Don’t Worry, Women Writers, It Doesn’t Matter If You’re ’500 Pounds & Really Hard to Look At’ - Jezebel
▻http://jezebel.com/dont-worry-women-writers-it-doesnt-matter-if-youre-50-1774529441
Anyway, the piece was supposed to be about the sheer monetary power of “gorgeous writing.” But then, as EW said, “you can’t count on selling a book on the writer’s talent alone.” (Maybe they meant a book by a woman specifically, as they did not invoke the $2 million single-book advances that are awarded to the Garth Risk Hallbergs of the world, whose headshots do not seem to be quite as scrutinized.) Isabella Biedenharn writes, emphasis mine, about Cynthia d’Aprix Sweeney’s The Nest and Stephanie Danler’s Sweetbitter (edited by Claudia Herr at Knopf):
While factors like being photogenic or savvy with social media won’t make or break a deal, they can definitely sweeten it. “I actually knew very little about [Sweeney] when I bought The Nest,” says her editor at Ecco, Megan Lynch. “I didn’t know that, for example, she knew Amy Poehler well enough to approach her for a blurb. That was a happy bonus.” Lynch stresses that while she would never “decline a book I loved because I felt like the author wouldn’t be able to handle an NPR interview, it would certainly affect how determined I might be: Am I going to hang in for another round at auction, or drop out?” Herr, for her part, acknowledges that an author’s appearance can affect an advance — “We look at all of that stuff” — but insists, “We would have paid her the same money if she weighed 500 pounds and was really hard to look at. That’s my firm belief.”
#édition #littérature #beauté #poids #sexisme