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MARTHA MILLARD
MEETING SUMMARY:
Meeting Date: March 9, 1996.
Meeting Site: Yeager Residence, Paramus River, New Jersey.
Official Attendance: 46.
Meeting Program: Talk by literary agent..
Notes:
Meeting Memories:
Newsletter Account:
The following account is reprinted with permission from THE STARSHIP EXPRESS Copyright 1996 Philip J De Parto:
Literary agent Martha Millard spoke to a full house at the March 9, 1996 meeting of the Association. The gathering was held at the home of Robert Yeager and family and was our largest meeting yet at the Yeager homestead.
Tony Tellado conducted his last meeting as the director of the Final Frontier with his usual easy going charm. He was genuinely touched when Greg Roman presented him with a "good luck with the radio show" gift. The gathering was held in the semi-circular TV room on the first floor. At 7:00 PM, the repeat of STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE 9 was viewed.
There was a fair-sized crowd at the Anime Associates to watch TIME STRANGER in the upstairs bedroom. Patricia Malone delayed starting the main feature to allow late arrivals the opportunity to catch the movie in its entirety. The episode of RAI DEEN was rescheduled to the April meeting.
The Yeagers set out an extremely copious variety of snack foods and beverages. The food area grew to encompass their table, the pool table (no games of interdimensional pool this year!), a counter, a side table, and a card table. Also contributing foodstuffs were Jackie Hecht (cupcakes), Charles Garofalo (ice cream), Philip De Parto (donuts), and a number of people with the odd bottle of soda or bag of potato chips.
After the usual preliminaries, Martha Millard was introduced. She recounted graduating from Drew University with a BA in English and landing an entry level position with Jove Books. While there, she discovered that she was more comfortable working with writers on the business end of things than on the editorial side.
She soon obtained a position with Richard Curtis Associates and worked there for four years before an amicable separation to start up her own literary agency in New Jersey.
About half of her clients are science fiction writers, although she does handle other genres as well as non fiction. William Gibson is her best known author. She contacted him after being impressed with his short story, "Johnny Mnemonic" in OMNI MAGAZINE. He had no agent and was at work on the novel, NEUROMANCER, at the time.
She stated three major functions that a literary agent provides for a writer. The first is as a buffer between the publisher and the author. This allows the author to concentrate on writing the best possible book and not on keeping track of what editors have changed jobs and similar marketing concerns. An agent also allows a more objective assessment of editorial requests.
An agent is also in a better position to follow up on the in-house details of the editorial and production process. This is especially true for writers at a distance from New York.
It goes without saying that an agent can be extremely useful in negotiating a deal for the book itself, but it is in the secondary markets that the agent can really prove his mettle. There are many foreign markets and media markets which can be exploited by the knowledgeable professional.
There was active audience participation throughout the talk. Questions were raised about the Joan Collins/Random House lawsuit and many other issues. When a question was raised about why the movie JOHNNY MNEMONIC was so terrible, she said that she could explain many things in the world, but not the workings of Hollywood.
William Wagner asked if the proper literary agent might be able to induce Harlan Ellison to complete LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS. Her reply was "I think it remains unfinished in myth and legend and that if he did in fact finish it, there would be some fundamental change in the universe."
As the evening go later, we called a halt to the proceedings so that Robert Yeager could begin the house tour. About 15 of the crowd went on the first tour, with the remainder continuing questions and answers with Ms Millard. Our guest accompanied the second wave, but had to leave before it was finished due to the late hour. She commented that she had had a good time and that the club was a lovely group of people.
The Yeagers were in no hurry to kick us out, so the group drifted out by the ones and twos. It was long after midnight when the stragglers headed out to the Horizon Diner, and I was long gone by that time.
Thanks to everyone who helped make the evening a success, and especially to the Yeager family.