So we all know that many of the authors we discuss here didn't get their stuff published in the traditional way, instead usually either self-publishing or having an 'in' with an agent or publisher thanks to family and friends' connections. And that in the course of this, they have often either gone without or ignored whatever editors they may have had available, leaving us with the confounding messes we have now and inflating their egos so that they don't think they even NEED editors.

What if they hadn't had daddy's dollars to throw at the venture and had to slog through it like everyone else? Do you think they would have eventually learned something from it, and we'd have some decent books from them now? Or do you think they would have caved and self-published and we'd be stuck with something even worse?


Like, for example, I'mma pick on my gal Kelly and her books on Vivaldi and Mary Lou Williams. As I said in the sporks I did, I do feel that if she had a strong editor, and had been made to go through the process of publishing with a press she didn't own, those books would have been actually pretty darn good YA stuff. The vast majority of the issues with those books really just comes down to no real editing having been done on them.
Maybe that's not what she wanted to do with her writing, maybe it was always just going to be 50 copies of something she wrote for her own enjoyment, though given the content of the website she made it seems like she intended for them to be taken fairly seriously as readable (and study-able) novels. But she has the writing skills. If she'd been forced to go through that process with professionals, or at least someone with a strong background in it, she'd be a solid author now, with two complete books under her belt, and that's nothing to sneeze at.

I haven't actually read Paolini or many of the other authors we've discussed here before, so what about them? Do you think their writing could have been or be honed into something great, if they'd been forced to slow down and play the game by the rules? (Their obvious egos aside, I mean.)


I may or may not have finished one of my novels and am trying to figure out the next steps now. Here's to hoping I've avoided the many storytelling pitfalls we've seen in this community.