Fiona O’Connor has written this spot-on article about the publishing industry as it is today, and although parts of it require extra careful reading, what she has written is essentially and horribly true. The article reads like a horror story in which she writes about the huge conglomerate publishing houses, their hideous array of literary agents and the ridiculous self-publishing industry that has reared up relatively recently. What the article doesn’t highlight, however, is the middle ground and what I think is the best place to be as a writer now, given that you do actually love writing for its own sake. You’d have thought the last sentence was unnecessary perhaps, but the amount of bad and poorly edited writing you can find these days is breath-taking, and suggests that the real ambition of maybe the majority of writers is the kudos that comes from being a writer, and the desire to be famous and to make a lot of money. I suspect these particular writers couldn’t care less if the work was any good as long as it’s out there and they are in the spotlight. Fiona describes this world wonderfully:- ‘In a shrinking pool where big sharks are sniffing for bestseller blood, where agents act like pilot fish, cleaning the teeth of publishing objectives, setting in play a penumbra of spin that shadows many a nudibranch-like writer/critic as she taps out her 500 words? And after all, she may well have, or want, that agent; the pool is incestuous and co-dependent.’
Here is another way to be a writer in today’s climate:- ignore the giant overblown publishers and their parasitic agents living in their fussy little worlds, those agents who might be good at judging the books that will sell, but not the books which have merit or dignity. Don’t expect to make money from your writing, don’t get too involved in the business of how well your books are selling, because you need that energy for writing the next one. Seek out careful sensitive independent publishers who don’t need you to send your work to an agent and whose love of books matches yours. In this world you will be able to create interesting partnerships with publishers who won’t exploit you, but who will produce beautiful and carefully made books with your words in them. What could be better than that? and you might incidentally end up as a well known writer who makes a bit of money from writing, just don’t have that as your primary aim as a writer. The aim should be to become as a good a writer as you can be, and anything which interferes with that aim should be studied with great care. The things which most interfere with that aim will come at you from the world described above.
Thank you Farah Ahamed for finding the article.
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/a-lament-for-modern-publishing-1.2292101
