HASdebate on 'Agents, editors and critics: the role and power of these 'gatekeepers' in contemporary publishing'

About the panellists

•   Jason Cowley critic

•   David Godwin literary agent

•    Philip Gwyn Jones editor

•    Fay Weldon novelist, screenwriter and cultural journalist

The panel will be chaired by Jane Dorner who has over 30 years' experience in writing and editing with books such as The Internet: A Writer's Guide and How to Think.com. Among other things, she is a member of the Editorial Board of Logos: Professional Journal of the Book World and was one of the judges for the 1999 Grierson Trust Award for the best British documentary.

   If you'd like to put forward any questions or points for discussion, please e-mail them to Jane Dorner or Pat Farrington.

    Stimulus questions for the HASdebate on 'gatekeepers' in contemporary publishing on 15 November 2001

•    The role of the 'gatekeepers' (agents; editors; critics): who determines which books are published and which criteria do they use? In terms of background, interests and a 'feel for the game', what do these 'gatekeepers' have in common?
•    How much real power does each type of 'gatekeeper' have in the face of increasing demands for quick profits and 'dumbing down' of the market (e.g. 'Chick Lit' and 'Lad Lit')?
•    How can new and talented writers be encouraged to get through the three gates in publishing, when they don't know the route? How much more difficult is it for young black or Asian writers ?
•    How far will the current vogue for confessional writing and personal revelations about writers' lives impact on serious fiction? (A L Kennedy's point at this year's Edinburgh Book Fair.)
•    How far does the present cult of personality and youth militate against a full range of talent being published (see points made at Edinburgh by Deborah Moggach, Margaret Drabble and Anita Brookner about the new 'ageist and lookist' attitudes among publishers)?
•    How far do new authors lose control of their work (e.g. pressure to produce books regularly for a 'readership who want to know what they're getting'), and run the danger of losing contact with their creativity?
•    How far down the line are we in terms of a book becoming a product?
•    How far do current practices among booksellers (e.g. discounting, promotional spending by publishers for in-store prominence, sale or return, hyping the books that are 'bankers') militate against a wide range of new talent in publishing?
•    How far does supply attempt to create demand in publishing, or do most publishers try to fill existing gaps in the market?

Robert Maxwell, his part in my downfall

Leon Arden

How do you know if what you've written is any good? That for me was the big question when young. To solve this dilemma I handed my first ever chunk of fiction to brave friends, hoping their reaction would unveil the truth. Alas, I learned there was no shortage of the truth. To one friend my writing was glorious, to another glutinous. Some thought the book amusing. Others found its starkness bracing. My characters were real. My characters were cardboard. It was the best of prose, it was the worst of prose. I had a great future. I had better consider another profession.

When the book was finally published, I rejoiced. Professional critics, though poorly paid, dispensed carefully measured judgments, did they not? So, now, at last, the truth would out. I hired a clipping service to send me reviews. I waited. They arrived. The verdict? A hung jury. There was quite simply no agreement on anything. I was accepted: I was rejected. I was good: I was bad. I was in: I was out. Or I wasn't reviewed at all. What did it all mean? Was there a smidgen of truth in any of it?

Ah, but then I learned that the novel in question, Seesaw Sunday, was to be published in England. How wonderful, for in that kingdom far away lived a repressed but highly cultured people who knew a thing or two about fiction. After all, they had discovered Raymond Chandler when his standing in America, as he himself said, "ranked slightly above the mulatto." They also discovered William Faulkner whose countrymen hardly knew he existed and who was out of print when he won the Nobel Prize. So I was to be the benefactor of a phalanx of insightful British reviews and at last, at long last, the truth would out.

I happened to be passing through London in the summer of 1966 and was invited to the offices of Whiting & Wheaton, where Ronald Whiting presented me with a pre-publication copy of my novel. We shook hands. He wished me well. I left, hired a cuttings service, returned to New York and waited. What arrived was a letter from Mr Whiting telling me how sorry he was that my book had been withdrawn by the new owner of Whiting & Wheaton, a man whose name was new to me: Robert Maxwell. The cuttings service sent me only one item, published on the 28th of September 1966. It was from The Evening Standard and it read as follows:

SEESAW'S DOWNSWING
An American novel, published in this country six days ago is being recalled by its publisher from bookshops, libraries and reviewers all over the country because Mr Robert Maxwell, MP, considers it is not the type of book which should appear under the imprint of his group, the Pergamon Press. The book is Seesaw Sunday, by Leon Arden. The publishers are Whiting and Wheaton. Mr Ronald Whiting took the book some months ago before his firm became a member of the Pergamon Group…

"I do not think any the less of the book now than I did when I took it on," Mr Whiting said. "There is no question of my being forced to take this action. I had a very difficult decision to take. It was tricky because the group are also educational and religious publishers." Mr Maxwell (said): "I have always maintained that a publisher has a responsibility to the community not to publish material that will undermine the morals of the young. Unlike some publishers, I practise what I preach. This is not a form of censorship, it is a form of self-control."

Years later when I moved to England I finally saw what he looked like, this gargantuan incarnation of self-control. Could it be that he was hiding under his jacket the entire first edition of my book? Obviously I was losing my grip. I tried to forget him which wasn't easy for he kept appearing on the TV news like King Kong atop the Empire State Building flailing at predators.

How touching that Mr Maxwell was so concerned about our morals particularly after leading such an exemplary life. Looking back, it gives me a bit of a lift to be thought of as a writer who could "undermine the morals of the young," by one whose famous integrity, with its unique ethical spin, would win national headlines. Seesaw Sunday was based on the true story of an unscrupulous District Attorney who arrests, for his own political gain, a group of innocent people who go with a model on a photo shoot in the woods, and then releases a false story to the press to make a harmless event seem scandalous, depicting himself as a defender of public morals. He was, at the time, running for State Assemblyman and, of course, won. Perhaps Mr Maxwell felt that to show how lying and cheating could lead to success would give the young the wrong idea. He can't have objected to the sex scenes. They were no more explicit than in many other novels. But then, perhaps, he hadn't read many other novels.

And so my hopes of obtaining enlightenment in distant England came to naught. The book survived, though barely. It was published only in paperback in the UK. And there were no reviews.

Through all this I learned several things, none comforting, none I could ever put to use, which is often the case with hard-earned wisdom. And then, of course, there is what, apparently, can never be learned and that is, how on earth do you know if what you've written is any good?

© Leon Arden is a New Yorker who lives nine months of the year in London with his wife and daughter. His first novel, The Savage Place was published when he was twenty-seven. Subsequent novels were Seesaw Sunday, The Twilight's Last Gleaming and One Fine Day. A play called The Midnight Ride of Alvin Blum, directed by Alan Alda, had three separate summer stock productions in New England. Short stories of his have been published the US, the UK, Australia and South Africa.

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