Sad State of Affairs

Among the primary attributes of any young writer must be optimism: specifically, the sustained belief, no matter how illogical, that success is just around the corner. Certainly, the hoped-for success includes the creation of a beautiful poem or powerful short story, or even simply a well-wrought sentence, but most of us hanker for something else as well: publishing success. For poets, the dream stops at publication (and perhaps includes a few readings, maybe even a job opportunity); we don't imagine sales figures and movie deals. But the dream, even if it wavers, doesn't fail: if success doesn't visit tomorrow, well, there's always tomorrow. It's the only way to keep writing, revising, and submitting work.

But in the interest of driving out self-delusion, I offer Joseph Bednarik's "The Law of Diminishing Readership," from the latest Poets & Writers. Bednarik, the marketing director at Copper Canyon Press, presents some sobering insights, not the least of which are these, copied and pasted from the article:

• In a statistical mood, I once estimated how many "good poems" were being produced by recent graduates of MFA programs. Keeping all estimates conservative, I figured there had to be at least 450 poets graduating nationwide each year. If each MFA graduate wrote just one good poem a year for ten years, at the end of a decade we would have 24,750 good poems--not to mention 4,500 degree-bearing poets, each of whom was required to write a book-length manuscript in order to graduate. New poems, poets, and manuscripts are added to the inventory every year.
• In the fifteen years I've worked in literary publishing, over ten thousand manuscripts--checks attached--were submitted to contests sponsored by the publishers I worked for. From those manuscripts, fifteen emerged as published books--good books all, with each receiving review attention from local and national media, and several going on to earn accolades. In each instance, the net sales ranged from four hundred to twenty-five hundred copies.

So. Your chances, based on Bednarik's experience, of winning a contest are less than .15%. (Note the decimal--it's not a typo.) The chances of writing something truly good, I'd wager, are smaller.

Bednarik's driving question is a good one: why, in the face of steeply diminishing interest in "high" literature, is the "literary" writing community growing like algae in the Gulf of Mexico? And, more to the point, what can be done? His answer is simple: if you write, read. As much as you can. (Or at least buy. No one will know how many of those books you haven't read.)

It's good advice. And it offers us something to do besides gaze with a microscope at our chances of ever finding success, in any form, on this path. So I'm off to the local bookery.

Cheers.