My five least favorite painful truths about book publishing
If these weren't so important for authors (and agents!) to remember, I wouldn't be dragging them out and making both of us retch at the sight of them. But they are, so I am.
A couple weeks ago, the wonderful Mike Albo emailed me “10 Awful Truths About Publishing,” a piece he’d seen on AuthorsGuild. “Thought it was good material for the newsletter,” he wrote.
Yes, Mike. Yes, it is.
The rest of you ought to read that piece. I enthusiastically agree with almost everything argued by its author, a senior editor at Berrett-Koehler named Steven Piersanti.
Now I feel motivated to supplement his agonizing truths with even more from me!
Quick tangent before I do that
There’s one thing I disagree with in Piersanti’s piece: the very last line, which encourages authors to keep all books short with a clear, front-loaded main idea.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for a clear value proposition, at least in nonfiction. (Dear God, I hope Piersanti is only talking about nonfiction.)
Nevertheless, the prospect of an American Letters populated entirely by 30,000-word header-happy Axios garbage literally just flooded my face chambers with stomach acid.1 And I suspect readers would hate this even more than my digestive tract.2
Anyway:
In this field, there are a lot of heavy truths lying on the ground: disappointing statistics, enraging delays, irrational systems, unclear outcomes.
As authors and agents, we have limited navigational choices:
pretend these painful truths don’t exist, thereby ensuring we’ll faceplant straight into them
twist and tiptoe around them. This generally ends in one “just” faceplanting into one or two hard truths overall, exiting the field an exhausted, depleted shadow of the person you used to be—but hey, you’re still alive!!
start weight training. Pick up the heaviest truth you can lift, then pick it up again and again until your beefcake arms can handle the heft. Move forth to train on heavier and heavier truths from there. Eventually, you’ll be jacked AF.
I recommend option 3. Shall we go ahead and tour the gym?