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Worth and WorthlessNovember 29, 2008 First novels by unknown authors are worthless. No, make that "The overwhelming majority of first novels by unknown authors are worthless." A few years back I reviewed a first novel that netted the author a $2 million advance: The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova. The novel had its merits -- it sprawled over three continents and several decades, and the author evidently knew her stuff. What she didn't know was how to tell a story. My editor warned me that she'd been told the first hundred pages were slow. She was right. The second, third, fourth, and (I think) fifth hundred pages were slow too. Then it picked up a bit. I couldn't figure out for the life of me why Little, Brown had paid $2 million for this particular first novel. At the time I was only dimly aware of the mega-best-selling Da Vinci Code. Now my best guess is that Little, Brown thought The Historian was going to be BIG the way The Da Vinci Code was BIG. It wasn't, but Kostova got her two million bucks. For a first novel. Nevertheless, most first novels by unknown authors are worthless. Not, I hasten to add, to their authors. By the time a first novel is complete and in print, it has almost certainly taught its author more than a Ph.D. program (including dissertation) could, and deepened the author's understanding of self and world more than years of psychoanalysis. To the author, then, her first novel is worth (at least) as much as a grad school education and lengthy psychoanalysis. This particular author, however, never for a moment considered shelling out money for either psychoanalysis or a grad school education, and though all this greater knowledge and deeper understanding has probably increased her value to society, it's done nothing to enhance her income or even her income-producing potential. (Yet.) The worthlessness of most first novels has less to do with what's inside the book than with what goes on outside it. Or what doesn't go on outside it: a book is worthless if no one will pay money for it. Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door -- but no first novel ever caught a mouse, healed a body, filled a belly, or did anything else that people are accustomed to pay money for. There's no market for first novels by unknown authors because almost no one in the world thinks they need that novel enough to pay for it or put the time into reading it. The mission, should you decide to accept it, is to persuade some people in the world that they do need this novel enough to pay for it, read it, and maybe even recommend it to someone else. This takes many, many novelists, and writers in general, completely by surprise. They're shocked, dismayed, and even insulted by the mere idea that they have to participate in the marketing of their book. To which I say, "If not you, who? You brought this book into being. You've heard it speak; you believe it deserves an audience. Go scare one up!" That's what I'm doing these days: trying to scare up an audience for The Mud of the Place. When I started writing, I'd never written anything longer than 40 pages. Part of me was deeply convinced that I never could write anything longer than 40 pages. Now I've got a published novel on my lap that's nearly 400 pages long. How did I break the 40-page barrier? Scene by scene. I couldn't write longer than 40 pages, but scenes were rarely more than 8 pages long. I could do that, scene after scene. When I knocked off for the day (or night), I'd always quit in the middle of a scene, so I could pick up the next day without losing momentum. After a while, each scene was telling me what scene came next, and even next after that. The same trick should work for building an audience, shouldn't it? Building an audience is as daunting a task as writing a novel, until you break it down. The Mud of the Place was written scene by scene. Its audience is growing reader by reader. My job is to catch the eye of one potential reader, and then another, and then another. Soon enough, with a little luck, they'll start catching each other's eyes, and some new eyes too. A book's worth isn't measured by the price on the cover, or even by the size of the advance. A book is worth what its readers will pay for it, in money and in time, even if it won't catch any mice.
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