Dear Editor: You keep telling us the publishing industry’s in massive transition. But the simple truth is I want to be a writer. What are my prospects?—E.P.G.
Yes, the publishing industry is definitely in massive transition. All kinds of stuff is going on, including publishers throwing out the baby with the bathwater, agents taking on editing chores for which they are not trained and don’t have time, plus a bizarre New Wave of tens of thousands of aspiring fiction writers determined that they, personally, need to be richer than the Queen of England.
The question you must ask yourself is: Do I want to be a writer because I belong to that (wildly unrealistic) New Wave?
Or do I want it because I simply love writing?
The publishing industry as we know it is based on a system established decades and decades ago:
The publisher said, “I will provide, up-front and at my own risk, the financial backing, including the accoutrements of the business like editing, cover design, printing, distribution, marketing, and even a cash loan, in certain cases and under certain circumstances, for the author’s living expenses while they write.”
The agent said, “I will provide, up-front and on my own time, unlimited free hours reading stuff I can’t possibly sell—far, far more hours than anybody will ever realize—in search of golden nuggets, along with my carefully-nurtured professional contacts and my expertise in negotiation and navigating the industry.”
The writer said, “I will provide, up-front and through my own blood, sweat, and tears, unlimited free years and even decades of my time learning this craft until I’m really good at writing those golden nuggets that are worth all this effort to sell, publish, and, finally, read.”
And between the three of them, they turned out a valuable product.
Not usually at much of a profit.
Still, it was stuff they were proud to put their names on.
However, now many players in the industry are trying to renege. They’re saying, “You guys keep providing what you promised to provide, but I’m not going to provide my full contribution anymore. I’m only going to provide as much as I feel like. I’m going to bounce into your business with a couple of years or even less under my belt and expect to be rewarded with enormous profits.”
Understandably, this tends to turn out badly for everybody.
And there’s absolutely nothing agents and publishers can do about this on their end, because their system says, “Thou shalt not charge writers for the hours and hours and hours and hours of free time you spend reading their queries and submissions.” It’s actually part of the AAR license.
Meanwhile, writers are having their expectations altered in recent years from “I will contribute unlimited free years and even decades learning this craft” to “I must be published now.”
Learning to write publishable work takes a really, really, really long time. The only way to get around this is to hire a really, really, really good editor. They’re not all good, and the cheaper ones are not even the ones you need—they’re just copy-editors and, sometimes, guessers. Also, publishers are no longer paying for editing, so you have to be not only really good at writing, you have to be able to afford someone really good at editing, before you can even get an agent’s attention.
So it turns out that love is actually what you need: love of the craft, love of the words, love of the imagination and creativity and characters and plotlines and storytelling and its relationship to language over all other artistic media.
Not love of publication. That’s what agents and publishers are for.
Love of writing.