Argument134 交作业--0710G同主题写作第8期

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TOPIC: ARGUMENT134 - The following was taken from a guidefor aspiring writers.

"New writers usually cannot convince large, prestigious publishers that their work is marketable, so they must firstpublish with smaller, less well-known presses to establish a sales record. Butthe editors of Mystery Writers Magazine have good news for aspiring writers:the number of mystery novels published in the last two years has grown significantly, and more people read mysteries than any other type of novel. In addition, almost half of the mystery novels published last year were written by first-time novel writers. Since there is apparently an expanding market formystery novels, all publishers will want to increase the number of mysterynovels they publish. Therefore, new writers should write mystery novels toincrease their chances for first-time publication with a larger, prestigiouscompany."
WORDS: 607         TIME: no time pressure         DATE: 2007-8-24

While the guide is somewhat opportunistic in enticing all theaspiring writers, regardless of what they actually write, to first publishmystery novels with smaller, less well-known presses, it is fundamentally flawed that it fails to establish a causal relationship between this suggestion and the promising chances for these new writers to cooperate with moreprestigious company.

First and foremost, the argument is based on a gratuitous assumption that novice writers have to establish a sales record with lesssmaller presses in order to impress large, prestigious publishers. This is ridiculous in that even according to an outsider of the publishing, he/sheknows well that it is the work itself that is the determinant of recognition,not what the writer's historical selling records with little known presses.Chances are that prestigious publishers never care about novice writers' sales records, as they generally have nothing to do with the work's own market value. Consider this: a novice writer has established satisfying records with smaller publications with several mystery novels; and afterwards this aspiring writer meet a prestigious publisher with his or her own most satisfying works--a collection of essays on the philosophy of life. Thus the past sales records alone cannot justify the prominence of this writer's current works unless it is presumed that this novice writer has gained considerable compliments and recognition from his or readers, and they are eager to buy whatever work by this writer.

Another problem is that the words from the editors of Mystery Writers Magazine (MWM) don't necessarily imply increasing chances foraspiring novice writers. First I turn to the 'good news' from the MWM editors.No evidence is shown in the guide on how MWM is claiming this conclusion, thus we have no idea whether this is from reliable statistical data or just faked upby the company itself to cover its sales crisis. Also no information isprovided to show whether this trend is existing just in MWM or other publishing companies as well. Given this information is factual and representative, however, there are other explanations for this prosperity other than thepopularity of mystery novels. One possibility is that this mystery-novel-fever coincided with some popular TV series based on some mysterious settings; andthe audiences were eager to buy the mystery novels based on the script. Thisjust explains the high proportion of mystery novels written by "first-timenovel writers" (probably writing movie script formerly) last year according to the guide. As things are quite different between the now and thelast two years, the sales of mystery novels would nonetheless decline as the popularity of mysterious TV series goes down.

Even if we assume that a market for mystery novels has been expanding in the past few years, especially last year, still we cannot guarantee that this is the case from this year on. Perhaps readers' enthusiasm with mystery novels has come to a plateau or even shown signs of declining.Thus the publishing world may not continue investing more on novels of this kind. And consequently there won't be any more opening chances for new writer sespecially when small publishers are inclined to play safe.

Overall, before one aspiring writer decide to rely onmystery novels being published by smaller presses in order to knock the dooropen for a promising career with larger, more authoritative publishers, he orshe should consider many more factors carefully than the over-optimistic information provided in this guide. Perhaps this writer has to first work as an editor or assistant to some renowned writers to gain experiences andimprovement before being confidence introducing his or her work to the publishers.

[ 本帖最后由 wizjo 于 2007-8-25 08:56 编辑 ]