Why Do Debut Novels Keep Failing?

On the Road was not Jack Kerouac’s first novel, but you’d be forgiven for thinking as much. Though 1957’s On the Road is widely considered to be Kerouac’s “debut,” the author’s first novel, The Town and the City, was in fact published in 1950. By all measures, it flopped. Between that book and the launch of On the Road, Kerouac started working with the literary agent Sterling Lord, who believed he could be the voice of his generation and laid the groundwork for his public reception as such. What, exactly, did Sterling Lord do to prime Kerouac’s audience? From 1953 to 1957, he leveraged his own professional connections to place excerpts of On the Road in magazines like The Paris Review and New World Writing, building hype for the young novelist’s next book. In 2004, there were at least 648 million books sold in the United States, and in 2013, 620 million; last year, there were at least 767,360,000 books sold—a significant increase. If that’s the case, then why does it seem like it’s harder now for a debut writer to “break out”? [View in Browser]( [Esquire]( [SHOP]( EXCLUSIVE [SUBSCRIBE]( [Why Are Debut Novels Failing to Launch?]( [Why Are Debut Novels Failing to Launch?]( On the Road was not Jack Kerouac’s first novel, but you’d be forgiven for thinking as much. Though 1957’s On the Road is widely considered to be Kerouac’s “debut,” the author’s first novel, The Town and the City, was in fact published in 1950. By all measures, it flopped. Between that book and the launch of On the Road, Kerouac started working with the literary agent Sterling Lord, who believed he could be the voice of his generation and laid the groundwork for his public reception as such. What, exactly, did Sterling Lord do to prime Kerouac’s audience? From 1953 to 1957, he leveraged his own professional connections to place excerpts of On the Road in magazines like The Paris Review and New World Writing, building hype for the young novelist’s next book. In 2004, there were at least 648 million books sold in the United States, and in 2013, 620 million; last year, there were at least 767,360,000 books sold—a significant increase. If that’s the case, then why does it seem like it’s harder now for a debut writer to “break out”? 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