![[Logo]](/images/101ReasonsLogo.png "101 Reasons to Stop Writing")
UPDATE: Tess Gerritson discusses the unbelievably spiteful pettiness of Michael Crichton, who inserted a fictional child rapist into his latest book to insult a critic. The New York Times investigates. (Last two links require free registration).
JA Konrath thinks you have ugly babies.
Literary agents Miriam Goderich and Miss Snark explain why your query letter sucks.
Seattle may be beaming at being recognised as America’s Most Literate City, again, but I’m more amused that of the ten least literate, five are in California and four are in Texas.
The first reviews for the eagerly awaited new installment in Thomas Harris’ oh who cares.
Prospect Magazine asks for, and receives, the most overrated books of the year.
Diana Peterfreund explains why your title sucks, and won’t get used anyway. Pub Rants agrees.
And sobering statistics from Pub Rants. Extrapolated data: 80 query letters per day, 0.25% of which result in requests for full manuscripts. This is an exact measure of quality.
Victoria Strauss explains why scammers prosper, leaving out the obvious: most writers are idiots.
Rejecter explains why you won’t make any money anyway.
Tod Goldberg hints at why authors shouldn’t use MySpace.
Tess Gerritson admits that being a bestselling author is not a bulletproof vest.
Judith Regan, the publisher behind the OJ Simpson debacle, has been unceremoniously fired from HarperCollins. The ReganBooks imprint “will continue as part of the HarperCollins General Books Group,” where it will be quietly dismantled and the staff reassigned to to Slush Division.
I can’t help the feeling that Regan expected, even planned this, possibly as a way of breaking an otherwise ironclad contract. I call this the Skywalker Gambit, after Mark Hamill’s attempt to break a TV contract so he could work on The Empire Strikes Back, using an automobile and a tree. At least Judith still has her looks.
Simpson’s confession hypothetical murder memoir was of course cancelled, but if you’re quick, and loaded, you can still snatch one up.
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Sounds like Chrichton’s amping up the George Lucas Response: because he apparently responds to critical opinion the way he writes screenplays, he had nothing but mealymouthing about Pauline Kael’s brilliant destructions of Star Wars, but “retaliated” by adding a villain named “General Kael” to Willow. Then there was the snotty stunt in Roland Emmerich’s godawful Godzilla of naming the mayor and his aide after Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, who had grand fun pointing out the idiocies in Independence Day. Sounds like Crichton learned from his Hollywood friends, all right…
Oh, and I’m not surprised in the slightest as to the number of Texas cities at the absolute bottom of the list. Plano is literally a five-minute drive north of me, and Arlington is just due west, and they share with Dallas a general population that looks upon reading as something Wrong. Some of it is due to the Southern Baptist influence, where we’re still being told that knowledge is a tool of the Devil by smarmy pastors wanting to keep his marks stupid, and some of it is due to the general Dallas love of wilful ignorance. However, I will say that our lack of bookstores is generally due to an incredible amount of incompetence on the part of our local indie bookstores: almost all of our indie bookstores, including the Taylors chain, went into complete denial when the first Borders opened in town, and all of the generalist bookstores died within two years of that first Borders opening. Even the specialist stores (mystery, Western, children’s) died within eight years, and now all we have are the Borders/Barnes & Noble superstores, the Half Price Books chain, a few university bookstores that might carry books not required for classes, and the occasional used bookstore started by the stereotypical frumpy fiftysomething who wanted to start a bookstore so people would leave her alone.
The really sad part is the equal denial of those whose stores died: at the Borders closest to my house, at least three employees are ones whose stores shut down when their customers decided that they took less shit at Borders than at the indie stores, and they’re sticking with it because it’s not like they have any other skills. My ex-wife was a similar case: for nearly a year, she insisted upon working at a local used store, for minimum wage (she spent more money on gas getting to and from work than she made in a paycheck), crying each and every day because her boss was mean and her feet hurt from standing all day. However, when I’d ask her why she couldn’t get another job, she’d give me the same exact reason they would: “But I want to stay in the publishing business!”
It really surprises me that Atlanta is so high on the list. Just goes to show that Georgia’s progressive capital city really ISN’T part of the south, just like we always suspected.
Crichton is a piece of shit, and I hope he gets sued over that. Naming a villain after a critic is all good fun, but talking about his rape of a 2 year old boy crosses the line in my book.
Quote: Literary agents Miriam Goderich explains why your query letter sucks, as does Miss Snark.
Miss Snark sucks?
Thanks, jb. Point taken, post rephrased. To my knowledge, Miss Snark does not suck.