/lit/ - Literature

>>19449655
I'm sorry, anon.

I genuinely don't think most great novels would even get published today. Imagine being Melville and having written Moby-Dick.

Now you need to take your 200,000-word work of art and condense it into a 250-word advertising query that perfectly and autistically conforms to everyone's individual egoist demands while also remaining faithful to your novel.

But you can't sent it to a publisher, you need to go through a useless middleman and find yourself an agent.

Now the leftist wine aunt whom you're seeking representation from has to "get" your writing.

Actually, it's not even her, it's her unpaid college intern with Borderline Personality Disorder whose favorite author is Miranda July.

You spent weeks writing that three-paragraph letter that will decide the fate of your novel. There is a 99% chance they will throw it in the garbage after the first 10 words and go on Twitter to complain about how hard their job is.

Speaking of Twitter, if you don't have one you're at a massive disadvantage. Same for MFA contacts and nepotism buddies.

By some miracle you get an agent. Now you have to pray that
>a) they're competent and can actually sell your novel to a publisher
>b) they see you as something more than a quick buck
>c) they're not actively trying to fuck you over

Uh-oh! You're a straight White male who wrote a story about a straight White male in an industry that's 75% female and 90+% leftist! You are useless as a "brand" in the current climate. Worse, you are an active liability for being cancelled - both for sexism and racism.

Even if this isn't the case, your novel likely dies on sub. Your delicately crafted epic didn't have enough of a HOOK to feel in the ADHD Twitter zombies. Try starting with an action scene where Moby bites off Ishmael's leg. And make him a Black woman. The whale? Stays white, of course!

There is a glitch in the Matrix and your novel somehow makes it through all the gates designed to kill it. No one buys it because no one reads literary fiction and you don't win any awards because it's not about the latest trendy sociopolitical meme. The blue-haired intern who reviews it doesn't like your white male protagonist. One star.

Now you are worse off than you even were before. Your novel was a critical and commercial failure. Your love for writing as an artform has been brutally stomped out of you. No elitist high society for you! Get back in the cagie, wagie. Go watch sportsball and play video games like everyone else.