STATUS: TGIF and I’m heading out of the office early to do a little reading.
What’s playing on the iPod right now? STORMY BLUES by Billie Holiday
Ah, I couldn’t get the Friday Funnies to work and since I’m heading out, I’ll just have to let Daniel Menaker rant in my place.
If you haven’t checked out his blog posting at the B&N blog, it’s really worth a look.
Warning—this article is not for the faint of heart.
It’s definitely the unvarnished inside perspective though….
Have a great weekend.
Wow! That was an intense blog post by Daniel Menaker. Gee, I don’t know what else to say, except that I hope Friday Funnies are up and running next week.
First of all, Daniel Menaker can WRITE. Anyone else feel like his sentences even for something like this were beautifully crafted?
Second of all, I am getting to the point where I just want to crawl in a hole, because everything I hear is negative… and I thought getting the book published was the hard part.
I just want to have a conversation where I can slip in “metaphorical abbatoir.”
Wow. I’m sure it is hard to get book reviews and people to give a book a chance- the 75 books a week is overwhelming.
But I think we’re headed to more of a netflix style bookishness. I blogged about how this could be an enjoyable experience earlier today on http://www.kaykaybe.blogspot.com, if anyone wants a pick-me-up.
-Kelly
And despite it all, many writers continue to dream the dream and press on toward the goal of beating the odds.
Blah, Blah.
First off I find it incredibly enlightening that this “editor” has so many run-on sentences 🙂
If you think his view points about the publishing business vary significantly from business in general than you are not opening your view scope enough.
Every business–whether it be financial, computer, health, or education–is doom and gloom right now. Especially from those that remember the “good ole days”.
The cream always rises to the top regardless of environmental factors.
Write your story.
Write it fucking great.
They will come.
And come hard.
R.T.
Daniel certainly is a literary writer. However, what I gleaned from this was that the mid-list, genre fiction, is probably what kept most publishing houses afloat. The profits from mass-paperbacks is what covered the losses of the “exceptional” books.
So if the big houses fall, it’s because of greed and status having been gained on the backs of the working writers, who churn out readable books every year to fans who read for pleasure.
Hmmm…
A midlist romance writer is what I’ve worked to be. But this requires I’m invisible to literary giants, with the big advances and marketing budgets, because the publisher would rather promote them with the profits of my work.
It’s an interesting way to do business. Let’s take the profits generated by these 25 writers, and invest them all in this one, because it will appeal to a select few.
Yes, I am one of those that feels the ultimate in pampering is with a full-sized hardback novel, a cozy fire, a cup of tea, a crumpet or two… But I can nourish that for free at the library. As of yet, I haven’t invested in an ereader, but that day is coming soon…
*snicker*
“Despite their often intense neediness, writers are often fascinating and stimulating company.”
The guy is a whiny gnit, pure and simple; impressed with the dull drone of his own verse which (I’m in agreement with previous here) tended to natter on like Professor Sominex at the community college.
“Booo hooo hooo, I (sniff) left all that behind. It was utter torture to get everyone behind a tome about Sardinia. Did I mention I know a thing or two about Sardinia?” (Days of wine and roses plays softly in the background)
You love that?
Jaysus, THIS IS WHO WAS BEHIND THE BLOODY scenes REJECTING US? No wonder publishing is dying.
Excuse me, who would read a book this guy edited? Can you imagine what an unmitigated joy that would be? “Needy? Fascinating?” Do you love that? We’re no better than lepers to this sort.
“Oh please Mr. condescending, supercillious Twat, that I might just touch the hem of your robe, and I shall be healed.”
Meantime, for some fun and gallow’s humor read me bloggies. Go nuts. Chin up. There’s always the blogs. http://www.mybladderisfull.blogspot.com
The guy is a whiny gnit, pure and simple; impressed with the dull drone of his own verse which (I’m in agreement with previous here) tended to natter on like Professor Sominex at the community college.
“Booo hooo hooo, I (sniff) left all that behind. It was utter torture to get everyone behind a tome about Sardinia. Did I mention I know a thing or two about Sardinia?” (Days of wine and roses plays softly in the background)
You love that?
Jaysus, THIS IS WHO WAS BEHIND THE BLOODY scenes REJECTING US? No wonder publishing is dying.
Excuse me, who would read a book this guy edited? Can you imagine what an unmitigated joy that would be? “Needy? Fascinating?” Do you love that? We’re no better than lepers to this sort.
“Oh please Mr. condescending, supercillious Twat, that I might just touch the hem of your robe, and I shall be healed.”
Meantime, for some fun and gallow’s humor read me bloggies. Go nuts. Chin up. There’s always the blogs. http://www.mybladderisfull.blogspot.com
The state of fiction is so bad right now, that very little of it should ever be published. I hope the whole thing falls apart and starts over.
Catering to the ignorant so they will keep buying books is ridiculous (i.e. ever shorter chapters, every shorter books, ever simpler sentences, ever easier vocabulary, taboo sex and more taboo sex, middle-age fat-women’s fantasies, and corporate authorship a la James Patterson). It’s an implosion in the making.
You can’t keep dumbing down fiction or eventually you’ll dumb down past the point where your audience actually consists of people who read books.
I just want to write a great story in the genre of the ghost story. I know the elements of a really good story, I just can’t seem to get it down. But I will, and when that day comes, I don’t care if the readers of James Patterson want to read my book. In fact, if that’s who I’ve appealed to, then I would say I’ve failed. Give me ten good writers who think I’ve written a great story, and I can die happy.
We must be artists first and leave the publishing to the agents and editors.
Good Lord, and please pass the hemlock.
And Gordon, way to insult a whole slew of people in one post. Really. Keep at it, I think that tact works well on the internet.
Eva, I am sorry but I will have to second every blessed thing Gordon said. I’ve just re-opened te last copy of the Dan Brown I attempted. Also just read a review of his latest. Blech.
Tack, yes, well, when a ship is sinking of what use is tact? Can one float to shore on it? No.
You see Hitler found a way of dealig with books and people he felt were objectionable. He burned them. He started with the books of course. IN this country, we don’t burn books, heavens no; dreadful thing. No, we simply make them so unreadably trivial and stupid, reading itself becomes an anachronism, a throwback. Some would have us sit round and wave politely at this problem, with ever so much tact. Others hoist the Jolly Roger and call a thing for what it is: BS. Gordon’s right.
With reading, goes freedom, goes a nation. Daniel Menaker is only a symptom: a whiny gnit who seems to blame the writers for a debacle clearly on the shoulders of the publishers who have decided to dumb down the most powerful country in the world.
http://www.mybladderisfull.blospot.com
This may be myopic on my part or even selfish. But regardless of what Menaker said about the current state of publishing and whatever the implications are for writers, I came away from the article grateful that I’m not an editor, but instead a writer. Years ago I took a short stint as an undergrad creative writing teacher (one semester actually) and quickly realized that any job having to do with writing that is not actual writing was sucking the juice out of my work. For those who can do it, great. But I can’t. And of course, getting Menaker’s insight on how brutal the industry is now, is no surprise, considering B & N’s new Boulder store has about 4 aisles out of 40 or so devoted to “fiction & literature”, 20 or so of which are dedicated to toys and music.
Sorry, Eva. I didn’t mean to offend you. I just get carried away in strap-a-bomb-to-myself-and-detonate-in-the-fiction-isle-of-B&N kind of way when I get to thinking about the last time I had a twenty in my tight little fist and walked into the store to get something to actually read.
It would be nice if we could have a decent book burning as David alluded to. We could power Biloxi for a month with all the fuel. Do you realize that for the most part the American reader is not educated enough to read Wuthering Heights and understand it? Or Frankenstein? And yet, even though these books were written in the 19th century, the English is as standard as today’s English. There are no hard words.
But we have become addicted to the McBook. We need it to be fast, full of calories, and nothing we feel compelled to talk about at any great length. We just want it to satisfy an immediate need–to build a turd, if you will.
Literature as one of the arts is the measure by which we judge ourselves as a species, in my humble Darwinian opinion. We have to try harder.
Again. Sorry for the offense. I certainly wasn’t referring to you, personally, I was just venting generally.
Hasta.
Boys will be boys I guess.
Here’s the thing, David and Gordon,
Whose books will you burn? And what about the readers who love those books? You insulted them, too. You judged what they do in thier free time, what taste they have, and the enjoyment they pursue. You have demoted them in your eyes to plebian tastes. So, here’s the thing. They are readers. The LOVE to read. Romance readers read a book a week-most of the ones I know. They are rabidly devoted and they really, really hate it when they are mocked for thier taste. In other words, you would be THRILLED to have them as your fans. Your joy would know no bounds, and you would dance like Snowball the Cockatoo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7IZmRnAo6s
when they gushed to thier friends how much they adored your book and they can’t stand waiting the next year till the next one comes out.
So, you can take your literachoor, give me the voracious reader. I won’t insult them. I’m not ashamed to dance lke Snowball.
PS: I didn’t even give you the call out on the misogynistic tone of your replies. All those stupid women reading genre are messing up your big dreams of selling your books! Pfft, they wouldn’t understand my three syllable words, anyway.
Eva, I wouldn’t burn a single one. Heaven’s no. I don’t advocate burning books. What I am saying is, thoughts and ideas are deselected in this country before they become books through a system of mindlessness called publishing as it is practiced today.
It is working to dumb down our culture.
While Dan Brown and his clones’ stuff gluts the system, those of us who would become the great writers and thinkers of our da are told to do elsewise but write. Why? Well, content is nothing, “platform” is everything. It’s a sham, a shellgame, a lie told to us, so that thoughts can be extinguished before they reach the page. A different sort of “book burning” The only way around this nonsense is to ignore the buggy-whip factory and post on the internet, before the systems of control find a way to dim that down too, silence all indepedent thought, all original content.
Okay, I hear you. Perhaps I even deserve a little of it, but just because masses of people want to read something doesn’t make it good. If that were true, these boilerplate romances would all be Nobel Prize winners.
I have to say, however, if the only way I can be a success is to write to the masses and titillate them, then there’s no point in being a writer. I’m all for all the graphic sex and violence a person wants to use. I’m all for making a story so hot or horrible or both that a reader can’t put it down. What I can’t abide is an author writing for their audience instead of writing about the themes inherent to them and engraved on their soul by the life they’ve led up until that point.
I mean, I have to give Anne Rice her due. She basically bolted at the height of her popularity to revert to her Catholic roots. I won’t ever read one of her religious books, but it’s inspiring to know she doesn’t give a damn.
And I’m not a misogynist. I’m an equal-opportunity misanthrope. Huge difference.
Dang, David. Your comment went up while I was posting mine, but I have to comment: what you said is exactly how I see it, too.
Well said, and thank you for saying it.