Plus ca change...

[anghara]

aeriedraconia provides a link to this particular little gem.



If he only wrote about the state of publishing, as and of itself, and had something solid to back it all up - well and good. But the money quote is this one:

I consider myself a fairly good writer. I've had a literary agent and I'm proud (?) to tell you I've been rejected by the largest publishing houses in New York (and smaller ones elsewhere). Plenty of literary agents have requested my work but decided to pass. And I wasn't rejected because of my inability to write well. I have been complimented on my writing skills by editors of very successful, household-name authors and summarily rejected.

Count the snarks and whines. COunt 'em, please. This is a rejected writer, and these are sour grapes, and if you can't blame them on yourself, hey, find someone else to blame it on.

He's right in one way, and that is that a lot of the publishing industry is staffed by women. However, there is no "glass ceiling" - men are perfectly capable of choosing this line of work as a career. And *many do*. A rejection is a rejection, whichever gender it comes from, and a frustration with rejection is what comes across BRUTALLY in that paragraph I quoted, but I think it stings particularly hard that the rejections in question come from WOMEN. I suspect this guy is the kind who swaggers up to women at cocktail parties with a macho drink like a double shot of scotch (no ice)and feeding the "girls" a line like, "So, Honey, what would you like for breakfast?" This is a man's man, ladies, and look what else he says somewhere later on in the article:

Unless a blockbuster author like Stephen Coonts writes a tome for men, less gets written for them. Then, again, Coonts first book was published by the arm of the Defense Department (Naval Institute Press) that published Tom Clancy. His first book was rejected by every other publisher before that. He's a former Navy flyer and a real hero, most men would agree. He made hundreds of takeoffs and landings from aircraft carriers, sometimes in the middle of the night. That takes real courage or, as a man might say, balls! Men like Coonts are good. They're willing to risk themselves to protect the rest of us. I guess women prefer not to read about them. Or am I mistaken and is it the feminization of the book business that prevents everyone from reading about them in greater quantity?

Is it just me or do the two halves of this paragraph have nothing to do with one another? So what if Mr Coonts is "a former Navy flyer and a real hero". Yes, that takes courage, but screw you, sir, women do things that require courage EVERY DAY. If you're going to all macho on me, I'll go all femme on you and basically challenge you to plug yoruself into a machine which simulates the pain of childbirth without an epidural - and then I'll ask you if you wouldn't prefer to go an be a "real hero" any day. But in any event - what the frick does a man's being a pilot (or a woman's having a baby, for that matter) have to do with the quality of their writing and the reasons it was rejected? You sink or swim based on what you show, what you write, what you produce. Your CV and your resume and your life story should not be a ticket to having a book published.

I've been lucky enough to have been surrounded all my life with literate and insightful men. My granfather was a poet who read the classics and wrote sonnets and instilled a firm love of language in me from babyhood. My father surrounded me with books, and encouraged me with my own words every step of the way. My relationships have always been with guys who love to read, and whose homes were stuffed with books; and I married a man who already owned enough books for a small provincial library (you should see what became of our house after *I* moved in...) Is it possible that I am a complete statistical anomaly and that these are the only males who actually read or admitted to reading? I don't think so, which means that despite the blogger's assertions, MEN DO READ. No, really. They do.

They just happen to want to read other things than those that the blogger in question happens to have written, apparently.

Sir, the fact that your work has been rejected means your WORK has been rejected. You haven't been doing the rounds of teh publishing industry asking the agents and editors for a dinner date - and if you come on this strong when you DO ask for dates, speaking for myself, I'd be the first one to tell you to take a hike. You have been presenting not yourself, but YOUR WORK. However much you present yourself as Louis L'Amour and Stephen Coonts (and hey, while we're at it, how about some more names? Clancy, you've mentioned. Grisham? King? Patterson? Frazier? For that matter, james Frey? DO you want me to go on?) the fact remains, you are NOT those writers. You are YOU. It is YOUR work that is being put on display here. And if the professionals have rejected it for publication, might it be down to the quality of the WORK and not to your gender? Or are you seriously telling me you believe that women don't get rejected...? WOuld you like me to send you copies of my rejection letters? Have you ever attended a gathering with other writers - male AND female? Have you ever listened to the stories of these people's lives - male AND female?... Rejection doesn't feel around for cojones before it pronounces its fiat. At least not in THIS industry.

Honestly, until the day that people like this stop pointing fingers at the wicked wimmin who are the only reason that they themselves are not the great glowing successes they should obviously have been had it not been for the "power" of the female dragons guarding the gates, there will NEVER be any kind of gender equality. Until the day that a person gets judged purely as a human being, until the day that the smallest success by the woman stops being seen as a threat to the dominance of the man, we remain stuck in the dark ages.

Okay. Rant over. I'll go and get myy coffee now, and perhaps I'll revert to being the quiet gentle timid little girl that I am obviously supposed to be.

And hey, blogger guy? You yourself said that women statistically buy more books. Well, here's another statistic who's just deliberately walked across the aisle in order NOT to purchase yours. I don't need to read anything by someone this patronizing.

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I like a double shot of scotch, no ice....

It is therefore a girly drink, because I am a girl. *g*

[anghara.livejournal.com]

[grin] well, substitute something else of your choice then, just to make the point...

But I suspect I really need my coffee. I'm VERY snarly this morning. Blame the the time slip thing - I HATE mucking around with my internal clock. I feel vaguely jetlagged today without ever having gone anywhere. Feh.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

*g*

I'd like to have the power to keep him down. Sadly, I do not.

He seems to be doing okay on his own though.

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

I'd be snarly at this guy regardless of the state of daylight savings. He chooses his numbers very carefully.

[woodrunner.livejournal.com]

What I found ironic was that in his self-aggrandizement as a fairly good writer who received compliments on his writing were the grammar mistakes that gave me feedback loops to re-read until I could figure out his meaning.

Mini-snark aside, the man whines on about men getting rejected without consideration that there are women who get rejected in similar percentages, or even include the number of men who write under female pseudonyms and vice versa, and still get rejected.

[julesjones]

I've already done my pointing and laughing in a mutual friend's LJ. There is some heavy-duty mockery going on there.:-)

Hi there

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Thanks for friending me....

Re: Hi there

[anghara.livejournal.com]

Heh. You're welcome. You can probably blame green_knight for that. Her little "questions meme" said that we were friends. So I just made it official [grin]

Welcome to my LJ, anyway - I've just had a nice cup of coffee, and now I'm much more my usual sweet and pleasant self (all those who have actually met me in person and feel the need to snigger at that one, feel free...)

Re: Hi there

[aeriedraconia.livejournal.com]

*snickers a little* ;-)

Re: Hi there

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

That would make you a sword-orientated person?

Re: Hi there

[anghara.livejournal.com]

Nah, probably just a personal acquaintance with me and my caffeine addiction [grin]

Re: Hi there

[anghara.livejournal.com]

But I *am* a sword-orientated person, if it comes to that. If you go back and read my VCon report, it's got a glowing account of my swinging a broadsword and loving every moment of it. Yes, much like the one on your icon...cross hilt and all...

[guinwhyte.livejournal.com]

Wow. Is he bitter or what? Not just about publishing, but about women. He may also have an even harder time finding an agent or publisher now -- if they do a web search on him, it might turn up this article, which makes him look difficult to work with.

By the way, I too have been lucky enough to be surrounded by men who read (a brother-in-law was the one who introduced me to fantasy stories when I was in my teens, in fact). There are men who read. Perhaps some men don't admit to being readers because they don't want to be mocked by those who think it's a waste of time.

[dancingwriter.livejournal.com]

He may also have an even harder time finding an agent or publisher now -- if they do a web search on him, it might turn up this article, which makes him look difficult to work with.

I love it when people like this make it so very easy for karma to catch them. :-)

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Hehe, the double-shot comment reminded me of the fact that when we'd go to Sunday lunches with my parents, when I was a child, my father always ordered a bloody mary and my mother ordered a gin-and-tonic, and the waitress always reversed the drinks when she set them down. My parents would just switch and carry on, but my mother did sometimes make comments...

Anyway, I saw that link on Lit Soup and read it, and could only laugh. I mean, I've gotten rejections and I always use my first two initials rather than my given name when I send off queries. Should I take it personally and declare that clearly, agents are all against people with gender-neutral names? I think I shall be offended now on the basis of non-gendered. Yeah.

The bit about the 'war hero and whatever' particularly made me laugh, because I currently work with a woman who was the first female Navy mechanic on two classes of jets, and was in the first squad stationed on an aircraft carrier. As far as I'm concerned, it takes guts to fly a navy jet, certainly, but it takes a lot more to walk onto a carrier where everyone is pretty much convinced you don't belong -- and do the best damn job ever. First female E4 on a naval carrier. That's my idea of a hero.

The rest of it's so sour grapes that I almost cringe at the fact that he boasts about his character. How many agents do you think have since written it down and put it on a sticky on their computers with the note: IMMEDIATE REJECTION.

Hehe. Moron.

[rugor.livejournal.com]

All the rejections I've received have been for my work. Funny that.

I don't worry about gender in fiction. I would expect that if someone's trying to break into a very formulaic genre like romance they may indeed have a problem with a masculine POV book, but that's only to be expected in that genre. Otherwise I don't think it matters; provided the writing is good enough to cross the bar, someone's going to make an offer.

Til then I'm going with the PPPM syndrome (Poor Poor Pitiful Me). (With apologies to the late Warren Zevon.)

[rugor.livejournal.com]

Got to post twice.

I just found a link from the blog to his works. There's an excerpt from his first novel that explains exactly why it wasn't published.

He didn't cross the bar.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

Oh good God, I'm sorry, but this is just too good.

ANother money quote (given the storm int this particular B-cup) from the first chapter of his (downloadable) book:

"he became enamored of rubbing elbows with the gentry. Although he wasn't of it, and he could never be, he became accustomed to having his way with their women."

No [snrch] comment.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

One more thing - from the blog in question -

"These novels are edgy, raw, graphic and thought-provoking."

...sez the author?...

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

Marks of the amateur, shall we count the ways? He's hit most of them, between his blog and the way he's put up his excerpt (and the fact the thing seems to be e-pubbed or POD'ed).

It never ceases to amaze me how consistent wannabe writers are. I was seeing every single one of these faux pas, except the e-pub one (back then it was xoxed copies of the ms. carried under the writer's arm as he went from conference to conference) 20 and more years ago in various slushpiles and fanzines (the Internet being a very tiny and obscure thing at the time). The "wimmin are taking over the publishing world" whine was old when sf was young, and I saw one almost identical to this in the SFWA Forum (from a one-story associate member) in the 1980s.

The words, the tune--they never change.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to digress, but WHAT a perfect icon [grin]

[julesjones]

Hell, I'm epublished, and I'm a damn sight more professional than this person. Of course, I'm epublished with an actual, you know, commercial publisher, and my whining about New York won't take my books tends to involve recognition that if I want to be published by New York I'd better learn to write at something other than novella length.

Nice icon. Very appropriate.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

You could have a totally brans dpanking new gender angle for whining about New York [grin] - "oh look, they won't take me on because I'm a woman writing about men..."

But apropos the "epublished or PODed" comment - I was a witness as recently as yesterday to an encounter I saw from my car - a man knocked on the door of a local business establishment, not QUITE open yet but on the verge of being so and one which I was waiting for, too - and I was too far away to overhear actual conversation but what I saw was this man knocking on the door, the proprietor opening it, the man talking for a few minutes, then proffering some sort of poster-sized piece of paper, the proprietor looked at this, nodded, the two men shook hands, and the visitor left. It being now opening time, I sauntered up to the business in question in time to observe the proprietor fixing the poster he had just been handed into the shop window of his business.

It was an invitation to a reading and booksigning by a "new local author".

The book was prominently displayed as having been published... by PublishAmerica.

I think I must have winced out loud because the proprietor looked puzzled, and then said, "He was just here, he gave me this..."

So I told him why I had winced. He looked a little blank, which is fair enough - never having had literary aspirations of his own he had never tripped over this particular rock (or lifted it to look underneath it, as it were). But the point is - that poor bastard who was doing door-to-door promotion. It DEPENDS on people never having heard of PublishAmerica. And from here on he is branded. He will very quickly learn that if he had hoped to use this publishing credit in order to sell a book to an agent or a reputable publisher, all he has to say is that his last work was published by PublisAmerica and there will be eyes glazing over...

[julesjones]

I feel so sorry for them. It's a dream come true, and they don't see the scam because they don't know how publishing really works. Even if they've heard about "money flows *to* the author", PA has worked out how to use POD to get around that.

And the worst of it is that I'm sure that a few of the people scammed by the stealth vanity presses have books that *are* publishable. Maybe with some heavy revision, yes, but they've gone to a vanity press because they don't know any better, not because they can't write well enough to get the attention of a real publisher.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

They're in the 'will be publishable' rather than the 'are publishable' category, I would think. And that's the most dangerous level to get stuck on - you know your book doesn't stink, so you think it's good enough for publication.

And every time you think you've mastered that level, you read a book that blows you away and makes you realise how high the bar hangs. Eventually, you'll be good enough to climb over the bottom - to _get_ published, but at that point you'll hopefully realise how much seperates you from the best.

I think early publication is the death of many authors; because they think that is _all_ they need to produce. If they keep collecting rejections with something that's fluent and readable, they keep trying to get even better. If they can publish it, they're less likely to stretch.

That's my excuse, and I'm sticking with it - but I really *do* think that the worst that could have happened to me would have been to have my first novel published.

[julesjones]

Yup. The main reason The Trashy Porn Novel That Grew is still waiting to go out again is the usual screaming panic at sending That to Respectable Agents, but there is also the fact that even three years ago I knew that it could do with another revision pass on the first three chapters, but didn't have the distance from the text to do it -- and now I _really_ know just how badly that section needs revising, but haven't had time to do it.

(The problem is essentially that I started off thinking that I was writing a Trashy Porn Novel, and it was only when I was about three or four chapters in that I realised that if had Grown.)

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Icky-poo - all that stuff about fathers must protect their daughters and all daughters need protection? that's the kind of mindset that goes with honour-killing.

Oh yes, and the feminisation of publishing? it is to laugh at, given that surveys regularly prove that more works by male authors get review coverage, prizes, recognition generally etc etc etc.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Rejection doesn't feel around for cojones before it pronounces its fiat. At least not in THIS industry.

That was just wonderful.

The only thing that makes him different from a thousand other rejected writers is that he plays the gender card. The next woman who gets rejected might want to point out that most of the publishers are male, as are large parts of marketing departments, and those are the people who contribute to whether something gets published, just so we have the full set.

[slrose.livejournal.com]

He won't be rejected because he's a man. He'll be rejected because (1) his writing isn't good enough and (2) even if his writing improves to the point where it might be salable, he has demonstrated that he won't be a good person to work with.

In my old job there was a pianist that thought he was so great he didn't have to do a concert in a podunk town. He skipped out on the concert, and lost the rest of his bookings, his agent, and there were cheers when he got washed out of the Van Cliburn competition.

If the question is, 'do I get the one that is the best, but is unreliable and hard to work with or the one that isn't quite as good but is reliable and easy to work with' most people will go for the latter.

For some reason, this is hard for a lot of people to understand.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

The thing that screams from that blog entry - and I am taking NO account of gender at all - is "I am a prima donna who knows best and furthermore is ENTITLED". I am proud of a few things in my own career, too - not least of which is several editors I have worked with saying that I had been "a joy to work with" when our particular paths diverged. This particular accolade I achieved by (1) listening to what they had to say; (2) doing much of what they asked for, and only digging in heels on points *I* considered too important to mess with - and then making my point about the reasons why I felt that way. Usually I was listened to in return, it was a return of courtesy, and I have yet to get into a major scrap with an editor of any of my novels. I cosnider myself as being privlieged enough to HAVE a gift, I don't think that *I* am a gift and that the editors should jolly well understand that forthwith...

[slrose.livejournal.com]

I considered commenting on his blog, but decided it wasn't worth the effort.

I know he isn't going to make it. Not just because he has made it clear that he will be difficult to work with.

But because he makes it clear that the problem is with the women who don't like men's stuff. It doesn't seem to occur to him that part of the problem could be with him.

Louis L'Amour would be able to sell books today because he was a good writer. Men may like his books, but so do women.

If you want editors to buy your stuff, and keep doing it, you have to first, write something good enough to sell, and second, be reasonable to work with.

It is possible to sell once if you meet the first criterion. However, unless you hit blockbuster with that first one, they won't offer you a contract on the next one if you are hell to work with.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I think it was during the 1970s that male spec-fic writers began to say that they weren't getting farther because they were male.. All the hot new writers were women, except James Tiptree, Jr.

This year or last, a fairly well-known sf writer explained that sf's sales were going down because of the fantasy conspiracy.

And currently, there are a fair number of US political candidates who seem to think they're entitled to election or re-election. And professional campaign runners who are outraged at the amateurs getting involved by using newfangled devices like computers and telephones. "Hey, I've had years of experience as a Democratic campaigner! I got my start working on the McGovern Presidential campaign!"

Debate

[noelleashley.livejournal.com]

Although women buy more books than men, women are also more open to reading about men than men are to reading about women. For example, a woman may read Tom Wolfe, John Grisham or the Pulitzer-Prize winning JR Moehringer (The Tender Bar). I've enjoyed books by all 3 authors. But how often do you see a man walking around with a copy of the latest Candace Bushnell or Jennifer Wiener?
I'm new to your site; I just discovered it today. Thanks for entertaining me.
Noelle Ashley, Author, Freelance Journalist and Blogger
www.threenewyorkwomen.blogspot.com
www.novelsbynoelle.blogspot.com

[eneit.livejournal.com]

oh my. There are so many things I'd like to say to this guy, but I think "Grow up, and become a better writer!" covers it.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I have to ask, though - why is it that the blogosphere readily picks up on this (absolutely ludicrous) perception of conspiracy, while I've not seen much discussion of the ghetooisation of black writers?

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

And here all this time I thought my rejections were because, you know, I had written a story that did not work (at least for that editor) for one reason or another.

I guess I'll have to go to Wiscon bearing fruit drinks and coupons for foot rubs. That will get me into the pro-mags.

*snort*

The gentleman needs to stop whinging and get back to work. That's the only way to improve as a writer, and that's the only way to turn those rejections to sales.