101 Reasons to Stop Writing

[Updated, see bottom.]

Howe’s Law: Everyone has a scheme that will not work.

It’s about time we had another axiom. I was going to work on something else today but this just came up: a post on a blog humbly titled Working Toward the Betterment of Publishing. It’s about … (pause for groan) … Web 2.0, and solving the problems of the slushpile.

It’s so full of wrong-headed ideas, it’s funny. Not funny ha-ha, or even funny peculiar, but isn’t it funny just how wrong someone can be.

Read it if you want (no, Mr Scalzi, you’re not obligated). If not, here are the bullet points:

• Publishers don’t do market research
• Readers could tell publishers what books they want, but publishers don’t ask
• A book “fails” if it doesn’t earn out its advance
• The slushpile could be automated
• Let’s Web 2.0-ify the slushpile
• I know it’s been tried before but my idea is slightly different

The author tries to counter all possible criticism in advance, and even demonstrates something approaching sarcasm by linking to my dissection of Web 2.0.

I’m posting a rebuttal here, because Mr(s?) Betterment of Publishing is an anonymous coward who doesn’t even allow comments. So Web 1.0.

• Publishers don’t do market research

Based on? No publisher’s market research project has ever asked their opinion. Seriously. Let’s move on.

• Readers could tell publishers what books they want, but publishers don’t ask

Readers tell publishers what they want every time they buy a fscking book. The problem is not the market research, it’s the unpredictable connection between what has sold before and what will sell in two years’ time when today’s signings hit the shelves.

Market research sucks. People tell market researchers what they think they want to hear, and what they think won’t make them look like an asshole. Market research never maps to actual purchase behaviour. Just look at the money wasted by the fast food industry, marketing moderately healthy meals people said they wanted but don’t buy.

• A book “fails” if it doesn’t earn out its advance

The advance is a fraction of the total cost of publishing a book. It’s a pittance paid to placate authors that something is happening during the long journey to publication. It’s the low-bid value of your silence. “Earning out” is unusual enough for established authors to joke “If a book earned out the advance, the advance wasn’t big enough.” A book only “fails” if it doesn’t sell enough copies to justify taking the risk on the next one.

• The slushpile could be automated

This is why WTtBoP doesn’t have comments.

This idea is just so bad I can’t believe a human thought of it. Can you even imagine the uproar amongst the great unedited masses if agents used computer algorithms to screen the slushpile? How would you feel if your rejection slip read “806 instances of: Fragment. consider revising.” ?

Natural language processing is still a pipe dream, it’s several generations away from being ready for such a “mission-critical” deployment. Software cannot tell the difference between Faulkner and syntactically correct gibberish. How would you define the filters? How many spelling and grammar errors would be permitted? What about experimental fiction?

If you think this idea has any merit, type a few pages from your favourite books into MS Word and turn all the grammar rules on. Until SkyNet becomes self-aware, and starts buying all the e-books on Amazon, and you’re writing for the amusement of your artificially intelligent toaster, this idea is the worst kind of stupid.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say No real writer would ever let a computer determine the quality of their work.

• Let’s Web 2.0-ify the slushpile

Honestly, if you still give WTtBoP any credence after the last point, you might as well buy the land in Florida too. Let’s have a website where 1000-word samples of the slushpile are posted, and readers can vote on the best! Hey, people can even get behind their favourites, and create pre-release buzz!

Oh, and:

• I know it’s been tried before but my idea is slightly different

Never mind that we have a system like this in place (called “short fiction magazines”) that’s already foundering. Never mind that a large portion of the slushpile consists of paranoid egomaniacs who would sue/stalk anybody who ever posts a remotely similar story to theirs. Never mind .. oh, just make up your own reason why you wouldn’t want to participate.

These sites fail not because they “haven’t been tried by a major publisher or agent before”, but because there’s no incentive for ordinary readers to engage in this process. Why would they? Who wants to read unedited, unfiltered garbage? Who could possibly care enough about what gets published …

Un-fscking-published writers, that’s who. This solution only sounds attractive if you’re part of the problem.

Please, please, stop bitching about what you think is wrong with publishing. The problems are not going to get solved by a few shitty writers blogging about how it could all be fixed with the magic of programming.

You have three choices:

• Take the money you’re wasting on POD and invest in some servers. Buy a book on Web 2.0 programming, and write the website that’s going to fix everything. Programming is easier than writing fiction, believe me. Instant feedback. If it works, you can go IPO and get pornstars to light your cigars with C-notes for the rest of your life.
• Write a better book. One that passes all the grammar checks in Word.
• Just shut the fcsk up already.

UPDATE: I have to entertain the small possibility that I’ve been had, by an apprentice of what an Australian comedian once called “non-laughist humour”. Surely, the author of the original post cannot truly believe in his argument, and that it was just “linkbait”, as the author claimed in a gutless, abusive email.

See, the whole notion of a Web 2.0 solution hinges on the (unrewarded) efforts of ordinary web users, giving of their time to read and make comment on the thousands of slushdwellers, towards the “betterment of publishing”. Yet the author doesn’t even allow commenting on their own blog, because they’re afraid of what they refer to as “retard farming“.

Is there anything of substance left in their post to defend?