Mary 5, 2006
Early this morning I jumped on Eric Mayer's blog. He had a post he was responding to by someone else suggesting that because the big publishers are set in their ways and not looking for any thing outside the box, and because almost nobody can make a living writing fiction anyway, you should just do your own thing, there are plenty of small presses out there that will be interested in publishing your work.

I ranted a bit. Here it is:

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You know, this is significantly more complicated than just "do your own thing."

I have very, very commercial tastes, generally speaking, in my reading. My writing has ALWAYS reflected that. But I wrote many, many unpublished novel manuscripts, despite the fact they were recognizably commercial.

Why didn't they get published?

I'm not 100% sure, but here are some thoughts:

1. THey weren't good enough. And by good enough, I think there are 2 issues:

A. The line-by-line writing wasn't good enough. THere was probably too much passive tense, too much repetition, relatively poor word choice. I also think that after a while this became less of an issue, which leads me to:

B. Not good enough structure. This is a different ballgame and I think an awful lot of unpublished writers fall into this category. Sure, you tell a good story. Sure, your writing is acceptable. But the way you're telling your story isn't effective enough. THere's too much backstory. There's too much padding. It's not tight enough. You're going off on tangents that negatively affect the forward thrust of the story. Your characters, though interesting and likable, are too pat, are cliched, are reminiscent of TV or movie characters. Your plot lacks coherence and logic, and goes from A to B to F to G, missing steps. It's unconvincing (this has happened to me, for sure). Even though certain types of stories have their own internal logic (ie., cozies), you couldn't convince the readers that the 30-something single mom was really a serial killer. The list goes on.

The point is, even small presses are looking for something that's effective and that they're able to sell. Yes, indies seem more open to variation (or perhaps, nobody wants to say this, it's really, they have lower standards, at least some of them), but that doesn't mean they want to lose money on you.

Big publishers don't want to lose money either, so they have some notion of what can reliably be sold.

You don't go to a car dealership and find too many purple and red 6-passenger, 3-wheeled vehicles. You might find some somewhere, but the big companies won't. Because they can't sell enough of them. Or to make it more sensible, you don't find a lot of 2-passenger cars out there. Some, but not that many. Limited market.

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Yes, well, let me expand just a bit. I think I was reacting, ultimately, to what felt to me a like a rationalization. You've all heard it, you've probably even felt it. It goes like this:

My work isn't getting published because:

1. It's a New York conspiracy.
2. The big publishers can't recognize originality when they see it.
3. I can't get an agent.
4. I don't have an agent.
5. I don't have the right agent.
6. I'm just as good as (fill in the blank).
7. I don't know anybody. They only publish works by people they know.
8. They only publish things they think will be bestsellers.
9. I'm an artist! What do I care?


The list can go on and on.

Okay, here's the deal. If all you want to do is write, if you don't care about being published by someone else, if the money doesn't matter AT ALL to you, if you have money to throw away, if you're in it ENTIRELY for the art, the actual DOING of writing, and even, by those standards, READERS aren't important...

Then by all means, write, print it out and tuck it away.

Or if you still want to see it in book form, but money and readers don't matter to you, then pay money to iUniverse or somebody similar and have books available print-on-demand, buy a dozen copies for family and friends and call it a day.

If that's what you want, REALLY, if you've got your desires and ambitions adjusted to just that narrow a frame of reference, I'M WRITING FOR MY ART AND MY ART ALONE AND COMMUNICATING WITH OTHER HUMAN BEINGS AND MAKING MONEY ARE NOT PART OF MY ART...

Oh for god sakes, why would you want to deal with the publishing industry and the laborious marketing aspects of the business? I mean, really, if that's REALLY where you're at, don't bitch about the New York publishing industry. They're a business. They're there to make money. If that's too crass and money-fixated for your art, they don't need you and you don't need them and what are you bitchin' about?

Oh, and my comment about small presses. For the record, the quality of Poison Pen Press is very high. I've read many books by them and many of them could easily get published by the bigger houses. Really. Eric Mayer & Mary Reed, Larry Karp, Kit Erhman, the list goes on. I really do think so.

But I used to review mysteries for ForeWord Magazine, which focuses on independent and small presses, and folks, whether you want to admit it or not, some of this stuff just isn't up to snuff. It isn't. The quality's just not there. The writing isn't as good, the editing isn't as good, the storytelling just isn't that good. It doesn't mean they won't be if they work.

End of today's rant.

Best,
Mark Terry