In Tough Times, Should the Business Lunch Be Cut?

“It would be penny wise and pound foolish” to trim back on business lunches, said Laura Heimert, vice-president and editorial director of Basic Books. “You can’t put a price on the books and the ideas that emerge from the lunch, either at that moment or in the future.”

In a time when companies are looking to cut costs, The National recently wrote a story on the value of the publisher’s lunch.

Lunches function as a relaxing, social way for editors and agents to learn enough about each other to potentially do business in the future. … Many in the New York publishing business feel that lunches are integral to helping agents and editors build relationships. Relationships which are important because, as editors love to point out, selling books is not like selling widgets. … ‘The idea of the lunch is that you’re looking for the place where your passions overlap,’ said literary agent Larry Weissman.

Mel Flashman, a literary agent at Trident Media Group summed up his recent experience at a business lunch. “Yesterday I had a first lunch with a relatively young editor at Viking. We talked about mutual friends and Sonic Youth. We rarely talked about books but I now have a sense of the books that I would send him.”

But, as The National points out, there is a skill to make the lunch effective.

Editors use the phrase ‘he does a good lunch’ to refer to people who are pleasant to talk to, can transition smoothly from subject to subject and can insert business tactfully into the conversation. … Skilled lunchers make the lunches seem natural.

Altogether, it appears strong relational skills are the key to saving the business lunch in the New York publishing world. What about your industry? Do you do a good lunch?

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