Does a Ph.d in Literature Help You Get a Novel Published?

Before going any further in discussing the question that is the title of this post I would like to be clear that I am concerned here with publishing, not writing--a very different endeavor that often has nothing whatsoever to do with the ability of an author to write (as the hyperabundance of celebrity-associated sludge on the bestseller lists indicates).

My experience is that while the "You Can Be a Bestselling Author Too!" industry tells those whose money it wants that they can acquire credentials that will help their blind submissions to the slush pile get something other than more form rejection letters this is merely another piece of aspirationalist dishonesty on their part--making their target audience think they have more control over their careers than they really do, and so more willing to spend on their proffered service. Certainly I found that mentioning such credentials made no difference whatsoever in the way agents and editors replied to me. There seem to me to be two reasons for that.

1. A Ph.d in Literature is no proof of being able to write a novel, let alone the kind of novel that a commercial publisher is likely to be looking for. After all, it is a training for teaching literature, and producing literary scholarship--very different activities. Of course, acquiring that training one reads a great deal of literature, is exposed to a great deal of literature, does a lot of thinking and writing about literature, and it may seem that this could be helpful in preparing a writer to produce a work of fiction, enough so to count for something in their favor. Still, the claim is more ambiguous, and given the ever-narrower interests of commercial publishing, it may be that they will even see such a preparation as irrelevant or even a disadvantage someone who has given much of their life to, for example, Romantic poetry or nineteenth century realist prose, appearing quite remote from the kind of work that today's publishers would want to put on the bookshelf.

2. Far more important than the ways in which an advanced degree in Literature may be of little relevance, or even a disadvantage, from the standpoint of the ability to produce a salable work of fiction is the fact that publishers are infinitely less interested in whether someone can write a book than whether their name can sell a book. This is, of course, not a thing admitted much these days, but Balzac spelled out very clearly in Lost Illusions (the kind of work by the kind of author today's publishers are unlikely ever to read, and knowledge of which they would probably regard as being to an author's discredit), and the reality has not changed one iota since. Indeed, there is ample reason to think that any number of factors have only encouraged the latterday Dauriats in their obscene crassness, as what was only emergent in Balzac's day developed in full.