Why is so much crap published?

Hello. Good to be back--my computer has been in the shop. I'm looking forward to catching up on what I've missed.

Okay, here's a question: why do so many crap novels get published? Sometimes, when I go to Barnes and Noble, I'll flip through the bookstacks, trying to find a hot book. But several of them are garbage. Now, I don't read these novels all the way through, so perhaps I'm not being fair. Still, a writer should tell us he has something to say in the first twenty pages, and several of these books don't make the cut.

So, why is so much garbage published? It's disconcerting to see these books for sale when you have written a better book--a book agents keep rejecting.

Best,

Lee

It's disconcerting to see these books for sale when you have written a better book--a book agents keep rejecting.

Click to expand...

The most likely answer is that your book is not actually better.

Why does Ashlee Simpson get to perform on SNL, with no dancing or instrumental skills, lip-synching a song she didn't even write? I'm sure she didn't even pick her wardrobe, so what on Earth does she have to offer? Meanwhile thousands of brilliant musicians who can "do it all" go hungry.

Is the book industry also being swallowed alive by cheep pop? I don't think it's as bad as the music biz right now, but is the book biz going down the same road?

Will we one day have models to pose as authors while the books are written by a team of hacks, according to a predesigned set of formulas that have been hashed out by market analysts and approved by conservative politicians?

And yes, that nightmare scenario would make a good novel. I call dibs!

well, for starters, you probably have to define 'crap' to satisfy a lot of people before they answer that question. i assume you mean poorly written on every level. i mean, it doesn't take shakespeare to tell the good from the bad, does it? do i have to be stephen spielberg to know a good movie from an awful one? hardly.

i was going to point out the same problem in the music industry, but mm beat me to it, heh heh. it seems to me that, for an example, most writers i've seen who actually comment on 'the da vinci code' thinks it's a pretty bad book overall. so, why did those things that makes it bad get through the writer, agent, *and* editor? to top it all off, so many people bought the damn thing and read it.

why do so many bad movies get made? holy cow, you'd think if you plopped 80 mil into a movie, or more, it'd be a great movie all away around.

one possible reason a bad book may get made is because who wrote it. j.k. rowling could write about pro-nazi sympathies and it'd be a best seller. another reason is sometimes editors ruin books (i think it was piers anthony who complained about one of his books being so wrecked in the 'new' version of the original ms). i imagine contractual obligations account for some authors' less than best efforts (if i sign a two-book contract and the publishers make me take them to court to claim my royalties from the mega-best-seller, guess what? i may not be too hep on giving them my top-shelf material on the second part of the deal). i reckon it's possible for nepotism, favourtism and flat-out good ol' boy systems to happen, too. maybe it's just simply bad decision making.

i assume 99.9% of all books are published for a profit, so apparently someone thought highly enough of them to accomplish that end. how can there be fifty-seven different bridal magazines that come out each month? how can movies like 'daredevil' get made? who actually buys ashlee simpson cd's? beats me, too.

Obviosuly because people buy books that aren't up to snuff.

One of the things that encouraged me to finally attempt to publish was the fact that I found so many fantasies lacking. To me there's nothing like a really well thought out, which means "thought provoking" story, or even one that entertains well.

In a sense, seeing how bad some published people were had this reverse effect. It gave me confidence, that "If they can do it, I think I can do it." But deep down, I want to do it better.

It's very simple:

Life isn't fair.


By all means, write a better book. Market a better book. Perhaps one day your book will be in that bookstack and someone would say, "I can write better than this crap." Then, you'll have just inspired someone to write.

Congratulations!

When a lot of people say "crap", what they really mean is "a book I didn't like." Hey, I don't like Hemingway. Is he crap?

I'd agree that too many books get published nowadays, and that many of them are crappy. But that's not because publishers are tossing out the gems and rooting in the trash, it's because there aren't enough really good books to fill all the publishing slots available. I do NOT believe that the slush pile is awash in disregarded gems of literature, or that vast numbers of good writers are habitually overlooked by the shortsighted gatekeepers of the industry. Sure, it happens, but if your book is marketable and you are smart and persistent about submitting it (or if, having tapped out with that book, you sit down and write another, better one), your chances of publication are better than not. The hard truth is that most people's books are not marketable.

Besides, as long as there's been publishing, there've been people lamenting how much crap gets published. It's a persistent refrain.

- Victoria

Good point Victoria (by the way, do you prefer a nickname?)

I hated many classics. I'm the Martin Crane of the family. I like sophisticated that is written in a down to earth way. Perhaps it is my ADHD, in that I like to read quick paced novels, rather than very descriptive ones, so I wouldn't blame it on the author.

What I disliked was not that fantasies are overly descriptive, because that is a salt-to-taste kind of thing. I don't like them being overly formulaic, and trying to sound like this one or that one, which fails unless the reader is forgiving.

Doesn't anyone think of a novel approach anymore? Pun intended.

Bad published books

We're writers, and we pay attention to things that most readers don't.

Is The DaVinci Code badly written? Many, many writers would say yes. Most readers don't notice. They're not reading for the prose; they're reading because they're fascinated in the faux-nonfiction conspiracy theory stuff.

Harry Potter is another example of a wildly successful book series that a lot of writers turn up their noses at. Again, passable prose, GREAT narrative force.

Editors don't buy stories because they are well-written (except perhaps books marketed as 'literary'). They buy stories because of the narrative force because, by and large, that's what readers notice.

I'd encourage you to do the analysis of the first two pages that's been happening in the Uncle Jim thread, with one of those books you flipped through and disliked, and try to figure out why it worked for enough people to get bought--an explanation that goes beyond "people are stupid." Maybe it's a perfectly good book that just doesn't push your buttons (as is the case with me and most epic fantasy). Maybe it's a poorly written book with a lot of narrative force. Readers in any genre have very specific requirements for the books they read that don't necessarily coincide with what you like...

After the publishers have bought all the good books, they still have rack-space to fill.

That should give all of us hope.

As others have mentioned, there are the Well-written-examples-of-stuff-I-don't-like.

Getting back to music: If you don't like bagpipe music, no matter how good the piper you're listening to is, you won't like it.

$ales

Because a significant proportion of it sells.

I've noted in the case of Af-Am lit, there are sub-markets that haven't been explored, and there is a hungry readership hoping to find anything that will whet even a tenth of their appetite. At this point, the readers are not asking for a perfect steak; they're only asking for something on the plate that approximates. And gradually as the table is filled with more offerings, then their palates will become more discerning.

The publishing glut of Af-Am "girlfriend, he-done-me-wrong" books has just about sated the audience to the point of nausea. The readers that I know of are looking for something more nuanced, complexed, thought-provoking. Unfortunately, to follow the music analogy (or even television programming, e.g. reality tv), if a record has proven a success, the formula will be replicated to the nth degree and no thought is given to expansion until someone proves there is more to the market.

Just a rant on my part, who have been told I use $10 words where $1 words will do. But I write what I like.

$ales are right. Go to your local market and see how many crappy products are on the shelves. You'd wonder, why would anyone buy and feed these crap to children? But they do, and as long as people are buying, they're making them and selling them.

For everyone who thinks a book is crap, someone else is buying and enjoying it. As long as there are people who like to read that stuff, someone will publish it. We can either join the gang and make $$ doing it, too, or turn up our noses and say, hey, I don't have to make $12.99 dresses for Walmart. I can make $250 dresses for Sak's Fifth Avenue.

As long as people are buying.

Oh, wow, I read Maestro post and thought first thought, but yeah, there are more Wal-Mart's around selling more $12.99 dresses, so if I'm in this for the money, I'm likely to make more money from the crappy dress in the long run than I will make from the $250 dress.

And that reminded me of a brief economic lesson one of my uncles gave me years and years ago.

My maternal grandparents were owned a small farm whose principle crop was tobacco. One weekend when I was visiting, I wandered into the drying shed where my Uncle June (short for Junior) was pulling the dried leaves from the stalks and sorting them for later sell.

June wasn't much of a talker when all his siblings and their kids descended on the family farm each summer, but for some reason, he just started showing and explaining the different types of tobacco leaves to me. There are reds, lugs, and trash. Reds are the highest quality and fetch the best market price. Lugs are medium quality and trash were the worst quality, fetching the lowest price per leaf/bale. But, because their was more trash per tobacco plant than reds, the family would actually make more money from them.

Maybe that's why so much crap gets published?

You probably hit it, Lori.

That's why Wal-Mart is the US's BIGGEST company.

Hello all, This is my first post. :eek

I think a lot of writers miss the point here. It's not about writing prose that would make Shakespeare cry with jealousy -- most readers probably won't care about that, or even notice. It's about writing a story that captures people's imaginations, and it's about creating characters and settings that they can relate to. It's easy to dismiss The DaVinci Code as crap; perhaps, instead, we ought to look at it to try and discover why it's so popular? Wouldn't that be more useful than complaining about all the "crap" that gets published?

crap

I don't think a lot of crap is published. As one editor said not long ago, "If you think what I publish is bad, you should see what I reject."

I've seen what publishers reject, and that's the real crap. The best thing in the reject pile is usually a hundred times worse than the worst thing in the accept pile. Publishers simply publish the best of what is submitted, and reject the rest. There simply are not enough good novels written, is the real problem.

I don't think it's fair to say a writer should show us they have something to say in the first twenty pages. Why is this important? It's the novel as a whole that matters.

Truth is, a book that keeps getting rejected over and over probably isn't better than those aleady published. By and large, sooner or later good novels get published, bad ones get rejected forever.

crap

On a side note, it's true that markteing decisions can kill a good novel, but this rarely happens, and it really doesn't apply to the agent side of things. A novel that can't find an agent is either a very bad novel, or has a writer who can't write a query letter worth beans.

The world is not awash with good novels that can't get published, but the world is flooded with bad novels that shouldn't be published. I'm pretty sure every writer who submits a novel thinks it's a good novel, and better than most published novels, else they wouldn't bother submitting it, but it just ain't so.

Now, your novel may be very good, but I know from experience that at least 90% of what comes in is just horribly bad, and stands zero chance of being published. Much of the rest may be moderately well-written, but there's nothing new about it. But every one of those writers almost certainly believes they've written a good novel.

As bad as some published fiction may be, it's great literature compared with most of what gets rejected on a daily basis.

Even the crappiest of published novelists are doing something right, and usually more than one something. This just isn't true of most novels in the slush pile, especially an agent's slush pile where there really are no gatekeepers. I'd say you can reject 70% of everything that comes in based on the first five pages. Sometimes based on the first page.

But in the end, it's pretty much as James M says. As an agent or as an editor, you take the best that comes in, then you take the best of the worst to fill out the remaining slots. What's left really is slush, though "sludge" would be a better term for most of it. Agents and editors have nightmares about teh slush pile, and darned few really want to read through it at all, which is one reason "slush parties" are so common.

I also think many writers are unrealistic in believing their first novel is any good. A fourth or a fifth novel, maybe, but this is probably the only profession in the world wherein those who take it up assume a first effort is going to be good enough to hit the top 1% that stands a chance of finding an agent and a publisher, or will even be good enough to read.

Sometimes lightning does strike and a first effort is wonderful, but the norm is something else, and first efforts good enough to be published are about as common as politicians who never tell a lie.

Re: crap

Good books do slip through and get stuck in slush, don't you think?

Simply the right book at the wrong time at the wrong place.

Sure, eventually someone will want it. That's why perseverance is important. But sometimes, I think, a good ms. does get bumped around enough that it disappears eventually... but a good, persistent writer won't.

But "crap" is so subjective anyway. One person's crap is someone else's pudding (sorry about the visuals). We can argue about "what works." Well, if the market demands a formularic story with familiar, 2-D characters and cliched dialogue (don't tempt me -- I will find you a few), and if you can write one, that makes "it work."

slush

I interned at a publisher last summer and was assigned to the slush pile more than once. Trust me, if you're picking up books at the book-store, you are not picking up crap. I've seen stuff that'll make your brain ooze from your ears, stuff that will make you weep for humanity, stuff that is so bizarre you need a special code to figure out what's going on.

Re: slush

Yes, but many writers have to go through slush after slush (and rejection after rejection) before they finally land an agent/publisher. Doesn't that imply the same ms that would eventually get picked up would have spent its days in the slush and considered "reject" over and over already?


For example, I've heard that Tom Clancy got rejected once too many times. That would only mean his ms. had been in the slush for a long time before he finally got published...

Thus, the logic only leads to: Good mss. do appear and stay in slush, sometimes multiple slushes, and sometimes for an extended period of time when no one would give it a chance. That's inevitable.


[There's no argument that the 99% of slush is utterly unpublishable... I trust the experts here]

Thank you, everyone, for the insight. I'll keep on writing. And thanks to Maestrowork for the last reply--a fine point. Lee

Re: slush

i'm sure good mss. have been rejected, and by multiple editors, to boot. i mean beyond the urban legend and author's fuzzy recollections and/or embellishmentalizings, certainly in the annals of publishing history some great books have been overlooked. maybe timing has something to do with it: publishers only have so many slots to fill for their money, and i'm sure that when you're in competition with other houses, and the fact that it's a business which runs on schedules much the same as the next place, you're better off being lucky sometimes than talented.