Quick but lengthy posting.
Jul. 25th, 2007 02:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
megwritesIt’s amazing how much writing you can get done when you have a very limited time and a singular determination.
In less than an hour I carved out 1600 more words on the Tower!Guy novel, and that’s including the time I took out to call people, check on the status of my passport, do dishes, and pack for Connecticut.
The grand total now comes to:
I saw an interesting link to an article about why publishers miss good books. It’s over here.
I mostly agree with the article, and I think people also need to try to think of publishing from a non-literary perspective. If this were, say, the NFL or NBA - we wouldn’t really even be having this discussion. I’m sure every year thousands of really talented athletes with the potential to be the next (insert your favorite famous athlete of choice) get picked over every year and don’t even make the draft.
Is that because coaches, teams, and owners don’t know what they’re doing? No. It’s because there is some luck involved. Teams have to make the best decisions they can and yeah, it’s the nature of the beast. Good athletes and good writers do get left behind.
Luckily for writers, just because nobody wanted to look at your first novel doesn’t mean you can’t try again with a second, a third and even a fiftieth.
Mostly what got me about the article was the discussion of the experiment David Lassman conducted where he submitted thinly redone Jane Austen novels to publishers. Apparently this is supposed to prove that publishers are evil or something.
Anyone who thinks the experiment proves anything but that Lassman is an idiot is also an idiot.
On a technical basis, he can’t say how many people rejected him because they recognized the ripoff and weren’t about to help someone plagiarize Jane Austen. Most probably just said, “Woah, this nutbag thinks he wrote Pride and Prejudice. Okay, form letter for the freak. Next!”
On a purely literary basis, trying to sell a Jane Austen novel to publishers today is like going to Amtrak and trying to sell them your amazing steam powered locomotive. How can anyone be surprised that 19th century writing doesn’t sell in the 21st century? Yes, we still read Jane Austen - but that’s because she got famous in her own time and we’ve decided that her writings, in their 19th century context, are still valuable to our culture.
Jane Austen was a 19th century genius, but that was the 19th century. Here, in the year 2007, things have changed. Including (and most importantly) your audience. People are not going to buy it. Especially not when they have the real deal in very cheap paperback form at any bookstore across the country.
And publishers can’t publish books out of the goodness of their heart. Things cost money. The costs of printing the damn thing, never mind hiring editors and copyeditors and assistants and executives OR PAYING THE AUTHOR, means that books have to pay for themselves at some point. If they don’t, presses and publishers go out of business. If they all go out of business, then good luck getting anything resembling affordable, well written literature. Maybe the publishing industry does need some change here and there, but without them, we don’t have books. And I don’t know about you, but I *like* books.
These companies are not charities. They have to look out for themselves. Which means, yes, they have to risk turning away the next JK Rowling every once and a while. Because if you do the risk vs. reward assesment, you’ll find out that for every one JK Rowling, there are hundreds of authors who’s books didn’t even pay for their advance even though they were really good writers and, at the time, looked like they might pan out.
Writing is an art. Publishing is a business. If you want to be Emily Dickinson and find posthumous success, then go hide from the big bad publishing industry and leave a note in your will that your epic masterpieces are in your sock drawer. If you’d like to have some reward and recognition within your own lifetime, learn to play the publishing game.
I know, this sounds really useless coming from an unpublished author, but even here from my obscure little setup in Queens, I can tell you this is true. I’ve done a lot of research and I’ll do a lot more.
And when the inevitable rejections start rolling in (I expect that I’ll probably get at least 100 rejections before anyone even wants to read a partial), I won’t waste the time whining about it. I’ll have a good cry, get over it, and remember the old saying: fall down seven, stand up eight.
In less than an hour I carved out 1600 more words on the Tower!Guy novel, and that’s including the time I took out to call people, check on the status of my passport, do dishes, and pack for Connecticut.
The grand total now comes to:
|
I saw an interesting link to an article about why publishers miss good books. It’s over here.
I mostly agree with the article, and I think people also need to try to think of publishing from a non-literary perspective. If this were, say, the NFL or NBA - we wouldn’t really even be having this discussion. I’m sure every year thousands of really talented athletes with the potential to be the next (insert your favorite famous athlete of choice) get picked over every year and don’t even make the draft.
Is that because coaches, teams, and owners don’t know what they’re doing? No. It’s because there is some luck involved. Teams have to make the best decisions they can and yeah, it’s the nature of the beast. Good athletes and good writers do get left behind.
Luckily for writers, just because nobody wanted to look at your first novel doesn’t mean you can’t try again with a second, a third and even a fiftieth.
Mostly what got me about the article was the discussion of the experiment David Lassman conducted where he submitted thinly redone Jane Austen novels to publishers. Apparently this is supposed to prove that publishers are evil or something.
Anyone who thinks the experiment proves anything but that Lassman is an idiot is also an idiot.
On a technical basis, he can’t say how many people rejected him because they recognized the ripoff and weren’t about to help someone plagiarize Jane Austen. Most probably just said, “Woah, this nutbag thinks he wrote Pride and Prejudice. Okay, form letter for the freak. Next!”
On a purely literary basis, trying to sell a Jane Austen novel to publishers today is like going to Amtrak and trying to sell them your amazing steam powered locomotive. How can anyone be surprised that 19th century writing doesn’t sell in the 21st century? Yes, we still read Jane Austen - but that’s because she got famous in her own time and we’ve decided that her writings, in their 19th century context, are still valuable to our culture.
Jane Austen was a 19th century genius, but that was the 19th century. Here, in the year 2007, things have changed. Including (and most importantly) your audience. People are not going to buy it. Especially not when they have the real deal in very cheap paperback form at any bookstore across the country.
And publishers can’t publish books out of the goodness of their heart. Things cost money. The costs of printing the damn thing, never mind hiring editors and copyeditors and assistants and executives OR PAYING THE AUTHOR, means that books have to pay for themselves at some point. If they don’t, presses and publishers go out of business. If they all go out of business, then good luck getting anything resembling affordable, well written literature. Maybe the publishing industry does need some change here and there, but without them, we don’t have books. And I don’t know about you, but I *like* books.
These companies are not charities. They have to look out for themselves. Which means, yes, they have to risk turning away the next JK Rowling every once and a while. Because if you do the risk vs. reward assesment, you’ll find out that for every one JK Rowling, there are hundreds of authors who’s books didn’t even pay for their advance even though they were really good writers and, at the time, looked like they might pan out.
Writing is an art. Publishing is a business. If you want to be Emily Dickinson and find posthumous success, then go hide from the big bad publishing industry and leave a note in your will that your epic masterpieces are in your sock drawer. If you’d like to have some reward and recognition within your own lifetime, learn to play the publishing game.
I know, this sounds really useless coming from an unpublished author, but even here from my obscure little setup in Queens, I can tell you this is true. I’ve done a lot of research and I’ll do a lot more.
And when the inevitable rejections start rolling in (I expect that I’ll probably get at least 100 rejections before anyone even wants to read a partial), I won’t waste the time whining about it. I’ll have a good cry, get over it, and remember the old saying: fall down seven, stand up eight.
