Tis (almost) the season for resolutions. If you're a writer, here's an idea: resolve to get rejected. 100 times this year, if you're lucky. After all, some very famous books (and authors) began their careers at the bottom of the NO pile. To inspire you to keep on writing and submitting, here are some of the most rejected books I could dig up.
Links of the week December 25 2017 (52)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
1 January 2018
Of course, this list is incomplete, and I've given preference to books that were rejected but are now well-known and widely loved. (Books that were rejected many times because they were pretty mediocre are just not as interesting.) Even with the higher-profile books, I discounted those with numbers I couldn't verify, or those that weren't specific enough-for instance, it looks like Margaret Mitchell's oft-repeated 38 rejections is a myth; Alex Haley may have gotten "hundreds" of rejections before publishing Roots, but they weren't all necessarily for the novel; ditto Kate DiCamillo's 473 rejections before Because of Winn-Dixie; Eimear McBride heard nothing but no for A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing for 7 years, but I don't know if she got ten nos or a hundred. Some authors, like Beatrix Potter and Proust, got so many rejections that they decided to self-publish-and good thing they did-but I don't have numbers on those either. If you do, give strength to your fellow rejectees and add on to the list in the comments.
Since I first began writing historical nonfiction books fourteen months ago, I have had to emphasize to everyone, from friends and family, to the caseworker reevaluating my EBT application, that my job isn't nearly as impressive as it sounds. Yes, it requires monumental effort and a certain degree of skill to research, write, and publish a 35,000-word manuscript on a different historical subject every month. But the money it pays barely folds, and as for prestige, my publisher-some guy in New Jersey I've only ever communicated with via email-sticks a male pseudonym on the covers and pays me a lump sum only after I sign an NDA. I see no royalties, and my name never appears in connection with the published books.
The very existence of the books I was being paid to edit offended me as a writer, a reader, and a person who has taken a storyteller's interest in history since I first read about Joan of Arc in a children's encyclopedia in first grade. But far worse was the inconvenient and irreducible sense of responsibility I felt over my role in releasing them into the world. I was the closest thing there was to a gatekeeper in this industry.
As the year draws to a close, I'm looking back on my various successes and failures, and trying to draw up a plan to help my books gain more readers in 2018. Any kind of goal-setting and planning involves a little bit of crystal-ball gazing. Using my experiences of what's been working for me and my author friends, as well as trends observed in the wider publishing industry, I'm making these 10 predictions for indie publishing in 2018.
An author's indie publishing predictions
- Enhanced eBooks will gain traction.
- More retailers will offer paid ads.
- Adult fiction will become primarily digital.
- Facebook will become less effective for authors.
- Authors who build communities will win.
- Niche genres will multiply.
- Authors will work together more.
- Audiobooks will get bigger and better.
- Amazon imprints will continue to dominate.
- Authors will become publishers.
Read on for details on each of these indie publishing trends.
This won't be an objective appraisal of Sue Grafton, who died today of cancer at the age of 77. I was a fan first, reading her Kinsey Millhone novels in high school and sticking with the series all the way to the end. I interviewed her twice: once for the Los Angeles Times in 2009, and four years later, onstage at the Toronto Public Library. I admired her ability to stick with her own voice, not let success go to her head, and to stretch herself in her writing. As the editor of two anthologies of 20th-century crime works by women that were published in 2013 and 2015, I was floored by her kindness in bestowing blurbs when she hardly did that sort of thing anymore.
Trailblazers don't announce themselves upon arrival. Sue Grafton's A Is for Alibi, the 1982 novel that introduced the world to private detective Kinsey Millhone, wasn't seen as the pioneering achievement we now know it to be. Pseudonymous New York Times crime-fiction critic Newgate Callendar sniffed, "Will the series take hold? This first book is competent enough, but not particularly original." Grafton proved him wrong over the next 35 years, gaining millions of readers in nearly 30 countries and languages.
Nowadays, the ebook has a reputation for technological conservatism - so it is easy to forget that there was significant anticipation for the Kindle's arrival ten years ago.
In a 2009 editorial, The Bookseller declared the device was "a giant leap for all". The Kindle was frequently compared to the iPod's transformative effect on the music industry. No wonder - the ebook format promised several advantages. Users could adjust typographic settings for improved accessibility; there was an increased level of portability; and the move to digital distribution promised the ability to purchase publishers' extensive back catalogues.
But despite the early promise of the ebook, many are questioning whether it has lived up to these expectations. In recent years, the ebook has faced significant backlash amid reports of declining sales in trade publishing. The Publishing Association Yearbook 2016 noted a 17% slump in the sale of consumer ebooks while physical book revenue increased by 8%. Over the last couple of years, audiobooks have replaced ebooks as digital publishing's critical darling on the back of a rapid increase in revenue. In this climate, several commentators have asked "how ebooks lost their shine."
The next generation of British authors could struggle to land a book deal after Brexit, according to the publisher who launched Harry Potter writer JK Rowling's career.
The UK's close ties with Europe meant British publishers enjoyed a huge financial benefit from exploiting the exclusive English-language rights to books sold across the continent.
However, US publishing companies such as Simon & Schuster believe Brexit will open the door to competition and break the cosy historical deals enjoyed by British publishers.
"For very big authors, you could argue there will be more competition for their signatures, they may earn more money post-Brexit. A really brutal battle and price war between UK and US publishers would see a focus on big names to maintain and drive profits. But everyone further down the chain from star author status is likely to be worse off."
Each year, 200,000 books are published in the UK, the highest number in the world.
John Ashbery's death in September gave my world a lurch, as the 90-year-old eminent American experimentalist was my favorite living poet. But the compensation was to discover how many others felt the same way. The appreciations became a rare public conversation about poems rather than about Poetry, and what it is or isn't (as in last year's exhausting brouhaha over Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize) or whether it's "dead," or corrupted by elitist obscurism, or replaced by popular music, or secretly thriving. On social media, people posted their favorite Ashbery poems and passages, like this one from 1977's "The Other Tradition," which might seem to refer to those cyclical debates: "They all came, some wore sentiments / Emblazoned on T-shirts, proclaiming the lateness / Of the hour ... "
It was sweet while it lasted. But now the T-shirts have come a-blazing again, because the 25-year-old Canadian poet Rupi Kaur has published her second book, "The Sun and Her Flowers." Kaur is the kind of poet who prompts heated polemics, pro and con, from people you never otherwise hear mention poetry, because among other things she is young, female, from a Punjabi-Sikh immigrant family, relatively uncredentialed and insanely successful. Her first collection, "Milk and Honey," has sold two and a half million copies internationally since it was published in 2014. "The Sun and Her Flowers" debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times paperback fiction best-seller list in October, and has remained near the top ever since.
Following the announcement from Arts Council England that sales of literary fiction are plummeting, it is suggested that arts subsidies be deployed to help writers survive. I have another idea. They should write better books.
Literary fiction is in crisis. A new chapter of funding authors must begin
I barely read literary fiction any more. When I do it is almost always American writers: Michael Chabon, Jonathan Franzen, Anne Tyler, Donna Tartt. Not only are the aforementioned brilliant writers, they are accomplished storytellers. But here, the form of storytelling and literary novel writing has become largely divorced.
But you can be a great writer and a great storyteller as well. Nowadays, long-form television has taken the place of most novels. What distinguishes great TV such as Breaking Bad, The Deuce, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos and many more is the power of the narrative drive. With the great fields of time and scope now opening up on TV, these series have become the new novels. If novelists want to compete they have to up their game.