Last week Tuesday, I attended a talk by a literary agent and consultant as part of the Creative Writing MA course at Birkbeck University, which I am currently undertaking. It was an informative talk about the marketplace and how to get published hosted by the Creative Writing MA Programme Director (who is also a prolific novelist).
One thing that irked me, however, was the agent / consultant’s view of the marketplace and, while I’m sure that his words accurately reflect his many years of experience in the field, it was very black-and-white the majority of the time while at other times he would admit that every so often a writer comes along and blows all of the rules out of the handbook – in short, it felt like he was contradicting himself. One of those times was his answer to my question:
‘You spoke of a revival in recent times of the short story genre. Is it still the case that an unpublished writer will be turned down if s/he approaches an agent / publisher with a collection of short stories, and encouraged to write a novel, instead.’ (Or something along those lines.)