The Great Term Shift
P eople in the publishing industry are a bunch of liars. I was reading a literary agent’s blog the other day and she made a comment about a perfectly good book that she didn’t feel she could represent because perfectly good books don’t sell, only great books sell. Anyone who has ever picked up a book, read some number of pages and finally decided to put it down because it was just too boring, knows that isn’t the case and would be glad to have some perfectly good books out there on the market to replace some of those not so great books. The problem is one of terminology. Imagine you are a literary agent and you have a book you are trying to sell. You can’t go to a publisher and say, “This is an okay book that I think you should consider. It probably won’t make you much money, but I don’t figure you’ll lose money on it either.” Instead, you have to go to the publisher and say, “This is a great book! This book is going to help you make up the money you lost on those other books you’...