Friday, Aug 29, 2008
Calling all unpublished writers: For a fee, Penguin Putnam will tell you how bad your manuscript is.
Jun 12, 2002 | Jim Conover, 61, a retired police officer in Pekin, Ill., started writing his first book more than a decade ago, when he was a desk sergeant on the night shift, working from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. Keeping the peace in the early morning in this suburb of Peoria, population 35,000, proved so "boring" that Conover had plenty of free time to scribble away at his nonfiction book about a gang of horse thieves who terrorized Illinois back in 1869.
Fourteen years, four more books and five screenplays later, Conover is still unpublished. Over the years, he's sent more than 300 queries to editors and agents without a bite. "Most of the publishers send you a form rejection telling you to go through an agent," says Conover. "Most of the agents say, 'We're not interested in your work.'" Conover has since self-published two of his books, which he markets through his Web site, but he still yearns to be published.
So last year Conover enrolled in a new writing course offered by InsideSessions, a joint venture between Penguin Putnam and Universal Music Group. Advertised as an "Internet-based learning program that teaches you everything you need to know to transform your passion for writing into a published work," the distance-learning course features video clips of authors such as Kurt Vonnegut, Amy Tan and Alice Hoffman dishing advice about writing and publishing.
Like a multimedia version of a writer's conference or seminar, lessons include chestnuts such as: "Writing is dreaming on paper" and "the best way to learn to write is to write." As well as this tantalizing note: "Contrary to popular opinion, editors are looking for new authors."
But what really drew Conover to the class wasn't the course. It was the lure of getting his work read by a real Penguin Putnam editor. As part of "WritingSessions Plus," for a $119.90 fee, a 7,500-word excerpt of one of his manuscripts would be read and critiqued by an editor at one of the publisher's 27 imprints.
"It was a chance to have a professional editor really look at it, rather than just getting a rejection slip or some reader reading it as opposed to an editor," Conover says. It was his chance to finally get his foot in the door of big time New York publishing. Who cared if he had to pay a fee to do it?
Perhaps great, undiscovered literary talent isn't the scarcest resource in book publishing today. Maybe the rarer commodity is an editor's time. With tens of thousands of aspiring Jim Conovers knocking on the door, Penguin Putnam has found something to sell besides books. The business rationale: "We know about this business. We know about publishing. Maybe we can monetize that," says John Schline, a senior vice president for business affairs at Penguin Putnam.
Penguin Putnam is charging wannabe authors to teach them how to craft and submit their work to publishers for publication. The plan makes a certain kind of sense: After all, there's a whole cottage industry of writers conferences, magazines and guides preaching the gospel to aspiring authors. But a publishing company is closest to the ultimate prize, actual acceptance. It could charge writers extra for a bona fide book editor to explain to the aspiring writer why she wasn't buying his manuscript. Rejection as a revenue stream!
And sure, there's an outside chance that Penguin Putnam might discover the next Stephen King this way. But aren't book editors supposed to be in the business of paying writers for their work, not the other way around? John Hodgman, a former professional literary agent, says: "I know just how voraciously editors and agents are scouring the world for good new material. They don't typically need to be paid in advance to read it. If you're paying them to read your work, something has already gone wrong."
And can the attention of a top editor at a major publishing house really be bought for just $119.90? It turns out, no.
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