Are publishers really interested in good writing?

Discussion in 'Traditional Publishing' started by OurJud, Sep 15, 2017.

  1. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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    Yeah, best to get that one out of the way as soon as possible, haha. Cold and harsh probably aren't the right words, though. Try to think of the publishing industry as no different than the toilet supply industry... it's all about utilitarian products that people need and will pay a fair price for in the right market at the right time. Just because the production end of writing appears magical (it ain't, nobody gives a shit about how much you care or how hard you've worked) and the production end of toilets appears sterile, there's zero difference in how either product is treated in the marketplace.
     
  2. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    Go watch (just as an example that promptly comes to mind) some videos where Ann Patchett talks about her writing and the bookstore that she owns. I think you'll feel better at evidence that there is love for writing and books out there, even though a book is absolutely not going to get published on love alone. Yes, she's the unlikely example of someone who writes approximately what she pleases (at least in her novels; she's pretty clear that for a very long time she wrote her nonfiction magazine pieces to the editor's taste, to make money that would allow her to write her novels), gets published, gets reasonable critical acclaim, and also makes money at it, so hoping to follow her path and get all four of those things is not all that likely. But you might feel better all the same.
     
  3. Edward M. Grant

    Edward M. Grant Contributor Contributor

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    Lots of trade-published writers who say they just send their books to publishers directly.

    Of course, if everyone starts doing that, the publishers may well have to go the movie studio route, and reject everything that they're not expecting.
     
  4. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    But do you know that they are sending manuscripts to publishers who have specifically stated that they do not accept un-agented submissions, and they are succeeding with those specific publishers, against those publishers' rules?
     
  5. Laurin Kelly

    Laurin Kelly Contributor Contributor

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    I could see this maybe working if an author has an existing relationship with the publisher and knows someone they can send the MS to directly who will recognize the name and not toss it.

    For example, as @Homer Potvin noted above, Less Than Three is closed to submissions currently. Anything submitted to their submissions email address I believe is deleted via an Outlook rule and never even seen by human eyes. However, because I've previously published through LT3, I can send in an MS directly to the Editor in Chief Samantha, and she'll make sure it gets in the queue. If a new author tried sending to her directly, she'd trash it immediately; the reason they're closed to submissions (though they may be opening them again soon, as they just hired a new Acquisitions Editor) is that they have more than they can get through so they're focusing on what they have in hand and authors whose books they know they can sell.
     
  6. Edward M. Grant

    Edward M. Grant Contributor Contributor

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    Pretty much all large publishers say 'no unagented submissions'. But they all want to find the next big thing, regardless of how it gets to them.
     
  7. GrahamLewis

    GrahamLewis Seeking the bigger self Contributor Contest Winner 2023 Contest Winner 2022

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    I remember, long long ago reading the book Jaws not long after the movie came out. In my view, the story undoubtedly (and movie) carried that book. I found it clunky, stodgy writing. And I the author was the son and grandson of established writers. So he had a blockbuster, but I truly doubt his writing carried it. So if the stars align mediocre writing can succeed, but I'd guess that's rare.
     
  8. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    That sounds good, but that doesn't mean that they're going to hire dozens of readers to come through hundreds of submissions. It feels like you're assuming that your submission will somehow shine and announce its specialness, so that an editor has to consciously, deliberately, say, "I know that this is good, but I reject it anyway." There's no reason to assume that, in a situation where a publisher isn't accepting unagented submissions, the editor will ever be aware of its existence.
     
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  9. NiallRoach

    NiallRoach Contributor Contributor

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    Disclaimer: I know nowt about Joyce's career.

    I'm sure he wouldn't get through the publishing industry nowadays if he submitted Ullysses out of the blue, but equally I doubt he did then. Presumably, like most authors of the time, he'd built up a following and reputation for quality with rather more digestible books beforehand.
     
  10. NiallRoach

    NiallRoach Contributor Contributor

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    Also, let's play a game. I'm a traditional publishing house, and I get a submission via the usual method which I think has potential to sell well.
    Who relies on me, in acquisitions, making the right choice for their next paycheck?
    Well, the author, obviously. And their agent. And me, doing the choosing. And our editor(s). And the cover designers. And the marketing team. And everyone who works in distributing the book to shops. And the the printers. Maybe even a translator.

    What happens if I make the wrong choice?
    My reputation is damaged, the author loses their 'debut' status. The agent has wasted time they could've spent finding a different author. The publisher itself has to fork out for all the returned, unsold copies from bookshops, and the reputation hit that comes with a flop.

    With all that in mind, along with the narrowing profit margins as e-book encroach evermore into the mainstream, you can be damn sure that I'm going to be very careful about what I ask my boss to invest a few thousand dollarinos into.

    That seems perfectly reasonable to me. You earn the right to sell 'unpublishable' stuff. If Elon Musk had pitched the hyperloop twenty years ago, no one would have given him a chance. He built his way up, with more digestible projects, until he'd garnered the reputation he now has, where he can launch a private space program, or propose the hyperloop. It's just the same with writing. No one's going to just take your word that your 500k epic will sell, and invest in it, until you can prove that it will.

    'It', of Stephen King, is over a thousand pages long. It's also his twenty second book. His first, Carrie? 199. And that's ignoring the good few dozen shorts he had to his name by then.
     
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  11. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    the truth is though, even traditionally published books probably can't compete with the rest of the stuff that Amazon sells - toys, clothes and the like - that I doubt Amazon would invest this much money to giving reviews, and reviews to books of questionable quality at that. Amazon is huge and while their website is probably the most well-known thing about them to the average population, it is a small section of their overall business I think. They're now into android technology and their Amazon Cloud technology is cutting edge. Much more money on those areas. Compared to those, as well as selling everything else, books probably don't bring enough for paying reviewers to be worthwhile to the business. There's already customer reviews done for free, on top of this, and Amazon has tried to ensure people give reviews only after they've read the book - or at least owns the book - by showing who has had a verified purchase.

    But yeah I agree, it would be kinda cool if there were trusted reviewers whose opinions you respected actively reviewing self-published books and making recommendations :) Maybe reviewers only give a review if the self-pubbed book becomes the top 5 bestseller on the site, which would kinda be a vetting system all on its own anyway.
     
  12. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    ??? I'm not sure where you're going with this. I think it's fine if people want to write stuff that traditional publishing houses want to sell, and then maybe push the envelope later to see if the same publishing houses will continue to carry them if they start to deviate from the kind of writing that got them published in the first place. More power to their arms, and good luck to them.

    Self-pubbing is a different game. One of the reasons people go for self-pubbing is because they may not have the time or inclination to write stuff they don't really want to write on the off-chance that some publishing house will take them on so they can write what they really want to write later on.

    I'm just trying to think up ways to bring self-pubbed books to the attention of buyers. This has got nothing whatsoever to do with traditionally published books. This is a practical problem, and I believe practical problems always have a solution.

    You wouldn't say an Indie band should establish a mainstream musical career before they can go Indie, would you? This is more or less the same dynamic.

    I'm fine if people want to think that impartial reviews won't work to improve the sales of self-pubbed books (although I don't necessarily agree) or that Amazon wouldn't ever be interested in my model. However, I'm not happy with the notion that NOTHING is going to help sell self-pubbed books and we're being foolish to try. I'm sure we can achieve a breakthrough, if we work at it. It's a new industry and it's evolving all the time.
     
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2017
  13. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    But then, going by the Netflix/TV model, wouldn't Amazon just become like any other traditional publisher? They would have to invest and buy these books - the same way a publishing house would - although of course they could just take a 2% or 10% commission off the books' sales instead, seeing as they would have invested very little if the book was only published electronically.
     
  14. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Well, don't get disheartened. Self publishing has opened an entirely new door for people who like to write. At the moment it's still in its childhood, and we have a long way to go before writers who use it make much money. Poor quality can muddy the water, as well as difficulty in getting your book noticed by lots of people. But if you love to write, and aren't focused on making a paying career out of it (yet) it means you CAN get yourself published without an outlay of cash (as vanity publishing requires.) And that's got to be good news.

    What you do after that is up to you, and it's up to you to make the book as attractive and well-written as a traditionally-published book. But this is a lot more positive than spending years writing a book, then being unable to find a publisher for it because it's 'not what they're looking for.'
     
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2017
  15. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    But as was stated above, this would just be Amazon becoming yet another traditional publisher .It wouldn't be a fundamental change in any way. Many of the other traditional publishers' books can be bought on Kindle; Amazon would join them.
     
  16. isaac223

    isaac223 Senior Member

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    I suppose I can do this, its just a bit disillusioning when I've always -- foolishly, to be fair, considering all of the counterexamples -- thought that the key factor in getting a book published is originality and prose, not pandering and whatever the lowest common denominator wants this year. :/
     
  17. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    I'm not positive that it would require professional reviewers, but it would require LOTS of reviewers, reviewers that take the reviewing seriously and that either have no motivation to lie, or are somehow prevented from lying.

    If I could wave a magic wand, there would be a database where people not only review books, but review reviewers. And some sort of algorithm that ensured that a highly-rated reviewer could only get there by reviewing such a variety of material that it would just be too much work to fake it for the sake of some specific works. And the users of the site could choose the reviewers that they trust, and the site would find other reviewers that follow a similar pattern.

    But that implies a WHOLE LOT of data and participation. And that's the problem--people who read a lot would have trouble reading all the traditionally published books that they want to read. What's their motivation to read the self-published books, and to spend lots and lots of hours gaining a reputation on this site? If you add money, it's almost instantly going to get corrupted.

    So maybe that's the wrong place to start. Maybe you start with all books, which means that the data will be dominated by traditionally published books. But you still have a more robust, trustworthy reviewer algorithm than anyone like Amazon has. You work on it until it's actually working and people are actually finding books that they like, that they might not have found another way. You work on it until it hits critical mass, in a few years.

    Then you try to find a way to make that work for self-published books, too. It's not as if anyone was preventing self-published books from being reviewed, but odds are that there would have been very few.

    Then you set out on a quest to get some attention for self-published books. Maybe you have an automation-assisted selection/culling. Maybe a bunch of self-published authors submit their books and the books go through an automated evaluation that at least confirms that they're probably half-decent on SPAG; that will probably cut about nineteen out of twenty. Then randomly selected fragments of the book are presented so that people can invest, oh, five minutes, and rate whether the three paragraphs that they read have an interesting and engaging voice. That culls down to maybe one out of a hundred.

    Then human beings who have good ratings on the review site and are interested in self-publishing actually read some of the books. They're forbidden to read books that they have any connection to, and the batches of books are handed out randomly and secretly, so there's no easy way to corrupt the judges. Each human being is allowed to choose one out of the ten books that they get.

    So now you're done to one out of a thousand. There's a chance that some of those will be decent. You make a dozen of those available to the general reviewing population, and hope that some of them get reviewed.
     
  18. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    It's whether the book will sell. It is, again, not a writing contest. It's a business. But, again, many great books get through that process.

    And why define the reading public as the lowest common denominator? I think that having contempt for the reading population may not be the best strategy here.
     
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  19. isaac223

    isaac223 Senior Member

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    Yeah, I get bitterness like that was uncalled for, I apologize. Its just slightly upsetting is all. But I am, as we speak, looking into the Ann Pratchett you recommended I do. I take it she has no relation to Terry Pratchett?
     
  20. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    No more agents.
     
  21. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    Patchett. Apologies if I added the 'r'. :)
     
  22. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    Why? As I understand it, agents reduce the cost and effort for publishers. Why would Amazon give that up? And they work for a better deal for authors. Why would they give that up?

    A world where the authors that Amazon deems most likely to sell are essentially doing sweatshop piecework for whatever Amazon feels like paying them doesn't strike me as an improvement.
     
  23. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    Amazon get take risks traditional publishers can't take. How much does it cost Amazon to put up an ebook? Therefore, it doesn't need agents to enforce all these filters, like word length, genre, etc.

    Amazon provides reviewers and editors at a reasonable price, because people need jobs and that's what Amazon does. The author pays for it. The books go on the market. No agent needed. They don't really do anything.
     
  24. surrealscenes

    surrealscenes Senior Member

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    Amazon doesn't need agants since they take anything and everything. Bit I do think it is coming for a division of them now that they are in retail book sales.
     
  25. NiallRoach

    NiallRoach Contributor Contributor

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    Self publishing is its own beast. I just wanted to stress how much is at stake in any given book deal. Tradpublishers aren't cautious because they're greedy or because they want to make ludicrous money by pumping out the same safe books; they're cautious because not being cautious sinks publishers.

    It's much the same as Hollywood. It costs millions of dollars to make a movie at that level, so who in their right mind wouldn't go for the safer, more boring option?
     

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