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In the first installment of this piece we discussed the advantages and disadvantages of sole practitioner literary agencies.
With the introduction of a second person into the agency - even a secretary with no discretionary power - the dynamics of the firm usually alter sharply.The agent can if he chooses make himself less accessible, a state that is often tactically desirable. He at last has somebody to blame, perhaps not for negotiating and other serious mistakes, but at least for some of the clerical screwups that bedevil all business enterprises. On the other hand, the operation of the business should become more efficient, a fair tradeoff for the agent's withdrawal from the firing line. If the employee is anything more than a warm body occupying a desk, he or she can create some important opportunities for strategic games, can serve as a reader, rendering a second viewpoint on the salability of manuscripts, or as a sounding board for marketing, negotiating, and other decisions. And if that person is interested in and good at certain specialized tasks—handling movie, television, magazine, or foreign rights, for example—or has a good grasp of certain markets that the boss has no interest in or feel for, or if he or she is good at handling certain clients, then you have the makings of a potent team and the foundation for a successful agency.
From that point on it becomes a matter of adding new staff members and deploying them according to the organization that best suits the agent's style - a style that may transmute as the agent gains experience. As a rule, the smaller the agency the less specialized are the tasks performed by its staff: in other words, everybody handles everything. As the firm grows, a structure usually emerges along lines of staff specialization. One structure might be described as vertical, with the agent at the pinnacle handling the clients, supported by a staff that services the clients' properties but does not necessarily have contact with the clients themselves. One staff member might handle foreign rights, another movie, another serial, another bookkeeping, another filing, and so on.
The advantage of a vertical system, generally, is excellent service, for every aspect of the client's needs; every facet of the property, will be taken care of by a specialist. The disadvantage is that the client list must be kept relatively small- no larger than the capacity of the head of the company to handle his clients' work and needs comfortably. Another disadvantage is the vulnerability of the agency in the event of the death or disability of its owner, for there will be no one with deep experience at handling clients to take his or her place. If the agent should go out of town for an extended trip or vacation, the agency may be reduced to a maintenance capacity and not be capable of dealing forcefully with the sorts of emergencies that always seem to attack writers the moment their agents board an airplane.
As an agent becomes successful, he or she will be solicited by many authors seeking representation. Many are excellent writers with good track records who need the guidance and assistance of a good agency. A combination of profit motive and compassion will compel the agent to offer representation to them. But how can agents fit them into their stables without curtailing the time, attention, and service he is now able to lavish on the rest of his clients?
Some agents resist this temptation, harden their hearts, and shut their doors to newcomers. Others resort to hiring employees to handle the overflow of clients. An agency engaging a roster of agents might be described as horizontal, and obviously there is no limit to the number of clients such a firm can take on, for, as soon as it reaches capacity, it can always add a new agent to take on the excess. The boss will still be the boss, and there will still be a staff of specialists to handle subsidiary rights and clerical and administrative functions. But on the middle level will be those other agents, replicating what their boss does. They may be generalists, handling the gamut of literature from genre to mainstream, or they may deal in such specialties as juveniles, nonfiction, or science fiction. I would say that most middle-sized and large agencies fit this horizontal pattern; in fact, it's hard to imagine how an agency can become large unless it does expand horizontally.
From the writer's viewpoint, an agency of this type is attractive for several reasons. First, it enables him to locate within the organization the individual agent best suited to his work and style. Second, if the organization is well run, he will enjoy the benefit of a team approach under the supervision of the principal agent. And third, if one's agent is out of town or on vacation, or is so thoughtless as to die, there is a good likelihood that he will find a replacement in the ranks of the other agents at the same firm. In other words, the bumpy ups and downs you often experience with a one-person agency will be absorbed by a larger organization, and that is a secure feeling. But there's also a catch.
Most clients of middle-sized and large agencies are content to be represented by an agent who is not the head man or woman, as long as there is a sense that the chief is at least overseeing the work of the subordinate agents and making sure that all of the agency's authors are being properly serviced. Inherent in the very nature of large organizations, however, is a degree of insulation between the head of the company and the activities of those clients he or she does not directly represent. If an author begins to feel that the agent handling his work is not doing an adequate job, he may conclude that the head of the company has more important concerns than the scribblings of a fifteen-thousand-dollar-a-year midlist writer. Thus is created what might be described as the "A-List/B-List Syndrome," meaning that the agency has two client lists: the Grade A clients handled by the boss, and the Grade B ones handled by the secondary agents. When that sort of suspicion begins to gnaw at a client, he may eventually decide he must either move up or move out and seek an agency where he will receive more personal attention from the top agent.
It is therefore incumbent on the heads of agencies to make sure that the subordinate agents keep in very close touch with him and with each other. At many agencies, that is precisely what happens. In others, the boss has administrative and client demands that make supervision of the other agents' activities difficult. Now, it can certainly be assumed that some of those agents are ambitious, and so an atmosphere is created in which a subordinate agent, operating with little supervision, begins to wonder just what he needs a boss for anyway. He may be making a good salary and even collecting commissions, but as so much of the revenue he generates must go to paying overhead and a profit to the firm he works for, as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow the idea will occur to him that he could do better on his own. For many of his clients, the notion of joining this agent when he starts his own agency is extremely appealing, for in a stroke those clients will be transformed from B-Listers to A-Listers. Things don't always turn out to be as satisfying as that fantasy, though, for the agent may discover that he does not, on his own, enjoy the same success he did when he was a member of a large and influential organization. It is extremely hard and perhaps impossible for the client of a larger agency to sort out just what is the true source of his agent's power and success. Does the person handling you consult with the head of the company or is he handling your account strictly on his own? Is his effectiveness due in good measure to the influence, reputation, and support of his organization, or are these incidental to his performance? Some authors discover the answers to these questions by leaving; others, by staying on.
At the summit are the giant agencies, representing many illustrious authors, extremely well connected in the movie and television area, and moving tremendous amounts of properties, rights, and money. These firms are often broken down into departments, and you the author will be handled by someone in the literary department. These departments usually have senior and junior staff members and operate as potent fiefdoms in a great bicoastal kingdom. Because the overhead of these firms is stupendous, the clients they take on must be pretty heavy hitters and often are authors whose work is highly adaptable to film and television. The disadvantage is the intimidating vastness of such organizations.
Somewhere in all this is a place for you, and in few businesses is it truer that what's great for one person may be awful for another. I doubt if many authors retain one agent for the span of their entire career. Indeed, for the sake of an author's personal growth, having the same agent from cradle to grave may be a very poor idea.
At least, that's what I tell myself whenever I lose a client.
Of the million ways that digital technology has impacted on publishing, one that has not been noted to my knowledge is the significance of manuscript submissions online. Only a few years ago, the only procedure for submission of manuscripts by authors and agents was US mail or, in urgent cases, courier or messenger. Emailing manuscripts as attachments unless expressly requested by editors was a breach of protocol to say nothing of good manners.
Two or three years ago that changed. Though unsolicited material was still prohibited, email submissions by recognized authors and agents were accepted, and today this practice is commonplace. But until the introduction of the Sony E-Book Reader and the Amazon Kindle, editors receiving emailed manuscripts printed them out and read them in the traditional way – on paper. Agents and authors rejoiced because the cost and bother of printing and mailing manuscripts was shifted to publishers. And though publishers bore these burdens stoically, the scramble for photocopier time, the expense of purchasing and maintaining high-speed machines, and the wasteful generation of paper were just further proof that publishing was still stuck in a twentieth century brick and mortar/mechanical business model.
Last summer, an editor told me at lunch that her company had experimentally distributed Sony E-Book Readers to its editorial staff and encouraged it to download manuscript submissions into the device and read them that way. She said she was deliriously happy; it solved a million problems from schlepping heavy manuscripts in back-straining briefcases and backpacks, to shameful waste of environmental resources. Some other benefits were the ability to read books on crowded buses and subways without having to shuffle pages.
Since then, publisher after publisher has followed suit. As a great many editors commute between Brooklyn and Manhattan, the subway line between the boroughs has been nicknamed the Sony Express. (Some editors prefer to read submissions on Amazon Kindles.)
An unexpected byproduct of this innovation is that Word for Windows documents, the format of choice for most authors, display typographical and grammatical errors in the form of glaring underlines, which I call Reddies and Greenies. Misspelled words elicit a squiggly red underline informing the viewer of a typo. Incorrect grammatical usage elicits a squiggly green underline. Authors can call up correct spelling and grammar at the stroke of a key, and at another stroke substitute the correct usage for incorrect or override the computer’s didactic but almost always correct remonstrations, such as an oddly spelled proper name or a deliberate misuse of grammar for special effect. The word processing functions generating these corrections are known as Spell Check and Grammar Check, but I refer to them as those schoolmarm twins from Eastern Europe, Spelczek and Gramaczek.
Unfortunately, all too many authors ignore the finger-shaking of those schoolmarms and submit their manuscripts replete with reddies and greenies. And if you are guilty of that sin I am here to tell you to mend your ways. For one thing, the rainbow display of underlined words and sentences is a serious distraction. Editors are conditioned to spot and correct errors in manuscripts and will unconsciously – or, even worse, consciously – stop reading to ponder some solecism beckoning for attention on their screen. If they loaded your manuscript into their e-readers hoping for a page-flipping experience (as your pitch promised), they will instead find their eyes lurching from one red or green flag to another.
What’s worse, the display of all those flags may give some editors the impression that you simply can’t write.
To demonstrate my point, this link* will take you to this selfsame article, except that I have deliberately ignored spelling and grammar prompts and sprinkled it with a handful of errors. Fasten your seat belts; it’s going to be a bumpy ride. It will also be an educational one. You will become a better speller and a better grammarian. You may even catch Spell Check or Grammar Check in an error! (I have a running quarrel with the latest version of Spell Check, which insists on changing “dialogue” into “dialog”. Bill Gates, where did you go to school?)
It is incumbent on every writer to review his or her manuscript for spelling and grammatical errors. Getting published is hard enough without saddling yourself with the excess baggage of being judged incompetent in the tools of your craft. And shedding that baggage could not be easier. On your Word for Windows taskbar, click on Tools to enable the Spelling and Grammar function, then following the prompts and either correct your errors or ignore and override them. When you come to the end of the manuscript there will not be a reddie or greenie in sight. Hit Save and you’re all set. Gazing at a clean black and white page, you will experience pride and professionalism and you will be able to submit your manuscript with confidence that whatever else may be wrong with it, sloppy spelling and grammar are not among its faults.
As those twin schoolmarms Spelczek and Gramaczek would say – Neatness Counts!
* To see a version of this text with errors, download the following Word file, BWB_errors.doc, and take a look at how Word approaches various grammar and spelling mistakes.
I'm not sure that authors understand the structures of literary agencies much better than they understand those of publishing companies. For those of you who are shopping for an agent or thinking of switching agencies, or who are simply interested in organizational dynamics, it might be interesting to compare agencies of different sizes and structures and to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each type.
First, but not least, is the one-man or one-woman agency. And when I say one man or woman I don't mean one man or woman plus a secretary, for, as we shall soon see, the presence of a second person can radically alter an agent's style, service, and clout. Most such agents start out either as editors of publishing companies or as staff members of large agencies; a few join our profession from the legal and other related fields. To agenting they bring their special knowledge and experience, and those are always big pluses for prospective clients. They can also be handicaps, however. The lawyer who becomes a literary agent will soon discover that publishing law is so vastly different in theory and practice from any other kind of law as to render his training and experience virtually useless. Agents who leave big agencies to set up their own don't always make good agents, as they may be unused to operating outside the context of a supporting organization. Editors who become agents may know a great deal about publishing procedures, but that knowledge doesn't necessarily make them good deal-makers.
The sole practitioner must do everything by and for himself, and from an author's viewpoint there are many desirable aspects of such a setup. Chief among them is accessibility. Phone answering machines or services notwithstanding, you know that when you call your agent, you will get him or her. That means you can maximize your input, communications, and control, which is great unless your input, communications, and control happen to be lousy. Remember that you hired an agent in the first place because you need someone who understands the publishing business better than you, someone who is more experienced and skillful in negotiations, is more objective, and remains calm when push comes to shove. If you take advantage of your agent's accessibility, then all you are doing is manipulating him like a puppet, programming into him the very same emotional shortcomings that you most desperately need to be defended from.
For the sole practitioner, the credit for success belongs exclusively to him or her, and deservedly so. But so, deservedly, does the blame for mistakes. Because there is no insulation between author and agent, both positive and negative emotions tend to run stronger than they might if the author were not so intimate with everything having to do with the handling of his business. Indeed, the author represented by a sole practitioner is all too often quite intimate with the business of his agent's other clients, too, and among the emotions that run strongly in these cases, therefore, is jealousy.
In short, you cannot ask for more personalized service than you get when you engage a one-man or one-woman agency, and if the relationship is solid and harmonious it can be like owning a custom-made automobile. But custom-made automobiles tend to react oversensitively to every bump in the road. And their owners tend to tinker with them.
From the viewpoint of one who has been a sole practitioner, the biggest disadvantage is that the one-person company cannot utilize what businesspeople refer to as a "devil," someone to blame. It is essential for the new agent to cultivate and ingratiate himself with the influential editors in the business. Needless to say, this agent will be loath to alienate those editors by being overly tough and demanding in negotiations. If an agent starting out in business gets a reputation for being unreasonable, he may lose business. He can of course blame his intransigence on his clients, but in most cases the editors will know it's not the author who's the troublemaker, but his agent. Besides, one of the things authors hire agents for is to take the fire for hard decisions in order to allow their clients to maintain pleasant working relationships with editors. If only there were someone working for your agent with whom he could play Good Guy-Bad Guy, he could have some leeway when it comes to playing hardball. His associate might sometimes serve as the devil, taking tough positions in negotiations. Then, just when it looked as if a deal were going to fall through, his boss would intervene and offer a compromise that mitigated his employee's inflexibility. In other cases the assistant could be the good guy who wishes he could be more lenient but, well, his boss is a tough bird who simply will not yield.
This may be the commonest game played by businessmen and women, but it requires two to each side, and the sole practitioner is one shy of that minimum. Exposed as he or she is, the one-man or one-woman agent must, almost by definition, be a courageous individual.
With the introduction of a second person into the agency - even a secretary with no discretionary power - the dynamics of the firm usually alter sharply. In my next installment I'll explain how.
Whenever authors gather to discuss the merits of their agents (it may legitimately be wondered whether they ever discuss anything else), the word "clout" inevitably enters the conversation. Clout is the measure of an agent's influence over publishers, and though it is by no means the sole criterion by which agents are judged, it is certainly the ultimate one. What is clout? How do agents wield it? And is it everything we crack it up to be?
The definition of clout has two important components. The first is access: the enclouted agent is intimate with the most powerful men and women in the publishing industry. "They put me through to the head of the company whenever I call," an agent might boast. Or, "I can have your manuscript on the editor-in-chief's desk tomorrow morning." The second component is power, the capability to effect, yea to coerce, positive decisions. The agent with clout does not merely have access to the honchos and honchas of certain publishing companies, he has the ability to make them say yes, and to say yes when they would have said no to some other agent.
Unquestionably, clout exists in our business as it does in any other, and there are indeed agents who can make publishers jump every time they call them on the phone, or render a positive verdict when they were originally inclined to render a negative one. At the same time, there are many erroneous impressions about clout stemming from the widely held belief that power in publishing is concentrated in the hands of an elite circle of men and women, a belief promoted by the press, which tends to quote the same people every time it does a story on industry trends. Let's look a little closer at these impressions.
1. Agents with clout know the top people in the business. It is not that hard to meet and know, or at least claim to know, the top people in publishing. For one thing, ours is an extremely small industry consisting, according to my short list of key contacts, of no more than two hundred men and women with acquisition authority in the trade book field—a number sufficiently small so that in the course of a season of publishing parties, lunch and drink dates, and office visits, any agent could meet 75 percent of them.
Of course, it is one thing to be acquainted with these folks and quite another to truly know them as one knows friends or family. Among that two hundred I mentioned, I doubt if I know more than half a dozen in a way that goes beyond the superficial. More pertinent is whether an agent should be too tight with the people he does business with. If my own experience is indicative, I would say there are few true friendships between agents and publishers for the simple reason that business all too often gets in the way of consistently close friendship. A time inevitably comes when one or the other must get hard-nosed about something, and few friendships survive the test of a knock-down drag-out negotiation, for it's impossible to dig in and take a hard stand when you're afraid of hurting the other guy's feelings. Bear in mind also that as genuinely warmly as agent and publisher may feel toward each other, the former is responsible to his clients, the latter to his company, and the pressures exerted on them are immensely daunting to friendship. The most one can hope for, I think, is solid mutual respect.
As for an agent's boasts of his ability to get an author's manuscript promptly on a publisher's desk, it's hard not to laugh, for if you could see some publishers' desks you would wonder why anyone would want to add to the mountainous chaos to be found there. I know of one editor whose office is so cluttered with unread manuscripts that his staff calls it the Bermuda Triangle. A story is told that one day an agent received a manuscript that this editor had finally gotten around to reading and rejecting. The agent dropped him a line thanking him for at last returning the manuscript, but pointed out that the book had been sold to another publisher, published, gone on and off the best-seller list, and been remaindered.
The truth is that most heads of publishing companies have too much administrative work to read manuscripts or even, for that matter, read all the books their firms publish. I would guess that more than half the time, when an agent submits a manuscript to the head of the company, that person is going to turn it over to an editor or reader and ask for a report. Unless the report is a rave, this executive will take the reader's word about the merits of the work. And again one has to ask, is going to the head of the company necessarily the wise thing to do? This tactic can backfire for an agent, for if the publisher thinks the manuscript is a stinker, he may be less inclined the next time to spend a valuable evening reading that agent's submission. An agent's credibility is his stock in trade, and once lost it's extremely hard to retrieve. Best to go through channels 99 percent of the time, and to be damned sure about the one time in a hundred you attack at the top.
One more myth about accessibility. It's commonly believed that clout among agents is the power not to return phone calls or emails. Although executives in all industries have their phone calls screened by subordinates, I know of few agents who are not available to the lowliest of editors or to any professional author desirous of speaking to them. And editors are fairly compulsive about answering emails. But like any other resource, use it sparingly and don't take advantage of the accessibility that email confers.
2. Agents with clout can make publishers buy things they wouldn't ordinarily buy. The judicious use of a close association with a publisher can make a difference in certain cases, particularly when a close decision teeters on the fulcrum of the key man's or woman's opinion. On such an occasion the agent may call in a favor, or beg one, or utilize any of his countless wiles, ranging from bluster to blarney, in order to elicit a yes decision. But because of the democratic process by which most decisions are reached by publishing companies today, few chief executives are going to make it a practice to overrule their editorial boards. The agent who tries to force positive decisions too often will eventually antagonize even his closest buddies in the business.
But I'm not sure that making the head of a company buy books is the best use for such personages, for, as I say, they are not as influential editorially as they are in other areas of the publishing process. The higher in a company an editor rises the less he is involved in editorial matters and the more in administrative ones. The editor-in-chief, publisher, and other titled executives are the principal transmitters of corporate policy. Such matters as advertising and promotional budgets, payout schedules, royalty scales, and reserves against returns are controlled by those persons, and if there is any flexibility on policies in such areas, it's to be found in their offices. And it's there that the agent is best advised to use his clout, except that clout is a terribly brutish word for a process that calls for the utmost finesse and diplomatic skill.
Because publishing in the last four decades has become highly conglomeratized and bureaucratized, decisions that used to be made by just one person who was accountable to nobody are now made by committee. Consensus is achieved by the input not merely of editors but of financial, legal, production, marketing, advertising, design, art, promotional, publicity, and advertising specialists. These individuals form a dismaying picket of decision-makers, each a potential naysayer. The agent's task thus becomes far more challenging than it used to be: it is no longer a matter of bullying, coaxing, or charming one person but of manipulating an entire system. Naturally, an agent can't approach the art director, head of subsidiary rights, in-house counsel, marketing director, vice-president in charge of publicity, and the half dozen editors who sit at a publisher's weekly convocations, whenever he tries to sell the company a book. But he might speak to one or two key board members whose reluctance to vote yes might be jeopardizing a deal or other important decision. The full measure of the agent's tact must be used here, for if he blunders the reaction may be likened to what happens when one inserts one's arm into a hornet's nest. Only at the utmost risk do you play office politics with somebody else's office.
One of the advantages a literary agent has over the unagented author is that the agent is usually familiar with the dynamics of each publishing house, and is able to adapt his methods to the style and structure and personality of each company. He knows all about their organizational structure and power hierarchy, their policies, their negotiating strategies, knows all about the friendships and rivalries that form the corporate profile. To know how a company reaches its decisions is to know how to influence those decisions.
There are other techniques for influencing decisions from without, ranging from relatively harmless ones such as cultivating and flattering secretaries (of either sex, I hasten to add) to the extremely dangerous one of going over the head of the person you're dealing with. For the agent who does not understand the company dynamic, who misjudges it, or who overplays the game, serious and possibly permanent damage may be rendered to his relations with that publisher. Some firms are so rigidly structured that any attempt to tamper with the system will create terrible turmoil.
3. Agents with clout get higher prices. There is a good deal of truth to this, but not necessarily for the reasons you think. High prices are a function of boldness; you get big money only if you ask for big money. Agents with reputations for landing huge deals earn their celebrity by seeking prices that other agents would hesitate to demand, and by risking everything by refusing to back down. But it takes two to make a deal, and if publishers accept an agent's demands, it's because the profit-and-loss statements they've drawn up before negotiations commence indicate that they can make a profit even if they meet the agent's outrageous terms. If a publisher takes a bath, the fault rests with the executives who wanted the book so badly they were willing to delude themselves about its prospects in order to acquire it. Of course, one thing that agents with clout do best is foster such delusions by reassuring publishers that they will earn back all that money. But seldom can an agent charm a publisher into overpaying again and again, for at a certain point along the chain of failures, people start getting fired.
One last myth about clout that deserves to be punctured: it is seldom exercised by means of a raised voice. The image of a cigar-chomping agent-bully browbeating an editor into submission is not one with which I'm familiar except in movies. Almost all of the agents I know speak to editors in conversational tones, even when the going gets rough. One of the most clout-laden ones I know seldom raises his voice above a whisper, but heaven help the publisher who does not detect the apocalyptic undertones in his voice when he murmurs, "Are you sure that's your final offer?" or, "I don't think you've really thought this through."
There are hundreds of literary agents plying their trade in New York, California, and many locations between coasts, and I'd guess that you've never heard of most of them. They don't get their names and faces in the trade papers every week like some agents we all know. Yet almost all of them make a living, and some make very good livings, simply because they know that a good book is the master key to most editorial doors. So perhaps you should ask not what your agent can do for you, but what—by way of a good book—you can do for your agent.
The Two Worlds of Literature: What Serious Writers Can Learn from Genre Comrades in Arms
When I went into the publishing business after graduating from college, I discovered a literary culture so lastly different from the ones I had studied that I could scarcely find any common ground between them. This world was populated by romance, science fiction and fantasy, and male action-adventure writers, by pulpsters, pornographers, and countless others who earn their living producing genre books.
Since then, I have become a citizen of that world, both as a writer and as a literary agent representing other writers of category fiction. I have come to know and respect, to admire and even love this world and its denizens and have had the privilege of attending the birth of some works that have come to be regarded as masterpieces of their genres. But I have also become increasingly concerned about how little is known about this world by the writers and critics who dominate the world of serious literature. And I've concluded that we are all a little poorer for these gaps in awareness, appreciation, and communication.
The belletristic establishment regards the world of popular literature as a subculture, but one could seriously argue that it is really the other way around. Very few "serious" writers make enough money from their writing to support themselves without having to moonlight. Their audiences are often modest in size and elitist in taste. Their work is frequently inaccessible, intellectual, experimental, and sometimes incomprehensible. Literary authors are often isolated from their fellow writers both physically and artistically, so that they have little sense of community or opportunities for intellectual cross-pollination.
The Professional World
Now look at the world of genre literature. Is purveyors are professional authors most of whom earn a comfortable living and many of whom earn a substantial one, all without having to rely on non-writing jobs to supplement their incomes. These authors reach a wide audience: Because many write original paperbacks, they can count on a minimum readership numbering in the hundreds of thousands and even millions. Their prose style and craftsmanship range from competent (they must at least be competent to sell their work to publishers) to superb; I will stake my career on the assertion that the craftsmanship and prose to be found in the best genre books matches or exceeds that found in the work of manv so-called literary stars.
Professional writers enjoy a strong sense of cohesiveness and mutual support that is lacking in the world of belles-lettres. Professional science fiction, western, romance, and mystery writers belong to guild like organizations that publish newsletters, hold conventions, and lobby for improvement of terms and conditions for their constituent authors. Taken altogether, these factors suggest that the life of the professional writer is far better integrated into the social fabric than that of the literary author. Genre writers might be likened to the guild arti sans of medieval times, with the exception that the Medieval craftsmen had the respect of their peers and patrons and were completely integrated into the community.
I have frequently pondered what it is that separates these two worlds of literary endeavor, and can think of a number of elements. One is ideas. The world of serious literature stresses the primacy of ideas, and the format of serious literature is designed to express those ideas. Another critical element is viewpoint: the serious author's viewpoint, or vision, is what makes those ideas fresh and special. And then there is style, the unique garb in which the author's ideas are dressed. The most interesting authors are able to identify themselves after a page or two because of what they have to say and how they say it. All too often, however, that format is not accessible to the mass reader because it doesn't follow the universal verities that, as Aristotle contended, humankind supposedly responds to. It is sometimes remote, dislocated, overly stylized, tedious, or just plain badly constructed and expressed. But the authors, and presumably their audiences, don't necessarily care as long as the essential idea is conveyed in a stimulating way.
The Story Element
Few professional authors approach their work this way; not, at least, if they want to stay in business. In the value system of the professional author, the most important element is story, for stories are what pros are paid to write, and those who are paid the most are the ones who write the best stories and write stories best. Ideas may be articulated, certainly, but only insofar as they help delineate the viewpoint of the characters themselves. Professional authors never allow their own ideas or viewpoint to override those of the characters who people their books, and the idea of calling attention to themselves through unique stylistic techniques are totally alien to them. Indeed, if a professional novelist slows the pace of his or her book to express some personal viewpoint, or distracts the reader's involvement with the story by employing stylistic gimmicks, he or she can expect the editor to come down very hard on the offending passage with a blue pencil. Totally unlike serious literature, it is often impossible, upon reading a popular novel, to guess who the author is, so well disguised is he or she behind the excellence of the tale itself. And that is the way that they, their publishers and their readers like it.
The lives of professional genre writers differ in many significant ways from those of their more literary brothers and sisters, and indeed from the romantic image so many people have of the way writers are supposed to live. They are, for example, extremely businesslike, or at least extremely concerned with the business of writing. They study the provisions of their publishing contracts carefully and actively consult with their agents in the negotiating dialogues with publishers. They know the market value of their work before they sell it, sometimes within $500 or $1,000, and in fact, most of them sell their work before they write it, lining up contracts (often for more than one book at a time) in advance. They approach the work at hand in a businesslike fashion as well. Because genre book lines have specific word-length requirements to fit them into the publishers' rigid price and marketing structures, writers have to design their manuscripts to those lengths and to pace the development and dramatic flow of their books so that all is resolved within 60.000, 75,000 or 100,000 words.
The Importance of Discipline
Which leads us to another quality of the professional writer: discipline. Inspiration as it is commonly understood plays little part in the life of the genre author, for, as we have seen, ideas are subordinate to story in his value system. Having selected a milieu or location, outlined a story, and sketched the cast of characters, the writer then tackles the job the way a skilled carpenter might approach the building of a piece of furniture, day by day, piece by piece. Of paramount importance is the outline. The synopsis of genre books are often highly detailed and broken down chapter by chapter scene by scene, so that every day, when writers sit down at their desks. They know precisely what work is cut out for them. It is here, in the daily task of writing the book itself, that inspiration plays a role. As the author follows his or her outline, the nuances of character, the details of time and place, the fine points of story and complications of plot flow endlessly onto the page from a source that is wondrous and mystifying. Characters take on lives and wills of their own. Struggling with the author for control of the work (and sometimes, to the writer's astonishment, winning).
This day-to-day grind with its little pleasures, epiphanies, and triumphs not be as romantic as the Big Bang variety of inspiration we usually associate with art, but does enable professional writers to get their work done no matter how ill, rotten, depressed, exhausted, or bereft of spirit they may feel on any given day: "You turn it on," they will tell you, "and out it comes." Writer's block is therefore seldom a problem for professional authors, and besides, it’s a luxury they cannot afford. These writers know pretty much to the word how much they can write daily before growing fatigued: two thousand words, say, or twenty manuscript pages or three chapters of work that is consistently good, often good enough to be acceptable in a single draft. They can therefore predict almost to the day when they will be turning their manuscripts in to their publishers. This is critically important in order for the author to project income flow. It is equally important for the publisher to be able to count on reliable production in order to schedule books far in advance with relative confidence. Because covers and monthly catalogues are produced by paperback publishers before manuscripts are actually in hand and sales people solicit orders months before publication, the failure of an author to deliver a book on schedule is a nightmare that haunts editors. Reliability therefore becomes the prime virtue of professional writers.
Demands of the Marketplace
Unlike so many literary authors, professional writers are intensely attuned to the demands of the literary marketplace, because their lives and livings depend on its fluctuations. Genres go in and out of style, and heaven help the author who doesn't adapt to a trend. As I write, science fiction is holding steady but fantasy is booming, westerns and horror are weak, cozy mysteries are strong and paranormal romance are huge. Authors working in these genres are expected to know about such cycles, indeed to know about nuances within the cycles: that within the fantasy genre, for example, the subspecies known as sword-and-sorcery is not very much in demand (as I write this, at any rate).
Like professionals in other fields of endeavor, professional writers exchange information with each other about the state of their fields. They belong to organizations devoted specifically to their genres, such as The Science Fiction Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America, Western Writers of America, International Thriller Writers and Romance Writers of America. These organizations have websites and regularly publish newsletters profiling leading writers in their field, offering market reports about which publishers are buying what material, how much they're paying, and whom to contact. Annual national conventions (and frequent regional ones as well) are held. There, organization members exchange information, conduct seminars, meet agents and editors, and honor their own for achievements in various categories. These meetings are usually well attended by representatives of the publishing industry and offer writers and editors an opportunity to conduct business on a less formal basis than is customary.
While I realize I’ve painted a black and white picture, discussions I've had with countless writers in all fields strongly suggest that the polarity of admiration and emulation runs from genre writers to mainstream ones but not vice versa. Oh, from time to time, a mainstream author will confess a secret passion for genre fiction that can be likened to a craving for junk food, and on occasion a mainstream author will cross over into genre fiction by writing a science fiction or mystery novel, a sort of literary equivalent of slumming. But these are exceptions that play up the rule that most literary authors don't feel genre writers have anything to say to them. That this is arrant snobbery goes without saying. I also happen to feel it is bad thinking.
The time has come for serious writers to pay far more attention to their genre colleagues than they have done up to now. The increasingly monolithic publishing industry now concentrates such power that the livelihoods and freedom of expression of writers of every kind are seriously threatened. As publishers focus more intently each year on producing blockbuster bestsellers to carry their bottom lines, the time and space in which writers can develop shrinks, meaning they are being forced to mature far too early. As the spawning grounds for writers get squeezed harder and harder by economic exigencies, the pressure on tenderly budding talents to turn out commercial successes becomes more and more intense. This disease has spread from giant bookstore chains to publishing conglomerates and has now infected the thinking of authors of every stripe, who feel their only choices are to hit the pot of gold on the first shot or become computer programmers or insurance salesmen.
When I entered the publishing business in 1959, a writer could still cherish - and achieve - the fantasy of a quiet life of literary accomplishment, a life in which one could be content with a modest living and the admiration of a small but dedicated audience. Today, this notion is so laughably out of date that I cannot imagine anyone seriously harboring it. More to the point is that if anybody did, it would be impossible to achieve it. And I believe there is worse ahead: as the conglomeratization of the publishing industry continues, it is possible that literature will no longer be a place in which writers achieve any dreams at all save that of getting rich writing stuff they don't give a damn about. If this vision seems excessively dark, you have only to listen to the complaints of television writers in order to foresee the future.
The Publishing Ecosystem
It is vital for the writing establishment to realize that literature is far more than a ladder with junk at the bottom and art at the top. Rather, it is an ecosystem in which the esoteric and the popular commingle, fertilize one another, and interdepend. Principally, if it were not for the immense revenues generated by science fiction, romance, male action-adventure, and other types of popular fiction at which so many literary authors and critics look down their noses, there would be no money for publishers to risk on first novels, experimental fiction, and other types of serious but commercially marginal literary enterprises. Furthermore, from the aspect of the writing craft itself, there are many extremely important lessons for literati to learn from their genre comrades in arms, if only the former would take the trouble to study them. Although serious writers tend to reject formula plotting, for instance, they sooner or later realize that if they wish to reach any kind of audience at all, they will have to construct at least a minimum of formula skeleton for their works. When they do realize it, they have but to visit the popular literature departments of their local bookstores to discover a trove of skillfully fashioned works to teach them about creating sympathetic heroes and heroines, daunting conflicts and antagonists, masterful pacing, and the building of dramatic tension to a thrilling climax and a satisfying ending.
And there is more: pride and professionalism, skill and discipline, reliability, attention to the business aspects of the writer's trade, a healthy respect for publishers and for the vast audiences that publishers speak for - these are among the lessons waiting to be learned by those on the other side of the gulf that separates the two worlds. Above all, serious writers stand to discover that they by no means have a monopoly on integrity. And because the integrity of all writers is now in jeopardy, it is incumbent on those of both worlds to talk and listen to each other to read each other, and, above all, to respect each other.
This article was originally written for Locus, The Newspaper of the Science Fiction Field and reprinted in the Winter 1992 issue of the Writers Guild Bulletin. I’ve made a few modifications to bring it up to date, at least as of 2008.
