Deborah Cooke: Author

Today, I’m starting a new series of Thursday posts. Although they’re still within the Wild West Thursday category, they’re linked. These posts are about the current state of publishing, along with some observations and speculations about where we’re headed from here. There are no right answers and no absolutes, but thinking about the changes to the industry and looking for trends can help us make some guesses as to where we’re headed. That, in turn, can shape the decisions of writers and of readers. I’d love if you shared your own comments and observations, not because any one of us can see the future but because more information makes for better theories.This first post is about the changing landscape of fiction from a reader’s perspective – because I’m a reader, too.

Recently I’ve been working my way through a stack of books, both real and digital, almost all of which are first books by the authors. They are all self-published. Some of these authors are people I know well, some are acquaintances, some I’ve never met but for one reason or another was intrigued by their book. I’ve bought the vast majority of these books, although some have been given to me in the hope of a review quote. Collectively, they have gotten me to thinking about the current state of publishing, how that affects the experience of readers and, more importantly, where we go from here.

Not a one of these books is a bad book, yet not a one of them is an excellent book either. By and large, they are okay books. They’re not ridiculous or implausible or badly edited, yet they’re not especially engaging or interesting either. They kind of blur together. Maybe they’re “safe” books. The New York word might be “competent”. They certainly don’t have that extra oomph that makes a book a compelling and memorable read, much less one that you push into the hands of your friends. I’ve been trying to figure out why that is.

For many of these authors, this is their first book, and as such is a beloved work. There’s really nothing so special as your first book. It’s hard to write a book. (It’s harder to write a good book, much less a great one.) All of these books are well-packaged and well-edited – you could say that they have been lovingly published, which is even better than being published with enthusiasm. If these books were going to go out into the world, this is the best possible way for them to do so.

What I’m wondering is whether they should be out in the world. That sounds harsh, but let’s walk through it. I’ve written a number books that were never published, including my first three books (and several more since then.) I loved these books more than life itself – especially that first one – but the truth is that my love for them blinded me to their weaknesses. I had file folders stuffed with rejection letters for those books, some of which were thorough and articulate as to why the books wouldn’t be published by that house, and others that were just dismissive. I have form letter rejections, too. At the time that I was gathering these rejections, I was sure that all the editors and agents in question were wrong. I knew my books were wonderful, so I carefully saved them, in anticipation of the day an editor would appreciate them for what they were.

It was years later when I was packing them up for a second move that Mr. Math asked me why I was bothering. He wasn’t being insensitive – he really didn’t understand why I felt compelled to keep this two-foot tall stack of paper. (Yes, this was in the day when we backed up on paper!) I decided to crack one open and read it, to prove that it was a gem worth the trouble of keeping. The problem was that the book wasn’t a brilliant gem. It was okay. It wasn’t awful and it wasn’t fabulous. With the distance of years, I could be more objective about it and I could see its flaws. Although there were some passages I liked (and some ideas I liked) the fact was that I could do a better job with every single sentence if I had chosen right then to revise that book. I realized that it would be easier to rewrite the book from scratch than to revise it. That made me glad that it had never been published. They were all the same in that trait (I checked them all) so they all went into the shredder and the recycling bin, never to be packed and moved again.

I don’t miss them. When those books were fresh and new and securely in my heart, I would never have believed that they were mediocre. If there had been a way in the early 90’s for me to publish them myself and prove that the editors and agents were wrong, I would have done it in a heartbeat. (Vanity press did exist then, but it would have cost me about $10,000 per title and filled my apartment with cartons of print books instead of a single stack of paper.) In a real sense, the “gatekeepers” saved me from myself.

Gatekeepers. Even if you don’t know the term, you can guess its meaning. Agents and editors are referred to as gatekeepers quite frequently in the indie publishing world. One of the consistent themes in indie-publishing circles (or self-publishing circles) is that the gatekeepers of publishing keep all of us from our inevitable commercial success. The concept is that agents and editors block writers and their work, that they say “no” more often than they say “yes”, and that their choices keep deserving books out of the marketplace. By this logic, all the denied books have an audience, so gatekeepers are doing a disservice to both writers and readers.

I’m wondering if it’s actually the other way around. While it’s true that I don’t love every single book that is traditionally published, I do have a higher “hit” rate than I’ve had with this stack of books. Often the traditionally published books that I don’t love are ones I hate. I’ve never been so overwhelmed by indifference before. I’ve never read so much mediocre craft or works devoid of voice. Maybe I was just unlucky, but it was a pretty big sample. There are marvelous indie books that are finding their audience, and I’m not arguing that trend or the merit of those books. I’m certainly not tarring the whole industry with the same brush. But the question remains – are there books that should remain unpublished?

Who should decide?

Or maybe the better question is – are authors the best judges of the respective merit of their own books? Authors are certainly not impartial about our own work. It took years for me to have any objectivity about my early books – and I might not be entirely objective now. That partiality means that perhaps authors aren’t the best party to judge the relative merit of the work. We love everything we write and in this market, we can publish everything that we write. Easily. Previously, we could only easily submit everything we wrote to a publisher.

This means that the “slush” pile has moved into the marketplace.

“Slush” is a name that publishers and agents use for unsolicited book manuscripts. It’s a reference to typed book manuscripts arriving in quantity. You can easily imagine a publisher unlocking the office door on Monday morning to find a huge white pile of typed sheets that have been shoved through the mail slot. Of course, slush never came in that way – even typed book manuscripts were bound and placed in envelopes – but it’s an apt analogy. If you detect a bit of derision in the term, you’re probably right – there is a prevailing idea that the vast majority (probably in excess of 99%) of slush is unpublishable, or unworthy of publication. (Lots of squishy judgements here – define “unworthy”. It probably means “unlikely to make money”.)

My point is simply that as indie publishers step around traditional publishers and go straight to the marketplace, the slush pile has moved from the offices of publishers to the digital-first publication list at any bookselling portal. Anyone can publish a book. There are no gatekeepers wading through the slush first.

This change is both good and bad – we’re seeing tremendous diversity in fiction as a result of this change. The gatekeepers, for example, had narrowed historical romance pretty much to the Regency period. Now the knights and Vikings and Highlanders are back, as well as stories set in the Ancient world, and that’s pretty exciting.

The downside, of course, is that readers need to go through the slush. It means that readers have to read, scan or skim a lot more to find something they actually want to savor. Editors and agents go through the slush as part of their job responsibilities. They get paid to do it. Most readers have another job (or two) and just want to read for pleasure – they pay to read, not the other way around. As a reader, I don’t want to sift through slush. It’s too much work. I want someone else to winnow out the dross and leave me the gold (Don’t we all!) EVEN with the understanding that what is gold is a bit of a subjective call. Having survived this particular TBR pile, though, helps me to better understand some things my agent has said over the years about curating books.

We’ll talk about curating books next week.

Why does it matter? Well, the downside of repeat disappointment, of course, is that readers might find something else to do than read. Having fewer readers in the world is never a good thing for writers. The ripple effect on the lack of gatekeepers could be huge. After my recent experience, I picked up my knitting last night instead of starting to read another book.

So, let’s talk about it. As a reader, do you welcome the variety of indie-published titles or are you feeling overwhelmed by choices? Are you finding lots of unexpected gems, or have you been disappointed enough that you’re getting fed up? Is indie publishing bad for you as a reader, or good?