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Erik Hare

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Blogs by Erik Hare

Minor Leagues
6/12/2007 8:30:32 PM

Think of book agents as something akin to baseball talent scouts. These are the guys who sit in the bleachers at high school games and generally just watch. What are they looking for? What interests them more, raw talent or hustle? What brings them here, and will they be back? A real player who wants to “make it” needs to know.

There is a substantial amount of information on how to be noticed by book agents and publishers, but the vast majority of it is useless. Some is naïve, some is simply wrong, and some is merely the front end of a scam. If there is a book or website with useful information to prospective authors, it is difficult to find amid the noise.

The problem is one of understanding what quality is and being able to find it. In that sense, the problem facing writers is similar to one facing Publishers. Their “slush pile” is large and unlikely to ever be sifted through completely.

Publishers often get a handle on the quality issue by staying with one genre, since one part of the market is easier to understand than the whole. Smaller presses frequently stay close to their specialties. This does not substantially change how difficult it is to be noticed, however.

The other major issue publishers have is from the business side, where printing costs are rising amid an antiquated relationship with sellers that requires them to take all of the risk. Before they commit to a book, they have to believe that it will sell in substantial quantities.

If any publisher can be considered the Major Leagues, the complete lack of a Minor League farm system is a serious omission. Publishers need to see demonstrated skills, but have no systematic way of developing or evaluating them. The closest thing in books is the self-publishing market. Unfortunately, this has absolutely no checks of any kind for quality and is as rife with con artists as the market for getting a manuscript published. This means that, in many ways, you have to create your own Bush League team from scratch.

The three elements necessary to be an author are ability to write from a mechanical perspective, ability to generate good ideas and/or stories, and the ability to promote. Rarely do all of these come together in one person, so it is reasonable that one or more will simply have to be learned.

Staying with the Minor League analogy, a coach with the patience and tenacity to tease out skills is going to be the most important asset you have. Finding such a coach is difficult at best. Even more importantly, such a coach has to be able to make the call when someone is ready for that cup of coffee with the Bigs.

Any revolution in publishing for new authors will necessarily involve the development of the coaching and field time that a Minor League system must have.

The world of writing and publishing is a world caught between two technologies right now – the world of printed paper, and the world of electronic displays. The latter has both highlighted the ability to drive a society with information and made it possible for new voices to be developed and heard. Crossing backwards into the realm of printed paper still has a strong allure and a much richer social context – but more importantly it has a potential income stream for the writer.

Is there a potential for a Minor League system on the internet for prospective writers? I believe that there is. Initially, it may not change the big publishers substantially. That’s fine with me.

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More Blogs by Erik Hare
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