Publishing’s Achilles’ heel

A writer friend of mine—who shall remain nameless—told me the fol­low­ing tale.

Last August she engaged in exten­sive talk with an edi­tor about a pos­si­ble book she want­ed to write. She and the edi­tor came to an under­stand­ing, includ­ing some of the basic para­me­ters of the contract.

Only a year lat­er, did the con­tract reach her desk. Along the way, there had been a num­ber of apolo­gies as to the slow­ness of the process. There were no rea­sons oth­er than an inex­plic­a­ble slow­ness. [Please note that this writer works with a high­ly accom­plished agent, who made efforts to accel­er­ate the process.]

This writer friend quick­ly signed the con­tract and sent it in. Now she won­ders how long it will take before she receives this first part of her advance payment.

“How,” my writer friend said with audi­ble anguish, “does the pub­lish­er expect me to live?”

If you have fol­lowed any of the debates about Ama­zon, and in par­tic­u­lar the con­flict between Hachette and Ama­zon, there have been writ­ers who have sided with Ama­zon. It is not so much that they sided with Ama­zon as they have railed against pub­lish­ers for their casu­al dis­re­gard (not to say con­tempt) for writ­ers, the pub­lish­ers’ assump­tion that authors will sup­port tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ing no mat­ter how they are treat­ed. The tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ers’ fail­ure to acknowl­edge that the pro­fes­sion­al writer must be paid so as to live, the casu­al indif­fer­ence to the life of the pro­fes­sion­al writer, as per my writer friend’s anguish, is the Achilles’s heel in the world of pub­lish­ing. How­ev­er, for the writer, it is not so much an Achilles’s heel as it is an author’s hell.

Joke:

What do you call a writer with­out a partner?

Home­less.