Monthly Archives: December 2008

Don’t Panic

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You’ve probably already heard about Houghton Mifflin’s cutbacks, and the big news, that they plan on not accepting new manuscripts. There’s also some speculation that Borders may not be able to keep their bookstores open. Ouch!

I heard it on NPR on my way home the other evening, and my first reaction was to wonder how any publisher can survive without new books. I’m not sure I’ve gotten my head around that yet, in fact. Of course, the media reaction amounted to lots of gloom and doom with a touch of panic thrown in for spice.

Yes, I do find it disturbing that a major publishing house is laying off workers and suspending buying of new manuscripts.

No, I don’t think it’s the end of the world for publishing or for writers.

I think a lot of people, me included, are falling into the panic-trap of this recession, and the truth is, the more people in general panic, the worse the recession is likely to get. I think that’s a little scary, don’t you?

I don’t know what will happen to the publishing industry, but my point is, no one else does either. All the pundits who are saying this and that on the news, each being more negative than the other, don’t know what’s going to happen either. My solution? Don’t listen to them. Oh, and write!


Maybe publishers will lay off or cut back. Maybe some of the major houses will go under. Maybe POD and e-books are viable options, even for traditional publishers, since there’s less outlay of cash up front. Who knows? I still believe that good writers will attract readers. As writers, I think it’s in our best interest to focus on being the best writers we can be. I know it sounds naive, but I believe that if we do that, everything else will fall in place.

And what am I going to be doing? I’m going to finish the novel. Yes, it’s coming along quite well (almost 60k words right now). I’m going to shop it around to some agents in a couple months. If nothing comes of that, then I’ll explore using a POD publishing instead. In short, my plans haven’t changed. I’m working on writing the best novel I can and I’m trusting that there will still be readers out there for it. And no matter what happens to “publishing,” I feel safe saying people will still be interested in reading.

Just another slush pile

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I saw a site mentioned in this month’s Reader’s Digest (of all places), Authonomy.

The gist is this, you put up your novel on the site, which is run by Harper Collins, it gets voted on, and the top novels get read by editors at HC.

That led me to doing some research on whether other publishers are doing something similar. One of the first sites I found was Writer Beware Blogs, which is a site I head to whenever something looks a little too good to be true. They give a good summary of Authonomy, including some of the potential problems. Essentially, they argue that it’s still the slush pile of old, just moved online.

Authonomy seems to be combining the traditional slush pile with social networking. Instead of an agent or reader looking at your work, online readers do. If you’ve used any social networking sites like StumbleUpon or Digg, then you probably know that it’s not just the quality of your work that makes you popular. It’s also the quality of your social network.

So, I can see a mediocre novel getting more attention that a good one, providing the author has an active network on the site. Fair? Not really, but that’s the way popularity on all social networking sites works.

So, has anyone used a site like this? If so, I’d like to know how it worked out for you.