What if everyone stopped scribbling for a year? Will Self could pull on his hiking boots, Martin Amis could sharpen his tennis serve, and we could catch up on our reading
Time well spent … John Updike practising his swing. Photograph: Boston Globe/Boston Globe via Getty Images
This is a tricky piece for me to write. I'm a publisher, after all, whose job it is to find authors, help them develop ideas for books, and edit their writing for publication. But I have a confession to make, a growing conviction that won't go away: I much prefer readers to writers.
Let me qualify straightaway: I know a great many writers and am close to more than a few. And, as a reader, there are many writers whose work I admire. It's just the category as a whole that gives me trouble.
Let's divide the world into two groups: those who write and those who read. Readers set out wanting to experience, or learn, something new. They share the attributes of intellectual curiosity, of modesty, of a capaciousness that seeks fulfilment through the ideas of others. As Virginia Woolf put it, the common reader is "guided by an instinct to create for himself out of whatever odds or ends he can come by, some kind of whole – a portrait of a man, a sketch of an age, a theory of the art of writing".
Writers are people who, by and large, have made up their minds and seek to deliver the resulting verdict to what they imagine is a waiting world. A few, the private diarists, may scribble for the sake of posterity or self‑improvement. But, as the Uruguayan historian Eduardo Galeano once observed: "Writing for oneself is like dancing with one's sister." Most writers have egos of sufficient muscularity to be confident that their words merit an audience.
In this, the majority will be mistaken – for the ability to write well is an attribute not widely shared. The self-assurance that coaxes many writers into seeking publication is irrigated by the supportive words of family and friends, as well as publishing professionals too busy, or lazy, to offer a critique. The misapprehension that even the poorest writers are worthy of an audience is spurred further by online retailers prepared to sell anything with an ISBN. And Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has proudly pronounced that it is happy to sell "the good, the bad and the ugly".
According to Google, some 130m titles have been published since the first books took form on the desks of monks. This overwhelming catalogue is today being supplemented at a rate never before seen in the history of the book. Another industry statistician, Bowker, reports that nearly 1.8m new titles were published in 2012, an increase of half a million in just three years.
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Let me qualify straightaway: I know a great many writers and am close to more than a few. And, as a reader, there are many writers whose work I admire. It's just the category as a whole that gives me trouble.
Let's divide the world into two groups: those who write and those who read. Readers set out wanting to experience, or learn, something new. They share the attributes of intellectual curiosity, of modesty, of a capaciousness that seeks fulfilment through the ideas of others. As Virginia Woolf put it, the common reader is "guided by an instinct to create for himself out of whatever odds or ends he can come by, some kind of whole – a portrait of a man, a sketch of an age, a theory of the art of writing".
Writers are people who, by and large, have made up their minds and seek to deliver the resulting verdict to what they imagine is a waiting world. A few, the private diarists, may scribble for the sake of posterity or self‑improvement. But, as the Uruguayan historian Eduardo Galeano once observed: "Writing for oneself is like dancing with one's sister." Most writers have egos of sufficient muscularity to be confident that their words merit an audience.
In this, the majority will be mistaken – for the ability to write well is an attribute not widely shared. The self-assurance that coaxes many writers into seeking publication is irrigated by the supportive words of family and friends, as well as publishing professionals too busy, or lazy, to offer a critique. The misapprehension that even the poorest writers are worthy of an audience is spurred further by online retailers prepared to sell anything with an ISBN. And Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has proudly pronounced that it is happy to sell "the good, the bad and the ugly".
According to Google, some 130m titles have been published since the first books took form on the desks of monks. This overwhelming catalogue is today being supplemented at a rate never before seen in the history of the book. Another industry statistician, Bowker, reports that nearly 1.8m new titles were published in 2012, an increase of half a million in just three years.
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