Not That You Asked

An Interesting, Quick Read

Who says legacy media has quit reporting on books and publishing?

But first, a story:

A million years ago I visited the office of my agent for the first time. It was the ground floor of a brownstone in Manhattan, wood paneled and fireplaced, and at one point the staff rolled out a shopping cart. “These are the unsolicted manuscripts we’ve received this week,” someone (name withheld) said.

Piled in the shopping cart were some hundred-odd paper manuscripts. The slush pile for just a single week. All sent by hopeful writers. Almost all of them, novels that depicted adolescent boys being sexually abused by Catholic priests. At the time, the Covenant House sex scandal was still a big story, and the would-be authors were trying to surf that zeitgeist. The problem is that publishing is always behind the curve. Far behind the curve. Even if a book were beautifully written, it wouldn’t come to market for at least a year, so chasing current events is impossible.

No, if you want to build a readership, you’ve got to set the pace. You’ve got to—at least try—to lead the pack with a new idea. If you try to springboard off current events, you risk, well, this.

For an interesting turn of events, click here.