Have you ever noticed that when you visit a bookstore, or peruse the shelves in those airport gift shops or anywhere else they sell books, it’s always the same novels by the same handful of authors?
When I see these same names and same titles being sold front and center again and again and again I want to throw up a little in my throat. Maybe you do, too.
Same “best-selling” authors, two or three of their latest books, mixed in with an assortment of whatever current trendy, buzzy, book club books are being pushed that particular week. You’d never know there were actually thousands of authors out there. If you just arrived on this planet and landed your spacecraft outside a bookshop you’d think that maybe a half dozen writers was all we had down here on earth.
Okay, I exaggerate. A little.
But I do think either:
- this limited universe of books and authors is the only stuff people care to read; or
- readers have no choice since this is all that the publishing world–dominated by five or six major firms–considers marketable.
It’s a vicious circle, because this narrow literary marketplace is forcing so many talented people, who have a lot to share with the world, into self-publishing. Maybe not so vicious after all, because it allows us to publish on our own terms.
Which brings us to a recent article in the New York Times.
In case you can’t access the story, I’ll summarize it. The writer posits that over the past 20 years, traditionally-published fiction has become a predominantly female endeavor. Novels found in the bookstores are mostly written by women for women. As an example, three-quarters of the authors on the Times fiction best-seller list are women. Apparently women readers now account for about 80 percent of fiction sales.
Additionally, as the writer of the article points out, anecdotally, literary agents that do accept well-written manuscripts from male writers cannot even get editors to read them.
So where does that leave us? Self-publishing.
I’m not going to offer an opinion on the article’s supposition, but I can attest, objectively, that when I was querying agents over a period of 12-plus months, the overwhelming majority of agents at every literary agency were women. Not that this means anything on the face of it, but the majority of those agents listed “women’s fiction” or something similar at or near the top of their manuscript wish list.
(Now, I will say that while my novel has some strong women characters, it in no way would qualify as “women’s fiction,” alas. Ergo, I was not even asked for a full-manuscript submission from a single agent!)
It goes beyond being a challenge for a male writer. If you follow the logic, it also means that men in general are simply not reading books any longer. The regression of men, educationally and otherwise, in our society is a national crisis. There’s a large disparity between woman and men in college graduation rates, for instance. Apparently, novels just can’t compete with video games and other temptations on the internet.
Still, one has to persevere. If you’re a guy and have an idea for a book, I say godspeed and carry on. My novel, Last Bridge to Memphis, is in the final stages of prepping for self-publication, and as I’ve written here before, I’m going to see this through. I’m on the last bridge, so to speak, of a long journey that started many years ago, but really, in earnest, during the pandemic.
Eyes of moody blue, in this sneak peak of the cover of “Last Bridge to Memphis.”
Obviously I think it’s a pretty good story, with a novel concept (pun intended), otherwise I wouldn’t have spent these past many months writing, refining and designing it. Not alone, mind you. With the help of a very patient and very creative freelancer (courtesy of Reedsy, which I would highly recommend) who crafted an amazing and mysterious cover and a beautiful interior.
I don’t know if this is going to be my first and only book, or only the first in a series. But I want it to look as professional as I can design it and read as engaging as I can write it.
What I learned from all this is that the initial drafting is the easy part. The real works comes in editing, cutting, revising, re-writing. Then the REAL work comes in trying to market it to agents (no love there) and then in prepping it for self-publication.
This final bridge is all the more complex because it is new. Every step is a potential landmine. If Last Bridge to Memphis makes it to Amazon and IngramSpark and you see it offered for sale early in 2025 it will be one of the most significant achievements of a lifetime. Not to mention one hell of a check mark on the good old bucket list!
And what’s next? Banging out a sequel, what else? Or as a certain prominent character in the book might put it, it’s definitely time for some TCB: “takin’ care of business.”
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