Is publishing broken? It depends on your point of view.
Publishing funds itself by selling books to readers. Everything it does is designed to maximise those sales because, like supermarkets and bakers and butchers and car manufacturers and shoe-makers and furniture makers and hat-makers, publishing is a business. It has to make lots of sales in order to remain in profit: which means that it focuses on providing what the book-buying public wants.
Publishing cannot focus solely on bringing works of staggering genius to the attention of a grateful reading public, or on nurturing and supporting novice writers as they learn their craft and experiment with exciting risky new projects: while that would be nice for those novice writers it wouldn’t be nearly so nice for the publishers’ shareholders who would have to provide funds to publish the many turkeys such an approach would undoubtedly hatch, nor would readers appreciate being provided with all the unreadable tripe which might well result. Which is not to say that publishers don’t encourage new writers: I know of several agents and editors who help talented-but-unpublished writers with no expectation of a future financial reward. But publishing books which will sell well has to be the publishing business’s main focus.
So, is publishing broken? Not if you’re a reader, it’s not. Every year the number of books published increases: there is now a bigger choice of books available than ever before. Readers can choose how they want to acquire their books (from physical book shops, or by shopping online); and they can choose how they read them: in print form, as an audiobook, or on their computer or electronic reader. For most readers, publishing works just fine.
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yes, I agree wholeheartedly – publishing is a business (what happened to candelstickmakers, by the way? What did they ever do to offend you?) – that’s why there’s absolutely no point in people writing stuff that’s unmarketable and then complaining there’s no market for it.
Which isn’t to say there’s no point in writing things that are unmarketable on a commercial scale – just that you need to be aware what you’re doing when you write it. If you are writing for the art, by all means try your hand at getting an agent, but don’t be upset if you don’t get one – and if the feedback is that you should be more commercial in oredr to get one, then make the decision – do you want to write for the pay packet, or do you REALLY want to do it for the art? And if it’s the latter, don’t expect to be picked up, or blame the publishers when you aren’t.
One further point. One of the reasons I gave up on looking for a publisher was that it seems to me that most published writers do not make a full-time living from their writing (is that fair, Jane?) They need to keep the day job. I am lucky. I have a day job I can leave at the office to let me write. If I were to change what I write in order to seek a publisher I’d still have to have the day job – but I’d efefctively be turning writing into a second day job. Rewriting would become a means to second-guessing commerciality and not a way of polishing something I love in order to make it shine. So I am very very happy to stick with writing the kind of weird stuff I do and performing it live and slef-publishing it. Um, Jane, am I allowed to mention my new book is out on July 1st – it’s called (life:) razorblades included and it’s a collection of poems and short stories celebrating the complexity and difficulty of making the choice to live. It’s also utterly unmarketable
http://yearzerowriters.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/life-razorblades-included/
Um, you couldn’t privately email a list of those particular agents and publishers, could you Jane? Seeing as my wip is inbetween genre (yes, i probably should have known better(:):)
Dan, most writers’ earnings are notoriously low: but that doesn’t mean that hardly any full-time writers earn a living from their work. I think that a big reason that most writers make such a paltry amount is that there are lots of people out there who call themselves writers but who only really dabble with writing: they sell an article every now and then, take several years to write just one book; sure, they’re writers–but not full-time, serious writers.
I know lots of people like that: but I also knows lots of people who write full-time AND who make a reasonable-to-good living at their craft.
And while I have your attention, I have to say that I don’t think following an editor’s or an agent’s suggestions for revising your work equates to second-guessing commerciality: again, I know a good number of writers who have written books they loved, revised them at their editors’ suggestions, and ended up with an even better book which they love even more. Despite the tone of my post, editors and agents don’t always sacrifice art in favour of commercialism–they just have to pay attention to commercialism at all times. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
(And yes, of course you’re welcome to mention your new book. I shall look forward to seeing it.)
Sam, you can find those agents all on your own. They are out there. You might want to read a few of their blogs to get yourself started.
As for being in between genres–that’s not necessarily a bad thing. So long as your book is well-written it gives you more scope: you can write a separate query for each of the genres it rests between, and approach all the agents who represent each of them. Just target your queries accordingly. And good luck.
I do read a lot of blogs, Jane, but admittedly not many by agents, so will do a search. And i have come across some lovely agents, who’ve said lovely things, but well, perhaps my writing just isn’t there yet and it’s not the genre thing that’s the problem…
Thanks for the good luck:)
Jane, yes I wouldn’t want to make sweeping statements about editors – the feedback I had from the HC editor who looked at Songs helped me make it a book I’m much happier with. And I think self-publishers need editors as much as they need oxygen to survive. I totally agree that commerciality and art needn’t be exclusive – I think I was making the point that as a writer you do need to have it clear in your mind what your ONE overriding goal is, and then ruthlessly pursue that – the rest is more likely to follow if you do. I think this is a common-sense lesson we learn from business – that those enterprises absolutely clear about what they do are more successful than those that hedge their bets or try to catch-all.
That’s rather encouraging – I had always assumed that very very few of the people whose books we saw on the shelves in Waterstone’s actually made enough to make a living at it, however modest. Maybe there’s hope – but it’s still not my overarching goal.
Publishing is not broken – of course I’d say that, I’m published – but it is incredibly competitive.
I wonder if publishing has ever focussed on ‘bringing works of staggering genius to the attention of a grateful reading public’? It seems to me that there has always been phenomenally popular twaddle out there, almost from the moment printing presses were invented.
Whilst I’m no fan myself of some of the stuff you see piled up on Waterstone’s special offer tables, I think the rumour that publishing has sold out to the dumb is probably sour grapes from the huge number of people who feel entitled to publication. I wonder how many of them really are the artists that they purport to be?
“I know a good number of writers who have written books they loved, revised them at their editors’ suggestions, and ended up with an even better book which they love even more.”
You know me, then! It’s just not as simple as them wanting you to write mega-selling commercial tosh, and you wanting to write high art, or them wanting you to write a book that more than three people will understand, and you wanting to write unsaleably literary tosh.
“editors and agents don’t always sacrifice art in favour of commercialism–they just have to pay attention to commercialism at all times. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”
The moment I fell in love with the agent who was offering to take on The Mathematics of Love, was when she said, ‘I think there are two reasons you should change X [a piece of plot]. One of them is commercial so I mistrust it, but the other is that it doesn’t work.’ That, to me, is the perfect combination in an agent: she knows what matters commercially, but she also knows that it isn’t ALL that matters, and that it doesn’t necessarily override every other consideration. So I’ll happily consider doing something which will make the book more saleable, provided it will also make it a much better book.
“It seems to me that there has always been phenomenally popular twaddle out there, almost from the moment printing presses were invented.”
Of course. The vast majority of any society’s cultural production satisfies the demand of the moment, but has no great longevity. And geniuses are thin on the groundm and since almost by definition their work is something that the vast majority of people won’t altogether get, or want, they have to wait for the rest of us to catch up with them: they have longevity, not necessarily sales (or equivalent) in their lifetime.
Jane, I agree with you that it’s perfectly possible to make a living as a writer, albeit not a huge one. I do think that the number of writers who can live comfortably solely by writing exactly what they want to write, and nothing else, is pretty small, though. But ’twas ever thus. George Herbert was a clergyman, Shakespeare was an actor, composers write to commission, visual artists teach, etc. etc.
I put my hand up as another of those who rewrote at an editor’s suggestion and now love the result far more than my initial attempt…
As for the “living” question, it’s a tricky one. My income is all related to my writing. But it is a combination of advances, royalties, payment for manuscript critiques, teaching for the WEA, private teaching (especially one-day novel courses), workshops via Sheffield Arts, privately-arranged visits to schools and workshops in schools, and a few other bits and bobs besides! But I’d argue that all of the other stuff is a direct result of my being a published writer – so I do “make my living from writing”. Plus my wife works too, as a teacher.
But, to put it in some kind of perspective, we have a beaten-up car, live in a modest semi (albeit in a nice area), have camping holidays in France or the UK, and have no option other than state school for the children… When I look at the lifestyles of some of my venture-capitalist contemporaries I boggle!
I’m going to have to disagree with this post…
You make an excellent point when you say publishing is a business and is tuned for profit. A lot of the profit maximization is at the expense of authors. The blockbuster mentality not only hurts the midlist, it also floods the market with endless clones of popular works (Twilight and Harry Potter are great, it’s the gagillion clones of them on the market that are bad).
So publishing posseses the necessary profit mindedness to make tough decisions to maximize profit. At the same time it is one of the most inefficient industries around. Policies like heavy bookseller discounting and late royalty payments which are inefficient remain in constant use.
Diversity in industry employees (and consequently books remains at a terrible low.
No offense to the reading public, but the industry shapes literary discourse because readers can only buy books they hear about. Saying the industry satisfies readers is ingenuous at best and gives readers little credit for their capacity to enjoy books that are not populist drivel.
The industry is only fine if you’re a part of it.
Every business, and every business model, must reinvent itself from time to time. Right now that seems to mean a major overhaul which is long overdue. I refuse to believe the day is coming when nobody reads. No way.
I refuse to believe that a person who has the balls to own up to the fact that the industry is going the way of crap is just sour grapes demanding publication themselves. Trends (and merchandising) is driving the industry, and indicators that books being dumbed down are aplenty! Twishite and the HP phenom are one of the big red flags (the vampire craze from the mid-90s has returned to choke us and while Eragon and Spiderwick weren’t great Lemony Snickett is fab).
Going to B&N isn’t exciting anymore- I mean a spy novel centering around an alcoholic beverage sounded interesting, but when I actually sat down to read the thing I wanted to burn down the pile stacked against the wall! Meanwhile diamonds hidden in the tonnes of coal such as The Year of the Woman by Jonathan Gash, Hong Kong On Air by Muhammad Cohen, and Marrying Mozart by Stephanie Cowell just get ignored.
I’m coming into this a little late here, but I can’t help but wonder — if Charles Dickens or Fyodor Dostoyevsky lived today and they didn’t have any name recognition, how long would it take them to get out of the slush pile, if ever? And when (if) someone deigned to notice them, then would they stand a chance of getting published without making drastic compromises to their style? I understand about the economics of the industry, and I hope I’m not being a snob here, but I wonder how many great literary classics would exist if it were up to today’s literary industry.
Mayowa wrote:
But this has always been the case: there have always been similar books published, with the claim that they are best-seller clones: thing is, if they didn’t sell well, they wouldn’t get published. You might not like those books but plenty of people do, otherwise they wouldn’t be published.
Publishing has to maximise profit in order to stay in business. It’s just like any other business. And I dispute that it’s “one of the most inefficient industries around”: yes, it does have its inefficiencies but I don’t think they’re any worse than any other large business, and things like large retailer discounts and late payments are common in business these days–most of my family is self-employed, and they all complain of such goings-on.
Here you’re right. But is that only true of publishing? I think not.
If the business published books which the reading public wasn’t interested in spending money on it would very quickly go down the tubes. You’re insulting both readers and writers with your “populist drivel” comment, but you’re also kind of proving my point: if those books are “populist” then that means they’re popular. The “drivel” is your judgement on them: but if all books published were ones you want to read, what would all those people who don’t share your reading preferences have to read? It seems that they make up a bigger part of the book-buying public than you do, so perhaps you can see the fallacy in your argument.
And this is revealling in so many ways.
Michael LaRocca wrote:
Michael, publishing has been changing ever since I’ve been involved with it and for a long time before. This is nothing new–just how things go. And yes: people will continue to read, no matter what. The trick is for publishing to continue to respond to those changes. As it has always done.
silvererieann wrote:
No–profit is driving the business, as it always has. Publishers which don’t pay attention to their profit levels go out of business.
NO. Just because you don’t like Twilight or Harry Potter doesn’t mean they’re no good, nor does it give you the right to insult the books and by extension, their authors or their readers. I won’t have such sneering here.
Again, if you don’t like Konrath’s books you don’t have to read them: but you have no right to sneer at them. Are the books you list as diamonds published, or not? I’m not familiar with them. But if they are then they haven’t been ignored, so you have destroyed your own argument; and if they aren’t, perhaps they’ve not been ignored, they’ve just not been published because the publishers which have seen them don’t think they can recover the cost of bringing them to the market–because not enough readers will buy them.
Alex wrote:
The problem is that if Dickens and Dostoyevsky tried to get their existing works published for the first time today, their work would be dated. It works now because of the context in which we read it; without that context they lose something, which might well make them unpublishable. And Dickens wasn’t published out of nowhere: before his books were published he had a big following because his works were serialised in the popular press.
Ah, you’re referring to Publishing Myth Number 372. It’s not true that publishers expect writers to drastically change their writing for little or no reason: it just isn’t logical for them to do this.
Publishers sign books they love. They only make changes to those books in order to make them better, not to change the book out of all recognition. If substantial changes are required then these should be discussed before signing, so that the author can decide whether he agrees with them or not.
It’s a misleading question to ask whether or not classics like Dickens et al would get published if they were submitted today: the thing is, if those writers were alive and writing today they’d write completely differently and might well get published. Would their original books get published today? Perhaps. Perhaps not. It all depends on how they compared to the books they were competing against for publication.