I’ve just read the Columbia Journalism Review piece that first Maud, and then Terry, linked to today. I’m left with mixed feelings. I don’t doubt that certain factors make the process of publishing a book today regrettably frustrating for most authors, and unsuccessful for many: the sheer volume of books being published and, of course, book publishers’ pesky need to make money. I sympathize with Stacy Sullivan’s plight, but I’m not certain she’s the ideal poster child for suffering midlist writers. Her situation as described in Gal Beckerman’s article seems to a considerable degree self-created.
You see, there’s this little thing in publishing called a contract. When signed, it confers obligations on both parties. The most important obligations of the author are (a) timely delivery of the manuscript and (b) delivery of a satisfactory manuscript. For most publishers, “satisfactory” will mean publishable, at the very least, but probably a sight better. If either of these basic obligations isn’t met (and they often aren’t), a publisher may renege on a contract (but they seldom do).
It’s well known that deadline extensions are handed out by book publishers like peanuts by flight attendants. It’s relatively rare for a book to be cancelled for late delivery; if one is, there’s a good chance the publisher has some underlying motive. For instance, if you’re an author whose acquiring editor has left your publishing house, you’d best be damn sure to meet your deadline, and in style. The staunchest thing standing between a missed deadline and a cancellation is the house’s investment in the book, which most commonly means the personal investment of the editor, i.e., the person who took it upon herself to jump through x number of hoops in order to persuade skeptical bosses to part with their investors’ money in return for the mere promise of a book. In general, that person no more wants to see the book cancelled than the author does, and so most authors are on safe ground counting on extensions. As an editor, however, one might understandably hope to know earlier than a month before deadline–this is when Sullivan “realized” that she wouldn’t be able to complete more than half of her manuscript–that an extension is needed.
The other pertinent thing to say about deadlines is that precisely those functions of a publishing house that can help a book find its audience, and that Sullivan found wanting at St. Martin’s–marketing and publicity, cover art and book design–are sensitive to them. Many of these departments start their work on a book far ahead of publication and rely on firm production schedules and season lists. It’s no small deal when a book drops off a list and gets pushed back to the next season.
But, as I said, late delivery is both the most common and most forgivable of contractual breaches in the book publishing business. Delivery of a satisfactory manuscript can be another story. Again, one is usually on pretty safe ground here, since it can be difficult for a publisher to legally prove that a manuscript is so subjective a thing as “unsatisfactory.” A really good, pugnacious agent can pretty readily cow an editor into gritting his teeth and publishing the thing, unless it’s an all-out total disaster. But guess what? If you miss your deadline and deliver something unsatisfactory–let alone unpublishable, as Sullivan readily admits the 600-page rough draft she delivered two years after her original deadline was–the publisher can walk away scot-free. Think “unpublishable” is too strong a word for what Sullivan turned in? She doesn’t; she pulled it out of production (a really big deal, like pulling up the rail in front of a freight train gathering steam) in order to get it into the shape in which she should have delivered it in the first place.
At the publishing house that used to employ me, we once received a manuscript several months late, and we weren’t happy with it. It was by no means unpublishable–in fact, it was a political-personal autobiography that was soon published by another house in much the same form and that now, many years after the fact, is selling like hotcakes. But it was not what the proposal had led us to expect, not the book we wanted to publish, and the missed deadline gave us the out we needed without our having to address the thorny question of what’s “satisfactory.” So from a certain perspective you could argue that St. Martin’s bent over backward for Sullivan. She left several doors open for them to duck out of, but they paid her advance and published a book whose fortunes, it is compellingly argued here, were already hobbled by its untimeliness. It seems audacious of her to complain about the publisher’s lackluster efforts on behalf of a book she delivered two years late, 100% too long, and in a rough enough state that she didn’t want it out in the world with her name on it. She admits she was “naive,” but nowhere in the CJR piece does she seem at all abashed by how unseriously she appears to have taken her promises to St. Martin’s. Well, there’s naive, and then there’s unprofessional.