It's tricky that. Because a lot of that son/daughter of making it in the same industry as the parent is just marketing. You almost have a guaranteed market for a book written by the child of an established, popular author. At least for the first book. People will buy it just to find out if they're any good.
Similarly why it's easier to get published if you're already an actor or a TV celeb or a musician - the market for your work is already proven, it's less risk for publishers so you get to short-cut the selection process that most authors have to fight through.
Who's to say whether they'd have got there on their own merits?
Particularly with publishing because there's an awful lot of factors at play beyond whether you can write a good book or not. Publishers look at whether you're a marketable person, how you come across to people. They look for books that fit with current trends. They look for books that are the first part of a series, rather than a stand-alone work.
I know what you mean though. I had some success with short stories, won a few competitions. But writing a novel has trashed my confidence - I can hardly bear to look at it, let alone edit it. And it's hard to keep your confidence up when literally no-one is interested in your book but you - but then, why should they be?
The only advice I have is to read bad books (as well as good ones, obviously). When I read bad books that have been published, particularly if they've been somewhat successful, I get fired up. I know I can do better than those books and they made it through, without a celebrity name or an established author parent - that's where my hope comes from.
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Bwark!
13 Dec 2021, 4:13 am
45k words I wrote, nary a view... very difficult to continue at this rate.
