Deborah Cooke: Author

No, this isn’t about that old television show, The Six Million Dollar Man.

It’s about writing – or, more accurately, about what writers know about publishing.

I was talking this week about the differences between the early 1990’s when I was trying to sell my first book and now, and the differences in the challenges and opportunities facing aspiring writers. One of those differences is the amount of time that industry professionals had available twenty years ago – as I mentioned in the radio interviews, I received only one form rejection letter. I had a big fat file of rejection letters before I sold, but they were all actual letters. Agents and editors took the time to write specific responses to my submissions, acknowledging the individual work’s strengths and noting areas in need of improvement. Sometimes they invited me to submit a revised version of the manuscript. I learned a lot from those letters. I didn’t always agree with the advice, but it was instructive to have other perspectives and suggestions. So, in that period of time, it was easier to get constructive feedback on one’s own work.

It was tougher to find out about the industry at large. (Sit down for this next sentence.) There was no internet. None. You could buy hard copies of books about publishing – one that was updated annually was the WRITERS’ MARKET, a great fat tome – but the information was, of course, somewhat dated by the time an aspiring writer got it. OTOH publishing fiction wasn’t quite as dynamic as it is now. And there were genre-focussed books, like Kathryn Falks’ HOW TO WRITE A ROMANCE AND GET IT PUBLISHED. There was Romantic Times magazine, which sometimes talked about the industry but was mostly geared to readers in those days, and that was about it. RWA existed, but it was a much smaller organization than it is now, and I didn’t even hear of it until after I sold. So, it was harder to get industry information then than it is now.

Now, in contrast, we have this online resource. Publishers have websites, RWA compiles market data and presents it on their website, chapters have websites and listserves, there are bulletin boards run for readers and for writers. There are conferences – there were conferences then, but they were smaller and it was less likely that an individual unpublished writer would attend – and there are online workshops. There are blogs. There are online bookstores and easier access to bestseller lists. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by general information about publishing and about writing romance.

So, technology has made the general information more widely available, but the specific information – the feedback about your own work – is tougher to come by. Industry professionals are pressed for time, and the form rejection letter has become the norm instead of the exception. Aspiring writers can pay for feedback from industry professionals – by taking courses or buying critiques, often at auction – or they can rely upon their fellow unpubs in critique groups formed under the umbrella of RWA and other writing chapters.

It’s always something! You can never get all the information all the time.

What I’m trying to do with the residency at TPL is create a resource on the TPL blog that addresses general questions about publishing, about writing, about the romance genre. And the critiques offered through the residency will give specific feedback to individual writers about their work.

On Monday, we’ll talk about the emergence of the internet, and what it did for writers – yup, mostly because I’m feeling nostalgic.

Meanwhile, tell me what you think. Do you find that there’s a lot of good information available for you as an aspiring writer? Does it help you to focus or does it distract you with possibilities? What’s the best resource you’ve found?