No Clue

How do I keep missing Wednesday? The sad thing is that Wed is also garbage day for me, so there are worse implications than missing my DWT blog day -- well smellier implications, anyway.

The NYT opinion piece, "Typing Without a Clue", by Timothy Egan has generated a lot of discussion on writers' loops and forums this week.

I've been reading these discussions with interest, but have stayed out of them. Partly because I was trying to decide how I really felt about it, and partly because I'm finally learning to keep my mouth shut occasionally. But clearly I haven't really learned, since I've decided to blog about it here.

First, I loved, loved, loved Timothy Egan's rant. But that's what it was. A rant.

Mr. Egan's ire was directed at publishers giving huge advances to the likes of "Joe the Plumber", especially at a time when publishing houses are cutting back on acquisitions and/or advances to actual writers.

I feel Mr. Egan's pain. (And that of the many writers who've agreed with his piece.) But celebrity book deals have never really bothered me. To me, they don't have anything to do with what I'm doing, so why should I care? Yes, they are produced and distributed by the same companies as I'm targeting with my work, but they are such a different product I don't see what they have to do with what I do.

The line blurs when celebrities write fiction... but even then, those celebrities have something I simply can't offer a publisher -- fame and a ready-made audience. So I can't really blame a publisher for choosing a celebrity's book over mine, even if I think my book is better. (And I'm someone who got rejections citing a celebrity's wife's book with a similar premise to mine... One that's now a TV series... I could be bitter about that. But I'm not. It's just a bummer. Bad luck/timing on my part. And I'd have needed a crystal ball to know that this woman was writing her book at the same time I was.)

I also don't buy the argument that the money the publishers are throwing at these deals is necessarily eating into the available pot of money they have to offer fiction (or non-celebrity non-fiction) writers.

I don't buy this for a couple of reasons. First, publishing houses are businesses and aren't run by stupid people. Their motive is to make money, not ensure as many struggling writers as possible get published.

Any time they pay a big advance, or throw a lot of marketing dollars behind a book, they're taking a risk, making a bet that enough consumers will buy the book to more than cover the money they've laid down. Would I love them to make a big bet on me? You betcha. But clearly someone thought that the chance that they'd make money on a Joe the Plumber book was worth the risk of tossing a big advance at the guy. Yes, I find it a little hard to believe many people will buy such a book. But since I'm not a top decision maker at a publisher, it wasn't my call, and clearly someone else thinks this book has potential as a money maker.

The second reason I don't buy into (or like) the argument that the publishers should be holding back on celebrity contracts and allocating advances and marketing dollars to "worthy" books and "real writers"... is that I think it's a slippery slope from that kind of argument to saying that publishers shouldn't be paying advances or giving contracts to writers of genre or commercial fiction, but should be saving their money only for the "serious literature."

To that point, here's what Mr. Egan said:

"For the others — you friends of celebrities penning cookbooks, you train wrecks just out of rehab, you politicians with an agent but no talent — stop soaking up precious advance money.

"I know: publishers say they print garbage so that real literature, which seldom makes any money, can find its way into print. True, to a point. But some of them print garbage so they can buy more garbage."

My issue is: who gets to define what's garbage? I have a sneaking feeling Mr. Egan would include romance and chick lit and thrillers and sci fi (etc.) in his garbage pail, too...

Yes, it's like a slap in the face to hear that someone, who will undoubtedly require a ghost writer and is unlikely to have anything meaningful to say in any case, has received a multi-million dollar publishing contract, while so many of us are toiling away, working really hard to learn and perfect our craft, but I think griping about it is like complaining that apples are more popular than oranges. It just so happens that the same company produces both apples and oranges. And it's for the people running these companies to decide whether their resources are better spent promoting apples or oranges this year. (Even if it's clear to many of us that the apples are rotten.)