Dear Friends,

As promised, I’ll try to explain here why you are not able to read the several books I have written in the past two years.

The short answer is these books are not published. Before we begin, you might find it interesting to check the front matter on the book you’re currently reading and locate the name of the publisher.

Most likely you are reading a book published “traditionally.” There are currently five major publishers in the United States. They are all owned by multinational corporations, all in New York City, and all in the publishing business to make money. This means they are looking for manuscripts to publish that will reliably sell thousands, if not millions, of books.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, untold numbers of authors are writing books, hoping theirs will be chosen by a major publisher. Publishers cannot possibly sort through that many manuscripts, so they look only at those marketed to them by literary agents. Literary agents are swamped with more manuscripts than they can possibly represent, so they look only at those that come recommended by someone else, are submitted by an author who already has a track record, or are derivative of previous bestsellers.

The sad reason any of this matters is that what you are likely to find to read is only what has made it through these multiple filters. Library collections only include books published by major publishers. The New York Times Bestseller list (USA Today and others) only lists books from major publishers. Bookstores only order books for their shelves that can be returned to the publisher if they don’t sell and this means traditionally published books. There are powerful benefits for an author if they can battle through all the gatekeepers and win (and keep) a contract with a major publisher, but in today’s market that goal is, for nearly all authors, impossible to achieve.

After having A Preposterous Excuse edited professionally, I sent the query package to 60 literary agents over the last eight months with either no interest or no response and, like nearly every author, no prospect of reaching a major publisher.

Next time: What’s an author to do?

Thank you again, as always, for your support.