Agent Miriam Goderich rebutted it here very nicely. So, I’m sure, have others, but I’m about to add my voice to the chorus simply because that’s the way I roll, baby.

Do you need an agent?

Yes. Yes, you fucking do.

Period.

Okay, sure. If you’re planning on having a career in epublishing, you probably do not need an agent. If you’re planning to self-publish, you do not need an agent. There’s nothing wrong with either of those things. I started out in epublishing, without an agent, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I’m glad I did it and am grateful to Ellora’s Cave for treating me so well and enabling me to make some decent cash. Working with them was a pleasure for me.

But–no offense–I wanted more than that. I wanted books on shelves. I wanted advances. I wanted a bigger career. I wanted to move out of genre romance/erotic romance; not because I didn’t enjoy it or don’t enjoy it (writing and reading), but because the more of it I wrote the more a little voice inside me told me it was simply not quite the right fit for my voice or the kinds of stories I wanted to tell.

To accomplish those things (aside from moving away from writing romance, which of course is a huge genre in all forms of publishing: ebook, mass market paperback, trade paperback, hardcover, audio, whatever) I needed an agent.

Here’s what fascinates me (and infuriates me) about the original Galleycat article (aside from the fact that its author apparently also runs a website devoted to helping writers self-publish; again, legal, but certainly interesting). It’s this paragraph here:

One published author who asks to be unnamed disagrees, “What do you need an agent for anymore, really? Why? To negotiate a meager advance? You can’t get them on the phone anyway. You’re stuck promoting the book yourself because publishers don’t put any marketing dollars into your book unless you’re John Grisham. I don’t see the whole point when I can hire an attorney to negotiate my publishing contract for a flat fee or just upload the book to Kindle myself.”

Let’s take a look at these points, shall we?

1. “To negotiate a meager advance.” Hmm. Speak for yourself, buddy. My advances aren’t huge, but I certainly wouldn’t call them “meager.” And having been involved in the negotiation process–through regular discussions with my agent, every step of the way–I’m well aware of how much bigger they became once he started negotiating them. In fact, several surveys have been done proving that the average agented advance is something like twice the size of an unagented one; Tobias Buckell’s, for one.

2. “You can’t get them on the phone, anyway.” Dude, if you can’t get your agent on the phone, you need a new agent. (Or perhaps you need to stop calling several times a day; ever considered that maybe the problem is you?) I can assure you, each and every one of you, that if I picked up the phone right now and called my agent, he would take the call. He always has, and he always will. And you know what? He calls me, too. When I send him a proposal, he calls me to discuss it. When he sells subsidiary rights (yes, we’ll get to those), he calls me. As I said above, he called me every step of the way, sometimes several times a day, when we were negotiating the sales of the Downside books and the second & third Demons books.

He calls me when something happens, like when my release dates changed. He calls me when we get cover art so we can discuss it. He calls me to talk about ideas.

Do we talk every day? No. Do we talk every week? No. Do we talk every month? No. But we do talk. And we do email, and he always answers those too. My agent is THERE FOR ME. And I am not unusual in that, I promise you. Every single writer pal I have is in the exact same situation. We talk to our agents. All the time. About all kinds of things.

An agent who does not have time for you is not a good agent. Find a good agent and stop bitching.

3. ” You’re stuck promoting the book yourself because publishers don’t put any marketing dollars into your book unless you’re John Grisham.” First, this is about agents how? Second, patently unfuckingtrue. Those books you see on front tables, end caps, mid-aisle tables, and those little rotating shelf things in bookstores? Are they all by John Grisham? No. Are they all, even, by known, NYT-Bestselling authors? No again. I see debut authors on those things all the fucking time, and guess what? Marketing dollars buy those spaces. Marketing dollars that publishers, real ones, put into the books they sell every fucking day.

And again, this has nothing to do with agents, as promoting your book to the public isn’t their job.

Here’s what my agent does for me. You look at this list and tell me if you think it’s worth it:

1. Reads my work, discusses it with me, offers suggestions
2. Sells my work to editors for major houses (not just “sends” or “submits.” SELLS. Pitches. Anyone who’s ever worked a sales job knows that isn’t easy.)
3. Negotiates not just my advances, but my CONTRACTS. All those confusing things about royalties and schedules and payouts and subsidiary rights and non-competition clauses and options and exclusive- and non-exclusive? He knows what all of it means, and how to get the best possible deal for me.
4. Sells those subsidiary rights. I would not have a UK deal without my agent. I would not have an audiobook deal without my agent. Which means readers in the UK and those who enjoy audiobooks would not have access to those books without my agent.
5. Keeps track of what monies have been received and which haven’t. Follows up on checks.
6. Keeps track of royalty statements. Follows up on those, too.
7. Knows what’s selling and what editors are looking for.
8. Talks about me; lets editors know I’m available (if I am) should they be interested in working with me.
9. Discusses my career with me. Offers guidance. Helps me plan my schedule.
10. Is a third opinion in discussions with my editors, should either of us wish him to be. Should a problem arise, my agent will step in to help. My agent is always on MY SIDE.

These are all equally important, at least to me. These are things that MATTER. My agent is the lifeline between myself and the world of publishing. He is invaluable.

Sure, I could probably do those things myself. I could fly to New York regularly and try to build relationships with editors. I could submit over the transom and wait a year for responses. I could spend ages learning about contracts. I could fly out to Frankfurt and London for the book fairs there and try to sell foreign rights (after first thoroughly researching all the publishers in lots of other countries, to determine if they’d be good for my book, and hope they’ll be interested), and then I could spend a bunch of time figuring out exchange rates. I could mark my calendar to make phone calls to follow up on payments and statements and all that stuff. I could be my own, my only, advocate, and jeopardize my relationships with my editors should disagreements arise.

What I probably couldn’t do, if I were doing all of that, is still have time to write.

If you want a real career, you need a real agent. You need an agent. YOU NEED AN AGENT.

Anyone who tells you that you don’t is either wrong or is trying to sell you something. Or both. Don’t believe them.

1. “The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance 2″ has been released, containing stories by myself, Jeanne Stein, Jaye Wells, Caitlin Kittredge, Tiffany Trent, and Ann Aguirre. My story, titled “Trust Me,” is–I think–kind of a fun little yarn about Jack the Ripper, and is officially the Last Erotic Romance story I wrote (for now). So while I did tone it down a bit for the antho, expect lots of sexxoring.

Shorts are difficult for me, in general; I have a hard time keeping myself from expanding and expanding and introducing subplots. But this was a story that really didn’t leave a lot of room for a novel, and the idea had appealed to me for some time (as with all mystery buffs and goulish people, I am fascinated by the Ripper), so when I had the opportunity to submit it for the antho I jumped at it. So rush on out and get it; my story is probably the weakest of the bunch, given the other names involved, but I think it’s kind of a sweet little tale nonetheless.

2. Kari Stewart, my agent-mate and author of A DEVIL IN THE DETAILS, coming next summer from Roc, has written a great little series on writing series novels on her blog. You have to scroll down a few entires, but it’s well worth it.

3. Charlaine Harris did an interview at Voice America’s “Mystery Matters” show on Friday, and guess who she mentioned as one of her favorite secondary characters ever, right around the fifty-four minute mark? Terrible, my big bad greaser from UNHOLY GHOSTS. Check it out!

Now. To the point of the post. (Yes, I seem to be on a bit of a self-publishing kick. I promise I have not forgotten the Critique series. I’m just busy as heck these days and going through some other things I won’t bore you with.)

.
Here’s the thing. I am not against self-publishing. Absolutely, honestly, 100% not. I think it can be very useful. I think that if you’re a writer who focuses on a specific niche area of nonfiction, for example, self-publishing can be fantastic for you. So this is not a rant against self-publishing per se.

What it *is* a rant against–or rather, a cautionary post about–is the idea so many self-published or vanity-published authors seem to put forth that this is the Wave of the Future, and that said future will be so much brighter without those nasty old philistines at major houses churning out crap week after week.

Um. First of all, yes, as a writer with series at two NY houses and one UK house, I’d rather not be told my work is obviously crap because it’s being published by people who actually have the insensitivity to art to think they can make money from it (and in return have paid me for it.)

But this isn’t about me (except where it really is, which I’ll get to in a minute). This is about lots and lots of other writers, who’ve worked very hard and deserve to earn money for their work. I might add, this is also about book piracy, which a lot of those who engage in seem to feel is their way of Bringing Down the Man and Smashing the State and Standing Up For The Little Guy.

Because, sure. It will be a much, much better word when publishing is only an option to those who can afford it. Don’t you agree? Aren’t you glad these Caretakers of Art are decreeing that things will be better when nobody gets paid for their work, that they will in fact have to pay someone else to publish it, that they will have to handle cover design, marketing, and promotion all by themselves?

Yes, sure, every author is expected to do some promo, even at the big houses. But we’re not alone in it. We’re not making meetings with book buyers at stores trying to convince them to buy our books; our publisher’s sales staffs take care of that. Even when PERSONAL DEMONS was originally released by Juno/Wildside, a small press, they took out ads in Romantic Times and made sure the book got reviews. Yes, I have some promo plans on my own for my books. Yes, I carry out what I can. But I do the suff that’s fun. I blog. I Twitter. I play on Facebook when time allows. I don’t carry copies of my book hoping to sell them to random strangers. I don’t slip cards with my title and cover into my utility bills when I pay them in hopes someone will see it and give the book a chance. I don’t have to invest a dime of my own money if I don’t want to. I have, yes, but the only reason I can afford to do so is because I was paid an advance for my work.

Frankly, if I’d had to pay to be published, I wouldn’t be published. I couldn’t afford it. Nor could most professional writers I know, very few of whom could manage to scrape together $5k to pay a publisher.

So what would we have, in a world where those Evil NY Houses have fallen?

We’d have books written exclusively by those who could afford it. Much like in the 18th century, when so many books were diaries of some peeress’s trip through Europe with titles like, “My Gleanings.” FUN. I know I can’t wait to read books written exclusively by the wealthy, with no viewpoints other than their own. I’m sick of hearing what baby boomers think already; I can assure you I don’t want to read more of their “Gee, the sixties were sooo great!” back-patting. I know I can’t wait for a world where books written by those from other cultures have no chance to be translated into English and released here, when we become even more ignorant of the lives of those in the world outside because there’s no way to get their books in front of English-speaking audiences. Oh, and of course, given that self-published books tend to be much more expensive, thanks to POD technology, I can’t wait for a world when reading and books are even less available to the poor. When they don’t have the same opportunities thanks to their inability to get hold of books.

Oh, what’s that you say? Oh, right. The internet will provide all of that. Of course. Because I know when I want something to read I’d much rather spend hours and hours slogging around online looking for something decent than just go to a bookstore. I know people who can’t afford books totally have the money for laptops and ereaders and the internet. So in seeking to democratize literature, what you are actually doing is STEALING IT from those less fortunate than you.

We’d also have a lot more unreadable books. I’m sorry, but it’s true. For every excellent work of self-published fiction–and they are out there, make no mistake–and for every one that’s not bad, just not terribly polished or professional or interesting, there are dozens of horrible ones. Not horrible the way so many of you like to put down NY books which aren’t to your taste, but awful. Really.

Let’s not forget that the way most people learn proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling isn’t through school. I mean, we do learn those things at school, but we develop those skills by reading. So you tell me, how literate will we be as a society when there are no professionally written books? When there are no people to judge if a work is even readable or not before it gets published? When anything goes? Would you like to go back to the middle ages, when words were just spelled however they sounded? Because I wouldn’t.

But this is it. With no publishing houses, there are no gatekeepers. Without publishing houses, bookstores–not just the big conglomerate ones, but the independents–will fail. There will be no way to check a book out before you buy it. No libraries, which are already in trouble. Writers with talent will be forced to suck up to reach people in hopes of their financing the writer’s latest books. I know I look forward to the day where I have to go out hunting for a sugar daddy so I can keep publishing, and hope he lets me write what I want and not simply odes to himself.

Maybe I’ll be lucky, though. Maybe that sugar daddy will simply love my work, and will publish it. Maybe he’ll grease the right wheels so my book can be sold through some outlet. Maybe he’ll pay someone to help me polish it; not change it, but polish it, catch the things I didn’t catch. Maybe I’ll be really lucky, and he’ll even pay me a share of the book’s earnings.

In short, maybe he’ll set up a publishing company.

Bringing Down The Man or claiming the world will be so much better when the NY houses are no longer around is a fallacy. You’re hurting yourself, you’re hurting all writers, you’re hurting people whose only education comes from the books they find and read themselves, you’re hurting people who depend on those industries to put food on the table, you’re hurting artists in other countries, you’re hurting everyone with a story to tell. You’re making literacy a hobby for the rich.

Wow. That’s something to be proud of.

Lemme ‘splain.

More and more lately I’ve been hearing this argument, or discussion, or comment. Self-publishing is just like punk rock! Because anyone can do it. Because self-published authors are taking the bull by the horns and doing it themselves! Fuck the Publishing Man! Rock on!

And it’s something I’ve wanted to write about for some time, but it was this Genreville blog post in PW that finally inspired me to do so.

Yes, there are a few similarities, or rather, there is one way in which they are alike. But for the most part they are vastly different, and this is what irritates me and makes me want to pull out my hair sometimes. Because the differences are vast and wide.

Before I start, let me give you a quick run-down of my credentials to even discuss this topic. I was heavily involved in the punk scene for, oh, ten years or so. With an ex-boyfriend of mine, who was in a band, I ran a tiny punk record label; we sold records for a dollar each. I helped book shows; I had bands stay at my house; I slept on floors; I did a little touring; I watched recording sessions; I sang one line in a song that ended up on a Lookout! records compilation; I went to drunken all-night parties; I never paid to get into shows because I always knew somebody in the band; I traveled across country with the ex (he wasn’t my ex at the time) and his band to attend a three-day punk festival in northern California; I can play a few Ramones and Sex Pistols songs on the guitar; I started my own band with a couple of other girls, and we were getting ready to try booking a show when our drummer quit; and a whole bunch of other stuff I’ve forgotten. This was one of my favorite things about writing the Downside books, was being able to draw on those experiences and namecheck my favorite bands.

I say this just because I want to make it clear that I do in fact know what I’m talking about; it’s not to brag or say “Look how cool I am” or anything of that nature (I readily admit I am not cool. Perhaps I was at one point in my life, but now I sit around all day writing and pouring juice for my daughters).

The only self-publishing I can honestly and truly say is punk rock are zines. Zines are–at least they used to be–fully punk self-publishing. Handwritten pages (although now that we have computers it’s very possible they’re typeset or laid out using Pagemaker or whatever), usually full of personal essays, record reviews, jokes, show reviews, that sort of thing, photocopied and stapled together at Kinko’s or in your basement or whatever. Are you getting a sense here of what punk rock zines are about? Could it be, hmm, that they are about punk rock? (I haven’t seen a zine in a while, save some of my old copies of big ones like COMETBUS or SCAM. So forgive me if some of my zine info is a little out of date.)

The rest? Not so much.

.

Yes, self-publishing is punk in that anyone can do it, and that’s where the Genreville blogger is incorrect. With punk anyone can do it. To an extent. Just because anyone can do it, doesn’t mean that anyone can do it well. And therein lies the rub.

Here’s what happens when you self-publish, as far as I know: You write a book. It gets rejected by many agents or editors, or perhaps you don’t want to bother with that and want to do it yourself. Maybe you believe the myths like “an editor will make you totally rewrite the book so it’s not even yours,” or “Publishers do no promotion” or “You have to pay to be published,” or “You have to give back your advance if it doesn’t earn out” or any other crap. Or maybe you do not want a single one of Your Golden Words changed. Or you simply want to be totally in control of every step of the process; I don’t mean to imply here that everyone who self-publishes does so because they’re rejected, untalented, or stupid, so please don’t think that’s what I’m saying. I don’t at all believe that’s the case.

Anyway. You write a book. For whatever reason you decide to self-publish. Most of those who self-publish seem to go through a company like Lulu–which is a great service (I’m still loosely planning to use them to print copies of the Strumpet series for those who would like print copies). They take their ms, they load it in, they design a cover, and there you go. You have self-published a book.

Now let’s take a look at a punk band who decides to produce their own record. They save their cash. They rehearse (or maybe they don’t, but they probably do.) They hire a studio. An engineer–or maybe they have a friend from another band do that part. They get–again, this is from my experience years back so the actual equipment may have changed–a DAT, Digital Audio Tape, and send that on to the record plant, which converts it to vinyl (or CD, or whatever.) I have no idea if DATs are still the norm or if it’s more digital now.

So right away we have some difference, though. The self-published author does it all himself. The band recording its own record has, in addition to the (at least) three band members, someone to handle the recording and engineering. More ears to hear what’s happening. More hands to play and write songs. And every recording session I ever attended had still more people, too; the friends, the girlfriends. Doing hand-claps or backup vocals or whatever. Granted none of us gave our opinions unless asked, but we were usually asked. For their first record a friend of ours did the producing along with them, essentially. For the next one (I believe it was the next one) Joe Queer did it. They worked with even bigger names later; always on indie labels, but not purely doing it on their own. Because that’s not how it works.

Now let’s look at the bigger stuff. How does a band go about making a record? I don’t think I ever knew a band that made one without some guarantee that some of them would sell. I saw a lot of bands come and go. I saw a lot of bands playing their first or second or third shows. None of them had records. Why? Because it’s not the first thing you do. You play some shows. You gain some sort of following. And when people start asking if you have a record, that’s when you make a record. You have an audience ready to buy, so you give them something to buy. (I’m going to get to merchandise shortly.)

But if you’re good, chances are you actually aren’t making your own records. My ex’s band made their first record on their own–it was a tape, actually, if memory serves, just a little demo kind of thing. Then they recorded the song for the Lookout! comp along with four or five other sings for a different label in California. This is a huge difference, and it’s where the self-publishing = punk crew always seem to get it wrong. In fact, in the comments for that Genreville post, the man who made the original comment the post is about even manages to muddle his own argument without even thinking of it. It’s six comments down:

By “punk rock” I mean the spirit of much independent-minded music in the seventies through the nineties. If you listen to stuff on SST records, it’s not three notes and screaming.

Yes. If you listen to SST records. SST is a label, y’all. Just like Lookout!, or Alternative Tentacles, or Crypt, or V.M.L., or Fat Wreck Chords, or Sub*Pop, or Melted, or Porterhouse, or Boner, or BYO, or Recess, or Far Out, or Kill Rock Stars, or any one of hundreds of other indie punk labels around the world.

Recording for an indie label is not self-publishing your music. It’s indie publishing. There IS quality control. There IS a vetting process. In punk anyone can start a band, but not everyone can get recorded by a label, at least not one with a reputation for putting out good music. Anyone can start a band, but not everyone can get people to come see that band play live. Anyone can record their own record, but not everyone can get people to buy that record, or anything else.

Which brings me to another big difference, possibly the biggest difference. There is no merchandise. Punk bands have t-shirts; often they make the screens and print the shirts themselves. I saw a couple of bands collect t-shirts and addresses from people, then take the shirts home, screen them, and send them to the owners. I’ve seen over the years quite a few people with home-made Sharpie t-shirts, when they couldn’t get an “official” shirt. Punk bands have stickers and buttons and keyrings (I carried my Blanks 77 bottle-opener keyring for years and still have it somewhere). In punk, fans feel as if they’re part of the bands gang, to some extent. They wear the shirts and buttons and in doing so declare an allegiance, a “We’re all in this together” kind of thing, which is awesome and fun.

When is the last time you saw someone with a book title magic-markered onto their t-shirt?

See, punk is a culture. It isn’t just about music, it’s about a lot of things. It’s about beliefs; it’s a way of life. And punk bands are at the forefront of this, and that culture sprang up around them to support them. There are magazines devoted to it, to review records and give you some idea what’s happening in other parts of the country and other parts of the world. I remember on my first trip to London, being on the Tube in my Misfits t-shirt and spotting a cute Asian guy in a Teengenerate shirt. We smiled at each other; he asked if I knew where the punks hung out and I had to tell him I didn’t. But we KNEW each other. We could have gone and had a drink and talked. We were part of something, both of us, him from Japan and me from the US. We even knew we’d have similar tastes (I freaking love Teengenerate).

Pinks listen to punk music. We look for it. We watch for it. We see a record with an interesting cover and grab it to give it a try. We hear a new band is playing and we go to see them, and if they’re any good we buy their record. If the band is on tour and we can afford it we buy a shirt, too, if we liked the music, because they need that money to get them to the next show. We get recommendations from our friends and recommend things to them.

Self-publishing, in the main, does not have that culture. Self-publishing isn’t about labels. It’s not about social gatherings. Nobody lines up to hear the latest self-published author read out loud or buy shirts or buttons with his or her name on them. Self-publishing doesn’t support a culture and a culture isn’t built around it.

When you buy a punk record you generally have some idea what you’re getting, especially since most of them are on labels and you usually know what kind of stuff that label puts out. When you see a Lookout! record you know chances are you’ll be getting some East Bay pop-punk; not always, but usually. (Again, there are those LABELS. Because the majority of records you buy are on labels, unless you bought it at a show where the band was playing, or saw a great review in Maximum RocknRoll and decided to take a chance–in other words, you knew something about it.) But even if you don’t know the label, you have some idea of what type of music it will be. You know the production will probably be decent and the music itself will probably not be awful; again, because you’ve heard the band live or seen a great review in a magazine you read anyway because it’s devoted to your particular subculture. Maybe you saw it in an indie record store and asked the people working there–who you probably know–to play it for you. It probably has cool cover art, a picture of the band or a little cartoon of some kind. You didn’t stumble across it online and buy it without hearing a sample or hearing something about it.

With self-publishing, you don’t. It could be a funny coming-of-age story. It could be a spy novel. It could be non-fiction about ornithology. It could be fantastic and well-written; more likely it won’t be (not it definitely won’t be, but it’s more likely it won’t be). You’ve never heard of the author. You know nothing about the book. A punk record, at least a 7″, will probably set you back $5 or so; a CD may be as much as $10 or $15, but if you’re buying those, again, you probably know something about the band. A self-published book, which may have amateurish cover art, could cost as much as $25 after shipping.

Yes, punk has a spirit of independence. Sure, self-publishing does too, in some cases. But punk bands aren’t playing punk and releasing records on indie labels because they couldn’t get Warner to sign them. They’re not doing it because Capitol rejected them. They’re doing it because it’s their culture and what they believe in. They’re playing the music they love and want to hear and they’re not doing it hoping a major label will pick them up. Whereas it seems to me a large proportion of self-published authors self-publish because they couldn’t get an agent or a NY deal (again, not ALL, just most).

Yes, there are some self-published authors who simply want to do it all themselves. And you know, more power to them. I appreciate and respect that. But again, the majority of them that I’ve seen, even those who most loudly proclaim that they are INDIE publishing, are hoping that by going this route they’ll get a NY deal. Not so with punk bands.

The simple fact is, the two are not the same because the products are not the same and the culture is not the same. The emotions behind it are not generally the same. The goals are not the same. The process is not the same.

If you want to self-publish, more power to you. I think, as I have said a number of times before, that there are some genres and areas where self-publishing can work very well. But punk is its own platform; if you want to self-publish you need to build your own.

If you’re already punk, and you’re writing something and self-publishing it, you already know how to do that. You already know who your audience is. But if you’re not, don’t claim you are just because you’re putting out a book yourself. Punk isn’t just about DIY. It’s about a lot of other things, too. And if you know enough about it to know that, you should also know that most punk record labels aren’t equivalent to self-publishing. Aside from zines, really, the analogy simply doesn’t work. If you write and self-publish a tale of urban alienation, wasted youth, and your personal quest through it, you could probably call that punk publishing (assuming you are in fact punk yourself). Publishing your fantasy novel yourself and calling it punk publishing, not so much. It doesn’t offend me as much as that infamous Subaru “This car is like punk rock!” ad from the early 90′s, but it doesn’t endear me either.

I’ve ranted for long enough, now, I guess. Any and all comments welcome, of course.

I wasn’t going to talk about this, I really wasn’t. Because I don’t want to piss off or upset people. I certainly don’t want to make readers, the lovely people who spend money on books, angry with me.

But I just…It’s like the opinion is a pot of coffee, percolating in my chest, and it’s going to explode. (Incidentally, I feel kind of weird thinking that nobody uses percolators anymore. My parents were never coffee drinkers, but my Grandpa was. And when he would come visit the smell of coffee and especially the sound of the percolator, that particular burble-sploosh noise, would wake me up in the mornings. I used to really like it; I was fascinated by the percolator and could never figure out quite how it worked, you know? All those childhood machines that seemed like magic to me, and none of them are in use anymore. The percolator, the 8-track tape, the flashlight that ran because of how fast you squeezed the trigger thingie…anyway. No time for this; this is going to be a little long anyway.)

So everybody knows about this Stephen King/Stephenie Meyer thing. Basically, Mr. King said in an interview that Ms. Meyer “can’t write worth a darn.”

And for reasons I cannot fathom, it’s being treated like he said Hitler was a really good guy or something, or that in his spare time he enjoys molesting children.

Leaving aside the truth or lack thereof of his statement itself, and leaving aside the fact that although he claimed Meyer can’t write worth a darn he did say he understood the appeal of the books…

So what?

There seem to be two schools of thought among the “Fry him! FRY HIM!” crowd. The first is that he’s jealous of Meyer’s success, which is, IMO, patently ridiculous. Stephen King is arguably the most successful writer the world has ever seen (and no, you cannot bring up the people who wrote the Bible or the Talmud of the Koran or whatever). No, I’m serious. Think about it for a minute. How long has the man been writing bestsellers? How many of his books or stories have been made into major films? Adapted for television? Turned into series? How many of those film adaptations have garnered Oscar nominations in any category?

Now think of one other author, living or dead, which that kind of success. ONGOING success. I suppose it’s possible to argue that JK Rowling hits it, but King’s written something like thirty books. JKR has not. Tolkein had massive, unprecedented success, but again, not as many books.

So the idea that Stephen King is jealous of Stephenie Meyer is silliness. I’m sorry but it is, and there’s another reason why it is, and it ties into my whole feeling about this so I’ll get to it in a minute.

First I want to address the other silliness surrounding this, which is the idea that writers shouldn’t criticize other writers. Which is bullshit.

I’m not even going to discuss the fact that without writers criticizing other writers we would’t have Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses. We wouldn’t have Virginia Woolf’s comment about Ulysses: “The work of a greasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.” We wouldn’t have ANY of Dorothy Parker’s fantastic reviews; we wouldn’t have any of Florence King’s; we wouldn’t have a huge, varied, and wonderful library of critique and wit and style. Since fucking when is it not okay for writers to comment on and criticize the work of other writers? In what world has that *ever* been the case?

I would say that it stopped being okay when women got in on it, since it seems to largely be women playing the “Stephen King’s just plain mean!” card, but that isn’t right at all. Especially not after I just quoted or mentioned three women in the last paragraph, not one of whom behaved as though a critique of her work was tantamount to touching little kids in their Swimsuit Areas.

But I suspect womanhood has something to do with it, yes I do. And that something is, everyone playing the “professional courtesy” card (professional courtesy, what a bunch of crap. We’re writers, not fucking insurance salesmen) seems to be female, and more importantly, seems to be upset not that one writer is commenting on another writer’s work, but that the commenting writer has a protruding pee-pee and the one being commented on does not.

I know.

But seriously. King said some not-very-nice things about a few male writers in that article too, but nobody seems to be jumping up and down all over the internets to say how Mr. King is just jealous of Mr. Patterson. In fact, no one seems at all bothered by the fact that not only did King call Petterson “a terrible writer,” he didn’t even qualify that statement anywhere by saying he sees the appeal of Patterson’s work, or that Patterson has very cleverly tapped into something in his audience’s collective subconscious.

So…why? Why does it seem okay for King to criticize Patterson, but not Meyer? Why isn’t anyone throwing “jealous” around? Why isn’t anyone acting as though writers are supposed to keep their mouths shut when we see each other butchering the language, as though we’re all the very best of good, clean pals and every Saturday night we sing Kumbaya in the park and roast hot dogs?

Yeah. I think a big part of it is that Meyer is a woman. And I think there is a very ugly assumption beneath this, which is that a woman cannot take criticism. And sadly, I think there is a segment of the female writing “society,” for lack of a better term, which truly cannot take criticism, who flounce around saying things like “If you’ve never written a book you can’t criticize” or “It’s hard work to write a book and the author deserves something for that and it’s mean to say her book isn’t very good” or whatever other whiny little excuses these namby-pambies toss around to justify their own total and complete lack of professionalism.

We’ve seen these people online. We see them all the freaking time, in fact. They’re the ones who stalk Amazon reviewers or decide to name transexual AIDS-riddled prostitutes after people who give them mediocre reviews (and let’s keep in mind, btw, what sort of person thinks “transexual” is a worthy insult) or send nasty emails to reviewers or start blogs where they put up nasty cartoons or send hate mail or have hissy fits in comments or whatever the fuck it is, and thus make all female writers look as though we too have never progressed beyond the 9th grade.

This attitude seriously makes me ill. You know what, gang? I seriously doubt Stephenie Meyer gives a fuck what Stephen King says. And good, because she shouldn’t. I love Stephen King. I think he’s fantastic. And I would love to think he’d read my work and enjoyed it; that would be a huge thrill. But you know what? if he loved it, that’s just one man’s opinion. And if he hated it? That’s still just one man’s opinion.

And jealous? Why is this argument so rarely brought up when two men are involved? Why do we hardly ever see someone claiming, for example, that Steve Jobs is just jealous of Bill Gates? or that, I don’t know, Javier Bardem is just jealous of Benicio del Toro? Not that I’m aware of these men making comments about each other, but really, can you imagine it? So why then, does this crap come up when women are involved? Stephen King is a grown man, people, and I don’t know about you but I’ve never seen anything before that would lead me to believe he’s the kind of man for whom jealousy of other writers is a problem. Have you?

Stephenie Meyer is a published author; she’s written four enormous bestsellers. Let’s give her a little credit, shall we? Let’s assume she’s mature enough to shrug this off and go on writing, and not behave as though she’s crying in the bathrooms by the gym and she won’t come out until Stephen writes her a note that says he’s sorry and gee, golly, the dance is tonight and she was our ride and we’re gonna get Stephen and pants him in the cafeteria?

We’re all entitled to our opinions. (In fact, one could argue that Meyer is one of the few people Stephen King can actually criticize *without* looking like a bully; who else is big enough?) And in the grand scheme of things, this is such a non-issue it’s not even funny.

I was going to tell you about a book I bought the other day, which I haven’t finished, but which is so well-written my jaw keeps literally dropping open–but that will have to wait until next Monday, because this is so long already. Sigh.