It must be awful being a publisher. Working in a Traditional Publishing firm must be like working in the industry of flood prevention in Holland. In that country, nearly seventy per cent of the land is lower than the sea level, so it's a constant battle to make sure that the barriers and dykes are well serviced and watertight, otherwise water will flood in and houses and people will be overwhelmed. Publishers say they know that feeling. In their case it's not water, though, it's brown envelopes. Every day the postman staggers in to their office with a heavy sack on their shoulder - like Santa at Christmas Eve - and unloads a stack of submissions onto any spare surface available - desk, shelf or floor. Then minions have to turn the envelopes over and try and identify who they're from and whether they're worth reading. Anything with a famous name will get looked at. Most other stuff hangs about for a bit, and then gets returned. If you're not famous, you're ignored. Tough but true. Meanwhile the publishing staff, despite leaving the majority of submissions alone, still feel like they're drowning under the flood of paper. They take manuscripts home at night. They read them on the bus or train coming in to work in the morning. There's a sea of chapters around them, all the time threatening to cover them completely. No wonder they feel under pressure.
Luckily, there's some joy in the job, and that's when a piece turns up that's a joy to read. Suddenly the weight lifts from their shoulders. The plot drags them in, the characters stir them, the dialogue sparkles. The words leap off the page and everyone is hooked. Mark that one up for publication, they cry!
Then there's the actual stuff they publish. Check any Bestseller List and you'll see that it isn't the above, the genuine work of literature, the 'joy to read' that we've just discussed. At the moment the fastest selling books as listed in the daily newspaper are all by people you already know - singers, comedians, musicians, actors, TV stars and sports people. Do their words grab you? No, but people want to read this stuff. Do they shock, enlighten, educate and entertain? Not at all, but then, that's not what we want. What we ask famous people to do is divert us, take us away from the mundanity we already know and let us dip our toes into the pond that is celebrity. It doesn't have to well written, it just needs to have enough gossip to titillate and amuse. If there's references to other famous people, so much the better - it'll save having to read their life story. One book could cover several. Even better if it's a husband and wife team. If famous people marry each other, our curiosity is tickled even more. So much to learn! So little time.
Internet Authors don't need to worry about such matters. There's no hurdle for them that says, 'If you're not famous, you're not getting in'. They can go to an on-line publishing firm like Lulu and upload their book, then they can print off as many copies as they need, passing them round to friends and relatives, and placing a few in local bookstores. They can even pay a small amount for a listing in on-line bookshops like Amazon, so that people can order their own copies, either soon or in the future. Meanwhile they're in the market, and there's still that dream of 'being noticed', of being spotted and taken up by a national publisher, or one of the Traditional names. If so, maybe a career beckons, the life of 'author' and the small amount of celebrity that will entail. If not, they've still found a home for their creation and still seen the work in print.
The alternative? Your work, so lovingly crafted, polished and presented, may be scuffed around the floor of an already overcrowded office, not being noticed because no one knows your name. You haven't got the fame - yet - and so you can't get the attention. It's a vicious circle and few writers will ever break in and join the enchanted few. Most will languish, their books still in the brown envelopes, right up to the time they are taken out, given a Rejection Slip, and put back into the Stamped Addressed Envelope and returned. Undaunted, the ambitious author and would-be writer will try again, and again, doing nothing except contribute small waves to the flood that may, one day, overwhelm the insecure offices of each of those Traditional Publishers.
When our children were younger, and still at High School, we moved house. The new place was further away from the school, and they told us that there might be financial help available for us towards the cost of our kids' new bus fares, which would, of course, be more expensive. We were sent a letter. It said that money was paid to people who lived '8 miles away and further'. We measured the journey in the car and it certainly seemed about that distance. Weeks later we got another letter. Our application was denied. We 'didn't live 8 miles away'. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, according to their calculations, we lived 7.9 miles away. That's seven point nine. Not enough, they said. After all, there has to be a cut-off point.
Would-be authors keep coming up against the same problem. They send their work to Traditional Publishers, and immediately encounter problems. Say they've written a novel in the Horror genre. Oh, the publisher says, we do operate in a range of popular genres and we publish Science Fiction and Fantasy, for instance. But no, not Horror. After all, they say, you have to have a cut-off somewhere. Or let's suppose you've written a Spy novel. We don't publish spy novels, they tell you. But, you say, consulting the publisher's current catalogue, you are publishing two spy novels this month and you actually published three last month. Ah, agrees the publisher, but we decided we've published enough spy novels for this year now and that's why we're stopping this month. After all, there has to be a cut-off somewhere.
A worse problem concerns money. You read in the newspaper that a certain publisher has just paid a fortune to a famous author for his new thriller. Ohoh, you think. This publisher likes thrillers and is willing to pay out large advances. Nothing so simple! When you send in your manuscript, you're given short shrift. After all, the publisher says, we've spent our budget for this year, (you know on who). We've had to cut-off all advances until next April and the start of the new financial year. Sorry.
Internet Authors don't have this problem. They know that they can go to a website like Lulu and get their books published there ' no matter how many, what genre you've chosen, and what time of year it is, (or day or night, come to that). They know the service is superb and you can order copies in small or large numbers, as you wish. In fact, there are no limitations at all. No cut-offs.
Because, you know, we're not robots. We don't have to live in a world where good things are cut off at some arbitrarily chosen point. A few weeks ago I went into a self-service restaurant one evening, hoping for a quick meal. I patiently queued at the counter, but when I got to the head of the queue, the man behind the counter pointed to a sign and said, 'We stop serving at 9 o'clock'. It was one minute past the allotted time. He insisted he was right, but then another chap came out from the kitchen, tray in hand. 'Serve up', he said. 'I haven't started putting things away yet. All the food is still out'. It's true, it was. It was no trouble for me to be served, no extra effort. It just meant breaking that rule that said there was an absolute and unequivocal cut-off. The second bloke wasn't so fixed in his views, and was willing to be flexible. I got fed. That was important to me.
What's important to hide-bound and inflexible bureaucrats (like the employees at most Traditional Publishers houses) is that The Rules are stuck by, adhered to and never questioned, (even when made up and changed at random). Why? In the first example, because 8 miles was the limit and that was that. Why? Why not 9 or 10? Had someone checked how many people lived outside this boundary and drawn the map accordingly? Nothing so sophisticated! Had anyone thought to check whether the bus fare for a 7.5 mile journey was any less expensive than an 8.5 mile journey? Not at all. The problem is that when people design these 'rules' they like to make them appear so scientific ' without actually doing any science ' and usually simply base their demarcation lines on sheer prejudice and blind faith. The usual reason such 'rules' are important, is that, we are told, if they are broken ' well then, oh dear, walls will crumble, culture will vanish and civilisation will collapse, (or something worse). Would it? Had anyone checked how many applications had come from people who lived at 7.5 miles or 7.3 miles? After all, if they bent the rules and let us through ' at 7.9 ' well, they could say that they might get flooded with all those other people within a decimal point or two short, mightn't they? Well no, only if such people existed, and nobody could tell me that. They had no record of how many people had been declined or how close they were to that magic figure 8.
The saddest fact from the school story is that the budget for assisted bus fares was under-spent at the end of the financial year, and the school had to send a leaflet round to all parents, inviting them to apply again. That's what you get for 'sticking to the rules' ' you don't get the outcome you want! You don't get to helping the people you want to help and you don't get to spend the money you've got available. The alternative? To grow up and realise that the 'cut-off point' is drawn up in an office by a balding man with glasses and a pencil. He's not divine; he's not a superhuman genius; and his decisions can be challenged or circumvented without destroying the carefully crafted system. That's not anarchy, it's simply common sense.
Mike Scantlebury has sinced written about articles on various topics from Internet Marketing, Writing and After Divorce. Mike Scantlebury is not shy about telling the world he is an Internet Author, and proud of it. Based in Manchester, England, home of soccer football, he sends out articles, books and stories to the internet, home of his many websites. Look in and see what. Mike Scantlebury's top article generates over 27100 views. to your Favourites.