Simon & Schuster

Its authors do heavy self-editing before the work reaches Simon & Schuster. Bill Browder gives each draft to ten careful, honest friends of different types first, so by the time his Simon & Schuster editor sees it she has almost nothing left to fix. When the publisher offered to reissue Jodi Picoult's first novel, Songs of the Humpback Whale, she kept the story but cut description, doing in five words what once took a page and a half.

On his second book, Browder's wife, son and agent all said it was bad, so he asked for three more months and rewrote about a third of it. Picoult says that even after 30 novels "you have to be willing to dismantle your own writing."

How I Write▶ 21:44

Its authors do heavy self-editing before the work reaches Simon & Schuster. Bill Browder gives each draft to ten careful, honest friends of different types first, so by the time his Simon & Schuster editor sees it she has almost nothing left to fix. When the publisher offered to reissue Jodi Picoult's first novel, Songs of the Humpback Whale, she kept the story but cut description, doing in five words what once took a page and a half.

On his second book, Browder's wife, son and agent all said it was bad, so he asked for three more months and rewrote about a third of it. Picoult says that even after 30 novels "you have to be willing to dismantle your own writing."

How I Write▶ 43:51

Editor Joanie Evans signed Susan Orlean for the book she actually wanted to write. After many warm rejections of a triathlon book Orlean did not want to write, Evans, head of a Simon & Schuster imprint, asked what she really wanted to do. Orlean said a book about Saturday night in America, and Evans replied 'Great. Done.'

Orlean had come to an agent meeting with 12 ideas and judged 11 and a half of them not good. The marketable proposal drew passes from publishers. Her takeaway is to back authors who are "literally burning with the desire to do the book."

How I Write▶ 29:18

Alice Mayhew rejected an introduction written before the book was finished. Jimmy Soni sent his Simon & Schuster editor Alice Mayhew an introduction drafted up front, and she told him to get it out of her face because he did not yet know the dimensions of the story.

Soni had two editors there, who also challenged overstated claims, and he credits Mayhew with teaching him to write things that stand the test of time. His rule now: "Save the intro for when you're completely finished and then the intro's the guide."

How I Write▶ 1:13:02