Good in Bed

Good in Bed Read Free Page B

Book: Good in Bed Read Free
Author: Jennifer Weiner
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next step was finding an agent. In those early days of the Internet, when you couldn’t check out an agent’s particulars via Google, let alone do a little formatting, pay for a cover, and publish a book by yourself, I did it old-school, going to the dedication pages and acknowledgments in my favorite novels to figure out the names of the agents, then writing query letters explaining who I was and where I worked, the distinguished professors I’d studied with and the short stories I’d published, and what
Good in Bed
was all about.
    In the fall of 1999, I sent out twenty-five query letters. By December, I had received twenty-four rejection letters. In some cases they were rejection postcards, packing the maximum amount of painful humiliation onto the minimum required postage.
Not taking new clients. Not taking new fiction. Not taking new women’s fiction. Not taking new young women’s fiction. Thanks, but no thanks.
    The one agent who eventually agreed to read and, later, to represent the book was full of what turned out to be not-very-helpful suggestions.
Does the heroine need to be fat?
she inquired, pointing out the difficulties of getting a movie deal when the putative film stars a plus-size woman. Yes, I said, the heroine needs to be fat, because if she’s not, then this is basically Bridget Jones with a bat mitzvah, and not even I want to read that. Fine, she huffed. But can we cut some of the sex scenes with the fat girl? No, I replied, we cannot. Then came the straw that almost broke the (fat) camel’s back. I think, said the agent, that instead of calling the book
Good in Bed
, we should call it …
Big Girl.
    I didn’t know much about publishing back then, and I didn’t have other literary agents beating down my door to represent me, but I’d been a reader all my life, and I’d spent enough time with books and in bookstores to know that a book called
Good in Bed
would have a much different time in the world than one called
Big Girl
. Actual big girls—myself included—would be loath to carry around a book called
BigGirl
, but even casual browsers would feel compelled to thumb through a novel called
Good in Bed
, if only to see if there were pictures.
    Agent one and I parted ways, and eventually I found agent two, the delightful and tiny Joanna Pulcini. We worked together for months, revising and rewriting and tightening and fixing, before we took the book out to editors, a number of whom responded with great enthusiasm. We ended up with three different publishers bidding for the rights to publish the book, and I got to make the trip to New York to meet them. Less than a week after we took it to market,
Good in Bed
was sold as part of a two-book deal in May of 2000, to Greer Hendricks, at what was then Pocket Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster … and I was over the moon.
    For the next year, as the book inched its way toward publication, I continued working as a reporter at the
Philadelphia Inquirer
, and dating a nice new guy I’d met. I didn’t quit my day job, and I kept my expectations modest. I imagined that
Good in Bed
would be published, that I’d do a reading or two, that my friends would buy copies and my mother (who rarely springs for hardcovers) would reserve one at the library, and, as is the case with most books, that would be that. True, I also fantasized that the act of publication would fix everything that was wrong in my life, that it would guarantee my eternal happiness, that it would silence my critics, most of all the ones who live in my own head. I pictured the manuscript as sort of a fiery cross to brandish in the face of the world’s vampires, a magic wand erasing all doubt and insecurity.
    Good in Bed
didn’t serve that function—really, no book could—but there were signs that it might end up connecting with readers who were not me, my friends, or my immediate family, once it made its way into the

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