The More Things Change...
by Michael Gallant

...The more they fear to change.

I don't want to seem like a broken record, but what we at QM have been saying for six years is still true. The big publishers don't love you. Pretty girls only want to date the football team, nobody gets letter jackets for Debate and there is no Tooth Fairy.

While browsing the web to avoid doing my reading or responding to authors, I came across the following blog entry by Anna Genoese, an editor at TOR/Forge:

http://www.romancingtheblog.com/blog/index.php?p=195

If you, like myself usually, are to lazy to click on off site links in the middle of a good rant, I'll give you a few highlights.:

"....at Tor/Forge, every two weeks, the entire editorial department gets together in a giant room with a big stack of submissions, and we get rejecting.

Nope, I don't mean reading. I wrote rejecting, and I meant rejecting..."

"I have worked in publishing for over five years now, and in all of that time, I have not purchased one book out of the slush pile."

She also mentions some statistics. 7,000 to 20,000 unagented manuscripts per year (I don't know how you get a range like that outside of an election year), and they publish about 120 new books per year, most of those coming from established authors, who are not included in the seven to twenty thousand.

Now Anna is probably no more evil than most editors. She's probably polite, kind to animals and the elderly and never cuts people off in traffic. This is no attempt to smear her good name. In fact, she's just telling an unpleasant truth.

The point of this editorial is to show how brutal the established market is. And it isn't brutal out of spite or whimsy. It is brutal out of simple economics.

Book sales have remained steady over the past few years. The number of writers has increased, as have submissions, naturally, but sales have not. Competition has savaged the ranks of the established publishers, and, like any frightened herd animal, they have drawn close and lowered their horns. The chips only get pushed out for safe bets. Risk is bad.

Now, it's unfair (but fun) to single out the book publishers for such abuse. Short story magazines have been hit even worse, and some have gone the way of all flesh. Even confining our lament to the printed word is inaccurate. Television is dominated by Reality shows, which require fewer trained actors or skilled writers, Movies have pushed further into the realm of remakes, if that could have been believed five years ago, and the music industry....

Well, the less said about that, the better.

So, yes, things look very bad for decent, original entertainment. But, what to do. Should we haul out the pipes and play a dirge for original work and the settle on the couch for the next season of Fame Whores Debase Themselves For Attention on Fox?

Well, we at Quantum Muse feel that it is better to light a Molotov Cocktail than curse the darkness.

There is good stuff out there. And there is an audience. QM has a loyal readership. I know this because if I miss an issue because my cirrhosis flairs up or I saw off a thumb doing work around the house I get bombarded with emails bemoaning the lost issue. Despite the meager showings in the Tip Cup, you guys are out there.

The venues are there. Dozens of short story sites. Small press. Even Print on Demand, given that a major publishing house isn't going to promote your book worth a damn anyway.

As far as consumption, well, that falls to us as well. See a local band. See an independent film. Read an unsyndicated online comic, read an ezine. Support the good, boycott the bland.

So lets present a challenge to the Established Order. And let it be ski masks and petrol bombs at five paces.

Or ezines. We're pretty easy.

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