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Avocado ([info]white_serpent) wrote in [info]otf_wank,
@ 2009-04-17 16:05:00


Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:authorwank, elitism, publishing, special snowflake syndrome

But why isn't your book selling?
It's all the fault of literary agents, who are single-handedly destroying literature everywhere!

Excerpt:

The substantial and nearly unassailable wall that separates you from us has been under construction for decades. You can find the names of its architects and gatekeepers on your telephone-callers list, and in your email in-box. They are the literary agents—that league of intellectual-property purveyors who bring you every new manuscript you ever see, those men and women who are so anxious to gain access to the caverns of treasure they believe you sit upon like some great golden goose that they would likely hack one another’s heads off were they not united by one self-serving mission: to ensure that quality fiction never hits your desk.

Just a tiny bit of entitlement, elitism, and self-delusion.

And some responses...


(Read comments) - (Post a new comment)


[info]hallidae
2009-04-18 02:35 am UTC (link)
This commenter on the literary agent rant puts it so much more eloquently than I could (mostly, because my response right now amounts to "Is she fucking shitting us?"):



If you consider yourself part of the generation of writers we readers are losing, I’m afraid I won’t mourn your absence. The first few chapters of the novel you linked to read as chick-lit, not literary fiction, and tired chick-lit at that. Does the world really need another novel about a fat female protagonist with self-esteem issues who is ultimately redeemed by losing weight? The writing is clunky and bogs down frequently in overblown description. I suspect the reason you haven’t been able to sell this lies with you, rather than with the business model of the publishing world.

In short: more practice-writing, less windmill-tilting.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]dragonfangirl
2009-04-20 02:01 pm UTC (link)
*wince* I like how women's literature is being used as an insult here.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]white_serpent
2009-04-21 08:12 am UTC (link)
I read it a bit more as "You only think it's so much better than chick-lit because you know zilch about chick-lit. You've got something that might have been fresh and new 15 years ago, but is now trite. People aren't going to accept self-esteem issues and weight loss as the entirety of a book today; you need more than that."

(Kind of like: in the beginning of science fiction, you might have been able to get away with "We went to space and found ALIENS! ZOMG!" Today, the reaction would be, "Yeah, and...?")

It's background detail; it's not a book.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]dragonfangirl
2009-04-22 01:19 am UTC (link)
Okay, fair enough. :)

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]visp
2009-04-23 07:20 pm UTC (link)
Women's Literature isn't chick lit.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


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