A ripple went through Canada’s creative community this week when The Best Laid Plans, a witty and astute satire by Terry Fallis won the coveted Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. Fallis chose to digitally publish the book himself after universal rejection by Canada’s agents and publishers alike. Inhabitants of the literary world were aghast. Surely this oversight by the nation’s literati should be a cause of concern, and they should straighten up forthwith and start digging through their slush piles with renewed purpose.
On the contrary, the publishing world should be on notice that their anachronistic, erratic and fundamentally flawed manuscript selection process is headed for the dust bin of history as frustrated writers are now side-stepping the whole process and entering a whole new world made possible by the digital universe. Book publishing, as we have come to know it, is a dinosaur on its last legs.
Consider this: the traditional approach to publishing is to produce a very large quantity of books, something in the range of one hundred and fifty thousand if you’re a major publisher. These books are then stocked in bookstores, for three months in an essentially consignment sales arrangement. He also absorbs shipping costs. Without payment, the die-hard traditional publisher waits for that inventory to move. Eight times out of ten, it doesn’t. Plus, the publisher has to pay thousands for prime placement of the books, on tables near the front door or major aisles, for example, to attract impulse buyers. And then publicists must push the book, at great expense. At the end of 120 days on the shelves, the publisher must reclaim the unsold books and sell them as ‘remaindered’ books, at a greatly reduced price. Or, have them ground up into pulp , to be reincarnated into some other wood-based product.
All the while, during currency fluctuations and political crises like September Eleventh, publishers have had to wait for payment. A sudden shift in reader interest, a shift in the public’s celebrity frenzy or political stripe, and a publisher’s gamble can go bust. After the Twin Towers fell, readers abandoned fiction in droves. Suddenly the hot topic was Afghanistan or Iraq. Small and medium-sized fiction publishers were required to buy back all their unsold stock, bankrupting many. Some were gobbled up by the big players. Big players pulled in their horns, tightened their belts and decided to play it safe by giving the market more of what they were already buying. Why risk money on originality when books about Brangelina, Tomkat, Hilary and Obama are perceived to be surefire sellers?
Creating a best seller is formulaic. Put a famous person’s name on the cover, spend a hundred thousand or more in publicity, get the author on Oprah, and you’re in the money. The arrival on a best seller list creates the snowballing effect to carry a book along.
This explains to some degree why authors trying to sell new fiction in the last half decade have turned elsewhere. If you don’t already have an agent, a new author will be told, you’ll have to find a publisher first. If you approach a publisher, you’ll be told to find an agent first. Authors who scan the list of topics of interest to publishers, will be told that they are interested in books by and about celebrities, political scandal or terrorists. Publishers’ guidelines will either rule out unsolicited submissions, or set out directives that imply that books are still actually considered when they cross the transom. The truth is quite different. In the mid-90s, American publishing firm Viking admitted recently that they had one unsolicited manuscript in 26 years. Have they accepted one since? Sending out manuscripts, no matter how Leacock Award worthy, is a waste of paper and postage.
Authors like Terry Fallis have seen the writing on the wall. The rejection of his book was certainly nothing unusual or even new. MASH, which went on to become a famous television series was rejected by 21 publishers, or a period of seven years. In 1969, author John Kennedy Toole, committed suicide over his frustration with trying to publish his book A Confederacy of Dunces. When his mother finally found a sympathetic publisher years later, it went on to win the Pulitzer in 1981, and was hailed by the New York Times as a ‘masterwork of comedy’. James Joyce’s Dubliners was rejected by 22 publishers, Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel by 12. Even Jane Austen’s works were rejected steadily for twelve years before she broke into print, with her brother’s assistance. And these were in an era which can now be looked at as the golden age of print, before competition with satellite television, DVDs and the Internet came along.
A quick visit to Amazon.com will suddenly give you a glance into the future. The online book seller’s home page features their newly released eBook reader, three years in development. Sony is launching another model. PDFs or eBooks have been around a few years, and early adapters have been downloading them onto their hand held devices or computers, eager for original, reading material at a discount. It’s only been a matter of time before the devices became more user friendly and accessible. Both the Sony and the Kindle allow users to download books at a fraction of the usual cost. No inventory has to be maintained. No trees need die. And the shelves are never empty. Books will never sell out. And authors with gumption, like Terry Fallis, have discovered that self-publishing is just a few mouse clicks away.
Book publishers no longer have a stranglehold on the means of publication, or distribution. The on-line book sellers are now making it possible for self-motivated, self-driven and original creators to side-step the monolithic, archaic publishing houses, with their erratic and capricious selection process. And agents? Well, they can enjoy their posh, self-congratulatory lunches and twelve percent commissions with their friends at the publishing houses for a little while longer. But not for too many years.
Walk into your local bricks and mortar bookstore and look around. You’ll see off-the-rack reading glasses, and nice stationary and book ends. And pretty pillows and scented candles. Sure you’ll find the heavily-hyped block-buster best sellers, which the big-time publishers paid a lot of money to turn into this season’s pre-ordained winner. You’ll also find yoga mats and yummy coffee. And an increasing number of computer terminals, where many more books are featured. As the years pass, these terminals will become ever more significant.
On a recent morning, television viewers were treated to a glimpse of the future, courtesy of Martha Stewart. Her guest was the creator of the Kindle, Amazon’s stab at the eBook reader market. How fascinating the domestic diva remarked. She usually takes a pile of heavy books away with her for the weekend, intending to read them. “And here all I have to take on the plane is this little thing!”
What viewers may not have realized, was that they were witnessing the first volley of gunfire in a new publishing revolution.
Trudy Fong is the author of The Contingency Man, self-published on Lulu.com, and available as a conventional print-book, or a tree-friendly eBook.
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