interviews
How did you celebrate the publication of
your first book?
Joseph Finder is the New York Times-bestselling
author of fourteen suspense novels, including
The Switch, Guilty Minds, and Suspicion; Buried
Secrets, co-winner of the Strand Magazine
Critics Award for Best Novel; Company Man,
winner of the Barry Award for Best Thriller;
The Moscow Club, named one of the ten best
spy novels of all time by Publishers Weekly; and
Killer Instinct, winner of the Thriller Award
for Best Novel. His novel High Crimes
became a hit movie starring Ashley Judd
and Morgan Freeman, and the film version
of Paranoia was released in August 2013. A
founding member of the International
Thriller Writers, Finder is also a member of
the Council on Foreign Relations and the
Association of Former Intelligence Officers.
A graduate of Yale College and the
Harvard Research Center, he lives in
Boston. Now onto our conversation:
How did you get into the business of writing?
I’ve wanted to write books since I was a kid, and
in fact I started writing professionally at a
relatively young age: I was twenty-four when I
published my first book, a nonfiction account of
the most powerful American businessmen and
their personal connections to the Kremlin. But
what I wanted to do all along was to try my
hand at a novel, a thriller. I was inspired by
some of the greats in the business: Ken Follett,
Frederick Forsyth, Robert Ludlum, and Nelson
DeMille. And other great writers like John le
Carré, Eric Ambler, and Graham Greene.
www.TopShelfMagazine.net
How long did it take before you could make
writing your full-time endeavor?
I was a very lucky guy—I made enough
money on the sale of my first novel,
between U.S. and foreign markets, to keep
me going for a few years, assuming I didn’t
buy a Maserati. So I quit the Harvard
faculty, where I’d been teaching writing to
freshmen in order to support my writing
habit, and became a full-time writer. I’ve
been writing full time since 1989!
Do you have a strict writing schedule?
I do. I get into my office every day by eight
and leave around five. I devote the morning
time, when I’m at my sharpest, to writing,
and I leave the business stuff for the
afternoon hours. Sometimes I take
weekends off, but usually not.
How much time and money do you––even a
successful New York Times bestselling
author––spend marketing your books?
Less than I used to. When I was starting out I
frankly think I spent too much time on the
marketing piece, which is why my books were
spaced apart by several years. I now have a
top-notch publisher that knows how to market
and do publicity far better than I do, so I leave
them to it. But despite all that, I still spend
time deciding what to Tweet or what to post
on Facebook and what should go on the
front page of my website, stuff like that. So
maybe a third of my office time is spent on
the marketing. Most of my time I spend
writing the books. That’s the best marketing
tool you can come up with: a good book.
Often, but not always. I’ve tried writing
with no idea of what happens after the
opening incident, and I found that I’d
wasted three months on ideas that didn’t
fit in the final story. On the other hand,
I’ve tried creating a long, detailed outline
(like Robert Ludlum did, for instance),
and I found that the writing was boring
and the end result suffered. So I create
what TV and movie writers call a “beat
sheet,” with the major dramatic
moments set out in order—it’s sort of a
high-level outline, but I always leave
myself open to ignoring the outline if I
come up with a better idea.
What’s your opinion of the ebook revolution?
AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
WITH NY TIMES BESTSELLING
AUTHOR, JOSEPH FINDER
I didn’t. What’s the way the hero of
Stephen King’s Misery celebrates finishing
a book—a bottle of Dom Perignon and a
single cigarette? I mostly felt relieved.
The reward was having done it.
Do you write and work from an outline?
When I was in my late twenties I gave myself a
three-year deadline to write a novel that made
enough money to support myself. So in that
period I gave myself a crash course in crime
fiction, reading the best books (and some bad
ones, too—bad books teach a lot) and taking
notes on index cards. Within 3 years I managed
to write the book that came to be called The
Moscow Club, get an agent, and sell it in the U.S.
and 30 countries around the world.
INTERVIEWS
I think it’s cool. I’m all in favor of
increasing the number of ways a
“reader” can be told a story. If the
convenience (and price) of an ebook
brings me one more reader, I’m all in favor
of it. I think if you glance at the numbers,
you’ll see that ebooks haven’t increased the
number of readers in total. But I would
argue that in the larger context, they
probably have, because every year we lose
readers to the immediate feedback loops of
the internet. And to TV (which has
gotten better and better). Yet the number
of readers has remained roughly the
same. So I suspect the Kindle revolution
has been good for business.
What’s the most important thing a bookstore
can do, in your opinion and experience, to
promote book sales?
Word of mouth. By far the most important
thing a bookstore can do is to have an employee
or two actually read the book—and tell people
about it. Word of mouth is the most powerful
bookselling tool there is, hands down.
Do you have any advice for independent
bookstores on how they might effectively
organize and promote events in their store?
Maintain a robust newsletter, whether it’s print
or (far more often) e-mail. I think that’s the
best way to keep your customers informed and
motivated enough to come into the store,
despite all there is to keep us away—family,
work, TV—and meet the author.
Read more of our interview with Joseph Finder at:
www.TopShelfMagazine.net
TOPShelf magazine
AUGUST2017 21