Saturday, May 19, 2012

A 'Fact Checking Error'? Dystel & Goderich Ask Writers to Submit Their Own Bios

Submission guidelines at the Dystel & Goderich website (original emphasis): "[Y]ou should describe in two or three sentences—no more—what the book will be about. This is followed by another brief paragraph on why it is being written and then another on why you are qualified to write it....Finally, there should be a more formal narrative Bio of the author."

Back in the mid-1990s, I lived in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. My wife was a medical student at the University of Chicago and I worked as a newspaper reporter.

I didn't know it, but also living in Hyde Park a few blocks away was a fellow just a couple years older than me named Barack Obama. At the time, he was a part-time lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, and I'm sure that at one time or another we crossed paths. I had no idea who he was, and unless he was a regular reader of the Chicago Daily Southtown, I'm pretty certain he had no idea who I was.

During that time, another reporter and I decided we wanted to write a non-fiction book about aging super-jocks--men and women in their 60s, 70s and 80s who could still sprint or do an Ironman or play baseball.

So we searched long and hard for a literary agent, and finally we found one who liked our material. Her name was Jane Dystel, and she worked in New York City.

A few years earlier, Jane Dystel had agreed to rep another client: my neighbor, Barack Obama!

More @ Breitbart

No comments:

Post a Comment