Re: 18 year old novelist
I'm trying to figure out how this is different than landing a job anywhere?
It's different because you aren't trying to get a job, you're trying to sell a product, one the publisher must then sell to the public. It simply isn't about the writer, and there's no similarity at all to getting a job. Getting a job is as far from selling a novel as you can get. Most people can do any job they've been trained for, or can be trained for pretty much any job the employer wants to train them for.
Darned few people can write a novel a publisher is willing to put many thousands of dollars behind.
I don't care how well you know an editor or publisher, or what kind of contacts you have, that publisher still has to put up a lot of money to pubish a book, and four out of five first novels lose money for the publisher.
A publisher can make a lot of money on the right novel, and lose a lot of money on the wrong novel. Editors lose their jobs by buying the wrong novel, and contacts or not, no editor is stupid enough to lose a good job by buying novels the publisher can't sell. Agents who take on writers because of contacts soon lose their good standing with publishers, and won't last long, either.
Those who think contacts make a difference have obviously never been inside publishing, and simply have no idea how it works. People seem to think an editor simply says, "I'm going to buy this" and it happens. It may work this way at a very tiny publishing house, but it does not work this way at large publishers. Nor does the publisher ever, for any reason, come in and say, "I know this person, so we're going to buy her book."
Contacts in publishing do not, will not, cannot get a novel published. It simply doesn't work this way. Not ever.
At the absolute most, the only thing the best contact in the world will get you is a faster read. That's it. Period. As one editor put it, "If God Himself recommended a writer to me, I'd still want to read the book before making a decision."
If your husband's friend had been trying to sell a product, rather than trying to get a job, and if that business thought they would lose many thousands of dollars by buying that product, do you think he would have been successful because he had a contact?
That's publishing. I've been in this business in one way or another for twenty-five years, and I've never yet seen a single person be published because they knew someone. I have seen a great many people rejected repeatedly, even when they had contacts better and higher up than this girl could have made if a hundred years. I've seen people who knew editors, agents, and publishers on a first name basis, and who still couldn't sell a novel. Shoot, I've knoown writers who were related to such people, and who still couldn;t sell a novel. I've even known a couple of writers who were married to great contacts, and who couldn't get a novel published.
The "You have to know someone" line almost always comes from those who have no clue how publishing works, and who are looking for excuses why they can't sell their own novel.
This is a real simple business. If you can write a good novel, one an agent thinks she can sell, she takes you on. And if an editor reads that novel, and believes it to be one that can turn a profit for the company, she recommends buying it. This almost always means the novel then has to pass muster at an acquisitions board, one usually made up largely of bean counters. The board is the one that actually buys the novel, and they have only one thing in mind. . .will this novel make money? If the answer is yes, they buy it, and if the answer is no, they reject it.
The simple truth of the matter is that only about one novel in a hundred is anywhere near good enough to interest a publisher. Anyone who has read thorugh a slush pile will tell you that finding a good novel is harder than finding gold in your bathtub.
And the truth is also that not all that many good writers do write for years and years, or goes through hundreds of queries before finding an agent and a publisher. When it takes this long, when it's this hard, it's a sure sign that the problem is with the writer.
It's sometimes a sign that the writer simply has no clue how to write a query letter, but far more often than not, it's a sure sign the writer doesn't know how to write a novel. Very few can write a good novel, and if what comes into slush piles is any indication, very few can write a novel good enough to be called bad.
There are some things seriously wrong with the publishing business, but needing contacts isn't one of them.
If you can write well, if you can tell a good story, and if you can fill that story with good characters, you will be published. If you can't do these things, and most can't, you won't be published.
Some just find it impossible to believe that an eighteen year old can write better than they do, but it happens all the time. Talent doesn't have an age range, and young writers have been selling novels and making news for two hundred years.
But thinking contacts makes a difference is one of the biggest jokes in the business.
