{"id":10836,"date":"2024-02-09T11:01:21","date_gmt":"2024-02-09T16:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/?p=10836"},"modified":"2026-02-24T14:03:29","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T19:03:29","slug":"the-cult-of-traditional-publishing-part-2-people-dont-talk-like-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/the-cult-of-traditional-publishing-part-2-people-dont-talk-like-that\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cult of Traditional Publishing Part 2: People don\u2019t talk like that"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Woman
Green is a lovely color on me, don\u2019t you think?<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n
\n
A tale of hubris and envy.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u2605\u2605\u2605<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to write a book!\u201d I hear quite a bit.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo it!\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

Writing a book has the lowest barrier to entry of any craft, hobby, art, free-time waster I can think of.<\/p>\n

Language is accessible to everyone. Everyone can find something to write upon and write with. If you\u2019ve ever heard about back-of-the-napkin ideas\/art, just know it\u2019s A Thing. Creators will take any damned thing that can hold ink or graphite.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Therefore, writing a story or book is felt to be easy. That\u2019s okay. Most people won\u2019t do it. They\u2019re just not interested. Some people will and they will feel a sense of accomplishment and it\u2019s a once-and-done and they scratch it off their bucket list. They may or may not share it. A few people will be infected with The Dream and learn how to submit queries and proposals to publishers. Some will publish themselves.2<\/a><\/sup> The marketers will make it to living (or better) income.<\/p>\n

\"18th-century
<\/p>\n

Anybody with a pen and piece of paper can do this.<\/figcaption><\/figure>What The Cult of Traditional Publishing fosters is the delusion that if you are any good, you will<\/em><\/strong> publish. It really is a religion: Take Simon & Schuster into your heart as your personal publisher and it will reward you with a book on the bestseller list. Remember, you are a child of Shakespeare and he is your lord and savior.<\/p>\n

You just gotta have faith<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I bought into this delusion. It was easy to believe before the internet, because you had no idea how many other writers were querying and you just knew<\/em><\/strong> yours would hit the slush pile just right. There were probably a lot, yeah, but it wasn\u2019t unmanageable.3<\/a><\/sup> I had an extra reason to believe because editors demonstrated they liked my writing but freak things happened.<\/p>\n

I was special.<\/p>\n

But the math don\u2019t lie and here is the formula:<\/p>\n

\n
Number of publishing slots < number of quality<\/em><\/strong> authors<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Quality<\/em><\/strong> is the real lie. It is the most pernicious lie because no one knows exactly what that is. Everyone assumes it\u2019s hitting the formula right and<\/em><\/strong> knowing one\u2019s way around the language. That is objectively true. It is also only ostensibly true.<\/p>\n

JK Rowling<\/a> got lucky when \u201cthe chairman of [Bloomsbury] gave the first chapter to his then eight-year-old daughter, Alice, to read. Upon finishing, she immediately demanded the rest of the book. However, Bloomsbury was not convinced that it had a bestseller on its hands. Rowling\u2019s editor, Barry Cunningham, warned her that she needed to get a day job because it was impossible to make a living writing children\u2019s books.\u201d This is a children\u2019s<\/em><\/strong> editor and he didn\u2019t recognize a gold mine.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to delude yourself into thinking one writes quality when your critique groups keep telling you this and you really don\u2019t understand the massive number of people who believe the same thing of themselves.<\/p>\n

You become like the beautiful small-town homecoming queen\/leading lady in local theater who thinks you can make it big in Hollywood, where no one\u2019s as pretty and talented as you are. You<\/em><\/strong> are the prettiest of all. You<\/em><\/strong> are the most talented.<\/p>\n

And then you find out LA is filled with beautiful, talented women and you look like everyone else and if you catch someone\u2019s eye, you\u2019ll eventually have to fuck Harvey Weinstein to get a breakout role and if you don\u2019t, bye bye hopes and dreams because you\u2019ll never work in this town.4<\/a><\/sup> And you may or may not go back home with your tail between your legs<\/a>.5<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n
If you are a good writer, you WILL get published. Don\u2019t give up.<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u2605\u2605\u2605<\/p>\n

2006<\/strong><\/div>\n

I\u2019m doing medical transcription and part of a Usenet group with other MTs. Most are women, most are bleeding-heart liberals, and every MT in the world has one thing in common: We are all voracious readers.6<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

An ancient woman, single, never married, with cats, a robot that mows her lawn, lives in San Francisco, and is about to retire. Now, this woman already irritated me because she felt very entitled to other people\u2019s money. She writes a book and she announces that she\u2019s been published. I\u2019m immediately green. I wear that color well. A lot. So I go looking and lo and behold! She self<\/em><\/strong>-published with this new-fangled thing called print-on-demand.     Wait, what?    <\/sup> Print-on-demand?!<\/em> Therein begins the toxic stew that churns in my gut.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s not supposed to do that! Nobody said she could do that! Doesn\u2019t she know how this is done? That\u2019s not an accomplishment! You can\u2019t be a good writer if nobody published you! I had that idea before you did and I couldn\u2019t afford it! I have been writing for years! I have a degree! My professor said I could write!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
HOW DARE YOU DO SOMETHING I AM TOO SCARED TO DO!<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

So I go to my secret horde of MT friends and rant. One of my friends, the only other female conservatarian MT I know (who has her own business) (whom I subcontract for) (who knows good fiction) bought the book and could barely read it. \u201cDon\u2019t worry about it; it\u2019s crap.\u201d<\/p>\n

I felt better, but later, the Usenet group had a conversation about fiction in general and this woman says, as authoritatively as she says everything, that she hates reading books that are grammatically incorrect. To clarify, I politely asked if she meant dialogue, too. She said yes. I said, \u201cThat is not the way people talk.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey should<\/em>. And I make them talk that way because it is correct.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is a medical transcriptionist. She listens to people talk all day. Doctors mumble, stutter, chew, shit, pee, and drive while they\u2019re dictating. Furthermore, I had cut my transcription teeth on transcribing my PI dad\u2019s telephone interviews when I was 16,7<\/a><\/sup> and had developed various punctuation protocols to replicate on paper how people really talk.<\/p>\n

So I copied and pasted a small snippet of dialogue from one of those old books I had written but han\u2019t looked at in years. She ripped me to pieces up one side and down the other and pasted a good piece of hers (which was, indeed, crap), but shocker\u2014the others agreed with me.<\/p>\n

People don\u2019t talk like that.8<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Satisfied that she was a dilettante and as much of an annoying idiot as I had already thought she was, I went about my medical transcriptioning business, comfortably smug that she had<\/em> to self-publish because she really was crap. My church and prophets were right, and my theology was pure:<\/p>\n

\n
Only people who can\u2019t write must self-publish.<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

But there remained the tiniest pebble in my soul I was worrying like an oyster worries a grain of sand: I write better than that. I am better than she is<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Aren\u2019t I?<\/sup><\/p>\n

\u2605\u2605\u2605<\/p>\n

2007<\/strong><\/div>\n

The Proviso<\/em><\/a>, book 1 of my restarted writing career, was as finished as it was going to be without editorial help. I started looking for online critique groups. They were not helpful. I found a couple of critique partners, but they didn\u2019t grok what I was doing,9<\/a><\/sup> deliberately hearkening back to ye olde dayes of soap opera books<\/p>\n

Didn\u2019t matter. An agent and\/or editor would see how special it was and whip it into shape.<\/p>\n

Then I realized there were these things called ebooks<\/em> and ebook publishers<\/em><\/a> and that was where most of these people were concentrating their efforts. Pffft. That was little better than self-publishing, but I continued to look for a decent critique group and partner.<\/p>\n

Well, it took a while but I figured out I wasn\u2019t going to get any valuable critiques.10<\/a><\/sup> I started preparing my submissions according to the Old Ways and when I went looking for agents and publishers, I was ecstatic to find out they took subs by email and<\/em> the restriction on simultaneous submissions was gone.<\/p>\n

I cracked my knuckles and gleefully copied and pasted my carefully personalized cover letters and \u201cfirst chapter into the body of the email\u2014no attachments accepted\u201d into one email after another after another and confidently hit the SEND<\/strong> button.<\/p>\n

\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

1<\/a>.<\/span>   #ProTip: Don\u2019t use pencil; it fades and you may need that idea someday.<\/p>\n

2<\/a>.<\/span>   This was always true, even when self-publishing was of the devil.<\/p>\n

3<\/a>.<\/span>   You weren\u2019t allowed to submit to different publishers and agents simultaneously back then, so it was a long process and you might never hear back. If you did so anyway and both publishers offered, you\u2019d have some \u2019splainin\u2019 to do, Lucy. The brainwashing was so complete that you obeyed this edict because you thought there was a very good chance more than one publisher or agent would want it.<\/p>\n

4<\/a>.<\/span>   Mira [sad trombone<\/em><\/strong>] Sorvino<\/p>\n

5<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n