Wisdom of Cherie L’Ecrivain
I ran across this humor on The Rejectionist.
While Cherie* and I don’t agree on every point, I do believe that forgetting who makes the bread and who churns the butter has become a problem in the publishing business. Reading her blog reminded me of something I heard an editor who has been around for a looooooong time say at a recent conference: the publishing departments are being discouraged from making the effort to talk to each other (i.e. an editor who wants to put in a plea for a book she loves is not supposed to go over to marketing and make the case from the sidelines). Sure, they meet. In a big room, with no windows that open, and a heating/cooling system that is always set on freeze/boil (okay, so that’s just a description of every meeting I’ve ever been to, in several different capacities, none of them publishing, so I could be off…but I don’t think so). And then marketing does what the big bosses demand (i.e. pretend they can predict the winner, throw tons of money behind it, and ignore everything else).
I don’t know if the days of boutique publishing are over, or are about to enter a renaissance due to the burgeoning e-publishing and POD market. But I pray daily that the industry giants wake up and notice that readers are sometimes unpredictable (no one guessed that Twilight, or Harry Potter, or Anita Blake for that matter, were going to reinvent and reinvigorate their respective genres), but always demanding. The fifteenth rip off of Twilight isn’t going to sell as well as Twilight. Duh.
I don’t know what will sell, I only know what I would love to read. And so that’s what I write. One day, maybe sooner, maybe later, publishing may go back to letting editors (who, you know, read) pick the books instead of marketing. My fingers (and toes) are crossed.
Kelly
*A non de plume, certainement.
