Is the Publishing Industry Rigged?

Believing That The Cards are Stacked Against You is a Sure Way to Drive Yourself Mad

I’ve seen this sentiment discussed in a lot of different chat rooms, social media posts, and have had conversations where authors I know (including myself) wonder what the truth is when it comes to having your book traditionally published. Personally, I think it’s just a tough business to break into, a tough business to be successful in, and a tough business to continue to be successful in, at least in terms of making a career out of writing fiction. I view being traditionally published as playing in the big leagues—not many people make it who try, and those that do aren’t likely to be superstars but rather players you may or may not know. But rigged? I think not.

Now, I’m not saying there aren’t any authors or circumstances and situations where some writers don’t have an advantage over other writers. I think if you have friends who work for literary magazines, there’s a good chance that if you submit something to their publication, and your story is good, your story will published. Or it will have a greater chance of being published than another story that’s on par with yours but whose author is unknown at said publication. I believe the same holds true with independent publishers, imprints of larger publishing houses, and the bigs themselves. I’m not saying if you know someone at HarperCollins that your novel will get published; I’m saying that, like anything else in life, contacts within an organization don’t hurt.

For me, it’s always been a goal to publish with a well-known, larger(ish) publishing house. I’ve had that goal since I was a kid, and I’m still pursuing that today. Yes, I’ve been published in journals. Yes, I’ve put in my ten thousand hours into the craft of fiction. Yes, I’ve had a novel published. And yes, I think I can write a decent book (I have about 10 right now that, with some work, I think are publishable). But I also know the publishing industry is an incredibly difficult one for authors when it comes to first getting an agent to represent your book (after likely having you rewrite a lot of it) and then having that agent sell your book. Some say it’s harder to get an agent than it is to have that agent sell your book, but I don’t know. I’ve had an agent and been offered representation by another, and yet I’ve still not crossed that little speedbump. It is what it is.

The publishing industry is an incredibly difficult one for authors when it comes to first getting an agent to represent your book (after likely having you rewrite a lot of it) and then having that agent sell your book

Unfortunately, other authors, in particular the ones that seem less . . . experienced, or “newer” to the game, don’t feel quite as understanding. The vitriol I’ve seen over the last many years is impressive, though not unexpected, given all of the many channels authors now have on which to express themselves. I have seen, and often, outright hatred by authors when it comes to rejection by literary agents and/or publishers, as well as an almost sort of indifference to even trying to go the traditional route due to the “fact that publishers only publish well-known authors.” I understand why authors might think this way, but I refuse to accept it as solid fact, and mostly because I know authors who have been published by the bigs and their imprints. Do I think those authors got lucky? Sure. But I also know that those authors lived by the “I hope I get lucky, because when I do all of this hard work will have paid off” maxim. And by lucky I mean they got an agent and that agent was able to sell their book to a big or one of their imprints.

I think what a lot of authors don’t realize is that bad books will get published every year, and good books will get published every year, and trying to predict or understand why every single book that got published in a certain year will prove to be an act of futility. The enjoyment of fiction is subjective. I can’t read romances. You may not enjoy mysteries or literary fiction. We read what we enjoy, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. Just because I enjoy literary fiction doesn’t mean I’m going to like or even buy a quarter of the literary novels published by numerous or even one publisher in a given year. And while I’m sure you just read that last sentence and admitted the same, you likely read right past the most important word in that sentence, which is “buy.” That word is a very, very important word when it comes to how authors enter the publishing world, because that word is top of mind with literary agents and acquisitions editors at publishing houses.

People buy books. Publishers sell books. Literary agents are the middle people between authors and publishers. And while publishers ask themselves many, many questions, the most important ones are these: Will this author’s novel sell? And Will people buy this author’s book? Agents ask themselves the same questions prior to taking on a new client. The publishing industry is just that—an industry. Publishers are businesses. For profit businesses, for the most part. And that requires selling their products, i.e., their authors’ novels. If an agent doesn’t think she can sell an author’s novel, she won’t likely offer representation. But even if that agent does think she can sell their author's novel, it doesn’t make it so. The agent may love the novel, but, for a variety of reasons, acquisition editors at publishing houses may not offer to acquire the novel if they think it won’t sell. And that’s even when they love the novel as much as the agent does. It’s a tricky business, this publishing one, and when authors experience rejection, they often can’t help but take it personally. I get it. I understand the desire and often decision to go with an independent publisher or to even self-publish, given the experiences many authors must endure. Like anything, you have to make the decisions you think are right for your individual circumstances and desires, goals, etc. And it’s also your right to believe that the industry is rigged, whether it is or isn’t.

Personally, as I mentioned, I choose to believe the publishing industry isn’t rigged. I know a lot of authors, a lot of editors, literary agents, and so on. I’ve had an agent, I’ve gone through the process of trying to sell a book to large houses, I’ve met with other agents in Manhattan and New Mexico and other cities and states, and I’ve spoken to a lot of them at length. The industry has changed significantly over the last century. If you’re like me, a literary nerd, you’ve read all about Maxwell Perkins and his authors and the process he went through while editing Hemingway and his war novels, and Thomas Wolfe, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. You’ve read stories about agents like Morton L. Janklow, Forrest J. Ackerman, H.N. Swanson, and others. And you’ve learned how some books were rejected by everyone only to become bestsellers later on down the line. You can’t take it personally if you aren’t some wunderkind who started writing a novel at fifteen and became a New York Times best-selling author at nineteen the way Christopher Paolini, author of Eragon and Eldest and the Inheritance Cycle did. Not everyone is that lucky. My take, however, is that if you’re a writer, you write. You don’t worry about whether or not the industry is rigged—if it is, who cares? There’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it. All you can do is write the best book you can, the book you’d like to read that hasn’t been written yet, and hope for the best. Do everything in your power to follow the steps you should follow to first getting an agent and then to having that agent do their best to sell your novel. Or submit to contests. Or to smaller publishers that don’t require agents. Or self-publish. Whatever. But, and this is just my advice, don’t spend time worrying about something you can’t change, if it’s even true anyway. This is the writing life. Sometimes (like everything else in life) things may not go your way. But never quit. Or do. It’s your choice.

Author Cully Perlman, at Rest in Taos

Cully Perlman is an author, blogger, and editor. He can be reached at Cully@novelmasterclass.com