Interaction

Dear Editors:
As a footnote to Steve Holland's letter in Interzone 109, I share his local library (Colchester) and can report that its management is, amazingly, aware of the fact that publishers are increasingly reluctant to welcome new authors. Even more amazingly, the library is doing something about it: they have a scheme called Write Angles, whereby you take your oft-rejected manuscript along to them, they decide which of their little stickers ("science fiction," "romance," "thriller," etc) to put on it, and they place it on their Write Angles shelf for people to take out as if it were a regular book. Most amazingly of all, not everyone thinks "everything on this shelf must be crap," but some take it out, read it, and fill in a little form anonymously which is sent back to the author. I've had my own novel (consensus from publishers: "this deserves to be published, but not by us") on the shelf for the past six months or so, since the scheme began, and have had half a dozen responses, all of which were either favourable or encouraging. It's very useful to know that my unshakeable belief in the merit of my own work is not entirely misplaced...
Of course, I have to agree with the thrust of Steve's letter, in that what independently-minded library readers like and what profit-oriented book publishers will publish are two unrelated concepts. If I waited for, say, 20 or 30 enthusiastic responses from library readers of my novel, and took all these to a publisher, would they change their minds and decide to publish it after all? Ha ha ha!

Richard A. Bartle
Colchester, Essex