An Exception to the Rule?

Rachel Donadio recently wrote an article about Elena Ferrante (cf. The New York Review of Books 1 December 2014).  This piece is of interest because it ran contrary to so much of the prevailing trend in publishing.

These days writers are often encouraged to spend more time marketing themselves than they spend writing.  Many editors are more concerned with a prospective author’s “platform” (i.e., Internet presence – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) and marketing plan than whether he/she can actually write.  Without “followers,” one is effectively assumed dead-on-arrival.

By contrast, “Ferrante is a pseudonym, has no public presence, has never been seen, gives her a strange place in Italy, a country obsessed with image, where if you aren’t on television, you barely exist.”  Wow! 

The feature is available at:  http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/dec/18/italys-great-mysterious-storyteller/.