Today the editorial October 2013 is by another guest.
Those Who Wait
“Patience (n): A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.”
– Ambrose Bierce
I’ve read with interest Steve Rosse’s articles on how not to write. Being forearmed against pitfalls can save a lot of time, effort and stress. This is especially true for those of us who imagine that writing is a sensible career option. However, from my own experience, I think the single most important aspect of being a writer is patience.
The first novel I wrote was awful. Really bad. But at the time I thought it was great. I was chuffed, proud, pleased with myself. I showed it to everyone who would stand still long enough and the response was universal: It’s a bad book.
Writers tend to react to criticism in two ways:
A: Yes, you’re right, this is bad.
B: Who are you to judge me! I’m an artist!
In the face of such unwavering distaste I stuck the manuscript in a drawer and started novel two. It was an improvement. This time everyone said ‘It’s good but …’ So that landed in the same drawer and I wrote novel three.
It was painful to discard those manuscripts and write off the time as a learning curve but a necessary one. But then I never had much choice. Novel one was finished in 2004 when e-publishing wasn’t an option.
Recently the already fraught world of publishing has been turned on its head by advances in technology, most particularly the e-book. A revolution that left the music industry in convulsions is now sweeping across literature. Barricades are being erected and we, as writers, whether tentatively submitting our first pieces to journals like Eastlit or dropping manuscripts on the inboxes of agents, publishers and studio execs, are choosing sides.
On the parapets, keys to the armoury clasped firmly in one hand, keys to the gates in the other, are the establishment. Publishing houses with their editors, their marketing departments, their distribution networks, their close relationships with media, booksellers and, at the gates with halberds and stern faces, the agents.
Taking to the streets with banners, bricks and cocktails, are the self-publishers, a Kindle or Ipad casually shoved into the waistband, alongside their comrades, arm in arm with their readers shouting:
What do we want?
To be published!
When do we want it?
Now!
The democratisation of literature. As with all revolutions, each side has its hardline adherents, most recently demonstrated by the reception publisher Mark Buckland received when he joined a panel on the subject. Most people, however, find themselves like Buridan’s Ass, unsure which way to turn.
Both sides have things going for them.
Self-publishing is a lot of work. Once you get beyond the gatekeepers and sign a contract with a publisher and deliver a manuscript, your responsibility is largely over. The marketing, distribution, promotion and legal issues, all are done for you. You are now on the inside and all that bureaucracy that used to so infuriate is now hard at work ensuring glowing reviews, primacy in shop windows and three minutes on a chat show. With self-publishing, chances are the only time Larry King or Michael Parkinson will interview you is when you’re daydreaming in the bath.
Then there’s the money. The simple truth is writers do not get rich through writing. Apart from a highly elite group, most writers are never able to give up the day job. Once the publisher, the agent and the bookseller have taken their cut, there’s not a whole lot left to keep us in wine and cigarettes. With self-publishing, these fingers get nowhere near the pie: Amazon take 30%, the rest is yours.
The problems with the classic model are well-known: The gatekeepers are elusive and notoriously difficult to please, but what is the downside of self-publishing? The same as the reality of digital music online: There’s just so damn much of it. There’s no quality control. No filters. The democratisation of music has made it like porn: the internet is awash with it, most of it amateur and nausea-inducing.
This is the problem with the e-book self-publishing revolution. Yes, there are some great writers out there whose books have been denied an audience because they are long or difficult or obscure, writers set free by the technology, but these are a minority. The vast majority of self-published novels on Amazon’s list are badly written, unedited, unproofed and often unreadable. Publishers refused to touch them not through meanness of spirit, but because they are bad books.
Why should this be? In producing a good piece of work, writers have two handicaps to overcome and this is where the publishing industry, for all its faults, comes in: we are often not very good at being objective and we are impatient.
A thought experiment to illustrate what worries me about the Amazon model: Move my story on ten years, so I finish my first novel in 2014. Result: Rather than sticking it in a drawer, this time I have a second option. I load the novel onto Amazon and start selling it.
A few friends buy it, some family members. They all read it and pronounce it bad, but maybe through loyalty they give it a quick four or five star review. So now people I don’t know pick it up and read it. They too find it bad and, as they have no reason for loyalty, give me a bad review. Before I’ve even begun my career, my name is forever linked to a bad book. Googling my name leads to page after page of negativity.
I keep writing. I get to book three and I’ve finally written something good, but it’s too late. The people who might have given me a chance have already been burnt and anyone else is going to take one look at earlier reviews and steer well clear.
Democratisation of publishing is all very well for the reader, as it opens markets, increases choice for people who are prepared to spend time wading through page after page of books that were rightly turned down by editors and agents. For the writer, I think it could be a curse.
by Iain Maloney
