Perspective...
Jul. 21st, 2007 07:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranPosted in a comment on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
green_knight's lj:
I think it's very tempting from a writer's point-of-view to start thinking of the submission process as a sort of contest where it's the publishers' job to provide an impartial judgement and suitable reward for effort for deserving writers.
It isn't. Publishers are in the business of selling wads of paper. They pay printers to put ink on that paper in the hope that they might sell more than un-inked wads. They pay writers for words to put in that ink, in the hope that they might better than the words they currently have.
It's worth the publishers' while to spend some effort in sorting out just who has the best words, but no more than they'll get back in terms of increased sales. If there are inefficiencies in they way they select what they buy, well, that's just an opportunity for a better publisher.
green_knight's lj:I think it's very tempting from a writer's point-of-view to start thinking of the submission process as a sort of contest where it's the publishers' job to provide an impartial judgement and suitable reward for effort for deserving writers.
It isn't. Publishers are in the business of selling wads of paper. They pay printers to put ink on that paper in the hope that they might sell more than un-inked wads. They pay writers for words to put in that ink, in the hope that they might better than the words they currently have.
It's worth the publishers' while to spend some effort in sorting out just who has the best words, but no more than they'll get back in terms of increased sales. If there are inefficiencies in they way they select what they buy, well, that's just an opportunity for a better publisher.
