Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
The whole of part two, curation, is really about the position of the publisher (and agents I would remind him) as a gatekeeper - this may be okay for readers, if/when it works, but doesn't serve the writer (keep in mind that rejected manuscripts only get form-responses, nothing useful that would help a writer to improve their work). The editorial and design aspects make sense, but then even Konrath acknowledges the need for an author to take care of these.
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As full disclosure, I'll note that I know Joe Konrath a little and have been a guest poster on his blog. I'm also a long-time bookseller and co-owner of a specialty independent bookstore with two locations, and I worked in publishing for years (and still work as a freelance editor), in addition to being the author of many, many books (most published traditionally, a tiny handful self-published electronically). So I have vested interests in various parts of the discussion.
I would argue that the publisher as gatekeeper does serve the writer, even in the case of a form rejection. Yes, there are very good books that get rejected all over the place (I've written some myself). Submitting a manuscript for publication is always a crap shoot, and the welcome it receives depends on many, many things beyond a writer's control and that may have very little to do with the manuscript's worth.
But it's also true that the new ease and relative respectability of self-publishing has encouraged many writers to get their books out before they are really ready to be published. Under the long-existing system, people worked on a manuscript and submitted it and if it wasn't accepted somewhere, they either a) worked on it more or b) put it in a drawer and worked on something else, or c) gave up. If they gave up, they weren't really writers to begin with. But if they chose a or b, then they became better writers simply by virtue of working at it, of putting down more words, of exercising those unique muscles.
Now we're getting people doing a draft and putting it online and calling it a book. Some of them even make some money at it, which encourages them to do it again. If they keep at it, they will (for the reasons stated above) get better. But they won't be challenged to work at getting better, because they have their book out and it made a few bucks and they can do that again. In my years in publishing I've seen a lot of people achieve moderate success but creatively plateau, never pushing themselves because they think they've reached their greatest heights.
Maybe mediocrity isn't a problem, though I think if readers are deluged with it, they can be turned off from reading altogether, or else start to accept it as the standard and not look for what's better. And I think writers being challenged--being forced by a series of gatekeepers--to do better work is important to each individual writer and to our literature as a whole.
To Joe's main point, the discussion of whether writers are being exploited, the answer is, probably, in the sense that our work is the raw material from which the product known as books is derived. Coal is exploited, timber is exploited, and writers are exploited. That said, more writers have made far more money from traditional publishing than from self-publishing. That may, and probably will, shift every year. But it's true for now, and will most likely remain true for some time to come.