So, everybody in writerly circles seems to be blogging/journalling about this Salon piece by one pseudonymous "Jane Austen Doe". Nick Mamatas gives a good summary of what the article's about, along with entertaining commentary here. Teresa Nielsen Hayden has noted the article and promised to say more later, which I'm rather looking forward to. Nobody can deconstruct an idiot quite like Teresa.

The kind of sad thing is that the article makes a pretty good case study of the vicissitudes of modern publishing, once you get past the writer's whiny tone and occasional odd notions. (It's really hard not to laugh when the writer sniffs about being offered "only" $50,000 for a book that took three years to write. Where exactly did she get the notion that the mere fact of busting one's ass to write a novel entitled one to a decent middle-class wage?)

In fact, if the writer had been a little more clueful, this article could have been written as a strange kind of success story. Okay, the writer is currrently having trouble selling her fifth book. But, let's face it: she sold her first book for $150,000, and it tanked. She then sold the second for $10,000, and the third for $80,000. That's a pretty impressive riches to rags to riches story -- a lot of writers would have seen no other option after the first book but to get a pseudonym and start over -- and I'd be curious to know how the writer pulled it off. Assuming that it wasn't sheer luck.

Of course, it would be really interesting to know who the author of this piece is, because this article gives you all the data about the books except their titles. It's really tempting to theorize, for example, about why that first book was exciting enough to editors to command a huge advance, but apparently not exciting enough to readers to rack up the sales. (I know, it would hardly be the first time such a thing has happened, but...) I expect that some publishing insider will out the poor author soon enough, anyway.

I think this article also provides the final proof that "mid-list" has gotten rather meaningless. Apparently the term describes any author who isn't a household name, or whose books do not sell in New York Times bestseller quantities. In short, virtually everyone.