Me, of course. Or off coarse. Nah, look, like far too many authors, I suffer from imposter syndrome. It’s hard, if you wandered into this having felt yourself in awe of an author/s. Like a kid looking up to its dad, you might want to be like that, but… they’re grown up. Having almost grown up myself, and lived through two sons growing up: I have been through ‘dad knows everything at 8… to at 13 dad knows nothing and they know everything… to gradually come back to realizing that… dad did actually maybe know a thing or two. When I come across authors who loudly assert they’re better than Tolkien… I remember that not everyone gets past being mentally 13.
The mentally 13-year old group aside, most of us have, no matter how we project ourselves, some doubts about our books. One of addictive aspects of Trad Publishing is it supposedly qualified to tell good from bad quality. If the publisher had granted their imprimatur, it had given the author the Hallmark of Quality. For people with imposter syndrome, desperately hoping their book is good enough, that is actually worth a great deal.
It doesn’t help that it is drivel, and that any thinking, logical person can establish that. People who want to believe, will. Look: every reader has looked at a book, somewhere down the line and either thrown it across the room or very least shaken their head and asked: ‘how the hell did this drekk get published?’ The remainder bins of thousands of bookshops bear centuries of testimony to the fact that publishers are fallible. Very fallible.
I want to say this again, very clearly: being published, Trad, meant that you were very lucky, or very well connected… or in the right place at the right moment. Millions of bad books were rejected. Millions of great books were similarly rejected. Some rotten rubbish was bought because the author was having sex with the agent/publisher/editor’s boyfriend. Some were bought for purely ideological and virtue-signaling reasons. Some were pushed to a level of success, and got better. Once you get above a certain level of sales (possible with marketing) inertia may well keep you there, as long as the rot is not… too rotten.
Look – the slush pile – I’m slush pile graduate – where it still exists, is mostly… not great. But the top 10% of it, one or two books may shine far brighter, but mostly editors are picking their likes from a slew of books which are possibly as good or better – they just resonated with that person, that day. And that person, these days is as likely to be unrepresentative of the reading public as not. Look at the surveys of sex, orientation etc. on PW. I’ve cited them before. They do not in any real way reflect the reading public outside a tiny, very insular NYC publishing circle bubble. They are not the right people to grant an imprimatur on anything, outside that.
If you can say you’ve sold more than these trad books (not hard, really. Sales are terrifyingly small for a lot) – the reading public at least you are a writer, not a fraud. If they pay for your work – more than once, you have their hallmark of quality.
Mad Genius Club 
13 responses to “The Hallmark of Brilliance”
“More than once” has got to be reassuring.
Every time I hit “Publish” I wonder if I still have it, if people will like this one, if I’m really that good, or just good enough that people come back for more (or like a certain series I borrowed from the library, out of morbid curiosity.) Am I as good as Ann River Siddons (how she uses landscape … wow. I sit in awe)? As early Lackey? As early Charles De Lint? As Susan Cooper? I think I know the answer, at least in my own mind.
It doesn’t help that I recently got the English Teacher Look of Disappointment™ from a former teacher when I said that I publish genre fiction. Could I write Lit Fiction? I don’t know. One book has a few readers that say it is close to lit-fic in a good way (story of a life).
I have one book from Lois McM. Bujold. I never finished the second chapter.
I have read all of yours. You’re a real writer.
As for LitFic, I’m convinced nobody actually reads that for fun. It’s the literary equivalent of self-flagellation. You do it so you can compare scars with others as a form of bonding ritual.
Stand tall, O Scarlet One! The “English Teacher Look of Disappointment™” is a badge of honor!
Wear it with pride!
There’s a scene in _Gaudy Night_ (Dorothy Sayers) where Harriet the writer of detective tales, goes back to Oxford, and the Dean of the College tells her that many of the ‘professors’ read her books. Then Harriet grapples with the idea of writing something Literary. So, nothing new. Still annoying.
One reason why establishing the text of Shakespeare’s plays is so hard is that Ben Jonson, who carefully oversaw the publication of his plays and called them “Works”, was considered conceited for it. Poems like Venus and Adonis were Works. Plays were just plebian.
When I published my first books (a Virginian snatched into leading the Wild Hunt series), I was at least as concerned that my local foxhunting friends would find the hunting and kennel scenes accurate as anything else. After all, they were not (generally speaking) fantasy readers, so accuracy is what most of them would judge it by. If they read at all, some of them had read the Rita Mae Brown “Sister Jane” books (she was a regional character and huntsman and known locally among the hunting crowd — though her public liberal positions were against her).
It was heartening, in a way. The Sister Jane books are not pretending to be lit-fic, any more than mine are.
I must admit I have considerable sour grapes going on with the publishing industry. I compare my (admittedly quite limited) ebook sales to what a New Author!!! is getting with Big Publishing, and I say things to myself like “hey, not doing so bad for a faker, old son.”
At least my work remains my own, not sold off or indentured in some ridiculous contract.
But if ‘Big Publisher’ came along and offered to get my books into every store in the nation, would I go for it? Sure! Book tour? Hell yeah! If somebody petted my fur in the right direction I’d roll right over. It is somewhat disappointing to realize I can be bought so inexpensively.
But, on the upside, at least now I know what my price is. ~:D A useless bit of knowledge, as ‘Big Publisher’ is not coming. Pipe dream, never going to happen, I must do my own work my own self. Like always.
But those grapes are definitely sour. Oh yeah.
I want to be able to write much more and much faster. Trying!
ATM keeping the bills paid is exhausting. But… my books do sell. Not heaps, but they sell. That’s something, right?
Yes. Trad sales – with the whole machinery behind them selling a few hundred, happens.
Heh. I remember the early days on Baen’s Bar. Well. early for me! There were the exalted beings, actual authors . . . and they would talk to us ordinary humans. . . like it was no big deal. And I won’t say I was shocked, but a little bit taken aback when they (including you, Dave) told me that *I* could actually Write A Book.
In my case? Lucky. Stumbled into writing books almost by accident. Have had almost 60 published by traditional publishing houses.
I don’t think my stuff is brilliant. More grind it out every day. The old Big Ten football strategy from my college years. Grind it out every day. Get three yards done on the book. Keep going. Keep grinding.
My only excuse is it is fun and it pays. Plus it fills a demand. And some days the magic works, and I get 2000 words down.
Talking LitFic, I can remember how my blood ran cold when I saw writers I honestly like such as H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard being promoted as ‘actual literature’. Because it seems to me that “real literature” is shorthand for ‘a book everyone buys but nobody ever reads’. To say nothing of all the pretentious literary critics it draws like flies, all of them desperately mangling it to fit whatever is the favored intellectual fad of the moment.