As I said, this post was written from a reader's perspective, and as a reader my first instinct is to read anthologies that promise the best payoff for my time and money - names I know, both authors and editor.
That is hardly a universal readerly instinct. For example, in the marketing and positioning of novels, "debut fiction" is a major selling point to both the trade and to individual readers.
We're only a few months past the point when readers irate at gender inequality in original story anthologies were told (for the second time) that sales were all and big names on the cover were what guaranteed sales, so it hardly seems unreasonable to me to expect the same attitude when it comes to untried or unfamiliar writers
Eh, you were told that by a small press working with a distributor relatively new to selling trade books and with 'sales' poorly defined -- sales to the trade? To readers? Even holding the claims of the Eclipse publishers and editors to be true, while it may seem reasonable to take one claim and outfit it to another, it is ultimately not reasonable at all.. The best way to come to accurate conclusions is to deal with the concrete -- find out what it actually going on -- rather than simply abstracting some principle into a broader claim and then writing as though it were a true fact.
A couple of things to keep in mind:
1. despite the greater expense and risk of publishing a book than several pages in a magazine, when all is held equal it is actually easier to publish one's first novel than it is to publish one's first short story in a prominent magazine. That is, the novel market is less competitive than the short story market, when comparing the number of available slots to total submissions.
2. there is a huge excluded middle between "big names" and "first time writer."
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Date: 2008-10-25 03:26 pm (UTC)That is hardly a universal readerly instinct. For example, in the marketing and positioning of novels, "debut fiction" is a major selling point to both the trade and to individual readers.
We're only a few months past the point when readers irate at gender inequality in original story anthologies were told (for the second time) that sales were all and big names on the cover were what guaranteed sales, so it hardly seems unreasonable to me to expect the same attitude when it comes to untried or unfamiliar writers
Eh, you were told that by a small press working with a distributor relatively new to selling trade books and with 'sales' poorly defined -- sales to the trade? To readers? Even holding the claims of the Eclipse publishers and editors to be true, while it may seem reasonable to take one claim and outfit it to another, it is ultimately not reasonable at all.. The best way to come to accurate conclusions is to deal with the concrete -- find out what it actually going on -- rather than simply abstracting some principle into a broader claim and then writing as though it were a true fact.
A couple of things to keep in mind:
1. despite the greater expense and risk of publishing a book than several pages in a magazine, when all is held equal it is actually easier to publish one's first novel than it is to publish one's first short story in a prominent magazine. That is, the novel market is less competitive than the short story market, when comparing the number of available slots to total submissions.
2. there is a huge excluded middle between "big names" and "first time writer."