Many of you may know I've been shopping around for a book publisher. I've written earlier about the difficulties in finding a publisher willing to even look at a previously unpublished author, especially one without representation. Judging by their reactions, one would think the market is flooded with books - there just isn't the audience for all that's being produced.
The reality is that the costs involved in publishing a book these days are so prohibitive that publishers aren't willing to take a risk on anything even slightly different from the mainstream. But publishers have no one to blame but themselves for their increased costs.
First there's the ridiculous amount of money they give authors in advances, to the tune of millions of dollars. Then there’s the money they have to spend on publicity in the hopes of selling enough books to recoup huge advances. If they're very lucky they might get a small percentage from a film if the book makes it to the big screen, but that can sometimes be years after publication.
They compound these expenses by not doing due diligence on their authors as well as they could. It's costly when you end up with thousands of copies of a book that was plagiarized word-for-word from a previously published work.
Let’s hear from your agent
In the fall of 2005 notices appeared on the submission guidelines web pages of almost every major publisher in North America and Britain. "We are no longer accepting unsolicited manuscripts unless through a reputable agent." It was almost word for word on all the web pages, no matter which publisher. It was as though they had held a meeting and decided they would all run the same announcement on the same day.
They blamed it on being inundated by so many bad unsolicited manuscripts from bloggers, who thought the world wanted to hear their life stories. Having read some of the dreck passing for writing on people's blogs, I admit that at first I could see some veracity in this claim. But recently I've had second thoughts about that assertion and have started wondering if there isn’t more to it than they've been claiming.
Article comments
1 - DukeDeMondo
Richard, i wish you none but the best in your attempts at getting published, and i dare say it's a matter of When rather than If.
2 - vikk
Hi Richard,
Good luck with your book. I will say that the closed submission policy has been around for a long time and not really that new. It's always been difficult but not impossible to get published through the slush pile but generally it's helpful to take the time know the industry--as you're doing--learn who the players are and then pitch your idea and book. Agents are certainly being used more and more as the primary screeners for publishers.
Frankly, I don't blame the publishers that much for the policies. I've seen the types of manuscripts that are sent to them and many, many, many of them should not have been sent. They simply weren't ready to be published. It takes time and energy and expense to go through slush piles. With so many people determining that they can write and that what they write is publishable immediately, the numbers have only increased.
I don't think it's any kind of conspiracy but rather a response to inundation of material and its quality that they've been receiving. The publishers are simply repsonding to various changes in the marketplace both in their providers and their consumers. OVer the last twenty years I've seen publishers tighten their submission belts and then let them out. Just as the various genres run high and low, submission policies change.
I don't know enough about India and its publishing to comment. But I do know that in the US publishers tend to look at many, many more things than we--the writers--consider.
For me, I tend to try and find my way through whatever current system is operating. It takes time but people do get published and it happens every day. I know way too many folks published to doubt the fact that it can still happen and happen to new writers.
Anyway, good luck in your literary pursuit.
3 - alessandro nicolo
I've often wondered if that is indeed the case: the wannabes clogging up the lines for more legitimate writers. Good piece. I think the writing industry is predicated on one notion: work like a dog to get published. It literally is like starting and running a business. And it seems so much harder to do in Canada.