Publishing manners: Only responds if interested

Dean Wesley Smith, one of the contributors to the freebie manual Write Good or Die, has a post on "But why would you... insult writers like this?"

The post is well worth reading, covering the growing habit of professionals in the publishing industry to not bother responding to queries. Dean rather eloquently points out that they do it because they can.

Previously, writers had no choice, but now the balance of power is shifting away from the middle management and to both ends of the real business--connecting writers and readers. Over the course of my own career, I watched the lack of response happen. In the late 1990s, you could pretty much count on getting a form rejection within three months of your submission. That was when publishers still looked at manuscripts.

After that, publishers started requiring agents, and agents responded to their newfound power by raising their commission from 10 percent to 15 percent. The corporate publishers merged, smaller presses folded, and soon we had the Big Six that we know today, although there are still some established small and specialty presses. All this moved the selection of marketable books into the hands of a very few people, which also caused them to be busier than ever.

The net result was that there were few of them and many, many, many writers. It was actually easier to ignore almost all writers, because they really only needed a few. Even if the 100 best books ever written all showed up at the same time, they'd still only buy five of them. Same with the worst 100 books--they'd still need five.

But that's not an excuse to ignore writers. If a writer spends a year working on a manuscript, even if the story is dog slobber, it deserves a "No, thank you." Of all the ways traditional publishing contributes to its own demise, I can't help but feel the "Only responds if interested" policy is a subtle but revealing detail about where modern publishing has arrived.

Perhaps the decline was inevitable, but it could have been embraced with a little grace, and then perhaps more writers would be saddened at the loss. As it is, we're not even sure it's any loss at all.
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Hello Indie Libraries, Good-bye James Patterson

Penguin pulling ebooks from libraries the week after announcing an exploitative "self-publishing assistance" program. Author's Guild grumbling about ebooks in Amazon Prime library. Publishers continuing to price ebooks at $10 and up.


The funny thing about paradigm shifts, like any trend, is they are more than halfway over before you notice them. In fact, it seems the noticing marks the beginning of the end. Which, incidentally, is why "writing to trend" is a terrible idea.

In this case, we have tradition reeling in the velvet ropes and hoisting the gate to the ivory tower, making its content elitist, overpriced, and inaccessible. Bully for them. A bit of a rah and that. One can't be troubled by the masses when literachuhhh must be preserved at all costs.

And as one door slams closed, a hundred others open. With Amazon rumored to open its Prime lending library to indie authors, the lines are really drawn in the sand. Overdrive allows authors and small publishers to apply for digital library distribution.

And guess who will jump the line? The writers with nothing to lose.

I don't think anyone can make the slightest guess about how all this will turn out. But I make one prediction: readers are soon going to become even more aware of the shell game they've been forced to play, given a small pool of authors. I think readers are going to discover that the indie authors and small-press authors will be the new populist literature, and they will like those books just as much as they ever did "the old guys." Frankly, I think we're in need of fresh blood. The paper bestseller list looks old and weary, the same names and the same sentimentality.

I've always said, "Put me and James Patterson both in brown paper bags, and I like my chances." Not that I am "better" than Patterson, but there's nothing especially special about Patterson besides a monopolistic distribution system that ensures bestsellers. Patterson was the perfect, penultimate achievement of that broken system. And, in a way, that achievement is part of what is helping break it as the tower collapses under its own weight. Ghostwritten corporate product masquerading as art. Nothing personal against Patterson, the man, but publishing a book a week doesn't mean you are a "writer."

I think we deserve better. And now we have better.

All that's left is hiring someone to ghostwrite Patterson's epitaph.
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(Need more writer babble? Janice Gable Bashman let me talk about Act 2 of a writing career at her blog today)