Writer vs. Publisher

As a creative writing student I am constantly involved in a struggle between what I think is best for my stories and what my teacher thinks is best. And, as my teacher is the one giving me my mark, I usually end up doing what they want even if I don’t believe it works.

I imagine it must be the same when working with, or trying to attract, a publisher – but with much more pressure. So I thought I’d write an entry about our powerlessness as writers. A slightly depressing topic, I know, but it’s something I find interesting.

I think script writers get the worst deal in this respect. Whether you’re writing for stage, film, radio or TV, unless you are lucky enough to become your own director, you have literally no say over how your script is presented.

But as this entry is focusing on publishers I’ll get back to that. It is true that once you attract a publisher, the chances are, any changes they ask you to make will be for the good of the book. However, the difficulty is in attracting a publisher in the first place. 

Whilst researching this week’s blog I found loads of websites about ‘what publishers want’. According to these websites, if we want a traditional publishing deal we need to write something similar to a book that has already been successful. But if it’s too similar it’s considered jumping on the bandwagon. We must show that we’re capable of writing more successful books in the future. Some of the websites I looked at even suggested that publishers aren’t interested in your book idea at all but instead with your marketing potential as a person.

So how are we writers supposed to write something original (that is also similar to something already out there), something that is true to what we want it to be and something that can also attract a publishing deal?

I’m afraid I don’t really have an optimistic end to this blog entry. All I will say is, this is why we love blogs so much, right? Anybody can write and be read without having to bow to the commands of the all-powerful publishing god. So let’s support self-publishing as much as we can in the hope that we don’t have to rely on the demanding world of the established publishing industry.

Thanks for reading!