Published - Page 3 - Writers Forum

thelatemitchellwarren · 07-03-2004, 09:03 PM

I agree. There is no absolute guarantee
that a book is "great" and will sell based
just on talent alone.

And even if the book is great and is ahead
of its time, marketing is still the most
important factor.

Trends, both creative and financial, control
what makes the best seller list.

And luck. One must never forget luck.
And a lot of self-published authors that
went on to mega-success had a lot of
luck. Because for every John Grisham
(or was it Clancy that self-published?)
there are a hundred just like him, just as
good as him, who failed.

And yes, I agree that sensationalizing
your Canadian background would
probably be a good ploy. I've always
noticed some nationalistic games between
Canada and America, in the media and
such. Better to go in with that, than with
"hello I'm an author and this is my book."

thelatemitchellwarren · 07-03-2004, 09:19 PM

I found their PA convention coverage
rather bizarre myself. Though it is nice
that they are travelling to other
countries trying to push their books.
(Probably only certain books, the top
sellers, in my opinion)

The Author Forum seems like a general
mix of both humble writers and nutty
cult enthusiasts who are a little too
happy too soon. I tried to sign up for
their forum a year ago, but it never let
my password go through, so I just
gave up on it. Some people gripe about
posters being banned there because they
criticize PA....but come on, what do you
expect???

eleutheromaniac · 07-04-2004, 04:35 AM

"I agree that sensationalizing
your Canadian background would
probably be a good ploy."

I don't intend to go around waving the Canadian flag, but if I can off-handedly mention that I'm Canadian, how can that hurt?

bobgelinas · 07-04-2004, 12:31 PM

To TLMW,

You mentioned the fact that we get material from Literary Agencies, and don't take unagented submisssions. This is true, and is a purely a policy of self-defense. We have neither the time, energy, nor staff to handle the inundation of manuscripts that would flood in otherwise. And the slush pile stays very full even from the submissions coming in from Agents.

What hasn't changed in publishing over the last 10 years is that still less than 1% of what's written ever makes it into print. For every new publishing avenue that is created are 99 more writers attempting to take advantage of it. So there must be some mechanism to filter out the chaff from the wheat. Literary Agents perform a valuable service in this respect. And having gone through the process of getting an Agent myself over ten years ago, I see it as somewhat of a "rite of passage" for a new author. That is, if you can't convince an Agent your writing has viable commercial value, then why should I, as a publisher have a different opinion?

Lastly, just because we don't accept unsolicited MSS doesn't mean that is the only way material makes it to my desk. There are three ways actually:

1. Agent Submission
2. Contest Winner (we sponsor regular events)
3. Writers I meet, either in person, or on writer forums such as this, who intrigue me about their work.

Ask, Airborneguy. He was astute enough to merely ask if I'd be willing to take a look at his book. I did, and gave him some constructive feedback on it. He has a contract on it with another publisher, but I was happy to check it out.

Incidentally, for the books we publish that come through the latter two methods, we still insist that all our authors are adequately represented. So if they don't have an Agent, we help them get one. You'd be surprised how amenable Literary Agents are to taking on a new client who has a publisher who wants to do his book.

Best,

Airborneguy · 07-04-2004, 12:47 PM

He did read my work, and I found his review to not only include important criticism, but also some great encouragement. It think it's great having you here, because you are the only one who offers the publishers view, and the stark reality that this is not just some fun game to be played by anyone.

But, about the literary agents: I still cannot agree with the whole thing. I understand the vetting process, and definately see the need for a publisher to have one, but unless I am mistaken about how it works, I am still against signing over 15% of my royalties to someone who performs, basically, a one-time service for me. Maybe if there was a different way of doing it, okay, but I think would rather "go it alone" than deal with that.

thelatemitchellwarren · 07-04-2004, 04:10 PM

I would say off-handedly mentioning it
would be a mistake. Hammer it into
the ground, would be my advice.

The problem is, once you have enough
clout to get an agent...you really don't
need one.

I understand the agent to writer process,
the publishing reality, and can accept
(1) and (2).

But come on, (3)?

That's enforcing the whole cliche, "It's
All About Who You Know."

Airborneguy · 07-05-2004, 03:23 AM

Number three is the best part: giving the "little guy" a chance.

Airborneguy · 07-05-2004, 11:58 AM

Like Mitchell's cover, not bad, I hope they do as good of a job on mine. I am hoping to have my friend draw/paint it. I will order it as soon as my author price kicks in! How many pages? That's expensive, I know they go by page length.

I posted links for Eleutheromaniac's and thelatemitchellwarren's books on my website.

thelatemitchellwarren · 07-05-2004, 07:55 PM

PA will consider a cover of your
design, though they have the final say.
If your friend is an artist, I would opt
for that. (read between the lines, here)

I expected to have a high price, as it
was around 175,000 words.

I noticed, oddly enough, for unexplained
reasons, PA discontinued their E-Book
Versions of Softcover Books. About 6
months ago, you had your choice of
ordering either version. Don't know
if they have plans to bring them back or
not.

Airborneguy · 07-05-2004, 09:01 PM

I'd rather no e-books, easier to get free copies that way (sorry, but I do want to make some money off of this). 175k, how many pages? Mine is looking like 90k once I finished the editing.

eleutheromaniac · 07-05-2004, 11:10 PM

"PA will consider a cover of your
design, though they have the final say."

Same with AH, only in my case they didn't like my idea. Ahhh, to be a misunderstood artist....

I thought this should be posted here as well, in case anyone else is interested in registering with a search engine.

http://www.google.com/addurl.html

thelatemitchellwarren · 07-06-2004, 12:53 PM

What was your idea?

eleutheromaniac · 07-06-2004, 02:34 PM

Just to have a plain black and white cover, with medium size type writer print of my name and the title, or better, just the title. The way I saw it, every book on the shelf is filled with designs and colour. If you have one black and white book it will stand out. Like if you highlight every word on a page except one, the word left unhighlighted is going to stand out. They didn't see it that way. I didn't push too hard because I just don't care about the cover that much. If I had really made a case about it, they probably would have changed it (but I would've probably had to fit the bill). But I still plan on using it for all my books, kind of my theme.

eleutheromaniac · 07-12-2004, 09:07 PM

Mitch's rant in the lounge made me give writers.net another look. (This post is going to be a long one, so bare with me).

I found that this argument came up a lot when discussing PODs:

"The average author only sells around 170 books per title. So POD-published writers only sell to friends and family."

To anyone who has taken even a basic highschool math course, this illogical train of this thought is quite comical.

For example, the average person eats three square meals a day. What does this mean? Exactly nothing, because what this doesn't tell you is that a third of the world is starving while another third over-eats. Hence the average is three square meals, even though, in fact, it is a minority who eats exactly three square meals.

Same with PODs. For example, AuthorHouse has 18 500 authors published. As stated earlier, about 18 000 of these are not writers. Or good writers in any case. Hence they will sell few if any books. 18 000 authors out of 18 500 who have sold between, say, 0-100 books would bring the AVERAGE way down.

Of the 500 remaining authors, several have chosen a very select market for their book. For example, one book I saw was about the intimate history of the city of Sacramento. Now, would anyone outside of Sacramento have the slightest bit of interest in such a book? Very, very few. So basically, this author has resigned themselves to a single city, and not a very big one at that. Lets say that the pop. of Sacramento is 800 000. Assume that the author, focusing in on just Sacremento, uses all their resources to market their work, still not everyone in the city will be aware of it. (out of town, too busy, illiterate, etc.). Say about 400 000 actually hear about the book. Of this, about 10% actually have a moderate interest in the subject matter of the book. (Because, honestly, how many people are interested in history, let alone the history of their town?) Of that, about half are interested enough to actually read the book cover-to-cover, and not just peruse the first few pages of it in the bookstore (you know who you are). Of the people who want to read it, half are willing and able to purchase the book. That's 1.5% of 400 000 (6000). These types of books also bring the average down.

Then there are those who do not know how to properly market their work. As a result their sales are mediocre at best. This would be true even if they published with one of the big, traditional publishing houses (stated earlier in this thread). If you, as the author, show no interest in selling your work, no one will have any interest in buying it. Even big name writers have to resort to promotional work. This is the life we have chosen.

The point of all of this: averages prove exactly nothing with regard to "Vanity Press" sales. In fact, I'm surprised that averages aren't lower than what they are. So be fore warned, any one who is anti-POD will bring up the 'average' argument eventually. If so, fell free to cut-and-paste this post and throw it back in their face.

Hopefully, this will convince some of you who are disinclined to use a POD-publisher to reconsider. The more actual writers that use POD, the better it will be. Hey, that's catchy.

Airborneguy · 07-13-2004, 10:52 AM

Without POD, 99% of the people who complain would never be published anyway, so you decide: never publish at all or publish POD. Not to mention, these people are probably not published anyway, so who are they to complain. Screw them, don't listen...