Getting Published
Ξ November 19th, 2008 | → | ∇ NUTS, BOLTS, & SOME RUSTY SCREWS, Thunk |
I just heard from a friend who used Llumina publishing to put out her first book. It cost her several hundred bucks. Other friends use PublishAmerica, iUniverse, XLibris, and a host of other pay-to-play “publishers.”Guess what? These are NOT publishers! If you self-publish a book (e.g., become an independent publisher), then that’s great, wonderful, and you-go-girl (or boy). This is totally legitimate. Anybody who’s been querying agents will tell you that your chances are almost 0 of getting one.
Here’s my rant. Agent blogs and newsletters tout their latest books. I’ve seen multiple sexy vampire loves human girl, multiple retarded MC makes good in the world (everybody be inspired by the McDonald’s heart-wrenching), and multiple naked chests of buff gay guys making the story.
ENOUGH! Agents say they want something new, a fresh voice! Well, damn it, quit signing up the same old tired tropes. I will not read those books. If a half-nude person of either gender is on the cover, I will NOT pay my good money for it. If your MC is a misunderstood vampire or werewolf, I will NOT pay my good money for it. If your MC is a mentally-challenged person finding their place in the world (sometimes with the help of a very clever dog), I will NOT pay good money for it.
I have read far better concepts and writing from people who can’t get the attention of an agent. I’m tempted myself. Can I have my teen witch character do the nasty with the troll? I suppose. Would it sell? Maybe. But I don’t want to trash up my writing with crap just to be sold.
Pant pant pant. Okay, rant over.
Just write what you know is good and screw the establishment. If your book is good and original, just bet on it being “not right for me at this time.”
I will regret this post, no doubt. Oh, well. I’m at rope’s end anyway, so I may as well hang myself entirely.
13 Responses to ' Getting Published '
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on November 19th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Hear here!!! Never regret a post like this, Marva! SOMEBODY NEEDS TO SAY IT, and, by all that’s decent, I’m with you on this 100%. More, if that were possible. Totally awesome. You said it, I second it, and I know a lot of other readers and authors out there feel it!
on November 19th, 2008 at 10:24 am
I third it. This reader and author feels it, too!
Liz
on November 19th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
A blog that a blog-friend referred me to “Grumpy Old Bookman” advised that if you honestly give it a year - and your writing doesn’t suck like a black hole, then go to self-publishing, or subsidy publishing, or POD after that point. So on his advice, (and that of knowledgeable friends) I spent a year looking for an agent when I finished my first novel “To Truckee’s Trail” and about eight months when I had the first volume of “Adelsverein” ready to go. Three or four agents read excerpts of “Truckee”, and one of them read the entire manuscript all the way through; every one of them regretfully said it was wonderfully written, an exciting story with wonderful characters… but that it wasn’t really ’sellable’ to a major publisher. I had pretty much the same response to “Adelsverein” - great book, just didn’t send them into the stratosphere.
Oh, yeah, and my favorite turn down was - “Your book just doesn’t make me as excited and enthusiastic as I would have to be in order to offer representation to you at this time.”
Which I think was their way of saying they wanted a potential block-busting best seller that looked just like the last twenty or thirty block-busting best sellers. Something that could be described in one attention-gripping sentence.
on November 19th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
My first comment here. In fact, my first moments here. P.D.R. Lindsay brought this site to my attention.
Also frustrated by agent comments regarding the market for HF, I researched the above mentioned POD companies. They had many packages that could cost up to several thousand US dollars if one bought into their marketing offerings.
In the end, none could not or would not give me the names of anyone who succeeded through their marketing.
In the end, I chose to continue querying, and I am delighted I did.
It may be best to go with them if one has a platform or is a natural salesperson. Before you go that route, I would suggest learning what Dan Poynter has to say about self-publishing.
on November 19th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
I know Celia is doing a bang-up job marketing her books. My gosh, the woman is everywhere! So, there’s one example for you, donroc. Welcome to The Deepening, by the way.
Dan Poynter does have a lot of good information. So does Steve Weber. It still comes down to what the individual writer wants to do. Keep waiting for an agent OR take charge of your own book and publish however you want. Oh, forgot the third option: consider your work crap and put it in a drawer. I suppose if one cannot get an agent, they must, be default, consider themselves in the third category (I’d better say that was sarcasm).
I’d encourage self-pubbers not to pay a ton of money to an outfit who doesn’t give value. I’d encourage self-pubbers to get their own ISBNs and become publishers themselves.
As Celia points out, if you’ve tried for a year or more for an agent and nothing comes of it, then go to self-pub, but with as much knowledge as you can find about the process. Don’t be taken by the any of a multiple of scam publishers who charge arm/leg/firstborn child to do nothing. They won’t market your book and won’t even necessarily produce a decent printed book. POD is expensive, but there are direct print options, probably right in your own town.
on November 19th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
In response to Celia Hayes: That’s interesting. I’ve had one of the top agents in a top agency request manuscript and synopsis, only to have them turn around and say glowing things about the writing, the characters, the plot…but refuse to take it because they just didn’t think they it was something they could sell to the majors. Mind you, this is a book that has a single sentence log line or high concept, is commercially written, and isn’t “same old, same old.” (Sigh) I’ve had other top agents also give it two thumbs up for superb writing, fast-paced plot, excellent hook…with the same old “but” showing up. I’m still querying it, but I figure it’s a wash. I also figure all the other ones I have in various stages will wind up with similar answers. I just don’t write sex-saturated, crude, ugly stories. I don’t write vamping vampires, either. It’s enough to drive a person to the scotch.
In response to donroc: I don’t think self-publishing is the best road to take, but, when it’s the only road left because what an author writes is more in tune with a market that the majors aren’t interested in, then, well, what can one do? I think there is a market for what I write, but I certainly can’t convince an agent to represent me. I’ll exhaust all possibilities; I’ll go to the small presses, too; but, and here’s the problem, what I write is suited to people like me who happen to like stories that aren’t saturated with sex, mayhem, the sanguine, or the salacious; I don’t write that which is titillating to tweens, teens, or to women who are looking for their beddable hero between the sheets of paper.
There is an audience for good stories that don’t contain the gruesome, the sexual, the perverse, and the gratuitous…because I’m a member of that audience. Any ideas on how to convince the publishers and agents, though? Got a list of agents who will look at books like that?
on November 19th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
In Response to ElRuek:
I was in your situation. I eventually submitted to to the smaller independents, and it was luck that my thirller/horror novel was accepted by a relatively new house. And, the publisher then created a new imprint to publish my HF novel as well. Fortunately the publisher is a graphic artist and designed my covers and web site and myspace site as well.
Continue to query. Everything that has happened to me writing in Hollywood and as a “with” as well as the above occured unexpectedly.
on November 20th, 2008 at 1:09 am
There are so many small independent publishers out there. And there are so many tales of rejected novelists who finally found a publisher and went on to great success. I don’t think a year is long enough. Give it two.
BUT
I hear you and I too sigh over yet more unimaginative vampire/werewolf type horror/erotica being published, and have to hunt down readable books in an indenpendent bookshop.
on November 20th, 2008 at 8:16 am
Alas, I live in an area where no independent bookseller exists for about 30 to 60 miles in any direction. Aside from a very small local B. Dalton, the nearest chain bookstore, Books-a-Million, is 20 miles away.
on November 20th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Okay, tell me if I’m off here:
Publishers publish what they can convince buyers they want, right? And, failing that, they publish what they know buyers will buy, right? Now, considering HarperCollins or somebody is offering Palin some 5 million for her memoirs, it isn’t hard to tell where they think they should put their money. But. That’s non-fiction. What about fiction? Why are publishers selling vamping vampires and bad girl stories? Is this the main market? Really? So there are that many young women and girls out there who are buying this stuff to tip the scales away from more wholesome stories? Really???
on November 20th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Er… good point, DLK - there probably are people buying vampy vampires and bad girl stories, but there might be just as many who are kind of tired of all that. All the marketing geniuses that I have paid attention to over the last couple of years, and the experienced writers like Janet Elaine Smith at the IAG, Grumpy Old Bookman, and others… they keep saying go where the readers who like - or might like - your kind of books go! Either literally, or on-line.
Go where they are, and put your book out in front of them. In my case - even though I kept saying ‘no, I’m not writing Westerns, I am writing historical fiction set on the American frontier’, everyone kept describing “Truckee” as a Western! When I came to trying to get “Adelsverein” out there, I figured in for a penny, in for a pound - hey, it’s set on the Texas frontier, lots of cows and Indian raids and all that - and went to as many western websites and discussion groups that I could find. My books are painstakingly well-researched, so I could go to some of the local museums where I had done research … and to bookstores in the towns where I had set a lot of the action and get into the local interest angle.
Yes, you have to hustle a bit, and yes, it can be very wearying. But if you have ever worked in sales, you’ll know that for every successful sale or two, you’ll make your pitch about a hundred times. It’s just the odds of the game. You have to expect that, and not to let it get you down. Too much.
on November 20th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Celia: You always have great ideas on getting your books to an audience. As you’ve found, your books appeal to those who like Westerns. Only after the fact, did I understand my book isn’t for kids, but for old people. There’s a huge nostalgia audience for them. Advertise on AARP? I don’t know. There aren’t many places on-line where old folks gather.
I’m not being snotty about the oldies. Hey, I’m within shooting distance myself! However, I did get signed up at a Holiday Fair last year at a retirement home. I made zero sales. I did trade one guy for his self-pub, and found it unreadable. Whatever…. I also sent press releases to western booksellers in the area where my book is set. Nada. So, I really don’t know what works, other than some mysterious folks are buying my Large Print edition on a regular schedule through Amazon. I wish I could figure out that demographic and do something about it.
I AM NOT A SALESPERSON! That’s the big thing I know about myself. I get panic attacks even thinking of approaching bookstore owners (alas, the independents are shrinking fast). Maybe I can get my son to sell my books. He’s a salesperson type and I’m still ashamed and trying to not acknowledge he’s like his father (ex-), but he is.
on November 21st, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Actually agents are saying ‘not another vampire book please,’ but I can’t find my source.
I think the problem is that not one publisher knows what will catch the reading public’s attention and become a best seller. Think of all those expensive deals on first books touted as world beaters which never made their advance!
The writer’s advice, to write the book you love, is still sound advice. but you have to be prepared to rewrite well, according to a good editor’s advice, to make it marketable.