Fantastic Metropolis

Rich Horton has an essay in the fourth issue of the Internet Review of Science Fiction in which he notes that the small press is taking up the slack in publishing midlist books that mainstream publishers are no longer interested in. This observation accords with my view that the diminishing of the midlist is a narrowing of choice and a preference for fiction that appeals to the lowest-common-denominator, such that the largest commercial publishers are no longer devoted to serving the more diverse spectrum of tastes the midlist has always appealed to. Consequently, work that’s more challenging—whether intellectually, emotionally, or ideologically—is likely to be viewed by mainstream publishers as appealing to a smaller audience and thus (by the simplistic reasoning of corporate marketing departments) not as viable as formula fiction with a “fresh” twist.

Anent claims made by the authors of awful mss: as someone who has read a small amount of slush, I understand well the horrors of the slushpile and the ease with which such authors deceive themselves about the quality and interest of their work; I’m also familiar with the tendency of many writers to fail to notice that the work they consider shocking and new is derivative (often because they haven’t read much of the twentieth century’s most serious and thus widely unread literature). Perhaps more important, though, is this: writers have the choice of considering themselves to be writing for pay, or for love. Granted, most writers try to do both and some may actually succeed at it, but those who are having trouble cracking the major book publishers or who have fallen out of favor with them must not expect to have their cake and eat it too. Eventually, they may have to come to a hard, clear decision: such that if they’re writing for pay, they have no choice but to get with the program and crank out whatever it is the editors currently want. While if they’re writing for love (i.e., “art”), then they’d better stop thinking they have some kind of “right” to get published and paid for it and garner favorable reviews besides. Writing for love means you’re in for the long haul, mostly alone, and often uncertain of your own judgment, which is all a writer has when she’s rejected the judgment of the marketplace. It means writing millions of words without recognition and only a handful of readers (who are more likely to complain to the writer about her not doing enough to get her work into print than to offer moral support in maintaining her independence). Sure, freedom from the marketplace may create a kind of aesthetic autonomy—but that kind of freedom entails obscurity as well. How many writers can psychologically negotiate such a situation? It’s no wonder that most of us cling to the vision of “cultural autonomy” as Bourdieu characterized the professional scene of literature in Paris in the mid-19^th century, even though the economic and social conditions that made that scene possible have long since vanished. We’d like to believe that good work will always merit financial reward and professional recognition. But it’s that assumption that makes writers fall into the error of thinking that if they produce good work, they’re entitled to get paid for it and see their work published, favorably reviewed, and loved by fans everywhere.

I haven’t been a contributor to the infamous slushpiles of book publishers myself. The only large publishers that are open to submissions of unsolicited mss are Baen and DAW, who don’t publish any of the several kinds of fiction I write. Tor requires a synopsis and the first three chapters of the ms as a basis for judging whether they will look at a novel ms or not. Until recently, most of the other sf publishers accepted such query packages as a gateway to the slushpile stage, but a quick glance at ralan.com shows that none of the other major sf publishers are now accepting unsolicited mss or query packages. While I don’t know the story of how sf book editors came to decide that a plot synopsis supplemented with a sample of writing competence provides the best tool for screening which mss they read and which they don’t, I can see a kind of logic to such a selection process. If marketing departments and chain-bookstore buyers assess a novel’s marketplace potential on the basis of just a few sentences used to pitch it, it makes sense that overworked editors would prefer not to waste time considering novels that their authors can’t pitch attractively to them in a synopsis or summary. But since I consider plot only one of many arrows in the writer’s quiver of narrative devices (and not necessarily the most important one), I have always declined to have my work judged by synopsis and so never found it possible to contribute to the book publishers’ slushpiles. One of the reasons I took a break from novel-writing in the late eighties and began writing short fiction was that short-fiction editors neither require nor want writers to pitch to them. Imagine if I’d had to synopsize and pitch stories like “The Forbidden Words of Margaret A.” or “Bettina’s Bet”! How in the world could I have described what happens in those stories in terms of plot development? Most of the interesting stuff that goes on in my fiction can’t be represented in a plot summary.

Which brings me to my reasons for starting Aqueduct Press. We will be publishing fine, challenging work that the mainstream houses pass up as well as work by me (which has never been submitted to mainstream publishers and therefore never rejected). I’d long entertained the idea of starting a press, but the thought of publishing my own work daunted me because I distrusted my judgment. Physicians are advised not to treat themselves, attorneys not to represent themselves. Similarly, it’s risky for writers to edit themselves. But I have so much unpublished work, a significant portion of which my best judgment tells me I should get out there, that I’ve nerved myself to take the risk.