Bad Books
Why are there so many crappy books being published? I am tired of all the mediocre writing being churned out of these college classes that ends up on the bookstore shelves. Haven’t they heard of editors? I’m not talking the pulpy fiction stuff but things purported to be literature. And I am talking big publishers like Anchor and Harper-Collins. I guess these one crappy book wonders all get jobs as editors at the big publishers because they are “published authors”.
One expects blogdom to have a lot of self-published nonsense with no thought to the quality of the work. Perhaps this post is even part of that load. But to invest in the production of books with all that entails ought to lead someone in the boardroom to question the level of competence of those in whom they are investing.
So to compensate for this lack of ability to filter competent from incompetent on the part of editors and authors I’ve taken refuge in translations of foreign works and English fiction written by those whose first language is not English for many years. And that is increasing almost exponentially as too many writers whose first language is English can’t seem to string together half a dozen words and have it make any sense. Translations are expensive for publishers so a little more care is taken not only with the selection of the works to be translated but also with the selection of the translator. Always follow the money trail when looking for quality. That doesn’t mean you’ll always find quality but it does improve the odds.
Dreck like chick-lit and “light reading” has really done in the American (and by association Canadian) publishing industry. Its the marketing of this crap that really drives me nuts as a reader. One cannot blame the educational system with its emphasis on computers either. The use of a computer does not preclude the ability to communicate. I mean I do keep 6 blogs going so communication is not the issue.
The real issue is standards. And writers, the keepers of language, have let their standards lapse terribly.
Filed under: About Writing, Essay, Nostalgia | 2 Comments
Tags: Blogs, Essay, Nostalgia, Writing
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Hi!
Just started exploring your different blogs, and already amazed by the amount of interests we seem to have in common…
First off, this post interested me because you truly grabbed the “bull by his horns”, as we say in France. Talking about crap being published and wonderful manuscripts being ignored… Or foreign writers who are not translated in english… And all the crap we may find on the blogdom. Geez, I bet the stupid stuff I write on a daily basis definitely fall under that name! Still, as long as it makes the writer happy, maybe this is enough for the blogsphere? Who knows… But it certainly doesn’t explain why so many talented writers are ignored or go unpublished… I bet many of them are tempted to give up on a regular basis. Pity, really…
Anyway, I’ll make sure to spend some time on your blogs, all of them seem pretty fascinating to me.
See you around!
B.
Hey B.
Thanks for stopping by.And thank you for leaving a comment.
One thing I wonder about on the Internet is if people realize they are presenting themselves in a way. For example if someone came to the door of their house would they not try to make themselves a little presentable before opening the door? You know smoothing their hair or putting on a robe or something? Of course some people wouldn’t bother which is their choice. I do like the freestyle of the internet writers but then again the operative word is free.
But the publishing world is different. Some kind of quality control should be in place for a business. Why would a professional operation like a publishing house come to the door without a robe and their hair all disheveled? That is exactly what they are doing when they publish a lot of stuff that wouldn’t even attract any attention in a free blog. Too often some kind of nepotism is in operation. Some big agent is befriended (or sleeps with) some bad writer and the deal is sealed. Or someone’s cousin just wrote a novel, or graduated from some big time writing school or this kind of thing. But how quickly these things end up on the remainder shelves! Sometimes only a month or two after publication. Why bother?
My criteria is If a book is going to likely inhabit my bookshelf for more than 2 years than I’ll likely buy it. That means it has to be good enough to go back to a few times. Even skimming though a number of pages in a bookstore one can get an idea if the story is engaging, the characters interesting and the language well crafted. Why can’t an editor at a publisher figure this out?
Oh I’ve started to rant about this again.
Anyways I do hope you enjoy some of my blogs and thank you for visiting.
Marnie