Things I Wish I Knew Then But Know Now, Part 2

Not Every Book Is Worthy of Publication. Writers write. That’s what we do. Some of us do it better than others. That’s not a criticism, it’s a statement of fact. I was blessed with some natural ability that has been honed from years of hard work. My writing has improved greatly from the early days simply because I’ve done so much of it. I still cringe when I read some of my early historical writings because they’re that bad.

On one hand, I’m very fortunate that I have never written anything that was intended for publication which was not accepted for publication. I know for a fact that there are very few people who can say that they’re batting 1.000 when it comes to having everything they’ve ever written published. Some of it is skill. Some of it is good luck in picking the right topic at the right time. Some of it is knowing the right people. I’ve never known the pain of a rejection letter for any of my work, but I know plenty of writers who claim it as a right of passage, sort of like fraternity hazing.

On the other hand, there are lots of people out there who think that they can write but have no business doing so. In my role as a publisher, I’ve had some God-awful manuscripts submitted to me. I can appreciate the effort and dedication that went into them, but it sometimes takes all of my willpower not to want to bash these people over the head and tell them the honest truth about just how terrible their work is. I remember one incident where a guy submitted an unsolicited manuscript of a Civil War novel that was, without doubt, the worst thing I have ever read. His main character was a Union soldier who somehow managed to fight in every single major battle of the war. That’s an interesting trick, swinging from theater to theater. Now, if that wasn’t bad enough, his best friend was a runaway slave who had enlisted in a regiment with the outbreak of the war in 1861. Never mind that blacks weren’t enlisted until the formation of the 54th Massachusetts in 1862. Mix in the fact that the writing was terrible, and you have a recipe for horridness that words almost cannot describe. I spent a week composing a rejection letter that was gentle but honest.

I am often asked to review things for people. Whenever my schedule permits, I try to accommodate those requests in an effort to return the many favors done for me over the years, although I often don’t get to things as quickly as they or I might like. Some of the things I read are quite good, and when that happens, I try to assist in placing it with a publisher. The best example of that I can think of was Russ Bonds’ very excellent Stealing the General. Within a few pages, I knew I was reading something special, and by the time I had finished it, I was determined to see it published. I’m the one who introduced Russ to Bruce Franklin, the publisher at Westholme Publishing, and Bruce saw the same merit in the book that I saw. Russ has hit the motherlode as a result: he’s sold a LOT of books, and he’s even optioned the movie rights. It doesn’t get much better than that. I’ve introduced a few others to Ted Savas in particular when I’ve thought there was merit in the work.

Some of the stuff I read is atrocious. Just a couple of weeks ago, I reviewed a chapter of a regimental history dealing with the 1864 Overland Campaign. It was so full of errors that I ended up largely rewriting it. But for what I did, the book would have been dead wrong, and would have been savaged by reviewers. That goes beyond what I’m normally willing to do, but I like the fellow who sent the chapter, and I wanted it to be correct, so I invested the better part of a day and a half into rewriting his chapter for him.

Here’s another story, and then I will come to my point. Several years ago, I was paid to ghostwrite a book for someone. Even after I did all I could for it short of doing additional research, which was not part of my contract, it’s still a bad book. The author self-published it because the original publisher elected to wash its hands of a bad book after I reported back on just how bad it was. The truth is that it was such a bad book that I didn’t want my name to appear on it, and I’m pleased to say that it doesn’t.

My point is that there are plenty of books in print that shouldn’t be. Self-publishing through venues like Xlibris, Lulu, or IUniverse makes it possible for things that never should/would have been published to find their way into print. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule; Fred Ray’s excellent Shock Troops of the Confederacy and Eric Jacobson’s For Cause & For Country come to mind immediately as self-published works that are quite good and worthwhile. Both had legitimate reasons for going the self-publication route, and I appreciate those reasons.

Don’t get me wrong: the self-publishing venue has some merits, such as providing a means for bringing out of print works back into print. However, it also lends a lot of credibility to works that don’t deserve that credibility. Some argue that self-publishing democratizes the practice, but it also means that a lot of trees get killed to publish awful books that never should have been published in the first place.

My point is that not everything that gets written deserves to be published. If a legitimate publisher tells you that, accept it and move on. Don’t subject the world to an atrocious book that adds nothing to the body of knowledge just to massage your ego.