A few weeks ago, on the strength of a single glowing review and numerous high profile endorsements, I bought a copy of Jeanine Cummins’ American Dirt. After I had read the first ten percent, I got curious and Googled the author. If you have heard of the book, you know happened next. A few keywords revealed a literary scandal of epic proportions. I am not here to rehash it – there are some excellent blogs that have already done that. But it has got me thinking about my own experiences with the publishing industry.
I am old enough to remember the gilded age before publishing was taken over by the bottom line mentality. All of that changed with the mid-eighties death of the midlist author. When I worked in publishing in the late ’90s, the mantra was “fewer titles, more sales” a profitable but obnoxious business plan that in some ways lay the foundation for the brand marketing that is so common today. To sell a lot of books, the author became a more central part of the publicity. It wasn’t enough to have a good concept, the author had to be interesting as well. In some ways, publishing paved the way for reality TV, which perfected the “solid talent, no story” rejection.
I have some experience with this. A student of mine got to the second round of a TV singing competition (let’s call it Swiss Idol) before being rejected because her biography wasn’t dramatic enough. This happens in the publishing world, too. Years ago, I knew a talented fiction writer who was going through round after round of crushing rejections from the big houses. What she heard over and over was that high quality fiction doesn’t sell. At the same time, I knew a much more modestly skilled woman who got a multi-book deal because she had a brilliant concept that lent itself to TV rights. Today that second author is on bestseller lists while the first died unpublished.
Knowing all this, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that the industry heralded American Dirt as a literary masterpiece. It is just the latest example of how shallow marketing lifts up mediocrity.
Books Smitten 