The first short story I sold was to Green’s Fiction for the Family magazine back in the mid 70’s. It was a story about a boy with a stuttering problem trying to fit into his new school and it was told through the point of view of a girl in his parochial classroom. I found the editor’s comment interesting. “You have the nun talking in clichés, but then that’s the way they do talk. Consider Jack Frost sold.”
Nothing like editorial comments and suggestions! Authors commonly rewrite entire novels at the direction of the editor of the publishing house opting to purchase their work – and that’s after they’ve rewritten huge sections on their own before submission. I will take a hardnosed stance and say if you’re not willing to edit and rewrite, take up something else.
The hardest part of being a serious writer is getting your work published. Gone with the Wind was rejected 25 times before it was sold! Now you could write the equivalent of that American classic and be rejected by a publishing house because you don’t have a large enough platform. The name of the game is selling books and if the author does not already have a following through social media, teaching, previous sales, public speaking (all of that is the platform), chances are his or her tour de force will languish in the slush pile of rejected manuscripts.
Enter the brave new world of indie publishing. Writers can independently upload their books into e-books or arrange for publishing at point to sale so the actual book is created upon purchase and then sent to the buyer. Indie authors get to keep much more from each sale as well. There are many excellent indie books out there and even the big names in the literary world use indie as well as traditional publishing now.
This gives us readers many more books at much lower cost, such as free to 99 cents. On the down side, there’s a lot of poor writing being uploaded and even the reviews are slanted. I wrote a review for a friend but admitted in my first sentence that she was a fellow writer. I did feel comfortable giving her a good review because it was really an excellent book, but some reviewers are trying to do a friend a favor without being honest about the book. I do have hopes that good books will rise to the top of reading lists and the lousy ones will sink into the oblivion they deserve.
Still the publishing houses need to sit up and smell the coffee. They need to give the new, promising authors more promotion if they don’t want to become an anachronism. For starters, “platform” should not be a factor in selecting manuscripts, but rather, quality writing. The fact is the traditional publishing houses are now in competition with the very people who used to be their clients – not a winning market position to be sure. Many are developing an independent publishing arm to assist writers who want to self publish quality work.
Publishing is in flux and that’s not even looking at e-magazines and writing content for the internet! Johannes Gutenberg would be flabbergasted.
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