Monday, July 23, 2007

An interesting experiment testing literary agents and publishers

This article is a story about an interesting experiment where a researcher took a famous book, changed the title and character names, and then tried to see if there was interest to publish it.

It would seem that the ultimate conclusion is that the filters in place to decide what is commercially viable to publish are imperfect, at best, and also do not screen for the actual worth of a work. But then I'm sure people already knew that, given the stories of many famous writers who only got published after dozens of rejections.

I wonder though, whether this will matter as much in an age of self-publication. Right now, anyone in the entire world can read what I've written here, and basically for free. Once there exists a cheap way (like a cheap tablet-like computer) to download content into something you can easily hold in bed (or elsewhere...) then the age of published paper books will truly start to draw to a close...

2 comments:

Writer, Rejected said...

I agree. Blogging is very cool and promotes a fairer way of getting published. Check out my blog on the subject of literary rejections at www.literaryrejectionsondisplay.blogspot.com

Bing said...

I saw that article somewhere. It seems to me that every so often someone does a prank like that. In a way, it's almost understandable, except that, really, you should know your Austen if you are an English speaker.

I have job hunt rejection letters at my site! Heehee!

HJ