Originally published at The Huffington Post
One of the more challenging aspects of being a literary agent is dealing with the incredible deluge of submissions that pour in every single day, twenty four hours a day, from all corners of the globe and for every type of project imaginable. I don’t keep precise stats on the number I receive (it’s hard enough just to answer them all), but in any given year I receive somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 query letters from aspiring authors. Out of those tens of thousands I reject all but a tiny handful of them and take on perhaps three to five clients a year.
Contrary to the myth that an agent is sitting at a desk cackling as they read the submissions from the supposedly untalented masses, I loathe sending rejection letters. Loathe loathe loathe. Not because it’s tedious, but because honestly: who am I to be telling someone they’re not worthy of publication?
Well… who am I? I’m a literary agent, and my job hinges on having a good batting average at the sorting process and pulling gems from the virtual pile. I have to use my knowledge of the industry and hopefully some skill to find what will ultimately sell to a publisher.
But as I search for the diamonds, every day I have to pass on the life’s work of cancer survivors and abuse victims and war heroes and many more people who spent hours upon hours of their life writing a novel in the faint hope that it would someday find publication. I don’t enjoy sending these rejection letters, and I never forget that on the other end of the letter there’s a person out there whose day I’m probably ruining and whose dreams I’m chipping away at. What makes these books unworthy, other than the fact that it simply wouldn’t be profitable to publish them in print?
The lack of commercial viability of 99% of the books written every year necessitates all this rejection. I can only take on the books I think I can sell to publishers, and aspiring authors receive this judgment in the form of a rejection letter. But the very nature of commercial viability in the publishing world is changing quickly with the transition to e-books, and I think it’s ultimately a change for the better.
The Print Funnel
In the print era, there was a good reason to create a funneling process rife with rejection: making a book and getting it to readers is a costly process. It requires extensive and expensive infrastructure (production, printing, warehousing, shipping, retail) and realistically there were only a finite number of books a publisher could publish and still have a chance at making a profit.
All the other books that, rightly or wrongly, were viewed unworthy: they disappeared into drawers, never to see the light of day. While many of the vanished manuscripts were likely passed on for good reasons, who knows what masterpieces and gems were lost to bad guesses?
Luckily, the e-book era is changing all of that. Anyone can upload their work to the Kindle or iBooks or insert e-book store here and make their work available, and thousands of authors are currently doing just that.
Contrary to another publishing myth, I’m not an agent that’s opposed to self-publishing, nor do I see it as anything close to a mortal threat to the world of literature and publishing. People fret as a swarm of books hit the market, many of poor quality, but I don’t see any reason to fear the deluge at all.
Let’s face it, folks: the deluge is already here.
The Digital Deluge
Walk into any large suburban bookstore and you’ll find tens of thousands of books to choose from, more than you could possibly read in an entire lifetime. Head on over to your friendly neighborhood online superstore and you’ll find hundreds of thousands more. We’re already faced with (literally) millions of options when it comes to choosing a book. And guess what: faced with all that choice we are still able to find the ones we want to read.
No one sits around thinking, “You know what the problem with the Internet is? Too many web pages.” Would you even notice if suddenly there were a million more sites on the Internet? How would you even know? We all benefit from the seemingly infinite scope of the Internet and we’ve devised a means of navigating the greatest concentration of information and knowledge the world has ever seen.
So what’s the big deal if a few hundred thousand more books hit the digital stores every year? We will find a way to find the books we want to read, just as surely as we’re able to find the restaurants we eat at and the movies we want to see and the shoes we want to buy out of the many, many available options.
Infinite Choice Instantaneously
I grew up in a tiny farming town, and for me a fun afternoon consisted of standing in a rice field and shooting things with a BB gun. I didn’t have a friendly neighborhood bookstore to peruse, and as this was pre-Internet I certainly didn’t have a lot of choice in what I was able to read. My choices were basically limited to what was stocked at our small-but-awesome library and whatever I was able to wrangle from the small-and-not-awesome mall bookstore over 30 miles away.
Not only did my experience growing up give me the skill to shoot dirt clods with the best of them, it also gave me a tremendous appreciation for the importance of choice (because let’s face it, nothing gives you an appreciation for choice like not having any). I probably would have bankrupted my parents if I had regular access to a Barnes & Noble growing up, but I would have loved it!!
And now we have even more choice than a big bookstore. Instantaneous access to every book you could ever want to read: how could this possibly be construed as a bad thing?
The Sound of Silence
Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, notes that we’re moving from an era where we filtered and then published to one where we’ll publish and then filter. And no one would be happier than me to hand the filtering reins over to the reading public, who will surely be better at judging which books should rise to the top than the best guesses of a handful of publishing professionals.
I don’t see this transition as the demise of traditional publishing or agenting. Roles will change, but there are still some fundamental elements that will remain. There’s more that goes into a book than just writing it, and publishers will still be the best-equipped to maintain the editorial quality, production value, and marketing heft that will still be necessary for the biggest books. Authors will still need experienced advocates to navigate this landscape, place subsidiary rights (i.e. translation, film, audio, etc.), and negotiate on their behalf.
What’s changing is that the funnel is in the process of inverting – from a top down publishing process to one that’s bottom up.
Yes, many (if not most) of the books that will see publication in the new era will only be read by a handful of people. Rather than a rejection letter from an agent, authors will be met with the silence of a handful of sales. And that’s okay!! Even if a book is only purchased by a few friends and family members — what’s the harm?
Meanwhile, the public will have the ultimate ability to find the books they want to read, will be unconstrained by the tastes of the publishing industry, and whether you want to read experimental literary fiction or a potboiler mystery: you’ll be able to find it. Out of the vastness of books published the best books will emerge, driven to popularity by passionate readers.
Sure beats shooting dirt clods.
Photo by Isabelle + Stephane Gallay via Creative Commons
Kathryn says
Nathan, thank you for your honest words. It's good to get some perspective from the other end of my… email world (? Is it a world? You know what I mean…)…
Interesting thoughts on publish than filter… I wonder what the future will bring for books.
Cheers,
Kathryn
ryan field says
You nailed this one.
Mira says
This is an absolutely brilliant post.
I have more to say, but I'm stuck reeling at the idea of you shooting things with a BB gun. You didn't shoot living things, did you? That was why you kept saying dirt cloud over and over, right?
No roosters were harmed by young Nathan. Yes, I know adjusting to testosterone is a challenge, but….not….roosters. I'm sure of it.
hannah says
This is literally the best article I've ever read on the future of publishing.
Nathan Bransford says
mira-
No chickens (or any birds actually) were harmed in my BB gun exploits.
Nathan Bransford says
Wow, thanks so much, Hannah!
Remilda Graystone says
I agree with Hannah. This was a great post, and I completely agree, especially when you pointed out whether we'd notice if a million more sites were added to the internet.
Thomas Taylor says
I recently asked my agent if she ever got the time to read for pleasure. the look on her face made me regret asking such a stupid question.
Bane of Anubis says
Great post/article… reminds me, once again, of why I wish I were an extrovert, or at least had some innate self-marketing skills.
Scott says
Excellent stuff, Nathan.
swampfox says
Great take. I agree.
Anonymous says
Hi. Wow Nathan, how did you get ROck Paper Tiger here!!
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/pubit/
COOL AGENT!
Candyland says
Excellent post! I agree with Hannah for sure. (And what if I like shooting dirt clods?)
bettielee says
I agree with what you're saying about the reversal of the filter in the digital age, but I think the day you're talking about is far, far off. Of all my reader friends, none of us have an ereader. Too expensive. Maybe ebooks are the wave of the future, but for now, buying an ereader and then buying books to read on it are out of many readers reach.
Courtney says
Wow, great article. One other potential upshot is that vanity presses will go away and those vets and cancer survivors you mentioned won't get fleeced trying to get their book out.
Josin L. McQuein says
And now that anyone can upload anything they want and stick a pricetag on it, people will have to rely on the publishers they know and trust even more to float about the flood.
If anything, it seems like the lesser known/small presses have more to worry about than the big boys because the lack of recognition in consumers who are going to tire of the hunt & peck game through what amounts to a digital slush pile will mean their titles get lumped in with the self-published masses.
Which of course means that there will still be massive competition for spots with the big publishers, which will require agents to get potential authors in the front door, and the self-publishing flood will end up something like the direct-to-DVD movie rack at Blockbuster. Maybe worth a risk, since it's cheaper, but your average consumer would rather buy a name brand.
Nathan Bransford says
anon-
Wish I could take credit, but that was all the good people at Soho!
Augustina Peach says
Posts like this make it harder than ever for me to decide what to do with my manuscript. I have the stereotypical devil and angel on my shoulders. On the one hand, I realize that my story, as historical fiction about a not-so-popular time period, is going to have an extremely tough time in the publishing game, even if I'm able to edit it into publishable quality. Your argument is very convincing as to why I should quit struggling and just put the story out there to sink or swim in the market. After all, I like my day job and don't want to quit; I just want to write these stories on the side.
But….
I don't want my work out there, with my name on it, with my friends and former students reading it, unless it is good enough to be published. The only way I can find that out is by trying to get published, in which case the silence mentioned in your title is frustrating. Does silence mean the book stinks? Or does it mean it won't sell? Should I keep editing until someone accepts it, or should I say it's ready and concentrate on some other story?
It seems to me there is a piece missing in this developing funnel, and that is the editor. I wish there was someone who could read what I've written and give me a professional's view of where the strengths and weaknesses of the story are. I wonder if that sort of role will develop in this new model of publishing. Freelance editor? Self-publishing agent?
margosita says
I think that the assumption you're making is that self-selection is an infinitely good thing. And that people will have the knowledge and experience to pick great books.
So while I mostly agree with you, there is something to be said about people not being able to continually choose only books that speak to their own biases. I worry that people's reading will become even more insular than it already is, if there is absolutely no kind of filter on what is available and where and how it's available or "out there."
heidi says
I'm probably echoing what everyone else has already said, but it seems worth repeating: thank you for this fantastic article. Not only is your take interesting (and comforting!) but it's also nice to know that there is a genuine human being on the other end. Much appreciated 🙂
Anonymous says
Well, it IS wonderful placement!!
VERY COOL for you and your client!
Anonymous says
I'm not too excited about this gigantic digital slush pile. However far I have to travel, I'll find a bookstore and buy my books there….
a-r-williams says
Great post, Nathan!
Some things will change, some will stay the same.
Writers will still need to craft the best story that is in them.
Editing and polishing will still be important.
Finding a way to get your name out there and marketing yourself will be more important than ever.
Amanda Borenstadt says
Woo-hoo! Good post. It's nice to read a positive opinion on electronic publishing from an actual agent. The writers I know are always squabbling about it.
Rick Daley says
Adaptability is a key to survival.
Anonymous says
In the future there won't be a need for agents, we'll sort it out for ourselves.
Throughtout economic history the 'middlemen' have been slowly declining and with self publishing going the way it's going – Literary Agents are next.
Make some noise while you still can…
Maya says
Maybe my dreams haven't been completely crushed yet, but the truth is I *like* the filter.
As a consumer, I am assured that someone out there thought that the book was worth investing in and that the writing is up to some standards.
As an author, if and when I ever get published, I'll know that someone believed in me. I'm not necessarily writing in a genre that my friends or family would like, but at least it is a genre that I know other people out there read. I don't think it would have a chance of reaching them in the age of "digital deluge".
Laura says
I guess what confuses me about this whole process is that we are told to write a kick-ass query. Send kick-ass query to agent(s), hopefully they request more…
But what you're saying is that a kick-ass query isn't necessarily key. It's all very subjective and I think how you feel on any given day, will dictate what you request, etc.
I understand being picky, but sometimes I think agents are really sitting at desk blowing raspberries at computer screen! 🙂
You think being an agent is daunting, try being the writer who wants to be published! 🙂
Remus Shepherd says
I don't know, Nathan. I'm unconvinced.
I see two big problems with the 'long tail' — the model where a lot of people produce things that only sell a little.
One is obscurity. Despite the efforts of critics and the tweetosphere, a good work may not get noticed. Without a vocal advocate telling people about a novel, there is almost zero chance that word about that novel will get out. You can see that happening now in various other online media, such as images and videos. And if agents and publishers can't handle the tsunami of submissions, there is no way that critics (a smaller pool) will be able to review everything.
This forces the author to be an advocate for their own work, but that puts demands on them that are outside of and sometimes contrary to their job as an author. They should be producing new stories, not designing advertising campaigns.
The second problem I see is a lack of any mechanisms by which a creator can hone their skills. So someone releases a novel and it sells to a dozen people. Maybe they get feedback, maybe not, and maybe only they'll get their friends gushing over whatever they write. They have no publisher giving them helpful directions, no agent to bounce ideas off of, and no market large enough to truly measure their work's performance. What do they do? They write another novel, with the exact same mindset and skillset, and release that under the same conditions. They'll never get better, they'll never grow as a writer, and they'll never get any useful, honest feedback to tell them when they're doing something right or wrong. They will be amateur writers — forever.
This future you're describing is a world of obscurity and mediocrity. No sir, I'm just not sold on it yet.
Nathan Bransford says
anon-
Agents aren't middle men, they're advisors who help authors get themselves the best deal possible. They existed when publishers still took direct submissions from authors, and they'll exist after they're no longer used as the first stage in the funneling process.
Do you think JK Rowling or Stephenie Meyer could handle all of their affairs by themselves or would want to? The foreign rights deals and the movie deal and the audio deals and the tie-ins and the graphic novel editions and etc. etc. etc. They don't need an agent to submit their work to publishers, but note that they still have agents.
February Grace says
OMG I knew it!
Nathan Bransford really is Luke Skywalker, ladies and gentlemen! He used to bulls-eye whomp rats in his T16 back home, I knew it…
Okay, so maybe it was dirt clods. No actual whomp rats were harmed in his bbgun exploits either I'm sure.
But the Force is strong in this one…his youth on Tatooine and the picture on this blog close the case for me.
Nathan Bransford says
remus-
I don't know, gems are discovered out of nowhere all the time. Just look at Shit My Dad Says. The guy started by Tweeting to his friends, and now has a million-plus followers, a #1 NY Times Bestseller, and a TV pilot. THE SHACK was self-published and came out of nowhere.
The process by which something catches on is changing, but viral is viral. All that changes is that the medium is even smoother and more instantaneous than it used to be, and the key players greasing the buzz wheels are changing.
I also don't think top authors will just drop their work into the public without having it critiqued. But there are lots of ways to go about that outside of a publisher.
Nathan Bransford says
remus-
I will say what I think will change is the myth that authors can write a book, send it off to their publisher and have it take off through no non-writing activity or self-promotion of their own. I don't think that ever was true, as I've written before, but even if it was it's certainly not true now.
February Grace says
oh, and I forgot to add in addition to mad Force skills, Mr. Sky…er, Bransford apparently does really well at this literary gig.
Honestly and seriously I'm so sad right reading this and I'm not even sure just why.
I really, really appreciate you saying how few new clients you take on in a year.
Up against the amount of submissions you receive it really helps put things in perspective. Thank you for this, truly.
My head is spinning…it's amazing you send responses to submissions at all anymore even rejections. And it really says something special about the kind of person you are that it still bothers you even now to send them.
Mark Terry says
"There's more that goes into a book than just writing it, and publishers will still be the best-equipped to maintain the editorial quality, production value, and marketing heft that will still be necessary for the biggest books."
Although I essentially agree with this statement–my current publisher certainly holds up their end on this–it seems to me that for it to be completely true publishers would actually have to provide "marketing heft" to all of their authors, not just some of them, and based on some of the amazing typos and continuity errors I've read in a number of bestselling authors over the last 10 years, the same applies to editing.
I'm not just being snarky about this, either. For my last publisher, with my second novel, they sent out 3–yes, count them, 3!–ARCs and otherwise did nothing to market the book (with expected results). I'd like to think I was an exception, but I know better.
Nathan Bransford says
mark-
No doubt – I think this will be one of the shifts. The major publishers will only publish the books (and authors will only go with the publishers) when they can provide marketing heft and the broad range of services they're best at when they're really on. Otherwise there will be a spectrum of options for authors outside of publishers.
tnt-tek says
The future maybe the silent rejection letter but there's no way that's going to be a good thing.
Books are not television pilots, they're not abstract ambient albums, they're not blogs or youtube videos. There is a reason that books have not been widely replaced by technology and there is a reason that publishing companies continue to do business when it's easy as pie (and fairly cheap) to run off 5000 copies of "My Summer at Aunt Frida's Emu Farm."
The role of the rejection letter is to serve as a hurdle to those submitting to a shared cultural experience. The gatekeepers of those institutions (right or wrong) collaborate to create lasting visions of the world in our time and place.
The upheaval and "memenization" of the literary process is a more culturally profound act than making last weeks Grey's Anatomy available on the internet. When everyone is shouting, no one gets heard.
How could a library hope to function in a world where any dope with a lulu account gets wide distribution? How can we vet actual scholarship from hackery? Viral media and convergence might work with a 500 word blog post or a three minute video but I can't see how it will work with full length fiction.
I'm far from a luddite but there has to be a way that authors and editors can interact in some meaningful way to maintain some semblance of quality control.
You may very well be right, but I sure as hell hope not.
Nathan Bransford says
tnt-tek-
We do it the same way we navigate several billion web pages on the Internet and a thousand restaurants in a city and, yes, the same way we navigate a bookstore with 100,000 titles. Is having 1,000,000 choices functionally that different of an experience than 100,000?
Janet Johnson says
I had never thought of it like this. It's not often I can say my opinion shifted after reading an article.
GREAT post. What is the harm? None.
Anne R. Allen says
Brilliant. The "long tail" theory lives. I hope this goes viral in the publishingosphere, Mr. B.
Books will be like blogs. Some will be the Huffington Post and some will be, um, like mine.
The money will be made perhaps, not by publishers, but iTunes-type websites that sort and coordinate all these ebooks.
Imagine, Augustina Peach, if there were a specific category on a central site for your historical period. You could be a star in that particular firmament. "I'm very big with the fifth century crowd."
Change isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Chuck H. says
Well, crap. And I was hopin' to be another Youngblood Hawke.
Mary McDonald says
I jumped on the e-publishing bandwagon last week. It's fun, exciting and a little bit scary.
It's great to see an article from someone in the industry who is honest about the probable future of publishing.
I predict that in a few years, there will be more respect given to independent authors similar to how indie movies and music have made inroads into mainstream film and music. We'll have our own 'Sundance' of sorts.
Chris says
You're right on the money with this post.
Note the new model. King's newest ebook, Blockade Billy, is Kindle only at present.
And like 'UR' previously, both Kindle editions are published by Storyville LLC, which I assume is his own company.
E-publish … then P-publish.
Ty says
This article and the above responses suggest to me a step forward in "literary Darwinism."
The bottleneck before e-publishing took off was getting your manuscript passed an agent/editor/publisher and into the hands of the masses. That bottleneck seems to less restrictive these days, though as Mr. Bransford mentioned, no less essential.
I see a widening of the proving ground, a stage for unpublished authors similar to the local improvs for stand-up comics or seedy dive bars for garage bands. Get your stuff in front of enough people and someone is bound to take notice. If it's marketable, it should rise to the next level.
It seems to me that we authors can now pay our dues by getting our material out to the public without relying on the traditional channels. Daunting, yes. Terrifying, absolutely. But these are the people we ultimately want to reach.
Oh and Mr. Bransford, the next time I get pissed at a rejection letter, I'll remember that there is a human doing the best they can on the other side of the computer screen. Nice post.
tnt-tek says
@NB
It's not the finding content that will be difficult. My argument is if all the authors that queried you daily knew they'd have a even shot at the pie if they just self-published, they would. Salable or not. Edited or not (probably not).
The institution of writing is an art form that is crafted, not wielded. It is most often a collaborative art form. The gatekeepers and QA are essential to the process of publishing quality work.
There are exceptions to this rule. Self-published authors are occasionally lucky enough to become successful by their own devices. But if the rules change like you say, we are in for a whitewash of the entire profession. To many aspiring authors, this is probably good news. For all of us who love books, this is a travesty.
Nathan Bransford says
tnt-tek-
"The gatekeepers and QA are essential to the process of publishing quality work."
Gatekeepers definitely ensure a certain degree of quality control, but if you remove the gatekeepers it doesn't mean that suddenly nothing but bad work will be published. The good stuff will still be published, along with works that may not have been commercially viable in the past but which will find its audience, and stuff that never should have been published and will (probably) not be read by hardly anyone.
I absolutely expect that the best work will still be edited in some form, whether by a publisher (who I fully expect to still exist) or by one of the thousands of freelance editors out there.
But most importantly: shouldn't readers be the ones who decide what they should get to read, and not have their choices constrained in advance? Anyone who wants the quality control of a publisher will still have that option: only buy books published by publishers! But people who don't care about that will have the option of reading books outside of what has been published in the past. I just don't see how more choice is a bad thing for books.
Mira says
I'm relieved to hear that our feathered friends were safe from young Nathan.
Of course they were. I should have known.
February Grace – I share your struggle. I think we all grapple with that here. I eventually decided that if blog buddies was all it turned out to be, well, okay. That's pretty good. I have so much fun here and learn so much.
Take this post for example. Okay, here's what I especially liked about this post.
You laid to rest this myth that the digital deluge is a bad thing.
You pointed out that bottom up rather than top down has benefits – i.e. masterpieces not accidentally lost.
You pointed out that low sales are easier on the writer – and also on kind, empathic agents – than the rejection letter.
You used the word cackling.
Does it get any better than this? Awesome article.
Bob Mayer says
I agree with this. It's inevitable. People forget that when POD first became a viable option, hundreds of thousands of writers jumped on that. There were some diamonds discovered. But in 2004 out of 1.2 million titles available, 950,000 sold less than 99 copies. The good news is, the big problem those POD books faced was distribution. Try getting your POD self-published book in a B&N. But eBooks level the playing field considerably.
We've put up 20 books, mostly my backlist (including titles that were bestsellers) at Who Dares Wins publishing. It's been an interesting experience. We learn something every day. We just learned that serializing a book, which I thought would be a good idea (let's go back to Dickens) is not a good idea. We're pulling the serial and making it one book and releasing it.
The are two factors that will delineate success and failure:
1. Quality content.
2. Quality promotion.
Both have to go hand in hand.
Having taught writing for over 20 years, having seen tens of thousands of queries and manuscripts, much as an agent has, I agree that out of so many, one can count on one hand those that are well written, well constructed, and have commercial appeal.
Kristin Laughtin says
Excellent article, especially the paragraph in the last section about the role trade publishers will still play. They will be important for quality control, branding, and hopefully will take a bigger step in marketing the books they do take on (although, as you say, author participation will still be vital). I'm definitely going to repeat some of these arguments–I thought the one about not noticing if a million new web pages appeared was brilliant!
Stephen Prosapio says
This is an awesome piece. As was said "brilliant." It very logically spells out what one very likely version of the future will look like. I agree. Digital books will be a great equalizer. There will be several (many many more than agents/publishers believe) that will rise from rejected obscurity to the midlist. Less talented writers (and marketers) will have their moment in the sun; their friends will get to read their work and those writers will see that going from obscurity to Oprah isn't as easy as they may think.
I personally think that this is ebook revolution is going to happen at a *much* faster rate than most people today currently think. When it comes to technology, we are adopting and moving on at a much more rapid clip than we were in the past. Look at how quickly emails virtually replaced faxes over just a year or two period back in the 90s. I don't think books will completely be replaced, but 7 years from now I wouldn't be surprised if more than 50% of all books sold are ebooks.