At 05:11 PM 16/05/2007, Allan Guthrie wrote:
>My experience is that there's a lot of truth in what
Dave Zeltserman
>said in his very succinct post. A lot of
exceptionally good novels
>are getting passed on, and the lack of 'platform' --
previously a
>term only applied to non-fiction -- is becoming an
increasingly
>popular reason for rejection.
>
>That's by no means across the board, but I do hear it
a lot.
>
>As Kevin says, "publishers are in business to sell
books, and they
>always were." No argument there. But what I've
observed since
>becoming a literary agent is that many publishers are
looking for a
>much more certain and immediate return on their
investment than
>perhaps was once the case. Literary agents are
increasingly turning
>to non-fiction to make a buck. You can sell on an
outline and sample
>chapters, there's more of it being bought, and the
money's generally
>about twice what you'd get for fiction. So why
wouldn't you? Of
>course by doing so it then becomes harder for new
writers to find
>agents, and without an agent it's very difficult to
find a publisher.
It strikes me that book publishing was among the first medium
to feel the effects of mass communications being splintered
into specialty markets now be served as a consequence of
technological change. The concept of "good" is subjective,
but industrial-era mass communications required and built a
consensus about what it meant. The less competition there
was, the easier this was done. Big publishers have to work a
lot harder now, and are less and less certain about what will
meet the challenge. They're more inclined to follow the
market, willing to lower the common denominator to achieve
it, than to try to get the market to come to their idea of
what's
"good." On the other hand, our subjective notions of what's
good are more easily met by small publishers targeting niche
markets. It takes fewer than ten critics to make a book a
critical success. But while technology has made it easier to
print small quantities at relatively cheap prices, it's still
tough to make a profit that way.
Actually makes me feel sorry for literary agents.
Best, Kerry
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