Creative Apathy - Part 3

I suppose we should be grateful for a publishing contract when one finally comes along?

After long days, weeks, months, years of careful plotting and distillation of ideas into a cohesive narrative, our hard work - and I do mean hard work, because as all writers will confess, mentally, the process is exacting - is rewarded by recognition by those who profess to having a knowledge of the literary market.

Word whores.

Publishers care not for the hard work it appears, nor the ideas, the imagination, not even the plot. Publishers care about copy, or more precisely, how many copies they can sell.

Is a book commercially viable?

Is the author a commercial asset?

Is the story worthy of a commercial franchise?

The worthiness of a book is not dictated by syntactic excellence, but by how many people feel it is worth parting with their hard-earned cash for. That is what publishers trade on, and why not? After all, they are in the business of making money from their products.

Safe and familiar may seem the most profitable way forward for publishers, however familiarity breeds contempt and before long those many, many similar novels become pulp as those that drive the market become bored, or tired with a product that offers nothing new. Todays trend becomes yesterdays fad and tomorrows vague recollection.

New. New. New.

New is dangerous. New is uncertain. New is the way forward.

In our fast-moving, consumerist, throw-away society the real trend is forward, bigger, better, faster, more technologically advanced. The innovators of the past are those that went beyond the limits of their own expectation and cast off the shackles of conservative conformity. It is risky, yet when it pays off the rewards are immeasurable.

Traditional publishing is but one way of finding a voice available to the many. There are more options now than ever before and it is within the writers grasp to seize and utilise them.

Admittedly there are authors whose work may not stand the test of time, though it should be market forces that decide their worthiness; it should not be the preserve of those who have cynically manipulated and controlled the marketplace in the past. Cream rises.

Think back. Authors who self-published who later became household names - Joyce, Lawrence, Taylor to name but a few. Publishers initially poured scorn on their work but very shortly after had to sit up and take note as their books became impossible to ignore. Contracts followed.

It is time to shake up the world with your words. Cream does rise and when it does along come the cats, salivating, with their guts moaning, eager for a taste of what that cream has to offer.

All that remains, when that does happen, is to decide whether you like cats or not...