Universities consider his work valuable enough to study under the field of modern Gothic alongside Blatty's The Exorcist.
But what do these academics know about literary worthiness?
Stephen King's advice on seeking an agent
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Universities consider his work valuable enough to study under the field of modern Gothic alongside Blatty's The Exorcist.
But what do these academics know about literary worthiness?
Harry Potter is taught in school, too, now.Universities consider his work valuable enough to study under the field of modern Gothic alongside Blatty's The Exorcist.
But what do these academics know about literary worthiness?
That's understandable.
I'm able to make the distinction, though, that a lot of bands I like (particularly from the pop and rock genres) are in fact absolute crap. But I still like them. While it's true the majority of "pop-ular" authors don't have much talent, there are exceptions to any and all cases.
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I think King's an excellent writer. I feel your point about 'technicality' is selling King extremely short. I could understand it in the context of someone like Dan Brown or James Patterson - who don't write the world's most gorgeous prose - but King has a great deal of skill.
EDIT: And of course Brown and Patterson have other virtues that more than compensate for the occasional infelicity.
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Well I'm certainly glad that someone is here to tell us what's good and not good so we dumb masses of popular writers and readers are saved from ourselves.
Why yes, I do find several of the things you've claimed in this thread incredibly insulting, both on a personal basis and on behalf of many readers out there. Just because you believe something is crap doesn't make it so.
Well I'm certainly glad that someone is here to tell us what's good and not good so we dumb masses of popular writers and readers are saved from ourselves.
Why yes, I do find several of the things you've claimed in this thread incredibly insulting, both on a personal basis and on behalf of many readers out there. Just because you believe something is crap doesn't make it so.
You should be old enough not to get worked up over somebody else's opinion. I do not think King's talented, and I will finally admit that. But I went straight out and said I was stating an OPINION, which means I am not trying to state fact. People are different and if it gets you so upset when somebody doesn't think like you, then it's sometimes best not to post.
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Um, no, you don't get to tell me when I can and cannot post. If you're going to make inflammatory statements, you shouldn't be surprised when people call you on them. Even if you state they're just "your opinion." I do NOT take exception with you stating what you just said. That you "do not think King's talented, and I will finally admit that." I fully support your right to say and think that. But when you make sweeping generalizations like "While it's true the majority of "pop-ular" authors don't have much talent, there are exceptions to any and all cases..." and "The point is that talent is very much not appealing to most of the world..." and " But such a book does not appeal to masses because of it. Talent must be toned down." do NOT be surprised if someone calls you on those claims. Especially the first one. There's a huge difference between stating, "In my opinion, the majority of pop-ular authors don't have much talent..." and "While it's true that the majority of pop-ular authors..." as if it's a fact we're all agreeing on. Which we're not.
Also note that I did not try and shut you down by telling you not to post in this thread or making the thinly-veiled accusation that if you disagree with me you're a baby or child. I'll thank you to give me the same consideration in turn.
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I'm a horrible writer, I should be twice as popular a King. It seems to me that the best writers, critically acclaimed writers, aren't well read (we are forced to read them in school). I'd rather be read by the dumb masses.
I doubt that I need an agent to sell a book. I just need to get it out to the masses. Now a days there are tools on the internet to do that. Once the volume of people reading the book is high enough then a BIG publishing houses will want to take over. Then I'll need a lawyer or an agent or both to help me keep my money and rights.
I doubt that I need an agent to sell a book. I just need to get it out to the masses. Now a days there are tools on the internet to do that. Once the volume of people reading the book is high enough then a BIG publishing houses will want to take over. Then I'll need a lawyer or an agent or both to help me keep my money and rights.
Wow, guys. The serious lack of respect in this thread, both for writers and readers, is astonishing. And disappointing.
Personally, I'd rather be read by readers than by these "dumb masses" of which you speak.
Er, no. The chances of you using those "tools on the internet" to publish your book and actually find success at it are insanely small. Do you know why we hear stories about people who make a lot of money self-publishing? Because they are huge exceptions, which make them newsworthy.
Look at the number of books self-published via Kindle/Nook/other every day. The chances of a big publishing house taking interest in your self-published book are so small as to be negligible.
If you want to be commercially published, in this day and age, an agent is still your best option.
And your point is? It's also being taught in Universities on Children's Literature courses, the subject of articles in literary journals.
Really? I'd say it's a sign of quality. please expand your opinion. Because I think that saying a bestselling book is not a sign of quality is naive.
Looking at it from a percentage standpoint, I'd wager 1.5% (this is an actual calculation approximately 125 of music aficionados came up with) of musicians are truly talented and try to further their skill with every album and song. It's surprising to think that music and writing industries are so different, when they're appealing to a similar audience (most of everyone). This is the basis for claiming most authors are not very talented... that and I've read hundreds of contemporary books and only found 6-9 of them that I thought actually made me feel as if I was gaining something from reading them.
Assuming that with the millions of books that come out through publishing companies (excluding vanity presses, POD, and self publishing) that 50% or more of the authors are talented. From a martial arts standpoint, it doesn't even make sense. From a music standpoint, it doesn't make sense. So I don't think claiming the majority of authors out there are not talented is a false claim.
I said the "My opinion" tag at the beginning so I didn't have to say "In my opinion" after every claim. That's not a logical way to go about it. However, I was not right in saying "It is true". Instead, "It is most likely true that..." would have been better.
To be honest, my last post was meant to mean "I did not mean to hijack this thread and it's rude to continue debate in the thread. Let's move to PM instead. But I haven't slept in over 35 hours, so I did not word it even 1% of the way it should have been. I apologize.
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A decent flounce, but much more flair required to be competitive. I give it a 5, maybe a 6 out of 10.
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Nick, in the interests of getting somewhere useful with this debate, how are you defining 'talented'?
It's a certain kind of talent, a marketing talent mostly. But sales =/= talent. The more money you make off of something, the more talented you are is a very, very naive concept. That makes Paris Hilton more talented than this dude: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy7bOAzq_24 . And he's only talented over guitar wankery.
While usually impossible to define, to me, I should elaborate. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
Talent, to me, refers to technical skill. It means doing things that are difficult to do, that enrich and challenge yourself to make yourself better, that challenge the reader/listener and help them become better readers/writers/entomologists, etc. It means sometimes taking an avant-garde approach to theory and stretching the boundaries of "rules", without necessarily having to break them. Talent can refer to taking some cliché and making it unique.
But being able to shred well isn't true talent. Being able to play all the chords well isn't, either. Knowing all the scales isn't. Having a truly well-rounded knowledge of all the aspects, and then bringing it to a higher level is. This usually relates to something around 17 years in martial arts terms, of training.
Sometimes this refers to brilliant prose. Other times it refers to a very good concept, depth, and character development woven into a tapestry of plot.
I'm not seeing the logic of this argument. First, who decided these 125 music aficionados were the ones qualified to judge talent/no talent? It would be interesting to see the names of these people and their qualifications. I know nothing about music, but I'm sure many people at AW do, and would also like to see this list.
Second, even assuming these people are a select group qualified to judge, making the leap from music to writing just doesn't work. That would mean every art form would have to be included in your argument as well. Are you claiming out of everyone who has ever sold a painting or been paid to dance professionally, there are only 1.5% who are talented?
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I'd like to spend a couple of cents here.
Firstly, with respect to those who believe that all publishing houses in the US will accept unsolicited work from unpublished writers, that is simply incorrect. A casual glance at big house websites will solve that riddle without any ambiguitly.
Secondly, having an agent is different from having, say, an IP attorney. An agent is exposed daily to various relationships built upon the ladder to publication. Editors being the most important connection. Often, agents and ediors carry on a symbiotic effort of common interests and tastes, where the agent learns of an editor's personal preferences, and submits manuscripts accordingly. These become "first read" submissions.
And to the industry, let me say this: I hooked my first agent at William Morris Endeavor (Endeavor prior the merger) nearly two years ago, when the publishing business entered a sort of apocalypse of closing houses and streamlining. Hundreds of editors were let loose on the streets. We spoke at length of the doom and gloom that seemed to have crippled the submission process. Editors were buried by submissions because there were less ediors to handle a work load that had not subsided with the industry problems. In fact, being a down economy, where more and more writers decided to pursue dreams of becoming an author, submissions to agents also exploded.
Today, I have an agent with Dystel and Goderich who entered this side of the business after having been an editor for 13 years at a big house publisher. He would tell you that agent and editor responsibilities have merged, with the agent taking a lion's share of editorial work for the author. You can imagine that a publishing house would see this as a selling point. Obvioulsy, an IP attorney doesn't possess the skill set, or time, for that kind of effort.
Lastly, we should take into consideration where the article originated. It is a British article. As most of you know, the UK publishing industry has a more casual view of publishers accepting unsolicited material. In fact, most of them will take a look. Eventually. But it all comes down to the time you want to wait and whether or not your work is in a ready state. If you're as myopic as me to your own material, that can be a difficult thing to know. Thus, an editing agent is a godsend.
Firstly, with respect to those who believe that all publishing houses in the US will accept unsolicited work from unpublished writers, that is simply incorrect. A casual glance at big house websites will solve that riddle without any ambiguitly.
Secondly, having an agent is different from having, say, an IP attorney. An agent is exposed daily to various relationships built upon the ladder to publication. Editors being the most important connection. Often, agents and ediors carry on a symbiotic effort of common interests and tastes, where the agent learns of an editor's personal preferences, and submits manuscripts accordingly. These become "first read" submissions.
And to the industry, let me say this: I hooked my first agent at William Morris Endeavor (Endeavor prior the merger) nearly two years ago, when the publishing business entered a sort of apocalypse of closing houses and streamlining. Hundreds of editors were let loose on the streets. We spoke at length of the doom and gloom that seemed to have crippled the submission process. Editors were buried by submissions because there were less ediors to handle a work load that had not subsided with the industry problems. In fact, being a down economy, where more and more writers decided to pursue dreams of becoming an author, submissions to agents also exploded.
Today, I have an agent with Dystel and Goderich who entered this side of the business after having been an editor for 13 years at a big house publisher. He would tell you that agent and editor responsibilities have merged, with the agent taking a lion's share of editorial work for the author. You can imagine that a publishing house would see this as a selling point. Obvioulsy, an IP attorney doesn't possess the skill set, or time, for that kind of effort.
Lastly, we should take into consideration where the article originated. It is a British article. As most of you know, the UK publishing industry has a more casual view of publishers accepting unsolicited material. In fact, most of them will take a look. Eventually. But it all comes down to the time you want to wait and whether or not your work is in a ready state. If you're as myopic as me to your own material, that can be a difficult thing to know. Thus, an editing agent is a godsend.
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Well, I know diddly squat about music, I only know what I like (and I have zero musical talent). I do practice martial arts and I understand your comparison there. (And no, I'm not talented.) But I think I know writing. So I'm going to ask an obvious question: have you read Stephen King? Or just dismissed him out of hand because you know he's a huge popular author whose books are made into really bad movies (With a few exceptions, like The Shawshank Redemption)?
I can talk about King extensively, though that's not really the purpose of this thread, and I'd strongly disagree that he's a "shredder" or whatever the writing equivalent is. He has turned out some crap books, I won't deny it (there was a long period in the 80s/90s where he's admitted that most of the time he was writing while stoned out of his mind -- though ironically, some of my favorite books of his are from that period), but if you've read his books, I think it's apparent that he's not just spewing words and retelling cliches, and he does have a writer's attention to the craft. (He also needs a firmer editor sometimes, but that doesn't make him a bad writer, it makes him a self-indulgent writer, which many writers are guilty of. I could say the same thing of Dickens.) If you've read his non-fiction, like On Writing and Danse Macabre, it's obvious that he takes writing very seriously. You may not like his writing, which is a perfectly valid matter of taste, but to say he has "no technical skill" is insulting, and to say that he's only popular because he appeals to the dumb masses is insulting to his readers.
That's why I asked you to explain why you think he's a bad writer. "I didn't like this and this and this in the books of his I read" would be an opinion I'd respect, even if I disagreed with it, but "Popular = bad writer" isn't. (And no, of course I don't think being popular automatically makes you a good writer. I'm perfectly comfortable stating that I think Dan Brown is a bad writer, but I've read some of Dan Brown's writing and can say why I think so. It's not just because he writes big dumb potboilers that become big dumb movies.)
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I don’t know Kasey and Chaos. Look at your own books. How they are packaged, the artwork, the catchy series titles. An argument can certainly be made that your publishers are duming down your work. I wouldn’t dare say you don’t have talent, or you don’t respect your target readers. I’m quite sure you do. But does your publisher? They must think they can sell more books by packaging them with sex appeal and branding the titles. They aren’t marketing the talent of the author, the quality of the writing or even the content of the story. They’re pushing a contrived formula. A lot of people think formula fiction by definition is crap. I’d go so far as to say it appears your publisher agrees with Nick Blaze.
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I am afraid I don't recognize the publishing industry you're depicting here. We market the author's talent and the quality of writing all the time. In children's books, where I work, we're going through a golden age of amazing fiction.
We also market branded series fiction titles, mainly by pointing up their qualities as compelling stories and as things that satisfy the reader's expectations - which isn't to say they are poorly written, just that we understand what people want to hear about them.
