There is one piece of advice given to aspiring authors more often than any other.
"Write a great book and a publisher will find you."
It's comforting.
It's encouraging.
It's also, I'm afraid, largely nonsense.
Before angry emails start arriving from publishers' offices, let me explain.
Publishing is not primarily a search for great writers. It is a business.
Publishers employ editors, designers, marketers, sales teams and accountants. They have offices to run, wages to pay and, ultimately, books to sell. If they don't, they won't remain publishers for very long.
That means they aren't simply asking, "Is this brilliantly written?"
They're asking something rather different.
"Can we sell enough copies of this to make money?"
Those are not the same question.
Of course, publishers would love every book they release to be beautifully written. But if they are forced to choose between a literary masterpiece likely to sell 800 copies and a competently written book with the potential to sell 80,000, commercial reality usually wins.
That isn't greed.
It's survival.
A publishing house that consistently publishes wonderful books nobody buys won't remain a publishing house for very long.
This explains why countless excellent manuscripts receive polite rejection letters every year. They aren't necessarily being rejected because they're poor. Many are rejected because the publisher cannot see where they fit into today's market, how they would be promoted or whether enough readers would buy them.
The quality of the writing is only one part of a much larger equation.
If you doubt that publishers are ultimately looking for books that will sell rather than books that will win literary prizes, look no further than Fifty Shades of Grey.
The novels attracted enormous criticism. Reviewers questioned the prose, the dialogue, the character development and the overall literary quality. They were certainly not universally hailed as masterpieces of English literature.
Did it matter?
Not in the slightest.
Millions of readers bought them. Millions more recommended them to friends. The books generated extraordinary publicity, sparked endless debate and became one of the biggest publishing successes of modern times.
From a publisher's perspective, that is success.
Whether critics admired the writing was almost irrelevant. The books found an audience, the audience spent money and the publisher achieved exactly what every commercial publisher hopes to achieve.
This isn't a criticism of Fifty Shades of Grey. Millions of people thoroughly enjoyed the books, and good luck to them. Rather, it demonstrates a simple truth that many aspiring authors overlook.
Publishing has never been solely about literary excellence.
It has always been about finding readers.
As a ghostwriter and editor, I've worked with extraordinary people whose stories deserved to be told. Some found traditional publishers. Others didn't. Their worth wasn't determined by a committee meeting or a sales forecast.
Too many talented writers receive a rejection letter and conclude that they simply aren't good enough.
That is often far from the truth.
Sometimes the timing isn't right.
Sometimes the market is crowded.
Sometimes the publisher already has something similar.
And sometimes the accountants simply can't see how the book will make enough money.
None of those reasons necessarily reflects the quality of the writing.
So, if you're sitting at home with a rejected manuscript, don't automatically assume you've failed. You may simply have written a very good book that doesn't fit one publisher's commercial plans at that particular moment.
Don't confuse commercial decisions with literary judgement.
The two are often very different things.
And perhaps that's the biggest publishing myth of all.
