When Publishing People Can’t Write
By Porter Anderson (@Porter_Anderson) | April 21, 2017 |
Image – iStockphoto: Orinoko Art
Query Their Skill Sets
It’s something of a “quiet provocation” I bring to you today—a point that lies deep within the industry: A lot of professional publishing people couldn’t write their way through a two-sentence blurb if their P&Ls depended on it.
Don’t worry, no names will appear here, I’m on a bloodless warpath.
But I was struck recently when a literary agent of considerable visibility in the industry contributed a blog post on query letter writing. Not that the world needs another word said, spoken, or thought about query writing, of course. Can’t we gather all the books, posts, and articles written on the tired, tortured, tedious topic of query letters and just yell, “Read Number 4,622!” when someone asks us for something special?
For our purposes here, never mind that the thing was about queries.
The problem is that the article was woefully badly written. Any agent worth her web site would have rejected the article along with the day’s query letters.
- Subjects didn’t agree with verbs. And some of the verbs didn’t agree with life as we know it.
- The entire article lived in Preposition Purgatory. (Your plane really does not “arrive into” London Heathrow.)
- Human beings were reduced to inanimate objects. (We all know self-described writers that don’t know the word who, don’t we?)
- Wooden? Stilted? Victorian? I’m still searching for an adequate term to describe the creaking formality with which this thing was written. This is a great sign of amateurism, by the way, as I’m sure you know. Good writers are able to communicate in a conversational English that gets out of its own way. This piece was in everyone’s way, a refrigerator fallen from the truck of author instruction.
And remember that in many cases—maybe most cases—a literary agent is an author’s first editor. Some agents do deep developmental work on manuscripts. More do multiple copy-edit jobs on their clients’ texts.
As a journalist covering publishing, I probably see examples of bad writing from industry people more frequently than most do. Maybe I approach a publisher with a series of questions for an article or I ask an agent to give me a few paragraphs of descriptive commentary about a special book that he or she is keen to promote at a trade show. What comes back frequently needs a lot of work.
So there’s my provocation for you today.
If you go to a doctor, you assume that he or she knows the difference between ibuprofen and penicillin. So why, when you turn to a publishing professional, should that person not know the difference in its and it’s?
Nobody’s Perfect
Provocations graphic by Liam Walsh
We’re not talking about typos here, of course. (God help me with the typos.) We all make them. If anything, people who work in words spend so much time shoving verbiage at each other that the odds of mere mistakes goes way up, of course, no problem.
I’m talking here, instead, about an obvious lack of knowledge, a tin ear, the mistakes it’s okay for your mom to make in writing out a recipe. Those things aren’t really okay for professionals in the publishing industry.
Can we come up with comforting assumptions to step around this? Sure we can.
- Publishing people are just writing for each other: it’s all in the family.
- Authors are the ones who have to be capable of bel canto writing, publishing people are just the support team.
- When the time comes, these publishing pros will suddenly shift into articulate gear and floor us with their expressive virtuosity.
Do you buy it? I don’t. I’d advise an author who’s researching agents and publishers to read your candidates’ blog posts and other writings. If they can’t handle the language, do they really appreciate your comparatively eloquent work?
Whats up with this? Have you noticed how many publishing folks whose careers are based in writing don’t seem to be able to write? Am I asking too much? Fine. And how’s your mechanic doing? Would it be good for her to be able to tell a tire from a steering wheel?
[coffee title=”Wish you could buy Porter a glass of Campari?” icon=”glass”]Now, thanks to tinyCoffee and PayPal, you can![/coffee]
@Porter_Anderson is a fellow of the National Critics Institute. He is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives, the international news medium of Frankfurt Book Fair. He co-founded The Hot Sheet, a newsletter for trade and independent authors, which now is owned and operated by Jane Friedman. Priors: The Bookseller‘s The FutureBook in London, CNN, CNN.com and CNN International–as well as the Village Voice, Dallas Times Herald, and the United Nations’ WFP in Rome. is a recipient of London Book Fair’s International Excellence Award for Trade Press Journalist of the Year. PorterAndersonMedia.com
From CNN this morning:
Stoffer told CNN, adding that Putin “is trying to put the US on notice that the Russians are everywhere and are back to expanding the limits of expanding their military power.”
How do you expand the limits of expanding?
Ha! Funny example of a lot of what you hear on the air these days, James, thanks for it.
It seems an awful lot of info these days is falling into that “alternative facts” zone — something else we’re “expanding the limits of expanding” pretty vigorously.
Cheers,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Great post as always. The world is full of people who are rushing to accomplish things, who don’t proofread what they write and currently don’t even research what they claim to know. I will take from this piece that we all need to work harder to create good writing, to not only research if it’s nonfiction, but to also present that information in the clearest possible way. I have also worked as a proof reader and copy editor. Things can get by you. But in this fast-paced world, we need to slow down, reread, correct and aim for the best. And so do agents and those working in publishing. Sometimes money is more on the mind than quality.
Hi, Beth, thanks for the input, as always!
As I’m saying in a response to Erin, I think one thing we’re losing in some instances is a writerly appreciation of the work by people whose roles lie in (as Erin points out) support areas, commercial parts of the business. I’d feel better if I felt the sales and PR folks were closer to the art of it. And I’d feel better if I felt most authors were more concerned with the business side’s realities, too.
Much to be learned on both sides of the business, when it come down to it. Slowing down is such good counsel. I wish we all could do more of that!
Thanks again,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Great post. Thank you for saying it.
Thanks much, Stacey,
Good of you to read it and drop a note.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
The one that’s been making my teeth itch is the subject/verb agreement. And it’s due to not only to misuse of contractions, but to utterly ignoring what the contraction is contracting.
In a typical day, there’s dozens of incidences, in print and on television. There’s too many infractions to count. Its enough to drive a man to pour another Campari.
Thanks for fighting the good fight, Bro.
Thanks, Vaughn,
I find the subject/verb agreement problem everywhere (and in so many ways — plural vs. singular, collective vs. individual).
I also see a lot of jarring opening phrases, too, along the lines of “Speaking as a crazy journalist, my article tries to point out that everyone in the business might think about how they represent and affect each other’s and their own work in their writings.” Of course, “my article” isn’t capable of “speaking as a crazy journalist,” so that setup is all wrong, and I see this self-attribution error all over the place.
The contraction one gives me fits mainly because I see too few folks using contractions. Part of that strange stilted impression comes from people who never speak without contractions but don’t seem to think it’s important to write them, too. Many writers I work with as an editor are thinking about this, because I’ve started calling it to their attention — for which they have not thanked me, lol.
Thanks, sir, as always, and keep the faith!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Ah! Yes. This.
Porter, you’ve highlighted a divide in publishing. There are those whose job it is to edit the book and make it the best it can be. And there are those who work to sell the book — marketers, publicists, the sales force, etc.
Those whose work it is to sell the book often come from a different educational background and have a different set of skills that may not include the ability to write a grammatically correct sentence. Those whose work it is to edit the book wouldn’t necessarily know a thing about how best to get that book into the hands of its readers.
I straddle the line in the industry — I’m a writer for the marketing end of things. I have the educational background of a writer/editor, but I work with people who are generally of a sales/marketing background. They are big picture thinkers. They love a dangling modifier. They probably think I’m way too picky about commas and hyphens and capitalization. Editors who look over my copy probably hate that I play fast and loose with some of the rules just because it makes for better sales copy. (I can’t count how many times they have changed % to “percent” and numerals to spelled-out numbers.)
But you need both kinds of people to publish books. Do I wish everyone had an eye for errors? Yes. But then, if everyone could write, my company wouldn’t need me. ;)
The biggest source of disillusionment for me when I started working in publishing was not that not everyone in the company could write well. It was that so many authors need so much help writing well. Especially in nonfiction. But this makes sense when you think about it. While nonfiction authors are often experts in a field (other than writing, of course) and great at building a network of people who love their ideas, that doesn’t mean they are great writers. That’s what great editors are for. It takes a village, I guess.
Exactly. I take this post as a Friday rant after a long week. If this is meant to be a genuine issue then I take issue with it. :) Agents sell. Yes, they are your first reader, but they are looking for a great story not excellent grammar and proper conjugation. A good editor can take care of that (thought they shouldn’t have to if the writer is doing their job). It’s all division of labor and their crappy writing is really meant be ‘in the family.”
I’ll add that I’m not saying those in the industry with poor writing skills shouldn’t work to improve, of course. After all, you are representing someone else’s work (in all of these positions) and you should do your best to present it to others in the best possible light. And that includes working to make sure your writing that promotes or pitches the work isn’t sloppy and half-assed.
Right with you. Per my earlier response, I think we’re on the same page.
Thanks again!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi Cece,
Thanks for your comment, sorry for the slow response, I’m into a lot of travel right now for work.
No, not a rant (alhough yes, a long week — they all are these days, it seems).
I’ve been looking at this and talking with other journalists about it for several years. As I mentioned, we see it most clearly because — I’m making up this example — if a news medium has a chance to consider an article written by a publishing chief or leading rights specialist or sales expert, that article isn’t written for “the family.” It’s meant to be read by the widest public. And there’s a good chance it’s going to come in poorly written. Not in every case, of course not. There are brilliant exceptions. But as a rule (and this is seen both in the UK market and in the US, I’ve compared notes in jobs I’ve held on both sides of the Atlantic), there’s a real problem of writerly ineptitude that I think you’d find surprising if you were standing where we do in the media (still a plural word, for our grammarians, lol).
And while I won’t take issue with your issue, lol, I do think, as I’m saying in comments elsewhere, that the “all in the family” response is ill-advised, especially when, as Erin is pointing out, so many authors (opposite end of the spectrum from sales/marketing/biz folks) aren’t writing all that well, either.
The more unified a respect and deployment of good writing the industry puts forth — recognizing that everything in public these days is read far beyond “the family,” the better.
And the more we ask every element of the industry to simply learn what good writing is — why not have sales, marketing, representation and other sectors take courses? — the more those parts of the business can appreciate the best output of the industry and promote its importance to the consumer.
All the best, and thanks again for your comment.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi, Erin,
I agree that too many authors don’t write well–nobody at Writer Unboxed, of course. :) It can be even more distressing to meet a writer who can’t or won’t take good writing seriously, seeing no need in it.
The idea that some editor somewhere is supposed to “take care of that” — and then, of course, the idea that the editor is somehow subverting the author’s original intent — is too prevalent and has something to do, I think, with the fact that a lot more people simply are getting into writing, or trying to. While many like to cheer a more egalitarian pathway to publication thanks to digital, that also lowers a lot of bars. As Jon Fine has said many times, “The great thing is that today everybody can publish a book. And the bad thing is that today everybody can publish a book.”
I get your point about nonfiction writers, of course, but I see way too many limitations in fiction writers. There’s a sense for some of them, I think, that only literary fiction people need to write well, and that the rest can just slap it together. The “tin ear” I mention in my article is a reference to folks (authors or otherwise) who can read really good work but seem to pick up nothing of what makes that work well written. Like tone-deaf singers, they never seem to “hear” what they or anyone else might be writing.
Setting aside authors’ issues, though, I take your point, and thanks for it, about people whose roles in the industry fall on the commercial/business side of things rather than on the creative/aesthetic side. And I’ve had a similar experience to yours as a journalist: for years I was with the Village Voice and my column needed the snark-speak that was, at that time, our trademark. I learned to turn phrases that made my more serious writerly friends’ skin crawl and ended up using some of that idiom as an advertising account executive. It’s interesting working in a promotional vernacular, isn’t it, especially in literary industries.
I think what I’d say about the divide that you’re right to bring up is that the sales/marketing/commercial side of things would have a better understanding and appreciation of the product if they came to it with more fluency in good language, themselves.
I’m a particularly big fan of agents. And the very best ones I know seem capable of writing rings around their author-clients. I really like that. Someone at a conference I was covering yesterday talked about the principle of hiring people smarter than yourself. To me, working with agents and marketing specialists and salespeople and cover designers (I’ve known a couple who were amazing writers) can be like hiring someone smarter than you are, really capable of coming to you with killer ideas and feedback and recommendations.
And while a publishing worker might have to really want to upgrade her or his writing — going at it almost like studying a language — I’d like to see a few more try…just as I’d like to see more authors take the time to study writing.
Really good input, thanks so much for reading me and taking the time to comment,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I liked this enough to re-post it on my own blog. Thanks for sharing!
Hey, Steve, very kind.
Thanks much for the generous note,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Speaking of typos, I’m sure you meant to write: Preposition Purgatory ;)
Good catch, Charles,
I did, indeed, mean Preposition Purgatory (and the Typo Limbo of trying to write a piece while jetlagged and still in transit, lol.).
Excellent catch, now fixed, and thanks for it!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter– Earlier this week, I received an email promoting the Writer’s Digest annual conference in August. It included photos of the many agents who will be involved, and two things caught my attention: with very few exceptions, all the agents were women, and again with almost no exceptions (and assuming extensive cosmetic surgery didn’t figure), all these women were millennials. So, the principal gatekeepers of the written word these days are women, and they went to school in very recent times. They grew up with the internet, mobile phones, Twitter, Facebook, texting, etc. My guess is, all these factors help to explain what for you is the degraded use of language among those working in publishing.
Wait a minute…the fact that they are women factors into this? Can’t wait to read the responses to that claim.
Erin–As I said, two things caught my eye: the preponderance of women agents coming to the conference, and what appears to be their age demographic. If you choose to make more of this than I intended, I can’t stop you.
Ironically, the way you worded it made it an issue, not my reading of it.
I guess this goes to show that even a grammatically correct piece of writing can still miscommunicate.
Barry, with all due respect, and coming from someone whose knee-jerk response is to give people the benefit of the doubt… The emphasis in your first comment seems to be about the preponderance of *female* agents at the conference, followed by the fact that those females also seem young in their photos. You follow those observations with a note about social media, which I expect speaks to age, and then say, “My guess is, all these factors help to explain what for you is the degraded use of language among those working in publishing.”
When you said “all these factors,” did you mean all factors you named minus gender?
I think it’s worth your time to clarify what you meant. Because it reads, at least to this woman, exactly as Erin interpreted it.
Therese–
With all due respect back at you (you have to know I mean it), I must say I am surprised by your comment. You think it’s possible that I might see gender as a factor in the decline of standards in publishing. Do you actually believe I might hold to such a cockamamie idea? It seems you do: you think it would be worth my time to clarify what I meant. So: If what I wrote reads to you “exactly as Erin interpreted it,” then Erin is also right in saying that “even a grammatically correct piece of writing can still miscommunicate.” I meant nothing so ridiculous, so laughable as to imply a gender connection to declining standards in publishing.
But you are certainly right to suggest that my skepticism about social media “speaks to age.” I won’t take offense (Ageism), or get out my political-correctness handbook, because you’re absolutely right. Guilty as charged.
As for the rest of it, no, Therese. I’m old, but reasonably sure I’m not crazy. I would have to be nuts to entertain such a thought. That, or from Trump country.
Ageism? No. “Speaks to age” was a reference to my guess about what you meant (e.g. you were referencing *the age of the agents* when you made the comment about social media), not a note about *your* age.
I do appreciate your time in clarifying what you meant. My fondness for you aside, and my inclination to think you meant one or another thing is beside the point. We were discussing what the words seemed to mean based on how they were being received. If this political era has taught us anything it’s that perception becomes as powerful as truth unless we combat it with fact, right? With that said, I thank you for setting the record straight. That’s exactly what we needed.
Thank you, Barry.
Therese & Barry-
I have found book publishing an industry that leads others, by far, in its acceptance of women in executive positions. That’s a good thing.
About the age disparity…remember the agents and editors who put themselves out on the road, as it were, are the ones who need to build their lists and reputations. Naturally, they skew young.
And none of that is discriminatory or impedes any writer’s chances. Not once in forty years in the industry have I ever heard an editor or agent dismiss a writer because of their gender or age. Not once.
-Don
As it should be. Thanks, Don!
Barry, Erin, Therese, Don,
Thanks for a great discussion-within-the-discussion, which you’ve carried forward as I was bouncing between planes.
Once more the context of respect and civility here at WU makes it possible for assertion, disagreement, and clarification to be promulgated in a healthy way.
As I write, I’m watching a BBC debate from Australia on political correctness and its value or damage in contemporary discourse — https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/n13xtmdd — a good background for our comments here, in that at WU, we see repeatedly how helpful it can be to simply stay alert to what a phrase, a clause, a proposition can mean, according to how it’s expressed.
Our engagement in conversation around articles here becomes, over time, a bonus benefit in social expression and professional exchange. We learn how we “sound” to others, and how those others come across to us. That’s an education that I think is important for everyone in publishing.
Writing well is not only the best revenge, as Dorothy Parker told us, it’s also fundamentally worthwhile, especially for those working in any capacity with words for a living — as everyone in publishing does.
Thanks again,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
make me gladder two bee a indie writer person and for the records i do gots a editor
Thats “indy.’
Keep us honest, Marc. :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Ha! :)
Robin, I’m sure we all send condolences to that editor. :)
Cheers,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I recently purchased an online writing class with lessons that were so full of errors that I wrote a note to the teacher and stopped reading the lessons. The errors were not only distracting, but it made me wonder if the content was any good.
I hope you got your money back!
Agree!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
What a bad experience, sorry to hear it.
It’s not among my more popular utterances, lol, but I’ll say again that the rise of the sheer numbers of folks trying to publish has led to a huge uptick in “author services,” some of them simply and deliberately bogus, others of them mounted by people who don’t know their own shortcomings, and still others (if fewer) excellent.
“Buyer beware” remains a sadly central phrase here.
I can recommend the work of my colleague (on The Hot Sheet) Jane Friedman (JaneFriedman.com), whose efforts have a lot to do with parsing what’s out there for writers.
All the best,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Uh-oh. It’s…its?…it’s…yes, it’s…no its…augh. Time to brush up on grammar skills? Dang, Porter, now I’m feeling all insecure.
Think I’ll go negotiate a contract, that will make me feel better. I’m still good for something, I hope. One hopes? Augh.
Well, Don,
If everyone in publishing wrote as well as you do, then my and my journo-colleagues’ observations about publishing people and their writing wouldn’t be around for discussion. :)
As you know, I’m a major fan of agents and all they do. And there has to be, on some level, a certain unfairness about asking them to be good at writing as well as in all their other roles, I can concede that. You and about four other agents I know are remarkably adept writers. There’s a London agent who needs to be writing literary fiction, as a matter of fact, but generously pours all energies into serving the clients instead.
Taken as a whole, however, I think the wider industry could do more to raise up good writing and literature for the consumer base (and the success of the industry) if everyone in the business took more seriously how good writing works.
We don’t expect art auctioneers to know nothing about what goes into a great sculpture, and when that auctioneer writes an essay on a big piece coming to the block, we should see his or her insights into the art, not just the market.
Similarly, we have every right to expect tennis coaches to be fluent in the effects of the game on players, maybe on their heads more than on their bodies, these days. A couple of coaches working today in sports journalism are among the best voices we have in assessing what the modern sport requires.
And we should ask airline marketers to understand the pressures under which gate and flight crews are working, so they can represent the dynamics of the industry in their work to a sometimes angry public…as United’s executive suite might agree.
I need to stop (as usual), but I’ll put it to you this way: I’d feel better about everyone working in the industry if they all picked up and read your books. In doing that, they’d have focused on deep issues in the craft and art that many of them treat, instead, as mere airy-fairy elements of distantly associated responsibility.
Cheers, as always,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
It is to be hoped that you are still good for something.
I do wish people would take greater care when writing, but I also think a person can be a wonderful agent or editor without being a wonderful writer. Criticism and creation are two different skill sets.
Let’s expand on the car example. Writers are like mechanics. We know every little part of the machine inside and out. Editors are like race car drivers. They’re experts at using the machine, and identifying problems in the performance of the machine, but they don’t have to know exactly how to fix the machine.
An editor’s job isn’t to say, “This is how you should write this story.” Her job is to say, “These parts of the story aren’t working, and I know you can fix them.” So I don’t mind if her own prose is stilted, or if her subjects have mild disagreements with her verbs, as long as she has a good eye as a reader.
Hi, Porter. I’m sorry to be late to the party, but yesterday was nuts! As usual, your post made me smile. You tend to touch upon things that many of us have noticed, but did not feel comfortable commenting upon. Here is my personal pet peeve regarding the industry in general. With regard to writing fiction, one reads repeatedly that the very useful semicolon is pretty much verboten, while the jarring, cringeworthy comma splice is not only accepted, it is often encouraged. Sheesh! Can you hear the nails moving across the chalkboard?
Hey, Linda,
No apologies, every day is nuts anymore and I’m pretty infamous for taking weeks to answer everyone here at WU.
I hear you on the nails on the blackboard (and I hear them, too). It’s pretty maddening to me, too, of course, although some here are making an earnest appeal for different standards for those who work in the commercial end of things and for the writers, themselves.
It’s an interesting debate, but I can’t see how we can really ask the world to appreciate our best writers if our best marketers and salespeople and publishing house chiefs and authors’ representatives don’t learn enough about the essential craft of publishing to handle it in simple public articles and documents.
Just one of the many things that can make publishing seem so combative at times. :)
Thanks again,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson