Confessions of a semi-successful author

March 22, 2004 6:45 AM

Anonymous midlist author tells horror story (Salon: viewing of annoying ad required, but it's well worth it) "In the 10 years since I signed my first book contract, the publishing industry has changed in ways that are devastating [...] to midlist authors like me. [...] What once was about literature is now about return on investment. What once was hand-sold one by one by well-read, book-loving booksellers now moves by the pallet-load at Wal-Mart and Borders -- or doesn't move at all." (more inside)
posted by Prospero (117 comments total)

This article consists mainly of a recounting of an anonymous midlist author’s economic fortunes, but it’s all the more horrifying for that. Questions that come to mind:

1. Does anyone have a guess who the anonymous author is? She says that you won’t be able to find out from reading it, but that sounds like a dare to me.

2. Is this recent transformation of the publishing industry (which this article certainly isn’t the first to discuss) something that’s endemic to America, or is it a problem worldwide?

3. If the increasing commercialization of the American, NYC-centered publishing industry is indeed responsible for a homogenization of American literature, what other reasonable avenues do writers of “difficult”, non-mainstream books have to publish their work, while still garnering some financial return? (Some will say that authors should just be happy to distribute their work to the public, even if they don’t earn any money in return--I don’t accept that argument. Financial renumeration for art is one of the principal things that makes the production of art possible.)

4. Is there anything that readers can do to help solve this problem, if even in a small way? (I personally have a habit of browsing in my local indie bookstore and buying far too many books than I have the time to read, simply because I feel as if, by doing so, I’m making it possible for difficult books to continue to exist in the current publishing climate.)
posted by Prospero at 6:46 AM on March 22, 2004

Hardly anything new on the publishing scene! The irony here is that the story of a person writing for money not forthcoming tells his or her tale on a site that charges to read this "sad" story...Write because you must. If money a serious concern, then find something that will make money and stop publishing on a site that pays you for your article about your woes.
posted by Postroad at 7:33 AM on March 22, 2004

Financial renumeration for art is one of the *principal* things that makes the production of art possible.

(My highlight) That is completely false. Financial renumeration for the artist is one of the principal things that makes the production of art possible might be more like it. Ever heard of day jobs?
posted by magullo at 7:43 AM on March 22, 2004

While I sympathize with this author and wish her the best of luck, I can't help but feel that the article itself felt a little disjointed to me. The "interludes" in the article really threw off the flow. And her choice to use silly acronyms like E#1WSLM (for Editor 1 Who Still Loves Me) just seems juvenile to me...like the scene of the little girls in the movie "Sleepless in Seattle."

Were I her, I'd have tightened up this article a bit, dropped the interludes (or had few of them, or made them part of the story instead of inserts), and not used the acronyms.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 7:49 AM on March 22, 2004

I don't find it particularly horrifying; in fact, I find her kind of whiny. She seems to expect some enchantment to drift lightly down on her life, eliminating all obstacles in her chosen field, and that's crap. Nothing anyone does, ever, is without obstacles and hardships, and though critically acclaimed words flow from her pen like honey-ink, that doesn't mean she gets a buffered, painless existence forever and ever, amen.

Writing is a particularly thankless job because there's so much personal blood in it, but business is business. If she thinks her advances are ridiculous, if she thinks that her publishers are just screwing with her, there's a wide world of self-publishing options available. She can pay the 800 dollars to have an imprint set up, and then she can sell her book to the best of her ability and see how much work it takes to recoup that 800 dollars, to move into profit. Sad as it may be that people like John Grisham better than Mary Anonymous here, when you have a patron in the arts, you really can't expect them to throw good money after bad.

No one's guaranteed an opportunity to make writing a full-time, no-other-job career; the fact that she has an agent, that she can get published (albeit with a great deal of effort on her part,) speaks to the quality of her art.
If it's the art that matters, then she needs to quit worrying about the million dollar advances. You can't have it all. Stephen King has a gabillion dollars and the critics hate him. Mary Anonymous has substantially less than a gabillion dollars, but the respect of the literati. Pick one.

The only way to change the foundering of a midlist author is for that midlist author to write something that lots and lots of people want to read. Call it selling out, or call it reacting to the market, if it's the money that matters so much, she knows how to get it. Go commercial, go big commercial, and hope it pans out.

Furthermore, there's nothing to stop her from doing commercial the same time she does literary; unlike your standard desk job, as long as you can write it, you can try to sell it. John Scalzi's a great example of a working writer- he writes novels, but he also writes non-fiction, he also has columns, he also writes commentary, he also writes for pre-established series. Doing one thing and doing it really wel is nice and all, but writing is a portable skill that can be applied to lots of different disciplines. Writing as a job, and doing it successfully, doesn't usually mean fixating on a single discipline.

I say all of this as a working writer who is trying to sell a novel, and god, yes, it's a pain in the ass. But I didn't quit my day job- which is writing short films, adapting screenplays, and writing television reviews. Every writer has entertained the fantasy of the One True Novel that vaults her from obscurity to literary luminance, but it's just that- a fantasy. As Mary Anonymous shows us, fantasies don't wear well when battered by reality, so perhaps she should give reality a chance.
posted by headspace at 7:52 AM on March 22, 2004

Shock Horror! Publishing company want to make money so employees aren't laid off. Author has dream to make lots of money, but doesn't.

As someone who used to work in publishing - and who was laid off last year when the entire place went bankrupt, I symoathise; we had books considered duds inn 2000 that did 30,000 sales; by 2003 we were chasing 5000. It's the way of the world; the Internet has pulled the rug out of many booksales, particularly in technical publishing, like I was in.

On the other hand, with the Interweb, authors and musicians and other artists have unprecedented access to virtually cost-free self-publishing; if you write/ sing/ paint because you want to communicate to the world, web hosting is much cheaper than any vanity/ print on demand publisher, and anyone anywhere can read/ hear/ see what the muse has communicated to you.
posted by Pericles at 8:08 AM on March 22, 2004

.. so, if you're concerned with art and communication, use the Web. if you're concerned about the money, then don't whinge when your publishers are concerned about the money, too.
posted by Pericles at 8:14 AM on March 22, 2004

Her daughter's NBA comment was apt. There are tons of great basketball players in the world. Precious few of them can make a living doing it. That's competition for you.

The real travesty comes from reading between her (disjointed) lines. All those responses from strangers about her identity as an author only tells me that she is enamored enough with the idea of being a writer that she's busy introducing herself to people as one, without having first established a comfortable track record to back that title up. Her "love of writing" jars with her haphazardly and politically timed book proposals. She piles on verbiage fretting about her "career" as a writer and plays to what she thinks the publishers want, rather than figuring out what book she wants to write next--and why.

The publishing system is shitty, no doubt. But if she represents the independent authors whose "new" voices are being shut down, then my sympathies lie instead with another who is more interested in writing and less interested in quitting her day job.
posted by DaShiv at 8:15 AM on March 22, 2004

There's way too much agreement going on in this thread. I command all of you to get the hell out of my head. Please. There are already too many of us in here.
posted by DaShiv at 8:18 AM on March 22, 2004

And speaking of Scalzi, he has a response up in his blog. Don't go there, DaShiv- I'm worried about the structural integrity of your skull, and this could put you over. :)
posted by headspace at 8:26 AM on March 22, 2004

I don't see the author's problem as being one in which she's complaining about not having enough money to write full-time--to that extent, I agree with headspace's assessment. But the larger problem here (and what interests me about the article, as opposed to the question of whether writers should expect money for work, which we could go on for days about without changing anyone's mind) has to do with the issue that the publishers don't print books unless they meet a certain profit margin, and that the aforementioned profit margin has certainly increased over the past few years as the aims of the American publishing industry have changed.

The general sentiment of a number of people I know who work in publishing is that it used to be the case that some books were printed for money, and some simply because it was felt they ought to be printed--the profit margins on the commercial books made up for the smaller margins, or even losses, on the literary books. According to them, that's changing--under pressure from a given press's owner (which, these days, is usually a company with a name that ends in the suffix GmbH) every single book has to be commercial. So while writers may or may not write for love, publishers definitely publish for no other reason than money. (Arguably, the category that's now considered "literary" has itself become commercialized: one reason it's regrettable that we don't know the identity of the author is that it keeps us from judging for ourselves how "literary" her writing is. She might be the next William Gaddis, but it's entirely possible that her books may just not be that good.)

So while self-publishing is indeed an increasingly viable option for writers, are we headed for a bifurcation in the industry in which the only books that receive wide distribution are commercial texts, and books for what David Denby calls "minority tastes" are either self-published, or not published at all? That would seem, to me, to be unfortunate.
posted by Prospero at 8:28 AM on March 22, 2004

The primary reason for the midlist author distress is a change the IRS made some time ago that makes it impractical for them to keep books in inventory past the fiscal year. This leads to smaller printings (which means if a book does take off, it's suddenly hard to find and dies on the vine) and to publishers actually shredding books that haven't sold rather than carrying a backlist.

I recently did a Web site for Harry Stein. Stein is a journalist whose work has appeared in Esquire, GQ, Playboy, and the Wall Street Journal, and a bestselling author who has written nine books. Exactly two of his books are still in print: the new one (self-link) and his previous one. And the previous one is being reissued by a different publisher than the one who published it originally.

This is not secret insider information; just look for his books at Amazon.com. Having a bestseller is no guarantee of how well you'll be treated by your publisher.

Print-on-demand was supposed to fix this, but print-on-demand's quality still sucks.
posted by kindall at 8:33 AM on March 22, 2004

DaShiv, I'm happy to disagree: Despite the whininess, I'm 100% sympathetic with her plight, and I'm not a novelist in my spare time. I think her central question -- what has happened to the ability of midlist authors to make a living at what they do? -- is pertinent, and that her story exemplifies it. And I don't fault her for being willing to "politically time" her proposals or considering working in genre -- every creative act is a negotiation between some muse calling for stream-of-consciousness outpourings of your regrets and the considerations of an audience for the work, and finding out the best way to compromise is a lot of the battle. (Ghostwriting celeb bios, for instance, would not be the best way.) How, and why, that battle has gotten harder, and what that means for our culture, is pretty relevant, and I appreciated her insight into that, however tangential it may be.
posted by blueshammer at 8:35 AM on March 22, 2004

Lots of (smaller) publishers still publish for a book's literary quality, rather than for profits. I have to make a plug for the good work being done by Small Press Distribution, in being arguably the most important means of distribution for contemporary avant-garde literature.

There's a vast gulf between commercial publishing and self-publishing. But writers who obsess over Amazon rankings will never go seek it out.
posted by DaShiv at 8:41 AM on March 22, 2004

The thing is, it's always been a business. Publishing, just like every other industry, has gotten the snot punched out of it by the economy. It used to be that publishers could *afford* to lose money on boutique books, but they can't now (see Pericles' comments above) and reasonably expect to stay in business at all.

Furthermore, just because a novel is commercially viable doesn't mean it isn't also good fiction. Toni Morrison is a fantastically evocative writer (naturally, in my opinion,) and her fiction is also commercially viable. We're not going to have a lost generation of brilliant authors lost in the commercial shuffle because publishers refuse to release loss leader novels like Mary Anonymous' here- the fact is, we weren't reading those novels in great numbers anyway, or she wouldn't be midlist.

Transferring her publication to a smaller, independent publisher with a focus on a certain kinds of work and distributing it on a scale more on par with her existing audience, or transferring to subsidy publishing completely, isn't going to divide publishing at all. The books we're not reading will still exist, and probably at a more browser-reader friendly level. I won't pay thirty dollars for a new book just to see if I like the author, but I will pay fifteen. (I know, the library and all; I just prefer to own books.)
posted by headspace at 8:41 AM on March 22, 2004

On the one hand, she makes some good points--the costs of paper and printing, the acquisition of publishing houses by huge multinational corporations, etc. do put pressure on editors to make sure that EVERY book is a potential blockbuster.

The "prestige" books that publishers used to carry because they believed in the writer's ability (Gertrude Stein is a great example) have become a smaller and smaller market niche.

Also, the recent popularity of biography and memoir has eaten into the fiction writers' share of the "prestige" market. And, quiet as it's kept, the "prestige" list is also a way for publishers to bulk up their house reputation for "diversity"--they're not going to waste a spot on some random middle-class fortysomething white lady when there are autistic Guyanese transsexuals out there writing their autobiographies.

And, EVEN WITH ALL THIS, this woman has gotten some huge advances. I honestly can't believe she's complaining about them. She also seems to take forever to write her novels--if she could finish a book every two years, she'd actually have a decent income from advances alone.

And, frankly, if her fiction is as neurotic and self-obsessed as this article, I don't want to read it.
posted by Sidhedevil at 8:42 AM on March 22, 2004

blueshammer: I don't fault her for doing what she needs to do to earn a living writing, but I don't find earning a living as a writer to be an admirable goal in itself. Being a full-time writer is not strictly necessary to produce one (or more) memorable books. Nor are the other adjuncts she dwells upon, such as hiring publicists, etc.

But maybe I'm just showing my biases when it comes to which books I consider "memorable."
posted by DaShiv at 8:50 AM on March 22, 2004

I do want to point out that, in the 10 years she relates, she made $240,000 from advances on novels, plus whatever else she was paid for book reviews and ghostwriting work that came her way because of her novels.

Assuming that she brought in $20,000/year from free-lance work obtained on the basis of her credibility as a novelist published by a Big Publishing House, we're talking an annual income well above that of the average American's--from doing exactly the work she wants to do.

(The above assumption is based on my own annual free-lance income; this woman seems far more connected to the Big Publishing Establishment than I am, so she might make far more, but I doubt she makes less!)

Are things harder for midlist writers than they used to be? Yes, absolutely. But it seems to me that this author is just angry that writing isn't making her rich.
posted by Sidhedevil at 8:52 AM on March 22, 2004

This is pretty much an inevitable byproduct of internet publishing in blogs and the like. Using this low-cost self-publishing method millions of additional authors who really wouldn't have gotten otherwise published, and as such it raises the bar for those who are hoping to get published in a physical form.

We're not all J.K. Rowlings... and $240K is a lot more than I expect my writings will earn me in my lifetime, but you won't hear me whining about it).
posted by clevershark at 9:13 AM on March 22, 2004

Now I've simmered down, it is entirely true that, when the economy was booming, I published several "flagship" books, high production values, good advances to new authors in order to get in the media, be thought of well in the community, promote a brand. Several of those never broke even and were not designed to. But when costs are just the same but sales are way way down, those are the books that don't get commissioned any more.
posted by Pericles at 9:23 AM on March 22, 2004

I tend to agree with many authors that a good book will always find a home.

Mild literature will not sell well, and is no longer able to hang on to endeared publishers.

Thus, it is either Beckett or Grisham, baby.
posted by the fire you left me at 9:41 AM on March 22, 2004

Pericles, would you say that the "corporate" (and I put it in quotes not because I mean it pejoratively, but because I don't) attitude in the business has changed significantly apart from the economy? For instance, are publishers as likely to spend as much on "R&D" in a flush year as they would have 10 or 20 years ago? Or is that kind of money inextricably committed to the bottom line? Obviously, the economy is hurting them, and that you were laid off from the industry shows that things aren't getting better, but apart from all of that, has there been a significant attitude shift in terms of what kinds of overall profit margins are acceptable? Or is the assimilation of publishing houses into larger conglomerates not so bad?

blueshammer: I don't fault her for doing what she needs to do to earn a living writing, but I don't find earning a living as a writer to be an admirable goal in itself. Being a full-time writer is not strictly necessary to produce one (or more) memorable books. Nor are the other adjuncts she dwells upon, such as hiring publicists, etc.

I think earning a living doing what you would like to do is an admirable goal, and that includes making a living as a writer. People need to scale down their expectations of how much they "need to" earn, I think, but it would be very hard for my household to get by on much less than, say, $40,000 a year, and if I had the tools and vision to write novels and the diligence to get them published to the degree that our anonymous Salon writer has, I would like to hope that I would be able to call that my full-time career. And I think that it is unfortunate that she cannot.

As I said before, compromise is a big part of it, and part of that is non-writing tasks like working with publicists. As was apparently the mantra at Apple in the early days of the Macintosh: "Real artists ship." "Real" authors do what they can to get read. "Real" is in quotes because many great authors, like Kafka, didn't follow that model, but I think that for the vast, vast majority of writers, writing 20 manuscripts that go no further than a desk drawer does not constitute a writing life. I don't mean that to denigrate anyone with 20 manuscripts in their desk drawer, but I think it's morally incumbent on someone who wants to be considered an author that the communication model is somehwo completed.
posted by blueshammer at 9:46 AM on March 22, 2004

This woman appears to be attempting to generalize her own personal frustration into some sort of implied "crisis".

While as evidence it is purely anecdotal, I (as a fairly significant lifetime consumer of both fiction and non-fiction books) not only do not see a crisis, but in fact see quite the opposite. Over the past decade or so, and especially the last few years, I've perceived an absolute explosion in both the quantity of books hitting the market, and the ability of consumers to find them. Even the complaints about the huge chains seem mis-placed. Barnes & Nobles stores are huge ... and their fiction sections are full of books very few people have heard of, and that certainly don't all sell thousands of copies. Authors may not like Amazon, but I have found absolute jewels that I would not have found without the "People who bought this book also bought ..." function ... many of them quite obscure , highly specialized works.

Modern society may be suffering from having less time in a day to read books, but certainly is not suffering from some lack of new and interesting books to read during the hours it does have, or some homogenization of art. Far more good writing is being produced, and put on the market, than any of us would be able to read in a lifetime.

To answer her rhetorical question ... "What will we lose if writers like me stop writing?":

Nothing. The world of people writing, and people reading those writers is immense - and appears (if anything) to be growing. All we'll lose is someone that apparently has a much higher opinion of her "art" than the world does (and its not hard to see why - good grief that article was one poor piece of writing).
posted by MidasMulligan at 10:01 AM on March 22, 2004

Lesson three, might be contradictory or funny
but MC's should have OTHER WAYS of gettin money
That's to say learn other things beside music
Make money elsewhere, Hip-Hop you won't abuse it
Too many MC's, just emcee
so their longevity, is based on an Uncle Tom
at the record company

(Adjust the appropriate nouns appropriately.)
posted by majcher at 10:14 AM on March 22, 2004

Headspace writes: "John Scalzi's a great example of a working writer --"

Heh. Except today, when I'm procrastinating like hell (that'll stop in about 15 minutes when a client sends me some work, but even so).

Yeah, I really don't understand what this author is complaining about. As someone else noted, $240k for five books is, well, nice. I have six to my credit (published and in the pipeline), and my total sum for advances isn't anywhere like that. On the other hand, I don't have significant amounts of angst about my books not earning out advances, thus torpedoing my career.

An example might be useful here: In 1999 I sold a book about doing one's finances online. As I was writing it, the publisher was extremely positive about the book's sales: They had an Internet book that had sold millions and they expected this to be a companion volume. But when the book came out, it was November 2000 and the Internet Bubble was collapsing and my book tour coincided with the Bush-Gore thing. The book, to put it nicely, did not live up to pre-sales expectations.

What happened to me? Nothing. My advance, while nice, was small enough that even as a stiff, the book recouped (or so I believe from what the publisher tells me) and they were pleased enough with the work that they hired me for another book. This one had a slightly smaller advance, which was reasonable, but I got to do a book I really wanted to do -- and this book has been selling steadily since it was published (it just went into a second printing, in fact). So now everyone's happy as punch.

As a writer, I write for the love of writing, but I'm also deeply aware that when a publisher buys a book of mine, they're essentially going into business with me, where I do some things (writing) and they do others (selling). The author of the Salon article gives the impression that she's entitled to a sum for her book that lets her lead a certain writerly lifestyle, but what she's actually entitled to is an amount based on what the publisher believes it can sell.

I do think the changing landscape of publishing make it a different game than what it was before -- but better or worse? It's hard for me to say; I'm fairly new to the game. But I can say the game doesn't seem particularly rigged against the writer, provided the writer is reasonably smart about what to expect, and has a bit of economic awareness.
posted by jscalzi at 10:35 AM on March 22, 2004

writing 20 manuscripts that go no further than a desk drawer does not constitute a writing life.

I don't get the impression that the writer was one of those authors with 20 manuscripts in the drawer. She seems like she's written a few that she's sold, which seems to be one of her weaknesses.

Now, much as I tend to agree with everything that John Scalzi said about the article, I think that one of the main points that the writer was trying to convey was that the publishing industry has become so consolidated that one novel that doesn't do as well as expected can end up blackballing her when it comes to trying to get her next novel published, because there simply isn't a large pool of different publishers that would be willing to take risks.

Furthermore, any number of people in the publishing pipeline can be incompetent-- the editor, the publicist, the agent, etc.-- but who pays the professional consequences of such incompetence? The author.
posted by deanc at 10:38 AM on March 22, 2004

Consider this a late addition to the FPP--a bit of Googling uncovered one of the sources quoted by the author, from this weblog on "writing, e-books, and handheld computing." Here are the relevant entries:

What's Wrong with Publishing
Publishing Reborn

They seem a little overly pessimistic in parts, and a little overly optimistic and visionary in others (the idea that the chain-bookstore business will collapse within five to ten years, e.g., seems a little farfetched), but they're interesting reading nonetheless.
posted by Prospero at 10:40 AM on March 22, 2004

To answer her rhetorical question ... "What will we lose if writers like me stop writing?":

Nothing.

bold statement, but i think you're wrong. compensation aside, every work of fiction can only enhance the existing oeuvre. even if it's crap, it's harmless (depending on how much, if any, paper it wastes).

what if J.K. O'Toole never wrote "Confederacy of Dunces"? would our loss be nothing? you might argue that no single work of art (or single artist) can be considered essential, and i would agree, but to say we're losing nothing is misguided. we may not be losing much, but we're losing something.

Over the past decade or so, and especially the last few years, I've perceived an absolute explosion in both the quantity of books hitting the market, and the ability of consumers to find them.

quantity, yes. quality, no. where are the great novels of the past five years? i know there must be a few, but it seems like less than the '70s, '80s, and '90s (the decades i can remember), and i have no rose-colored memories of those years.

i think it's much harder to get quality fiction published these days. it's also much easier to self-publish, of course, but i think we'll definitely get to see what happens when top-notch novelists are no longer promoted by megacorps. i would have definitely said "so what?" a few years ago. now, i'm not so sure.

of course, we only have ourselves to blame. how many novels by first-time authors have *you* bought lately? how does your fiction budget compares to your movie/dvd/music budget? just a reminded that we (at least most of us) get what we vote for with our dollars ...
posted by mrgrimm at 10:53 AM on March 22, 2004

English Encouragement of Art

Cromeks opinions put into Rhyme

If you mean to Please Every body you will
Menny wouver both Bunglishness & skill
For a great Conquest are Bunglery
And Jenous looks to ham like mad Rantery
Like displaying oil & water into a lamp
Twill hold forth a huge splutter with smoke & damp
For its all sheer loss as it seems to me
Of displaying up a light when we want not to see

--William Blake
posted by gimonca at 10:54 AM on March 22, 2004

oh yeah, and who is the f'ing author? i've been trying to figure it out, but i don't think i've found her yet.

think first-time novel (for $150K) in 1996. how many female authors got $150K advances for first novels in 1996? i was thinking Jane Mendelsohn, but the rest doesn't fit ...
posted by mrgrimm at 10:55 AM on March 22, 2004

Man, this shitty little article by Jane Austen Doe (gotta love the implied claim that she's an incredible writer no one's heard of) just drips with self-pity and self-importance. As an editor who has spent the last ten years in publishing, and as someone who is working on her first novel, I have no sympathy for this woman. I'm too irritated by her article to even comment on it at any length.
posted by orange swan at 11:04 AM on March 22, 2004

think first-time novel (for $150K) in 1996. how many female authors got $150K advances for first novels in 1996?

Do we necessarily know that she's a novelist? The only certain work of fiction mentioned in the article is the (unpublished) short story collection. Her published works might all be non-fiction, or memoirs (which, presumably, she wouldn't have to do any real research for).
posted by Prospero at 11:06 AM on March 22, 2004

It occurs to me that the easiest way of figuring out who she is is to see which books got "rave reviews" from Time magazine in 2001.
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:40 AM on March 22, 2004

I'm too irritated by her article to even comment on it at any length.

Me too; it was unreadable.
posted by carter at 11:42 AM on March 22, 2004

Never self-publish. Never, never never. Eat nails before you will self-publish. Die before you will self-publish. Self-publishing is not an option. If you self-publish, you are dead to me. You are a non-writer. A non-person. I won't recognize you when you walk into the room. I will turn my head away if you address me. You are not even worth cursing.
posted by Faze at 11:49 AM on March 22, 2004

I realize I'm still pissed off about this, and posting way too much (ironically enough, while I should be working on a book proposal), but I have to say that this woman had a sweetheart deal--I've gotten way less money for books that sold way better.

And ghostwriting a successful celebrity autobiography is a relatively easy pathway to HUGE CASH! So I don't really see what she's complaining about.
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:51 AM on March 22, 2004

I can only speak as a humble reader who diligently pursues new writers. I was saddened by this article; it confirms much of what I have read, heard and suspected.

The fact is I love midlist authors. I automatically scour the trade paperback table at my independent bookstore, because I know that is where the fresh voices are, the compelling stories.

But I am constantly reminded that I am out of step with American readers. Publicity and Big Money nearly always equals pap. A $45 million 2-book deal for Tom Clancy and the best seller list could make me weep.

The bottom line is McDonalds outsells the neighborhood coffee shop, K-Mart put the local general store out of business, and Parker Posey will never make the money that Julia Roberts does. There is still an audience for a good quality product, but that audience may not provide the producer with an income that is worth the time and effort.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 11:53 AM on March 22, 2004

I've read that even blockbuster authors aren't selling like they used to--Crichton, Grisham, etc. Anyone know if it's true?
posted by amberglow at 11:55 AM on March 22, 2004

38 comments in an only one person has guessed. I clicked in expecting everyone to have their guess.

I don't have one, btw.
posted by archimago at 12:03 PM on March 22, 2004

. If you self-publish, you are dead to me. You are a non-writer.

WTF? That is to say... WTF?
posted by kindall at 12:03 PM on March 22, 2004

> what if J.K. O'Toole never wrote "Confederacy of Dunces"? would our loss be nothing?

One can't help remembering that he wrote Confederacy for no financial return at all. Couldn't even get it published. And yet somehow it still got written.
posted by jfuller at 12:04 PM on March 22, 2004

If you self-publish, you are dead to me. You are a non-writer. A non-person.

care to expand on this troll? what's so bad about self-publishing (aside from making the "real," published writers worthless)?
posted by mrgrimm at 12:06 PM on March 22, 2004

Self-publishing may not have much credibility given that it's possible to print any piece of crap, but that doesn't mean a self-published book is automatically without merit.
posted by orange swan at 12:21 PM on March 22, 2004

"Self-publishing may not have much credibility given that it's possible to print any piece of crap, but that doesn't mean a self-published book is automatically without merit."

Agreed. The very first novel I wrote I put up on my Web site as a "shareware novel" (it's still up there, actually), and it's made me a nice little sum of money over the years from people who sent in money even when they didn't have to (the top amount: $200, which even I thought was a little much -- not that I didn't take it). I also consider it good advertising for the books which will actually be in bookstores -- i.e., if you like this one you can read for free, you might be willing to pay cash for the next one.
posted by jscalzi at 12:30 PM on March 22, 2004

A self-published book is like a non peer-reviewed scientific paper. It has no validity. Publishing is a form of peer-review, however imperfect. Without peer review, we are all just jacking off, and the whole literary enterprise goes to hell.
posted by Faze at 12:34 PM on March 22, 2004

A few non-persons who are dead to Faze and whom he wouldn't look at when they entered the room (among other charming conceits):

Mark Twain
James Joyce
William Strunk
Upton Sinclair
Walt Whitman
Stephen Crane
Thomas Paine
...
posted by George_Spiggott at 12:37 PM on March 22, 2004

George-Spiggot, Thanks for your predictable reply.
posted by Faze at 12:40 PM on March 22, 2004

Faze, if a book is good, it has validity no matter how it was published.
posted by orange swan at 12:42 PM on March 22, 2004

Good luck finding that "valid" book amid the ten million, million, million crap books self-published by lint-headed losers every year. Are you going to read them all to find the good ones? Is any reviewer? You can tear down the publishing-for-profit structure, but it will eventually (and probably very quickly) reconstitute itself at the demand of readers, writers and the market -- and probably with even more economic efficiency and less warmth and fuzziness.
posted by Faze at 12:53 PM on March 22, 2004

I'm not sure what direct relationship exists between a work of fiction and a scientific paper. The latter presumably has assertions which are testable, and which the peer-review process test. Fiction is not testable. I don't care what editor x thinks about a given piece of fiction. All I care about is whether I like it or not. So I'm really not sure why you're being so adamant about this dislike of self-publishing, if indeed you're serious (and if you're not, you're not being funny either).
posted by deadcowdan at 12:55 PM on March 22, 2004

I too have dabbled with calling myself a writer...and I've made some small amount of change doing it...although certainly not enough to consider it an *income* per se.

It's significantly harder now to get a book published than it was a decade ago, that part is true. Changes in tax laws play a part, the declining paper readership plays a part, book warehousers play a part, and publishers responding to market pressure plays a part.

I've got a couple of books under my belt, none of which could be found for love or money now...as they are tech books which are now so obsolete they might as well be about punch cards for all the good it would do anyone. I've sold and given away a fair amount of short fiction, but haven't successfully pitched a novel yet. The comics I used to write never sold when I was publishing them...and now I'm finding them on collector's sites for 500% markup above the cover price...although, considering how few I sold, I'd love to know where they got them. ;)

And while every fiction writer would love to write "the great american novel", most of us never will. And even the writers who can...like John Updike...sell books in small numbers, because the common reader can't get through the book. (Hell, some English grads can't get through Updike, gods bless his detailed soul.) I could be wrong, but I think publishing may, like many business models, be fairly cyclical. It may also be that old media has had a hard time figuring out how to market to the new media consumers.

I feel for this woman, but no more than I feel for the ladies and gentlemen in my various writing groups and workshops...many of whom have extraordinary talent...most of whom will never see an ISBN number on anything with their name.

Isn't Cory Doctrow one of the Mefi gang? If so, I'd like to hear his take on the publishing universe...and how the free distribution of some of his works has or has not translated into paper sales.

Me, I just wish I could get over my writer's block...


On preview:

> what if J.K. O'Toole never wrote "Confederacy of Dunces"? would our loss be nothing?
One can't help remembering that he wrote Confederacy for no financial return at all. Couldn't even get it published. And yet somehow it still got written.

He killed himself before it was handed off to a publisher by his mother, didn't he? I seem to recall that it was a handwritten mass of notes that an agent or a publisher read as a favor...and then realized what a masterpiece it was.

Faze,
I don't get your animosity at all. And I disagree. I have a whole shelf of books that are brilliant, from people like Bill Willingham, Mark Finn, and a host of other new writers who would rather control the entire aspect of the publishing experience, and thus form their own publishing companies. And I have boxes and boxes and boxes of independent comics from the late 80's and 90's that are far better than anything that came from the Marvel/DC pander to the 10 year old market. It was indie publishers that forced big companies to start imprints like Vertigo so they could compete for the demographic that didn't like to be spoonfed superhero crap. I see no reason why novelists and other writers couldn't force the same change in publishing houses, if they would use the current media to their own advantage.

Are you suggesting that unless someone is willing to be squeezed through the top 4 publishing machines, they should be automatically ignored? That seems particularly short-sighted to me. I could care less who pays for the words to get on the page...what I care about is the words themselves.
posted by dejah420 at 12:56 PM on March 22, 2004

I have absolutely no sympathy for the anonymous author -- she's a whiner, and, worse, a failure looking to blame someone else for her repeated inability to connect with a market.

Notice that it's "a" market, not "the" market -- it is easier now than it has ever been for a well-written book to find an audience, however narrow or specialized. With every newspaper book review section and most magazine book review section online, to say nothing of the blogosphere and other less formal promotional means, or the fact that there are hundreds of channels of television now, you can get the word out in a thousand new ways.

And for all that we lament consolidation, with Amazon and Borders/B&N, it is vastly easier to get a small print-run or otherwise obscure book close to potential buyers than ever before. When I started buying books -- in a well-off college town full of avid readers -- my new book choices were limited to two bookstores with under 3,000 square feet each, keeping hours hardly longer than bankers hours, and each with a suspicious proprietor who started to give you the evil eye if you browsed more than 10 or 15 minutes. (There was also a Waldenbooks down at the mall). How many undiscovered mid-list gems could I have found?
posted by MattD at 12:56 PM on March 22, 2004

Spiggott: Also Walt Whitman, Dave Eggers, Richard Nixon, L. Ron Hubbard, John Grisham, Gertrude Stein, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Rudyard Kipling and e.e. cummings. Although a few of those names are dead to me for other reasons, and we're not talking the folks who slid off the biers.
posted by ed at 12:56 PM on March 22, 2004

And how many people will really follow through on their desire to self-publish? It's not like there's a million people out there doing it right now, even though there could be. The gazillion self-published books you're talking about simply won't happen, and the for-profit publishing outfits aren't going anywhere. I don't know how self-publishing == death of Random House, it's not like self-publishing hasn't been going on as long as the book has been around.
posted by deadcowdan at 1:01 PM on March 22, 2004

Publishers are not arbiters of quality, they are gatekeepers. They make business decisions, and quality is very far from being the deciding factor between go and no-go. Or would anyone argue that the great bulk of dead trees at the B&N aren't dire twaddle that you'd embarrassed to wipe your bum on?

You don't look to a publisher to tell you if your book is any good; you look to them to print and distribute it, or not. Publishers employ various people to read manuscripts for them, and the level of skill and insight of that work varies as wildly as anything else in the employment world. And in what they do read, they're not looking so much for quality as for sales, and for that they have a kind of checklist of the sort of thing they're looking for. The next great thing is not going to come through this process, because if there's anyone at the publishing house with the gift to recognizes something genuinely new, the manuscript will probably never reach that person: it will have been slush-piled by somone lower on the food chain.

If the fact that a publisher will take your book is no indication that it's any good, and the fact that one won't is no indication that it's bad, that pretty much wraps it up for publishers as arbiters of quality.
posted by George_Spiggott at 1:15 PM on March 22, 2004

Or would anyone argue that the great bulk of dead trees at the B&N aren't dire twaddle that you'd embarrassed to wipe your bum on?

As, someone who's both shopped at worked at both chain and indie houses of print slinging, I can say: sure, but so's most of the stuff on the shelves of an indie. It's just a different flavor of shit. And close to half the sales at the big chain places are what I'd call "practical type" books, like home improvement and self-help stuff, anyway.

And ultimately the arbiter of quality is the reader.
posted by jonmc at 1:42 PM on March 22, 2004

I don't care what editor x thinks about a given piece of fiction -- deadcowden
I DO care what an editor thinks about a given piece of literature. That's what editors are paid for. To read, or pay someone to read through thousands of submissions and select the ones that are most likely to appeal to the readers who are likely to pay for them. The problem with publishing isn't that there are too many gatekeepers, it is that there are too few. Given the amount of books available to be read at any time, and the limited amount of any individual's life he or she is able to devote to reading, there needs to be a way of narrowing the available choices. As an aggregate, America's major publishing houses miss little in the way of worthy literature, and what they do miss is gleaned by the smaller for-profit publishers. In a world of infinite subjective opinions, the buck has to stop somewhere, and commercial viability in literature, as in most other products, is not a bad benchmark of quality.
posted by Faze at 1:46 PM on March 22, 2004

If I ever wrote something like that article I'd stay anonymous too, for fear of getting bitch-slapped in public by some random $8/hr bookstore clerk with 3 unpublished novels who recognized me as the author of that horribly self-absorbed article.
Without a writer's foolish fantasies -- envisioning Book 5 piled in stacks of 50 in every airport bookstore, its carefully chosen title appearing on the Times bestseller list, my agent calling with breathtakingly, indisputably, non-euphemistically good news -- how can I face the otherwise overwhelming prospect of a book waiting to be written?
I'm not a psychiatrist but I'm going to guess Narcisstic Personality Disorder - anybody else want to take a crack?
I think it was Frank Herbert who said that when he wrote Dune the last thing he had on his mind was the financial success and popularity of his book. He wanted to write something that was entertaining to him, and to his fans. And this was a guy who heated his home by burning his junk mail.
posted by twitch at 2:04 PM on March 22, 2004

Faze, I'm sorry, but you're just plain wrong. I don't need a faceless editor to decide if something's good enough for me to read or not - that's what I have friends for. Someone tells me that they like a book, and if I like the same sort of stuff they do, I'll check it out - even if it's self-published.

As for missing little in the way of worthy literature - how would you be able to tell?

commercial viability in literature, as in most other products, is not a bad benchmark of quality.

That is so, so wrong.
posted by majcher at 2:05 PM on March 22, 2004

Are you going to read them all to find the good ones?

No. Luckily, there's no need to. There's this cool thing called "word of mouth" that works even better on the Internet than it does in real life. Besides, I don't need to find all the good ones, or even all the best ones. As long as I find enough good ones to keep me occupied, I'll be a happy reader.

commercial viability in literature, as in most other products, is not a bad benchmark of quality.

It's a terrible benchmark of quality, but until recently it was the only one we had.
posted by kindall at 2:14 PM on March 22, 2004

Faze is being ham-handed about it, but there is a point in their trollery.

Ninety percent of everything sucks. The self-published 90% sucks differently than the 90% that's filtered through editors and the Publishing Machine, but the crap ratio is probably similar. (Your mileage, of course, will vary, along with your personal definition of the term "suck.")

This is true of every art form, especially the movie and music businesses. Most of my favorite records and movies had little or nothing to do with the institutional big-budget systems at the "top" of the industry.

But many people have the vastly different tastes. Many people actually like McDonald's or Danielle Steele or Tom Cruise movies. I hate that tripe, but ultimately I can't judge. Hey, whatever, man, it's your head. I'll just keep telling people when I read or hear or see something I like. Because I find stuff I like that no editor has ever seen or signed off on, all the time.

Faze, there have been some points brought up that you've completely ignored. I'd really like to hear where your visceral reaction comes from. It sounds a bit too personal to be ignored.
posted by chicobangs at 2:41 PM on March 22, 2004

Thanks for your question, chicobangs. Here's my visceral reaction: No self-respecting novelist can ever self-publish without disgracing him or herself and the profession at large. Part of this business is that you submit your work to the public through the prevailing modes of commercial distribution, and accept the challenges of the marketplace. You must accept that if your book is not accepted for publication by a for-profit publisher, it probably sucks. (This doesn't mean that if your book IS published by a for-profit publisher, it doesn't suck.) Self-publishing is a scam that is heavily promoted by book packagers and printers -- for obvious reasons.
The idea that anyone with two brain cells could accept "word of mouth" as a substitute for our culture's vast and truly (to all but loser writers) wonderfully effective publishing, promotion and book review apparatus is not even worthy of discussion.
posted by Faze at 3:02 PM on March 22, 2004

not to pile on, Faze, but i'm curious how you feel about self-distributed musical artists? i know it's not a great analogy, but i can't imagine you're so vehemently opposed to selling homemade CDs out of the back of a trunk. is there a difference? if not, even in today's corporate climate, there are still lots of legitimate musical artists who sell their own material. i suppose concerts are slightly more popular among young people than book readings ...

it just sounds so narrow-minded not to see *any* alternative to the current publishing structure that would also allow for filtering quality. especially as you're posting on a site that's essentially a collection of self-published works.

as an aside, i was going something with the o'toole reference (author who couldn't get published until he died), but i'm not sure where i fell off the boat ...
posted by mrgrimm at 3:04 PM on March 22, 2004

getting back on the rail, I read the article wishing she'd have explained why she forewent:

Self Publishing
Placing short stories in Magazines
etc.
etc.
Etc.

It would appear the real folks slaying her career are her agents.

Faze: Novels are reviewed all the time, by peers in book reviews. What made you think self published books are exempt?
posted by Fupped Duck at 3:07 PM on March 22, 2004

Self-publishing is a scam that is heavily promoted by book packagers and printers -- for obvious reasons.

I think you're failing to distinguish between self-publishing and vanity presses.
posted by DaShiv at 3:11 PM on March 22, 2004

On the Road: Tremendously negative reviews. But word of mouth got it on the bestseller list.

Catch-22: Savaged by critics. Ten million copies, word of mouth.

From the introduction to Jeanette Winterson's Whitbread-winning Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit: "Small bookshops and word of mouth were the start of my career."

Toni Morrison's career happened because of word of mouth. People kept wondering about this book called The Bluest Eye that offered a more forthright take on African-American life.

Four examples of the world being a better place because of word of mouth.

It is completely foolish to dismiss word of mouth. Sure, there's a lot of crap that comes from it, but only when people listen to crap tastes (and even then, experiencing a crap book every now and then helps to recalibrate the standards for the better). But there's also goodness. With the right trust and the right standards, word of mouth does result in the rapid dissemination of Good Stuff. (Case in point: Last month, someone put a David Mitchell book into my hands. I'm now nuts about the guy. Word of mouth, baby.)
posted by ed at 3:27 PM on March 22, 2004

what if J.K. O'Toole never wrote "Confederacy of Dunces"? would our loss be nothing? you might argue that no single work of art (or single artist) can be considered essential, and i would agree, but to say we're losing nothing is misguided. we may not be losing much, but we're losing something.

Actually, I really don't think so. Some writing is - simply - garbage. This woman, whomever she is - has apparently made close to a quarter of a million dollars writing, and the article she produced really really sucked ... not its content, but its actual skill.

I do believe there are - in existence - those that are genuinely "writers". Compare that entire article, for instance, to the following from jscalzi's post:

"As a writer, I write for the love of writing, but I'm also deeply aware that when a publisher buys a book of mine, they're essentially going into business with me, where I do some things (writing) and they do others (selling). The author of the Salon article gives the impression that she's entitled to a sum for her book that lets her lead a certain winterly lifestyle, but what she's actually entitled to is an amount based on what the publisher believes it can sell. "

Damn ... now THAT is a frigging writer. In a single paragraph, this guy was able to express more about the attitude of a good writer, the state of the publishing industry, and the interaction between a writer and that industry, than that woman was able to express in three full pages of confused thinking and sloppy expression.

While I need to do a lot of writing for business, I do know that I am not a writer. I think clearly, and certainly express thoughts - but it takes me a thousand words to say what a true writer can say in a hundred. And I am always awed when I stumble across someone that does have the talent.

I remember reading a essay written a century or so ago (by Charles Dickens, I believe) ... who, at the time was actually bemoaning the rise of the "professional writer" (i.e., was actually saying that the greatest damage to literature would be done by the creation of the "career" this woman complains she is no longer able to practice). Interesting argument that he made - he pointed out that most of the best fiction of the past had come from people that had lived life ... and wrote about it almost as an afterthought - not by those that spent most of their days holed up alone having narcissistic epiphanies. The Pickwick Papers, the Canterbury Tales (or for that matter, A Farewell To Arms, or Confederacy of Dunces) could not have been written by authors who got their MFA's, and remained sequestered with tenure-track positions in academia, so they could work on their "novels" while being comfortably supported.

Or - to put it another way - this woman appears to be one of the many utterly self-involved "writers" out there ... and she blames publishers, and an entire industry, for her own shortcomings (note that she was not complaining at all about the "publishing industry" when it was working in her favor ... nor did she reject it and write for the pure joy of writing ... her complaints about the "game" only began after she started failing at it). Oddly enough ... the fact that she is failing at it, and apparently now needs to take (gasp) an actual job, and get into the flow of the world again, may be the single thing (if you agree with Dickens' point) that she needs to actually start maturing again as a writer.

PS. jscalzi ... I've never seen you post here before, and generally keep my online and offline lives strictly separate (as in some circles my name is somewhat known, and I can speak much more freely here under a pseudonym) - but I've made a fortune by recognizing talent ... and after reading the few sentiments you've posted in this thread, I gotta tell you man, you have got talent. Inborn, and developed. And over the next year or so some corporate work will be directed, discreetly, towards Scalzi Consulting. And I hope you develop down the road of fiction as the years pass as well ...

I can't write worth a flying piss myself, but I've read enough to understand what good writing is ... and it is amazing how few people are capable of expressing ... with but a few sentences using the simplest of words ... large realties. Dude ... you've GOT that inexplicable something out of which great writing is born. And the fact that you seem to have such a balanced, sane viewpoint about the fact that doing what you love doesn't guarantee you anything without taking into account the need to adjust your talent such that it creates real value for others ... well hell ... I'm sure rooting for your success.
posted by MidasMulligan at 3:35 PM on March 22, 2004

The idea that anyone with two brain cells could accept "word of mouth" as a substitute for our culture's vast and truly (to all but loser writers) wonderfully effective publishing, promotion and book review apparatus is not even worthy of discussion.

Maybe you just need to get some new friends, Faze.
posted by majcher at 3:38 PM on March 22, 2004

Faze:

"Here's my visceral reaction: No self-respecting novelist can ever self-publish without disgracing him or herself and the profession at large."

Well, no. I'm quite happy with my little self-published novel on my Web site, and since it helped lead to my getting a two-book deal with Tor Books, a quite reputable publishing house, I doubt that the word "disgraceful" is the word to be used here.

I'd also note that one of the novels Tor bought was one I serialized on my Web site; I didn't even bother to try to publish that one through conventional channels because I didn't want to bother with the hassle (the editor who bought the book found it on my site). Nevertheless, had it never sold, it would be no less good than it is now that it's soon to be published in conventional form.

Speaking professionally, it is far better to be conventionally published than not. And my own sloth aside, I encourage all folks who want to be writers to attempt to sell their book conventionally before settling for self-publishing. But I disagree that there's shame to be had in self-publishing, as long as you know what you're getting into (Faze is correct in this low opinion of packagers and vanity presses; they do exist largely to feed off the hopes of writers with more hope and ambition than caution).

On preview: Thanks for the kind words, Midas.
posted by jscalzi at 3:49 PM on March 22, 2004

I'm not with Faze in terms of intensity, but in spirit, I think I am, mainly because I think you people are making a big mistake by assuming there's a complete disconnect between "word of mouth" and "the gatekeepers." Word of mouth, in the vast majority of cases, is the function of an organized structure created to promote books, and in the vast majority of those cases, it's the machinery of a publishing company.

There's no reason why a self-published book can't be great, but the simple fact is that the vast majority of them are truly, truly terrible. My dad and his friends are doctors, and are often given novels self-published by patients. They are all, universally, almost inconceivably painful to read. He's never gotten a good one in over thirty years of his practice.

Sure, Joseph Heller and Kerouac and all those folks picked up big buzz despite poor reviews. But it often takes a publishing company to keep those kinds of books in print through those bad reviews until the reading public catches on. The point of this article is not "Boo hoo, nobody loves me," it's "There's no longer any publishing company out there willing to stand by a potentially successful book." And that's definitely true.
posted by logovisual at 4:21 PM on March 22, 2004

If the fact that a publisher will take your book is no indication that it's any good, and the fact that one won't is no indication that it's bad, that pretty much wraps it up for publishers as arbiters of quality.

Although I agree that Faze is over the top here, I think you're running too quickly in the opposite direction. Whether a publisher will take a book or not is certainly not conclusive evidence of its worth, but I would still say that it's indicative, that it has some relevance. A lot of crap is published, but the worst of it is not. A lot of good stuff is rejected, but the best of it gets through (eventually). Bad writing can be really, really bad.

I was a writing major in college, and in classes experienced some examples of poor writing, in skill or style or attitude, but in general, people were competent, interesting enough, sometimes really good. A couple years out of school I took a continuing ed. writing class - and discovered that people can identify themselves as writers without having any ability in the art. I mean, I don't like to be judgmental, I understand that I may miss things - sometimes I thirst too much for the exuberant, the extravagant, and may dismiss profound work because of its simple or hidden nature. Some writers seem cliche until you realize how many interconnected references and multiple meanings are contained in the seemingly obvious sentences, etc. But. The point is, even with generous readings, some people just don't have it. I mean, some people will never get published, because they should not be published, and they are the ones most likely to turn to vanity presses.

Although, it is an interesting question about music CDs, since that's become such a common thing. Maybe it just has more to do with the ethos of a culture... I dunno, when people start a band, their original fans are usually their friends and maybe the local hangers-out at the club where they play; I don't think I own many self-published CDs that weren't from people I knew personally... It's possible some of the indie bands I like put out their own albums, but I know a lot of them are off indie labels, which is a benefit because it gives me another way to find out about new stuff I might like - when I get to know a label, I know to check out the new people they add to their line-up (or the old people I didn't know about).

Wouldn't work quite the same with books - seeing music is a social event, friends can go out and support each other even if they're not 100% into the music, a CD you can have on in the background etc... but a book is a committed relationship (for a week or so - maybe less, but sometimes more, depending on your schedule) - and you have to feel it, or it just isn't worth it. Reading your friend's novel is totally different from going to see your friend's band.
posted by mdn at 4:23 PM on March 22, 2004

Faze: No self-respecting critic can ever self-publish without disgracing him or herself and the profession at large.

And I believe putting your criticism on a public web site IS self-publishing.

On a more serious note - Allen Ginsberg once said that we do not have to make a living from our art. There's a place for part-time writers and self-published writers, especially on the web. Some are doing things that in the commercial publishing world are simply losing propositions. And the mission of winnowing the wheat from the chaff, should y'all choose to accept it, is YOURS.

If you run across something you think is great, mention it here, or on another webspace. We need "self-editors" as well as self-publishers.
posted by pyramid termite at 4:32 PM on March 22, 2004

1. Does anyone have a guess who the anonymous author is? She says that you won’t be able to find out from reading it, but that sounds like a dare to me.

Gawker's on the case. Some names mentioned: Anne Lamott, Louisa Ermelino, Jane Smiley, Amy Bloom...
posted by amberglow at 4:51 PM on March 22, 2004

Gawker's on the case.

Well, at least someone's trying to figure it out. I expected the world-renowned crack team of MeFi Detectives to have this woman's address and home phone number before I left work today.
posted by Prospero at 5:02 PM on March 22, 2004

If you don't want to hear about the noir underside of publishing -- if you're a writer longing for a literary career, or a reader who's happier not knowing that producing and marketing a book these days involves about as much moral purity as producing and marketing a pair of Nikes -- I suggest you stop reading now.


I love this. Apparently giving someone a quarter million dollars over 10 years isn't enough to write books few people want to read is somehow equivalent to using child slave labor in sweatshops in Laos.



I mean, seriously. This bitch can barely string together a coherent sentence, and certainly didn't enliven much sympathy for her own character. How are we supposed to believe that she was able to do so for her imaginary ones.



What a whiner.
posted by delmoi at 5:07 PM on March 22, 2004

Never self-publish. Never, never never. Eat nails before you will self-publish. Die before you will self-publish.

And yet here you are, self-publishing on MeFi.
posted by meehawl at 5:11 PM on March 22, 2004

Although, it is an interesting question about music CDs, since that's become such a common thing. Maybe it just has more to do with the ethos of a culture...

As far as I can tell, the reason self-published music and comics don't have the credibility problems self-published novels do is because the music and comics industries have had much larger problems proving their worth as arbiters of talent. I mean, the authority of the establishment gets undermined every time you hear that damn song on the radio or read a lifeless strip on the comics page. It's harder to spot a bad book right from the start (and then you can just avoid the thing) but I think the book industry really does a better job, and has more realistic expectations of what their authors can produce.
posted by furiousthought at 5:21 PM on March 22, 2004

...but I think the book industry really does a better job, and has more realistic expectations of what their authors can produce.
But do we need 17 memoirs from young women all at once, or 9 Nanny Diaries/Devil Wears Prada, or 7 million "for Dummies" knockoffs? Don't each of those mean there's one less spot for a new fiction writer? Publishers have limited funds, no?
posted by amberglow at 5:31 PM on March 22, 2004

There's a joke that my managing editor told me after she moved on to her next job-
There was a worker at a papermill, who for the past 20 years was responsible for cleaning the pitch and bird droppings off the logs before they went in to be pulped and turned into paper. One day he started having trouble breathing and passed out. When he woke up in the hospital the dortors told him that after all these years he had become allergic to the bird poop he washed off the logs. The doctors told him he needed to change jobs or the next time his allergic reaction could kill him. The man just looked up and said, "What? And give up publishing?"

posted by rodz at 6:02 PM on March 22, 2004

Here's my visceral reaction: No self-respecting novelist can ever self-publish without disgracing him or herself and the profession at large.

It's because of the fact that publishing is essentially a business relationship that I don't have the same visceral reaction against it as you do. You can always hire an editor. Really, a publisher just provides the marketing and distribution muscle that individual writers don't have on their own. Thus, there's the need for large publishing conglomerates. But if a bunch of writers want to get together, pool their resources, and start printing books and trying to sell them to bookstores, good for them. You put way too much stock in the artistic value of the publishers. All one needs is a check to retain the services of an editor. To print, distribute, and market a book? That takes a lot of serious corporate strength, and that's what publishers are for.
posted by deanc at 7:51 PM on March 22, 2004

No way is this Jane Smiley or Anne Lamott. Aside from the biographical details not being right, the two of them are excellent writers and not at all given to self-pity as this pathetic woman is. Dani Shapiro (also mentioned by Gawker's as a possibility) is definitely a whiner - she's been known to write pieces on the horrors of being pretty and of turning 30 - but Gawker's says she doesn't quite fit biographically speaking.
posted by orange swan at 9:40 PM on March 22, 2004

A self-published book is like a non peer-reviewed scientific paper. It has no validity. Publishing is a form of peer-review, however imperfect. Without peer review, we are all just jacking off, and the whole literary enterprise goes to hell.

Yes.

But masterbation is just so much fun!
posted by delmoi at 10:50 PM on March 22, 2004

I thought that Gawker's suggestion of Joe Klein was interesting. But he's not too self-pitying (or at any rate, doesn't have any reason to be, given all his magazine work. Plus he's a pretty good writer (even if he does have my eternal enmity for lying about his involvement with Primary Colors...journalists shouldn't lie. Ever.)
posted by Vidiot at 10:50 PM on March 22, 2004

A self-published book is like a non peer-reviewed scientific paper. It has no validity. Publishing is a form of peer-review, however imperfect. Without peer review, we are all just jacking off, and the whole literary enterprise goes to hell.

Publishing as peer review? Having moved from freelancing to academia in the last couple years, I'd like to call attention to a couple things that won't help you get in any science journal: being Erica Jong's daughter, being Anne Rice's son, being spotted in the Condé Nast cafeteria, and being David Remnick's personal assistant. When publishers evaluate manuscripts without looking at the names on them, then talk to me about peer review.
posted by transona5 at 11:27 PM on March 22, 2004

Self-publishing can help a writer get published by a house. Especially now, with the rise of the Internet, as in jscalzi's experience, but it worked before too. Alison Lurie, who is one of my favourite writers, self-published a memoir about a friend in the late sixties and distributed it among her friends - who were mostly academics and writers as her first husband was a university professor. Lurie was then contacted by an editor who had read the memoir and wanted to know if she had a novel. Lurie did have several tucked away - she'd been unable to get them published despite years of effort. She published those novels, and a number of others, and won the Pulitzer for fiction for her 1984 book Foreign Affairs.

Of course any writer would rather be published by a house, but sometimes self-publishing can be a great way of getting there.
posted by orange swan at 7:22 AM on March 23, 2004

Gawker has made stupid guesses.

It's not Jane Smiley (her lowest-selling book sold more than 25K), or Anne Lamott (her non-fiction has sold more than 25K, she doesn't have a teenaged daughter or a husband), Francine Prose (first published in the 1970s), Julie Hecht (doesn't have children), etc.

The keys to the mystery are: A) First published in 1996--sold 10K. B) Never sold more than 25K except for her 2001 book. C) "Rave review" in Time magazine in 2001. D) Between 45 and 47 years old today.

Louisa Ermelino might work, but I'm plumping for Rita Ciresi (has a daughter, is a sloppy writer, technically, has one book (Pink Slip) that did pretty well but the others have languished in obscurity, etc.)

Pink Slip is 80,000-something on Amazon right now, which definitely suggests it could have been 47,000-something when the article was written.

Especially if the author bought a few copies to pump up her rating--three or four copies make a big difference in the rankings between 100,000 and 25,000, sadly enough.

(My highest ranking ever on Amazon--7,513.)
posted by Sidhedevil at 10:17 AM on March 23, 2004

It's not Rita Ciresi - her first foray into publication was her short story collection Mother Rocket in 1993.
posted by orange swan at 10:35 AM on March 23, 2004

It's also not Louisa Ermelino, who published The Black Madonnas in 2001.
posted by orange swan at 10:45 AM on March 23, 2004

(My highest ranking ever on Amazon--7,513.)
Sidhedevil, what book? plug away! : >

A friend of mine's book, (ranked 82,625) which came out only in Dec., is already 60% off--it's sad.

Gawker did say that they may have purposely changed some details to make it harder to solve the mystery.
posted by amberglow at 10:51 AM on March 23, 2004

From the Salon page:

Editor's note: Although the author's name and some identifying details have been changed, the facts, quotes, e-mails and tragedy depicted in this story are real.

So, it's hard to track this down. I figure the best way would be to search through Time's 2001 reviews, make a list of all the authors who got great reviews, and then start researching autobiographical details. But what if that rave Time review was actually in 2000 or 2002?
posted by orange swan at 11:00 AM on March 23, 2004

Here's the problem: what's the difference between an "identifying detail" and a "fact"? (All identifying details would seem to qualify as facts to me.)

It depends on how much journalistic integrity Salon's editor has. Something like altering the number of books published would stretch the bounds of decency, I think. The same goes for changing the dates of contract signings and publications, and the number of books sold: since the point of the piece is that the author's wane in fortunes coincides with changes in the publishing industry over the past ten years, changing those would invalidate the article.

So all of these:

A) First published in 1996--sold 10K. B) Never sold more than 25K except for her 2001 book. C) "Rave review" in Time magazine in 2001.

are definite facts, unless Jayson Blair wrote the article.
posted by Prospero at 11:11 AM on March 23, 2004

See, that's why I still think it's Rita Ciresi, Orange Swan. Overlooking the first short story collection could have been the "detail that was changed" to occlude her identity.

The story still "works" that way; it doesn't "work" for Jane Smiley (huge sales for some books), Anne Lamott (huge sales for non-fiction books), Julie Hecht (crazy and self-obsessed in a different way), Francine Prose (has been doing this stuff for a zillion years), &c.
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:12 AM on March 23, 2004

But, on the other hand, Prospero is right--it probably would be too uncomfortable for the Salon folks to leave out a whole book.

Okay, scratch Rita Ciresi. I'll keep working on it.
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:14 AM on March 23, 2004

You know, the more I think about it--I don't think she's a novelist. I think she writes memoirs and/or nonfiction.

1. She never refers to any of her own books as "novels."

2. From the description of the first book:

Current status: Out of print. Small but loyal cult following; 10 years later adoring fans still show up at readings, clutching well-worn copies, eager to tell me how book changed their lives.

A strange way to describe the reception of a first novel. A memoir--maybe.

3. And if she's a novelist, then this is hard to explain as well:

Agent offers EWSLM unprecedented deal: If publisher will buy new book, we'll forgo advance to help defray losses from first one. EWSLM gently advises agent to "pursue other avenues." Agent gently advises me to "pursue other genres."

To keep daughter in Nikes while writing short-story collection, I write Web copy for dot-coms, ghostwrite celebrity bio (Book 2).

Would an agent describe a short story collection to a novelist as another "genre"? Who would be more likely to receive a contract to ghostwrite a celebrity bio: a novelist, or a memoirist (who would already have demonstrated the ability)? Why would a novelist try to jumpstart a flagging career by writing a short-story collection, apparently from scratch (which would arguably be a step backward, and which would only sell to the set of people who bought her novel in the first place)? It seems more likely to me that she tried to crank out a collection, and that it was rejected by editors because she didn't have the talent for fiction. This would fit in with the idea that the first book got such an egregiously large advance because of its marketable subject matter, not because of the talent and "fresh new voice" of the writer.
posted by Prospero at 11:36 AM on March 23, 2004

Huh. You might be right, Prospero. Although I'd been thinking "she must be a novelist because her handling of hard facts and real-life situations and dynamics is baaaaad."
posted by orange swan at 11:46 AM on March 23, 2004

All of you who are bashing her with zeal will enjoy the comments at the corresponding Making Light thread, where everyone's putting the boot in. Me, I'm a little taken aback at all the nastiness. Sure, she's whiny and made some bad decisions and had unrealistic expectations—but she's a writer! Let's face it, if you're the cold-blooded realistic type, you're unlikely to go into that line of work.
posted by languagehat at 4:53 PM on March 23, 2004

Based purely on the author's writing style in this article, my immediate thought was that it's David Foster Wallace. I mean, seriously, check out the use of acronyms. But if so, the "identifying details" were REALLY changed around.

Still, I'm willing to bet the principal identifying detail that was changed is the author's gender (but maybe this is just because as far as I know, no woman writes with the same postmodern, look-everyone-I'm-clever arrogance of DFW).
posted by halleck23 at 7:08 PM on March 23, 2004

I think it's a woman--a guy wouldn't reveal himself that way i don't think. It would be angrier and more blaming, and a little less whiny (i'm stereotyping, i know)
posted by amberglow at 7:29 PM on March 23, 2004

Me, I'm a little taken aback at all the nastiness.

I suspect part of it is the way she portrays herself as moderately successful, when she isn't. I don't think a writer who *ever* got a $100K+ advance is moderately successful. Such a writer is hugely, gigantically, fantastically successful, more successful than, probably, 99.99% of all people who are or want to be authors.

It's like watching a highly-paid second-string athlete complain about how badly they get treated by the team, and how it used to be about the sport, and so on.

It reads like a real fuck-you to everyone who's struggling to get published at all, much less to receive huge advances. If getting what she got is moderately successful, not getting published at all must mean that you're some sort of prokaryotic slime.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:37 PM on March 23, 2004

Salon readers' letters responding to this article, including one from Neal Pollack.
posted by Melinika at 8:13 PM on March 23, 2004

Amberglow--Men may be less whiny in general, but certainly DFW can whine with the best of them. Still, I don't really think it's him.
posted by halleck23 at 9:38 PM on March 23, 2004

I don't think a writer who *ever* got a $100K+ advance is moderately successful. Such a writer is hugely, gigantically, fantastically successful, more successful than, probably, 99.99% of all people who are or want to be authors.

See, you think that because (I'm presuming here) you never got a $100K+ advance. To you, she's way up there on the high peaks. But she'd say "Are you kidding? Stephen King and Tom Clancy are hugely, gigantically, fantastically successful. I'm just a gal who got lucky with her first book, except then it turned out it wasn't lucky at all because it fucked up the entire rest of my career, and now I can't write for a living, which is all I ever wanted to do." From her point of view, she struggled her way up to the lower slopes and then fell back, while the true gods watched serenely from the peaks.

How much money do you make? (Don't worry, I'm not expecting an answer, this is a rhetorical argument.) However much it is, I guarantee there are lots of people making less and lots of people making more. You probably occasionally think about all those people making more, and about how a lot of them are idiots who don't deserve it, and bitch about how unfair it all is. (Maybe you don't, but I'm sure a lot of the "Jane"-bashers do.) And I'll bet when you do that, you don't give a lot of thought to those farther down the ladder, who would be very happy to have your problems. And if one of them happened to read your complaint, they'd slag you off very much the way everyone is slagging off "Jane."

Well, that's human nature. It's just that a lot of the people over at Making Light are writers themselves, and I'd expect writers to have a little more insight into human nature, a little more perspective, than your average thoughtless barstool philosopher lambasting A-Rod for taking the money and moving to Texas, just as if they wouldn't do the same for $252 million. Have all these people never made bad decisions and then bitched about their life anyway? Do they all go around constantly worrying about how what they say might affect those not as lucky as they ("struggling to get published at all")? I just feel she's getting scapegoated for something other than her article.
posted by languagehat at 6:58 AM on March 24, 2004

See, you think that because (I'm presuming here) you never got a $100K+ advance

Nothing that I've written has gotten me an advance at all. American Journal of Political Science and Legislative Studies Quarterly don't pay at all, much less pay well.

To you, she's way up there on the high peaks. But she'd say "Are you kidding? Stephen King and Tom Clancy are hugely, gigantically, fantastically successful. I'm just a gal who got lucky with her first book...

But she'd be simply wrong -- as in factually incorrect -- in saying so. She's been a one in ten thousand or one in a hundred thousand success story. That's not the lower slopes of anything.

From her point of view, she struggled her way up to the lower slopes and then fell back, while the true gods watched serenely from the peaks.

And people are saying that her point of view is a dumb one to have. It's as dumb as an actor complaining about steady work as supporting characters.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:52 AM on March 24, 2004

It's as dumb as an actor complaining about steady work as supporting characters.

Well, it's more like an actor complaining because they got one great gig, thought it was the beginning of a brilliant career, then got stuck doing supporting characters, and now has had to give up on the acting career. Either way, so what? Actors complain about both situations. People complain about everything. It's called being human. I don't think her "point of view" is any dumber than anyone else's; it's just so much easier to see dumbitude in other people.

And I don't see how you can call hers a "success story." Is Enron a success story?
posted by languagehat at 8:01 AM on March 24, 2004

I can't help but think that, if there'd been a way for this woman to write the article without revealing her advances, then the reaction to it would have been completely different.

If she were getting steady work, but with lower or even non-existent advances, then much of the griping that went on in the thread that languagehat linked to would be justified. But the point of the article is that, in part because of her success in her early career, there's a pretty good chance that she will not be able to publish in the current market at all. Sure, the author in question received an average advance of $25,000/year over ten years, and there are a large number of writers who would be overjoyed to get that. In her position, would I have taken that kind of income for my writing if it meant that after those ten years, I would no longer be able to publish at all when I still had decades of writing left in me? I don't think I would.

(As some have said above, one could argue that she can't get published in this market because she isn't willing to self-publish, or willing to shop her work to a smaller press that isn't part of the NYC/German-owned conglomerates. That's an issue that's well worth discussing, but it's not the issue that people on MeFi, Gawker, and Making Light are, in general, kvetching about--most of them add up the $240,000 in advances, get blinded by rage at her whiny impertinence, and stop there.)

As logovisual said above: The point of this article is not "Boo hoo, nobody loves me," it's "There's no longer any publishing company out there willing to stand by a potentially successful book." Whether there is or is not such a company is debatable, but that's not what most readers of the article seem to be interested in debating.
posted by Prospero at 8:14 AM on March 24, 2004

Doe (I refuse to call her Jane Austen Anything) is irritating not for her complaining but because of her near total lack of perspective. Yes, she does acknowledge that she's been lucky to get published at all, that more talented people than her haven't been. But she also calls her 240K "barely any money", says that she can't read the New York Times or watch any TV channel except for Playboy without getting upset, and generally indulges in useless and revolting levels of self-pity.

Everyone complains. And yes, it is human nature to always be aspiring to the next level, to always want more and better than what one has. But I think it behooves an adult to keep the complaining in balance. If she's getting to do what she loves and is buying Nikes for her daughter, she has no business talking about a broken heart. She should focus on solutions - not magic solutions like "everyone should buy more mid-list books" but realistic and personally responsible solutions like "what can I do to identify and reach the kind of audience I want to have" or "what kind of publishing options do I have for my next book" - and I just don't believe that there aren't any. She should bring humour, intelligence and resourcefulness to her whinge sessions. One of my closest friends makes an art out of complaint. I LOVE to hear C. talk about her frustrations with her husband and her job and her car repairs because she's so hilarious and incisive in her descriptions. I'm both entertained and educated by her rants. Doe had a golden opportunity to entertain and inform AND sell her own books, and she blew it.
posted by orange swan at 8:42 AM on March 24, 2004

Well, it's more like an actor complaining because they got one great gig

Not so much one great gig but one highly-paid gig. On MakingLight and other publishing-oriented or by-an-author pages, people point out that she was dumb to accept a $150,000 advance, since if it didn't pay out well enough she'd look like a giant failure and maybe get her editor sacked, and that her agent was either stupendously dumb or was exploiting her for a larger check by not telling her to take a smaller advance. Likewise, people pointed out that moving from that to trying to sell a short story collection -- outside SF, one of the harder things to sell -- makes her look about as sharp as a sack of wet mice.

Either way, so what? Actors complain about both situations

And people rightfully ignore and even ridicule them when they do, given the realities of their industry.

I don't think her "point of view" is any dumber than anyone else's

I think it's demonstrably out of touch with the reality of her chosen industry, which has always been fickle, and has always been very hard to break into.

And I don't see how you can call hers a "success story." Is Enron a success story?

Well, if JAD was stealing from people, she hasn't made it clear.

A better analogy might be to the dot-com boom. Would I call a firm that lasted longer and did better than 99.99% of other dot-coms a success, even if it eventually went bust or might go bust, and even if it's not doing remotely as well as Amazon? You bet I would.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:10 AM on March 24, 2004

Gawker's theory on the true identity of the midlist author: Amy Bloom
posted by arielmeadow at 4:55 PM on March 24, 2004

I don't think it's Amy Bloom. Bloom is a practicing psychotherapist and she teaches at Yale. She has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, Slate, and Salon, among other publications, and has won a National Magazine Award. Her short stories have been included in many an anthology. She sold a mystery novel to her publisher and then bought it back because she didn't think it was good enough to be published. I've looked at bits of her work on Salon and the style is not similar to the "Confessions" piece.
posted by orange swan at 6:49 PM on March 24, 2004