So: Why am I doing this Web page?

Let me tell you. I’m assuming that “you” are a student in an MFA writing program, or simply an aspiring novelist. I hope to spare you at least some of the frustration and disappointment I suffered because I didn’t understand what “getting published” really meant.

My first impression of what an author’s life was like came from Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. My family got a volume every season, and I read the author bios with keen interest. The details varied, but they always gave the sense that this guy (in those days, almost always a guy) might not be Hemingway, but he had it made. He lived in, say, Connecticut with his wife, kids, and dog, and every morning he went to his study, lit his pipe, and wrote a chapter. His publisher and his readers were waiting.  Every year or so he published another novel, and in old age he would have a shelf of his books above his desk.

Acceptance of your first novel, I assumed, was the only ticket you needed to be admitted to this wonderful world.

No doubt Reader’s Digest was giving us the glamorized version of its authors’ lives, but there was probably some truth to it in the late 1950s. Novelists had a golden century, from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century.  Good public schooling provided a large literate public, which had fewer choices of other ways of entertaining themselves.  Many have suggested that people in publishing were more honorable and less greedy back then, too, but we’ll let that pass. What we do know is that a publisher, when he accepted a first novel, was usually committing to continue publishing the author until he built up an audience. Or at the very least, to give him a few more chances.

Things have changed.  The fiction-reading public has shrunk drastically, according to the NEA’s 2004 report “Reading at Risk”. Other authorities disagree, but it’s unquestionable that the public is more fragmented, more distracted, and much more difficult to interest in a first novel—or subsequent novel by an unknown. It simply isn’t worth the publisher’s investment and effort, unless they see the potential for big, fast sales.

In the ‘80s, the term ‘getting published’ suffered inflation and devaluation. The number of first novels published went up steadily. My guess is that the support offered each author got thinned in proportion. It’s hard to avoid the impression that publishers were just throwing authors against the wall in handfuls to see if anybody stuck. That might be a good marketing strategy, but it’s kind of tough on writers. That’s why we need to clear the golden fog from our heads and define what getting published means.

My ‘classmates’ from spring 1977 found out the hard way. Some of them have done every well; five have published novels in the double-digits. Others, not so fortunate, have still demonstrated great persistence and ingenuity in finding ways to put their work before the public. But these writers and their agents have had to hustle. These authors, with one exception, didn’t “get published” once and for all. They got a publisher. A few years later, they had to get another one.  And the more often you have to go looking, the tougher it is to find one.

“It used to be a marriage, between publisher and author. Now it’s a one-night stand.”
--Francis M. Nevins, mystery novelist and law professor, 1978

By now you’re thinking that all I want to do is bum you out. Not so. This news should actually cheer you up. If the publishing set-up of the last 30 years had served authors well instead of badly, that would be something to get depressed about. Because things are changing again—this time, maybe, for the better.  

No one can accurately predict the future of publishing. My guess would be that the big New York publishers will still be around, continuing to search for the next Da Vinci Code, and dropping authors and firing editors who fail to deliver it. But alternatives are arising.

 “Over the next few years, the traditional definition of what a ‘published book’ is will have less meaning.”  
--Steve Riggio, CEO of Barnes and Nobel, to Chris Anderson, 2006

Riggio heads a company that owns hundreds of bookstores as well as one of the largest book websites. He is the man an author who wants to sell books needs to impress. He says he isn’t going to be that impressed with the traditional published book. So he’s open to new alternatives. Young writers, take note.

These new alternatives involve various ways of opening up book production, distribution, and marketing to authors, as well as alternatives to books. So, it’s reasonable to assume that authors will have to do more work, and most of them will probably make even less money. But I urge you: don’t hesitate to consider novel (excuse the pun) opportunities because you’re faithful to traditional publishing.

Not that I’m blind to the attraction. “Getting published” is still a phrase to conjure with. It’s like getting into Harvard or marrying your true love or winning the big game. It’s a movie fade-out moment, because from here on, the hero is supposed to live happily ever after.

More seriously, perhaps, it answers to writers’ need to set a threshold. Every profession needs to separate the men from the boys, the pros from the amateurs, the serious from the dilettante. Creative writing has a particularly strong need, for several reasons. There are so many aspirants and so few successes. As an activity, writing is so solitary, unstructured, almost insubstantial. We don’t have the certification formalities of more organized professions, the degrees and exams and board certifications. We don’t have offices with our job titles on the door. “Published author” is the only title we’ve got.

But when we unpack  traditional “publication,” what do we find? 

It’s acceptance. It cuts you apart from and sets you above the herd who only get rejection slips.

Well, yes and no. You or, even better, your agent can now write a much more impressive cover letter to your manuscript. But published authors still get rejections—along with the occasional acceptance. The only way to protect yourself from the pain of rejection is to stop submitting.

It’s an editor’s favorable opinion.

Praise from an editor is wonderful, but don’t get drunk on it.  In my experience, editors have remarkable literary acumen. But you shouldn’t value your editor’s opinion more highly than her employer does. Publishers think editors are almost as expendable as authors.

Your editor’s backing counts with the publisher only until the sales figures come in. If they’re low, she may not be frank with you. The truth is, “Your sales are unsatisfactory, so I can’t accept your second book.” But if she says that, you may reply, “It’s your fault my sales are low.”  Instead, she’ll turn literary critic. She’ll say your prose has lost the crystalline limpidity it once had, etc. True or false, that’s probably irrelevant to the decision to publish your second book, but it’ll shut you up, and that’s all she wants at  this stage.

That’s why it’s dangerous to wallow in an editor’s praise as much as you are tempted to.

It’s a contract that ensures your book will be published.

 That’s usually true (Though not always—if the editor gets fired or the publisher changes hands, the new people may not publish, and you can’t make them.)

But what do publishers mean by publish? Let’s quote one.

“To publish a book is to do more than print and distribute it. Publishing is trying to find an audience for a book.” 
 --Howard Kaminsky, president of Warner books,  to Whiteside, 1981

Kaminsky is speaking for himself here. Print and distribute is what most publishers do for most of their authors. You may think, when a publisher buys your book, that you are in the major leagues. In fact, you are most likely on the farm team. The size of your advance is a reliable indicator. If it’s low, print and distribute is all you’re scheduled for. Publishers always insist that, in the interval between acquisition and publication, they are alert to sub rights interest, enthusiasm from the sales force, internet buzz, or any other sign  that might suggest there’s a potential audience out there. If they see these signs, they will buy advertising, send the author on tour, order huge print runs, etc. That’s what publishers always say, yet authors remain skeptical.

You’ll be paid—for writing!

Yes, and that’s nothing to sneer at.  But it probably won’t be enough to let you quit your day job.

You have credibility because professionals have invested in you.

True. This credibility, having someone to vouch for you, to say to readers that you are worth reading, is the most important thing a publisher can do for you, in these times when you don’t need a manufacturer to publish a book, and you don’t even need a book to get your writing out. Even today, in the words of marketing guru Chris Jackson, you need to show the consumer that your work has been through a “filter” to get people to buy it.

But a publisher isn’t the only one who can do this for you. The best voucher-for or filter a novelist could have, in the ‘90s, wasn’t a publisher at all but Oprah Winfrey.  

To sum up: traditional publication is nice, but not what it’s cracked up to be. And no longer is it the only game in town.

I hope you find this Web site helpful in two ways. Its first and more obvious use is as a source of tips. Members of the class of ’77 have tried many tactics for getting their work out which might prove useful or encouraging to you in the New Era soon to come upon us—self-publishing like Chesbro or Slosberg, switching genres in mid career like  Zaroulis or Townley, authoring computer games and “hyperfictions” like Swigart.

The second, less obvious but more important way in which this site can be useful is in suggesting the negotiations with yourself that you must undertake if you want to (in that famous phrase) “work at the writer’s trade.” You need flexibility and persistence, and you cannot give in to your hunger for validation.

In the 1989 movie New York Stories, the segment written by Richard Price centers on Lionel Dobie, a famous artist. His winsome young mistress Paulette is an aspiring artist herself, and she hectors him throughout, asking “Am I good? Have I got talent? Am I the real thing?”  

Finally an exasperated Nolte bursts out: “Why do you keep asking me that? What makes you think I know? If you’re an artist, you just do it.”

“Just doing it” doesn’t come naturally. You have to learn how. It’s the essential quality for a writer who wants a professional career. Even if you were one of those lucky guys in the ‘50s, with your pipe, dog, and loyal publisher, you still had to have it. In a future full of changes and unknowns, one thing we can be sure of is that it’s going to be even more crucial.  

“Having read (and believed) the depressive truths I have communicated, do you still wish to become a writer? Do you sill prefer the hideous mischance of authorship to the safe comfortable and prosperous occupations of the miner, the airman, the racing motorist, the soldier, the statesman, the steeplejack, the nurse, the charwoman or the housebreaker? Then you are born to authorship as the sparks fly upward. Good luck to you!”
       --Frank Swinnerton, 1932