A Publishing Death Spiral?

September 18, 2008

I recently got this rejection letter:

"John passed along to me HOT MONEY by Mark Terry.  I liked it a lot, but ultimately, I couldn’t get the kind of support that we would need to successfully publish it.  I found the pace to be very quick, and I had to force myself to put down the manuscript when other things came up because there was always a new twist to keep me glued to the story.  I also really loved Austin’s voice, his debonair sense of style, his camaraderie with BB and Shelley, and his dry wit.  Unfortunately, though, the Sales Department thought this was more of a caper than a political thriller, and they haven’t sold very well for us in the past.  And without the layers of novels by bestselling authors such as Flynn and Baldacci, I just couldn’t convince them to take a chance on HOT MONEY, so I reluctantly must pass as much as I enjoyed reading it."

In some ways, of course, there's nothing to bitch about there (although I could wonder, exactly, what layers in Vince Flynn's novels he thinks are actually there). I want to also point out that I recently received an e-mail (a few months ago) about another manuscript with a vastly different publisher that said something very much along the lines of, "we really liked it, but our sales department tells us these types of books haven't sold well for us."

I don't know if this blame-it-on-the-sales-department rejection is just another arrow in the editor's quiver in the doesn't-work-for-me, liked-the-character-didn't-like-the-plot, liked-the-plot-didn't-like-the-character, didn't-quite-feel-strong-enough-to-compete-in-today's-marketplace, Choose A, B, C, D or None of the Above list of standard rejections. It's a new trend for me.

I suspect, and in this regard, shame on me for taking a rejection letter at face value, that the editor did like the book, wanted to publish it, and got shot down by the sales department. Rumor has it this happens all the time these days.

Which does not, I don't think, bode well for the publishing industry. Particularly if the sales department isn't basing their rejections on the individual books, but on some perceived overall trend.

First, I don't know exactly what my agent was selling HOT MONEY as. Yes, it could be called a political thriller. Or just a thriller. And I suppose it could be called a caper, although that would not have been my first choice. Frankly, although Austin Davis is a political consultant, he comments early on that when a politician wants a problem spun, they hire a political consultant; when they want the problem to go away, they hire him. I purposefully designed the book and the character to be very similar to a private eye novel, but in this case, his clients are almost exclusively U.S. senators and representatives. I think the sales department is probably kidding themselves if they thought they couldn't market HOT MONEY as a mystery or a thriller. But like I said, shame on me for taking the rejection letter at face value.

Second, and far more importantly and the point of this little diatribe, is that if publishing house sales departments start rejecting novels on the basis of a category or subgenre's track record instead of the strength and unique qualities of an individual book, then we're all screwed--writer, reader AND publisher.

Because I can only see a death spiral there. It's a little bit like the western, I suppose, which many publishers have dropped. And a few years ago, one of the big houses, I forget which, totally dropped its mystery line because it was a little soft. Rather than the publisher saying, hey, mysteries are strong for everybody else, let's really focus on strengthening our line and really promoting mysteries, they just decided to ax the whole line, fold a couple of their more successful writers into their "mainstream" line and sent the editors whose primary focus was mysteries into the unemployment line.

Oh well. Hence the rise of niche publishers, I suppose.

You ever heard the expression about professors? They learn more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.

I wonder if that's what we'll be joking about big publishing: they published more and more about less and less until they were publishing everything about nothing.

I can see it from Random, Inc: We Only Publish Bestsellers. (10 books, 4 million copies each).

Cheers,

Mark Terry