Apparently, neither do many major publishers these days.
It seems that a disgruntled writer, frustrated that he couldn't get published, wanted to test the limits of the system. He decided to take some good old fashioned Jane Austen, change the names of the chapters, the book, and the characters, and submit it to 18 major publishers. Only one of them even realized it was a plagiarized Austen book. The rest thought it was good, but rejected it. They must not realize that women these days still crave those mushy old-timey love stories.
One publisher even reprinted Pride and Prejudice recently. How sad. It just goes to show that publishers are bad judges of good literature, as well as badly versed in famously good literature. And I was thinking of writing a novel... better work hard...
Posted by Shenlon at July 22, 2007 04:29 PM