Scott Turow: The Slow Death of the American Author (NYTimes)

[Sregener]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

He was lucky in the sense that he didn't spend years getting a dozen rejections, like Rowling (and others), before finding a publisher willing to publish his book. *That* connection is pretty much the luck of the draw and has nothing to do with the quality of the book or his talent.

Well, yes and no. The classic example is the 150 rejections A Wrinkle in Time got before a small publisher decided to "take a chance" on it. The problem with Rowling and Wrinkle in Time and other stories like those is that they were clearly books that were different from the norm. They didn't fit the typical genre boundaries and styles of the time. Turow aims right down the middle of a genre everybody knows: the mystery/thriller. He has his own spin on it, but his book did not create a new category. That he aimed down the middle and did so well is a testament to his skills and abilities, but that is all.

When I was in school, the theory was that A students made the worst teachers because "they didn't have to struggle and work at it like the C students did." Which is complete and utter nonsense. Some students work like mad to get As, and some students are just lazy and get Cs. The end result does not tell us how hard they worked to get there. Turow made his own luck. Only losers assume the winners were lucky.

[caleb72]

I keep thinking about this article because there's some things that really bother me about it.

The title is: The Slow Death of the American Author.

So firstly, the title itself limits this discussion to the U.S. But even then, it's not that simple. He immediately excludes himself and all other best sellers from this death. They are apparently flourishing with the changes he is condemning.

So ok - only U.S. non-best seller authors are dying this slow death.

Then the nature of his arguments seem to exclude independent/self-published authors entirely. His arguments seem to be aimed squarely at traditionally published authors only.

So ok - only U.S. non-best seller, traditionally published authors are dying.

Once you start working out about whom Turow is speaking maybe the title doesn't seem so outrageous because we've actually narrowed down this plague of his to much smaller proportions. I take it from his argument that he either believes these authors can not become best sellers and therefore immune to the problem.

Next - he's president of the Authors Guild and he represents some several thousand members. Are these all best sellers? If not, the president of these members has basically just condemned them all to a slow death in a prominent newspaper. How is this helpful to them?

Now I'm throwing aside all the arguments based on his use of logic. Much more knowledgeable people than I have jumped in and argued them. I'm just thinking about this in terms of the following questions:

1) About whom is Scott Turow speaking?
2) If I were in the Author's Guild and Scott Turow was my president, is this the way I would want him to characterise my future as a writer?

Even in a workplace environment, if my CEO continued to state publicly that the company - or large parts of it - were hopelessly lost, I would start looking elsewhere. If my leader had no confidence in my future - why would I follow?