When Is the Time Right?

Yesterday's back page of The New York Times Book Review elucidated the glacial pace at which the publishing industry moves--not only in terms of submission review but also in terms of actual publishing. "Technology may be speeding up the news cycle, but in publishing things actually seem to be slowing down," writes Rachel Donadio. She is speaking about the "suspended animation" that occurs between submitting a manuscript and seeing the book appear in stores, but the lack of movement seems to apply to all aspects of the process.

According to Donadio, it all comes down to marketing, specifically the time honored practice of word of mouth, which, in the end is what publishers rely on to sell books. The publicity wheels start turning as soon as a literary agent sells a publisher a book, even before it is edited, or in the case of non-fiction, written. "While writers bite their nails, the book editor tries to persuade the in-house sales representatives to get excited about the book, the sales representatives try to persuade retail buyers to get excited, and the retail buyers decide how many copies to buy and whether to feature the book in a prominent front-of-the-store display, for which publishers pay dearly." Mind you, this is very often before they even know what the book is going to say, how it is going to say it and whether or not it says it well.

Merit seems to have very little role in the process. Perhaps if it is deemed good enough to be bought, then it is deemed good enough to sell. But this also explains why the decisions about the "value" of manuscripts seem to end up in the hands of sales and marketing teams, not editors, who presumably judge the book on its story, not its sale-ability. Success breeds success in publishing, perhaps more so than in any other industry, yet ironically second and third books are often not as popular, sales wise as first ones. Still, few are willing to gamble on unknown, first time authors, without a following.

And when it comes to direct competition, the object of the game is to run in the other direction. "You never want to get in a horse race with another book on the same subject," says William Shinker, the president and publisher of Gotham.

I tell you this because there are lots of reasons why my proposal seems to be going nowhere, not the least of which is the nature of the industry itself. Timing seems to be important in a field where time, ironically, often seems to stand still. So does competition, of which there is a fair amount in the form of other books on Barbaro.

One would think that the authorized story would carry more merit than the non-authorized ones but apparently only in the hands of an already published author.

So the waiting game continues, not without incredible frustration, despondence and anger on my part. Remember I never asked for any of this and now find myself with too much invested to let it go lightly.