The measure of good literature - is the accountant’s decision …
Guido has learned, thanks to the agonies of a friend, that anyone who has tried to break into the writing game has chosen a hard road, one definitely not for the faint hearted or those who are easily put off. The whole game is designed to be as hard as possible for precisely that reason. They may well be the best story-teller around, but, unless they can sell their MS to an agent in the first five pages – that’s it, they’re in the reject pile.
Now everyone acknowledges, even the agents and publishers, that most books don’t get going until about the midway point. You can’t have excitement and action on every page, it becomes as boring to the reader as it is tiring to the writer to be that inventive, so how does a would be writer grab their attention on Page 1? Well, as it transpires, it ain’t that easy. In fact, anyone who has done a bit of research into how to do this will know that every editor they speak too has a different view on it. One says he likes the MS double spaced and another rejects anything that is. One says set the page out neatly, another says don’t. And so it goes on. Confused? Of course you are and so is everyone else. Guido has looked at a lot of the “guidance” his friend has been given and would have to say that it is contradictory to say the least!
Once a budding author gets down to the point where they finally have someone interested enough to ask for the full manuscript there are still hurdles to take. Having sent the manuscript, the months pass, the e-mails go unanswered and they know they daren’t phone because that is the ultimate killer, the guarantee that their labours will land in the “reject” pile.
What it all comes down to in the end is not whether they have a good story or even a well written one; the readers in the Agent’s Office and the editors at the Publisher they may have interested in it may love it. The final decision is made by the paper shufflers who run everything these days – the Accountants. This is why new writers find it almost impossible to get a toe into the door. The Accountant takes one look and says “No, too risky, we will only publish works by best sellers.” (Guido tried to work out the other day how many “Best Sellers” he has abandoned mid-flight and left on the ‘plane because it was unreadable or simply boring, now he knows why they are so bad!) So now we have a situation in which only known authors get a look in and only their works get the big budget pushing that makes them best sellers.
Now Guido will admit that there are many on the best seller list who deserve to be there. He could name many whose work he admires and orders as soon as it is available. But there are a heck of a lot more that simply rehash what they did in book one. Add to this the fact that you are also up against the personal tastes of a particular editor. If you write military based material and they hate the military you’re on a hiding to nothing right off. This comes down to knowing your market – and the market here is not the ultimate reader, it is the intermediary who is the ultimate arbiter of what gets into print. Interestingly Guido’s friend was told by one agent that writing military based SF in the UK is a no-no, “the military are only interesting if they are the villains dear boy!” Well, Guido feels that that explains a great deal about why he has found so much of the UK based literary output not to his taste, it seems that to pass muster in the current literary climate in the UK an author needs to play to the socialist visions of anti-militarism, and socialistic hedonism of the individual exercising their rights “in defence of the masses”. Or simply write loads of debauchery into the script – always a winner that one.
What is this all about you may ask? Well it was sparked by a conversation with a fellow at a party who turned out to be a Literary Agent believe it or not. The thrust of his message to new authors was, unless an author is better than good, better even than “specially gifted” in writing, they have almost no chance of acceptance. Even if they are, they still find themselves up against the agent’s reader and the publisher’s editor, unless they “love” the work they is unlikely to be able to sell it to a publisher and many publishers now have the Accountant having the ultimate say. Even if you pass that hurdle, there is another, now you are up against the Buyer in the Bookstore – who is also subject to the veto of the Group Accountant. Guido was surprised to learn that one bookstore group actually does have a rule from their Accountant that NO new author is to be stocked unless the book has a large pre-publication order book! Guido would certainly be fascinated to know how that works!
So ultimately everything we read today is published because an accountant somewhere liked it or approved of the author, not necessarily because it was good literature ….
Guido is very glad he has a different career path entirely – and feels very sorry for budding authors and, in general, for the entire future of the written word. Once the accountants and bureaucrats get their sticky paws on something, that’s it!
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