Quote:
Originally Posted by neilmarr
Because an acquisitions editor (like the vital casting director in film and theatre) works behind the scenes, his contribution to the literary gene pool goes unnoticed or is often undervalued, misunderstood and even considered suspect.
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Exactly.
I'm sure in pre-
Idol days, a lot of aspiring musicians, and even the general public, thought that there was something fishy going on. You could only make it in the music business if you had contacts, or if you were manufactured, etc. But now, we get to see with our own eyes that a lot of the aspirers are not 'making it' for a good reason. Not all, of course, but a large portion, certainly.
Maybe they can just about carry a tune, but am I going to switch on the radio or buy an album to listen to someone who can 'just about' carry a tune? No. Similarly, I will not buy a book from an author who can 'just about' write. Publishers know this, and so they try to find authors whose work they think
will sell.
In the other related thread, Neil and others talked about the agent John Jarrold. Now, I happen to be a member of a forum where Jarrold is a frequent contributor (well, he
was. He hasn't written in a while.) JJ himself admitted that his acceptance rate was very low (pretty much in line with the figures stated here). Interestingly, JJ also said that he has, more than once, rejected a manuscript
that he loved. Why? Because even though it struck a chord with him, it was his professional opinion that the book(s) were not, for one reason or another, commercially viable. As a respected and well-reputed agent, he feels it is his responsibility to only pass those manuscripts to publishers that he thinks can sell.
Along with the factors others have stated, this last is a very important reason a lot of manuscripts -- even well-written manuscripts -- are rejected. It is important for authors to pay attention not just to the guidelines of individual publishers, but the trends in the market as a whole. If you're writing Humourous Fantasy, for instance, you can be assured of receiving nothing but a scrapbook worth of rejection letters. You might love the book you wrote, and it actually could be brilliantly written, but it will get rejected because it has no place in the market. (Yes, I know of Terry Pratchett, but he doesn't count; his books sell by the power of his name. The genre itself has long been considered commercially dead.)
Ultimately, then, the goal is easy to state, but incredibly difficult to accomplish - write a book that people want (and will pay) to read.