Recession Rejection

What is with these recession rejections lately?  "Due to the economic climate we need to be careful to choose novels that are highly marketable..." blah blah?  Makes one realize the appeal to self-publishing, since you can write what you wish.  High fantasy out of fad?  Who cares if that is your thing.  Personally I read all and every fantasy, so I am the least likely to pick a particular fad.  But I really do like reading fantasy with strong female characters, being as I am female and that is what I usually write as well.  And I have been writing more urban fantasy since I have been reading a lot of it as well.  But I also like to write stand alone novels, not epic, not a series, and not urban fantasy... that follow from interesting world-building ideas, but those indeed are less marketable in the genre because urban fantasy is hot right now, as are vampires of course, but also publishers love a series writer.  Writing a series, that is same world, same characters, but different plots per book is actually quite easy with urban fantasy.  Writing more than one novel with a continuous plot is easy with epic fantasy.  Who knows what publishers want these days, given they are even more particular on who they pick up 'given the economic climate'.  Just one more hurdle I suppose.

Although, that does not explain some of the poorly written and horrific plots of some novels I have bought recently.  One wonders who chose them and why they thought repitition, simplictic characters with predictable plot lines would be a smashing hit.  Whoever that dude is, he should be fired.  And I am not talking about decent novels that simply do not appeal in style or some other characteristic personally, but are well written and interesting enough to finish reading.  I'm talking about truly aweful novels that you toss aside in disgust either without reading it to the end, or finish reading only when you have nothing left to read or re-read.  As a writer you can't take rejection personally, since novels that are awesome can be rejected for many reasons from some publisher or another, sometimes simply because they don't want to 'bet' on a new author.  But when you read one of those horrible novels it is a little insulting that something like that could have been published, for any reason, over and above the thousands of novels that were at least well-written.  Maybe it is the genre though, since I find most fantasy novels of a decent standard, even the fluffy romantic ones.  But when I pick up a random romance at the drug store, it is luck of the draw really and the most boring or aweful novels I have ever read have been so called romances.  Some can be short, simple and following rather predictable lines and still be fine for a quick read.  Those would be tolerable, if at the bottom of the barrel for that genre.  But some simply are bottom of the barrel for any published book of any sort simply due to the poor writing craft itself.  It really does make me wonder why they were ever published.  And maybe to avoid picking them up I should take note of the publisher of those novels rather than the author, since obviously the publisher saw some merit and clearly I do not, so I should not be able to trust any of their choices for that very reason.  Granted I read more books in a month than most people do in a year, but I expect a minimum of quality, otherwise I would by e-books of people never published all the time.  When an author is published, having undergone the long, drawn out process of submitting and the billion of rejections I am familair with, I do have the expectation there is quality there.  If not then surely that is some fault of the publisher in question who do not have the same standards as others.  When I buy a book I am rarely influenced by the cover, or author (unless it is someone I love), I am someone that carefully reads the back of the book to see if it is interesting (or I am desperate), but maybe to weed out these waste of money and time books I should look at the publisher first?  Interesting idea, unfortunately if I cannot remember an authors name then I am hardly going to remember a publishing companies name.  Although this year I have given four boxes of books to charity because those books are ones I don't even want on my shelves... and 'due to these economic times' I really should be more careful on those I choose to buy.  I should weed out those publishers that are publishing for the sake of publishing, who are looking at marketing rather than quality.  I should not take the 'risk' of purchasing a book from a publisher that chose to publish drivel rather than some minimum standard of quality.  Yes, truly, in this day and age we need to be far more picky, as publishers and as readers.  In fact, I might just buy myself and e-book reader so that when I am purchasing books to have on hand when I am out of my fav authors and want to try someone new and unknown, I might just buy e-books instead, as to save money on potentially disapointing works.  It is a pity that a self-publishing author would not be compelled in the same way as a publishing author to continue with a particular series... such that if I loved them, I would not have as many works to read from them.  Still, for fluff books, where I do not have that expectation, that would be fine.  I have been meaning to pick up an e-book reader for a bit now, just to save on some shelf space really.

As for writers.  Maybe it is a good idea to keep in mind the marketability of your writing, if you have ideas that are in the genre that are the latest thing.  But don't let that stop you from writing what you wish to write, since fads are fickle things.  And it is weird how a particular sub-genre takes a life of its own as capitalists jump on the latest money maker.  Provides a lot more available books in the sub-genre for sure, and a lot more not so awesome ones in the mix.  But it decreases availablity in other sub-genres which is disapointing.  If an author writes the most amazing epic fantasy, that should not be held against them... there are not enough of them out there any more.  I used to wait very impatiently for the next Robert Jordan book... he just drew you into this complex and fasinating world.  There have been a few since then I have latched onto, but not as many as there used to be.  That is a pity.  Thanfully, I enjoy about 90% of any fantasy books out there.  Other genres I am more specific... like I only like soft science fiction.