Should you hire a book doctor?

Today one of my Twitter pals asked if it's worthwhile for an unpublished writer to have her manuscript professionally edited before sending it to a literary agent. At the risk of offending those who make money editing manuscripts for unpublished writers, I must say that paying a "book doctor" to edit a manuscript in the hope that she will transform it into a salable novel is a colossal waste of both money and time.

Self-editing is a huge part of writing well. A writer who has not yet learned how to ruthlessly edit her own work simply isn't ready for publication. Even major tweaking by a paid professional won't turn the lackluster manuscript of such a writer into anything that would interest an agent or a publishing house.

Publishers are used to looking past grammatical and punctuation errors and even awkward scenes dropped here and there. They know all that stuff can be cleaned up because they do it every day. They're always impressed by a "clean" manuscript, but what they're really looking for is a gripping story told by a talented and skillful writer. That being the case, paying a book doctor to make your story more tempting to agents and publishers makes about as much sense as painting a pig's toenails so it will fetch a higher price at the livestock auction.

A published writer is someone who has learned how to edit her own work. She knows how to tell a good story clearly and concisely. She puts words together in such a way that her sentences sing, her paragraphs dance, and her scenes and chapters begin and end gracefully. Some of that ability came from raw talent; the rest she developed through hard work and by paying close attention to the technique of published authors she admires.

Have you ever eaten at a restaurant where the paint was peeling off the walls and the table was sticky but the food was fabulous? If so, you probably went back again and again for the great food. Contrast that with the experience of dining in a scrupulously clean establishment with cloth napkins and sparkling glasses--and ordinary, unimaginative food. Do you go back to those places? Not if you can help it, you don't.

Publishers know how to take a great story told in an engaging way and turn it into a good book. They're not afraid to buy manuscripts that are a little bit awkward, a little bit messy--as long as those manuscripts sing and dance and fascinate.

The bottom line? Depending on your current level of writing skill and how teachable you are, paying a reputable freelance editor might help you learn some valuable lessons about grammar, word usage, and basic story structure. What it will not do is take a story that's not quite ready for publication and turn it into something wonderful.

You will have to do that all by yourself.

Print-on-demand pubs and their silly demands

By now most everyone who's interested in the publishing world has heard about the furor over Amazon's announcement that they will stop carrying book titles from print-on-demand publishers other than their own BookSurge division. Yes, the news was a shocker, and POD publishers and their authors are understandably worried about losing sales now that they're no longer welcome at the Amazon party. But there's a difference between being disappointed and being cheated, not that you'd pick that up from the complaints that have been so shrilly voiced in recent weeks by the displaced publishers and authors.

Take a look at this snippet from a recent article in Publishers Weekly:

Saying it is reviewing the antitrust and other legal implications of Amazon’s “bold move,” the Authors Guild sent an e-mail late Friday [April 4] to its membership questioning the motives—and implications—of the e-tailer’s new position on print-on-demand that makes publishers use its BookSurge division if they want the sell their titles on Amazon in the traditional manner. While Amazon is pitching the move as a consumer-friendly change that will improve the speed of shipping books and other products, the Guild says it suspects the motivation has more to do with profit margin than customer service.

So what if it does have more to do with profit margin?

I don't get why everyone seems to believe it's horribly unfair (and possibly illegal) for Amazon to quit stocking POD titles except for the ones published by its own BookSurge. Doesn't the store belong to Amazon? And doesn't a retail outfit have the right to decide what it will and will not sell?

If I were an Amazon stockholder, I'd be glad to know the company planned to stop making available POD books other than their own. I'd say that was probably a smart business move. Why should Amazon promote their competition?

Amazon is a for-profit corporation looking to increase its profits. I don't see anything shocking or disgusting about that. But the Writers Guild is leveling "antitrust" accusations:

If Amazon is successful in wresting a large chunk of pod business away from current leader Lightning Source (which the Guild says does a good job), they will have taken a huge step in controlling publishing’s supply change and thus control much of the industry’s long tail business, the Guild said. “Once Amazon owns the supply chain, it has effective control of much of the "long tail" of publishing,” the statement reads. “Since Amazon has a firm grip on the retailing of these books (it's uneconomic for physical book stores to stock many of these titles), owning the supply chain would allow it to easily increase its profit margins on these books: it need only insist on buying at a deeper discount -- or it can choose to charge more for its printing of the books -- to increase its profits. Most publishers could do little but grumble and comply.”

I'm no legal expert, but it seems to me that it's going to be difficult to build an antitrust case on the giant online retailer's refusal to stock certain products.

But maybe I'm missing something. If you'd like to weigh in on this, hit the Comments button.

Getting published: treasure from the slush pile?

I saw this a couple of days ago at The Guardian Book Blog, but didn't link to it because it looked like one of those items everyone else would link to. But I haven't seen anyone pick it up, so here's a snipet from an eye-opening article called, "The shocking truth about the slush pile":

If your typescript comes back to you in your self-addressed stamped envelope and it looks like the whole thing hasn't been read, it probably hasn't, because it isn't very good. If your reader doesn't feel compelled to turn the first page, she's not going to read to the end.

But before you start sticking knives in your publishing assistant voodoo doll consider this: when someone tells you that your sample chapters don't set her heart and mind on fire, it doesn't mean that your work won't sparkle for someone else. A couple of months ago, a photographer friend of mine took the jacket photo of an author for a forthcoming title from a major house. I had rejected the book. Twice.

I get in trouble every time I suggest to my romance-writing friends that editors probably don't read every word of every submission--not even the query letters. "That's not very supportive," someone will always say, causing me to wonder yet again how warm fuzzies could be more important to some writers than actually learning how this industry works.

Publishing is a business. Editors don't read manuscripts to encourage writers, but to find books they can make money on. Facing that reality is the first little bump on the road to publication. Get over it and get on with your journey.

On the unfathomable mysteries of book-publishing

There are writers out there who know their novels are good enough to sell, but who find the publishers aren't biting. They twist their brains into knots trying to figure out why so many poorly-written, predictable novels are snaped up by acquiring editors when their manuscripts don't even get a full read. Those people and many others will find some eye-opening quotes in yesterday's New York Times article about the shocking cluelessness of the book-publishing industry. The article pretty much spells out that deciding which books to buy (or not) is no more exact a science than picking winning ponies at the race track.

There are quite a few eyebrow-raisers in the article. I'll quote some of them:

Publishers...put up Web sites where, in some cases, readers can sign up for announcements of new titles. But information rarely flows the other way — from readers back to the editors.

“We need much more of a direct relationship with our readers,” said Susan Rabiner, an agent and a former editorial director. Bloggers have a much more interactive relationship with their readers than publishers do, she said. “Before Amazon, we didn’t even know what people thought of the books,” she said.

Why not? How hard would it be to ask?

Most in the industry seem to see consumer taste as a mystery that is inevitable and even appealing, akin to the uncontrollable highs and lows of falling in love or gambling. Publishing employees tend to be liberal arts graduates who enter the field with a starting salary around $30,000. Compensation is not tied to sales performance. “The people who go into it don’t do it for the money, which might explain why it’s such a bad business,” Mr. Strachan said.

That's an interesting observation. But it's a "bad business" all around, as few published authors are able to make a good living, either. I lay that at the door of publishers, who make money purely by accident and who lose it by sheer stupidity. That's some business model you've got there, friends!

Eric Simonoff, a literary agent at Janklow & Nesbit Associates, said that whenever he discusses the book industry with people in other industries, “they’re stunned because it’s so unpredictable, because the profit margins are so small, the cycles are so incredibly long, and because of the almost total lack of market research.”

Why haven't publishers made any discernable effort to get a handle on what makes readers buy some books and not others? How is selling books different from selling potato chips or running shoes? Can't somebody interview a few bookbuyers and find out why certain books are bestsellers and others aren't?

They could, but they don't. I mean, they really don't. There is no business in the world like publishing. Here's more:

The industry does follow trends to pursue growth, but when it comes to acquisitions, methods have not changed much in hundreds of years, says Al Greco, a professor of marketing at Fordham University.

IT’S the way this business has run since 1640,” he says. That is when 1,700 copies of the Bay Psalm Book were published in the colonies. “It was a gamble, and they guessed right because it sold out of the print run. And ever since then, it has been a crap shoot,” Professor Greco said.

“It’s guesswork,” says Bill Thomas, editor in chief of Doubleday Broadway. “The whole thing is educated guesswork, but guesswork nonetheless. You just try to make sure your upside mistakes make up for your downside mistakes.”

Yet publishers still stubbornly avoid doing even the most basic market research.

Some experts wonder if book publishers might uncover more [successful] books...if they tried harder to find out more about their buyers and what they want.

“The Newspaper Association of America has a staggering amount of data on people who read newspapers. The book business has, basically, nothing,” said Professor Greco. “They’re not going into the marketplace and doing mall intercepts and asking people, as they leave the bookstore, ‘What did you buy? Did you find what you’re looking for? What motivated you to choose that book?’”

An exception is the consumer research gathered by the Romance Writers of America, a writers’ association that publishes a regular market study of romance readers. It reports survey information on, for example, demographics, what respondents are reading, where they are getting the books and how often, and what kind of covers attract them. Romance authors and publicists use the information to create promotional campaigns.

Most publishers, though, continue to gather data on sales and not much else, though past performance is certainly no guarantee of future results, even from the same author.

I've always found the RWA stats interesting but not particularly helpful, as the depth and breadth of the surveys is limited by financial considerations. But at least the romance writers are trying to figure out what people enjoy reading and why. The publishers are doing nothing at all.

Unless gazing into crystal balls counts as market research.

New trend: teenagers buying books

This morning Sarah Weinman at Galleycat linked to an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I clicked over to the PI and got a giddy little thrill from the headline, "Teens buying books at fastest rate in decades." Here's a juicy excerpt:

It's a time of strong writing and strong sales as readers in the 12-to-18 age group rock the marketplace.

"Kids are buying books in quantities we've never seen before," said Booklist magazine critic Michael Cart, a leading authority on young adult literature. "And publishers are courting young adults in ways we haven't seen since the 1940s."

Credit a bulging teen population, a surge of global talent and perhaps a bit of Harry Potter afterglow as the preteen Muggles of yesteryear carry an ingrained reading habit into later adolescence.

Not only are teen book sales booming -- up by a quarter between 1999 and 2005, by one industry analysis -- but the quality is soaring as well. Older teens in particular are enjoying a surge of sophisticated fare as young adult literature becomes a global phenomenon.

That's very good news for society and for the publishing industry. And for romance writers, too:

Fantasy and graphic novels are especially hot, and adventure, romance, humor and gritty coming-of-age tales remain perennial favorites.

There are a lot more kids in this new generation than I realized:

There are many reasons for the turnaround, not least the sheer size of the teen population -- well over 30 million kids with ready cash in their pockets. Called Gen Y or Millennials, they trail only the baby boomers in number.

"The publishing world has recognized that teens have a lot of disposable income, and they're willing to spend it," Nelson said. "They buy books. They (especially) buy paperbacks."

Excellent. I think I'll go write one.