Nobel laureate Doris Lessing has attacked what she calls the 'harmful' promotion of young authors. She believes that 'Literature festivals and the aggressive marketing of celebrity authors have created a damaging climate for new writing ...' and that she felt desperately sorry for them. Lessing is quoted, "Now what happens is that if you are a girl who's good-looking and has written even a passable book you can be earning enormous sums of money very quickly and are then sent on a promotional tour ..."
Yes, and some people say good looks are also useful for winning prizes.
She continues, "The writer has become more and more a personality. Literary festivals are enormously enjoyable but when you go into one it's got nothing to do with your writing ... We all know that writing comes out of a man or a woman sitting alone in a room with the telephone off the hook, a cup of coffee and in the good old days, a cigarette."
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