![[Logo]](/images/101ReasonsLogo.png "101 Reasons to Stop Writing")
New York — At the end of a week filled with news of layoffs at some of America’s biggest publishing houses, editors and literary agents are reporting a dramatic increase in the volume of unsolicited manuscripts and query submissions — many of which are considered “unpublishable, even unreadable”. Editors and agents interviewed for this story claim that their slushpiles have more than doubled since the 1st of December, a pattern that has been repeating and escalating for the last ten years, and no-one is sure what is causing the increase.
“Some [submissions] are only just over 50,000 words, and one was exactly 50,000. Another had ‘done for the day’ every 1,600-1,700 words.”
“I don’t know where all this is coming from,” said one editor who wished to remain anonymous and employed. “By Wednesday, my email Inbox looked like I’d somehow subscribed to a live submission feed from BookSurge or Lulu. By Friday, the mail was stacked up floor to ceiling in the hallway outside the company offices. With the financial crisis, we can’t even afford to feed our interns, so I’m stuck going through the slush. And all of it seems so … unpolished, like a first draft, like they’d just finished writing it the day before. Who’s writing all this stuff, and why are they sending it to me, and why now? Why does the end of November always mean a deluge of crap?”
An anonymous literary agent agreed: “Most of the submissions I’ve received this this week are too short to be contemporary novels. Some are only just over 50,000 words, and one I got via email was exactly 50,000, cutting off mid-sentence. Another one had ‘done for the day’ or something about going to bed every 1,600 to 1,700 words or so. It’s a lucky standout that even has an introductory paragraph before the opening. Tell you what, though: judging by the subject matter of these submissions, poor is the new cancer.”
Barry Lyndon, editor of poetry journal The Contented Dodo, reported that he received over a thousand submissions during the week. “We usually get seven or eight. Twelve is a busy week, and that includes responses to funding requests. I think we might have opened the floodgates by amending our submission criteria to include ‘prose poems’, but really, none of the submissions I glanced at even mentioned dodos, and each issue of TCD only runs about 5,000 words. Someone would’ve had to write the Divine Comedy of dodo poems for us to dedicate ten issues to it.”
One literary professional interviewed was upbeat about the situation: Edwin Drood, editor of online literary journal The Unconscious Novella, said: “This spike in submissions is wonderful. We have enough material to publish a randomly chosen novella every day for the next decade. We can’t pay contributors, of course, but you can tell these submissions weren’t written with real publication in mind.”
Stephen Jayson Harris covered the publishing industry for What Fish is That? magazine until he was laid off in September. He now works as a bouncer at a Starbucks establishment, and is writing a book about the upcoming death of publishing.
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Why? NaNoWriMo.
Thank me later.
“no-one is sure what is causing the increase”
Ha ha. But the rest is true.
Someone needs to develop a literary Metamucil, because the people dropping these vowel movements really need to get unblocked. Of course, one huge dump in November versus lots of little squirts and runs all year round: either way, I wouldn’t want to flush out any editor’s slush pile these days.
“and no-one is sure what is causing the increase” What about the overall nosedive in the reading level of our kids? Or the lack of reading in curriculae and off time (in favor of Guitar Hero and what not.
Other than NaNoWriMo does anyone know if this pattern is repeated during other econ downturns? Bet it is. I get calls (I do some coaching of writers) from folks who, because they’ve lost money in their 401ks etc. think now is the time to start writing “to make some money.” Sigh.
Anne Wayman, now blogging at http://www.aboutfreelancewriting.com
[...] Stephen Jayson Harris wonders why Publishers, Agents Report Sharp Increase in “Unpublishable” Submissions. [...]
Anne, it’s pretty much a standard during recessions that everyone starts reaching for the writing career in lieu of a real job. Not only are they suddenly allowed the free time they wouldn’t give themselves when they were working, but most of these characters feel that “I have a story in me” and decide to coast on six months of Unemployment insurance, at least in the States, and crap out a manuscript. Then, just before the checks stop, they frantically try to find a publisher, and finally settle for a vanity press right about the time they’re working at the front counter of a Burger King. They won’t give up, though, because this is Their Dream, and it’s something they can use to lord it over the other losers who just won’t go chasing their dreams.
Likewise, this is about the time when the really persistently nonwriting writers start looking at getting some sort of backup. You’ll see them at book readings at the local Frumpy Fiftysomething’s Used Books Emporium, or hanging out at any other writing-related event, looking for love. They’re not actually looking for love: they’re looking for someone who listens to their tales of publishing woe, figures “Gosh, you just need a place to stay while you get your career established,” and lets them move into that inexplicably empty spare bedroom that the victim has available. For the first few months, it’s heavenly, where they don’t have to worry about bills, they have more free time to post blog entries and hang out at the Dave & Buster’s with friends, and they have a landlady/lord with fucking privileges. By the time the meal ticket’s gotten tired of the outrageous phone and electric bills, the random parasites stopping by at all hours “to talk writing”, and the signs that Our Wannabe has been screwing someone else in their mutual bed while the victim’s at work, Our Wannabe usually has at least two further leads to continue that lifestyle, and s/he buggers out in the middle of the night with almost no warning.
And then you have the really bad ones. These are the ones that can’t write, but they want the attention and respect that they think writers get. If they can get a lot of money, they start a bookstore. If they can’t, they start a magazine. Both end about as well as you can expect, in which case they spend the rest of their lives bitching about how “the public just doesn’t appreciate genius”. Also cue sympathetic new boy/girlfriends sufficiently lonely to put up with that crap, and the cycle ends roughly much the same way.
Boy, I sure know this from experience, don’t I? Both sides of the counter, really, and my wife has one particularly nasty example who tries to pop back into her life every five years or so. I don’t want to get into why I watch out for two particular exes with a similar track record.
The timing is absolutely perfect as long as you have a paper-burning stove.
“Too short to be contemporary novels”?!
I’ve never understood this arbitrary insistence on 50,000 words. Elsewhere in the world, it’s not at all uncommon to see works that are longer than novella length (yes, I realize this is a soft designation), but shorter than 50,000 words. Why do publishers disregard 130-page books? Aren’t they cheaper to produce and more fitting for the contemporary attention span?
Someone already said it, but…it seems pretty clear to me that the answer is NaNoWriMo. The goal is 50,000 words in a month, so lots of people have daily goals they want to reach, and they stop at 50,000 whether or not they’re done. Unfortunately, most of them don’t realize that after November is over, they have to actually EDIT. And that, maybe, their novel shouldn’t be published at all, but should be regarded as an exercise in writing practice. It’s fun to participate, and makes November a crazy time of writing madness, but most participants have only a vague understanding of what happens (or should happen) afterward.
Rachel: Oh, I think they realize that once November’s over, they’ll have to edit. That’s why there’s a “I-Don’t-Want-To-Edit-My-Novel-Because…” Club thread on the NaNo forum. Editing is hard, frustrating work–especially when the piece being edited was written without concern for plot, characters, setting, grammar, or composition.
I’ll give the members of the “I-Don’t-Want-To-Edit-My-Novel-Because…” Club credit for being honest with themselves–”I know my novel is crap” is probably the #1 reason people give for not wanting to edit. I suspect most of these people won’t be submitting their manuscripts to anybody. I worry about those who think their novels are masterpieces, works of art that will only suffer if subjected to editing. These are the people who make slush-readers’ heads explode.
You’re absolutely correct that writing like mad (especially without concern for plot, characters, setting, grammar and composition) is fun. So is shooting up heroin (or so I’m told), but that doesn’t mean we should have a “National Heroin Shooting Month.” A “National Heroine Shooting Month,” in which we put the female lead characters of badly-written novels out of our misery, is another matter.
Here’s an amusing article on the benefits of a federal bailout for writers, of whom most of us agree comprise too great a percentage of the population. Thankfully we have agents, editors, and publishers as gatekeepers, but they are mostly just standing around with their thumbs in the crack of a dike (no Gertrude Stein jokes here) as the floodwaters build and everyone either self-publishes a book or decides to distribute their work on the Internet for free. Because New York “isn’t ready for their genius” or they “are too cutting edge.” The problem is nobody tells them “no” anymore. Or better yet, “Shut up. Stop. Please. For the sake of all that is holy.”
In the good old days, editors actually typed and signed letters of regret for being unable to accept work, but then the mimeograph was invented and form letters became socially acceptable, perhaps under the notion that wholesale, generic rejection was somehow more compassionate. Then most editors and publishing houses stopped accepting queries altogether, counting on agents to serve as first line of defense in the trench warfare of literature. As recently as a decade ago, you could still get a form letter for the price of your self-addressed, stamped envelope. Now most agents simply don’t respond at all “unless interested.” Meaning they don’t respond at all.
For years I tried to talk people out of self-publishing. It’s bad economics, because the biggest stumbling block to getting an audience is getting your books in front of the readers who can buy them. After all, why else would we need a publishing industry? I’ve heard people who call themselves writers tell me, “I’ve already had three rejections, so I may as well print it up.” I don’t even waste my breath anymore, though I did wonder how they ended up with rejection slips in an age when ignorance is bliss. The same Internet that makes it easy for agents (and, by extension, publishers) to ignore you and still consider their profession to be genteel, courteous, and crusading also makes it easy for anybody to throw up a Web site and dump 100,000 words of Gurglish without insulting any electrons.
Luckily for those who consider themselves real writers (and the article’s stated $40,000 a year “average” income would inspire most of the writers in my acquaintance to turn joyous backflips and buy health insurance for spinal surgery), not many fly-by-nights or type-by-12-packs are actually going to stick with it long enough to compete with you.
The article also touches on the plight of Ann Beattie, whose authorial good name has been hijacked by another Ann Beattie. There is another Scott Nicholson (not the real one, I can assure you) who has self-published a book called “Seeds of Achievement.” In researching for this blog entry, I discovered one site that erroneously had the author’s bio as mine. Hell, maybe the guy writes better than me. That wouldn’t be too difficult, since I’m part of that vast subset of writers who aren’t verifiable geniuses like Larry McMurtry, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, or Richard Brautigan. But the annual thirty-cent royalty checks are not making their way to my address.
It irks me when his books are listed alongside mine or when one of my readers asks me “WTF?” about that book. True, he has a right to use his name (and I’m not even sure this is the same Scott Nicholson who “stole” scottnicholson-dot-com or the one who writes board games, or a new imposter) and I have a right to change my name. Who knows, maybe these other Scott Nicholsons have been submitting badly written query letters that open with, “Dear mean agent, I know you’re going to reject me, but….” And these agents, seeing the sullen and mutilated grammar, immediately block “Scott Nicholson” from their email inboxes, then real Scott Nicholsons like me can’t even tell when we’re getting rejected. Does that “no” mean “no” or does it mean I’m sending spam, or is it that my genius is so far ahead of its time that it’s cutting edge?
The U.S. government may find it worth $40,000 a year to keep people from writing. Maybe we can then all turn to some other more-useful enterprise, like dog-sledding, porcupine husbandry, or natural-gas exploration. I figure with a one-time cash grant of $250,000, we could convince all Scott Nicholsons to rest their weary pens forever.
But, hey, if you are the one in hundred writers who actually finishes a novel and are then one in the hundred novelists who actually gets a response and then become one of the hundred “read” novelists who gets passed to an editor and then…well, you see where this is headed. Your odds are a lot better at being a Scott Nicholson than it is at being a New York-published novelist. In fact, I feel ready to self-publish a book myself. The title is “Scott Nicholson” and I will release it under a pen name. Do you have a successful authorial name I can steal? I would pay you $40,000, except I’m a writer and have no money.
I’m starting to wonder if publishing on paper is worth the time anymore. I’m publishing online. I don’t need a printer telling me my work is crap, I’d rather have an army of angry internet readers to beguile you.
I’m well aware of copyright/theft problems on the internet. Most of these complaints lead back to the money issue, but if going through a publisher is not one of your goals than neither should be cashing in or selling out.
It’s not like the internet isn’t full with anxious, ambitious writers who love to do it for free.
Dear 101,
I’ve been skimming through a number of posts on this site and grinning like a loon at each one. I think most of your comments are perfectly fair, especially about NaNoWriMo. I have always pitied the agents and publishers wading through their various slushpiles, but hadn’t realised how huge those slushpiles had become until recently. It must be soul-destroying to read page after page of garbage, knowing there was mountains more of the same stuff to get through before the end of the month. Is there a special clinic for broken slushpile readers out there somewhere? I’d be prepared to put my hand in my pocket for it, or even better, raise and glass and toast their continuing good health. As an indifferent writer, two novels finished and two more in progress, I still feel that I am learning about how it all works. Todate, I have only inflicted my efforts on two slushpile readers. As to giving it all up and making the world a better place? Sorry, that’s not going to happen, well not any time soon anyway. It’s not that I think I’ve got a great novel in me, but that one day I hope to be able to tell the story that’s stomping around my head, in a way that won’t have that poor slushpile reader gagging on their coffee after the first five minutes. Until then, I’ll keep it under wraps and only inflict it on the strongest; at around Easter time, or thereabouts.
A huge factor in this sort of increase is the tripe like Twilight that does get published (usually by a smaller press before being picked up by a larger one thanks to questionable “bulk” purchases) and then mimicked by freshly-graduated writing students who cannot differentiate between their/there/they’re and use phrases like “I should of done something” instead of “I should have done something” — as in: “I should have done something better than this, but I’ll clog the publishing pipelines with my crap anyway.”
I like to peek at the excerpts of the “authors” on the nanowrimo site to see just how many functionally illiterate people fancy themselves to be writers.
Perhaps it’s encouraged by the amount of subpar crap that is actually published by “legitimate” houses. When celebrity authors are in print just because they have a platform to pay back their advance, or established authors get away with lax editing for their 3rd+ book that would never have passed slush in their first, it sends the message that standards are being lowered all over.
[...] Agents and Publishers are reporting a sharp increase in unpublishable submissions. Editors and agents interviewed for this story claim that their slushpiles have more than doubled since the 1st of December, a pattern that has been repeating and escalating for the last ten years, and no-one is sure what is causing the increase. [...]
It’s simple, really. The answer is: Internet and word processors. Blogs are perfect examples of the word bloat publishing phenomena. Lots of keyboards on lots of computers loaded with word processors wired to the Internet equals lots of meaningless verbiage. Readers and writers can now choose their own ending to their fantasy. How nice. The boom in unpublishable manuscripts is directly proportionate to the boom in technology: first there was a pen and paper, then the typewriter, now the word processor. Software is now available that will compose a novel for you; just select a few options, press enter … and bam! … you’ve got a novel in the style of your favorite author and genre. Painless. I say stop publishing books and just read and write blogs. That’s the future. It’s the literary equivalent of American Idol.
A while back the N.Y. Times reported that reading was taking a backseat to other forms of entertainment. There are fewer readers than ever bemoaned the Time’s journalist. Your post made me wonder if it is because everyone is so busy writing a book that they don’t have time to read anymore.
Oh my dear lords and gods. People are actually sending in their Nano novels to be published? The day after it ends? I am ashamed of my fellow Nano participants. And now I feel even worse for the poor agents who have to read that crap. When I first heard the word ’slush pile’ I thought it was just a term that the particular agent whose blog I was following used. Now I truly understand it, especially after reading some of the entries submitted to Miss Snark’s First Victim’s Secret Agent contests. They’re dreadful. They were physically painful for me to read, and I’m ‘one of them.’
The good news is, hearing things like this gives me a very clear-cut, very defined list of What Not To Do, and gives me a chance to make the Agents slushpiles as firm as a concrete pillar for me to stand atop and prevail over all the others who contributed to said slush piles.
It surprises you that nano novels are getting published? What’s so surprising about that? It’s all about money these days.
well, I bump into “writers” everyday…I’m sure these guys are producing large quantities of crap. It seems like the new thing now, to write a book. everyone that spend more than two weeks on Wikipedia thinks he has enough material to share with us in form of a novel.
This is a cute story. Does anyone know how many novels originating from NaNoWriMo are submitted to publishers or agents? I’m wondering if The Office of Letters and Light ever surveyed participants to get a rough number.
nanowrimo, “Twilight”, Nicholas Sparks romance novels, the internet, vanity, ego…Poor, poor agents.
I really don’t feel all that sorry for them, to be honest.