jiminy crickets. talk about refusing to let go.

"They overprice these books, they sell them to the friends and families, and that's it. That's as far as authors are ever going to go," said Jenna Glatzer, a professional children's author.

Ken,
Let's analyze this.

What is a "professional children's author"?

What is a "professional child"?

Since "children's" is possessive, does that mean that the author is owned by children?

Posted January 30, 2005 8:47 AM by julia

"The most insightful and revelatory jacket quotes I've read all year!" - Michael Pullmann

Posted January 30, 2005 10:19 AM by Michael Pullmann

I won't be surprised if Atlanta Nights polls the highest in one of the novel categories next year. If it does, it would be another well deserved shot at PA.

Posted January 30, 2005 10:49 AM by Dave Kuzminski, Preditors and Editors

Can anyone actually read the sales figures on mylulu.com? It requires a login, and I quail in terror of the idea of pointing BugMeNot at a self-publishing website.

Posted January 30, 2005 1:24 PM by Charlie Stross

Even with my login, Lulu wouldn't let me read the sales statistics. I suspect it doesn't recognize me as an author. I'd love to see the figures, though!

Posted January 30, 2005 2:31 PM by Deanna Hoak

Sales of Atlanta Nights: To date, 43 copies.

(IOW, over half-way to the average sales by your average PublishAmerica author.)

Posted January 30, 2005 3:56 PM by James D. Macdonald

Are you hinting that I should buy another one?

:-)

Posted January 30, 2005 6:11 PM by Brad DeLong

Whoops, sorry about the sales figures problem. That's what I get for letting Jim Macdonald use the laptop while we were both at Vericon. He must have logged in to Lulu.com. I'll ask him whether he wants to reveal the sales figures.

Posted January 30, 2005 7:10 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Everyone should buy multiple copies.

Posted January 30, 2005 7:11 PM by James D. Macdonald

Whoops, there's Jim already. That's what I get for posting a comment I'd drafted before taking a nap.

I need coffee.

Posted January 30, 2005 7:14 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

James D. Macdonald:

"Everyone should buy multiple copies."

Nabokov gave a flimsy reason to do so for "Pale Fire," namely to have one open to the poem, and one to read the novel purporting to be a commentary on the poem by an increasingly obviously unreliable narrator. Question: how to embed armtwisting towards viral duplication in a deliberately antiliterary book in which a quotation from Nabokov, unless grammatically convoluted as this is, would be mandatorily blue-pencilable?

Posted January 30, 2005 7:24 PM by Jonathan Vos Post

JVP: Oh, Nabokov was full of it. Obviously the solution was to tear the pages with the poem out of the book and keep them seperate from the rest.

...

Posted January 30, 2005 7:39 PM by David Bilek

Remember: it wasn't Nabokov talking, but Kinbote.

Posted January 30, 2005 8:51 PM by Robert L

Jonathan Vos Post wrote:

> Nabokov gave a flimsy reason to do so for "Pale Fire," namely to have one open to the poem, and one to read the novel purporting to be a commentary on the poem by an increasingly obviously unreliable narrator. Question: how to embed armtwisting towards viral duplication in a deliberately antiliterary book in which a quotation from Nabokov, unless grammatically convoluted as this is, would be mandatorily blue-pencilable?

Well, not Nabokov, nor Publish America, but Milorad Pavich's _Dictionary of the Khazars_ was published in a 'male' and 'female' edition, the two differing by one word on an undisclosed page.

Or so they claim... We have both editions in our house, but I've never gone looking.

Posted January 30, 2005 9:44 PM by Steve Taylor

One of the interesting side effects of using Lulu.com to publish Atlanta Nights is that people who might have considered using PublishAmerica even though they realize they're a rip off, now are finding out about Lulu.com.

That's kind of nifty.

For the second edition of Atlanta Nights, the one with ISBN and, maybe, (please?) a forward, why not Quark/InDesign/Framemaker the file?

Posted January 30, 2005 10:52 PM by Lisa Spangenberg

I got a nice email from Lulu on Friday that my copy had shipped. But the notice about the blurbs on the back cover didn't show up until after that. Wonder if I'll get them.

Oh--Robin Hobb/Megan Lindholm indulged in a rare rant about PA taking advantage of young/inexperienced writers, in a post on her newsgroup.
http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=read&group=sff.people.robin-hobb&art=6444

(I'm really going to have to learn to write those links. *sigh*)

Posted January 30, 2005 11:22 PM by Mac

Is Robin Hobb/Megan Lindholm one person with two authorial names or two people who cowrote something?

Brad DeLong, confused...

Posted January 30, 2005 11:44 PM by Brad DeLong

Robin Hobb/Megan Lindholm are one person. :)

Posted January 30, 2005 11:52 PM by Catie Murphy

Brad,
One person with two pen names. Among other things, she co-wrote "Gypsy" with Stephen Brust-- which is a weird and lovely book.

Posted January 30, 2005 11:53 PM by Mac

Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm are the same author. I'm kind of wondering when we'll see Lindholm's old books published under the Robin Hobb name in an attempt to increase sales. Though I'm not sure the publisher is the same...

Posted January 30, 2005 11:53 PM by David Bilek

I think that Robin and Megan should collaborate on a shared world novel of some kind.

Posted January 31, 2005 1:53 AM by Ray Radlein

Since I've been (with a mixture of glee and terror) following the various PublishAmerica threads, I was thrilled to find that Fandom_Wank has ummmm ... previously taken stock of the situation. There are two threads, one at F_W itself, and one at otf_wank, both worth reading.
I'll try to post the urls here, but I'm not very good at it, so apologies if it doesn't come out right: http://www.journalfen.net/community/otf_wank/7062.html
(one of the PA authors pops up trying to be snide and superior - really in the wrong place to try that)
and:
http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/255051.html
(reference is made to the Maniac Mansion game and the "Three Guys Who Publish Anything" ad)

Posted January 31, 2005 2:03 AM by Barbara Gordon

Reading the comments of the PublishAmerica authors, rampant spelling errors and all, was hilarious, until I realized that they are the very ones who are getting taken advantage of. Then I just felt bad, and vaguely sick.

Posted January 31, 2005 3:37 AM by Heresiarch

Oh, my. Barbara, I went to the otf_wank thread, and oh, my.

I think my favorite part was:

"As for my punctuation, be careful what you criticize. Those of us who know better will see you for the fraud you are. But I can see why a high school grad would get confused, I am, after all, university educated. Would you prefer I spoke using shadow puppets to help you understand?"

Why, yes. Yes, I would.

(Also, the PA authors board thread with the poetry in praise of spellchecking made my head hurt a lot. Or maybe that was from banging it against the desk.)

Posted January 31, 2005 3:54 AM by elise

elise:

"As for my punctuation... Would you prefer I spoke using shadow puppets to help you understand?"

Shadow Puppet Cop: "Aha, Bad Bart! Stop or I'll shoot!"

Shadow Puppet Bart: "You'll never take me alive, copper!"

Shadow Puppet Cop: "Okay, I'm shooting you. Bang! Bang!"

Shadow Puppet Bart: "Oh, no! A bullet went into my belly, making a round hole shaped like a period!"

Shadow Puppet Cop: "Not exactly. See the trickle of blood coming out? That makes it a comma."

Shadow Puppet Coroner: "The autopsy reveals that the body of late Bad Bart has only a semi colon."

Posted January 31, 2005 9:52 AM by Jonathan Vos Post

the transcript of an online chat with the author of the Post article on POD publishing and PublishAmerica is here

Posted January 31, 2005 10:28 AM by julia

The PA author being raked over the coals in the otf_wank thread is now one of PA's most vocal detractors. And the guy who came to PA's defense in that thread isn't thrilled with them these days either.

Posted January 31, 2005 11:32 AM by Nicole

I am coming in on this whole thing rather late. I have a question,was this "novel" submitted to publish America? If so, was it accepted? If so, why is it now with Lulu?

Part II: Is this the same book Clapper said resulted in some sort of legal or criminal action because it was submitted with some sort of malintent (is malintent a real word?? If not, I declare it one).

Why is the sky blue?

Posted January 31, 2005 11:41 AM by worddude

WordDude, the truth is out there.

I have been admiring the first paragraph of Chapter 40, which discreetly indulges in a much finer-gauge error than the average Atlanta Nights chapter:

Irene checked her face in the mirror and the gun in her handbag just once more before she found the reserve she was looking for in herself. Popping in a fresh breath mint (just in case), she pushed open the boardroom door to confront the three people who had ruined her life and killed her love.

Do I have a theory about who wrote it? Could be. I could also be deliberately misleading you. I'm still not telling.

Posted January 31, 2005 12:44 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

It's not an error, T, it's a feature. See "Have Some Madeira, M'Dear" from Flanders and Swann.

Posted January 31, 2005 1:02 PM by Tom Whitmore

Zeugma is generally regarded as ornamentation; here it's a vice.

I'm determinedly avoiding using Atlanta Nights as a core text for a discussion of the rhetorical figure as vice.

But that doesn't mean I won't come back to it later.

Posted January 31, 2005 1:22 PM by Lisa Spangenberg

worddude, you appear to have overlooked the link "the authoritative version of the project and its origins", right at the top of this very post, yes?

Posted January 31, 2005 2:01 PM by Kate Nepveu

I'm just proud to belong to the same species as whoever came up with "y'all'll"

Posted January 31, 2005 2:18 PM by julia

julia:

Just for the L of it, how about:

"y'all'll, llamas included, drool at this..."

Posted January 31, 2005 2:42 PM by Jonathan Vos Post

Well, "missed" might be correct, but this forum does not appear on my computer as it should. I can see the top, or I can hit f11 and see the posts, but never can I see the whole thing...it's awkward to say the least. I imagine I'm missing a lot.

Posted January 31, 2005 3:19 PM by worddude

I beg everyone's pardon for my pithiness, but after reading the letters from PA that Teresa linked to, I can't avoid saying this:

PublishAmerica really isn't living in the reality-based community, is it?

Posted January 31, 2005 3:56 PM by Jason

Has anyone tried an ipso lorem submission to PA?

Posted January 31, 2005 4:33 PM by MaryR

Worddude — In case you still haven't seen it, the nickel tour summary: Hoax novel written; hoax novel submitted to PA; hoax novel accepted by PA. Hoax revealed to great fanfare; PA withdraws acceptance. Free of PA, novel printed and sold through Lulu.

There. That was mercifully brief.

Posted January 31, 2005 4:53 PM by Ray Radlein

Well, gosh, thank you Ray. You have no idea how much I appreciate a straight-forward answer to my question. Your mother (or someone) obviously spent some time raising you properly.

Posted January 31, 2005 5:08 PM by worddude

Julia: Actually that construction is often used in spoken language, but I have to admit I haven't seen it written out before. I, myself, have said things like, "If all y'all'll move over to this side of the room...", and I grew up in only a semi-Southern state.
MKMK

Posted January 31, 2005 5:58 PM by Mary Kay

I kind of like the way it sounds, but it looks godawful funny in print.

Confession: since my two year stay in NC, I sometimes say "didden" (as in "I didden see it") when I'm tired.

Posted January 31, 2005 6:20 PM by julia

"The world is full of bad books written by amateurs. But why settle for the merely regrettable? Atlanta Nights is a bad book written by experts." -- TNH

Here's a thumbnail history of the sorry affair.

Here's the press release.

Atlanta Nights now has an ISBN: 1-4116-2298-7

Price is still $11.94 at Lulu.com

http://www.lulu.com/content/102550

That's right! Atlanta Nights is now* available** in brick-and-mortar bookstores from sea to shining sea!

Approaching*** one million sold!

* Or will be, whenever Bowker updates their database.
** Over at the Special Order desk, along with the PublishAmerica books.
*** With the speed of a turtle on Qaaludes....

Posted January 31, 2005 7:03 PM by James D. Macdonald

For those who prefer to read your badfic on an ebook reader, Atlanta Nights is now available from Embiid Publishing.

Posted January 31, 2005 11:45 PM by James D. Macdonald

I love that chapter 34 was computer generated. If the rest of the book is as farcical as the back cover, then I need to find a multi-autographed copy where the proceeds will be donated to SFWA's medical fun.

If only negative examples could teach people how not to do something, this would be a great lesson.

As I read this thread and its links I got this vision of Punch and Judy hitting one another on the head with PA novels. And on that note I'm going to bed.

Posted February 1, 2005 12:24 AM by Gigi Rose

I've just realized I misspelled Steven Brust's name, upstream.

I am a doofus.

Posted February 1, 2005 6:26 AM by Mac

Worddude, Ray Radlein is indeed a nice guy, but your messed-up browser isn't visible from here.

Nicole, that's not an uncommon pattern. PA's most fervent defenders tend to be authors whom they've accepted but not yet published, or authors in the first flush of publication. A year or more out from publication, they're likelier to be sunk in depression, or hanging out in the PA thread on Absolute Write.

Newsbreak: Atlanta Nights has ISBNs!

print: 1-4116-2298-7
e-book: 1-58787-256-0

Posted February 1, 2005 8:26 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Atlanta Nights is #4 on Lulu's best sellers of the week.

Posted February 1, 2005 10:59 AM by Alex Cohen

That letter from Publish America is really vile.

Surely the company has to have crossed some legal line.

Posted February 1, 2005 2:07 PM by JackM

Quote: Worddude, Ray Radlein is indeed a nice guy, but your messed-up browser isn't visible from here. /Quote

Yeah, well I should hope not. I'm typing in the nude.

Posted February 1, 2005 2:57 PM by worddude

Just a note on that point though, there was a discussion last week on another forum with people would could not read this site. I told them about the f11 trick, but it's not a smooth ride for many of us with IE.

Posted February 1, 2005 2:59 PM by worddude

Just a note on that point though, there was a discussion last week on another forum with people would could not read this site. I told them about the f11 trick, but it's not a smooth ride for many of us with IE.

What version of IE are you using? There was a problem viewing the individual post pages here with IE 6, but the page template was changed and since then I've had no problems, and no one else has mentioned them either.

Posted February 1, 2005 3:23 PM by Dan Blum

Worddude

I've seen the Search page issue, but frankly haven't tried to figure out why it's doing that.

But.

Don't use I.E. Really. It's not safe at all, it's a veritable invitation to disaster. FireFox is worth at least taking a look at--and there are other alternatives.

L

Posted February 1, 2005 3:24 PM by Lisa Spangenberg

I am usually using IE6. It's not that big of a deal, honestly. I can live with it although I might be missing a few things but anyone visiting the site for the first time might not figure out the f11 thing and just leave.

Posted February 1, 2005 3:45 PM by worddude

elise, Fandom_Wank is one of the joys of my life (rather like my husband, and for some of the same reasons).
Do you think he meant sock puppets rather than shadow puppets?
Just popping back to let you know that the wankers have discovered Atlanta Nights:
http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/620064.html
and it's being suitably appreciated.

Posted February 1, 2005 4:48 PM by Barbara Gordon

Barbara, thanks for the link. I just read through the blurbs (hadn't taken time before). ROTFLMAO,,, until I'm giddy. One of my own personal fave jokers contributed to the blurbs.

Posted February 1, 2005 5:55 PM by Paula Helm Murray

Oh, which one? But they're all so good.
I'm going to have to get hardcopy from Lulu, I think. But ... the cover at the e-books is way cooler than the Lulu cover, especially the way the title scrawls over the woman's eyes. Sigh.
Question - will Atlanta Nights be listed on Amazon? Should we all go there and give it 5-star reviews?

Posted February 1, 2005 11:46 PM by Barbara Gordon

Still enjoying this and its wonderfully bad prose. Kudos for the phrase: "the memory of a great man who had walked the earth like a rock in the sand".

Posted February 2, 2005 3:53 PM by Jimcat Kasprzak

"These writers engaged in ... acyrlogia"

That's "acyrologia."

Posted February 3, 2005 1:28 AM by Zzedar

Teresa,

My we use this quote of yours below either on the front of the ATLANTA NIGHTS book cover or inside?

"The world is full of bad books written by amateurs. But why settle for the merely regrettable? Atlanta Nights is a bad book written by experts." -- T. Nielsen Hayden

Posted February 3, 2005 1:30 AM by Vera Nazarian

Reading that manuscript has somewhat of a highway accident effect on me; you know it's not right to look and you *want* to look away but you just can't. And it keeps getting worse.

To anyone involved in that book reading this I say: Awesome work! And by awesome, I really mean awful!

Posted February 3, 2005 3:51 AM by Daniel

One measure of success for a book may be a mention in Bookslut.

Congratulations, Travis Tea!

Posted February 3, 2005 10:59 AM by Jill Smith

Vera, if "we" is the same outfit on whose behalf Jim Macdonald and Sean Fodera asked me the same question yesterday, the answer is yes, yes, and yes.

The supplementary answer is that it was a signed review in a public venue, and if you have to get formal permission to quote from those, the industry is in big trouble.

Posted February 3, 2005 2:02 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

I just finished chapter 28 of Atlanta Nights, and must say I felt gypped at the end of it. Ignoring the formatting errors, ...creative spelling and punctuation, nonstandard grammar bits, and gratuitous POV shifts (along with the fact that it, like all the rest of the book, seems to be a chapter from some entirely different book), chapter 28 isn't half bad. I'm even kinda interested in the rest of whatever non-existent novel it's part of, somewhere in the great library of unwritten books.

Posted February 3, 2005 2:22 PM by alsafi

Teresa,

Yes and thanks for verifying! :-)

Posted February 3, 2005 10:47 PM by Vera Nazarian

Alsafi:

The Invisible Library
"The Invisible Library is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library's catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound."
Please note: The catalogue used to list entries by pseudo-author and pseudo-title. These have been removed to save space and because they weren't visited very often. However, if you want them back, please let me know. The Oddities section was removed because it's redundant.

The Crimson Hexagon
"The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resume, a commentary . . . More reasonable, more inept, more indolent, I have preferred to write notes upon imaginary books."
-- Jorge Luis Borges

Posted February 3, 2005 11:16 PM by Jonathan Vos Post

Sadly, I received a mass-emailed letter today from the last person I would think be taken in by a vanity press scam: my copyright/trademark attorney, who is extremely Internet & research savvy.

He was taken in by Llumina Press.

And is doing what all such authors do: putting his fingers in his ears. He doesn't want to admit to himself that it's a vanity press & not a real book publisher. He really thinks it was a good deal (check out their editorial rates: Elric and I calculated that one of their "edits" [copyediting, not even line-editing, from the description] would cost someone who wrote a 100,000-word ms. a whopping $29,000. You read that right. Just for editing. The a la carte list continues from there...). Unlike PA, they don't even typeset for nothing. Granted, you get what you pay for with PA, but if you pay these guys the $900 for typesetting and production, you still get crap. And I thought PA was bad.

He also thinks it will honestly be "in" the bookstores, just like Llumina's website claims. Same vague claim that all the scams pull. It's astoundingly awful what these guys are doing.

It's saddening. Worse because this guy is the last I'd think would be taken by the routine.

I so want to write back to him and say, "You yell at me all the time to NEVER do anything contract-wise or legal-wise without talking to a lawyer, usually you. And you did this without first talking to me, a publishing professional?!"

Worst of all? The book isn't half bad, and it has an audience. If he would have called an agent, I'll bet it would have found a niche sale. I told him that two years ago. He didn't listen, apparently.

Posted February 3, 2005 11:57 PM by Nancy Hanger

I got my package from Lulu last night, and I have to congratulate whoever set up the page grid. Just magnificent.

Whoever you are, you have achieved Typesetting That Made Me Giggle.

Posted February 4, 2005 7:36 AM by julia

Man oh man, this site is fun. "Y'all'll" be pleased to know you've kept this weary Aussie writer-type entertained through many a sleepless night. I lurk and laugh, and love the lot of you.

Posted February 4, 2005 7:46 AM by Leanne Gates

Julia, out of curiosity, what made you giggle about the typeset? (I haven't seen the book). I assume that in keeping with the general theme they've somehow done it as wrongly as possible as well; I'm curious in what ways typesetting can be amusingly wrong.

Posted February 4, 2005 8:38 AM by Daniel

Daniel,

Let's just say that there are very many fun things you can do with text justification. . . . :-)

Posted February 4, 2005 8:42 AM by Vera Nazarian

casts around for an example - the page numbers, which are practically on top of the last line of type on each page, and which don't have the same baseline as the text, and which appear, at a glance, to be in different places on different pages.

and yes, the text justification was fun :D

Posted February 4, 2005 10:04 AM by julia

although I have to award the highest honors (the coveted Golden 22-Year-Old AD) to whoever force-justified "I'm not"

Posted February 4, 2005 10:19 AM by julia

"Publishers and Sinners. Possibly the most astonishing novel ever written, Atlanta Nights by 'Travis Tea' was created to test -- preferably to destruction -- PublishAmerica's claim to be a serious 'traditional publisher' with old-fashioned trappings like editorial standards...."

The Runcible Ansible
David Langford
The Infinite Matrix

Posted February 4, 2005 11:59 AM by Jonathan Vos Post

Okay, so I have a question, and maybe someone can help me with this:

Why do so many people assume that it's their job to pay for the success of their book?

I mean, if there's a common thread in all of the PublishAmerica apologetics I've read, it's their sincere belief that PA is doing them a major favor by putting their book into print -- and that's all they expected. Who are they to ask for promotion and advertising? Doesn't everyone buy copies to resell? If you want your book on bookstore shelves, it's just logical that you have to do it yourself, right? Anyone who wouldn't buy fifty copies of their book and drive around to every bookstore in the tri-city area asking for shelf space is just lazy.

Now, some of their beliefs I can understand. For example, a bunch of editors talking about the slush pile can easily translate as "goddamn new blood, wasting time we should otherwise be spending polishing Stephen King's gold-plated toothbrush, oh how we hate them all" when a frustrated wannabe writer listens in. (And then along comes a traditional publisher who doesn't care if you're unknown, because your work is sure to resonate with an audience....)

But I honestly don't understand how you can fail to see that everywhere in the publishing industry but PA, big pots of money are given to you before even one copy is sold, and then the publisher does the marketing and promotion for you! If anyone said to me "Here you go, a pot of money for you, now just sit back and write another book while we work our asses off on your behalf." I would be thrilled.

What am I missing? What sort of mind do I need to not grasp that publication can mean money, up-front, and in (relatively) copious amounts?

Posted February 4, 2005 12:25 PM by Anticorium

Anticorum's puzzlement brings to mind David Rising's book How to Get Published FREE: And Make Money. I read the title, and waited for my brain to catch up, and thought, "Well, yes, that's how it's supposed to work."

But he makes it sound like another scam.

How to get published FREE and make money: when you get your work into the retail chain. There is a story or an idea in everyone. It's just a matter of finding out what works for you and getting those creative juices flowing. There are much more than just books that can be published to bring in some extra money. With this method of publishing you will not have to wait six months or more, just to get a rejection notice from a traditional publishing house. You could have your material in the retail chain in as little as six weeks from the time you submit it. The fact is you can get your work published in book form and up for sale at zero out of pocket cost to you. This book will guide you through what to do to get your material published: Books, Magazines, Music, Poetry and Short Stories. Work from home and at your speed. Marketing your book on all of the major online websites is also detailed in this book.

I leave the exploration of the irony that his book is published by Lulu as an exercise.

Posted February 4, 2005 12:39 PM by Alex Cohen

"A bunch of editors talking about the slush pile can easily translate as 'goddamn new blood, wasting time we should otherwise be spending polishing Stephen King's gold-plated toothbrush, oh how we hate them all' when a frustrated wannabe writer listens in."

Only if the "wannabe writer" is an idiot.

Think it through. If you're an aspiring unpublished writer, do you want the average quality in the slushpile to be high? Why would the news that it's not be something to get offended over?

Posted February 4, 2005 12:48 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

If you're an aspiring unpublished writer, do you want the average quality in the slushpile to be high? Why would the news that it's not be something to get offended over?

Because there's a persecution mentality mixed in. Many people never reach the part of the logic chain that says, "I can write in complete sentences with few grammatical gaffes. I'm ahead of 60% of the slush pile already!" They stop at "Gee, the editors reading the slush pile really think we aspiring writers are all idiots. I'm never giving them a chance to make fun of ME that way!"

Posted February 4, 2005 1:24 PM by OG

That's understandable. Stupid, mind you, but understandable.

Honestly, at the risk of destroying the last shreds of any reputation I may have for being writer-friendly, it seems to me just extraordinary to want to pin one's flag to the mast of the slush pile.

Posted February 4, 2005 1:37 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

I think, Patrick, that you have on advantage over a number of writers: you've actually seen a slush pile. Most people who become discouraged by the prospect of editor's complaining about the slush pile usually haven't seen one and don't have a grasp on the types of compositions therein.

I, personally, and others I've known have at one point in time or another thought that the slush pile consisted almost entirely of stories that were perfectly spelled and punctuated but that simply lacked an engaging enough storyline or interesting enough character or whatever. The slush pile, in our minds, was filled with a staggering number of perfect, publishable books that were passed up because they weren't as good as This Other Book Over Here.

I'd venture that most of the people who pin their flags to the mast of the slush pile don't realize that, as OG pointed out, by being able to spell they already have a leg up on a sizable chunk of the competition.

Posted February 4, 2005 1:57 PM by PinkDreamPoppies

I'd venture that most of the people who pin their flags to the mast of the slush pile don't realize that, as OG pointed out, by being able to spell they already have a leg up on a sizable chunk of the competition.

Oh, no. That was a summary of a conversation that started when I passed Teresa's Slushkiller post on to someone wondering about the chances of a slush manuscript. I was soundly berated by a third party and accused of actively trying to discourage people from trying to get published.

It may be significant that the people involved who took Slushkiller as encouraging were the ones with a good command of English grammar, while the ones who were offended should probably recognize their own writing styles in Atlanta Nights.

Patrick, people are desperately searching for an alternative to joining the slush pile, and there doesn't seem to be one. Even getting an agent doesn't eliminate the slush pile from the writer's perspective; it just shifts it to someone besides the editor at the publishing house.

Posted February 4, 2005 2:28 PM by OG

I'm convinced that many new writers think that there's a Slush Room at each major publisher. Every Monday an editor goes in and pulls out three manuscripts at random that will be Published. The editorial assistants then package the rest up with rejection slips and take them to the Mail Room to be aged for a year before returning them. The slush room fills until the next week's ritual.

Posted February 4, 2005 2:39 PM by James D. Macdonald

Not long after PW started its "My Say" guest editorial page (not quite twenty years ago), they ran a piece from a self-described "business consultant," who took the industry to task for its insulting attitude toward the valuable material sent in unrequested.

His solution (and if you hang around here, you could guess that he would have a solution in his hip pocket) was that all publishers should contribute money, editorial time, and the occasional sacrificial intern to a joint clearinghouse agency that would read everything, make decisions, and then distribute the Good Stuff to publishers by some means he didn't actually get around to explaining.

The punchline was the comment that "if even 10% of the material is worthwhile, this will pay."

It drew one very polite but amused letter from someone at Knopf.

I don't know what the exact motivation for this item was -- the natural guess is that Mr. Consultant had been trying to push his book and failed, but there are all sorts of equally tired possibilities. (If so, one would guess it had to be a novel -- there was a time when Tennessee Tuxedo and Chumley could have published their book on Getting Rich as a Consultant.) And, in the end, it doesn't speak very well for the consultancy.

Posted February 4, 2005 3:03 PM by John M. Ford

I thought Atlanta Nights was a brilliant concept, flawlessly executed. I was riveted in my chair -- except for the (frequent) moments rolling around on the floor laughing.

Posted February 4, 2005 4:03 PM by E.E. Knight

I haven't started submitting my writing anyplace yet, but it seems to me that the slush pile is just the equivalent of musical & theatrical auditions. Presumably nobody likes the stress of auditioning, but if you think your work is fabulous, you should want to participate in a process designed to separate the wheat from the chaff.

For some reason a lot of amateur writers seem to think that their work should be judged purely by the quality of feeling that goes into it. But if they have to go through the slush pile, unfeeling junior editors who can't see past trivialities like grammar and pacing will cast aside their masterpieces. Clearly a more senior editor, someone with real depth of feeling, wouldn't be bogged down by the mere technicalities that are all a junior editor can see. Meanwhile the senior types spend their time sucking up to established authors and ignoring the diamonds in the rough, who are being trod upon by the uncaring slush pile readers.

Etc.

Posted February 4, 2005 5:28 PM by Mary Dell

A true Southerner would know that in addressing more than two people, namely a bunch to use true Southern technical terminology, it would be said this way: "All y'all'll be pleased to know you've kept this weary Aussie writer-type entertained through many a sleepless night."

Posted February 4, 2005 7:00 PM by Evil Genius

Quick question - anyone here ordered books to the UK from Lulu? What're the shipping rates like?

(It tells me *how* they can be shipped, but not how much it'll cost. Usually I find that suspicious, but I'll give them the benefit.)

Posted February 4, 2005 7:17 PM by Paul

"Meanwhile the senior types spend their time sucking up to established authors and ignoring the diamonds in the rough, who are being trod upon by the uncaring slush pile readers."

Quite right. Except, wait, we're not "sucking up to established authors," we're lolling about in our offices eating bonbons and reading the National Enquirer. Or maybe the SFWA Forum. I get so confused.

Posted February 4, 2005 8:42 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Oh, sure. Now you'll try to convince us that editors *read.* Good luck with that one.

By the way, how was today's ep of Dr. Phil?

Posted February 4, 2005 9:40 PM by Harry Connolly

Re: slushpiles.

Deep, dark secret here. I once submitted a Bad Novel to an agent. The slush-pile reader, with whom I was slightly acquainted, was intestered in it. I suspect that her interest was mostly the result of my being able to spell and punctuate. She referred the MS to the agent, who, fortunately for me, realized that the novel was a nasty memoire/Mary Sue and rejected the thing.

Decent writing might get one past the first cut but not necessarily part the second. My decently written but utterly foul "novel" got enough send-us-some-more letters followed by this-does-not-suit-us letters that I eventually understood the lesson.

Lesson: it's hard to write good stuff. However, we all knew that, right?

Posted February 4, 2005 10:04 PM by JackM

Having been following the Neverending Thread's links to the PA boards, I've been having a depressing thought of my own, a bit different from the question of whether the aspiring but credulous authors have seen a slush pile ... and ooh, here's an idea to make our genial hosts blench - how about a webcam of the Tor slush pile, so those who have cleverly chosen shocking pink envelopes etc. can see their mss rise through the ranks?
Wait, I did have a thought. Okay. I kept wondering how much the hopeful authors read - what authors they liked, what genres they favoured, did they buy new or used? Too often it seemed that they didn't read very much at all, let alone in the genre they hoped to break into.
Reading the posts of the hopefuls reminded me distressingly of the anecdote about the farmboy who wanted to be an author, and when interviewed about it, said he figured the hardest part was getting all the lines to end at the same spot on the page.
Maybe it's a false impression. I kept remembering Teresa's remarks about thinking with one's reader brain, though, and wondering whether they had access to that mentality. Maybe they're too busy with the huckstering to have time to read.
Did anyone else find it chilling that one of the sections on PA's advice pages is called "Death of a Writer, Birth of a Salesman"?
(Anyone who has the correct text for the farmboy story, please share.)

Posted February 5, 2005 1:49 AM by Barbara Gordon

The major problem hired slushpile readers have, imho (and having been one back in the early '60s I know whereof I speak) is that reading too much of it can destroy your critical faculties. Soon anything spelled correctly, punctuated properly, and with relatively few adverbs seems a veritable masterpiece. Which is why no one reads slush for days on end.

I always tell my workshop students that simply by being there to learn something, they have already lifted themselves into the top 5% of slush pile. And that only about 1% of slush is actually publishable. (That's being generous.)

A few years ago a consultant was hired by Boyds Mills Press, a children's book imprint of Highlights Magazine. He actually came up with the reccommendation that they'd do much better if they'd only published books that would become bestsellers. Yeah. Brilliant!

Jane

Posted February 5, 2005 2:39 AM by jane

As someone who has not yet escaped the slush pile (not that I've tried in, oh, about eight years), I think the key to PA's appeal as an alternative lies in two concepts that seem contradictory but aren't:

1. PA's claim that if you're not already famous or well-connected, editors and publishers will treat your brilliant first novel with disdain. (Aha! That's why they rejected me! My name isn't Stephen King!)

2. The writer's secret fear that maybe the manuscript that seemed so right, so perfect during the writing of it, may nevertheless be not quite as good as Big Name Author's latest. Coupled with #1, that spells almost certain rejection. (And who wants to go through all that again? With PA, I can show those stupid snobs that there's a company out there that appreciates and nurtures my Unique Artistic Vision. If I work at it, my book can be the next Eragon!)

Trust me. I "know" my book is worthwhile. Nevertheless, the idea of sending it out again inevitably brings up dark, scary thoughts of "What if it never sells?" To stave off the despair, I try to convince myself that if I do another edit, and another, it will finally be good enough. In the meantime, at least I'm putting off the feared rejection just a little longer.

Up to a point, that's a helpful gambit. After a couple of major rewrites, many substantial edits and most of a sequel, my first novel is a heck of a lot better than it was when Tor rejected it however-many-years ago. Still, I'm rapidly reaching the point at which I run out of excuses to pop the latest version of it into an envelope.

Posted February 5, 2005 2:56 AM by Karen Funk Blocher

Many thanks, Evil Genius, for the tip. Obviously we're just not southern enough down here!

Posted February 5, 2005 7:18 AM by Leanne Gates

Patrick said:

> Think it through. If you're an aspiring unpublished writer, do you want the average quality
> in the slushpile to be high? Why would the news that it's not be something to get offended over?

Because the unpublished writer identifies every manuscript in the slushpile with their own. And no matter how many times you attempt to describe the average quality of those manuscripts, the writer will still be thinking, "but one of those is mine, he's talking about my manuscript."

I'm sure I'd have a hard time believing it, if I hadn't taken the time to read a manuscript a friend-of-a-friend asked for help formatting for submission... or at least the first few pages of it. I couldn't take any more of it than that.

So, assuming that's an average slushpile manuscript, I can easily separate theirs from mine. Without that benefit, any discussion of the quality of slush would just be abstract and hard to visualise.

I think every writer should have to read at least one slush manuscript. It might help everyone.

Posted February 5, 2005 8:44 AM by Jules

Woo hoo!

Atlanta Nights hit the LA Times!

http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-et-hoax5feb05,2,5388025.story

Please publish this dud

To test a publisher's selectivity, a group of writers collaborated on a book. Their goal: Make it stink.

By Scott Martelle
Times Staff Writer

Feb 5 2005

The moral of this story is: Never tick off a science fiction writer.

More than a year ago, a website run by PublishAmerica, a controversial Maryland book publisher, took a swipe at some of its vociferous detractors among sci-fi and fantasy authors as "literary parasites" who "looted, leeched or plagiarized their way to local stardom."

That caused what "Star Wars" aficionados might call a "disturbance in the force."
...

Posted February 5, 2005 12:20 PM by James D. Macdonald

I've been thinking about what Patrick said about the slushpile. Rationally, it makes sense: if you're competing against the other manuscripts in the slushpile, it does you no good for them to be excellent.

But if you're an unpublished author listening to people talk about how bad most of the slushpile is, it's easy to interpret it not as "I'm better than those clowns, I'll get in" but as "they expect the slushpile to be crap, they won't give my book a fair chance."

Or, if you've put a lot of yourself into your book, it may feel like dating: if the group of people whose attention you want keep publicly disparaging people like you, you're not going to be encouraged. It's not easy to remember the distinction between "most of the slushpile is crap" and "all of the slushpile is crap, and the people who send those unsolicited manuscripts are crap".

Posted February 5, 2005 1:28 PM by Vicki

Harry, locally, I watch Spike TV's "MacGyver" reruns instead of "Dr. Phil," even though I've already seen all the "MacGyver" eps. (Okay, I could turn the TV off between the soap operas I like and the news at 4, but when I do that, I frequently miss the beginning of the news.)

Posted February 5, 2005 4:09 PM by Marilee

There was some discussion of formatting earlier on in this thread, so I feel some justification for butting in with a question:

Should it be one space or two spaces after a full-stop (period)? Or doesn't it matter?

When I learnt to type, *cough*teen years ago, I was taught to leave two spaces.

I'm sure I've seen a comment somewhere on Making Light about how two spaces are bad -- but my browser crashes every time I try to use this site's search function. Googling brought up nothing useful, except this: http://www.webword.com/reports/period.html -- which is more about text on the internet rather than text in books.

Posted February 6, 2005 5:16 AM by Madeline Kelly

Here is a better link directly to the LA Times article about ATLANTA NIGHTS.

Not sure how this bypasses subscriber registration, but I found it referenced in a couple of blogs via Google.

Posted February 6, 2005 7:10 AM by Vera Nazarian

When you're typing on a typewriter (or when you're preparing a manuscript in Courier for submission) you leave two spaces after a period. When you're running justified type, you leave one space after a period.

In other news:

Lulu Sales Rank: 58
Hits: 20,875
Sales: 144
Royalties: $162.50

Mentioned on 402 web pages.
Discussed in 85 blogs and LiveJournals.

Posted February 6, 2005 7:54 AM by James D. Macdonald

Patrick said:

> Think it through. If you're an aspiring unpublished writer, do you want the average quality
> in the slushpile to be high? Why would the news that it's not be something to get offended over?

Vicki - haphazard pick from said book here
I've been thinking about what Patrick said about the slushpile. Rationally, it makes sense: if you're competing against the other manuscripts in the slushpile, it does you no good for them to be excellent.

Granted Sturgeon's Law says the average will converge to cr*p as the numbers increase - still I'd hope for publication surrounded by quality and so maybe I'd hope for something better than trunk stories in the slush as well?

Objectives may differ. I suppose there is a reason market reports have called themselves Scavenger's for these many years?

Posted February 6, 2005 1:10 PM by Clark E Myers

You want what is published to ==> good (your published work is surrounded by quality) as what's in the slushpile ==> crap (the stuff you're competing against to get published) as the numbers go to infinity.

If the system works correctly, this is what happens.

In other news: Atlanta Nights Tee Shirts and such. Proceeds to go to the SFWA Emergency Medical Fund. Tell your friends.

Posted February 6, 2005 1:59 PM by James D. Macdonald

"as the numbers go to infinity" I rather suspect response time is indeterminate but perhaps countable large?

Posted February 6, 2005 2:36 PM by Clark E Myers

Slashdot has picked up the Atlanta Nights story. That should drive some traffic toward Lulu and away from PA.

Posted February 6, 2005 2:38 PM by Mark Wise

On the Atlanta Nights t-shirt page, why is the main picture different from the one (matching the Lulu cover) shown on actual shirts?

(I like the main picture better.)

Posted February 6, 2005 3:53 PM by Bruce Arthurs

"Or, if you've put a lot of yourself into your book, it may feel like dating: if the group of people whose attention you want keep publicly disparaging people like you, you're not going to be encouraged. It's not easy to remember the distinction between "most of the slushpile is crap" and "all of the slushpile is crap, and the people who send those unsolicited manuscripts are crap"

Don't forget:

"But...but what if I'M one of the crap ones and just don't realise it? ANGST! PARANOIA! AAAIE!"

Posted February 6, 2005 4:40 PM by Richard Cobbett

The main picture on the CafePress site is the cover from the Embiid ebook edition. That isn't on any gear yet because the graphics using that picture haven't been uploaded yet.

Posted February 6, 2005 4:56 PM by James D. Macdonald

Slashdot will likely also drive some traffic here. Hope the servers can cope (although it's likely to be a smaller than usual Slashdot effect).

Posted February 6, 2005 6:30 PM by Paul

The full text is available (free download) at Embiid.net in Palm, Rocket, and Windows formats.

Posted February 6, 2005 6:55 PM by James D. Macdonald

Cool. I don't think I'd spend money on a dead-tree version -- even if it does help support a good cause -- but I'm willing to invest in a free download.

Posted February 6, 2005 8:12 PM by David Goldfarb

Has anyone read Jim Crace's article in the Guardian, of letters to the importunate unpublished?
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1405386,00.html

Is it really a Bad Thing for the first sentence of a novel to include the character's name? Or is he making that up?

Posted February 7, 2005 12:17 AM by Barbara Gordon

Call me Ismael.

YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.

Posted February 7, 2005 1:42 AM by Lisa Spangenberg

In other news: Atlanta Nights Tee Shirts and such.

Shouldn't that be Atlanta Nights Tea Shirts?

Posted February 7, 2005 2:45 AM by pericat

A fair piece upthread, Mary Dell wrote, "Presumably nobody likes the stress of auditioning, but if you think your work is fabulous, you should want to participate in a process designed to separate the wheat from the chaff."

Yes, but what if the business was set up such that you were only supposed to audition at one place at a time, and that place would typically wait a year or more to get back to you?

Would that be a sign of a well-run business?

Posted February 7, 2005 5:52 AM by Doug

Ooh! This is a good game.

"Emma Woodhouse, handsome clever and rich, with a comfortable home and a happy disposition..."
(in fact Pride and Prejudice is the only one that doesn't drop someone's name in the first sentence)

"When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating..." (admittedly it's a sequel and I skipped the prologue)

"'Come home, Tenar, come home.'" (okay, technically another sequel, but the original wasn't about Tenar).

"Roger, aged seven, and no longer the youngest of the family..."

"My father's family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer than Pip."

"'Do come out of that dream, Moril,' Lenina said."

"Stavia saw herself as in a picture, from the outside..."

I'm going to stop now, because there are other things I should be doing.

Posted February 7, 2005 5:55 AM by Aquila

Ooh, Aquila, I knew five of those! And I don't think there's anything wrong in introducing the main character straightaway. As a reader I get irritated if there's lots of random description before the story gets going. I want to know who's doing what and where -- not how pretty the primroses are, or how strangely the autumn light plays about the hillside, etc.

I've raided my collection of children's books. How about:

"Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do..."

"The trouble started the day Howard came home from school to find the Goon sitting in the kitchen."

"William and Ginger and Douglas and Henry (known as the Outlaws) walked slowly down the road to school."

"The carriage gave another lurch, and Maria Merryweather, Miss Heliotrope, and Wiggins once more fell into each other's arms..."

"Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening Hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen."

"Taran wanted to make a sword; but Coll, charged with the practical side of his education, decided on horseshoes."

Posted February 7, 2005 6:31 AM by Madeline Kelly

Darn it. Sorry for double-posting, but I forgot to say 'thank you' to James for responding so quickly to my two-spaces question.

Thank you, James.

Posted February 7, 2005 6:33 AM by Madeline Kelly

Nice of Jonathan Vos Post to link to my "Runcible Ansible" column at The Infinite Matrix. However, using the "index.html" link brings up the latest column, and the one that mentions Atlanta Nights is now here.

Charlie Stross tells me that he's waiting to see the first novel "in the grand tradition of Charles Stross". At once I thought of contributing a reader's response at Lulu.com, but pity stayed my hand. Instead, perhaps, I should offer the blurb line sent to David S. Garnett when he demanded that everyone in British SF plug his book Bikini Planet sight unseen:

"If science fiction's founding father H.G. Wells were able to read this astonishing novel, he would be alive today."

Dave

Posted February 7, 2005 7:19 AM by Dave Langford

I suspect that wannabes are discouraged by more than the difficulty of getting through the slush pile. The generally atrocious response times and "no simultaneous submissions" gag are probably worse, not to mention self-defeating for the publishing industry. Wannabes would be far more likely to get the message that "your work isn't publishable" if they got a set of curt rejections within a short period of time. Instead, the agony of waiting a year or more to get a three-line rejection, then moving on to the next publisher that won't accept simultaneous submissions, just reinforces the sense of persecution.

Frankly, there's no excuse for having both a long response time and a no-simsubs policy. Pick one or the other at most; better yet, recognize that the amount of time devoted to rejecting just about everything in the slush pile is so short that the whingeing that "I don't want to invest a lot of time for nothing" is disingenuous and curable with a postcard saying "You're out of the slush, we're still looking at it, and we need six weeks of exclusivity."

And if you think it's bad in fiction, try looking at the slush pile confronting an editor of serious nonfiction. Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt.

Posted February 7, 2005 8:37 AM by CEP

Is it really a Bad Thing for the first sentence of a novel to include the character's name? Or is he making that up?

It's slightly more convincing than the rule about not publishing anything set in, or posted from, Cornwall, but not much. There might be a correlation between a novel being bad and it giving a character's full name and occupation in the first sentence - for evidence see the Language Log article on The Da Vinci Code, or a vaguely remembered Danielle Steel novel that mentioned the heroine's name, make of car, and "successful photographic agency" before giggling prevented me reading further. Maybe you have to have "successful" or "renowned" in there as well for the full effect.

Does Atlanta Nights begin by mentioning Bruce Lucent and his world-class software business? And, in the interests of impartial scientific research, are there any counter-examples?

Posted February 7, 2005 8:51 AM by Paul Clarke

Is it really a Bad Thing for the first sentence of a novel to include the character's name? Or is he making that up?

I think he's just pointing out that slush readers have their own prejudices, like all readers.

I do like some of the advice in that article, starting off with:
if you want to change the world or even your locality do not put your politics into a book, but put your politics into Politics.

And on writer's block:
Well, if you are determined that it must be written, start to think of it not as "groundbreaking" - it's never wise to praise your own work, especially when it isn't completed yet - but as a self-indulgence, somehow unimportant in the greater scheme of things.

Thanks for the link!

Posted February 7, 2005 9:42 AM by mayakda

While doing some random research into the 18th century (in a vast and moldy old college textbook) I came across Alexander Pope's wonderful satire on bad writing -- pretending to praise it -- "Peri Bathous". Mixing genuine examples of the stuff with his own sly inventions, it's hilarious. Centuries later, the clunking verse and gloriously awkward poetic devices of one Sir Richard Blackmore can still induce fits of uncontrollable giggling, and Pope's riffs on that kind of writing are as pitch-perfect as the absurdities in Atlanta Nights.

The piece is related to his better-known "Dunciad" and "New Dunciad", whose social commentary is as apt as ever (despite his crusty religious prejudice against what *we'd* call science). Pardon me for not putting this quote on the Open Thread, but I couldn't resist sticking it here. As the goddess of stupidity reigns: "Beneath her footstool, Science groans in chains,/ And Wit dreads Exile, Penalties and Pains./ There foam'd rebellious Logic, gagg'd and bound,/ There stript, fair Rhetr'ic languished on the ground...." ("New Dunciad", Book the Fourth). Some things change, but powerful dunces are forever.

Posted February 7, 2005 10:41 AM by Faren Miller

There might be a correlation between a novel being bad and it giving a character's full name and occupation in the first sentence...

From a current rebinding project:

"Mr Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow lovable."

Admittedly, the first sentence doesn't tell you his first name is Gabriel, but it is set in a time when people didn't use one another's first names as freely as they do now. But still, somehow, I find myself preferring it to "Pain."

As they told us when we read Virgil, you can break any rule (in that case, metrical rules) if you're a genius. Though it helps if you're also dead.

Posted February 7, 2005 2:28 PM by abi

Lulu currently lists Atlanta Nights at #2 on their bestsellers list.

I ordered a copy last night so I take credit for a tiny part of that increase.

Posted February 7, 2005 2:48 PM by Lois Fundis

. . . or a vaguely remembered Danielle Steel novel that mentioned the heroine's name, make of car, and "successful photographic agency" [...]

The name she had decided to be a successful artist under was Pearl Amboy, kind of like the city, so people would remember it, kind of, and she drove the last living Yugo in Corona Park, a piebald rustoroon kept going by cadaver transplants from less fortunate Yugos; she called it "Gogo," either after Samuel Beckett or Vincent van or a Muppet, she forgot which, and other cars, or maybe the people in them, honked at it a lot (perhaps because it was plastered with bumper stickers encouraging you to honk if you held various faiths or affections) but her real joy was her photographic agency, which was very successful at taking photographs, none of which she'd ever taken to Duane Reade for developing, because that was technology, not art.

Okay, that's not so memorable. But most folks would take a whole chapter to get that across, so it is not without some weensy virtues.

Posted February 7, 2005 3:04 PM by John M. Ford

Paul Clarke, in reference to Is it really a Bad Thing for the first sentence of a novel to include the character's name? asked: "And, in the interests of impartial scientific research, are there any counter-examples?"

I saw a list of counter-examples somewhere in the late 1980's, and can only recall the first one. "Call me Ishmael."

Posted February 7, 2005 4:11 PM by Curt

I want everyone to know that on behalf of my colleagues, I object to the following assertion from Mr. Crace's letters "There aren't as many editors for a start. Those smart young men and women are accountants."

My objections are twofold:

Firstly, substantive: My co-workers, and the many, many young people I've met in editors' associations and editorial courses are very smart young men and women. They are simply impoverished smart young men and women, who chose careers with low salaries, low freelance wages, and a great deal of scratching at the doors of publishing houses hoping to land one of the few entry-level editorial jobs. There are legions of smart young people working in publishing, or trying to find work in publishing. I work with three extremely bright young editors, and I've spent several hours over the past couple of weeks interviewing several other smart young editors. So piffle to the notion that all the smart young men and women have become accountants.

Secondly, editorial: Which smart young men and women are accountants. To what does "those" refer? The former editors? The types of people who would have been editors in the heady days of the 'eighties? The antecedence is unclear.

ahem.

Posted February 7, 2005 4:40 PM by jennie (with a lower-case "j")