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I know for a fact that publishers will now vet authors as well as manuscripts. A nice-looking and personable author, preferably with a well-oiled presence on so
by toyg 4y ago
I know for a fact that publishers will now vet authors as well as manuscripts. A nice-looking and personable author, preferably with a well-oiled presence on social networks, has a much higher chance of getting published than the rest of the pack; that's because publishers now "sell" the author as much as the book.
- digdugdirk 4y agoThis is actually one of the more important aspects in publishing. But its not so much the author themselves being sellable, its the built in sales they might have from their social media audience. The conversion rate from marketing to their own audience is much higher than otherwise, and is enough for even small publishers to justify an initial print run of a niche book.
- SleepilyLimping 4y agoYou must fandom everything you can.
- bombcar 4y agoMore importantly to the publisher, the author sells themselves. Most books are basically flops and so having a built-in market is a huge advantage for the publisher. Also saves them having to do much publicity, too.
- karaterobot 4y agoIf we're selecting for mediagenic authors with a lot of Twitter followers, we're going to get the culture we deserve. I grant that publishers have always selected for things other than the quality of the book alone, just observing that this has an effect.
- ephbit 4y agoMakes me ask myself: which hugely successful works of fiction (excluding stuff like the Bible) are out there convincing readers solely through their content because the author remains anonymous/pseudonymous and how can they reliably be found?
- karaterobot 4y agoFirst thing that came to mind was Elena Ferrante, but also one of my favorite authors, K.J. Parker (who is no longer pseudonymous but was for a long time). But why does it have to be fiction, and why does the author have to be anonymous? There's a big difference between being anonymous and being a social media influencer: I'd guess most of the best and most influential fiction and non-fiction authors have fallen in that range. The thing to avoid is a world where publishers would say "Sorry, Mr. Faulkner, we won't be publishing your little book until you get a few more followers."
- ephbit 4y ago> But why does it have to be fiction .. ? My immediate thought was: would it even work to publish a non fiction book anonymously? > There's a big difference between being anonymous and being a social media influencer. Agree. My reasoning was: even without any digital social media, charisma (and other factors such as having connections or previous success) is probably a trait that positively influences an author's success. If you want "pure quality of the oevre itself" to speak for itself, then shouldn't it have been published anonymously?
- toyg 4y agoFerrante is extremely likely to actually be someone who was already connected to publishing (either the wife of a celebrated Italian writer, or a nome de plume for both of them), so it's hard to say "she" got there "on merits alone". But I agree on the rest of the comment.
- bluGill 4y agotop web fiction, royal road, and so on - there are a lot of places budding authors can post their fiction. Since we are talking about unknown authors the burden is on you to find them. That means get off the top lists and search things that are way down in the rankings (most of the ones on the top of the list will publish on Amazon in the future as that is where the money is)
- barry-cotter 4y agoPlenty of authors don’t do publicity. Patrick Süskind has become very rich and he hasn’t done an interview in my lifetime.
- ska 4y agoPublishers have always "sold" authors, it's the how that's changing. In 1990 internet/social presence probably wasn't seen as meaningful, now it's just one of the standard tools in the bag.