Spine Intact, Some Creases by Victor J. Banis

Author:Victor J. Banis [Banis, Victor J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: erotic MM, Romance MM
ISBN: 9781434402066
Google: MmuDCvXgYxMC
Amazon: 1434402061
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2008-02-28T05:00:00+00:00

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Having spent much of a chapter discussing sales figures, I must now emphatically point out that sales numbers or the lack thereof do not make a book good or bad. There are some very dreadful books that sell in large numbers year after year, and there are some very good writers whose royalty payments would hardly ever have bought them a pot of soup.

In my opinion it is publishing by the numbers as practiced today by virtually every mainstream publisher that has all but brought publishing to a state of artistic irrelevance. They have made a whore of the literary muse.

With rare exceptions—mostly at university presses, and too few of them do fiction—books today are not purchased and published on merit; indeed at most houses the final decision to publish or not to publish is not even made by the editors but by the marketing staff—the sales reps. Again and again struggling writers show me letters from editors to the effect that, "We think your book deserves to be published," or "We liked your book very much... but... our marketing people do not see the numbers for it." I can only hope that the authors of those letters sign them with pangs of guilt and shame. Those who do not should probably park themselves at the curb for the next garbage collection—what good is the body if the soul is dead?

Mind you I am not saying that publishers should never turn down manuscripts. Publishers receive thousands of unsolicited manuscripts each year, many of them clearly not worth publishing, and others, though showing merit in one form or another, perhaps not ready yet. Sometimes a writer doesn't do his homework and sends, say, a cookbook to a publisher who only does mysteries. There are many reasons why a manuscript should be legitimately returned. Editorial reasons. I do not believe that "lack of numbers" is one of them.

Editors are underpaid and underappreciated. No one goes into the business for the money. They are there because they love books, the words on the pages, even the smell of ink and paper. This is noble and good—they are after all the custodians, the cultivators, of one of the oldest and grandest of the art forms. Historically good editors have nurtured good writers and in the process produced good, sometimes great books. Could anyone say the same about good sales reps?

Critics today sometimes refer to opera as an outdated art form and to opera houses as museums; but there is not an opera house in the country—indeed, in the world—that does not regularly produce operas for which they know the house will not be filled, productions on which they are certain to lose money.

They do so because these works need to be performed. Sometimes they are masterpieces by composers who for one reason or another never have and probably never will enjoy the mass popularity of Puccini or Verdi—composers like Schoenberg or Penderecki, whose works nevertheless occupy important niches in the musical canon.

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