* Some Notes about Publishing *
"BIG Publisher or SMALL Publisher?"
That was the theme of the discussion taking place in a lower hallway room during DragonCon '98 in Atlanta.
Guest speakers from one large publishing house and two smaller ones were holding forth about the do's and don'ts and whys and wherefores.
All of them spoke of how much easier, cheaper, and faster it had been to get a book from typewritten pages to the store shelves twenty years ago.
Then they all agreed that today's publishing costs were very high, that hundreds of new manuscripts arrived every day, and that there were huge backlogs of manuscripts long-awaiting to be reviewed.
All of them also agreed that since costs were so high, it only made perfect sense to relegate even the best of potential new authors to back-burners in favor of going with known-strong sellers already under contract, and that even those known-strong authors were having to stand in line these days.
They all admitted that your manuscript could 'conceivably' sit on a desk for a year or so before being initially 'evaluated' by someone who could then kick it up the line or reject it, and that the evaluator would probably be an intern. (read: "trainee")
They all also admitted that at the end of that year, your manuscript could wind up in the hands of someone about to go on vacation who would then pass it to someone else to read, where it might 'conceivably' end up waiting yet another year to be 'evaluated'.
Most attendees were disappointed by these answers. A few actually left the room, and one said that it sounded as if they were trying to talk us out of writing.
When question & answer time rolled around, I told them about having sold nearly 1500 copies of my works on disk and as downloadables over the internet and asked if that could be considered any sort of reference toward the saleability of my works if published in book form.
Their responses were immediate and strongly worded.
All of them said that they wouldn't touch anything that had been on the net.
I then asked if they ever picked up on self-published books (of stuff that hadn't appeared on the net, of course) that had done well.
Again the quick responses came.
Each publisher flatly said "No."
I found that rather an odd answer, since it is known that Mark Twain, Zane Grey, Upton Sinclair, Carl Sandburg, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Edgar Rice Burroughs, George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Gray, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alexander Pope, George Gordon, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Edward Fitzgerald, Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace), Stephen Crane, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Willa Cather, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Thomas Hardy, James M. Barrie, Walt Whitman, Henry Martyn Robert (Robert's Rules of Order), Vachel Lindsay, Francois Mauriac, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Henry David Thoreau, Richard Bolles, Mary Baker Eddy, Robert Ringer, Rudyard Kipling, A.E. Houseman, Marcel Proust, John Bartlett (Bartlett's Familiar Quotations), and Rod McKuen, among others, all paid to have their first works self-published, and that those works are now in the hands of large publishing houses.
That's right, I've done some research on the subject of self-publishing.
It is obviously not in the best interest of standard publishing houses to suggest self-publishing, but why are they so afraid of the internet?
Publishers don't sell to you and me. They sell to Amazon and Walden's and Barnes & Noble and outfits like that.
(all of whom have retail web sites...)
To me, a book is just another mass-produced bit of art waiting to be sold, just like jewelry, lithographs, and other such things.
I've designed pewter and coin pendants. They sell well.
I've also designed Wiccan goblets and tiles. They sell well, too.
These items are wholesaled to stores and sold by me and others on the internet.
How is a book different? It is just another thing to be sold.
Like the pendants, a book or story has to be designed (written) and made, and if it's good, it will sell. If it isn't, it won't. That seems simple enough to me!
I like the E-book concept... Something to read at home, at lunch hours, on the plane or commuter train, on your computer or laptop. Real convenience.
With E-books, storage isn't a problem. Manufacturing copies and shipping them by email is virtually free. There are literally no excuses for errors.
It has become my opinion that the publishing houses are much like churches, laden with tradition and ritual to maintain control of their niche market.
Buyouts and mergers have created huge publishing houses, and their ability to profitably produce anything less than a blockbuster best-seller has become extremely difficult, if not impossible.
New authors are a deep financial risk for them.
The publishing houses also rely heavily on a new author's belief that his/her works and marketability may somehow be woefully inadequate without their assistance.
Because I don't believe in their dogma, I'm viewed as a heretic.
I don't believe that a book needs a big-name publishing house's logo on the cover to sell the book's contents.
This is considered further heresy, of course.
I would prefer to keep score with money and fan mail, so I'm going do what I've always done and shortcut the traditional system.
When I passed the ACT's for college, I quit high school in the 10th grade and skipped two years of drudgery.
I also tested past much of my military training and many college courses. I've made a career of bypassing tradition-steeped, ritual-laden systems, and I see no reason to alter course now.
To get my works in print, I'll have to toss my own money on the table (for a web site) in a bet that I've created something readable and saleable.
I've done this before with jewelry and other works.
It's simply time to do it again.
The internet will have a substantial impact on publishing. This is due to empowerment of individuals to accomplish what formerly required a large corporate entity.
The net will not destroy publishing any more than televison destroyed the movie industry or cheap laser printers destroyed the printing industry.
Industries will change because they will be unwilling to disappear.
It boils down to this:
You either believe in yourself and what you've created or you don't.
You either have the courage to try or you don't.
If you have the courage, you will find a way.
Otherwise, you'll be on your knees to the gods of publishing, hoping they'll take
time to look at your work, not butcher it, and perhaps even print it someday.
A better idea: read some self-published books about Self-Publishing.
Indexes to my other articles and ebooks
may be found on my websites:
Abintra Press!
and
|
|
|
|
