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commercial, the bottom line. If they can merge art and
commerce, happy day! But commerce eventually controls.
Do you seek a career as a novelist? Then you need to
know that it comes down to a simple query: Will you be
of value to a publisher?
The publishing business has always been undergirded
by monetary calculation. Even when Maxwell Perkins was
snifting brandy and wading through a trunk of Thomas
Wolfe pages. Even when Bennett Cerf was plucking his
tie nervously because Ayn Rand refused to allow Atlas
Shrugged to be cut.
Yes, even when Fitzgerald was boozing and Heming-
way was running from the bulls, it’s always been about
the money because no business can continue to run un-
less it turns a profi t.
If anything has changed, it’s that this calculus has
picked up speed. In the “old days,” a publishing house
might have carried promising talent along for a number
of books, hoping they’d catch on.
Not so today. Corporate consolidations demand
quarterly profi ts, so money has to be made, and fast.
As the legendary ad man David Ogilvy once put it,
“In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a cre-
ative original unless you can also sell what you create.”
So, as one who wants to make a career out of fi ction
writing, you simply must show the publisher your value,
now and in the future.
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