So many literary characters are part of our lives. Some inspire us, some repulse us some make us laugh, all entertain us. How impoverished we’d be if we’d never known Harry Potter, Stephen Dedalus, Philip Marlowe, Hercule Poirot, Lolita, Andy Dufresne, Mr. Wemmick or Magnus Pym, among others. If some bold and adventurous publisher hadn’t taken a chance on JK Rowling, James Joyce, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Vladimir Nabokov, Stephen King, Charles Dickens or John le Carré, they would have continued their lives as teacher, singer, petroleum executive, housewife, entomologist, gas station attendant, law clerk and spy. Their stylish stories and brilliant characters would have rotted away in a drawer or a hard drive, never to come to life on page or screen. An unbold publisher is not unlike a jailer, keeping all those characters prisoner in their pages, unable to sing and dance and enlighten.
How many other vivid, inspirational characters and stories have we been deprived of by today’s fearful publishing industry? How many other writers are still waiting on tables, driving trucks, cleaning toilets, selling cars, frying Big Macs, exterminating termites or picking strawberries? We know publishers are legitimately afraid of being obliterated by self-publishing and e-books but is fear good for publishing? Will it cause them to produce books with the same bland vanilla characters often found inself-indulgent self-publishing? Or will it make them publish more books with feather-ruffling, mind-stretching characters? Which might, incidentally, make more money than the bland vanilla stuff.
We understand publishers’ promoting and brandifying well-known, best-selling authors and their books to the broadest possible demographic to stay afloat and also to generate cash. This cash gives them the means to publish lesser-known writers, not to mention un-discovered ones still working themselves to the tendons in poorly-paid and soul-destroying jobs and bitterly burning manuscripts containing characters who could possibly entertain and illuminate the world.
How many books featuring Katniss Everdeen, Bella Swan and Robert Langdon do we have to buy in the hope publishers will eventually be able to publish more books featuring characters like Jonathan Pine, Scarlett O’Hara, Lord Voldemort, Joe Kavalier, Henry Skimshander, Miss Haversham and Charles Swann?
Pen and ink drawing: "’Well, aged parent,' said Wemmick, 'how am you?'" H. M. Brock
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