The Artistic Commodity

Because I'm a new writer, I read a lot of stuff about writing, how to get an agent, and how to get published.

The main piece of advice everyone tells you is, "Write something good."

In many forms, over and over, this is the advice you will hear. Agents want something good; editors want something good; publishers want something good. "Write the best story you can! The rest will take care of itself," fellow writers say. "All we want to know is, can you write? Is your story fresh/exciting/gripping/extraordinary?" agents and editors say. "We want something great, if it's crap don't send it!"

Doesn't this sound good? Only quality gets published. Nothing else has a hope in hell. What a terrific business.

Dude, have you read the crap that gets published out there? My bullshit alarm is tripping. Someone is lying. I don't know who it is, but someone is.

No agent or editor claims to want material that won't sell, of course. They are upfront about the fact that publishing is a business and they require paychecks like the rest of us. But at the same time they all claim that they want quality AND saleability. It has to be a combination of both.

And yet, somebody is publishing crap, and lots of it. In fact, a lot of places are publishing crap that is the purest, thinnest, barely-written, overtired, fad-induced writing you have ever seen, put in trade paperback form to bilk the public of $18 per unit, put on the market purely for the purpose of making money and nothing else. The writer submitted stale crap to someone, and someone published it for a paycheck. Quality never entered into the deal.

Why?

1. Agents and editors, hope for quality, but rarely get it.

2. Agents and editors say they want quality, but are willing to publish all kinds of crap to make money, and won't tell you that.

3. Agents work on commission, so have to sell to make money; editors work with quotas, putting out so many books per line per month or whatever. Both of them have deadlines and numbers to meet. So they do the best they can.

4. Both agents and editors are so overworked that they don't have time to do a good job with every project.

5. Some agents and editors have terrible taste and don't know what good writing looks like.

It's probably a combination of all of these. Also, the money made from the crap increases the bottom line for the publisher, which means the publisher can take the odd financial hit from the low-selling literary-masterpiece stuff. You know, the "I only make big blockbusters to finance my artistic indie career" thing. So they publish crap, and they will keep publishing crap, for as long as people buy crap. And they just won't admit it.

Which leaves some of us writing the best we can, and hoping for the best in the crapshoot.

Abby