-l.

I have a great idea. Let's typeset and retitle the texts of some terribly worthy novels, have them made up into fake bound galleys, and send them round as review copies to the same publications that have pulled the "submit a book by a well-known author" stunt. When they fail to review these books, or review them unenthusiastically, we'll do a round of finger-pointing and sneering at them for being such undiscerning clods.

Whoops, forgot. We're not in the business of generating lightweight thumb-sucking feature stories about the scandalous state of literacy today. We just do the best job we can of publishing the best books we can find. The Fourth Estate is safe for now.

Since we also don't have the time or resources to find out how many of the journalists who pull these stunts are frustrated at having had books rejected by publishing houses, the Fourth Estate is doubly safe.

Yoo-hoo, London Times? Fishwrap. That's all I've got to say to you: fishwrap.

Anyway.

At a Tor slushkill a couple of years ago, I spotted a manuscript submission as a retyped version of E. R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros. That's a swell book, but it's not for everyone. It was reissued as a paperback in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line during that post-Tolkien period when there was a tremendous appetite for epic fantasy, but very little epic fantasy was being written. These days, if it were published as a first novel in a fantasy series by an unknown author, it'd go down in the scrum.

I sent back a note saying "Swell book, but it's in print from [another publisher]." They never wrote back.

Buncha doofuses. How dumb do you have to be to use E.R. Eddison for a stunt like that? Do they think we don't know our own genre? Eddison has one of the most recognizable styles in fantasy.

Vast piles of cr*p there may be, but for the rest, I remain unconvinced.

There is another stunt that has been done by different writers times in several European countries (I do not know if anybody has done something like this in the US), which is to write deliberately cranky or silly letters to political parties, big firms, branches of government, etc. etc. I read the Norwegian version, and it was singularly unfunny. Except for a few slips where the person responding was a trifle too enthusiastic, the vast majority of the responses were just polite but reserved form letters of the kind big firms and the goverment send to unsolicited offers and advice. It seemed to me that the letter writers thought it hilarious just to get an answer at all.

When it comes to slush piles, I had a friend who worked for a Norwegian SF magazine in the 70s, and who once commented that some of the most boring stuff he had to read was written by people who thought that they would sell simply by writing "soft" or "literary" SF (as that was the kind of SF usually translated and anthologised by the larger publishing companies). He claimed to still shudder when he thought about how bad bad "Bradbury" or bad "new wave" could be...

Steps got published because it could have the words "By the author of The Painted Bird" on the cover. That's why Steps won the National Book Award too: That was the folks who vote on such things saying "Oops! Sorry we missed the good one...."

This may suggest that the reading public either isn't any better at recognizing good writing than the editors are, or that both are equally hypnotized by big names.

It's quite understandable that Doris Lessing found that folks didn't buy as many Jane Somers books as they would if the same words had come out under her own name.

At least, I think it was nice. I don't know how her agent felt about it.

(I should note that the only book I've had published so far garnered quite a few rejections before I found a publisher who'd take it. That's not unusual in academic publishing. I ended up with three potential publishers and went with the one who answered first.)

The book is number two in a series of a supernatural spy thriller pastiches, written in the style of various famous authors of spy thrillers. The non-Anglophone publisher who bounced it had already published the first in the series. It has sold to American and other publishers, so it can't be that awful. It was explicitly pitched to the publisher in question as doing for Ian Fleming what the previous book did for Len Deighton. The book was rejected. The cited reason for turning the book down: "this reads like a James Bond movie."

Yes: most of the time, editors know what they're doing when they turn a book down. But then, just when you think the publishing industry is a safe, sane place to work, they reject your Ian Fleming pastiche for being too like James Bond, or your SF novel for having talking squids in space in it.

I wish the industry still *could* use different rejection letters. It used to be that I constantly got "not right for us" letters or letters saying that the schedule was filled through the next two years. For the past couple of years, though, I've gotten "we simply did not love this enough" or "in this competitive market, it did not have that extra spark." So perhaps there *are* different form letters (possibly all meaning the same thing--"BORing.") But rejectomancy COULD become a real discipline if rejection letters noted which condition holds. Maybe the crazies and newbies wouldn't know the diff between the "we don't publish fantasy" and "our list is full" letters and the "this is not ready for prime time" letter, but everyone else could figure it out, and that'd be helpful. You might not need a rewrite, a workshop, a blowtorch to correct a novel that came back with an authentic "our list is full" rejection. Out here on this end, one never really knows whether it's a waste of postage to keep sending the novel out.

O'course, that would take too much time and would mean that some percentage of recipients would write back to argue with editors. You're not in the business of telling me anything about my work, and you don't have time to do it, so that probably won't happen. It used to happen as late as the mid-1970s when my cousin had an editor basically working with him through two drafts SANS promises or contracts (he'd get letters with advice about revisions, and he'd revise, or he'd send a new book, and another letter with more advice came back.) But the world was different then. That editor wasn't working under the pressure of the bottom line all the time. I suppose the important thing is not to encourage the crazies and the hopefuls who will read all kinds of promises into other kinds of rejection letters.

>>The number one reason anyone buys a book is that they read and enjoyed a previous book by the same author.

This is true for me. On the other hand, often I pick up books by writers whose names I don't recognize. And my husband is notorious for never remembering authors' names; he can't even remember J. K. Rowling. He says he has just as much luck finding books he likes when he goes out and randomly grabs one that he hasn't read that is out from a fantasy imprint, so he doesn't bother to remember authors' names (this leads to many "discussions" in our household, but to no avail--I can't bring him around to the author's POV that it's the most important thing on the cover.) So if that number one reason isn't there--Connie Willis hasn't published anything in a while--I have to go and find something based on reading a few snippets from the middle of the book and getting a feel for what it's about. I usually check to see whether the author knows when to use the subjunctive, and I make sure there are a few semicolons--properly used, of course. Because style affects my ability to continue hearing the author's voice in my mind (I can't stand clunky prose, but I'll stick with a great voice and wait for the bang-boom-action to begin--if it does--so long as there are clever turns of phrase and interesting sentences), this works for me. *grin* I don't read for plot/story so much as I do for the vicarious experience, the feeling of being in someone else's life/thoughts. But then I am not typical.

Much credence is given to the idea of "branding"--meaning if you pick up a Janet Evanovich novel, it's going to be a Stephanie Plum or another chick crime novel that's a humorous/hardboiled cross. I tried using the argument that Carole Nelson Douglas writes both mystery and fantasy, but she's already written the "breakout novel" that made her a NYT bestseller, and that means she's a brand unto herself and doesn't have to worry so much. Though if she did a legal thriller, her fans who picked it up might be upset and disappointed, having expected the tone to be similar to that in her other books.

I don't think like marketing gurus. But they know how to make a lotta cash, so we defer to them. No one ever went broke underestimating the capacity of the public for being manipulated and actually "getting into" being manipulated, after all.

Shalanna: if I remember correctly, one of the big SF mags (Amazing? Back in the day? Under George Scithers?) used to have checkbox rejection sheets, with the commonest causes for rejection ready for the editor's pen to tick. (Getting a scribbled sentence at the bottom of the form letter was good -- it meant you'd gotten past the routine filters.)

And I seem to remember Walter Mosely being much worse at SF than at mysteries, although I could be wrong. .. and that sets the bar pretty high. (Curse you, Amazon, and your capitalistic cunning! He has a sequel to Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned!)

"Dear Writer: Is this a joke? It starts in the middle of a sentence, and just about every word in it is spelled wrong. Some of it looks like it might be puns, but it's so unrelenting, any humorous effect is lost in the shuffle. We handed this from one editor to another until everyone here had had a turn at it, and decided it doesn't mean anything. You may wish to self publish in the future. Best regards..."

"Dear Writer: You need to work on consistency of style. The book starts out atrociously, full of misspellings and with no punctuation to speak of, yet by the middle it reads like a college treatise before inexplicably once again sinking into grammatic hopelessness. Perhaps showing your manuscript to an English teacher before sending it out would be beneficial to you. Best regards..."

1) Erzrzoenapr bs Guvatf Cnfg
2) Svaartna'f Jnxr
3) Sybjref sbe Nytreaba

ISTR that even a world-famous author had substantial difficulty getting #2 published, and I'm somewhat dubious that #1 would be profitable to publish today - or much-read - if it weren't already considered a "classic".

I had thought Jack McKinney had a familiar voice when I read Kaduna Memories, but I didn't realize why until much later: McKinney was a pseudonym for the partnership of two other writers I had already come to like, Brian Daley and Jim Luceno. They later went on to write a huge pile of franchise fiction under that pseudonym, none of which I've bothered to read (I don't like the specific franchise, and I have little interest in franchise fiction generally).

I understand it's common for successful writers to adopt pseudonyms when they're hired into teams for development of a franchise. Under the name Jack McKinney, I suspect those two guys sold a lot more books than they did writing separately under their own names. On the other hand, the books they wrote under their own names were a lot "better" in my view (simply by virtue of not being tied to the lame conventions of a lame and lamer franchise).

A publisher, of course, would naturally have a different opinion about "better" than me. That's as it should be. I think that's basically the nut of this discussion. Everything else is just whinging.

Nope. That's #3. #2 is Hylffef.

Oh well, one out of three ain't bad.

Except it is.

This is the problem that John Grisham had, isn't it? The risk in his publishing A Painted House under his own name was that fans of the legal thrillers would pick it up and then be disappointed - and presumably would then be less inclined to pick up his next book. So goodbye to bestseller status. I was just reading the Varieties of Insanity thread, and presumably "I won't use a pseudonym: my fans will go on forever buying anything with my name on it" qualifies there too.

There are people like TexAnne, and me, of course, but we don't tend to be the market that makes bestsellers. On the other hand, I suspect Grisham was fed up with writing legal thrillers anyway.

Yes. That will teach me to take the shortcut and transcode manually rather take the extra time look up how to do "echo $1 | tr 'A-Za-z' 'N-ZA-Mn-za-m'" Yes, I suck.

Some time later, I discovered that it gave me a way to write articles speaking in not so polite terms about people near to me without any obvious connection to be made between my nom de plume and myself. Sometimes, that's worth a lot to me, especially now that those articles are all indexed online.

Also, I like my name, but nobody seems to be able to say it right, and I always figured that if I got nominated for something or had a death sentence placed on me by some middle eastern despot, I'd like to not cringe in my secret bunker every time the news anchor mangled my name. Authors have to think of these things, you know.

Which is why I find it interesting that not only does Carl Hiaasan have multiple adult and young readers novels all published under the same name, but that the look of the books are fairly similar: sparse with bright pastels (is that an oxymoron?)

Although I suppose in some ways crossover between adult and kid books is easier - less risk of fans thinking they are getting something they aren't.

(Neil Gaiman did put an apostrophe in the title of Worlds' End but he put it in a different place than most people expected.)

In vim, type the string; go to the start of the string; g?G will rot-13 the whole thing. (Well, any movement command. w for words, ) for sentences, } for paragraphs, and G for 'end of document'.)

Simpler than fighting with tr. :)

The trouble is, I think that decision would be perfectly correct, on the level I live on where I revile that book. But then I have to accept that, however much I would like to reach into its pages and throttle its author with my bare hands, chortling to myself as I enjoy his risible little gurglings and squeakings, I must acknowledge that many people consider that book to be a great work, and that a publisher's decision to reject it would therefore be wrong.

But I think that would be the decision. Do I hear rebuttal?

Nor would those who laud it today as a great book do so absent the corpus of other works by that same Irish writer.

Brief moment of horn-tooting for the mag's collective review staff: while all tastes are personal (and can vary extremely in the Recommended Reading stage), we do try to give some sense of what a book is like, as a potential help for readers who have never heard of/ wonder if they should catch up with the writers and books we review. [End of horn-tooting.]

As for that Irish guy, I had no problem with the previous "controversial" book, but have tried and failed to get more than a few pages into his most radical experiment. The French guy (in English) was much easier to take.

I've not tried the Irish guy recently, but I love the French guy (in French, anyway). I like him especially because there's no plot;* I can just float along on his prose.

*Bu, nyy evtug, gur jvaare bs gur Nyy-Ratynaq Fhzznevmr Cebhfg Pbzcrgvgvba vf: "Znepry orpbzrf n jevgre." Juvpu vf gur bayl hfrshy guvat V yrnearq va zl tenq yvg-pevg pbhefr.

I just Googled "Rot-13" and chose from among the many.

A completely different answer, also male, would follow from "twelve" as the number of novels.

"Dear Writer: No one is going to read an adult sequel to a children's book, much less one that's got two more volumes."

"Dear Writer: We have better things to do than publish a work that draws its plot from an 18th century historian."

The author, major work is (obviously, given the general length)

Cebhfg, N Yn Erpurepur qr Grzcf Creqh.

It looks as though two volumes (Nyoregvar qvfcnehr and Yn Cevfbaavrer) are sometimes treated as one volume; contrariwise, Yr Pbgr qr Threznagrf is sometimes split into two for publication purposes: all of which means that a count can run from eight to six novels/volumes. My shelves have the volumes broken up into eight; the site I used for quick research this afternoon refers to six; I did accurately remember that the one volume was divided into two by the publisher of my edition (Folio).

The work in twelve volumes is Cbjryy, N Qnapr gb gur Zhfvp bs Gvzr.

It didn't occur to me they weren't dead obvious from the get-go. I hope nobody was really in much suspense because of mistakes I made that made them less clear-cut.

Fragano: That's actually what I had in mind. Everybody write some! Even if Umberto Eco did it in an anthology somewhere (and probably wasn't the first, anyway). If we limit ourselves to things nobody has ever done before, well, we won't succeed and we won't have any fun. (Note: I can't figure out any of these, but when somebody spills the beans, I'll say "oh yeah...)

I miss having Rot-13 built in. Calling up a website and copying into windows alwys seems like it's going to be work (but isn't, really, so there ya go), though I could see that Clifton Royston got them off the bat just by counting the letters (and that naughty apostrophe) in his answer.

Wasn't that John Dickson Carr? The one in which the impossible crime was achieved with a quantity of lethally toxic, quick-acting, dry ice?

I read this book during the summer, so it is possible that what I remember as Agatha Christie may have been something else entirely.

Huh. If it weren't for the recipe part, I'd think it was Gur Zheqre bs Ebtre Npxeblq...

TexAnne: It happens that there's a 'novel', if that is what it is, by the German author of potboilers, Johannes Mario Simmel that fits that description.

Kip: I expect you have. :)

I'm still stumped by your first and third. The third in particular sounds like it would be right up my alley. More hints?

I am not that old yet. Gotta keep telling myself that. I am not that old.

(I can't believe I didn't think to Google for that. Kill. Me. Now.)

PJ: I second TexAnne's point!

Wim, I think that if you totted it up, the largest single category of "who publishes books" would be "the same publisher as the previous book by that author."

Dave Luckett, Patrick found Maureen McHugh's first novel, China Mountain Zhang, in the slushpile. I did the same with Stephan Zielinski's Bad Magic. Have we occasionally seen books we've rejected get published by other houses, and on a few occasions be nominated for or win major awards? Sure. Any editor who doesn't isn't being nearly picky enough. And you know what? When they won awards, we still didn't like them.

Per Jorgensen, New Wave and Bradbury knockoffs have intolerant failure modes. They're fine when they work. When they don't, nothing saves them.

A general comment: Okay, here's the deal. The packaging of an author's books -- and I don't just mean the covers, I mean the entire idea and presentation of what this author is about, as embodied in the physical packaging -- is something we construct. It's an expert piece of work. So is the process of acquainting the public with this author and his-or-her work.

Do books fare less well when they're tossed out into the world with no protective cocooning of explanation and presentation? You betcha they do. And what does this prove? It proves that my industry isn't a scam from top to bottom. It proves that we're doing something real for our authors and books.

Let me invoke your reader-minds. Imagine you're standing in front of the Great Wall of Paperback Slots, literally hundreds of books on display in front of you. This is reader-mind territory.

Now imagine that there are a couple of rather awkward and recondite books right in front of you. One's by no one in particular. The other's by an author whose vivid and memorable earlier books you read and enjoyed, for certain values of "enjoyed."

Wouldn't you give the book by an author you know a lot more leeway than a similar book by an unknown? (The answer is "yes," by the way. We know this because statistically, that's what you do.) What this means is that Steps by nobody in particular is in fact less saleable than Steps by Jerzy Kosinski, author of The Painted Bird.

Dear Sir, Thank you for submitting your murder mystery for our consideration. While we are interested in publishing your work, we feel that two changes are vital:

1) The murderer's identity should be concealed until much later in the novel.
2) A madman with a Napoleon complex is something of a cliche; this needs to be replaced with something more original.

Please let us know if you feel you can make these changes.

Paul: That would explain it; I've never read those. Would someone care to suggest where to start, if "publication order" is not optimal? (And if it is, what's the publication order? :)

Dear Writer, While we're delighted to see you writing for us again, only the first few chapters of your latest offering appear to meet our needs. We are also mildly puzzled by the metamorphosis of a harmless trinket into an evil artifact, and by the way that the last book's useful but limited mentor-figure suddenly becomes almost superhuman.

Dear Sir: We are not in the habit of being so blunt, but you need to tone down the MarySueness of your main character--for Heaven's sake, her only flaw is a lack of aptitude for higher math, and she has a cute furry pet! Also, the attention paid to superfluous details such as number of missiles fired borders on the pornographic.

Carrie: Ooh, you lucky girl, you get to read them for the first time! Publication order is best. And I like your #1. Is #2 Ubabe Uneevatgba?

PJ: Seriously, were you kidding about that movie? Please announce the title so that I may avoid it like the plague.

--Mary Aileen

I agree, though chronological order (or as near to it as you can get) makes an interesting way to reread them. Carrie: the first book in publication order is Jhereg, also available in the omnibus Book of Jhereg along with Yendi and Teckla.

Dear Author, thank you for your submission. I'm afraid that even with the warning at the beginning, your cookbook is too unconventional for us. Moreover you seem likely to end up in prison, given some of the activities you describe between recipes.

I love the series, but. . .you're not wrong.

(You left out "She can eat as much as she wants and not gain weight.")

Paul: I'll look. I'll bet the library has 'em.

Xopher: Yep. I think someone else did that earlier, but I wanted to expand a bit.

Sandy: You left out "She can eat as much as she wants and not gain weight." Actually, I think I blocked that bit from my memory. :) Tried to build Ubabe as a GURPS character once. I think I gave up when she hit 300 points. (ST+2 DX+2 IQ+2 HT+2. Unaging. Ally: Avzvgm. Ally Group: a whole bunch of people who're reasonably powerful in their own rights. Patron: The Queen. Two different kinds of Military Rank, two different kinds of Social Status. Charisma +4. Strong Will, at least 3 levels. Beautiful. Catfall. Voice. 4 or 5 Talents I can't remember right now. Some implanted cyberware. Skills out the wazoo, including a number of lower-than-TL skills. Versus Minor Secret (Genie), a fairly restrictive Code of Honor, Hazardous Duty, and a couple of Enemies. And apparently a Dependent in the latest book which I haven't yet read.)

Does anyone else think that Ubabe Uneevatgba would make a wonderful alien name? Very StarWarsy.

(I feel like I'm cheating, because people have reviewed this book in pretty much exactly those terms.)

As a young copyeditor, this struck me as so psychopathically coldhearted that it sat on my desk as a kind of macabre talisman, like displaying a human skull or a knife that once belonged to Jack the Ripper.

My dad once satirized the members of an academic organization to which he belonged by writing a limerick about each one. I can't remember the entire poem about the editor of a journal, but the middle two lines were

As papers collect,
I stamp them 'REJECT',

And, oh yeah, Resistant to Disease and whatever it's called when you're familiar with a number of different gravities.

And "genie" is Ubabeverse slang for "person whose genes have been modified"--hence the +2 ST, +2 DX, etc etc. :)

Back to the beginning:
Dear Writer:
Your "stories" don't seem to have much plot? What's the point? And couldn't you pick happier people to write about? And maybe have at least two stories connected by one or more charatcers?

There's a fellow who does this in the US (printed in Funny Times mag -- well worth the cost). At first, it appeared that the responders had no idea what he was doing, but now most go along with the joke, showing there is at least a marginal sense of humor in the largest companies and organization.

And we shall not quarrel over whether editors, from time to time, find gems in the slushpile. Of course they do. That they more often (far more often) reject other gems - that being defined as "books that could be successfully marketed to their organisation's profit and the enhancement of their own, the writer's and their organisation's reputation" - is, however, also a fact, as you admit. No quarrel there.

Nor shall we quarrel over whether a book that is actively and expertly marketed will usually do better than a book that isn't. Of course it will - usually, barring those prodigies that somehow or other strike a chord with public taste and, once out there, couldn't be stopped. (You are of course well aware that this effect doesn't necessarily have much to do with the intrinsic worth of the book, and when it occurs, often does so to the astonishment of all concerned. Except possibly the authors, but what would they know?)

But I suspect we are going to have to disagree on the interpretations of these admitted facts. I would interpret them to imply that a selecting editor with access to adequate marketing skills has the power to make or break nearly any marketable book (barring the prodigies above) and hence, any author whose work is marketable. And that this power is essentially used capriciously, based purely on the personal likes, dislikes, tastes and mental habits of the editor. And that these likes, dislikes, tastes and mental habits are intensely fallible guides to the actual marketability of books.

But the industry is based securely on one undeniable fact: that there are many more marketable books submitted than could actually be published. This makes the rejection of marketable books inevitable. Does that necessarily imply that only the most marketable books get published? With respect, and subject to further data of which I am not aware, I beg leave to doubt it.

If so, then whether a marketable book gets accepted is random, which in turn means that a book rejected by a sufficiently large number of editors has a virtually zero chance of being marketable.

Sounds like a good system to me.

I'd contend that there are more publishing slots open in a given year in the legitimate press than there are good books written in that same year.

James D. Macdonald wrote:
>Well, carbon dioxide will displace oxygen.

Of course CO2 is toxic; the CO2-O2 exchange in the lungs doesn't work if the partial pressure of CO2 is too high. Bad things start happening around 5%, with unconsciousness and death from around 7-10%. This is not a displacement effect, it works by affecting the chemical equilibrium.

That's why CO2 scrubbers are needed e.g. in spaceships.

Perhaps JDC did exaggerate the speed of action slightly, but ... it doesn't take very long without working oxygen intake for people to die.

I'd suggest haphazard, though some publisher's office may be chaotic.

For some folks, writing is their love, their life, their passion. They must write, or die. For them, attempting to be published will always be "worth it", no matter what cost "it" is.

Whether these folks should be published is a totally separate matter.

1. The books which get published nowadays and win literary prizes are a bunch of crap which should never have been published at all, because their publishers were so eager they just published some random tripe; and
2. Not even great, brilliant, prizewinning books can get published nowadays, because publishers are so tight-fisted now they won't publish anything no matter how brilliant you are.

Any test which allows one to simultaneously "prove" two opposite theories can reliably be assumed to have something a bit wrong with it.

Books would be published that die off the press. Books would be refused that end up selling well for other publishers of the same type of book. Books would be published that every discerning reader would decry as utter garbage. Great books would languish unread. At least the first three effects are often seen. The last is by its nature far more difficult to observe, but that is just as one would expect.

In fact, I don't think anyone disputes that the selection process is unreliable. But how unreliable?

There are statistical methods for determining whether a test for some quality is better than random, and how much better it is. Surely someone, somewhere, has applied these methods to the selection of books for publication. Surely?

If there isn't some objective standard, and if each individual is forced to rely on his or her own best judgement of what he likes and dislikes, then might it not be that the whole hunt to determine whether potential great books are being mischieviously persecuted by inadequate editors is a bit misguided?

By the way, I hold that properly prepared asparagus is the greatest vegetable of all time, and any restaurant's failure to serve asparagus (prepared to suit my objective standards) should immediately bring them under the harshest scrutiny. Ditto for dark chocolate desserts.

Sounds a bit strange when you express similar sentiments about food instead of books, doesn't it?

The sequel to Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned is the _other_ half of Les Mis retold in South Central.

And yes, it is also good.

Socrates Fortlow 4evah!

The only taste that matters is the collective taste of a given segment of the paying customers. It follows that the function of an aquisitions editor for a publishing house is to predict that taste.

The question is, how effectively is that predictive function performed, by the industry as a whole? What data I have seen leads me to suspect that over the whole industry, the predictive ability of acquisitions editors is better than chance, but I continue to entertain a certain pessimism as to how much better it is.

That's not Wbua Q. ZnpQbanyq'f Genivf ZpTrr obbxf, is it?

jhlipton--

Number one is Hefhyn X. YrThva'f Gur Yrsg Unaq bs Qnexarff. *g* Only saved from being Znel Tragyr Tbyqra Jvgpuoerrq by the snow.

Number two is everything I read for class in junior year of college.

***

Dear Writer--

May I note that your prose clunks, your narrative doesn't, your plot is improbably, and your characters aren't? Also, people in 16th century London didn't generally swill single malt Scotch from pocket flasks. Just saying.

I can't see why that would matter to anyone who doesn't own a publishing company. Nor do I think it's necessarily the most important factor even if you do. If all you want to do is make money, there are surely far easier ways than publishing. Many publishers seem to have as their goal something more like "let's put out great books and try not to go broke," and I doubt that even more commercially-minded publishers get that excited about putting out books they don't like.

What's more, you're assuming that publishers are equally adept at marketing books whether they're excited about them or not, which seems unlikely to me.

I think Clifton Royston's restaurant comparison is quite apt. Who'd want to open a restaurant where the chef didn't like his own cooking, and who'd want to eat at such a restaurant?

The question is, how effectively is that predictive function performed, by the industry as a whole?

I don't know, but: I've read a fair amount of unpublished and self-published books, and while some of them were worthwhile for one reason or another, I can't think of a single case where I was surprised that it didn't find a publisher, nor of one that became a personal favorite. At this point I'm willing to believe that if a book can't find an editor to champion it, it probably needs work.

On the other hand, many of my favorite albums are self-published. I can only conclude that the book industry is doing a better job of finding stuff that I like than the music industry.

See, I had not realized that published was a synonym for writing.

hmm, but you're not so great a fool that you would suggest improperly prepared asparagus is the greatest vegetable of all time. There may in fact be some standard for judging the preparation of asparagus that you are not willing to contravene.

If those are your insights, I am most unhappily compelled to state that they are not consistent with my own experience.

Yes, there are groups of people who buy kinds of books, but it's almost a recursive definition: the only way to identify, say, Sue Grafton fans is if you see them reading her books. That probably goes double for John McPhee, because it's true that readers who like one series detective may like others, but it's harder to identify or promote "writers like McPhee."

No, I don't seem to be saying that. "Not necessarily the most important factor" doesn't come close to meaning "do not and should not consider."

And if sales and marketing professionals don't need to be excited to do their jobs with maximum efficiency, then sales and marketing are unlike every other human activity. I'll allow as they probably have techniques for psyching themselves up in the absence of unforced excitement.

At this point I've lost track of what you want. First you complain that the book purchase process is driven by caprice. Now you say that, "most unhappily," it's driven by profit.

What would your editorial policy be? How would you do better? I've already mentioned what I would do if I ran the zoo--put out books I liked while trying not to go broke. This would almost certainly mean that I couldn't put out everything I liked, and probably that I would need to put out some things I thought were just pretty good, but I'd probably do better financially, and certainly do better emotionally, than if I based my decisions purely on my undoubtedly lame estimates of what other people would like. It's actually quite difficult to guess which generic piece of art is going to excite lovers of that genre, and removing one's own gut feeling from consideration doesn't make it any easier. The only technique I'm aware of is to copy what's currently selling--but while people will sometimes go for that, what they really want is something new that they didn't know they liked. You can make a living selling Terry Brooks, but it's much better to find the next Tolkien. And when The Lord of the Rings was published, the senior editor gave permission thus: "if it's a masterpiece, go ahead and lose #1000." Words to live by.

I should qualify this by saying that the only Brooks I've read is The Sword of Shannara, which is an unabashed Tolkien clone. I don't know if this is typical of his work. For all I know he's doing underwater Oulipo poetry these days.

True also for computer games and TV - what tends to be produced is clones of what has been selling. Then the powers-that-be wonder why the clones don't do as well as the original did. (Maybe in their universe people never get tired of the clones.)

you seem to be making the same mistake one writer made, when he tried to insist to other writers that they had to be in it for the money. if they weren't in it for the money, he claimed, they would self-publish, or not publish at all, or be happy to give away their stories to small free magazines.

Of course writers and publishers *Want* profits. It's not the same thing as being in the job to make profit.

Anyhow: Teresa had one comment at VP9 that seems deeply relevant: IIRC,t he commentary goes roughly like so. Whenever the company is bought by another corporation, the new people in marketing look at their profits, and say, "You know, it looks like most of your money is made by this tiny handful of bestsellers, and the rest barely scrape by. Is there any way to sell only the bestsellers?" This tends to get the editorial staff laughing, as the obvious answer is, "If we could, believe me, we would."

The key question has been asked, however. What cirteria would you like editors to use in choosing books that is better than their own combination of personal taste, knowledge of the market within their genre (which tends to include at least a vague idea what other readers might get behind), knowledge of their own publishing company's quirks regarding marketing, and knowledge of writing in general? What can you use?

And I'm with the people who say "Chaotic, not random." The difference may be subtle if seen from outside.

Of course, you foolishly rejected ZOMBIES 1: WOKEN FROM THEIR GRAVES AND THEY DON'T HAVE THEIR HAPPY FACES ON THIS MORNING, which every one of my friends heartily recommended to you. Its genius was charting how free enterprise would one day beat the undead pinko commies in putting a man on the moon! You rejected that?!? When it wins every major, I bet you'll come begging for the next magnum opus!

(By the way, ZOMBIES 3: ALL IN A DAY'S WORK AT THE WAYSTATION is wending your way in its very own UPS truck.)

I believe his next title is Sodomy for Dinosaurs!

That'll be news to Stephan Zielinski.

I took that to mean that you thought that it shouldn't matter to selecting editors (who are employees, not owners, of publishing companies). I beg your pardon for this misunderstanding.

I'm saying that publishing is a commercial enterprise, and the taste of a given segment of the paying customers should be far and away the single most important consideration but it often doesn't seem to be, and that editorial taste is, instead. You seem to be saying that's fine. I regret that I disagree, in principle. I am prepared to entertain arguments that it's the best available criterion, but would do so reluctantly, and not without asking questions like "exactly how good is it?", "by how much does its prediction rate differ from chance?", and "has anyone tried anything else?"

Vicki: Why do you think that "the taste of the editor is also relevant"? Why should it be?

The origin of the purchasing decision in the mind of an individual customer is imponderable, true. But what is unpredictable in the mind of the individual is predictable for a large group. It becomes a matter of statistical analysis. I have no doubt that this is applied to books, or else they would be unique among all goods offered for sale. But I wonder to what effect, because I do not know.

I have heard of that managerial response to the decision to publish "Lord of the Rings". It happened fifty years ago or more, when most British publishers were, like that particular one, small family companies. Their owners were from a class and set socialised from the cradle with a particular attitude to business, money and trade, viz that one's business was one's vocation, because merely making money was vulgar, and therefore that one's business decisions were not made with that criterion uppermost in mind.

That situation had its deleterious effects, certainly, and the very existence of such a class was no doubt deplorable. But two facts: it could and did throw up effects like that; and it is now gone forever.

Lenora Rose: Of course nobody does anything for only one reason. There is no one simple cause, in the mind of the individual, for any action. But publishing companies, bar the smallest of small presses, are (now) nearly invariably corporations. They are usually owned by large numbers of stockholders, and these stockholders are often in turn owned by large numbers of other stockholders, and the only common denominator among all these people is a wish (eventually) to profit by their stake. It is actually illegal, I believe, for the directors of a corporation to act (positing the law, common prudence and a reasonable duty of care) to any other end.

What criteria would I wish to apply? I wish I knew. I know that the ones that actually are applied are very poor predictors of success, either critical or commercial. The point I wish to make is simply that they are very poor predictors, differing no doubt from chance, but to a degree that I do not know. I want to know.

Teresa has acknowledged that the publishing industry survives on a handful of bestsellers, and the rest struggle along, as you say. I have seen a report to the effect that about 55% of fiction titles return a profit (eventually) to publishers. I have looked, but can find little other data. I want to know.

Why do I want to know? Why shouldn't I want to know?

Editing's a bit more involved than grammar- and spell-check. If the editor doesn't much like the book, chances are they'll make a good book bad, and a bad book worse. At best, it's unlikely to end up any better than when it arrived in the mail.

None of these outcomes increases the book's chances of paying its way, let alone scooting up the bestseller lists. So if the goal is to publish books that sell, a publisher who pays attention to editorial tastes and opinions has a better shot at staying in business.

But she got most of those things by levelling up over the series. (Some serieses have protagonists who clearly level up, while others do not- it's an oddity. It can't be "caused by RPGs" entirely; Luke Skywalker levels up, for instance.)

As for the starting package, I've met people who are just what a friend of mine referred to as "your basic Better Person." Ubabe is one of those.

Consider too that the statistic about 55% of books earning a profit is a false one. That (and other, similar, statistics) derive from the percentage of books that earn out their advances. In fact, a book will show a profit for the publisher long before it earns out.

Contrast her with Zvyrf Ibexbfvtna, who is a Better Person too...but who is continually plagued by doubts, makes at least one huge mistake in EVERY book, and is always DOING. Every solution is an action; virtue alone cuts no mustard.

Also, the villains in general are not so clearly evil-for-the-sake-of-evil. In fact, in some of the stories the villain is never onstage at all; it's all about the interactions between the people on the SAME SIDE.

Ubabe can kill you with her mind? Wow. I'm glad I stopped reading that series when I did.

That's not Wbua Q. ZnpQbanyq'f Genivf ZpTrr obbxf, is it?

No, although I find the comparison fascinating. They both have a whole lot of Good vs. Evil. Mine is a single book, not a series.

Even if it were correct, that's much better than the music and film industries do, both of which, not coincidentally, have gone a lot further down the path Dave is advocating than publishing has.

The Ubabe point is somewhat mitigated by the fact that she still can't breathe vacuum or survive fusion reactor explosions. But still, do you really expect anyone to drop a Huge Flaming Spaceship on her head at this point?

Amen. I had a friend in the industry who was asked to produce "Doom but with a role-playing element." He did. The publisher then looked at it and said, "Hang on! Doom doesn't have a role-playing element!" and sent him back to the keyboards.

Death to the false profit!

Hey, a girl can dream, can't she?

Actually not even the words "horrible old song" were safe - I think I've been actively repressing that interpretation throughout this thread.

From my post of January 06, 2006, 04:34 PM:
1) Gur Yrsg Unaq bs Qnexarff

2) Gur Qhoyvaref

Also, in part because of the prominence of Austen's work, mainstream style has shifted around it, making her style "classic"... but by the same token, cliched or antique. It's another facet of "Hamlet is Derivative". (I'll let you find TV Tropes on your own. ;-) )