Only On Sunday

What does the unknown author need to get published? Besides a tough skin, I mean. Well, talent helps. A good handle on craft will refine and define that talent. An agent, in most cases, is essential. Agents, I think, are kind of the filter system to the Publishing Industry. They pretty much weed out most of the crap before it gets to the editors desk and help to refine the good stuff they do accept.

So, if you have all of the above, you have it made, right? Wrong. There is one more ingredient and, unfortunately, it is not something you’re born with like talent, nor can it be taught as craft can be taught, and having an agent does little or nothing to help you gain it.

That last ingredient is luck.

Getting published as an unknown is a crap shoot. There are many reasons for this. Of them, this post will concentrate on two as they kind of snuggle each other nicely.

The first is the obsession the PI has taken to the bottom line. I suppose this obsession can be justified. They are, after all, there to make a profit.

It takes a lot of money to publish a book. Before a publishing house will take one on, they want to know exactly what the market will be for that book. Which, if you think about it, is a little like wanting to know which lottery ticket in the bin on the counter is going to be the BIG one before you buy it. Still, that is what the marketing department tries to project and if they can’t figure where to “place†your book, i.e., they can’t figure out how to market it, it doesn’t matter how well written it is or how compelling the story, it gets the boot.

There are exceptions, of course. There always are. Unknown authors do break out from time to time, though I think even that is getting rare. Still, when it does happen, it certainly looks good and gives a much needed dose of hope to other unknowns. However, it would be my guess that knowing the number of unknown authors that sunk beneath the waves for every one breakout might dim the hope a tad. Still, there are those exceptions and the exceptions often lead to “trends†; the second point of this post.

Marketing departments love trends. It takes a bit of the edge off trying to guess what will be popular and what will take a nosedive at the bookstore. John Grisham and Scott Turow were breakout authors of a sort, and their success started a trend. Before them, with the possible exception of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason, there weren’t a lot of lawyer books. After them, there were enough to choke every lawyer in the country. Not a bad thought, all things considered, but it certainly got to the point where one felt, upon entering a bookstore and browsing the shelves, that the only thing to read about was some lawyer solving yet another unsolvable crime.

The problem with the above, of course, is what happened to all those many authors who didn’t have lawyer books subbed to the publishing houses during that time?

There have been other trends along the way, both before and after the lawyer as crime fighter trend. The cold war was a solid, long running one. Vampires were hot after Ann Rice. Female protags even hotter after Sue Grafton. And many are the unknown authors who have flowed into the breech the trend opened up. And not a few who died when the breech closed, I might add.

Is this a good thing? Well, it certainly is if you happen to write a book that just happens to be on a subject that is, at the moment, hot. But what if your book - a well written, compelling story of a book - just happens to not be on the momentarily hot topic hot plate?

Now, being a writer, and being, at the moment, unpublished, one might think I am referring to my own struggles with publication. Let me assure you I’m not. I knew from the start that my novel would be of little or no interest to an American publisher. In this country, it’s just another thief story. Not much of a trend there and, indeed, some of the feed back I’ve gotten is “love the book, don’t know where to ‘place it’†, with ‘place it’ being the euphemism for ‘market it’, which just proves my belief. I wrote the book for a European audience, about a subject quite well known and controversial in Europe and, if I ever manage to get it published there, well, I think it will do quite well, thank you.

No, the above scenario is something I have witnessed in the past, at a relative distance. Recently, however, I observed it happen to two friends of mine. Both are exceptional, talented writers with a strong grasp of craft and exceptional story writing ability. Both recently finished their books. Both got agents that raved over their books. Both books were subbed. One made the rounds and never found a place to land. The other is generating such interest that it will likely be sold before the week is out.

The difference? Well, as my friend James N. Frey (no, not THAT James Frey) would say, one is a damn good novel, the other is a damn good novel that happens to be on a subject that is currently hot. Though I am beyond ecstatic about the acceptance of my one friends book, I am saddened by the rejection of my other friends equally fine book.

Lady Luck and the Marketing Department Jester can be a hard combination to please.

EJ