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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
Another round of responses -- rants, raves, confessions and praise -- spurred by "The Confessions of a Semi-successful Author."
Mar 26, 2004 | [Read the original story. Read the first round of reader mail.]
Like one of your other letter writers, I'm an editor at the "giant publishing conglomerate" mentioned in the article. Jane Austen Doe styles herself as a sort of literary damsel in distress, forced (despite advances many authors would envy) to take odd jobs to make a living, beset on all sides by villainous publishing moguls and hapless editors who are powerless to save her from the cruel vagaries of the marketplace. It's all high opera, and it reaches a climax when she writes: "When a book 'fails to meet expectations,' many are candidates for blame. But ... the consequences are the same. Those with jobs keep them. Only the author's livelihood is threatened. Only the author is punished."
Well, that would come as a surprise to the many good editors who are out of work because they championed authors whose books didn't sell, or simply because the corporation they worked for didn't make budget and ordered middle management to "reduce head count." At least one major publishing house runs yearly P&Ls on each editor who works there to assess their performance.
I love what I do, and I'm not asking for sympathy. But it is galling when writers like Jane Austen Doe don't seem to realize that editors exist except to love them or not. The main thing is that everyone has their struggles, and editors and writers have less cause to complain than many. If Doe were able to step outside herself and see that a little more clearly, my guess is that she'd be a better writer.
-- Name withheld
That Jane Doe is one evil, greedy wench, isn't she? She wants to be paid for her writing and see progress, pay-wise, as she works at her craft. How dare she suggest such a thing? After all, she's an artist -- meant to starve and suffer in a manner that suits our romantic notion of what a writer should be, do, and feel. Doesn't she know how many truly great writers have wondered where their next meal is coming from, and that she should do the same? We need her to do that. She should do it for us -- because this really is, in the end, about us. We would not have been so personally, so deeply offended, by her article if we weren't projecting our own wishes and needs and dreams onto her. She has what we want and she doesn't deserve it. We know how to be grateful, humble, hungry, worthy, and artist-like. Those advances she got belong to us, not her.
I don't think we've heaped nearly enough anger, jealousy, and insults on her for suggesting that publishers support their writers' books with proper promotion rather than sending them off to market where they must fend for themselves. Goodness, think what would happen if publishers actually stopped paying as little as possible for a book only to pretend that it doesn't exist when it comes time to sell it. What chaos if a book by a midlist author were to find an audience. Think of how dangerously close that would come to benefiting not just the author, but the publisher and the reading public.
What really angers me is her senseless suggestion that we ought to save the publishing industry from being so completely sales-oriented that it forgets it's people (not calculators) who write, edit, and buy books, and it's their love of and dedication to these activities that might actually result in profits. Is she crazy? Where do wild ideas like achieving balance in an industry that's leaning way too far in one direction come from? Clearly, this woman needs to be silenced. Or viciously attacked in Salon's letters column.
Lighten up, people. Jane Doe is telling you something important and true. Maybe it's not news to you, but she's asking you to do more than know it; she's asking you to do something about it because, well, because nobody is. Wow, talk about pity parties. Quit moaning over the opportunities she's had and you haven't, and go out and buy a book by someone you've never heard of. Then another. And another.
-- Patricia Sierra
To be fair to Ms. Austen Doe, a lot of good artists are really petty and annoying people.
-- Rene Caron
As the author of over 250 published books for children, young adults, and adults, I want to say simply: Shut up, stop whining, and write. It's the writing that matters, not the payment. (And I have never gotten $150,000 for any book. Not even half of that. Not even close.)
-- Jane Yolen
I was stunned by the vitriol your readers showered down on Jane Doe. Many readers were outraged that she was not more grateful for having earned a reasonably good living as a writer; they could not believe that she felt abused by the current star system in publishing. How dare she be unhappy, one writer asked, when there are Chinese prison poets who have to write on toilet paper with their own blood?
Such comments reveal a moral nihilism and self-loathing every bit as painful to see as the occasional narcissism of Jane Doe's piece. Look, the point of society is not to make us happy we're not Chinese prison poets. To formulate the question in that way is to encourage a race to the bottom, in which the majority of workers of all stripes learn to eat their gruel and be happy with it, while a few (of which Jane Doe was briefly a number) earn real dough. I still would like to think of America as a middle-class society -- not bourgeois so much as committed to a relatively broad diffusion of wealth across a hardworking population. Having diverse publishing outlets and diverse writing livelihoods is part of this vision: the mid-list is a part of the middle-class world. As for the Chinese poets, the current system does them little justice, so why flog Jane Doe for questioning it?
So I say thank you, Jane Doe! Feel better about yourself -- work hard, write, avoid self-pity -- and the rest of you learn to love yourselves and others a little more. And while we're talking about supporting independent writers and media outlets, subscribe to Salon!
-- John Randolph
Jane Austen Doe seems to think that a) editors, agents, and publishers should be her friend and b) someone else will do her promotion and publicity.
I love writing. But writing is also my business. As a self-publisher of regional books since 1989 -- eight books, no advances, all expenses paid from my own pocket, obscenely profitable -- I know that you either have to keep yourself in the public eye or expect to have your manuscripts discovered in a shoebox after your death. I've chosen the former.
I don't have a publicist. I do mailings twice a year to libraries, bookstores, schools and other institutions, as well as individuals (garnered from my speaking engagements and book signings). I also do mailings to media in my state which invariably generate much free publicity. One of my series has over 200,000 copies in print and the first volume continues to sell well a dozen years later. Both indie and chain stores report brisk sales. I have no idea what my Amazon ratings are. I'm too busy to check.
Personally I think I'll keep on self-publishing. I'll never get my heart broken by uncaring editors or agents. I'll never keep hurling myself against the vast indifference of the traditional publishing world. I control scheduling, book design, publicity and content. And profits.
-- Chris Woodyard
