“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
Hands up if you recognise that opening line……
David Lassman, the director of the Jane Austen Festival in Bath decided to copy out opening chapters of Jane Austen novels, changing only character names and send them to publishers as his own work to see what would happen. He sent Northanger Abbey, Persuasion and, yes, even Pride and Prejudice (that’s the opening line up there….!) to a number of big publishers and agents.
Two interesting things happened. Firstly, they all got rejected – the publishers didn’t want to publis them. Secondly, nobody seemed to spot the plagiarism – well, apparent from one person at Jonathon Cape. But here’s the bit that really struck me – Penguin said this about his Pride and Prejudice look-a-like
It seems like a really original and interesting read
When challenged about this later they said
A spokeswoman for Penguin pointed out that its letter had said only that it “seemed” original and interesting. “It would not have been read,” she insisted.
What??! They said it “seemed” interesting but they didn’t read it? Oh dear, is publishing totally random? Is it just luck? I suppose it would have been worse if some publisher had offered him a contract and published it without realising the book was actually a Jane Austen novel, but that probably was never going to happen. The saddest part of this tale is the way the rejections either suggested the book was not good enough to be published (poor Jane Austen!), or gave false hope. Wouldn’t it be better for a manuscript to either be sent back with a note saying the company did not want to look at it, or for it to be taken seriously and a clear, honest communication about it to be given to the author?
Why does this interest me? Well, one of the key themes of this blog is a call for individuals to matter more than institutions and systems. The more impersonal and systems based our society becomes the more we are all poorer.
Heroes Not Zombies 
What an instructive post! I wonder if they would have spotted Hamlet?
Publishing has to be in crisis. But I love paper technology. You are right about institutions. Don’t they produce institutionalized minds?