*Writers who are mesmerized by their own brilliance ("My book is just what I want to read, but I can't find among the crap on the bookshelves at B&N") but money-grubbing agents and editors don't dare give them a chance.
I'm having a problem with this - I am one of the people who don't find many books they want to read on the shelves right now. (I'd never have thought ten years ago that I'd visit four bookstores with middling-to-good SF sections and leave without wanting to buy a single book.)
Overall I am happy with the more likely explanations for why *I* don't sell - but I am seriously thrown by the fact that many of my all-time favorite writers (as in, multi-published, award-winning writers with large fan bases) are _also_ struggling to get publishing contracts, or reach for pen names, or go small press/self-published.
I simply cannot imaging publishing one of my books _instead_ of those BigNameAuthors, and if those BNAs don't get published, I don't see much chance for myself.
So I have a certain amount of sympathy for anyone holding this view. If I didn't write, I'd be just as annoyed that I couldn't find my kind of books on the shelves. I was a reader long before I became a writer, and I am a reader still.
Oh drat. I am entirely unsurprised, unfortunately. You write the kind of books I like, which right now just don't seem to be what publishers are buying.
Unfortunately, the kind of book I love is the only kind of book I know how to write. I am very happy to learn how to write them better, but that's as far as I can go.
Right now, I am slightly distracted by work and the wholesale destruction of my garden, but I think I'm going to do a more detailed post on that topic. Or maybe two.
I'm having a problem with this - I am one of the people who don't find many books they want to read on the shelves right now. (I'd never have thought ten years ago that I'd visit four bookstores with middling-to-good SF sections and leave without wanting to buy a single book.)
Overall I am happy with the more likely explanations for why *I* don't sell - but I am seriously thrown by the fact that many of my all-time favorite writers (as in, multi-published, award-winning writers with large fan bases) are _also_ struggling to get publishing contracts, or reach for pen names, or go small press/self-published.
I simply cannot imaging publishing one of my books _instead_ of those BigNameAuthors, and if those BNAs don't get published, I don't see much chance for myself.
So I have a certain amount of sympathy for anyone holding this view. If I didn't write, I'd be just as annoyed that I couldn't find my kind of books on the shelves. I was a reader long before I became a writer, and I am a reader still.
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Including me!
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Unfortunately, the kind of book I love is the only kind of book I know how to write. I am very happy to learn how to write them better, but that's as far as I can go.
Right now, I am slightly distracted by work and the wholesale destruction of my garden, but I think I'm going to do a more detailed post on that topic. Or maybe two.
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