John Blake
2008-04-10 14:00:59
Let’s face it, editors are commercial opportunists. J.K. Toole’s “Confederacy of Dunces” went unpublished for eleven years after his suicide, whereupon it won a Pulitzer Prize. Rowling reports that 21 submissions yielded only rejections (“no audience, vocabulary too sophisticated” etc.).. but churn out a sex-and-death potboiler replete with car chases and evil corporations, you’re in!
Literary quality is not synonymous with short-term marketability. Probably 90% of authors produce hack-work anyhow, but if editors of integrity can’t flag classics in advance, what’s a publisher to do?
