{"id":130,"date":"2008-09-18T14:17:44","date_gmt":"2008-09-18T19:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=130"},"modified":"2025-07-31T20:54:45","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T01:54:45","slug":"the-gatekeepers-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/the-gatekeepers-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"The gatekeepers, part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

I haven\u2019t read Stephenie Meyer\u2019s Breaking Dawn<\/em>. I read Twilight<\/em> and while I like cotton candy, I can only take so much. Like, one cone every 10 years or so or.<\/p>\n

By now I\u2019m sure everyone\u2019s heard about the backlash against what is reputed to be the shoddy workmanship of Breaking Dawn<\/em> and the push to return it to the bookstores after having read it. Mind you, the complaints ranged from the fact that Meyer tore her own world\u2019s rules asunder to the poor editing job (i.e., grammar, spelling, typos). I found more than a few of those in Twilight<\/em> and it bugged me then that a major publisher would release it like that. It looked so [sneer] vanity published.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard ad nauseam<\/em> about the gatekeepers, the agents and the editors, whose self-appointed Prime Directive is to keep out the unwashed masses of illiteracy who think they have a bestseller in them somewhere. They are there to not only 1) screen out the dreck and vet work that is potentially money-making, but once that is finished, to 2) put out a product that is well edited, well designed, and doesn\u2019t look like it\u2019s [sneer] vanity published.<\/p>\n

Well, with Twilight<\/em>, they did the first part right: They found a piece that would make money.<\/p>\n

With the second part, they dropped the ball (especially with regard to Breaking Dawn<\/em>) and Meyer ended up being put on the spot for a) bad writing, b) violation of her world\u2019s rules, and c) bad editing in all stages.<\/p>\n

I think that\u2019s totally unfair.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking about one particular Breaking Dawn<\/em> post\/thread on Dear Author<\/a> for over a month now, wherein the commonly held die-hard fan opinion [that Meyer wrote by whimsy alone (putting forethought and craft aside)] was reiterated by author K.Z. Snow:<\/p>\n

What\u2019s so irksome is this: Meyer seemed to have a serious\u2013and, to me, really appalling\u2013lack of commitment to and respect for the craft. So shoot me for idealizing what we do, but one doesn\u2019t become a writer on a freakin\u2019 whim. I\u2019m not surprised there\u2019s been a degeneration from one book to the next.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and I opined:<\/p>\n

I think this is clearly a case of wringing blood out of a turnip by the publisher and editors. They\u2019re the ones who control the channel to the marketplace. If Meyer doesn\u2019t have a commitment to the craft, who\u2019s to blame? Meyer? No. The publisher and editors who facilitated her in that. If she has any thought about \u201ccraft\u201d at all, I\u2019d be surprised\u2013and that\u2019s not her fault. She hasn\u2019t been required to to sell a gazillion+1 books.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nora Roberts disagreed with me:<\/p>\n

Yes, it is. Her name\u2019s on the book. It\u2019s her work. [\u2026] But it is the author who\u2019s responsible for what\u2019s on the page.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And this comment is what\u2019s had me thinking about this for so long after it\u2019s been done and gone.<\/p>\n

Ms. Roberts\u2019s comment is borne out in the fact that Meyer alone was held accountable for what\u2019s widely perceived as shoddy workmanship. Do we know who her editors (content, line, and copy) are? Undoubtedly somebody does, but they aren\u2019t the ones being burned in effigy. I wonder if they got dragged into a meeting to find out why so many die-hard fans took their books back? I wonder if they got sent to Remedial Editing? I wonder if Meyer went back and said, \u201cHey, why didn\u2019t you do your job? You made me look bad and you\u2019re supposed to make me look good. You\u2019re the gatekeepers.”<\/p>\n

She was also responsible for selling those gazillion+1 books and making a helluva lot of money for those gatekeepers, whimsy and shoddy workmanship and all.<\/p>\n

Yet why should Meyer bear sole responsibility for what is obviously a case of \u201cBless her heart. It ain\u2019 her fault; she doan know no better”? Moreover, she doesn\u2019t know<\/em> she \u201cdoan know no better\u201d as evidenced by the fact that she\u2019s trying to defend the book by blaming readers. \u201cThey just didn\u2019t get it.\u201d Well, maybe they didn\u2019t, but you don\u2019t say<\/em> that in public. If you can\u2019t keep from digging yourself into a hole, shut the hell up.<\/p>\n

(And ahem, Stephenie. You\u2019re college educated. Could you not have gone through your manuscript to make sure you caught all the typos? Oh, right. That was the copy editor\u2019s job, wasn\u2019t it?)<\/p>\n

Meyer\u2019s editors, in looking for a quick buck sooner rather than later, threw Meyer to the wolves. They, as the self-appointed gatekeepers should have done their jobs and when they didn\u2019t, they let her take the fall because, as Ms. Roberts points out, it\u2019s her name on the book<\/em>.<\/p>\n

They also threw the readers and die-hard fans to the wolves\u2014who howled<\/em> loud, long, and with their checkbooks. Who knows how many die-hard fans felt betrayed who did not take their books back and did not burn them (as some did)?<\/p>\n

I have come to no conclusion except that, at this point, I think both<\/em> Ms. Roberts and I are right. But how can that be<\/em>? I don\u2019t know, because obviously Meyer was<\/em> held accountable for it, but she wasn\u2019t the one who enthusiastically put it in the editorial pipeline. I can\u2019t think she had much control over it after that other than galley proofs.<\/p>\n

Right now, though, I only have two questions:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What, again, are the gatekeepers for?<\/li>\n
  2. How did such work warrant such gorgeous covers?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
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    I haven\u2019t read Stephenie Meyer\u2019s Breaking Dawn. I read Twilight and while I like cotton candy, I can only take so much. Like, one cone every 10 years or so or. By now I\u2019m sure everyone\u2019s heard about the backlash against what is reputed to be the shoddy workmanship of Breaking Dawn and the push […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87,525],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-money","category-publishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17071,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions\/17071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}