Books

Author John Barlow writes for Slate about the agony of writing a book for 17th Street Productions, the book packager behind Kaavya Viswanathan’s controversial novel and a number of other hit teen novels.

However, having never lived in the United States, I had no idea about what
was permissible in terms of cussing, especially in kids’ fiction. We had agreed,
previously, that I would write the thing as naturally as I could, and the people
at 17th Street would filter out the unacceptable elements. So, I did just that,
leaving in the text a modest fistful of shits, craps, a
bastard, and several fucks. I even told them so when I mailed
the finished text. Did they filter? Did they read? No; they gave the manuscript
straight to the 8-year-old son of the company president. Little Timmy saw a
shit and a fuck. He cried. He read the word bastard
and needed counseling. It was a catastrophe.

My 80,000 words were dead words. A book that I love never got published. Or
even edited. Or read by a single kid (apart from Timmy). I blew it. My chance of
Harry Potterdom, of country homes, of cars that start every time, of book
signings where enough people come to form an actual line … all down the drain.
However, it was a great way to learn that you can’t write a book by committee,
and to be paid 10 grand to learn it. So, thank you Sweet Valley boys. It was
great fun, really.

I know I’m supposed to read this and side with the author…but, I have to say, my sympathies are with the book packager. Maybe because I’ve written so many television shows (where I get input from a thousand people) and work-for-hire tie-in novels. Maybe because I’m a complete sell-out and a talentless hack. Whatever the reason, this guy strikes me as an unprofessional, self-destructive,  whiny putz. He couldn’t bring himself to do some minimal preparation like, oh, actually read some other books from the packager…or other books in the same genre.  He was an artist. He was following his muse instead of doing the job he was hired to do.

Barlow implies in his article that the disasterous experience is all his (then) agent’s fault for getting him into a deal with a bunch of talentless suits. But the truth is that the fault is entirely his own. What killed the deal wasn’t the class between his high, artistic standards and their gutlessness and lack of taste. What killed it was Barlow’s ego, laziness  and astonishing lack of professionalism.

Novelist Millenia Black , who is African-American, claims she has been told by her editor to change the race of the characters in her latest book, THE GREAT BETRAYAL, from white to African-American or they won’t publish it. She writes on her blog:

THE GREAT BETRAYAL is a story about secrets. Secrets.
And just how long you can bury them before the past crashes into the
present, with a vengeance. Pretty universal subject matter, yes? I
thought so.  Now, suppose you’d written such a novel, and your
publisher told you that, although it was a dynamite story, they would
not accept it—because the characters were white. The race must be
changed before they’ll publish it!

If this story is true,  I don’t blame Millenia for being outraged.  She believes that she’s being told that as an African-American author she can’t write about whites. They are, in essense, relegating her to a niche market — strictly  "African-American" readers.  Black adds in a comment to her post:

It’s one thing to write to an AA audience. It’s another thing to write mainstream/commercial fiction and be relegated
to an AA audience. The fact that you can’t write a book with
main characters that happen to be white (would have to lie about or
hide your race in order to do so) is the Jim Crow of modern-day
publishing. Enough is enough.

Especially when you consider that nobody has a problem with James Patterson, a middle-aged white guy, writing about a black detective.  But a black woman can’t write about white characters? It’s ridiculous.

UPDATE: Bloggers Monica Jackson, MJ Rose and Edward Champion weigh in..

UPDATE 10-9-06:  She’s suing. Millenia writes:

Career or no career, the genre of a book should not be determined by
its author’s color. An author should not have to lie about his or her
skin color in order to obtain equitable handling by a publisher. An
author’s skin color should not determine where his or her books will
likely be shelved by a bookseller, or whether or not some booksellers
will even order said book. The color of an author should be of no
interest in any acquisition. If they want a book about black people, that’s what should be acquired – a book about black people.

It isn’t easy making a living as a writer…and it’s getting harder, as the Independent reports (via POD-dy Mouth). Here are some excerpts:

Publishers have been forced to protect their profits by reducing
costs throughout their businesses. At first this meant redundancies,
consolidation and cutting production costs. But such have been the
rapacious demands of retailers that publishers have been forced to save
money on the riskiest part of their business: books. That’s why authors
are feeling the pinch.

Midlist authors who had sold in steady but unspectacular numbers
felt the impact first. Their sales were undermined by the decline in
library budgets. Once sales to these institutions fell away, they
became far less attractive to large publishing houses, the economics of
which make small books that sell in the few hundreds unsustainable.

Large publishers scythed through their lists.

[…] "The market has shrunk dramatically," says agent Luigi Bonomi.
"Advances are either very big or very small with nothing in the
middle." Orion paid £800,000 for Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth
Tale; but according to the Society of Authors, the harsh truth is that
the average advance rarely climbs above £12,000 for a two-book deal,
and authors’ annual incomes are under pressure – the average author
earns less than £7,000 a year.

In a somewhat related item, GRADUATE author Charles Webb is bankrupt.

Charles Webb, the novelist who based the couple on himself and his
long-term female partner, Fred, wrote the basis for a hugely successful
film but made one serious tactical error. He accepted a £14,000 one-off
payment for his work, and then watched the film take £60 million at the
box office. The wise generally go for the percentage, but material
wealth, he says defensively, has never meant much to him. It is just that he could do with some right now.

Webb and Fred, who settled in Britain six years ago after
emigrating from America, received a letter from their landlord last
week telling them to expect an eviction notice because they are two
months behind in their rent. Webb is hoping that a well-wisher will
offer them a place to stay while he finds a buyer for his latest works.

(via Bookslut via The Guardian)