What's So Funny about Publishing?

Those of us who toil in the publishing trade don't always have the objectivity to see the comical aspects of what we do. If you seek a dark view of our industry you'll find lots of confirmation: publishers gobbling each other up, dedicated editors summarily released from long-held jobs, an antique and horrifyingly wasteful distribution system, books orphaned and ruined by corporate indifference -- well, I could go on and on. And I did, chronicling these and other harsh realities in a column I wrote for Locus, the science fiction trade magazine, for a dozen years.

As time went by, however, I achieved a bit of perspective and began to see the ridiculous side of publishing. The world is certainly a tragic place, and if you measure tragedy against war, famine, earthquakes and floods, then the horrors of orphaned books, underpromoted authors and bankrupt publishers do seem petty, pathetic and preposterous by comparison.

It's in that spirit that I offer The Client From Hell and Other Publishing Satires. What if an alien visited Earth seeking intelligent life but, after studying publishers, concluded the planet was not worth a second look? Suppose a visitor from another galaxy engaged a literary agent to handle book and movie offers? Picture a convention of authors so jealous of each other that they rend their agents limb from limb a la Night of the Living Dead? Those are some of the nutty concepts you'll find in my book. And, if you're a denizen of the publishing industry, you may get a kick out of my end-of-the-year poetic spoofs that appeared in Publishers Weekly. You can hear more about these in my introduction.

Have your royalties plummeted? Editor left the industry? Publisher gone bankrupt? Smile -- it could be worse!

- Richard Curtis