From The Outline:
Has anyone ever said you should write a book? Maybe extraordinary things have happened to you, and they say you should write a memoir. Or you have an extremely vivid imagination, and they say you should write a novel. Maybe your kids are endlessly entertained at bedtime, and they say you should write a children’s book. Perhaps you just know how everything should be and imagine your essay collection will set the world straight.
Everyone has a book in them, right?
I hate to break it to you but everyone does not, in fact, have a book in them.
. . . .
I am a literary agent. It is my full-time job to find new books and help them get published. When people talk about “having a book in them,” or when people tell others they should write a book (which is basically my nightmare), what they really mean is I bet someone, but probably not me because I already heard it, would pay money to hear this story. When people say “you should write a book,” they aren’t thinking of a physical thing, with a cover, that a human person edited, copyedited, designed, marketed, sold, shipped, and stocked on a shelf. Those well-meaning and supportive people rarely know how a story becomes printed words on a page. Here’s what they don’t know, and what most beginner writers might not realize, either.
Every story is not a book.
. . . .
A book may also be things that happened or that we wished happened, embellished for interest, but it’s also so much more. It’s a story told artfully on the page, tailored to the reader. A book has a beginning, middle, and an end that keeps the reader invested for the five, six, ten hours it can take to read a book, because if it gets boring in the middle, most people stop reading. A book, when published by a traditional publisher to be sold in stores, has a defined market, a reader in mind, and that reader is one who usually buys books, not just some hypothetical person the publisher hopes to catch off the street.
You can tell a story to anyone who’s willing to listen. But writing a book that people will pay money for or take a trip to the library to read, requires an awareness few storytellers have. It is not performance, not a one-person show. It’s a relationship with the reader, who’s often got one foot out the door.
. . . .
Remember writing papers in school? Remember trying to eke out 1,000 words or three pages or whatever seemingly arbitrary number a teacher set? Remember making the font bigger and the margins wider? You can’t do that to a book. I ‘m often sent stories that are way too long or too short for the publishing industry, and that makes them bad candidates for books. The average novel, for adults or children, is at least 50,000 words. That’s 50 three-page papers. Shorter books are not cheaper for the publisher to make, for many reasons too boring to get into here, and no, it’s not just cheaper to do ebooks, either. (No, really, it’s not.) If you’re an epic writer and think breaking up your 500,000-word fantasy series into five books is the key, you’re wrong there, too. A publisher doesn’t really want book two until they see how book number one is selling. And if your story doesn’t wrap up until book five, then you’re going to have nothing but disappointed readers. Writing — just getting the words on the page — is hard, period. Writing artfully so that someone enjoys what you’re writing is even harder.
Publishing is a retail industry, not a meritocracy.
Writing is an art form, books are art, but they exist in a system that relies on readers to exchange money for goods. That money pays a publisher’s rent and electric bill, and the salaries of the often hundreds if not thousands of people they employ to make the books readers buy. And if a book doesn’t make money, it’s very hard to pay those salaries. Publishers take a financial risk on a book, because no one knows how a book is going to sell until it’s on shelves, and very successful authors (your JK Rowlings and James Pattersons) help pay the bills for the less successful books. Publishers certainly publish books they know are not going to make a lot (or any) money, and they do this for the sake of art or history or prestige, or a dozen other reasons. But they can’t do it that often. So, you may have an amazing story, but if there isn’t sufficient evidence that readers will flock to it, you’re not likely to be published. No one deserves to be published just because they completed a book. It’s not “if you write it, they will come.”
Link to the rest at The Outline
Or you could write a book, click on the KDP Publish button and let JK and James pay all those salaries and bills on their own.
And never have to deal with a literary agent. Or pay anyone but yourself.
In the 1970’s, there was an Irish Tourist Board magazine called Ireland of the Welcomes. Many of the issues bragged about all the non-fiction, poetry, and fiction books written by non-literary people, and published by small presses. Much like in Iceland, it was considered normal to have a lot of high-quality, entertaining books coming out from people you knew.
I cannot believe that the US or the UK have a lower percentage of potential good writers than Ireland or Iceland.
Agreed Niran.
Sure every person has a book or 100 inside; for they have stories. books are, most of them , just stories.
Not sure why this writer’s so upset and piqued
Because this AGENT is watching her gravy train leaving the station without her.
My dad had a book in him. Fortunately the surgeon was able to remove it before it killed him. Ba-doom-boom.
It does not matter if everyone does not have a novel in them absolutely no one has the right to discourage a person from writing. In this age of self publishing, the opinion of the publishers, agents, or critics doesn’t matter that much. Let people “vote“ with her dollars.
Harry Chapin, “Mr. Tanner”
Well, sounds like this agent is tired of agenting, and wants to find a new career. What else could induce such self-destructive rants as telling potential clients that she’s not interested in their business?
This sounds like an angry rant after work with friends after reading one too many “It came from the slush pile”, fueled by the third or fourth Long Island Iced Tea… and would be much better if it’d been left in the bar, not posted where it’s archived and displayed in all its ill-thought-out premises and contradictions.
Just because you can put it on the internet, doesn’t mean you should.
Perhaps her slush pile is inhabited only by the slush of those to dumb to understand that trad-pub contracts are bad and only believe they can only be ‘published’ if they sign a bad contract. That the smarter writers are self publishing means that what she gets is less fit to print than in days of old.
With luck her rant will cause even more clueful writers to bypass her and other agents and go indie/self-pub.
It’s true. Many people don’t have a book in them. However, absolutely everyone has a story in them. There are many ways to express our stories. It doesn’t need to be in book form. People may choose never to express it or become convinced that they can’t. It’s still there. Because all humans are creative beings and story is universal.
Nailed it.
I’m reminded of one unemployed, middle-aged dude, sitting in a dentist waiting room paging through a fiction magazine and thinking “They paid money for this? I can do this.”
He went home and took a shot.
Before he was done, he gave the world John Carter; John Clayton, Lord Greystoke; David Innes; Jane Porter; Tara of Helium; and hundreds of memorable, probably eternal, characters and stories. His name was Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Everybody does have a story. Some can even tell it brilliantly, but they’ll never find out unless they try. Telling them not to try is a crime.
If I remember it right, Robert Heinlein has a similar beginning. Probably a lot of others authors (J K Rowling being one) do as well. Like their work or not, where would the world be if people didn’t try to tell stories?
North Korea.
Albania under the communists.
Humans tell stories every day: jokes, gossip, riddles.
Tell us not to tell stories?
Prepare to run. 🙂
A petulant and arrogant post by a snobbish member of a dying profession.
I think just about everyone does have a book in them in the sense of an interesting story to tell. Not everyone has the talent to write it themselves in a way others like to read. This is one reason we have ghost writers. These days publishers decide a sportsman or a politician or a celebrity has a story to tell so they throw money at them and send a ghost writer out to extract that book. Too often they are mistaken.
Fortunately there is absolutely no need to try to discourage those from wanting to bring the book or books inside them into the real world. No need for those stories to darken the doorstep of any members of a disintermediated profession.
Thank you but no thank you madam. We do not require your gatekeeping services.
Okay, she’s an agent in traditional publishing. It’s easy to poke holes in what she says. Nevertheless, she does have a point, even if she didn’t make it well.
Not everyone who writes or wants to write has a book inside him. It’s enough to spend time with local writers’ clubs to realize this.
You commonly find people who have been working on their (first) books for years. Many never finish. They like the idea of being an author but never manage to become one.* Others produce a manuscript that appeals to them but not to any prospective reader.
In the latter case, you can say, “Well, he produced a book after all.” But you also can say, “Yes, words appear between two covers (or following a Kindle cover, though at these clubs such books almost always are paperbacks), but they’re such a mishmash that we have to ask whether it even should count as a book.”
Around 1970 I saw a book called “The Wit and Wisdom of Spiro Agnew.” It was about 250 pages, all blank. In one sense it was a book (it had pages and a cover), but in another sense it wasn’t. It might have been a timely and clever novelty item, like the Pet Rock, but if that had been the author’s only book, no one would have said, “Yes, that person now is an author”–a marketer maybe, but not an author.
*PG may remember this: it also occurred around 40 years ago.
The Wall Street Journal had an interview with a guy who had taken and failed the California bar exam something like 16 times. (You could take it every six months.) The reporter asked him why he didn’t just give up. “Why are you doing this to yourself?” “Because I love the law.”
You can love something or love doing something without ever gaining the least competence in it. There are some people who love the idea of becoming an author but they just plain don’t have a book inside them.
The journey is its own reward.
She sounds offended that they would even try to find out what they are capable of. Even failure has value.
I would offer up the career path of John Jakes, who back in the day produced some thoroughly uninspiring high concept SF…
…and a string of best selling historical novels.
I suspect many would tell us that Dan Brown didn’t have a book in him. The author of Fifty Shades?
Yeah, it sounds snobbish, but this is someone ranting about their slush pile. I have no doubt that slush piles exist and from what everyone says they have lots of slush in them, slush that nobody wants to look at. I’m sure that in some cases there are items in any given slush pile that could be offered up for sale and be successful, but I’m not going to argue much with this post. As a reader I have learned to be very suspicious about books offered up for sale.
There’s this silly little thing at Amazon called “Download sample”.
Before that, there was “Look inside.”
Even before, at B&M there was “browsing” and “speed reading”. 😉
I keep hearing about people who have a gift for buying bad books and I can’t figure out why…
I keep hearing about people who have a gift for buying bad books and I can’t figure out why…
I keep hearing about people who actually finish those bad books.
Yes, I agree that not everyone has a book in them. There are so, so many people who like the idea of writing a book but never actually do. I don’t think we’re entirely talking about discouraging people from publishing who’ve actually produced a book (the OP seems to be doing that, which of course I disagree with, because WhoTF cares what publishers want these days?). My mom is one of those people who likes the idea of writing a book but never seems to put in the time to even start learning how to do it. For years, she used to say, “We should write a book together,” and then I sat her down and said, “Okay, what do you want to write?” After about half an hour, she had *nothing*. Not a single idea for a story. She stopped saying that for a while. Then she accompanied me to a writers’ conference and got all excited about the idea of trying this writing thing out. She did start learning about it for a while, then life happened, and she now keeps saying that she’ll get back to it when X or Y and everything else is no longer a demand on her time.
So yeah, some people simply like the idea of writing a book–or rather, I think, of having written a book–but that doesn’t mean they actually have a book in them.
It’s true that there are a lot of people out there (like the OP) who want to discourage people who’ve actually written something–or who are actively engaging in writing–from putting anything out into the world. But that doesn’t mean that everyone who thinks they “have a book in them” (or who other people think that about) really do.
I’m a little perplexed by the insistence by some here that everyone does have a book (or even a story) in them. Not every person is a storyteller. That’s okay. Not every person is an athlete. Not every person is a caregiver. Why diminish your own talents by contributing to this destructive myth that what we do is something literally anyone could do? That’s the mindset that makes people think all stories in all forms should be free. There’s a skill and talent and discipline to storytelling. Why insult yourself by saying any and every person in the world can do it if only they gave it a try?
My favorite part is her detailed explanation as to why producing ebooks isn’t cheaper: “It just isn’t.” Bravo.
Well, there you go. Short and sweet. To think, we’ve all been wrong the whole time. snort
It isn’t cheaper. But that has to do with the anti-economics of scale at the big trad pub houses. New York rents and multi-layers of expensive management who don’t actually know what readers want next.
There is a cartoon in the January-February 2001 Utne Reader, on page 20, by Mueller, that has always haunted me.
It’s Death confronting a guy. The dialogue bubble from Death is:
– I want the novel that’s always been in you.
Each time I see the cartoon, I always see the guy(me) leaping at Death and tearing him apart.
Maybe not everyone, but at least a few zillion, and lots of them support themselves doing other things. (Don’t ever get in a price war with a guy who doesn’t need the money.)
That’s what Amazon KDP shows us, and that’s why fiction publishers have lost market share. And that means agents have also lost market share.
This agent is a snob. Who cares if a work meets any agent’s approval?
If you go to the trouble of writing a book, and the further hassle of getting it online, it barely matters if anyone buys it. You’ve already accomplished something worthwhile.
Maybe she’s just stinking selfish and can’t see past the end of her own nose.
Maybe what she’s really saying is, ‘How dare anybody write a book that I cannot make money off of!’
She’s no more a snob than you are if you order a plate of scrambled eggs and you reject them because the eggs were spoiled before they were cooked.
Ah, but she’s claiming the eggs you may be serving to others are spoiled before the hen has even laid them.
You beat me to it. 🙂
Funny, when I write a story I do it for myself and my likeminded fans, not a publishing fortune teller. The only people who see a dime of my income from my stories are my freelance editing partner I have a long-term relationship with, my cover designer, Amazon, and the government tax hounds.
Like Ms. McKean said: writing a book is a retail industry. Why should I bother paying any intermediary between me and my reading customers that doesn’t directly benefit me. I don’t need to be a blockbuster. I just need to write stories my true fans will appreciate and continue reading.
It’s rare that these sorts of articles actually anger me these days since they’re hardly unique, but McKean has well and truly earned a full-on sarcastic eye-roll and one fingered salute for her sheer condescension and superiority complex.
I hate to break it to ‘The Outline’, but not all of their bloggers have a blog in them – this being one of them.
Funny how she’s an agent AND a writer…
And she’s so stuck in the last century …
“That money pays a publisher’s rent and electric bill, and the salaries of the often hundreds if not thousands of people they employ to make the books readers buy.”
Like most art, it takes one person to make the art. if they are skilled in things other than just the ‘art’ they may be able to package it themselves for sale.
Of course the mere idea scares the crap out of all those middlemen who insist that all artists need ‘them’ to somehow add value to the art (and of course take their cut …)
And some people don’t have logical English in them.
“everyone does not, in fact, have a book in them.” is the same as saying “no-one has a book in them”, which means there is nobody to write books.
What the writer means is “not everyone has a book in them.”
Ah, but that isn’t literary english. Not obtuse enough. 😉
Funny thing this, discouraging authors from jumping into the market. Could it be their cash cow clients are hurting enough they can’t stand the idea of new voices getting into the game?
They and their cash cows fear the writers that won’t line up to be locked into a trad-pub pen, where their shearing will be timed to not interfere with a cash cow release; but instead will steal eyes and reading minutes by posting their stories for free, or by selling it cheaply on places readers look – like on Amazon …
(And what really gets those cash cows teats in a twist is knowing that those not penned into a trad-pub contract can be making a lot more per sale than the cash cows are. 😉 )
Nobody has logical English in them. There is no such thing as logical English. English is a notoriously illogical language, and if you ask it to be logical, you are crying for the moon.
English:
I’ve always loved that quote!
I actually do believe that everyone has a book in them. Maybe more. We all have our own story, after all. But, that’s an entirely different thing than having the ability to tell stories that others will pay to read. You can hire people to fix your English. You can hire someone to make a cover, to format, to write a blurb, even to set up promotions. But if there is no storytelling ability, then it’s all moot.