Reading his posting feels distressingly like the first time you realized that your parents actually had -sex- to produce you. Uncomfortable and icky, with an undertone of curious fascination ("Parents -did- that?!?").

I wish him the best of luck though - and can't help but think back to the thread about male authors needing the most editing...

I can't imagine putting that kind of effort into writing an entire novel and then not want to see it through under my own name, no matter how much I needed the money.

So, the big name author will make $150,000? Or even $2 mill? Having read what some of the going rates are for signings, I doubt it.

I also suspect anyone who writes "maybe" as "mabe". And the fact that English teachers like it has nothing to do with how well it will sell. Most of the stuff my English Creative Writing teacher liked was pretty much crap.

I hope he finds a way to get some good feedback on this book and sell it to a reputable publishing house.

Suzanne: You and me both. I'd want to have my name on the novel--and I imagine that usually Ye Olde Famous Author wants the novel with their name on it to be their own work too. (Except Paris Hilton, but she doesn't count anyway.)

I keep thinking....notoriety online tends to make strange celebrities out of less probable stars. Think about the Star Wars kid and William Hung from American Idol's tryouts--so who knows what could happen to this fellow. Of course, in the mean time, he could also be the receptacle of Really Bad Advice. I have mental pictures of avid Publish America authors trying to sell him on PA. Or he might decide to go with AuthorHouse, his last resort, but I hope he doesn't.

Oh, dear. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to sweep in with a pot of hot chocolate, a plate of cookies, a blankie and a stuffed animal, and a whole pile of unwanted good advice. I give him points for realizing that he's unlikely to make the kind of big bucks he wants with the manuscript he's got (and sadly, the prose in his offering statement doesn't inspire much confidence in the story) but...but couldn't he make big bucks selling heroin or robbing banks, something comparatively honest?

And why is it that so many people think that Big Name Authors are hurting for stories? Hell, I'm a Small Name Author and I have more story-ideas than I know what to do with--it's the time, focus and energy to turn the ideas into prose that I need more of!

Suzanne — What I really like about this “offer” is the implication that King, Grisham, Rowling (er, “Rawlings”), et al. hate writing and would love to have someone else do it for them. If Mr. Rice thinks they don’t care about their work, and don’t care who wrote what gets published in their names, it doesn’t surprise me that he doesn’t care what name his stuff gets published under.

(So how old do you think he is? I’m guessing either thirteen or thirty-five.)

Now I’m tempted to put my unwritten manuscript on eBay.

Under a pseudonym, of course.

PicusFiche, I wonder the same thing. There ought to be a Top Ten Ebay celebrities of the week list somewhere. The guy who put his ex-wife's wedding dress up on ebay comes to mind. Iirc, he not only sold the dress for more than its original price, he got several marriage offers [boggle].
But that was just funny. This one actually has a suspense element to it, like watching the innocent soon-to-be-victim walking into the villain's lair. Ebay-noir.

Here's hoping he actually gets some good advice.

It’s filled with suspense, along with fear and anxiety.

He's talking about the book, right, not the auction?

Has anyone actually tried contacting the fellow yet to give him some of the advice everyone thinks he needs? Or even just to point him to this blog entry?

(If the answer's "no," say so and I'll do it. I just don't want to be redundant if smarter people have already done it better.)

I'm hoping someone who isn't an acquiring editor will write to him.

David, thirty-five has to be closer to the target, and I think it's low. He's been living in his apartment for nine years with his three kids, though he doesn't specify that there were three of them during all those years.

Has anyone actually tried contacting the fellow yet to give him some of the advice everyone thinks he needs?

I considered doing this yesterday, but it was then pointed out to me that this might actually just be a joke.

Oh, my initial reaction was pretty much the same as Madeline's (a feeling of intense pity and desire to save him from himself) but I soon found myself clinging to the idea that it might all be a big joke (the fact that he realizes he wouldn't sell more than a few copies under his own name underscores this idea for me). It's easier that way.

This guy has almost a conspiracy theory view of the publishing world -- he appears to think that the "Big" authors, even Rawlings, don't ever meet with editors, or rework any of their writing.

It's as though their books sell because of the name on the front, not because people have enjoyed reading the books that have had that name on the front in the past. I'm definitely not in the pro-King or pro-Grisham camps, but I've read more than one book by both of them and I can see why they sell.

As an aside, can someone point me to the thread about male authors needing the most editing? I've been reading this blog for a while but I don't remember seeing it. As an unpublished male author, I'd like to know what my problem is. :) Actually, it sounds like an opportunity for a competitive advantage...

M@

He's been living in his apartment for nine years with his three kids, though he doesn't specify that there were three of them during all those years.

Ah. Good point, Teresa. I was distracted by the handwriting.

Re: the "publishing is a big conspiracy" theory, check this out:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2491267640

An author is selling self-published novel on eBay, along with a rant about why he couldn't get published conventionally.

The rant's quite entertaining. :-) A pity he doesn't know the difference between self and vanity publishing, but the rant does display a better command of the English language than most such rants I've seen.

At the risk of this being a side issue, the conception that the "idea" of the book is what's valuable, the prose is just the soggy croissant one stuffs it into, goes way back; one used to see many comments by writers about how people would come up to them on social occasions with an "offer" to have the writer turn the Brilliant Notion into a book, in exchange for half the proceeds.

There actually is a sort of conspiracy theory at work, which is helped along by the short-term bestsellers with famous names that are widely known to have been ghosted. (There was an entertaining account some years ago of how WASHINGTON WIVES, allegedly by Maureen Dean, had been created to back up an already-scripted TV miniseries; Dean bragged that she hadn't even read the book.) Sometimes it gets weird, like the various hypotheses about who E. L. Doctorow "really is," most of them involving multiple authors using a code name ("Eight Ladies," "Eleven Doctors" -- no, I'm not kidding).

The idea fixation shows up a lot in the skiffy slush, not surprisingly; some idea prised from a bleeding-edge technical journal like PARADE magazine is stirred into a formula pulp story in the way that Godzilla visits the Japanese from time to time. The rejection is sometimes met with complaints that this is a brand-new and really important idea, certain to sell a million copies of Superheterodyne Stories and win the, you know, sci-fi prize thing, the Norman bel Pulitzer or whatever.

And backing up a little, it is an observable fact that "big name writers" sell a lot of their books (except when they don't, but that often goes unnoticed, even if the book is a serious failure), and the actual dynamics of Bestsellerism are complicated and contain a lot of quantum weirdness.

The film-sale bit -- the idea that a novel really desires to be a movie, and is somehow unfulfilled if it doesn't -- is a side issue, like three-bean salad.

I considered doing this yesterday, but it was then pointed out to me that this might actually just be a joke.

That occurred to me, too, but it just doesn't read like one, somehow, though I can't put my finger on exactly why... the tone is wrong, I think.

A little Googling also turns up independent existence of a Daniel Rice at the address on the letter shown in the auction. Of course that could be his real name and address and it could still be a joke, but I think that unlikely.

I'd guess the guy is pretty young, judging by the multiple references to English teachers.

I dunno, though. The whole thing boggles my mind, but it's really got me thinking about why I find the idea of selling one's MS on eBay so appalling. And since I just drank a half-gallon of NyQuil and my brain is all fuzzy-happy, I'm going to natter on for a little bit.

For me, the joy of making things is in the act of creation and the "payback" is seeing someone else enjoying them. And yes, I put my name on the things I make (though rarely prominently, all Gigantic Noreascon Signs aside). But I don't suppose that's any more valid a reason for creating things than the drive for monetary gain, and I've got a decent day job so I'm not constrained by having to make what I do pay. I guess everyone writes/paints/sculpts or what-have-you for different reasons, some more personal and some more practical than others, and maybe for this guy the idea of some Big Name Author adopting his words and getting a Big Fat Check in return is reward enough. Or maybe Ebay Fame is his chosen payback, and hey, I suppose that's valid too.

Well, anyhow. It'll be interesting to see if he gets any bids (-:

I love the idea of the Norman bel Pulitzers. The winner of the Public Service category could get some sort of gold medal in the shape of an impossible flying boat.

The idea fixation has a long history. Byron on Shakespeare, for instance:

Shakespeare's name, you may depend on it, stands absurdly too high and will go down. He has no invention as to stories, none whatever. He took all his plots from old novels, and threw their stories into a dramatic shape, at as little expense of thought as you or I could turn his plays back again into prose tales. [Thank you, Google.]

Maybe so, George, but Will's name still shifts a lot more product than yours.

Okayyy. Taking all that as a "no," here's what I sent via the Ebay question link:

Dear Mr. Rice:

I thought you'd like to know that your auction is being discussed at a popular blog for writers and publishing professionals:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/005569.html

My advice is this: If you're proud of your work, stand behind it. No one else wants to put their name on your book; they're too busy writing their own. If you want to see this in print, it needs to be your name and your sweat.

And don't fall for scams. Learn how to send your book to real publishers, ones that'll pay *you* instead of the other way around, ones whose logo you can find on books in bookstores.

Will they publish it? Maybe. Maybe not. But the only person who can make your book work is you. Good luck to you.

the conception that the "idea" of the book is what's valuable, the prose is just the soggy croissant one stuffs it into...

...may in fact be a valid model for certain areas of non-fiction. I'm thinking of scientific publishing, where prose is secondary to content. (Which is not to say that scientists don't admire well-written prose in scientific papers. To pick a random example, Claude Shannon's first paper on information theory is lauded for both qualities.) But that's not what we were talking about...

("Eight Ladies," "Eleven Doctors" -- no, I'm not kidding)

Twelve Monkeys? Nah, they wrote Shakespeare.

That would be Chris Patton, Author Services Representative at AuthorHouse.

Other services, available for additional fees, include copyediting, publicity, custom cover design, back cover, copyright registration, and bookstore returnability.

Oh the poor thing!

There's something so immensely sad about that. I read it twice. His entire life flashed before my eyes. I have this very strong image of him at a roadside diner, tired and unshaven, drinking coffee while clutching the manuscript box, on his way to visit some shadowy figure who may want to buy it. It would make a great movie.

Has anyone else read Donald Westlake's The Hook? Actually if you're a writer, I wouldn't recommend it, as I couldn't sleep after finishing it. It's about something a bit like this, only with more murder.

I have this very strong image of him at a roadside diner, tired and unshaven, drinking coffee while clutching the manuscript box, on his way to visit some shadowy figure who may want to buy it. It would make a great movie.

It's not quite that bad-- if he's put it on ebay, he's not lacking in spunk. (The shadowy figure is J.K. Rawlings, the grizzled, cigar-smoking éminence grise behind the Harry Potter racket.)

What's with the 10" x 13" paper?

The cover says "15-20 chapters." What, he can't count them to be sure?

It's supposed to be a 450 page book, but it's only 200 manuscript pages. That ain't no doublespaced Courier. Given his description, I'm guessing it's got no margins and no paragraph breaks, and is in ten-point Times Roman.

He "thrown away a 1000 pages" because he wants it to be perfect, but he couldn't finish the last two chapters before posting it to eBay? (And why thrown away? Did he use an actual typewriter?)

He spent a year writing it. That's 1200 pages, and given his word/page density, at least 600,000 words. In a year. Harry Turtledove can produce text at that rate, but I don't think anyone else.

I can only consider two alternatives: 1) this is a very cleverly constructed joke 2) he has a profoundly serious neurochemical disorder.

I'm thinking about a collaboration between John Grisham and J.K. Rowling "Harry Potter and the Runaway Jury."

Lord Christ and Lady Bast. That's ... well ... I have to admire the person's guts and creativity. Really, I do. And at least he's honest enough to himself about not selling much with a self-published book.

Me being a nosy bitch, I wrote him and mentioned AuthorHouse's class-action lawsuit. And gave him some links to find more information. Figure, what the hell.

Nonny

making sense in a reality way

Damn. I wish I had stuff that made sense in a reality way. I don't even know what that would look like.

Whatever Mr. Rice's ideas about the career of novel-writing, I'm not much of a fan of his copy-writing skills. I'm not sure the author is allowed to say "It's a fascinating read" unless he is quoting someone else (double points for a misquote out of context).

I wonder if he has submitted portions of this work to agents/publishers and been rejected already? He doesn't mention it if so, and I hope he doesn't think that leaping straight to the "don't pay me, I'll pay you" option is the way it works.

Oh come on, this is just a joke.

From the excerpt image posted on eBay, it looks like single-spaced Times New Roman. (Or an IBM Selectric Composer. It's so hard to tell, these days.) It also looks as though, had he submitted this portion to an agent or publisher, he wouldn’t have had much luck with it. Poor guy.

Con.
De.
Scend.
Ing.

A hundred and fifty thousand? This guy’s small potatoes. Have a look at some of the other “books” listings on eBay. Current top of the heap: Life and Times of “Arcola Ray and the Mississippi Delta Blue’s”. Twelve million for “book and movie copyrights, as well as, the rights to two Blues/rock style songs titled ‘Mississippi's on the Rise’ and ‘Gon’ Be A Man,’ which are to be featured on the movie soundtrack.”

You know what the sad thing is? Sooner or later somebody really will sell one of these this way. And then we’ll see a whole pseudo-industry around marketing and packaging your unique artistic vision for eBay.

I don't think it's a joke. Or if it is, it's a joke contrived by someone with an extensive background in submissions, and a very precise command of tone. It's hard to write like that if you don't naturally write like that.

Fallible ear, ChickenBoot. David's genuinely sympathetic.

That’s not condescension, Boot, that’s a dispassionate appraisal.

Oops. Cross-post. Thanks, Teresa.

What do you say to someone like this? I mean, when I was writing rejection letters for the Zeppelin book I didn’t say anything, except to the people I knew, the people who came close enough that I wanted to encourage them to submit something to my next anthology, and one nice old English guy who I wanted to thank for the attractive vintage aircraft stamps. But let's say you run into this kind of writing when you're teaching, or in a workshop; is there a way to deal with it that's both delicate and effective?

David's post just happened to be above mine and I don't have any issues with it. It's just a huge proportion of the other comments on this thread I find objectionable. Absolutely not directed toward your comment, David.

Let's be kind, shall we? Mr. Rice's tone is earnest enough. If anything was a joke, it would be Robert Ferrell's eBay listing, although something tells me that's a real book as well.

Perhaps this should remind all of us that publishing is a tough business to break into, period. Americans don't like to be told they can't do something. That's why PA and AuthorHouse do a flourishing business.

I shall now return to my customary lurk position.

I didn't mean to be unkind, I just really hoped it was a joke. If it's not, I feel terrible for Mr. Rice and I hope he takes the advice people are giving him to heart.

Every author with a book in the slushpile thinks their work is publishable. They literally can’t tell that it isn’t. If they could, they’d have written different books.

This is the thing I always have a hard time with. One hears, repeatedly, at conferences and whatnot, editors and agents saying, "Well, what you really need to do is write a good book." And, at many of those whatnots, I've heard people say, "But how can you *tell* if you've written a good book?"

And, of course, you can't. At least, you can't tell what other people are going to think. _You_ have to think it's a good book. And I was sitting here thinking, "Well, I know the book I sold last fall was good, and I knew it before I sold it. Same with others I've got out there. So I've always just *known* that what I was writing was good." Which is, I'm sure, exactly what everybody must think.

It suddenly occured to me that I could go dig up the manuscript of the first book I wrote, 12 years ago, and look at it (which I've been claiming I'm afraid to do) in order to see where it lies on the publishability scale. Obviously, at the time, I thought it was publishable. I seem to recall thinking it was good. Not great, but good. My suspicion now is that the underlying story isn't bad, but that the character development, motivation, and general writing is probably lacking.

Unfortunately, it's not in the bedroom where I thought it was. I'm going to have to go dig around in the garage, because now I'm *really* curious.

-Catie

I spent many years in theatre, and most of the time I was surrounded at auditions by hundreds (thousands) of men and women of all ages who had absolutely no interest in the art and craft of acting, but merely wanted to be rich and famous. They genuinely believed in their assumptions that they only had to desire something to be entitled to it. If I tried to speak to them about my many years on stage, about hundreds of thousands of hours spent learning my craft, about Shakespeare and Eugene O'Neil and Beckett, about poverty and degradation and never having a dime in my pocket, their eyes glazed over. They couldn't make the connection. In turn they would point to magazines and say "they're famous - why can't I be?"

It's no wonder that this extreme naiveté towards the life of the artist and the cult of celebrity and money has spilled over into the world of writing. If Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton and Madonna can be "writers", why can't anyone? Why can't I, an average joe with a great idea and teachers who can't be bothered to tell me the truth about the writing "life" and my talent, NOT sell my wonderful manuscript and make millions of dollars? Look at reality shows, look at the hundred of pop stars and WB-actors that are churned up and out into the world every day. They've all "made it" - why can't we all?

Sadly, I don't think this is a joke, and while it's terribly funny, it's also, well: terrible. In my opinion, it's less of a bad reflection on this man than on the (incredibly lazy) so-called "teachers" (of dubious morals) who told him he was a good writer (!) and of the culture that surrounds him and tells him that this action is not only appropriate, but will reward him in ways that can't be obtained by simply trying his best and graciously accepting the fact that he is ordinary. It's no crime to NOT be rich and famous - at least, it's not supposed to be. Unfortunately, everything around him whispers something different.

"Slushpile" What a wonderful concept. It will warp your mind and your attitude toward humanity.

What do you say to someone like this? I mean, when I was writing rejection letters for the Zeppelin book I didn?t say anything, except to the people I knew, the people who came close enough that I wanted to encourage them to submit something to my next anthology, and one nice old English guy who I wanted to thank for the attractive vintage aircraft stamps. But let's say you run into this kind of writing when you're teaching, or in a workshop; is there a way to deal with it that's both delicate and effective?

Rejection is so hard to do fairly, and honestly. And there's that underlying question: How would I take this rejection if it was me at the other end?

The honest person in me would want to say something blunt and straight. I'd want to know if my piece was poorly constructed or ungrammatical. I want to know if I still don't have the basics. It lets me know where to focus my efforts for the next while.

But hearing that about a piece you've submitted is... morale-crushing. If you're in a workshop, you maybe at least get to know the person enough to judge whether they would soak up any grammatical, writerly-how-to and other books you might throw their way.

I don't think there is a simple and effective way to handle it, as an editor rejecting something submitted. And it's not your job to educate the writer about their flaws, just to choose stories that will fit your collection, anthology, magazine or booklist.

[as an aside, and related.. there's an English mockumentary series called People Like Us, which has an episode called "the Artist" or "the Photographer". It follows a few days in the life of a very bad photographer who believes he's got "it" and takes his portfolio to a london gallery for commentary. She rejects him in the most heartbreakingly funny brutal-yet-honest way.]

As alluded to above, AuthorHouse does do copyediting, which I happen to know because that's what the person I know who works there does for them.

But they of course charge extra for it.

If you look at their agreement, it's option #10 of a list of 24 options, all of which cost extra above and beyond that first $698. (Many of them require a second, special agreement; this is one of them.) According to their price sheet, they charge $0.015 per word; a mere $2250 extra if this author goes that route...

...that is, if they don't decide that your MS needs "excessive" editing, and charge you more, or decide they don't want to bother, of course.

Some other optional services include copyright registration ($150), the Booksellers Return Program ($699), and a one year domain name contract for a mere $75.

Although technically the return program might help address one of the problems with getting books on physical-store shelves discussed elsewhere, that $699 is only good for one year and, of course, AuthorHouse can choose to cancel that contract at any time as well.

I wish I could make my friend there understand the extent of how ungood this all is, but all he can focus on is the success stories. He probably doesn't enough realize how small a percentage that presumably is.

Catie, the answer to your question is: find yourself a good critique group. Of course, that's work, too, but then, so's the whole process.

Hell, even handing it off to some literate and book-loving friends can help. Sure, your friends want to spare your feelings on average (unless you have my friends, who are champion critiquers and will, after saying they liked my book, start pointing out the flaws, see also "how I ended up adding two extra chapters to my first book to fix gaps"), but if they read a lot and you insist you really want an honest opinion, you probably can get an idea even if they try to softpedal any criticism.

I may be biased by Robert Ferrell's being an e-mail acquaintance of mine, but I took his eBay listing as self-deprecating humor (and funny, at that). I don't see a rant there.

The honest person in me would want to say something blunt and straight. I’d want to know if my piece was poorly constructed or ungrammatical. I want to know if I still don’t have the basics. It lets me know where to focus my efforts for the next while.

This is the problem, isn’t it? As previously noted here, often the people who most need to put in effort are the least likely to realize, or believe, that they need to. Maybe the trick is to distinguish those people who can accept the idea that writing is a game of skill, not chance, from those who can’t.

I mean, I have a pretty high opinion of my own writing, but if someone with Teresa’s experience were to tell me that my misuse of the semicolon goes beyond the bounds of civilized taste, I’d listen. :)

I don’t think there is a simple and effective way to handle it, as an editor rejecting something submitted. And it’s not your job to educate the writer about their flaws, just to choose stories that will fit your collection, anthology, magazine or booklist.

Right. Which is why I’m more interested in the pedagogical case.

Goodness, ChickenBoot. Do you imagine that the rest of the people here aren't sincerely sympathetic? Perhaps if you just read for a while, you'd get a better sense of the conversation.

David, Zara, I say "I'm sorry, but this doesn't suit our current needs. Thank you for letting us see it, though." If it's a workshop, I say "You have a long way to go. I can help you. Let's talk. What are you finding difficult? What's coming easy? How long have you been working at it? What are you trying to do?"

Livia, I can't say this guy is ordinary, because I don't think he is. I do think his book isn't saleable. I also think AuthorHouse is lower than slime mold for trying to scam him. But he's written quite a substantial piece of work, he's out there trying to do his best with it, and he doesn't have his brain stuck on "idle."

Catie, a lot of the good ones can't tell either. I tell them all to get beta readers.

Jo, that's it exactly.

Jim, tell me it's not a good idea to phone Chris Patton and explain my views to him.

David, I don't recall disparaging your semicolons.

Teresa,

"Ordinary" was obviously not the best word to use. I agree, he's not ordinary. Actually, he's savvy enough to have made the connection between "recognizable celebrity name = some form of success", although he might not understand what success entails and how/why people have earned it. He most certainly has some innate understanding of how things work in the world. It's just terribly skewed.

ChickenBoot, I think people here are being remarkably uncondescending considering the extremely sloppy quality of the author's prose. They are being encouraging and nurturing to someone who, as John M. Ford points out, is trying to push a slight variant of what almost every successful writer hears sooner or later, the "I've got a great story; you write it and we'll split the money" rap.

"Slushpile" What a wonderful concept. It will warp your mind and your attitude toward humanity.

I was warped before I got here. I blame my violent childhood reading, like Homer and that bad girl Edie Hamilton.

But, y'know, not really. Reading too many slush stories at a sitting does produce a kind of aftereffect, like the world counter-rotating after stepping off the carousel, but it's temporary, and with experience one learns when to change the IV coffee drip and administer chocolate. Bad things can happen during backlog time -- and backlog time, like stuff, happens; if you should see a group of first readers out at lunch, and they are not talking about anything at all, it is Backlog Time; smile kindly as you pass.

Nor is there any marked alteration of the general view of humanity. The idea that everyone is, even potentially, equally talented at all possible tasks can't survive contact with reality; slush in this regard is just a concentrated narrow-spectrum dose of that reality. There are no doubt people who become embittered by the experience of first reading; one hopes they bail early and find fulfillment elsewhere.

Sometimes you get close -- say, after the fourth letter from a rejectee demanding to know how he will ever get good if he isn't "encouraged" (which invariably translates as "buy my next story no matter what its actual quality is"). Is there another art or science where one is expected to be rewarded first and get good later? Public office excepted.

It's not possible (and many of us have tried) to explain just how bad slushpile writing is; no one in civilian life ever sees so much faulty grammar, creative spelling, and non-Euclidean syntax. There's a frequent question that goes something like "How bad can it really be?" Quotes don't work as an answer, as it's assumed that they're being selected for pity-and-terror quotient, and reading a couple of mss. off the top in someone's office is not the same thing as reading twenty a day.

But the curious thing is that, when something puts a hand up out of the flow and waggles it for attention, there's a genuine pleasure in it. Even if the story as a whole falls short, or lurches into the pig-ironic ending that Rod Serling convinced way too many people was the asthenic heart of skiffy, the appearance of a charming minor character, a moment of authentic emotion, a few lines of dialogue not pasted in from dubbed anime, can redeem a piece of the day.

Maybe you're right. Getting through the day on that, plus Kit Kats and French roast, would warp anybody's attitude.

Ok, I'm really missing something here. Why are people feeling so wretched for this pathetic binkus?

He's done precisely what many hundreds of thousands of people have done: wasted a whole pile of time writing an unsellable novel. We've all heard of the sea of unpublished manuscripts that slosh around the publishing biz. That sea represents the collected cluelessness of the myriad binkuses.

Say you decide to start working in a field that is new to you. What do you do first? You learn as much as you can about the field. If you still want to get into it after you've done that initial research, you seek an entry-level position or professional training.

What do the writers of the unsellable ocean of slush do? Many of them, including the guy we're feeling so sorry for, don't find out such basic facts as how to format a manuscript. They just dive in with little or no knowledge of how to write a novel, let alone how to sell it.

What does that behaviour say about the viewpoint of these "writers"? "Writing a novel can't be so tough, can it?" they seem to think. If it were tough, they might try to get some proper training and do some research. Don't you think that attitude is more than a tad insulting to professional writers?

An analogy: A few years ago my wife took an intro pottery night class at a local high school. The results were predictable: she had some mild fun, and we ended up with a small collection of well-intended but misshapen bowls. The most successful of them does fine duty as a scoop for dry cat food. It never crossed her mind to try to sell these things. She was, in fact, mildly embarrassed to bring them home.

Why, then, do would-be writers who have created the literary equivalents of those beginner bowls think they have created something that the world will want to pay money for?

And why on earth would we feel sorry for them because they hold this delusional belief in the value of their literary beginner bowls?

I have all sorts of time for unpublished writers who have studied the craft of writing and know how the publishing industry works. I respect the ones who have sought feedback from critical readers or joined writers' groups to help them hone their skill. I have even more time for them if they have tried to find out what sorts of novels will find an audience and have tried to write for that audience.

But for someone who can't even format the page properly? Feh! I'm glad to see him waste the eBay listing fee and make a public fool of himself.

Nice, John! I haven't had to read slush for 21 years now, and I don't miss it slightly, not even as comic relief. How bad is slush? Much of it is far worse than people imagine. Perhaps the most vivid example of slushy wretchedness I encountered was a long religious rant, submitted to a mass-market fiction publisher, in which the author constantly referred to The Bibble.

It's not possible (and many of us have tried) to explain just how bad slushpile writing is; no one in civilian life ever sees so much faulty grammar, creative spelling, and non-Euclidean syntax. There's a frequent question that goes something like "How bad can it really be?"

As a member of said civilian life, this is something I've been curious about for a while, and while I know it isn't possible to explain... How bad is slush compared to, say, the experience of reading the first twenty randomly chosen fanfics I find on fanfiction.net? Or (at least in terms of spelling and grammar) the experience of reading three posts each on ten randomly chosen livejournals? Is it that bad? Is it (shudder) worse?

Greg:

Because some of theose clueless people are, a few years later, writing decently and bemoaning their earlier haste.

I subbed my first pieces double-sided. I sent MZB's magazine a first draft that was at best incoherent because I couldn't wait the two weeks to get perspective ("Earthquake" rejection for those who recall the day). Two weeks later, I knew what I had done. I've always had decent spelling and passable grammar (I blame it on being in French Immersion as much as on reading a crazy number of books), but I didn't always know how to *use* the knowledge. Perhaps I still don't.

My personal favourite example of my own writing skills early on was the long stretch describing the characters studying the domed city they'd just been teleported into, noting a plethora of fine detail, ending with "It was only then they saw the crowd surrounding them."

I suspect every writer of a salable novel has also written a pathetic first attempt. It's only if they're lucky, or have good friends, that they can realise or be told it's just not ready in time.

Why, then, do would-be writers who have created the literary equivalents of those beginner bowls think they have created something that the world will want to pay money for?

They clearly can't see that these are beginner bowls. I've seen published books that wouldn't make it out of many workshops alive, fwiw, so it's clear that the 'standard' for what constitutes a non-beginner bowl varies widely.

But I think it's just more emotional and internal than that. These writers know what they're trying to say -- and that's probably what they see when they look at what they've done. I think it boils down to this: they loved the novel by so-and-so, and they love this story they've written just as much and love=good.

And why on earth would we feel sorry for them because they hold this delusional belief in the value of their literary beginner bowls?

I'm not saying this is clever or even right; I just think there's some pathos in this. Pity is like compassion, but shorn of a certain basic peer-respect.

Mike, I've read a lot of slush without ever being in publishing. I used to manage the AOL libraries for the GMI forums and there were an awful lot of people in the OMNI forum who thought Ellen would be reading everything uploaded to those libraries. I had to read every submission to make sure it didn't violate the Terms of Service, and while Ellen said to give her a link to any that were particularly coherent, I never found one that was.

Finding a good critique group (or beta readers) is wildly effective, if you know *how* to find one. Giving the book to your mother and best friend isn't usually the way to get accurate criticisms, but I'm not sure how many new writers understand that.

I'm hardly disagreeing with the tactic, but I can't help wondering if many people in the early stages of a writing career literally don't know how to find a good critique group, or if they would know a good critique if it came up and bit them. To take G. Jules' fanfic example from above, I've seen an awful lot of fanfic with notes of grateful thanks to beta readers who, judging from the manuscript, have no grasp what-so-ever of how to use punctuation or even spell check, much less story structure or character deve...well, ok, a lot of fanfic character development comes pre-built. Nevermind that. :)

*I* know there are *lots* of ways to find critique groups; I remember checking college bulletin boards when I first started to write novels, so I must have had some kind of clue even then. I know I had classmates who would read my writing, and now you can find a critique group every five feet on the Internet. But how, I wonder, does someone who can't tell if her own writing is good judge whether the group she's got is a good one?

I'm largely spouting rhetoric here; I think the real answer is that you keep trying and you learn to recognize the talents, strengths, and weaknesses of the people around you in the growth process. It requires work on your own part, and if you never learn to recognize that, I suppose you stay in approximately the same place as a writer that you began in.

I also think some of what I'm responding to, at least emotionally, is the sheer frustration I've heard in people's voices as they ask how they can tell if their book is a good one. (I can hardly imagine actually being an editor. I think those waves of frustration would flatten me.) I'd love to be able to deliver a concrete answer to that question, even if I know perfectly well it's not one that concrete answers apply to.

...which, I suspect, brings us all the way back around to why PublishAmerica and AuthorHouse and other vanity presses succeed.

Michelle> I know how truly horrible my first submissions were. Put it this way, I started when I was fifteen and what I wrote then probably should have been burned. Yet, I submitted it. (How sad is it that I was more professional in my submissions practices than my actual writing? :P)

Someone else, however, wrote to the guy, and posted the response in his LJ. It's here for anyone who's interested ... let's say, after reading that, I'll be quite surprised if I receive a civil reply.

Nonny

Teresa, it's not a good idea to phone Chris Patton and explain your views to him.

Cate> Finding a good critique group IRL can be near impossible depending on where you live and what you write. I never managed it, but I'm a bit of an antisocial person IRL, too.

Online, it's a touch easier, but it's easy to be intimidated by groups like Critters. Also, I was in Critters intensively for about six months. I did more critiquing than I received, and what I received was not that helpful. The one thing I got out of it was that it convinced me to put aside the novel I'd been banging my head against for three years and work on something else. (So, of course, I pick up one I've been banging my head against for four years.)

After which, I stopped writing for about eight months. :P

Critters has a wide userbase. This has its advantages as well as its detriments. I had a tendency to get people critiquing my work that were not familiar with my subgenres and really hated that type of story along with people that liked it. The people that hated the subgenre often had advice completely opposite from what people who liked it said. At the time, getting that many divided opinions confused the hell out of me.

I've had more luck over at Evolution, the writers' site I administrate. I have some good friends from there, who I know write well and are open to the sort of thing I write--and who aren't afraid to tell me, "Nonny, this sucks boulders through barstraws; it's not fit to line the litterbox with" if I've really screwed up.

For me, it's been more important to get the opinion of someone I know writes well rather than someone random--because I've also had numerous random people tell me to resort to cliches. *rolls eyes*

Nonny

Catie, this is a learn by experience game, just like most things in life. It's like asking how do you know when you've found good friends. Sooner or later you figure it out.

Some of it seems like common sense to me. A good critique group offers, well, criticism, not just feel-good platitudes. If no one has even so much as a question about what you've done as a writer or a suggestion about how they might have done something differently, you're probably in a mutual appreciation society, not a critique group. If your group consists in part or whole of other writers, you probably can get some insight as to how good of a critiquer they are based partly on their writing and partly on how they respond to criticisms.

I'm not saying I don't understand the frustration that goes into a decision to go with someplace like PA. But nobody handed me the knowledge I've gotten and am still expanding on how it all really works. I looked things up. I read author's web sites, I Googled (back in the Olden Days, that would've been 'searched the card catalogue'), I read through online forums, I bought writing books. I read tons and tons of books and compare what I like with what I write; what works for me as a reader is important to know if I want to write something others will enjoy. And I talk about books with other people, so I get an idea of what seems to be more or less personal preference and what seems to be commonly thought of as good or bad.

And I know that it's extremely difficult to judge any craft one does completely objectively, so I ask other people about what I've written and what they think of it, and have learned that the most useful critiquers and beta readers are the ones that ask questions like "How come we don't see this character for 9 chapters after he's introduced?" or "Why does this character have a car in Chapter 3 but suddenly has to catch a bus to get somewhere in Chapter 4?" They also say things like "I really liked the way you handled getting these two characters to meet" or "The end of Chapter 12 is really creepy" (presuming that's what one intended), so you know what works as well as what doesn't, the last bit being the part I think is (again) common sense.

A commentors in that link Nonny gave is speculating that PNH posted the eBay offering as a joke.

FYI.

Re Online workshops: I joined Critters about eight years ago, back when I decided to get serious about writing. I've been pretty fortunate in getting good feedback through them, though as Nonny notes, it's a very large and diverse group, which means the quality of the critiques can vary. The same holds true for the OWW, another good online group, which also has a large and diverse membership.

One thing a large group can give you, however, is the chance to join up with other writers for smaller writing exchanges. I found several writing partners through Critters and the OWW. After I get their feedback, I often submit the revised manuscript to Critters to get a wider range of feedback.

But it's all what works best for the individual writer. Different groups offer different advantages, and the best way to find the right group is to try each one out for a while.

In defense of Critters:

I've been a member there about five months. I also have a real-life writers group, which I've been with for about four years (a couple of them are semi-pros, agented by Budrys--a little out-of-date, but still legit).

I went into Critters with very low expectations, because I've been in several writers groups and yes, I've seen how bad the slush can get, including the neurochemical disorders. Nevertheless, I joined Critters because I had seen it mentioned here, because I liked the organization of it, and because my summer schedule was going to keep me away from my RL group.

Do I spend more time critting than being critted? Yeah. Is that any different from a RL group? No. If there are ten people in the group on a Saturday and everybody brings a story, odds are you're going to read five or six of them, and crit them, before they get to your story at the end of the day.

Critters is nice because it gives you a wide cross-section of your audience. Horror, SF and fantasy all gets lumped together, just like in Locus. It's kind of like selling your product at Wal-Mart; sooner or later, somebody from every walk of life is going to pass by. Some of them won't like what you're selling, some of them are looking for exactly that item, but the point is exposure--and if you can get the attention of people who *didn't* come looking for your product, so much the better.

I quickly learned that *how many* crits you got on Critters was just as important as what they said. If you get 20 or 25 crits on your story, when the average is 10, you must be doing something right, because people are interested enough to finish reading--the bad ones barely get critted at all. Furthermore, if each crit starts with, "Hey, this is a great read, I'd just change this one little thing--" you can also assume you're doing something right; subsequent comments may be assimilated or dismissed as needed.

If I get contradictory comments, I generally assume they cancel each other out, and don't worry about it. If I get a consensus, I take it seriously.

The other nice thing about Critters is it's fairly anonymous. People don't look at me and make assumptions about the kind of story it's going to be. I find myself more open-minded toward the text in front of me. Plus, writing a crit, as opposed to delivering it in a round-table, requires precision and gives you time to digest your impressions. Most writers I know are far more eloquent on paper than in person. Personally, I have no fear of public speaking, but it can be hard to think on your feet when the author is looking all eager and crushable and is apt to jump to conclusions.

This wasn't intended to contradict anything Nonny said; I've encountered some of those same problems on Critters. But I thought it only fair to provide an alternate point of view. For anyone thinking of joining Critters or another peer writer's group, bear in mind that writers are also readers, and even if somebody's writing isn't as good as yours, they probably have a legitimate idea of what works as entertainment. I've even had people tell me something was written well, but it left them with a "so-what?" feeling, which is certainly legit.

My advice? Use a peer group to test-market the story. Rely on Strunk and White, King, et al to help you with the mechanics.

One final point: Critter Joy Remy just got published in this year's Writers of the Future Anthology. Make of that what you will. Diff'rent strokes, etc.

The weird thing about writing/crit groups is they make no sense in terms of population. They're all over the place in Pittsburgh--I learn about a new or new to me one nearly every year--but I've got a friend in NY, NY who can't find any that are genre. (If you count Alpha, Pittsburgh has five that are just genre, three of which can be blamed on one person.) However, if you really want and care enough about it, it's still surprisingly easy to start one. I've had plenty of other friends go that route successfully, and really, most established writing groups have that somewhere in their history: someone in the group wanted people to crit their stuff, and couldn't conveniently find anyone to do so. This person may or may not end up in charge of the group later on. (In WorD, this special place is reserved for Diane Turnshek, who we generally obey but who doesn't really run the group any more because she doesn't have time. If you or anyone you know comes across a Time Turner, please ship it to us immediately as she desperately, desperately needs it.)

The only difficult bits of making your own group are getting good people and establishing good guidelines. (Well, a meeting place can be somewhat difficult, but many libraries will have some sort of meeting room they're willing to donate to you, and in time the librarians may become fond enough to defend you to patrons and give you donuts even though the library is strictly no eating or drinking. True anecdotes.) Good guidelines can be obtained off the 'net, and you can simply present them as the unconditional rules at the first meeting, which will weed out some of your more problematic attendees right away. (WorD shamelessly stole our initial procedures from the former Worldwrights, for example.) Getting people isn't hard, either; you put up notices in bookstores, colleges, coffee shops, and other places writers congregate--I believe the Houston group my friends started took its core group from NaNoWriMo 2002. Getting good people requires a bit more work, but if you set up your guidelines right and phrase your notices to encourage what you're looking for, that helps. So does starting the group with a few friends or acquaintances, so you can drive out the problems by force of personality.

(It's very likely that any group of people meeting for a social or recreational purpose can, if deposited in a different and stressful location, instantly turn into an episode of Survivor.)

Even if the group isn't great, even an adaquate group will usually help you more than nothing at all, or just giving your work to your friends and/or teachers.

I admit, though, I'm spoiled--Write or Die meets at my local library, so when I decided I was really, truly serious about this, I just wandered into a meeting. It was a ready-made group where I fit in perfectly, to the point I was ready to put something on the chopping block for my third meeting (and it didn't even hurt too badly). Through this group, since it's open, I've also learned something that ties into an above comment: there are some good writers who don't give good critiques, and there are some mediocre writers who give extraordinary critiques. The skills involved in writing are not the same skills involved in being good at spotting problems in writing, which is another reason people have such a hard time telling if their own writing is good or not--because developing the eyes of a critiquer require an entirely different approach and workout than developing writing skills, so that even the people who are trying to put the time and effort into being a good writer may never realize how to be good at analyzing that writing.

So what I've found to be true is, the easiest way to start building up the ability to tell if you own work is good... is to start taking apart other people's work looking for the same thing.

Also: you can synthesize the Slushpile experience from the convenience of your own home by signing up as a moderator for any kind of online story archive. I spent about six months doing this for Elfwood, and forever will have a scar on my soul from one suicide story so bad it made me want to kill myself. I have no idea why a site specifically for genre stories gets so many about people ending it all in a distinctly non-genre way, though it's probably the teenager factor. I just know one thing: yes, the slushpile really is that bad, if not worse. (And also, watching MTS3K and learning how to mock the atrocity you're reading can help, a lot.)

Teachers aren't necessarily a help, either (I know, I know, don't throw things at me). Education, particularly at the college level, is a business as much as it's a craft, and if you get a teacher who's just sitting around collecting a paycheck, and gives credit simply for filling up the requisite number of pages, nobody learns anything.

My technical editor (I'm the style editor for a line of motorcycle repair manuals) thinks he's a terrific writer--he got straight A's in his English comp class at the community college. He gave me his history final project to read (and supposedly crit). I edited it just as I would one of our tech books--for grammar and clarity.

It was unreadable. It contained, commas, in strange places. Utilizing megolith verbiage was in inappropriate locations, nevertheless the writer, despite having put numerous man-hours, into crafting this masterpiece, revealed himself to have a dreadful tin ear. I can't even replicate it. Nominalizations are so foreign to me I can't even fake them.

The technical editor and I are still on good working terms, but we don't talk about writing anymore.

Teachers aren't necessarily a help, either (I know, I know, don't throw things at me). Education, particularly at the college level, is a business as much as it's a craft, and if you get a teacher who's just sitting around collecting a paycheck, and gives credit simply for filling up the requisite number of pages, nobody learns anything.

My technical editor (I'm the style editor for a line of motorcycle repair manuals) thinks he's a terrific writer--he got straight A's in his English comp class at the community college. He gave me his history final project to read (and supposedly crit). I edited it just as I would one of our tech books--for grammar and clarity.

It was unreadable. It contained, commas, in strange places. Utilizing megolith verbiage was in inappropriate locations, nevertheless the writer, despite having put numerous man-hours, into crafting this masterpiece, revealed himself to have a dreadful tin ear. I can't even replicate it. Nominalizations are so foreign to me I can't even fake them.

The technical editor and I are still on good working terms, but we don't talk about writing anymore. Given the quality of the text we edit in the manuals, I've often wondered if it was a case of GIGO.

Teresa wrote: David, I don't recall disparaging your semicolons.

You haven't. I was just trying to think of something technical I might be vulnerable on. :)

I've seen people mentioning how writing and critiquing are two seperate skills, so I just wanted to chime in with the third piece to that puzzle; RECEIVING critiques. It's every bit as much a skill as the other two.

The first hurdle people have to get over is, of course, the battering to your ego. Having your work disected by people who have no particular reason to be nice to you hurts, more than people who've never been exposed to it think. Your ego wants you to reject their criticism as invalid for some reason and cling to the belief that your story is perfect. Learning how to beat your ego into submission can be tricky.

But even after you get to that point, it's still not easy to know what to do with all the feedback you've gotten. It's not a democracy. If everybody tells you X is screwed up in your story, there really is a chance they're all wrong. The weird-ass, out-of-left-field comment you get on a single critique may be the thing that takes your story to the next level.

Examples.

Everybody says one of your scenes is completely superfluous. It needs to be cut. Dead weight. Get it out of there.

So do you cut it?

Well . . . maybe.

All you know at this point is that your story has a problem, and people are noticing the problem in that scene. MAYBE they're absolutely right; maybe it's as simple as a block-delete. But . . . what if the problem actually lies elsewhere? What if this scene is actually VERY relevant, and you just did a lousy job of connecting it to the rest of the story? What if the way to correct the problem lies in editing the text that comes before and after it? It's possible that this hated passage can be fixed entirely without changing a single word within it.

Another example.

I once had a critiquer tell me he wanted to see more of character X -- a LOT more, she was barely in the piece.

Well, there was a good reason she was barely in the story -- she was a throwaway character, introduced between the first and second versions to illustrate a single plot point. She did her job, and I tossed her and went on. Initially, I ignored the comment; his request was entirely out of keeping with my vision of the piece.

Except . . . he was absolutely right. (The bastard.) Every time I thought about how I wanted to edit this story, I thought of ways to give this charcter more to do . . . and I liked where it was going. So I broke down and overhauled the story, converting her from a disposable walk-on to a main character. It worked. I like the story a lot better now.

Another example.

Another one of my critiquers pointed out a technical glitch in a story I had written. Nobody else saw it, nobody else made anything resembling that comment. So, I could ignore it, right?

Wrong.

As soon as the comment left her mouth, it marched across the table and started smacking me upside the head with how RIGHT it was. If you noticed this flaw, the entire story was sunk. Dead. In fact, I could no longer read the story without thinking "Yeah, but given what Flo pointed out, it doesn't really matter, does it?"

So, I got to work correcting the flaw. I found a way to do it, and my fix wound up making the story MUCH creepier than it had been originally. (And in the context of this story, that's a Good Thing.)

Sometimes it's obvious. Sometimes the group consensus is dead-on. Sometimes an idea that sounded stupid when you first heard it becomes, after some time as passed, really REALLY stupid. Sometimes your readers just flat-out miss what you were trying to do in the story and provide you with absolutely nothing you can use beyond typo corrections.

But not always.

Editing your story in response to honest feedback is a skill, one well worth learning.

(So says the guy with a single pro-rate sale to his name.)

Paul: Very good points. I use many of the same guidelines when I'm reading critiques. (And here's an essay that I wrote about the subject.)

Holly> You've got some definite points about Critters. However, it is a large time committment, and I no longer have that time to spare. It wasn't uncommon for me to do in depth crits that were between 1k - 3k when I was there. And, if I'm going to crit someone, I'm going to crit them; anything less isn't really an option for me.

On teachers ... at least at the college level, they generally are focused on a completely different writing style than what is commercially publishable. While this isn't true all the time, I've known too many people who had to unlearn what they'd been taught in college about writing to really place much faith in it as a good place to learn. :P

Nonny

Nobody here seems to have commented that the eBay listing is actually costing the lister more that PublishAmerica would have charged him -- not sure of the exact numbers, but IIRC they charge about 2% on big sales (or $3,000 on $150,000).

Whether it sells or not. Yeah, you get to list it again free if it doesn't sell (once!), but is this a cost-effective marketing strategy? Sounds like lottery tickets as a major investment approach.

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Maybe a woman named J.K. Rowlings wrote J.K. Rawling's books? You think? I think so!!

Sugnwrgaed, I beg to differ. J.K. Rowling wrote J.K. Rowlings' books.

Man, now I feel compelled to apologize to everyone.

I'll resist that temptation -- pointing him here was the right thing to do, I believe, on the off chance he was sincere and not a loon. But reading the above, I can't help but feel a twinge inside. It's probably guilt; I'm pretty sure I don't have tapeworms.

Andy: LOL, you're right! A completely different woman altogether.

One is reminded that, in the study at http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html , the authors pointed out that those in the lowest percentiles (who grossly overestimated their abilities) tended to blame failure on something other than lack of skill or knowledge, and to be unable to take advantage of the opportunity to learn from those more able.

_The Shinning_:
"Ow! Ow! Will you *stop* kicking me? OW!"

Apparently under Mr. Rice's theory, Steven Brust is either a conglomerate or suffers from MPD [*].

[*] This is a joke and I don't want to get into a discussion about MPD as a diagnosis. Thank you.

Words fail me. Well, no, they don't, but words useful to Mr. Rice fail me.

Beth > (I THINK you were talking to me . . .) Thanks for the link; it's always interesting to see how other writers handle it. (And I love the secret diaries, BTW.)

Daniel > You're making a terrible mistake.

"Oh i get it, you are all talking about my write up on EBay itself. Well who the hell cares about that? I wrote that in a minute. It's not my story, so I didn't put any effort into it. I also knew what the out come would be after I posted my manuscript, so why would I put any more effort into something than I have to?"

Technically, you are absolutely right. The quality of the manuscript you're trying to sell has nothing to do with the quality of the EBay sales pitch.

But.

Let's say I'm Stephen King's agent. Let's say Mr. King wants to take a year off and have somebody ghostwrite a novel for him. And, thanks to all the hullabaloo, I see your manuscript up for sale on EBay, for a price that's massive in Normal Person money but actually well within Mr. King's budget.

The big question on my mind is not "Is this novel good enough?"; it's "Can this guy write?" After all, if I don't think you can string a sentence together, why would I want to bother reading an entire novel?

So, what's my first impression of Daniel Rice's writing ability?

Daniel Rice is difficult to read. He doesn't bother with paragraph breaks; his sales pitch is one enormous monolithic lump of text that fills my entire browser window. Damn thing just LOOKS exhausting before I've read a single word. His use of words is sloppy, and occasionally gramatically incorrect. He is confusing "Rawlings," a sporting goods manufacturer, with "J. K. Rowling," the Harry Potter creator every writer secretly wants to be. (Or, at least, have her bank account.) This is not the sign of a writer who pays attention to detail.

And, like most first-time writers, he is being very protective of his work, meaning I'll have to jump through hoops aplenty to even see this novel, which I have no objective reason to think will be any good in the first place. And the first draft is two chapters short of completion anyway.

Pass.

I give you credit fo