Why are debut novels failing to launch?

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I'm currently starting a publishing company in a niche Canadian market.

What people in these comments (and really, most places on the internet) fail to grasp is the role of the publisher as a curator and editor.

Unlike your friends, the editor is not your friend. They don't have a stake in your ego, they won't sugarcoat it beyond the veneer of professionalism. You need an editor who is not your friend, too say no to you. No, you shouldn't start your book with this cliché. No, you shouldn't have your character meandering aimlessly. No, you shouldn't use whedonisms. Exceptions apply, of course, but when the editor is your publisher and not your friend, "shouldn't" becomes "can't". Usually that involves saying no to 99% of manuscripts coming through the door. And this is how an okay story becomes a great book. Your editor, having read more books than you in their segment, knows the difference... usually.

All manuscripts are at least a little bit bad, some books aren't. As you can tell, I'm no fan of self-publishing, I just don't believe anyone can be objective enough with their own baby.

Now... I've read my fair share of bad books, especially recently. The publisher/editor is to blame 95% of the time. My theory is that being rigorous takes time, which is always in short supply, and skill. I believe people tend not to stay in the same role for too long anymore, lest they lose out financially. Which is totally fair, but skill (and the chutzpah to say "no") takes a while to develop, years really. And no one has "years" for anything.

Except, of course, all the people in the industry who don't mind being poor. And people making bank, I suppose, but these are so few as to be statistically insignificant.

Many many years ago a friend did a stint at a major publishing house. Whenever she'd show up to parties she would bring in a small stack of unpublished manuscripts, we'd all get into the wine or beer or whatever and start reading particularly terrible passages to each other. Had she sought out especially bad manuscripts? No! She just grabbed whatever was on the "will read, maybe, someday" shelf in the editor's work area.

I learned about Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap) during these events. Most people think what they've written is interesting, or unique, or worth publishing. However, publishers have to make money, so they curate very carefully, edit the hell out of the raw manuscripts, and then only actually commit to publishing what they think there's a market for. Nearly zero of the random manuscripts that are sent in by unknown authors ever make it into this funnel, and the honest reason why, at least from what I have personally read, was because most of it was completely terrible -- in as many ways as you can think of terrible to be.

Three other thoughts:

1. The great videogame crash of '83 happened because the dominant platforms at the time did not have a lockdown on curation, so anybody and everybody flooded the market with garbage. Consumers decided it was better to not buy anything than to chance spending the equivalent of nearly $200 in 2024 money and get trash.

2. A few breakout, self-published, authors are making it through the piles of junk, but they are few and far between. Andy Weir (the Martian) and Hugh Howey (Silo) come to mind. The "secondary" film and TV markets are so starved for good new ideas that their works are getting converted into non-print media almost as fast as they can get sets built and costumes sewed.

3. There's probably a new market for solid, well known, curators. People who make money sifting the dreck to find the Weirs and Howeys and surfacing the cream to the top. The creators are self-publishing, and the publishing houses aren't doing well these days. But the curation function is still wildly important and finding the right way to do it, and the business model around it, is perhaps the future.

My comment was because my last three submissions were blocked. I emailed the moderator the first time it happened, and he said the algorithm probably thought it was self-promotion as I cross posted it to medium.com which I now know everybody hates. By blocked, I mean the articles showed as normal on my browser but was hidden to anybody else. I did not use the "Show HN" option because I have had articles submitted in the past from my website without this issue.

I am not a prolific poster, maybe 2 or 3 a year, and appreciate HN efforts to keep the spam out, so I will give it another shot on my next original article using the "Show HN" option.

Ironically my last submission that was rejected was exactly about this https://rodyne.com/?p=1400

I know what you mean. I have turned to reading history books, that are far more interesting stories.