Discriminating Against Quality: the New Low of Traditional Publishing

By Dario Ciriello

Part of the Indie Author Series

In the last few months I’ve had the good fortune to see two extraordinary manuscripts.

One of these was a developmental edit on a novel I’d critiqued the opening chapters of last year. The work is an intensely dark suspense novel set in a remote tavern in the Northeast at the time of the Revolutionary War. The piece is saturated in atmosphere, the narrative and character voices terse and spare. It’s as startling a novel as I’ve ever come across, the sort of thing agents and editors at publishing houses claim to live for. I had been impressed by the chapters I’d critiqued initially; now, weeks after returning the edited manuscript, I find myself still thinking about it.

The second piece came to me for critique. The author, whom I later discovered has been writing seriously for thirty-five years, has queried over sixty agents and not even had a request for a partial: he wanted a reality check on whether the novel had merit.

As I read through the work, a 155k-word fantasy bordering on the epic and set in what feels like an alternate world in a period with clear elements of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century North America, I realized I was looking at a my second unique work in two months: the story, beautifully told in omniscient with a nineteenth-century sensitivity of style, and so clean you could have published it there and then without editing or proofing, was of a quality and breadth that I associate with World Fantasy Award-winning novels. It was astonishing.

Both these novels contain supernatural, mystical, fantastic elements; both incorporate larger-than-life, fully realized characters who drive the action; both are beautifully written, seamless, impossible to put down; and both still resonate long after I returned the annotated manuscripts.

My point in telling you all this is that both these authors will almost certainly, as I advise readers at the conclusion of my recent writing craft book, Drown the Cat, be going indie. In fact, I advised both clients to do so after critiquing/editing their novels; I suggested they go indie, I confess, with the greatest reluctance.

Why? Because I know all too well from experience – mine and others’ -- just how hard the indie publishing road is (as, perhaps, do you). Because authors writing at this level would, in any sane world, or even this world two or three decades ago, at least get a fair shake from an agent or publisher. The fact that none have shown the slight interest in either of these fine novels, not even requesting partials, shows just how broken and, frankly, creatively bankrupt, trad publishing is.

I do understand the dilemma faced by readers at literary agencies and publishing houses. The slush pile1 is a slathering, poison-fanged, all-consuming monster, and the only way to survive it is by rejecting as many manuscripts per hour as is humanly possible in the (frequently vain) hope that there’s a story worth your time buried in there somewhere…if you could only get to it.

Unfortunately, the way the industry approaches the problem of first cut selection – rather like the mania for testing in schools – is by standardizing and unreasonably weighting the importance of synopses and query letters. We all know very well that you can be a terrific writer and yet suck at queries. What a first reader should really be focusing on initially are the prose skills shown in the first few paras of a story; if these are good, glance ahead. The synopsis is important, but only insofar as it needs to show that the plot hangs together (so many don’t) and that necessary character arcs are there; the query letter should be ignored: a good one only proves that the writer can write query letters. A simple cover should suffice. And don’t get me started on the industry’s obsession with categories.

So which new authors get asked for fulls? In the main, those who can write amazing queries and synopses, and who write formulaic and easily categorized stories that fit nicely with the industry’s ideas about what readers like. And there’s plenty of those manuscripts going around. I recently asked one award-winning author friend if they could suggest any agents who might have a look at these authors’ work. Their reply was that they don't know a single agent in the field who’s actively looking for new authors, and that they believe the chances of success today are as good for the indie as for the trad pubbed author.

And there you have it. Go indie and don’t look back.

Are you going, or have you considered going, indie because you believe traditional publishing system is completely broken?

Dario Ciriello is a professional author and editor as well as the founder of Panverse Publishing.

His fiction includes Sutherland's Rules, a crime caper/thriller with a shimmer of the fantastic; Black Easter, a supernatural suspense novel which pits love against black magic and demonic possession on a remote, idyllic Greek island; and Free Verse and Other Stories, a collection of Dario's short science fiction work.

Dario’s 2011 nonfiction book, Aegean Dream, the bittersweet memoir of a year spent on the small Greek island of Skópelos (the real Mamma Mia! island), was an Amazon UK travel bestseller. Drown the Cat: The Rebel Author’s Guide to Writing Beyond the Rules (Panverse, July 4 2017) is his second nonfiction work.

In addition to writing, Dario, who lives in the Los Angeles Area, offers professional editing and copyediting services to indie authors.

Website | Facebook | Goodreads

About Drown The Cat: The Rebel Author's Guide to Writing Beyond the Rules

Drown the Cat is a complete guide for the fiction writer who wants to develop an individual voice and understand the reasons underlying the so-called rules of writing. Although a few rules really are necessary, the vast majority are either dogma or passing fads. Worse, so much advice like “show don’t tell” and “open with action” is often poorly explained and entirely misunderstood, causing writers no end of problems.

Drawing on fifteen years of writing, critiquing, editing and mentoring experience, Dario Ciriello explodes writing myths, shreds conventional wisdom, and dissects the often misleading advice and diktats shouted at writers by books and blogs, agents and publishers. Drown the Cat gives authors the necessary tools and insights to retake control of their story and make it unique.

Whether your interest lies in novels or screenwriting, Drown the Cat shows you how to tell your story in your voice and place it before your audience, eschewing formulas and cookie-cutter fiction to remain true to your own, exceptional vision while adhering to the few rules that actually matter. Because writing isn’t about prose wonks and industry insiders: it’s about the reader, and most of all it’s about telling a story. Your story.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | | iTunes | Indie Bound | Kobo | Panverse

Notes

1I had three years of experience with my own slush pile when I was publishing the Panverse anthologies series and, later, taking novel submissions