As any aspiring writer knows, one of the finest rewards for taking the time to produce good written material – either fiction or non-fiction – is the coveted prize of ‘getting published’. The promise of recognition (fame) and the anticipated royalties (fortune) could create a fantasy that would appeal to most writers, if they were honest.
In my experience, the desire to get published by one of the ‘big guys’ is still so appealing because the anxious author looks at the most successful books in the market and assumes that his book will experience similar levels of success. Let’s face it, how many authors think they have written the next big bestseller? Too many! By definition, they couldn’t all be bestsellers. But there is room for a lot more books than traditional publishers would have you believe. You simply cannot cut off the number of ‘worthy’ books at an arbitrary figure such as the number of books in the publisher’s strategic plan and budgeted for that year. Yet from the publisher’s point of view, employing a formula to filter out most manuscripts allows them to choose those which they believe will be the most likely to succeed. But! I am getting ahead of myself…
I know for a fact that there are worthy books being turned down every day; they end up in the slush pile, never to be seen again in most cases. Seemingly innocuous rejection slips are crushing the hopes and aspirations of some excellent writers simply due to the fact that there is not enough budget to publish them all and every unknown author and book represents a significant risk to the publisher.
Now that we have conjured up the unpleasant image of agents and publishers playing God, let us ask the big question again: Who should be the judge of quality? The real judge of quality is the reader. Of course, I hear you say. It seems so obvious; let the reader be the judge. I agree, readers vote with their purses and good books always rise to the top. However, with the old model, readers might never get the chance to judge manuscripts deemed unworthy of publishing. Many well-loved books by well-known authors might never have seen the light of day if not for the self-belief of the author himself or a supportive patron.
Luckily for today’s authors, there are many choices. The fate of manuscripts no longer depends on the whim of an agent or junior reader at a publishing company; authors can self-publish or go with any number of small, independent, cooperative, subsidy or partnership publishers. In my work as The Book Midwife, I am often in the position of outlining a large number of choices to authors and in fact the number of options is growing all the time. So, getting published is not really such a big achievement anymore. My fascination is with the large number of authors who are still going after a contract with a traditional publisher.
Traditional publishers often get it wrong. Of the small percentage of manuscripts actually accepted by these publishers, half go on to lose money, thirty percent break even and only twenty percent turn any kind of profit at all! In other words, even with the stringent filters employed by the publishers in their attempts to choose promising manuscripts, the formula is faulty. I often liken the process of selection to that of a fortune teller. Both are in the game of predicting the future, and both are probably wrong just as often as they are right.
I hate to rain on anyone’s parade, but this is the reality. Gone are the days of generous advances, unless the author has already proven himself in the market. Therefore, you have to hope that the larger publisher will market the book more aggressively, which would in turn lead to more sales. Sadly, this is not often the case, but I shall leave that for another time. Whichever form of publishing an author chooses, one thing is certain: the quality of the book will soon become apparent by all who read it, and that will be the only the only factor that determines the future of the book and the author.
Mindy Gibbins-Klein is best known as The Book Midwife (TM). She is an international speaker and the UK's leading authority on Authentic Writing and Cooperative Publishing.
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