Is Publishing Every Writer’s Ultimate Destination?
I think we’re all very conditioned to believe that publishing our work is the be-all end-all. But the truth is, that is not always going to be the case.
There are plenty of people who are perfectly content to just write and then stick their stuff in a drawer. It’s overly personal, perhaps. Or maybe they need to do more work on it.
I hear ya, folks.
That is all perfectly fine. You are totally cool!
But then, there are these people.
Perfect is the Enemy of Good and the Good Enough
I imagine a lot of the writing community is neurotic, or at least I guess I hang out with them the most.
Guilty as charged.
But here is where it gets awfully tricky.
These are not people who are avoiding publishing because they need to do work on their stuff. Nope.
No, these are people who are staying far away from publishing because they have been editing for years. They feel their stuff is no good, and may entertain occasional (or even frequent) thoughts of just trashing everything.
And so they polish. And polish. Then they polish their works some more. They polish until they have rubbed anything interesting, different, or quirky out of their prose. Or original, too.
You Can Stop Now
Or, as James Cromwell said in the movie Babe, “That’ll do.”
Seriously.
It wasn’t until 2022 that I first met someone who had been editing their work for a good decade or more. This is not a series of books or even more than one book.
It is editing for just one book. One, sports fans. Uno. Srsly.
That blew my mind. And now, even months later, guess what? It still blows my mind.
But here’s a dirty little secret, folks.
Publishing Companies Brought This Upon Themselves
Or, rather, I suppose you can say that publishers just did their thing. And then we, the writers, jacked it all up to infinity.
What the hell am I talking about?
I’m so glad you asked.
I Blame You, Bill Gates (No, Not Really)
In the mid-1980s, my brother published a book on charitable giving. Pantheon gave him a contract, an advance, and everything. They took care of the promotions. And when he was writing it, he had to go to libraries, and do legwork by visiting various charity offices as well. It took him months. The publisher did the editing, if I recall correctly.
And the advance? It was spent on all that research. There was a high barrier to entry.
Now let’s fast forward to 2013, when Untrustworthy was published by Riverdale Avenue Books.
I wrote it for NaNoWriMo in less than a month. No research was necessary as it is a wholly fictional piece. I hired an editor and paid her, although RAB did last minute editing which was probably a lot more like proofreading. And I was responsible for nearly all the promoting. Which I’ll admit I could have done a lot better.
A lot better.
It does not help that a good 427,000 people participated in NaNo last year.
Does this mean that everyone has a book in them? Maybe. But there are a lot of people who really just have a terrible book in them.
The Onslaught of Written Material
For people in the publishing industry, it has got to be a lot like hacking away at an invasive plant like kudzu. They get tons of submissions. Some are great! Some are awful. No doubt, most are somewhere in between.
As a person who has had to field a lot of inquiries (and say no a lot of the time), I can guarantee you that they are using macros or other templates to answer most writers. And I can also guarantee that virtually every rejection is not personal.
But Publishing Needs a Way to Cope
Due to this continual tsunami of new material, publishers have got to be ruthless. And they have got to be fast. Hence a piece has really got to be perfect—but only from their perspective. If your novel is 100% A++ material, but it’s not in a genre that they publish, then they are going to turn you down.
In fact, they probably won’t get past your cover letter or, maybe, the first few pages. Once they determine you’re not writing in a genre they put out, they’ll send a rejection notice and move onto the next thousand manuscripts.
This makes writers even more neurotic. We’re all terrified of doing that one thing wrong. But the truth is, you could be doing everything beautifully, and still not get the golden ticket.
See Jean-Luc Picard.
So, try not to let it get you down. I know, I know, that’s a lot easier said than done.
But you’ve still got to go forward.
My Experience
No, it’s not the same. But it is another way in the world where one person (me!) has to deal with a lot of … stuff. And say no a lot of the time. What am I talking about? Why, it’s the wonderful world of guest posts.
My most recent full-time job was as the Content Manager for Credit Suite. That’s a fancy way of saying that, among other things, I ran the blog. And as the site had gotten more popular, we had gotten more and more requests from people and companies to do guest posting.
The Ugly
Without getting into the specifics too much, there were a lot of guest posts where I was just not going to say yes, come hell or high water. Who did I reject out of hand? People who had such awful grammar, spelling, etc. that I could tell dealing with their post was going to take my time and give me massive agita. I also said no to anyone who clearly had no clue what the company actually does.
Because if you can’t be bothered to research the company, then I have got to figure that you can’t be bothered to actually research anything you’re writing.
I also checked samples if it got that far, and I would out and out reject someone who appeared to have completely plagiarized their work.
Also, I’ve been sold a bill of goods before, where someone looked good on paper but then the stuff they handed in was terrible. So it was obvious—either they had not written their sample or they had sent in sloppy work. I had no problems telling those people no even if I had already said yes to them.
Their loss.
The Inbetweenies
I have a soft spot in my heart for freelancers because I am well aware that they are trying to build a reputation. But there are two things which a guest post for Credit Suite was supposed to accomplish:
- It added to the overall expertise of the site and improved the user experience. And…
- It saved me time.
Particularly at the end, I could not handhold anyone. There just plain wasn’t enough time in my schedule. And so, I picked through the middle ground carefully. I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up—not the least of which, my own.
But at the same time, I wanted to at least try to give people chances. So, I looked out for people with interesting ideas but were okay writers, and people who were great writers but would be excellent with the right topic.
The Good Great
Then there was the last group, the superstars. Of the almost 50 guest posts I accepted, there were only, maybe, about 4 or 5 people who had been off the charts amazing. Of course, I tried to work with them when I could. They made Credit Suite (and me) look good. So, in return, I gave them work and did everything in my power to make them look good.
Personally, I think there’s a lot in my experience that relates directly to how publishers work, or at least how they deal with the continual onslaught of new material flying at them all the time.
My Publishing Advice and Journey
I harbor no illusions of this being perfect advice or fully up to date. It’s really just what I have gleaned from years around other writers.
But I think it’s still useful, and publishing advice in particular can work well for self-publishing.
Because that’s a whole other kettle of fish.