An agent talks about publishing

Another article of note, this time a Guernica Magazine interview of superstar agent Chris Parris-Lamb.

He’s mostly into literary fiction, not genre, but he has some very interesting and incendiary things to say about writing, publishing, Amazon, big books, and big advances.

Selected quotes:

On Amazon’s huge efforts to police its relatively tiny returns from publishing: “Almost no one writes books for economically rational reasons.”

On National Novel-Writing Month: “I frankly think that initiatives like National Novel Writing Month are insulting to real writers. We don’t have a National Heart Surgery Month, do we? I’m being intentionally provocative there, obviously—being a good or bad writer isn’t a matter of life or death—but I’m also serious. Great writers are as rare as great heart surgeons—maybe even rarer; I don’t actually know anything about heart surgeons. But I would argue that it takes as much time and work to perfect their craft, in addition to having talent to begin with that most people just don’t. What I really object to is this notion behind these initiatives that anyone can write a novel, and that it’s just a matter of making the time to do it. That’s just not true…But I am really skeptical of the idea that, but for National Novel Writing Month, those gifts would go undiscovered. I think part of the nature of the gift is that you can’t not give voice to it—having received the gift, you must give it in turn. Which is to say, the people who really do have a great novel in them are going to find a way to write them anyway.”

Whether we agree or disagree, the whole interview is worth reading, from an author research angle.

4 Comments on "An agent talks about publishing"


  1. His comments on NaNoWriMo and like initiatives are interesting. I can see where he’s coming from, and would agree that the ability to write an X-thousand word narrative doesn’t necessarily mean you should call yourself a novelist – but I wouldn’t say that is any reason NOT to have people involve themselves in writing initiatives.

    I come across similar arguments on the music scene in the city where I live. “Amateurs should stay home and leave it to professionals to make music,” is an argument I hear a lot. Well, no. Making music is something we all have the capacity to do at some level, and it’s a means of expression available to people, and can be an important social glue to bind people together in a positive way. A community that is attuned to music, appreciates music, and values music is good for all those professional musicians trying to make a living at it. One way to make sure the community is that kind of fertile ground is to encourage everyone who wants to to make music. Play an instrument, sing, perform at the local open mic night, write your own stuff – whatever. We’re not all Gillian Welch or Paul Kelly or Blair Dunlop or whoever … but an attuned community is more likely to produce people like that.

    I reckon it’s much the same with writing. Let’s have events that encourage people to write. If nothing else, they’ll know more about what working writers put into their craft.

    Great writers probably are as rare as great heart surgeons. Or great musicians, great songwriters, great painters, great photographers, great winemakers, great chefs…. But that doesn’t mean everyone else should pack up and go home.


    1. I forget the precise term in skeptical debate. Essentially, because you don’t know something, you shouldn’t bother to find out? I don’t play NaNo myself, but it’s a fine tool to instill the habit of writing. It teaches nothing about the other disciplines of critical self-review and revision, which can mean the difference between drivel and polished draft. Much of the criticism leveled at NaNo is because of the latter problems with NaNo novels.

      Parris-Lamb also does not address the participatory aspect of writing – where your analogy of music works as a great illustration.

      Writing and music have had about a century as culturally segregated arts supposedly limited to ‘professionals’. By the mid-twentieth century, music, writing, and art were categorized as useless play or even threats to diligent, sober society. Both the scientific revolution and the religious right viewed the arts as somewhat dubious wastes of time. That allowed music and publishing to be micromanaged by serious businesses, while being portrayed inaccurately in popular culture. (The dual myths of Starving Damaged Artist, or Millionaire Author, anyone?)

      Now that’s changing back – of course, those established as ‘gatekeepers’ may feel under siege.

      Pre-copyright enforcement and our entrenched music industry, making music was a much broader artform, as I’m sure you know. Work songs, parlor music, festivals, etc. made up a large part of entertainment and other social functions. People of a certain class and above were expected to have some musical education. The phonograph and radio popularized music and spoken drama, and spread them in previously unheard-of ways.

      Likewise, after the invention of the Western printing-press, the acts of writing and publishing became much more open to anyone with the ability to read and write, and access to a press and paper. Skill with words was a valuable personal development. The Industrial Revolution led to worker-supported social institutions, among them the public library of the working-class town. The lurid dime-novel became the pulps, which became the mass-market paperback, which became e-books and self-published works.

      The literary fiction market is shifting, along with everything else, as technology allows more voices to be heard.


  2. To me, Lamb sounds like someone trying to beat the genre vs literary horse. What makes a great writer? Someone who sells a lot? Someone who writes a lot? He lost me as soon as he mentioned talent. Writing is a skill like anything else. There are people who will be a lot better at it than me. They’ll start younger. They’ll get more awards. They’ll write more books. And?


  3. I come from a cheerfully lowbrow appreciation of genre fiction, probably as a result of my Depression-Era mom trying to rear her children to appreciate Classic Books. Some of her choices were gems; others, ugh, they might have put me off literary fiction forever.

    To this day, I find myself burdened by a reflexive distrust of modern American ‘literary’ fiction, and a tendency to scan the first few pages with an even harsher urge toward rejection at the slightest flaw. I still find a few breathtaking gems. Generally in inverse proportion to their hype in Publishers Weekly.

    Many of the genre writers I grew up adoring were talented hacks who wrote for money, on deadlines, with certain formulas their readership demanded. They had some raw ability at the start, but learned their way forward.

    I see the same contrasting mindsets in the ‘fine art’ world and the commercial art world. In the fine arts, it’s rather common to hear an artist waffle on about taking months or years on a painting. Commercial artists get paid by the job, so they’re far more efficient and realistic with their time.

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