Jan 4, 2006
Depressing
From London with love--
THEY can’t judge a book without its cover.
Publishers and agents have rejected two Booker prize-winning novels submitted as works by aspiring authors.
One of the books considered unworthy by the publishing industry was by V S Naipaul, one of Britain’s greatest living writers, who won the Nobel prize for literature.
The exercise by The Sunday Times draws attention to concerns that the industry has become incapable of spotting genuine literary talent
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This ruse has been done many times over the years, by both writers and journalists, and gets ressurected every now and again.
I worked at one stage, for a short time in the fiction department of a publisher and the way they selected typescripts was once a month to go through the submissions, take out anything that came from an agent, or was accompanied by a covering letter from someone they knew of or who was famous, sift out any books that relating to a market they were currently interested in (at the time it was books about female chinese experience) and occasionally anything that caught their eye. Everything else when straight back in the SAE or in the bin. It was extremely easy for indiviudal works of quality to be missed. I would not be surprised if many publishers, very large ones who get hundreds of unsolicited submissions every week, do the same :( sad but true
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