Into the Fire

Specific jobs require specific talents, education, experience, and savvy. Or not. Some jobs provide training and require no previous experience. Most of the people who do the hiring for any place of employment have personal preferences for the kind or type of person they hire—even though the current laws might forbid them from actually exercising those preferences.

So. How ‘bout publishing? Well, there are ever decreasing numbers of actual employees in the publishing ranks, but there are ever increasing numbers of applicants seeking to be contracted. Since there have always been a limited number of contracts available for those who write novels, and since some of those available contracts have been reduced due to survival efforts during the receding economy, the competition stiffens.

And rest assured when the competition stiffens, the superfluous platitudes expand.

Publishing might be the only business where competition does little to determine quality. Geez, I can hear the professionals squawking from such a brash statement—if they ever read this blog. Here’s the thing. Competition might keep the UNqualified out of print by a royalty publisher, but it doesn’t guarantee that the selected authors represent the best writers. However, it might mean they are the best, too. Do you see what I’m saying?

Who’s to say? Because if the measuring stick is copies sold, then William P. Young is far and away the best writer in Christian fiction today, and he would be the first to tell you he isn’t. Karen Kingsbury would be the queen of the realm, and although she writes stories which deeply touch the target market of women, many females on the fringe of that focus group would prefer Robert Liparulo’s or Ted Dekker’s fiction to Karen’s.

Where creativity is displayed and a response is required to establish its worth, the variables to that response are astronomical. It’s far easier to agree—but not indisputably—upon what is terrible than it is to agree upon what is “good”. In publishing the ability to be marketable to an often misunderstood reading public now defines “greatness” in some professional circles. But the twofold cries of agents and editors are, “Write a ‘great’ story and prepare to market it.” If the marketing team can’t catch the vision for how to market the story, forget it. “Great” story or not, it’s flushed.

The writer’s conundrum is always deciphering what it is these publishing professionals want, and the even larger question: Do I as a writer agree with the demand(s) by definition and requirement? Some writers truly believe the publishing professionals are infallible. And those writers will be far more likely to produce the fiction those professionals are seeking because they believe in the system and recognize a contract as affirmation of their abilities.

Who’s to say if the system is working? There are certainly enough novels out there to meet the demands of readers. Some readers get the short shrift in their particular preferred categories such as adult fantasy, but some of that audience has shied away from looking toward Christian fiction for it because it’s been so absent from the shelves. Many of those readers turn to the secular/general market where they can find the category in abundance. There’s certainly no shortage of Amish, historical, category romance, romantic suspense, and chick-lit which pretty much covers the target market.

Quality, quantity, “great”, and not so great. The good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s all out there in the ABA and CBA. And really: who’s to say which is which?

Lord, just keep me true to you in what I write, in what I say, and in what I do. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.