“It’s good, but we can’t market it. If you were already famous in some other way so we could sell based on that, we would buy it.”
Could have phrased it better, but I kinda get it.
“It’s good, but we’re bad at actually selling books so we need you to be famous in another unrelated way to compensate for our incompetence”
FTFY
At least they know their failings and wont waste the authors time.
No you didn’t. People don’t buy the memoirs of random people. The publisher can move heaven and Earth but people still wouldn’t change the fact that the audience will never exist
Who said anything about memoirs? The thing about “the memoirs of random people” is not that they were written by non-famous people - it’s that they are about non-famous people.
So you run it by James Paterson, Inc. (or the estate of Tom Clancy or whoever fits best) get his name above yours and now you’re contracted to release new novels at an absolutely breakneck pace, but you have your foot in the door and can become the more famous writer who can release their own novels.
I can’t have a job because I don’t have enough experience. I don’t have experience because I don’t have a job.
You’re supposed to devote yourself to a year long unpaid internship. Bills? Who cares, you have to live like a slave.
“Bills? Who cares, you have to live like a slave.”
Don’t be silly. No-one is expecting you to live like a slave in order to do an unpaid internship — that would hardly be conducive to outputting good work anyway.
No, no — obviously you’re meant to rely on your family’s wealth.
Oh, you don’t have family wealth to rely on? Okay, well the simple solution is to just not do the unpaid internship if you can’t afford it. And if that means you aren’t able to secure a paid position, due to lack of experience, then that just shows that the system works! After all, we have to keep the riff-raff out somehow
It’s more like walking into Google the day after your high school graduation and asking to be the CEO. I’m sure he could have been published if he tried to publish something people wanted to read. there’s barely an audience for the memoirs of real people that isn’t just money laundering. Literally no one would buy it if they published it
This is what ghost writing is for. The publisher just slaps “Peter Andre” on the cover, the readers get to do “Leo-pointing-at-the-television”, everybody wins.
It’s a reasonable concern for a publisher. A book being good doesn’t necessarily sell books. But having a famous name on it does.
Lots and lots of anecdotes online about aspiring authors being denied publishing because they don’t have a pre-established following. It’s a sad state of affairs
Isn’t the publisher’s job to advertise the book, get people to know it?
