User: kradical Date: 2006-01-01 18:36 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: writing

*shrug* Happens. People have different tastes, and what appeals to one editor will be despised by others. All this reveals is that editors have biases, which is hardly news. If they didn't have biases, they'd accept everything.

And winning a Nobel Prize for literature doesn't mean you won't get rejected, obviously. *laughs*

User:	lonp
Date:	2006-01-01 18:47 (UTC)
Subject:	(no subject)

Boy are there a lot of things wrong with the basic assumptions of this stunt. But the top two for me can be pulled from this sentence:

The exercise by The Sunday Times draws attention to concerns that the industry has become incapable of spotting genuine literary talent.

1) Far as I know, the nameless floating concept of "the publishing industry" (as much as such an animal could ever be pinned down) has never really been about spotting genuine literary talent; rather it has been about finding what books will sell to the readers of their time in sufficient numbers to produce a profit. People looking for talent independent of marketability should start a foundation/contest or pin their work to their refrigerators or something rather than call themselves a part of the "publishing industry". Or so I would think.

2) Actually, all the exercise seemed to show was that what editors thought people would pay to read in the seventies is--gasp--not the same as what they think people want to read in the 21st century. (And of course now is a good time to shudder and bemoan the technological world we live in where Xbox and the Cartoon Network get more leisure time than a bunch of middle-age angsty literary riffs on the theme of "boy life sure is weird and sucky, but I guess that's okay by me."

An don't get me started on the fallacies involved in the concept of "having/discovering new talent"

Oops. I let my jaded side out again. ;)

User: mroctober Date: 2006-01-01 18:53 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

It's a sad, sad, publishing industry.

User: beth_bernobich Date: 2006-01-01 19:28 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I'm not an agent or editor, but may I comment?

This isn't a new stunt. What I've heard from editors is that they recognize the novels and simply send back a rejection because they don't want to play games, or make accusations of cheating.

User: pnh Date: 2006-01-01 19:36 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I've seen some variation on this chestnut every year or two for the entire twenty years I've been working in the industry. Granted, this is a particularly thorough version, culminating as it does in a fine kids-today-don't-know-what's-good rant from Stanley Middleton. (And their music! It's just noise!)

It's not my job as an editor to decide what's "worthy" of publication. It's my job to find and acquire books that Tor can do a good job of publishing. I've passed on some very good books for which I felt we weren't the right house.

I also haven't read every well-regarded novel in the English language, and some of those which I have read I would certainly have rejected if they'd been submitted as new work to Tor in 2006. So the gotcha! aspect of this stunt also fails to impress.

User: dinogrl Date: 2006-01-01 19:41 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: trek

Oh dear, what awaits for me if I get brave enough to submit.
The last statement in the article is pretty disturbing, especially as I have to teach what elements make a good paragraph.

User:	ellameena
Date:	2006-01-01 19:43 (UTC)
Subject:	(no subject)

It's no secret that most slush doesn't get carefully read at big publishing houses, so it's not surprising that stuff that's being returned unread, or after an 18-year-old intern scanned the first and last pages, could actually be previously published, award-winning books. I suppose it's the nature of the business. I think we'd have better books if merit was the only consideration, but it's not. It's probably not even in the top three.

User: norilana Date: 2006-01-01 20:15 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I was going to make the same comment as beth_bernobich -- it is very possible the novels were recognized as such, and simply rejected in quiet, in order not to accuse anyone of anything underhanded and potentially litigational.

User: casacorona Date: 2006-01-01 20:59 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I am not the least bit surprised. Editors and agents are not in the business of discovering and nurturing talent. We are in the business of finding commercial fiction which will make money for our bosses. Award winning fiction is rarely bestselling fiction, alas.

And the fact that a novelist would be rejected when submitting pseudonymously to her own house also doesn't surprise me. So much of what sells is sold on name-value. I made a depressing experiment with that last year -- we published a pseudonymous work by one of our bestselling writers, and though it was really good, it flopped. If I could talk him into reissuing under his own name, I'm sure we'd sell a zillion.

User: pnh Date: 2006-01-02 21:54 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Of course, when you actually think about it in information-processing terms, for readers to buy books based on "name recognition" represents an entirely rational strategy.

There are hundreds of thousands of new books every year. There's nothing discreditable about using the tools at our disposal to narrow our choices.

To repeat a panel observation made by TNH, how many times in our lives have we wandered into a bookstore saying to ourselves "I want to buy a work by an unheralded new voice"?

User: etcet Date: 2006-01-01 22:45 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Just because someone's won the nobel prize doesn't mean they're incapable of writing utter shite.

Frankly, I see this as good news, because otherwise, there would be absolutely no point for us unpublished fucks to bother trying; "Oh, so-and-so's been published, let's take their work, there's no reason to look at the stuff from the unpublished untouchables."

User: squirrel_monkey Date: 2006-01-02 21:30 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Interesting analysis here:
http://scrivenerserror.blogspot.com/2006/01/and-gold-medal-in-conclusion-jumping.html