A freelancer and colleague, Jana Reiss, e-mailed me a few comments about my last blog post that I wanted to share. (Jana is a former reviewer at Publishers Weekly.)

At PW I would get a lot of self-published memoirs for review, and authors never quite understood why I wasn't assigning their work.  I couldn't exactly say, "Your writing sucks," even if that happened to be true, but I would tell them the same kinds of things you are saying here -- that unless you already have a celebrity platform or some kind of wonderful eat-pray-love kind of experience, no one outside your immediate circle is usually going to care what you have to say.

I laughed when I saw your description of writers who rely on their friends and family to tell them that their writing is terrific and sure to be featured on Oprah.  I was on a panel once with an editor who asked all the first-time writers in the audience if they had ever seen the early episodes of American Idol.  Most had.  He said something like, "Those people who can't sing are always telling Simon Cowell, 'But my friends and my parents say I'm a really great singer!' And those people are horrible singers. You need a professional opinion."  It was a great analogy and, judging from the uncomfortable looks of many people in the audience, he got his point across.

Another technique I have tried when speaking to writers is to ask them about the memoirs they have read recently.  What did they like about them?  Then I point out that the memoirs they have mentioned are without exception either a) written by celebrities or b) already bestsellers.  It's a sobering thing when they realize that if THEY don't read memoir when it's not already water-cooler talk, why should anyone plunk down $24.95 for their story?

Many thanks to Jana for sharing her advice! More people need to hear it.