Someone who shall
remain nameless once emailed me with a ‘great idea’ for a book and listed the
proposed contents. Unable to tell whether it was supposed to be fiction or
non-fiction – no, really – I asked them. ‘I don’t know,’ they replied. ‘What’s
the difference?’
A friend
of a successful writer friend once badgered her to read the manuscript of their
‘first novel’. Foolishly she agreed. It was irretrievably bad, but of course
she couldn’t say that, so she tactfully suggested 'a few changes'. When it was duly rejected by all and sundry, the author blamed my friend for her 'editorial
interference’.
Someone else once sent
me the manuscript of a non-fiction title together with proposed illustrations,
many of which they had simply found online. When I told them it would be essential for them, as the author, to secure the image rights, they poured scorn on my advice and totally ignored it. (I was right.)
The reason why so many
people outside publishing think they know more about the industry than those
inside it is simple. They look at how little those inside the industry are
paid, and rightly conclude that they are idiots.
There's a lot to think about there. The industry is certainly having to change however - perhaps for the better?
ReplyDeleteSage says to tell you he likes this post (but he's put off commenting himself because he found it so complicated last time).
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