I've been reading you. I'm sorry you had to go through all that. I never even tried to find an agent because I'm old and don't have time for their BS, I don't have a voice that is "commercial," and I am "privileged" enough to be able to afford to self publish. It's going well. No complaints. No one (except my editor) asks me to change anything. I think you will continue to do great things. You already are. You don't need publishing to tell anyone that. We can all see it (read it) for ourselves. Congratulations!
Liza, your literary path sounds a lot like mine, and hundreds of other talented writers that I know or have encountered in my years in the business. I think what bothers me most about the publishing industry is the smugness of agents and editors who clearly don't know very much about what makes good literature, and instead substitute social politics as the yardstick for the measurement of quality.
Right on! May I add that the obsession with plot methods like the Save the cat screenplay outlines are destroying any interior work a novelist may wish explore - and the reason is obvious: publishers are desperate to have their books adapted into movies... cheers!
I've been writing about this stuff for 15 years on my blog. Beyond politics, I think it has to do with algorithms, hashtags, the focus on brevity and keywords. I remember reading a TLS review that trumpeted the arrival of some great newcomer, just out of high school, and the excerpt focused on the character's thong digging into their ass. That was the plot point. It was really hard for me to navigate a soulless world that calls that 'culture.'
I've been around this industry long enough to know that “minor edits” are to a manuscript as hanging, drawing, and quartering are to a human body, so I sympathize. I've had agents, twice, and publishers, twice, and still never found a fit between their interests and mine.
But I have to challenge your notion that the humanities have traditionally been about the big questions or beauty and meaning. The humanities, per se, is an institution of very recent invention, essentially formed of those disciplines that were rejected by the science faculty in the modern conception of the university. The questions of beauty and meaning have traditionally belonged to philosophy, and the idea that literature is principally a means to explore them is very recent, as is the notion that it is the task of the academy to teach people to write or to define what literature should be.
The traditional roots of literature lie in storytelling, and stories have traditionally been concerned with those things that affect ordinary people who tell and who listen to stories, not with those things that occupy the minds of aristocratic philosophers. They were concerned with bravery, and honor, and ingenuity, and romance. They were concerned with the things that go bump in the night. They were what people sought out to help them become wise and brave in facing the perils of their workaday lives. And, of course, with the human appetite for sensation, absurdity, and titillation.
The state of literary fiction that you rightly deplore today is, in fact, the direct result of the capture of storytelling by the "humanities" that you see as the state from which literature has fallen. But that state of literature, captured by the academy and recast as a tool of philosophical inquiry, was not the prelapsarian state; it was the origin of the fall. The current deplorable state of literature is the inevitable conclusion of the academic and philosophical capture of literature that you so admire. As philosophy collapsed into nihilism, it inevitably dragged literature down with it, leaving it in a state where it can only portray ennui temporarily relieved by sensation.
The solution is not to go back to the beginning of the slippery slope. Even if you could climb it, you would only slide down it in the same way again. The only solution is to cast off abstraction and grand ideas and return to a literature of the concrete virtues lived in the real world, a literature whose aim is to make us wise and brave.
Questions on publishers: Is contemporary publishing "broken" only when it comes to, say, major publishers? How about smaller and independent presses thst are not imprints of or affiliated with, say, Random House Penguin, for example?
And, speaking of R. House Penguin as one example of a contemporary publisher, have they, too, also narrowed and slanted their minds and literary tastes similarly? And, if they have, what might explain why they have not shut down their own Penguin Classics line? Does that not seem interesting to anybody else?
Just one more voice in the Liza column. I feel for your journey. After the requisite struggles, when my first short story was picked up for inclusion in an anthology book (Ace Publishing), I was "on my way!" Ten years of Writers' Digest subscriptions later, two novels and many short stories and screenplays mailed with enthusiasm, I decided to change tracks; for the hell of it, I submitted a YA Fantasy novel. I actually heard back! A well respected agent, referred by a very well known writer, said he loved it. "But 80,000 words...? Would you be able to break it into chapter books? Think Lemony Snicket" (popular at the time). As politely as possible, hoping for a dialogue, I tried to explain—but the plot...but specific pacing...but characters with layers... He vanished into the ether. And I watched as the "industry" changed, decade by decade, year by year, as publisher and editor requirements evolved exponentially. Oh, so many stories over that time—I appreciate you. Carry on.
And it's not all about the fame, the money, the visibility: it's about your message, about being heard, about what you have to say to the world and whether it will listen to you back in turn. Literature is a way of communicating; poetry is a way of seeing the world, as is fiction – not a commercial success!
As a poet trying to publish my first pamphlet in the traditional way, whilst also publishing poems in journals and magazines (my first poem in print came out recently, published by The Madrid Review), and also a lover of novels, I really relate to this! A lot of modern literature is quite similar but I feel the best does both of what you describe; shows both the relativity of meaning and the universal truths that still exist. Writing is hard, and a lot of us are left unvalidated: but its even harder when we look at what's being published and feel we're doing just as good, but not getting anywhere.
Read through the article. It sounds awful what you had to endure. I'm tempted to say that you're at least lucky that all those agents didn't flat out ignore or ghost you, but what actually happened is likely worse.
Michael O. Church has a lot of theories which he writes about on his Substack about why publishing is the way it is. Per Michael, publishing these days is mostly about leveraging the social clout of authors, while what they actually write is mostly irrelevant.
Writing and literature feel so bad, and so uniformly bad, in this day and age, because publishers and agents don't care about stories, but rather about how many followers on Instagram or TikTok you have.
Michael also opines that publishers these days tend to favor debut authors who are young and female (as opposed to not-quite-so-young dudes) because social media algorithms favor such individuals. Per Michael, there is no feminist conspiracy to keep young white guys out of publishing, but instead they are just optimizing their roster of authors to conform to the demands of social media algorithms. Now, I don't know of all that's true or not, but that's his theory.
I'm a nonfiction writer and I wrote a memoir. You wouldn't believe the comments I've received while querying. I universally have amazing feedback from all agents, with multiple full manuscript requests. I'm being rejected, ultimately, after being read and congratulated, on the basis of being "too literary." I'm assuming this means they would not even understand how to sell a literary memoir given its potential. The memor industry right now is also dismal compared to fiction. What is being published is only for influencers who lean into the correct political controversies yet unification of their platform and mass following. I have written a more theory-driven, philosophical, and culturally critical manuscript using literary language. I have only been doing this for about 9 months but it is very frustrating.
Liza. If you self-publish your novels I will buy them. As an author myself I’ve gone that road and was not very successful. But you have an extraordinary platform — great reach — and an authoritative voice.
I've been reading you. I'm sorry you had to go through all that. I never even tried to find an agent because I'm old and don't have time for their BS, I don't have a voice that is "commercial," and I am "privileged" enough to be able to afford to self publish. It's going well. No complaints. No one (except my editor) asks me to change anything. I think you will continue to do great things. You already are. You don't need publishing to tell anyone that. We can all see it (read it) for ourselves. Congratulations!
Liza, your literary path sounds a lot like mine, and hundreds of other talented writers that I know or have encountered in my years in the business. I think what bothers me most about the publishing industry is the smugness of agents and editors who clearly don't know very much about what makes good literature, and instead substitute social politics as the yardstick for the measurement of quality.
Right on! May I add that the obsession with plot methods like the Save the cat screenplay outlines are destroying any interior work a novelist may wish explore - and the reason is obvious: publishers are desperate to have their books adapted into movies... cheers!
I've been writing about this stuff for 15 years on my blog. Beyond politics, I think it has to do with algorithms, hashtags, the focus on brevity and keywords. I remember reading a TLS review that trumpeted the arrival of some great newcomer, just out of high school, and the excerpt focused on the character's thong digging into their ass. That was the plot point. It was really hard for me to navigate a soulless world that calls that 'culture.'
I've been around this industry long enough to know that “minor edits” are to a manuscript as hanging, drawing, and quartering are to a human body, so I sympathize. I've had agents, twice, and publishers, twice, and still never found a fit between their interests and mine.
But I have to challenge your notion that the humanities have traditionally been about the big questions or beauty and meaning. The humanities, per se, is an institution of very recent invention, essentially formed of those disciplines that were rejected by the science faculty in the modern conception of the university. The questions of beauty and meaning have traditionally belonged to philosophy, and the idea that literature is principally a means to explore them is very recent, as is the notion that it is the task of the academy to teach people to write or to define what literature should be.
The traditional roots of literature lie in storytelling, and stories have traditionally been concerned with those things that affect ordinary people who tell and who listen to stories, not with those things that occupy the minds of aristocratic philosophers. They were concerned with bravery, and honor, and ingenuity, and romance. They were concerned with the things that go bump in the night. They were what people sought out to help them become wise and brave in facing the perils of their workaday lives. And, of course, with the human appetite for sensation, absurdity, and titillation.
The state of literary fiction that you rightly deplore today is, in fact, the direct result of the capture of storytelling by the "humanities" that you see as the state from which literature has fallen. But that state of literature, captured by the academy and recast as a tool of philosophical inquiry, was not the prelapsarian state; it was the origin of the fall. The current deplorable state of literature is the inevitable conclusion of the academic and philosophical capture of literature that you so admire. As philosophy collapsed into nihilism, it inevitably dragged literature down with it, leaving it in a state where it can only portray ennui temporarily relieved by sensation.
The solution is not to go back to the beginning of the slippery slope. Even if you could climb it, you would only slide down it in the same way again. The only solution is to cast off abstraction and grand ideas and return to a literature of the concrete virtues lived in the real world, a literature whose aim is to make us wise and brave.
Applauding you from afar. You're younger but much deeper than I am. I hope your ideas echo in ever-widening circles.
More power to you Liza. Keep going, onwards and upwards!
Which smaller and independent publishers are there that have **not** also succumbed to the recent dismaying trends in publishing?
Questions on publishers: Is contemporary publishing "broken" only when it comes to, say, major publishers? How about smaller and independent presses thst are not imprints of or affiliated with, say, Random House Penguin, for example?
And, speaking of R. House Penguin as one example of a contemporary publisher, have they, too, also narrowed and slanted their minds and literary tastes similarly? And, if they have, what might explain why they have not shut down their own Penguin Classics line? Does that not seem interesting to anybody else?
Just one more voice in the Liza column. I feel for your journey. After the requisite struggles, when my first short story was picked up for inclusion in an anthology book (Ace Publishing), I was "on my way!" Ten years of Writers' Digest subscriptions later, two novels and many short stories and screenplays mailed with enthusiasm, I decided to change tracks; for the hell of it, I submitted a YA Fantasy novel. I actually heard back! A well respected agent, referred by a very well known writer, said he loved it. "But 80,000 words...? Would you be able to break it into chapter books? Think Lemony Snicket" (popular at the time). As politely as possible, hoping for a dialogue, I tried to explain—but the plot...but specific pacing...but characters with layers... He vanished into the ether. And I watched as the "industry" changed, decade by decade, year by year, as publisher and editor requirements evolved exponentially. Oh, so many stories over that time—I appreciate you. Carry on.
I suppose that’s what you get when kids graduate school with a 3rd grade reading level.
And it's not all about the fame, the money, the visibility: it's about your message, about being heard, about what you have to say to the world and whether it will listen to you back in turn. Literature is a way of communicating; poetry is a way of seeing the world, as is fiction – not a commercial success!
As a poet trying to publish my first pamphlet in the traditional way, whilst also publishing poems in journals and magazines (my first poem in print came out recently, published by The Madrid Review), and also a lover of novels, I really relate to this! A lot of modern literature is quite similar but I feel the best does both of what you describe; shows both the relativity of meaning and the universal truths that still exist. Writing is hard, and a lot of us are left unvalidated: but its even harder when we look at what's being published and feel we're doing just as good, but not getting anywhere.
Read through the article. It sounds awful what you had to endure. I'm tempted to say that you're at least lucky that all those agents didn't flat out ignore or ghost you, but what actually happened is likely worse.
Michael O. Church has a lot of theories which he writes about on his Substack about why publishing is the way it is. Per Michael, publishing these days is mostly about leveraging the social clout of authors, while what they actually write is mostly irrelevant.
Writing and literature feel so bad, and so uniformly bad, in this day and age, because publishers and agents don't care about stories, but rather about how many followers on Instagram or TikTok you have.
Michael also opines that publishers these days tend to favor debut authors who are young and female (as opposed to not-quite-so-young dudes) because social media algorithms favor such individuals. Per Michael, there is no feminist conspiracy to keep young white guys out of publishing, but instead they are just optimizing their roster of authors to conform to the demands of social media algorithms. Now, I don't know of all that's true or not, but that's his theory.
I'm a nonfiction writer and I wrote a memoir. You wouldn't believe the comments I've received while querying. I universally have amazing feedback from all agents, with multiple full manuscript requests. I'm being rejected, ultimately, after being read and congratulated, on the basis of being "too literary." I'm assuming this means they would not even understand how to sell a literary memoir given its potential. The memor industry right now is also dismal compared to fiction. What is being published is only for influencers who lean into the correct political controversies yet unification of their platform and mass following. I have written a more theory-driven, philosophical, and culturally critical manuscript using literary language. I have only been doing this for about 9 months but it is very frustrating.
Liza. If you self-publish your novels I will buy them. As an author myself I’ve gone that road and was not very successful. But you have an extraordinary platform — great reach — and an authoritative voice.