Rant

As a writer and a teacher of creative writing, I'm constantly following friends and ex students through the process of trying to get their work published. And I get angry, very angry. These people are treated so badly by agents and publishers. The truth is that agents and publishers generally know very little about writing - after all, they haven't written anything themselves, have they? Frequently they don't actually read the work which is sent to them. But this doesn't seem to stop them handing out advice which is frequently just plain, old fashioned Wrong. Sorry, but I have to say, there are a lot of cheap and ignorant people working in the agent / publisher world. I say all this now because I've just seen someone being treated particularly badly. She's got herself an agent but this agent has a) failed to read the whole book b) advised her to change the title from the very good title she had chosen to an appalling trite title and c) advised her to take out of the book those parts of it which are 'difficult' (but which are in fact the best bits of the book). Frankly, I want to ring this agent up and shout at her. Aspiring writers are really in a bad position right now. There is more or less nowhere they can go to get good advice. So instead they fall into the hands of unscrupulous agents and publishers .... and they believe what those people say .... which they shouldn't but how can they know that? I hate having to watch this happening.