Monday, November 28, 2005

The Joy Luck Club

Sometimes you get rejected because the story is badly written. Sometimes it's because it's not a subject the editor likes. Sometimes it's because the editor had a fight with his partner right before he went to bed and saw your manuscript first thing in the morning. Sometimes it's because the editor used your manuscript as a coffee mat and had to throw it out after there was significant spillage. Sometimes it's because your story came in the same day John Updike's did and no matter how good it is, it will never beat out an even terrible story by Updike. Sometimes it's because you can't get your story past the Cerberus of literary magazines - a pale-skinned eighteen-year-old college intern with neither editorial nor life experience but a vicious grasp of the power of the red pen.

If you've been in the business of submitting your work for publication, then you've met your share of the above and probably more. Talent, never a bad thing to have, is not the be-all and end-all on the path to success. Luck has plenty to do with it. So does understanding how books are selected by editors. For me it has always been a mysterious process. Shouldn't the great writing always rise to the top? This might be true if there was no money involved, but alas, publishing is a business and has been a big business of national and multinational conglomerates since the 1970s. Some would say it has never been the same since. When Jason Epstein in 2001 wrote his treatise on the last fifty years of the book industry in Book Business: Publishing Past Present and Future he said there were five major players running the book business in the United States - five. And so it gets more complicated than that. There are other mitigating factors.

"Isn't the process of selecting what gets published and what doesn't get published wholly subjective and controlled by mostly white men and women?"

So asked an angry young writer, his glasses pushed up against the bridge of his nose -and it wasn't me - at a workshop I attended ten years ago. I was young but much more naive and not in need of glasses, though I was a little angry at my seven years of foiled attempts at infiltrating the publishing systems' defenses.

I sat next to the rabble-rouser at the Old Chatham Writer's Workshop in upstate New York. We were in a large living room at an old Quaker Meeting House with a worn wooden floor covered by an old rose-patterned carpet, two barely padded sofas, and both soft and hard-backed chairs arranged in a large gallery-like circle beneath a high ceiling with exposed beams.

The six editors, all Caucasian, an equal number of men and women - the women with black and tan straight hair, some cut short in the fashion of the time; the men in glasses - shifted in their cushioned chairs. A few looked down at the carpet and studied the tangled thorns and petals spread out beneath their feet. One man, whose thinning hair drooped over his eyes as he looked down, bit into the thick skin of his thumb. Surrounded by other writers and publishing professionals, I leaned forward to hear what they would say.

"No," said a brave woman, black hair cut short, skin almost translucent. A patch of red colored her cheeks. "It's not about who is Black or white. It's about what is good literature and what is not. There is a standard, and it applies to all."

"But," the angry young writer continued passionately, flecks of spit landing on my arm, "what about the demographics of the book industry - who are the editors and agents? Who are the authors they are publishing? You are the arbiters of what people read and see as quality fiction. Isn't that true? Aren't you the true gatekeepers of what we consider art in fiction?"

"We can only work with what we are sent," said the man biting his thumb after spitting the extra skin out onto the carpet.

"But what about the manuscripts that aren't sent in the right format because the writer doesn't know what the right format is?"

"They can go to Barnes & Noble just like everybody else and do their homework. It's a business, and if you want to succeed in the business you have to follow the rules."

A number of heads nodded sagely at this old restating of the publishing canon.

"Still," the man continued, "we all can more or less agree to what is well-written so - "

Then an editor at a large publishing house - Publisher B - a black-haired and pot-bellied man, turned to face the thumb-biter, shaking his head, "I don't think we can."

"Of course we can, Jeremy. It's our job to know what good writing is."

There was quiet, nervous laughter.

Jeremy, the man from Publisher B, shifted in his chair for a moment as if unsure if he should push forward or retreat. Pushing his fingers back through his hair he made his decision. "Of course," he said. "You're right in one way - we're the arbiters of what's published and what's not. We say what's art and what's not because we choose what to publish. It's a huge responsibility and probably one of the reasons why we all love to do it."

I smiled, thinking, that took balls.

"It's who I think is good, and who you think is good," he said pointing at the translucent-skinned woman, "and there's no one standard on what is good literature and I'd say we rarely agree among ourselves which of the good pieces are the best pieces. And ... " he began, scanning each of his colleagues, "most of the editors I know are white, so it makes sense they'll be more open to writers that they, well, know. We have limited resources to buy with, so we're very selective and, well... subjective. I have two criteria for selecting a book. Do I love the work, and will it make any money? I wish I didn't have to think about the other but it's there whether I want it to be or not. It's got to do both, or I can't ask my company to buy it. It's just not like the old days when editors bought books because they believed in nurturing a promising writer hoping that some day they'd create their, our, great American novel.

And then sometimes we make mistakes. Do you remember a little book called How to make an American Quilt? I read it and passed on it. It just didn't do anything for me. What do I know about quilting? Besides, who would have thought a book about quilting would become a bestseller and then a hit movie? How did I know they'd put Winona Ryder in it? Even today if it came past my desk, I'd probably pass on it. I mean, you," he motioned to his colleagues, "tell me. You've all done it too, right?"

There was a murmur followed by a long silence.

In my peripheral vision I saw a woman walk in. Her hair was black and she wore glasses. She took a seat in the back to my right.

"And then," Jeremy plunged on, "there was Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club. I passed on that too. I didn't know how to sell it. Sure, I could tell it was well-written, but what did I know about the Asian experience and how to sell it to a mainstream audience? I can only do what I know how to do. We're all limited in that way."

The crowd turned to look past me - towards the woman who had just sat down.

"Oh, shit," Jeremy said.

I looked to my right also. The man next to me whispered, "That's Amy Tan."

I nodded.

"Hi, Amy," Jeremy waved. "I won't pass on another of your books if you send it to me now ... I promise! I've learned a bit since then."

I sent two manuscripts to Jeremy at Publisher B not long after that. We'd talked a few moments at one of the communal meals and I'd found out that he'd grown up in the same town I had. Why not send my manuscripts to him? I'm white and male. We shopped at the same sports shop for football equipment when we were kids. I had networked and we were connected. He didn't bite on either manuscript. Still, those words and his honesty about the business of publishing have stayed with me for ten years.

At the Frankfurt book fair this fall the Korean exhibition was highlighted with a football-sized hall. "The idea is to bring cultures together," the Buchmesse PR Director Holger Ehling stated in a recent Publisher's Weekly, "and of course to build the relationships that will connect publishers and marketplaces, preferably worldwide."

Not many people showed up, even with the free food and spirits that were handed out. In response, a U.S. publishing cynic is quoted by Editor-in-Chief Ms. Sara Nelson in her column in the same issue as saying, "We have a hard enough time getting our own books to readers. Books in translation are a very hard sell."

Ms. Nelson then states - commenting on cultural exchanges at the Frankfurt Book Fair - "But publishing, for all its admirable, high-end and altruistic qualities, is not about politically correct favors, it is - or should be - about publishing books that will sell. The smart publishers already know this ... "

Hey, I bought Yi Munyol's Out Twisted Hero, and enjoyed it! Sure it was only one hundred and twenty pages but it was hard-cover and I laid out $21.95 for it. It had a quote from Salman Rushdie on the back and it got a good pre-publication review in Publisher's Weekly. I'm part of the buying public, aren't I?

So where' s the tie-in? You spend three years of your life, working late at night at this second or third job of yours, ignoring your significant other ("You're having a love affair with that damned computer!"), sometimes your kids ("Daddy, can you play with me now?"), and sometimes performing substandardly at your paying job because you can't keep your eyes open unless you're using mega-doses of coffee - liquid toothpicks - to finish your novel and then it enters a fun-house version of Dante's Inferno.

"I love your work, Joe. I really do. This book is like a cross between Don Delillo's Endzone and The Natural - but I don't know how to sell it. I asked everyone at the agency and they said the same thing. So I'm going to have to say no."

Since big business took over thirty years ago it's gotten tougher out there. Everybody knows this, and yet a recent informal poll I took of writers I know who've been to writer's conferences all said editors and agents are still shying away from voicing this salability aspect when it comes to feedback and advice about their fiction. "Write a great book that you're passionate about and send it to me." That's all they say. There's nothing about, "And make sure it has a good angle with a top demographic, preferably a heavy female audience - otherwise I won't be able to figure out how to sell the damned thing."

Oh, there are still rules. We still hear them sung from the highest conference podium. "Keep your first novel short, under 300 pages. People don't like to read long works."

Yet look at the tomes authors are putting on agents and editors desks these days. They're breaking all the rules and still making it. A recent book by a first novelist weighed in at over 1,350 pages. And look at the wonderful use of footnotes - "Never use footnotes in fiction" - as a narrative device in Jonathan Strange (thank you for breaking that rule even if it almost drove me crazy reading the small print). How many of you out there who've read the book read the footnotes? How many threw it across the floor? Threw it twice? More than five times? But damn, the stories within the stories gave that book incredible texture and depth.

I can't even begin to talk about what is selling in non-fiction because that is an alternate universe ruled not just by the dollar but by the tabloid story of the moment and the insanity of the masses - who, as my High School history teacher always used to tell us, "The masses are asses." Why else would a book like Why do Men Have Nipples be a best seller or Trudeau's Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You To Know About?

And so the question of discrimination based on race or gender remains. Is it commerce or is it discrimination that causes editors to pass on books like The Joy Luck Club? Sure, someone bought it eventually and it is a publishing phenomenon now. But what about the thousands of other books like it that are not picked up and die a slow dust-collecting death in a writer's closet? Is it a factor of who the editors are, what they look like and who they know? Well, who else selects the books that go to those all-important acquisitions meetings and subsequent Barnes & Nobles pitch sessions? That editor at Publisher B was not just being ballsy he was telling it like it is. He understands white privilege and was, for one brilliant moment, willing to speak of it in the sanctuary of the white business world we call publishing. But why doesn't he, when he encounters a good book outside of his knowledge base, find someone who knows the target population to help him with the acquisition process?

Ms. Nelson did the same thing for all humanity in her Publisher's Weekly column - fair play to her. But, she was using commerce to explain the acquisition decision. If the acquisition decisions are discriminatory, isn't that a problem? Aren't we missing out on art because many times it never reaches the hands of the those with buying power? Perhaps the first thing that should be done is to stop talking about standards and quality, because although that's part of the picture it has long since become a sideshow - commerce has been a white king for thirty years whether folks want to talk about it or not. The fantasy of an objective literary selection process needs to be put to rest - so the new one, which is out there somewhere, working its way out of a slush closet - can some day replace it.

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