Bud Wiser

The proposition is very basic: there is no more true creative freedom for writers in the modern US & A than in the CCCP in the (supposed) totalitarian days of old. "Nonsense!" and "preposterous!" are the kneejerk adjectives I expect toward said statement, but I know it's true from my own experience, and so do the honest among you.

For instance, you can forget about getting published, unless you have an agent, or other inside track in the business making you "attractive" to a publisher, regardless of your literary merits. (Kato Kaelin - man of letters? Only in the US & A!) But now, agents themselves are so overwhelmed that you need an inside contact to even get considered by the agency as a client - an "agent" to get an agent. This effectively closes the door on 90% of submissions. And this is intentional. The publishing industry, IOWs, is run like the stock market: small investors are penalized, only the heaby-hitters need apply.

But this is how a free-market publishing industry needs to be run, you protest. After all, how can publishers afford to publish if they can't turn a profit? And as for Kato Kaelin, well - if he's what the public wants to read about, who's to say publishers are wrong to seek him out? Public taste - or lack of it - is setting the standard, which is what makes it a market democracy.

These counter-arguments seem to satisfy many. But like the claims of writers' freedom, they won't stand under a minute's scrutiny. When the botton line becomes the top one, immediate return becomes the only consideration. No great writer in the English language could ever have achieved prominence - or even publication - under the current closed-door, monopolistic publisher-agent axis, and that includes Dickens, Hemingway, Michener, Faulkner, Graham Greene - you name them. Of course, "connections" did indeed help these authors, too, but the publishing industry for them was not yet the mega-billion business of today's US & A, and talent retained its fair competitive edge.

And what about Kato Kaelin? Any honest person knows that interest in these bubble-fad celebrities is consciously generated by the media. Investment that could go to serious and really entertaining works is rat-holed after Britney Spears' latest meltdown, Paris Hilton's tantrum, who was on Jay or left off David's, et cetera ad nausem. Real interest in these attention-whores is fleeting and ultimately minimal, as should be the amount of media money chasing them. That is, if we in the US & A had a publishing industry that bases its considerations on merit. Since we don't, the argument becomes irrelevant, not Britney's head-shaving.

To put it another way, there's as much writers' freedom here and now as for the politically correct and connected member of the Writers' and Artists' Union of the USSR. Thus the next time you read, see or hear some fatuous foreskin blathering about creative, artistic and press freedom in the US & A, corner this joker and ask, "For whom?" This liberty bell tolls for the publisher, the agent, the connected insider, but not, Mr. and Ms. Writer, for thee.

Have a great day!

Sam Winchester

There is this untrue missaprehension that the publishers and editors are against all aspiring writers and reject all new manuscripts without a second's pause. For this reason, more and more authors are beginning to self-publish, thinking that this is the way forward. It isn't. Perserverance, on the other hand, is. It may take years, but if you're determined enough, you will get published.

As for this piece of work: was this posted for critique, or is it a satire?

Sam.

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Eli Cash

I agree with Sam.

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Mike C

Sorry, but this is total fuck-witted idiocy.

Even putting aside the gross inaccuracies put forth regarding chances of publication, to equate difficulties with getting into print with the dangers that writers faced, and still face, under totalitarian regimes (when was the last time an American writer was imprisoned, tortured or killed for what he wrote?) is obscene.

Bud, you're a jerk. A misinformed, dull-witted jerk.

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Just Jim

Sounds to me like somebody can't get published.

I expect I'll have to write something great before i get published. In other words, I plan to earn it.

And as mike said, I won't be worrying about jail time, as in CCCP, most of the Arab world (including our allies) parts of Africa.

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Centurion

Reminds me of the old saying "Cream rises to the top."

If its good enough it will get picked up and will sell. If it ain`t..........well you tell us Bud..

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IrishLad

I disagree (with the op). The very first story I wrote netted me a hand-written note from a heavyweight chief editor, saying I came very close to being accepted. This after only a nine month wait.

My second story/submission also got a personal reply, from a different editor/venue.

My fifth submission--again a different story to a different venue--was published.

I think it's just a matter of refining your writing (assuming you actually have some talent and imagination from the start). I don't claim to be talented; I let the rejections/acceptances tell me. But I've never imagined there is some invisible wall of elite publishers sitting around a conference table smoking cigars and determining my literary fate.

Yep, and it is as it should be. 90% of all submissions are unpublishable. If you want to know why getting published is hard, look to the time wasted by those who submit blindly and without taking the time to learn the craft. And I would venture that another 2-5% of that published 10%, probably shouldn't be, perhaps myself included.

Editors don't cause getting published to be difficult, subpar writers do.

Just my opinion,
Cheers

Bud Wiser

The replies are all pretty much the smug kneejerkings I expected, the kind of top-floating opinions one expects from those who live on De-Nial. The only intelligent and honest retort in the bunch comes from IrishLad. Yes, any honest writer will tell you that the vast majority of stuff s/he does is garbage, and s/he is usually glad down the road that it was rejected. No less a figure than Stephen King will admit to it.

But the rejection is across the board regardless of merit. What is the time-honored cliche of every form-letter (or hand-scrawled marginal) rejection? "I can't take on new clients at this time." And of course the right time never does come, does it? Unless you are indeed Stephen King looking for a new agent. Then watch that Iron Curtain swing open like the entrance to Ali Baba's cave; proving that it does matter who knocks without.

Totaliarianism does not necessarily equate to torture or exile for writing; it means works do not see the light of day for content. This I know from direct experience, having been told outright by agents and publishers that there's nothing wrong in my writing, that the subject is too controversial. This gives me the right, upon which I stand, to make the remarks I have. Nor am I a new writer: I've been at it longer than many of you have been alive.

In all the above critiques I saw no one who actually revealed how they themselves came to be published, just self-righteous cliches that "cream rises to the top," "good material always sells," etc. I am not soliciting anyone's experience, but with all due respects this is drivel. It is, of course, how things should be. It is not how they are. I won't be so crass as to inquire what some are smoking, but considering the aforesaid location, Camels come to mind.

Jax1108

Wow. Your attitude doesn't make me want to listen to you at all. Infact, it only proves in my mind what Mike C, said. Sorry you had a bad experience, which is what this is obviously about. Were you really that arrogant to come here and think you were the only one who tried to get published?

I find it hard to read crap like this when you don't give one shred of evidence or resource to where you got information like this. Sounds like a personal experience you dressed up with fancy words and analogies to try and make us think it is legit.

Sorry, I am not biting.

*edit* Also if what you have submitted is anything like what you posted here, well then, I can say that what those "agents" have told you was rather nice of them.

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lin

WOW is this stupid!

Even given the old axiom, "There's only freedom of the press if you own a press," the idea that people in US/UK are less free to publish than people in repressive regimes like China (been reading the papers lately) or Cuba or Burma or some such is too absurd to take seriously for a second.

What it all boils down to is: My work sucks too bad for anybody to want, so the system is at fault.

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lin

One more word: lulu

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Sam Winchester

And this is exactly the reply I would expect from someone who posted mindless drivel like you did originally. As I said before, perserverance is a great thing. If you have it, there's a good chance you'll get published. If you don't, there is, as Lin pointed out, the option of getting your work published by Lulu.

And Mike was exactly right about the idiocy of the entire post.

Sam.

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To those who live by and never stray from the creedo of "show, don't tell," here's a thought - it's called storytelling not storyshowing.

Foxee

Bud, I read the OP and had to chuckle. Don't confuse 'difficulty' with 'lack of freedom'.

You have experienced 'difficulty' getting published. If you 'lacked the freedom' to publish someone would have arrested you as soon as you submitted your work.

When you are cowering in a bunker somewhere for fear of retribution or in chains for what you've written, then talk about lack of freedom. As it is you really just come across as a man with his nose out of joint because you don't have celebrity status and think that's the only way to attract attention of a major publisher.

You've referenced many authors who you argue would not be published if they lived today. I would point you to Gutenberg who created his own press and Benjamin Franklin who wrote and published his own work quite well, thank you.

In other words, if you're so upset, self-publish. It's not that hard anymore...you don't even have to build your own press! And you're free as a bird to do it unless you have a condition that prevents you from getting off your behind and making it happen.

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Centurion

Bud wiser, I`m not sure why I`m bothering to reply to your posts but I would like to offer one true story for your consideration.

A young lad born in Coventry in the UK, who later had to move to birmingham UK during lifes struggles and hurdles, packed his bags and moved across the pond to the US to become a fiction writer after all of his other endevours failed. With nothing except determination, (That means no contacts at all in the US.) he set out to follow his dream.

He has now released his twelfth best selling novel and is better known as Lee Child.

I only have one question. How did he manage this in the country you so despise????

According to you its impossible. And please no political nonsence, his latest, soon to be released, slams the US Gov for its involvement in Iraq.

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Jax1108

Not to mention the US is one of the only countries where you have SO MUCH freedom. Whatever controversial crap you wrote, you better be damn thankful you had the FREEDOM to write that. Someone denying publishing it - I mean comeone, I would. I would stay away from controversial material if I were a publisher. I don't want any trouble from media etc - is NOT the same as freedom, just as Foxee put it.

For a "writer" you don't seem to have much commonsense.

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