Why "new novelists" are all old
Finding an agent is a slog. One has to query the agent, wait to see if the query is accepted, and then if it is sample chapters and an outline go out in the mail. Then more waiting to see if the agent asks for more. If he or she does, it's time to send the whole manuscript and then wait again to see if he or she thinks the writer is worth their time to represent. At any point the agent can say "no," at which point our budding novelist will have to start over again.Why New Novelists Are Kinda Old, or, Hey, Publishing is SlowBut if the agent says "yes," then comes the part where he or she starts schlepping the novel to publishers. Presuming the agent gets a publishing house interested in looking at the manuscript, it could be weeks or even months before there's response, either positive or negative. If it's the latter, it's on to the next publisher.
The second path is the Path of the Slush Pile. This gets the work out there quicker but fewer publishers still accept unagented manuscripts, and as you might guess from the name "slush pile," the rate at which editors work through the slush pile is pretty slow. Baen Books, which accepts unagented manuscripts, lists their response time as nine to twelve months: Yes, you could make a baby (if you can make a baby) before our poor theoretical writer here would hear back about their literary child. And if at the end of those nine months to a year Baen (or whomever) said no, the poor writer have to start all over again.
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Its equally bad if not worse in the world of visual arts.
Most "young artist" shows are feature folks with an average age of about 45.
there is also much age discrimination against the young.
I find that now that i have some lines on my face, my work gets taken more seriously even when the specific work in question is something i made 20 years ago when i was still a teenager.
Why are '30s' considered old? I'm 25 I suppose I should be going through my midlife crisis about now then.
Secondly, I don't doubt that there are exceptions but generally speaking I'd rather read books from more mature authors, people that have a lot writing and/or life experience to talk about.
Thinking of the 'freshness' of anyone, in any field, by reference to their chronological age is a tired old meme. It has nothing to do with our time in which people (at least those of us in the lucky countries) live to their '80s, and many will have multiple careers.
Note that 'multiple careers' (common enough) means that you don't know at what age someone started their enterprise
A 50-year old might only have started writing a year ago. Conversely, a 30-year old might have been publishing for 10 years.
Chronological age is irrelevant.
As a hopeful author, I've noticed this a little bit myself, though I'm not really actively shopping for an agent yet.
While I agree that this very likely destroys some hopeful careers, it might not be quite as bad as it sounds, both because the high cost of entry (time and effort) is a decent idea to weed out people who might not really love the craft AND because of the things discussed in CBLIST's comment.
Why actually just give your outline/first chapter/manuscript to just one agent/publisher at a time? Why not everyone who might be interested in your genre?
At this speed, you can only try one agent at a time and if rejected, it'll take years of humiliation until something finally works out. If you send the stuff to many, you'll get the humiliation part sooner over with.
Plus, most publishers are really only concerned about What Will Sell, if your manuscript doesn't really fit into this category, that's it.
Astrid Lindgren BTW was 39 when she published her first book.
Teapunk, if the publisher are to make a serious effort to decide whether they want a book or not (read it, think it over, visualize a place for the book in the market, start an editing process with the writer, etc.) they need to be able to count on actually being offered to publish the book. Otherwise it makes no sense, as this kind of thing actually takes employee time, which equals money.
However, a processing time of nine to twelve months hints at a certain arrogance, IMHO.
Just when I thought it was too late, I still have time to procrastinate finishing my novel.
I've been writing for a long time now--closing in on 20 years. I've had about a dozen short fiction pieces published in small press, haven't won any of the big awards, but did manage a couple of notable achievements, including placing 2nd in a pretty big contest about "The Next Fifty Years of Computing" in 1997. I've actually, recently, been writing for the RPG business. I DO have a novel sitting in my virtual drawer, that will never see the light of day, because it's mostly crap. I'm 47 now.
And I just finished the first draft of a novel that "works". I like it. It has some "legs"...it needs work, absolutely, before it goes anywhere that isn't my laptop screen...but this one, unlike my first try, constitutes a real, coherent story about interesting characters. I'm going to chase this one into the publish vortex (when it's ready) to see where it goes. The point? I couldn't have written this novel any sooner in my life. It didn't exist; more fundamentally, I just wasn't ready to write it. The themes that emerged as I wrote it (for example, one of the characters is gay) just weren't things I was prepared to handle until now. Assuming it ever gets published, then optimistically, I'll be 50'ish and a "new novelist". Never mind agents and slush-piles and publishing schedules...this was about me and my readiness to actually write a novel that (and this is my opinion; we'll see what the publishing industry thinks!) "works".
I'm okay with that, because for me, it couldn't really have happened any other way.
@NehPetse#1
Your experience (that "young visual artists" average around 45 years old) certainly isn't the conventional wisdom. Usually artists complain that being over 30 is a real hindrance.
See this Edward Winkleman blog posting for a discussion on the subject.
It's interesting to read this.
I was just reading an article about MuuMuu House, an online indie publisher run by poet and novelist Tao Lin. Tao Lin has had a novel published, "Eeeee Eee Eeee" as well as poetry and short story collections.
In the interests of relevance, I'll point out that he's 26.
I would hate to think age makes a difference (I think it's more likely that writers take a long time to get published because it takes a long time to develop a good style and worthwhile piece of work).
What is more notable about Tao Lin is that he has taken a more experimental approach to getting published. He sold shares of his second novel equalling 60% of their future royalties, garnering him a lot of press and publicity to boot.
Of more interest, he recently started MuuMuu House, an internet-focused poetry and fiction site featuring work created through Twitter and instant messaging. So with some creativity and chutzpah (and who knows what kind of personal funding), young authors can get out there, especially in the AGE OF THE INTERNET (TM).
His stuff is pretty good, too.
I pretty much fall into this category. I finished my novel a few years ago, am about to turn 39, and haven't had much luck in even trying to find an agent. If I ever do, my story probably won't be relevant anymore, so I've just taken to giving it away for free until someone wants to publish it.
As a young writer who hopes to someday be a published novelist I always get depressed when I read about how insurmountable the publishing industry is.
Count me among those too busy working my full-time day job, paying off my student loans, and generally getting my shit together to worry about a theoretical writing career. I'm 28.
I guess that now that things are settling down, I should start working on that career, so I'll have one by 40.
Well, you write, you submit, you get rejected, you keep submitting and getting rejected while continuing to write. You submit to literary magazines of all kinds, get some short fiction published, get some rejected.
I don't think anyone will get published slogging around the same novel. You may write four or five before the first or second one gets published. You may have to write five or ten to get one published at all.
best thing to do: get into publishing. After a few decades of that, you know what to write.
I would recommend that any 20-something aspiring novelist first find someone to do thorough professional copy edits (even if a friend) and then pursue self-publishing for a first novel to learn some of the lessons of the industry and relating to an audience. Nothing to lose and you are expected at that age/stage of career to be producing less than stellar work.
Extended adolescence has been sweeping our culture for the past 30 years or so. We don't even come close to being grown up until 25 or so, so I don't think this is a surprise! This trend is the same in science- the average age for getting a first major grant is now about 40 when it used to be closer to 30.
It also helps to have something to write about. The level of specialized knowledge that is required for any non-fiction writer takes years to accumulate. I prefer my fiction writers to have something to write about too.
I'm 90 and I'm old - so shut up and dance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UfBs3o4DVo&feature=related
How To Get Happily Published, by Judith Appelbaum is supposed to be pretty good.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Happily-Published-Judith-Appelbaum/dp/0062735098/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245892243&sr=8-1
Also, it was either in "On Writing" or at a talk, Stephen King remarked that there are many people in the publishing industry so sleazy that, "they'd steal the pennies off a dead man's eyes."
-so take that into consideration; be careful what you ask for, eh?...
Oh man, I couldn't rant myself into a better body shape.
Almost every time I go to an Agent's website now, the first thing I do is laugh. Those people really do themselves a disservice by putting pictures of themselves on their little profile pages. They tell you how much they love their cats and how they live inside magical universes, when not being pestered by their husbands or reading through manuscripts of course! (That's where you giggle and get fooled into thinking that they don't look like investment bankers).
Most of these people look like a virgin after an orgasm; every piece of purity died and their last creative thought creamed them in their pants. It's in their eyes, a horrid deluded eye fist..."I'm gonna say something and laugh before I check to see if anyone is scowling at me, and declare myself a fucking revelation!"
Agents play god with writers like any other mad scientist or doctor. They love the fact that you need them, and yeah, you do, for the most part, but NEVER think that they are anything more than YOUR TOOL. YOU are the fucking genius, YOU are everyone's bread and butter. They do it just like that bloated coach does that you had who taught you baseball, feverishly living his crushed dreams through you and pushing you until you cry.
It's a jealousy thing.