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Apr. 2nd, 2004 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hafoc
I'd appreciate some advice, either here or in private, for those who have my email addy. Esepcially if anyone here knows the publishing business.
Rafferty was good enough to talk to me about self-publishing today. It's something I could do easily enough. If nothing else, Cafe Press will print my books out one at a time for those who order them. And I'm sure I could convince, or strong-arm, my friends to buy copies. But I can't devote full time to marketing these books. The most marketing I could do would be to sit at a table at Anthrocon and Further Confusion, and maybe one or two more IF I wanted to stretch my resources to the limit.
I could go with Publish America, but some of the stuff I found on them on web searches indicates that's not the way to go either. They seem to be chiefly in it for the few copies I could strongarm friends and family into buying. But I don't know if the criticism of them that I've run into is valid or not.
I'm inclined to think it may be, because so far anyone who has said they were interested in publishing or representing my stories has been a scam artist; details on request. On the other hand, anyone I knew was reputable wouldn't give my books a second look, or even a first one.
On the other hand, the criticism I've read states, basically, that the only way to REALLY get published is to sell to an editor in an established venue, and that any good writer will do that, unless s/he is a lazy whiner who doesn't want to put in the work to make the story sing. This criticism is written by the editors in the established venues and the writers who have sold to them and are, therefore, by their own self-serving definition, Good Writers who aren't Lazy Whiners. I would no more expect someone who makes their money from the existing sysem to speak against it than I would expect a realtor to advise me to sell my house myself or a tax accountant advise me to do my own taxes. Their judgment is a bit suspect if their income is tied up in it.
On the other other hand, I don't have time to sit around and wait two and a half years for some publisher-- who I won't name, but they were the bane of my existance-- to get off their sorry asses and take a look at the novel I sent them. Nobody knows how long they're going to live, and yet the Industry seems to think it's reasonable to make writers wait a minimum of one year before sending them a bad photocopy of a bad photocopy of a bad photocopy of a rejection slip.
So.. I don't know. What should I do? Collect more neglect and abuse from agents, except for the ones who want to scam me? Go on sending stuff to established companies, at a year per try, when if I follow my dad's example I'll be dead in four years? Publish myself, knowing that means I'll sell maybe twenty copies? Or, I hope I hope, something else I haven't thought of?
What do you think?
Rafferty was good enough to talk to me about self-publishing today. It's something I could do easily enough. If nothing else, Cafe Press will print my books out one at a time for those who order them. And I'm sure I could convince, or strong-arm, my friends to buy copies. But I can't devote full time to marketing these books. The most marketing I could do would be to sit at a table at Anthrocon and Further Confusion, and maybe one or two more IF I wanted to stretch my resources to the limit.
I could go with Publish America, but some of the stuff I found on them on web searches indicates that's not the way to go either. They seem to be chiefly in it for the few copies I could strongarm friends and family into buying. But I don't know if the criticism of them that I've run into is valid or not.
I'm inclined to think it may be, because so far anyone who has said they were interested in publishing or representing my stories has been a scam artist; details on request. On the other hand, anyone I knew was reputable wouldn't give my books a second look, or even a first one.
On the other hand, the criticism I've read states, basically, that the only way to REALLY get published is to sell to an editor in an established venue, and that any good writer will do that, unless s/he is a lazy whiner who doesn't want to put in the work to make the story sing. This criticism is written by the editors in the established venues and the writers who have sold to them and are, therefore, by their own self-serving definition, Good Writers who aren't Lazy Whiners. I would no more expect someone who makes their money from the existing sysem to speak against it than I would expect a realtor to advise me to sell my house myself or a tax accountant advise me to do my own taxes. Their judgment is a bit suspect if their income is tied up in it.
On the other other hand, I don't have time to sit around and wait two and a half years for some publisher-- who I won't name, but they were the bane of my existance-- to get off their sorry asses and take a look at the novel I sent them. Nobody knows how long they're going to live, and yet the Industry seems to think it's reasonable to make writers wait a minimum of one year before sending them a bad photocopy of a bad photocopy of a bad photocopy of a rejection slip.
So.. I don't know. What should I do? Collect more neglect and abuse from agents, except for the ones who want to scam me? Go on sending stuff to established companies, at a year per try, when if I follow my dad's example I'll be dead in four years? Publish myself, knowing that means I'll sell maybe twenty copies? Or, I hope I hope, something else I haven't thought of?
What do you think?
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-03 08:28 am (UTC)Couldn't you do a bit of both? Or is publishing a one-time-only thing?
no subject
Date: 2004-04-03 04:25 pm (UTC)If I wrote more novels, having self-published my first ones wouldn't mean I couldn't send the later ones to the established publishers.
But the usual story I get is that I can't, not with the same novel anyway. What you're selling when you sell a novel is the first publishing rights. If those rights are "tainted" somehow, if you self-published or put the stories on a web page so that anyone could read them free, supposedly you'll never sell the book to an established publisher. There's no legal reason why you couldn't, and if by some miracle I sold thousands of copies self-publishing they might go ahead and buy my book anyway, but generally, if you've once published the novel it's supposed to be done with. Supposedly you have no chance to sell it to anyone else, after that.
Problem being I have no idea how true that is either. Everyone says so, but does that make it true? I don't know. I have to admit it could well be true, though. Again, it's the old problem that there are a thousand good books for each one that gets published. If I can't offer the buyer exactly what s/he wants, why wouldn't s/he pick someone else's instead?