These people depress me. They're like vampires, feeding off dreams.

I have a freind who is always nearly getting suckered by these kinds of scam artists--she just wants to see her novel in print so badly. It makes my heart hurt.

I noticed in the TWC FAQ section that they mention two more publishers: Mercury Print and Palace Press. I wonder if these two printers charge similar amounts to Fidlar, or if they're no longer working with TWC, or what. Maybe they're more expensive? I didn't find them on the rest of the TWC site.

Posted June 1, 2004 11:41 AM by ElizabethVomMarlo

At Balticon, there seemed to be a plethora of trade paperbacks and writers thereof wherein the name of the publisher and their entire stable of writers were not ones I recognized. I started wondering how one can distinguish the vanity press/publication market trade paperback publications from ones published by small fry small publishers which actually have some commercial or literary values to them.

[I'm groping not all that successfully for some terms which denote that the publisher isn't an example of very low cost desktop publishing + low relative outlay for print runs of trade paperbacks = Gresham's Law in action, wherein the barrier to production of trade paperbacks and "getting published" are so low that anyone who's got a decent-paying job and some discretionary income and can sustain writing -something- to novel length, can get that document "published." I'm also groping for terms that indicate the publisher -is- of the ilk of "have money, have document, poof, here is a press, one or more authors, and publication credits."]

So, how does one discriminate, where are the guides and guiding factors? There were several tables full of people I didn't recognize pushing books I'd never heard of written by those people, from publishers I was not familiar with, with promotional styles that made me think "this stuff looks like paravanity press crud!" Hmm, I wonder if inventing a term like "parapress" would apply?

Having cut my book purchasing of things I really WANT way down, I'm not about to fork any money over to unknowns promoted by bombast with no indication at all that the material will be worthwhile for me to try to read more than isolated paragraphs I looked at and was not impressed by.

Some of these presses/publications may be worthwhile, but how's anyone to really find out or have some clue about?

Posted June 1, 2004 11:42 AM by Paula Lieberman

This is why I read Making Light. I've been working on a novel for some time now and am at the point where I'm researching where to submit. There aren't a lot of people who will tell you these little things, the pitfalls of vanity presses, or the ins and outs of the slushpile. Thank you so much.

Posted June 1, 2004 11:45 AM by Keith

Paula Lieberman: the name of the publisher and their entire stable of writers were not ones I recognized. I started wondering how one can distinguish the vanity press/publication market trade paperback publications from ones published by small fry small publishers which actually have some commercial or literary values to them.

Huh. My rule of thumb is usually "if they've published or republished someone I've heard of, then browse," which is no help in the situation you describe. Maybe that's the answer, but if anyone else has suggestions, I'd like to hear it. I admit I've instinctively avoided the author with a table of his/her books in a dealer's room; maybe I'm being unfair.

Posted June 1, 2004 12:07 PM by Kate Nepveu

EVM, I've run into writers who've been published by three different vanity operations. They've gone past despair and are into major denial.

All I know about Mercury and Palace is that they're Canadian. Perhaps Yog or Victoria will know more.

Paula, given how long you've been in the community and how many people you know, the rule I'd suggest in your case is that if you haven't heard of at least one out of three, publisher or editor or author, there's probably a reason for it. In a pinch, browse the text.

One of those publishing outfits with a name like "nDiscriminate" had a dealer's table at a convention I attended some months ago. It would have been improper for me to harass them, as I had to tell myself over and over and over again ...

Kate, at one mass signing I just had to stop and admire a semi-published author's book, and wish her luck, because she was starting to get that hollow-eyed despairing look they get when hundreds of people walk past their much-beloved book, give it the briefest possible glance, and move on.

Posted June 1, 2004 12:50 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

At Baycon, this last weekend, Other Change of Hobbit gave table space to a (self or vanity published) book on spiritual aspects of SF. None sold.

Publication is about selling books. If you can't sell a single book to what you're identifying as your target market, maybe you need to think again.

Posted June 1, 2004 1:02 PM by Tom Whitmore

Semi-published. I think that for the time being, I'm going to call them semi-published.

Posted June 1, 2004 1:11 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Teresa, Elizabeth vomMarlo,

I checked The Mercury Press in the Quill&Quire Canadian Publishers Directory; they're in there, distrubuted through the Literary Press Group (a group of small Canadian publishers who distribute together. Address is a PO box, but the website looks legit. They seem mostly to do poetry. They are not however called Mercury Print (italics mine), so I don't think they're the same beast as the one mentioned in TWC's page.

If TWC chose the name deliberately, that's really slimy. However, albeit they're demonstrably evil, this instance could simply have been coincidence.

There's no Palace press listed in the Q&Q directory.

Paula Lieberman,

When I'm checking on potential clients, I look to the aforementioned Quill & Quire directory, as well as the Association of Canadian Publishers on-line directory. Is there a similar body in the States?

Posted June 1, 2004 1:18 PM by jennie

There are a few small press publishers out there. One of them that I know is good is Golden Gryphon Press. One that I'm questioning is Tachyon. They have some authors I've read (David Smeds, reprints of Micheal Swanwick) but the quality of the covers is poor and I'm not too sure on the bindings. Any thoughts on those?

Zhaneel

Posted June 1, 2004 1:22 PM by Dawn Burnell

We're very much in favor of "small presses." There's nothing predatory about perfectly reputable operations like Golden Gryphon and Tachyon.

In SF and fantasy, certainly, small presses hold up half the sky.

Posted June 1, 2004 1:28 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Full disclosure: I had a book I wrote when I was twenty-two that was sitting on my hard drive for almost six years. Nosing around on the internet in '98, I found a certain print-on-demand publisher that was more than willing to take my book. (At that time, I was living in Shanghai, China, so I thought I would never have the opportunity to get it published.)

They published my book, and although it had a crappy cover and a million mistakes, it didn't cost me anything, so it wasn't a big deal. I guess they made a hefty chunk when they actually printed it, but I made my costs back for the purchases of the book and it has been online this whole time. Somehow, the whole process was never real for me. I didn't believe that they could actually publish my book for no money up front, so I didn't take the time to edit it or anything of that sort. I just did it. Sure, it was crap, but who cares? I was never destined to be a successful writer anyway.

Now, am I naive? Absolutely. I did no research. I didn't try to get my book published elsewhere. It was just sitting there. This was a book that had no market potential. It was poorly written, unedited, and pretty much crap. Yet it cost me nothing; and to have a crappy, unedited, poorly written book with my name on the cover sitting in my hands was incredibly cool. In the time since, this publisher has taken away this whole "free" option and you have to pay for what they publish.

So what am I saying? Nothing. I never would have published with them if they would have charged me. But when it was free, it was fine by me. (I recently had them take it off the market because it wasn't up to my standards and considering I'm going to try to get my latest book published by a real publisher, I think it might be best to quietly rid the world of the horror that was my writing at the age of twenty-two.)

Sorry for my ramblings and disjointed thoughts. I'm secretly typing this at work and easily distracted. HA!

Posted June 1, 2004 1:31 PM by Randall P.

Paula's question about identifying vanity presses really does have real-world implications. There was a period a couple of years ago when I was seeing a lot of trade paperback genre fiction on my county library system's "new books" shelves (predominantly mystery, but some SF/F as well) -- and a depressing percentage of it proved on examination to be of self/vanity-published quality, as in "truly execrable".

I talked to a couple of librarians about this at the time, and the system's buying practices seem to have smartened up (whether that's cause and effect, I don't know). But somehow or other, the vanity stuff was making it onto the library buyers' radar -- and that's a trifle worrisome.

Posted June 1, 2004 1:39 PM by John C. Bunnell

Paula, you're not the only one to notice that particular phenomenon at Balticon. (I assume it's happening elsewhere as well.)

I had the honor and pleasure of chatting up one well-known small-press editor who mentioned that a big red flag is opening the book and finding the title page, copyright page, acknowledgements and so forth all in the wrong order. Also if the author doesn't have books with anyone else's name on the byline at their table...

Posted June 1, 2004 3:16 PM by Dan Layman-Kennedy

Is there no successor to Dean Wesley Smith (and others) assorted Scavengers communications?

I can remember share the wealth writers groups who sort of were an agent, or had a front, for submissions - was that a bad idea?

Posted June 1, 2004 4:11 PM by Clark E Myers

Hi, Randall --

My guess is that your publisher was Xlibris.

What went on was this:

There was a time, a few years ago, when the dot-coms were flying and all seemed bright in the world, when some folks got the idea for Print On Demand Publishing where they would publish the slush pile, for free.

According to the theory, the cream would rise to the top, and sell bunches of copies all pulled by customer demand. As for the others, well, the marketplace had spoken. And if they got five sales, well, that was five sales. Any book that wasn't selling was just a file on a hard disk somewhere, essentially no cost.

Unfortunately, what happened was reality intruded. No one reads slush for fun. No one pays money to read slush. So the publish-the-slush-pile model got buried. "Essentially no cost" isn't the same thing as actually no cost. Just handling the files took time, time is money, you know the rest.

The cream wasn't rising. It was getting buried in the sewage. Bad books weren't selling. Neither were good books. Money wasn't coming in.

So -- funds had to come from somewhere.

There are only two places money can come from (once you've blown through the venture capital): the readers, or the writers.

Money from the readers was already sewn up by the traditional presses. So the money for the new-model PoD presses started to come from the writers. Those who didn't charge the writers went out of business. The survivors are following the time-tested Vanity Press model.

Posted June 1, 2004 4:59 PM by James D. Macdonald

Clark, I think I remember some kind of writers' collective where they were all going to agent each other, or some such thing. If it's the one I'm thinking of, within less than a year it had turned into a remarkably predatory scam agency operation.

Jim, one of these days we've got to do the edited best-of version of the SFF Net thread where the founders of Xlibris, which was then just getting going, showed up to defend their publishing model in the "Publishing Scams" topic. It's all there in the SFF Net archives.

That was before they'd burned through fifteen million dollars. I'm still wondering how they did that.

Jennie, have I ever mentioned that Patrick and I edited a couple of issues of the Q&Q Canadian publishers' directory? Brings back memories.

Anyway, I'm under the impression that Palace is a printing operation, not a publisher. (Smacks forehead.) Right. Printer. Far East. Various Canadian publishers use them. Probably Statesiders do too.

Posted June 1, 2004 5:15 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

No, what we line-edited was two issues of Quill and Quire's twice-yearly New and Forthcoming Canadian Books.

Posted June 1, 2004 5:17 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

John C. Bunnell: what sometimes happens in libraries is that "self-published" books are donated to the library. If they are by local residents, they are even more likely to end up in the system. In the latter case, there may actually be some demand for them, at least at first (friends and relatives).

But if the library was actually spending money to buy them, and there was no local connection, that's a much different thing and I'm glad they've wised up!

Posted June 1, 2004 5:37 PM by Lois Fundis

"fifteen million dollars"

fifteen million dollars?

I'm thwacking my monitor and hoping that doing so will unscramble those pixels to reveal what you actually typed, 'cuz doing the same to the side of my head hasn't changed the vision at all.

Nope. Still fifteen million dollars.

Lordy.

Posted June 1, 2004 5:44 PM by Mark Bourne

My hometown is Kalamazoo. Before this doubleday doubletalk leaves an indelible stain on your impression of this humble, midwestern town, I'd like to mention that it was once the celery capital of the world.

Not impressed?

It is also the home of checker motors, where all the cool cabs came from. And Gibson guitars used to be made there.

Posted June 1, 2004 5:45 PM by sean bosker

I was born in Lansing. Midsize Michigan cities are OK with me.

And anyway, Kalamazoo is forever matched in song to Timbuctu, which is also a plus.

Posted June 1, 2004 5:56 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Moscow Moffia more or less led to Pulp House - Jon Gustafson RIP Gimlet Eye on Pulp House was formally set up as an agent - kidding on the square. There were some issues with advice on how to write for Paramount but I thought they were exclusively with Paramount. My only knock on Jon was that he sold his review copies pristine rather than pass them around. It was quite a different era.

Posted June 1, 2004 5:59 PM by Clark E Myers

Hey, Kalamazoo is cool. It's got one of the great American place names.

These days, large-scale typesetting operations tend to be out in the Midwest. Braun-Brumfield's in Wisconsin. Black Dot is (was?) in Crystal Lake. When you can zip stuff back and forth electronically, you just need to be at the other end of a clean connection. The Midwest has cheap space, good phone lines, and an underemployed literate population.

Mark Bourne, I've tried that, though not on my monitor, and it never gets any better.

Patrick, you're right. Of course. So it was.

John, Lois: Just the other day I saw what I thought was pitiable conversation on a message board maintained by a vanity publisher. Some of their authors were swapping tips for getting exposure for your book, and one of their suggestions was donating copies to their local libraries. I guess it beats giving them to the Salvation Army.

Posted June 1, 2004 6:00 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Fifteen million dollars

Heck, I worked for NASDAQ from the beginning of the boom through the boom until this past December, and I saw tens of millions go whoosh really fast (we, who worked for the market itself and were basically the wage-slaves behind the scenes, watched with some amount of fascination, dread, and finally horror. Some of my colleagues jumped ship during the height of the boom to take jobs at dot-coms - most were unemployed within six months).

For a different perspective, fifteen million is what a very, very frugal biotech will burn in one year in phase 3 clinical trials, hoping desperately that they have a product that the FDA will approve.

A company with no dollars coming in the door and payroll, rent, and other expenses to meet can go through a heck of a lot of money very, very quickly. This is especially true in a boom economy when payroll costs and rent are high.

Posted June 1, 2004 6:05 PM by Jill Smith

Every time--EVERY time--this issue comes up I am swallowed by sighs. I want to go out with copies of diatribes by TNH and Yog and Annie Crispin and every other professional writer and editor (and me) who has tried to explain to these poor benighted souls that they are being had.

And for every one you help (and who curses you for helping!) there are fifty more waiting behind them waving a mss. in one hand and discrete dollars in the other.

'Consumed by sighs' will surely be on my headstone.

Jane

Posted June 1, 2004 6:11 PM by jane

15 milllion dollars total burn? That's nothing.

The burn rate record that I have heard knocked about was Amazon's which around 1998 or so was 25 million dollars a month. Of course Amazon had five years cash to burn at that rate. It would not be hard for any high tech startup to go through $15M -- the insistence on high speed by dot coms not only increased the rate of spending, but the actual cost of a lot of the work done.

Posted June 1, 2004 6:23 PM by Claude Muncey

One of my friends, an old friend, a high school friend, started working for a vanity press earlier in the year. The one and only time we discussed it in depth, he defended them up and down (and insisted they were merely PoD, not vanity, but, uh, I've been to their web site, and I sure can't tell the difference). I tried to explain to him what my issue was with the company, and his basic position is, "But these people wouldn't get published if it weren't for $company, and no regular publisher would publish x sort of book, so what's the problem?"

I told him that one of my problems was the fact that they hide their actual costs in the very end of the PDF with the contract in it -- my biggest reason for insisting 'vanity' is the right word -- and asked him if he'd looked at the costs, but that didn't help him understand my problem with the company, and we ended the conversation vaguely disgruntled with one another.

I've thought about pointing him here, but I'm pretty much afraid that he's going to say either a) the clients they have are different or b) the company itself is different.

So I've been avoiding talking to him about his job... which means pretty much avoiding talking to him, lately, because he's so excited about it. He's editing, which he really loves doing (and he is good at it), and he was out of work for months before that...

Ms. Jane, may I borrow your epitaph?

Posted June 1, 2004 6:26 PM by Tina

Midsize Michigan cities are OK with me.

Actually, Patrick, I liked some of the smaller ones. Two years in Oscoda were some of the best of my childhood, and Frankenmuth around Christmas was fun.

Posted June 1, 2004 6:31 PM by Claude Muncey

They still make guitars in Kalamazoo. That's where Heritage is. Comparable quality to Gibson, not as much money. Good deal.

Posted June 1, 2004 6:48 PM by Chuck Nolan

Lois & Teresa:

From my observations and what the librarians were telling me at the time, I don't think what I was seeing were author donations. Two notable datapoints: few if any of the books I was spotting were written by local authors, and Multnomah County's system is itself large enough that most incoming donations of books go directly to their used/discard retail operation.

Posted June 1, 2004 8:01 PM by John C. Bunnell

Maybe those books were acquired by a semi-published author with spending authority, who was doing his or her best to help out other semi-published authors. They do that. You can find rings of them on Amazon, where A reviews B's and C's books, B reviews C's and F's, C reviews D's and E's, plus A's second book, and so on. Every review gives the book five stars. My only consolation is that they don't write the kind of reviews you get out of people who've actually read the book.

Okay, not my only consolation. My other consolation is the Amazon ranking of their sales. When it isn't nonexistent, it's astronomically low.

One of the classic forms of the fake review is where they start with an elaborately casual explanation of how they came to be in possession of a copy of this book, seeing as how it's not available in bookstores and is showing zero sales on Amazon. Most often they say they found it lying around at a friend's house. They picked it up to have a look, and found themselves unable to put it down. This explanation is the kind of review you get from people who haven't read the book. Even naked self-interest can't make fellow authors read these turkeys.

Posted June 1, 2004 8:49 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Teresa, I had a related question for you. Over at the SLF, we've started a small press co-operative, designed to let presses share tables in dealer's room, exchange ads, throw joint parties, that kind of thing. Just did a table at WisCon, big success, lots of fun. Our table made about $900 for the various small presses who shared it (some presses made a lot, some made nothing, which is a whole interesting topic on its own). We'll hopefully be at World Fantasy too.

What I'm wondering is whether you think we ought to be selective or discriminating in some way. So far we've just let anyone and everyone join -- if you self-identify as a small press (including self-publishing of chapbooks and such), you're welcome to join us. Membership is free this year, and will probably be some miniscule dues next year (in the $5-10 range).

We've only been going for a few months, and haven't had any trouble yet, but reading this thread, I'm wondering if we ought to be trying to sift for scam presses and denying them access to the co-op? Although that makes me worry that we'd just be additionally penalizing poor authors who are already fairly screwed... :-(

Would appreciate your thoughts. Details on our co-op are here:

http://www.speculativeliterature.org/Co-op/

Thanks!

Posted June 1, 2004 9:40 PM by Mary Anne Mohanraj

"Jeeves, while attempting to locate the whisky decanter at Lady Fantod's house the other night, I happened upon this book, which since that moment I have been utterly unable to put down."

"Do you propose to write a review of the volume, sir?"

"Of 'Oryx and Squid, a Scientific Romance of the Aetherial World,' by someone calling themselves 'Spiritus Vivendi?' Good Lord, no. If Bingo Little heard of it, I should be obliged to review Mrs. Bingo's output until the end of time. No, I just want to put the deuced thing down."

"Quite conceivably so, sir. Here, I believe, is the difficulty; the spine has been heavily bird-limed. May I presume that you did not obtain the decanter?"

"Gosh, Jeeves, the countryside does have a knack for the cunning snare, doesn't it?"

"Quite usual among the woodlanders, sir."

Posted June 1, 2004 9:42 PM by John M. Ford

That was before they'd burned through fifteen million dollars. I'm still wondering how they did that.

These guys were in Silicon Valley, right? People were stark raving mad then. Seriously. Microbrew beers flowed like water and money flowed like, well, microbrew beers. It wasn't enough simply to pay well and have a good team spirit. No, to attract the hotshots and the public interest, your company had to be cool. Foozball tables in the break room, three-story slides in the middle of the office complex, special areas for you to bring your pet to the cube farm, memberships in cybercafes...I'm surprised they stopped at $15 million, frankly.

Ahem. What Keith said about the advice.

Posted June 1, 2004 9:43 PM by mythago

And here is another sort of scam: writequickly.com

How would you feel if in exactly 28 days time, you were holding the finished version of your own book...? New CD course from best selling author Nick Daws shows how to do it in UNDER 28 days, in less than ONE HOUR a day.

I'm sure the editors around here will want to know about:

The wonder of Power Editing and how it’ll enable you to edit your entire book in under an hour!

Posted June 1, 2004 10:36 PM by Andy Perrin

Claude: I think Frankenmuth is always fun, but I'm a real Christmas freak. (See here for my latest Christmas desire.) I used to live in Lansing, so it was easy to get there, but I haven't been in some time now. Hmmm. I'm going to Ann Arbor next month. Hmm.

MKK

Posted June 1, 2004 10:47 PM by Mary Kay

Andy: Too late, I made fun of them ages ago. Are they really doing Power Editing now?

Mythago, what I know is that they had branch offices in a half-dozen cities, which seemed odd and unnecessary for an online business.

Also, a characteristic they shared with all the other e-publishing startups of that period was that I don't know of a single industry person who was hired by them, or even solicited to be hired. What's strange about that is that publishing has a sort of Oort Cloud of extremely experienced freelancers who are between in-house jobs -- a condition that can persist for years. While you're hanging on, you take two or three or four part-time gigs. They're part of what makes publishing run. Anyway, the offer of a full-time in-house job with decentish pay plus health benefits could have gotten you former heads of lines, senior editors, manging editors, production heads, acquisition & development specialists, contract specialists -- you name it. Granted, some of them would be a bit behind the curve on the latest software, but most of what you do in any publishing operation is deal with authors, manuscripts, printers, etc.; and that, they knew in spades. But they weren't hired. They weren't even wooed. The e-publishing startups hired a bunch of know-nothing youngsters -- you know, people like themselves.

I was working on a large complex post about the whole e-publishing boom and bust, and all its follies, at the moment that a large passenger jet slammed into the first tower. Somehow I've never been able to pull that material together again.

Mary Anne, a bad scammer can publish a good book; but in general, if they're publishing everyone who wants to be published, their books will be unsaleable. I think you should screen for those, not because they're scammers, but because a reader who picks up one book off your table and finds it execrable is unlikely to browse another. That's one of the things we were telling the Xlibris guys, long time gone on SFF Net: nobody will wade through slush to find the good stuff. Life is too short, and the world is full of unread books.

("Fantod! He said fantod!")

Posted June 1, 2004 10:56 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Someone used 'bellicose' after dinner at Ruby Tuesday's Saturday night, in my car, on our way to Sheridan's Frozen custard to make up for an average meal at a chain where one or two of the folks were vegetarians who had to just eat sides, etc. (Gee, KC ii a horrid place for vegetarians.)

He was referring to how one of our group didn't act when... she asked for a burger plain with bacon and something else on it. No dressing, etc. It kept coming out wrong, and she's allergic to things like mayo, mustard, etc. It took four tries and she took the last good try with her to eat on the say. At one point it was obvious the cook just scraped it all off and re-bunned it (wrong choice with an allergic person.,..). GRR. Waitress was execellent, though. And we gave her a special atta-girl afterward. Cook needs to be flushed, though.

He said that because she didn't act bellicose that she got better treatment. I've NEVER hears an American user use that word, but Grant is from South Africa, and English-speaking.

Posted June 2, 2004 12:03 AM by Paula Helm Murray

I was startled to learn that MoveOn's book had been published by a Maui press which normally specializes in what looks like New Age material. Obviously MoveOn didn't need a vanity publisher, but Maui? I suspect all the small presses here on Oahu are turning green.

Posted June 2, 2004 2:59 AM by Linkmeister

Back in 2000-1, a friend who was also my doctor (a D.O.) spent a good portion of our sessions together telling me about the book he was getting published, based on the WWI memoir of another friend/patient. He tried to sell me on getting my book published the same way, but I was politely noncommittal. He eventually went with Xlibris, and had a book signing at the local Borders. At one point he told me a junior agent was trying to get approval to take him on as a client, but nothing ever came of that.

A year later, my friend was dead of a heart attack right before his daughter's wedding, and a year after that, his practice went bankrupt for want of a decent replacement doctor. But that book of his is still on Amazon. At least one of the two reviews was written by one of his medical assistants.

It's sad and strange, but that little book, which made him so happy and excited at a time when he was fed up with medicine, is now Dr. E's legacy.

Posted June 2, 2004 3:31 AM by Karen Funk Blocher

Let me get this straight: Theresa tells us that there is no really credible alternative to traditional publishers (vanity publishers usually producing crap, as was witnessed through a link from this very site the other week). Perhaps Theresa is right, but what about self publishing, where the author becomes more-or-less a traditional publisher (with or without minimum print runs)? Isn't that a credible alternative?

Full disclosure: I'm not about to use a vanity press or become a self publisher; I'm just an interested by-stander.

Posted June 2, 2004 3:46 AM by SRH

Yes, self-publishing is an alternative.

Yes, it's perfectly honest and honorable (and at least in the case of poetry) almost traditional.

Self-publication works best with specialized non-fiction and sub-genres and micro-niches where the author is going to have to sell all the books face-to-face anyway. The local history, the church cookbook, that sort of thing.

True self-publication is a whole bunch cheaper than the every-penny-extraction process that most vanity shops represent.

The major problem that writers run into with self-publication is this: They forget to wear two hats, the writer hat and the publisher hat. They forget to pay themselves as writers regardless of what's happening on the publishing side of their desk.

To avoid violating Yog's Law, the self-publisher needs to move money from his Publisher pocket to his Author pocket. Figure out what royalties he's going to pay himself, buget them into the cover price of his book, and pay them on-time.

Like any other small business, the usual problem with self-publication is under-capitalization. Whole piles of small businesses in all categories fail; self-publication is no different.

The vanity-presses and scammers like to blur the distinction between self-publication and vanity publication (some of the vanity PoDs call themselves "self-publication services" for example), but there is one.

In vanity publishing, on the day the first book comes off the press, the money has flowed from the author and the publisher owns the rights. In self-publication money has flowed from the author and the author owns the rights.

Posted June 2, 2004 4:14 AM by James D. Macdonald

Self-publishing can be a rational and even nominally profitable exercise -- but virtually never for genre fiction, or really any sort of fiction.

I've seen it done, and done well, in two categories in particular. One is local history/memoirs; sometimes a person will put together a book in order to preserve and circulate a body of obscure but interesting material, while in other cases a local government or foundation will contract with a professional for a book project.

The other category -- and I think there's a company or two that specializes in producing these -- is the Insert Your Club's Name Here Cookbook, wherein the cookbook is sold as a fundraising project by the sponsoring organization, whose members have contributed the recipes. With the advent of Kinko's and relatively inexpensive comb-binding, these can be done pretty cheaply without seeming tacky.

Posted June 2, 2004 4:15 AM by John C. Bunnell

Heh; cross-posted with Yog.

It should be noted that in a few cases -- particularly organizational histories (i.e. churches, corporations, the local mountain-climbing club, etc.) -- the sponsor of a self-publishing project is more interested in printing and distributing books than in making money for itself.

But even in those cases, a sponsoring organization (even a nonprofit) will sometimes hire a professional writer to do the actual wordsmithing.

Posted June 2, 2004 4:26 AM by John C. Bunnell

After reading all this, I think if I ever do write that novel, I will just send it to the slush pile and hope for the best. Heh heh.

I guess if I ever did actually get it written, I would feel a lot more desperate about getting it published than i do now when it is a mere wisp of imagination, though. But I hope I would never get desperate enough to jump through the hoops and pay the fees this organization and other vanity publishers would want.

Posted June 2, 2004 5:05 AM by Anna in Cairo

My eyebrows went up. “They’re making that many corrections?”

He beamed. “They’re rewriting those things in fourth pass.”

Long ago, in another life, I worked for a large publishing company as a pre-press team leader/template goddess on a huge textbook project they had to get out in less time than they'd left themselves.

Three weeks after the drop-dead date, we were still sending corrections to the printer to be stripped in to existing plates.

The bitter joke around the office was that the books were going to go out to each school with a dedicated onsite typesetter to make corrections in the classroom for the kids to strip in with tape.

Posted June 2, 2004 6:52 AM by julia

What I don't get about these people, in their FAQ they list as separate services that they acquire an ISBN and a barcode for you -- the barcode of a book is 978 + (first 9 digits of ISBN) + check digit, which I understand is automatically allocated when your ISBN is. Why would you want another one?

Posted June 2, 2004 7:28 AM by Jules

SRH, I neither said nor thought that. Try the link for Booklocker. They're not traditional at all. Try one of the three links to that article about self-publishing, I wrote it.

If all else fails, you can consider the fact that I've off and on been self-publishing since the late 1970s. Before I worked in publishing, certainly before the web was invented, I knew that unless fiction is unpublishable for some reason other than its quality, publishing it yourself is a very bad idea.

John and Yog both have good, practical advice on the subject. My take on self-publishing is more radical: whatever I spend on it is gone forever.

Posted June 2, 2004 8:37 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Imho, the cheesiness of Writer's Collective is shown as early as their url--they're a business, but they present themselves as a .org. What's more, it's not that they couldn't get writerscollective.com--if you try that url, you're sent to the .org.

As for people not reading slush for free, the fan fiction subculture has a lot of systems of distributed evaluation. Everyone I've talked with about fan fiction says that 90% of it is awful, but somehow the good stuff gets found with no one getting paid to do the selection.

And here's a special case of self-publication: George Chesbro's dangerousdwarf.com. His publishers had been letting his books go out of print, including some which were getting high prices as used books, so he went into self-publication for all of his books, and seems to be happy enough with it.

Are their publishers which keep track of used book prices as an indicator for what to bring back into print?

Posted June 2, 2004 9:13 AM by Nancy Lebovitz

Just to give some real-life examples of successful self-publishing (where "successful" means that the author/publisher has reached their desired audience and has not spent more than they budgeted, in some instances has indeed earned money, and emphatically has not been taken to the cleaners):

My grandmother, an enthusiastic geneaologist published The Paper Chase to the Coulsons of Clarke in 2000. This modest 5 x 8 paperback contains the story of her research into thefamily, photos from the family farm, copies of the documents she has meticulously acquired, and a family tree. The book represents the culmination of decades of my Grandmom's research; she knows that nobody will ever buy the thing, but it's been distributed to the family, the historical society for the town in which the family settled, and the Archives of Ontario. When I have kids, they'll get copies. That's what she wanted from the book, and we're all happy that she did it. (It was also my second-ever copy-editing job, and I'm reasonably proud of it.)

Sarahealth.com publishes books about health issues through Trafford Press, a POD operation. The books are marketed over the Internet, thereby saving readers the possible discomfort asking at the bookstore for such titles as Women and Unwanted Hair. Again, the market for this sort of book is clearly defined, quite small, and has an interest in Internet or mail-order sales, rather than traditional bookstore sales. This preference for Internet sales allows the publisher to bypass expensive distribution and the costs of a print run.

Like the cookbooks and special-interest books that John, James, and Teresa have mentioned, these are books that have a specialized audience. In the first case, the publisher (and author) had no desire to earn any money from the book; in the second the publisher recognizes that her earnings are going to be small and slow, and that her sales are going to be in single books, rather than bulk sales to bookstores. Self-publishing works in both cases. You'll note that neither book is a work of fiction and that the readership is not a literary one.

And Teresa, you had mentioned having worked for Q&Q at some point, but not what you had done. We have a subscription at the office, and amuse ourselves by tracking all the folks who have passed through our offices (either in person in manuscript) through its pages. We've never actually done work for Q&Q, though.

Posted June 2, 2004 10:30 AM by jennie

my latest Christmas desire

I love it, Mary Kay, and I can't wait to see the superhero version. Maybe you can persuade Bronner's to carry it?

*grin*

Posted June 2, 2004 10:34 AM by Claude Muncey

Okay, here's an experiment. There seems to be a lot of self-publishing bashing here, all of which is reasonable and probably correct. I feel like self-publishing is a way for those without any connections to the industry to get their work out to people in one way or another, even if it is just to friends and family. I think that a lot of people here tend to know a lot about the industry in general, so their biases are a given. I, however, am not one of those people.

I'm in the process of trying to get my book published and I'm going to go about the "traditional" methods of getting it out to people. I'm anxious to see whether someone with absolutely no connections to the industry can get their work in the hands of the right people and get published. I bring this up because, being the ignorant soul that I am, I was seriously considering just self-publishing my work. Now that I've read all of the information here and the links that go with it, I'm scared sh*tless! Perhaps my little plan won't work and I'm on the verge of getting scammed.

So let's see. My manuscipt is good and it's in a genre that is hot right now. Let's see if TNH's quality credo works. If it's good enough, then it will get published. Otherwise, I'm going to have to screw myself by publishing it all by my lonesome.

Posted June 2, 2004 10:43 AM by Randall P.

Are there publishers which keep track of used book prices as an indicator for what to bring back into print?

I don't know, but I don't think it's a great idea for any publisher other than a small press.

Suppose that you work for a publisher and scan Bookfinder on a regular basis to track probable sale prices for a given book. This actually requires a fair amount of work in that every time you checked you'd need to compare the list of copies for sale to the prior list, item by item, in order to add new listings and to identify removed listings as probable sales. (There might be a way to get the data from Bookfinder automatically - certainly there are ways to get the data from the systems Bookfinder searches automatically (since Bookfinder does it), but that would require a fair amount of programming on the front end.)

Assuming you're willing to put in the time to do this, after a year you might have 100 or so probable sale prices. (I persist in calling them "probable" because you don't actually know what happened to a book that was removed from its listing service - it might have been sold for the listed price, it might have been sold for less, it might have been lost, etc.) Is that useful data? If you work for a small press which is contemplating a 500-copy run, or something in that neighborhood, it might be. If you work for a larger publisher which is contemplating a 5000-copy run, it's not. If a randomly-polled set of 100 book buyers are willing to pay cover price or more for your book, that's useful data (assuming a pool of 100 is statistically significant). The data you actually have at this point doesn't demonstrate anything except that there are 100 people willing to pay cover price or more, and they already have copies anyway.

This is even ignoring the fact that many books which go for high prices on the used-book market do so because of collectibility, and a collector who is willing to pay $100 for a first edition of a book may have no interest at all in a reprint (most likely because they already have a non-first copy).

Posted June 2, 2004 11:05 AM by Dan Blum

More interesting to track might be how long it takes to sell copies... books that sell quickly are probably more marketable.

You'd have to account for strange things, like first editions (which will usually take longer to sell, I suspect) and under/overpriced copies (similar effects). Probably only consider books with at least (say) 10 listings, and only use listings withing 75-125% of the median price.

Could work.

Posted June 2, 2004 11:32 AM by Jules

Fan fiction has its own mechanisms for finding the good stuff (archives with good reputations, frex). That there is "good stuff" in fan fiction comes about because fan fiction has no legal existence. If you've written the best Star Trek novel in the world, and you weren't pre-approved by Paramount, it's not going to get published. It can't. So -- you find people who have written the best Star Trek novel in the world putting out underground copies, and people who are dedicated to finding it, and passing the word to interested others. (These still aren't printed anymore, mostly, and are available for free.)

On the other hand, if you've written the best any-other-genre novel in the world, you'll be able to get it traditionally published. So, right off the bat, the books that are non-traditionally published aren't going to have the Really Good Stuff in the mix. (Very rare exceptions, and then, they're lost in the noise.)

Yes, there are review sites that review self-published and vanity-published books. Midwest Book Review for one. But -- MBR isn't very helpful. Every review there is a rave, and the reviews are written by people who aren't well known for their reviewing skills (anyone can play -- if you want to be a reviewer for them, go here). It isn't a trustworthy source.

We aren't bashing self-publishing here. Teresa's done it, I've done it, lots of other people I know and respect have done it (hi, Mike!). What we are bashing are the snake-oil salesmen who prey on naive, desperate, or deluded writers in order to put a suction hose into their bank accounts.

Posted June 2, 2004 11:48 AM by James D. Macdonald

Somehow, a vanity press got my name as a person they should send free review copies to. Why, I have no idea. The sole positive aspect of this is that the books I get can be sold or pitched, unlike real ARCs, which are difficult to deal with if I don't want to keep them. Most (I want to say all) ARCs can't be sold, and aren't clearly my property anyway, so giving them away is not really an option. Throwing them out seems wrong, even when it's a book like _A State of Disobedience_. Happily, the aura of evil around a vanity press product allows me to overcome what few ethics I have regarding destroying printed material.

Posted June 2, 2004 11:55 AM by James Nicoll

Actually, I can think of a couple of cases in which authors have achieved reprints of books with very high used-copy prices -- both in SF/F. Doris Egan's "Ivory" series of paperback originals from DAW was at one point highly sought after on the used market (I saw reports of $60 a copy and up); DAW subsequently brought out a new omnibus edition of the novels. Sherwood Smith's kids' fantasies about Wren were chasing even higher single-copy prices -- and she's just now had all three reprinted by Firebird in new editions.

Teresa may have more to say about this, but I think a large part of the equation has to do with small original print runs (at most 10,000 copies of a new genre title, often possibly far fewer) for a title that generates sustained demand /after the usual publicity cycle has ended.

Much depends on how long it takes the word-of-mouth thing to kick in. Sometimes the publisher gets lucky, and it happens early enough in the product life cycle for them to keep a title in print practically forever (witness Barry Hughart's BRIDGE OF BIRDS, which Del Rey is still selling). But often, as with the Wren and Ivory books, word of mouth doesn't generate the consistent "buzz" until the publisher has run out of inventory, lost rights, dropped its fantasy imprint, or otherwise turned its attention elsewhere.

The trick is persuading a publisher that there's demand for a new edition of whatever-it-is. (Elsewhere in cyberspace, we've discovered that one of Yog's own backlist titles is going for $155.75 on Amazon -- and the only other used copy anyone could turn up was over in the UK. This looks to me like an opportunity....)

Posted June 2, 2004 11:57 AM by John C. Bunnell

Other data points of things reprinted after being expensive and hard to find: Pamela Dean's Secret Country trilogy. Wrede & Stevermer's _Sorcery and Cecelia_ (and a newly-written sequel coming in the fall, hooray!). The early to middle Sector General books. Possibly Lee & Miller's original Liaden novels, and the Steerswoman books (I'm not sure how hard to find they were).

Of course there are hard-to-find things that aren't being picked up; in some circles, people inquire yearly after Daniel Keys Moran's _The Long Run_ and other Continuing Time novels. (Okay, _tLR_ was republished in an expensive small-press edition. But there's a COMPLETE TRENT NOVEL sitting unpublished in his desk drawer, gnash wail tear hair. Err, sorry for shouting.) I have my suspicions about why those haven't been picked up, but they're speculations only. Anyway.

Posted June 2, 2004 12:23 PM by Kate Nepveu

For our other fans, another copy of that book turned up in Australia going for $139.60 USD. (Hey, smart publishers, this is the Bad Blood series. Rights available, and a fourth (unwritten) book all plotted out and ready to sweeten the deal.)

Have I thought about self-publishing that series to bring it back into print? Sure I have. Why haven't I? I don't have the startup capital, and the distribution/publicity is beyond my capabilities.

Posted June 2, 2004 12:51 PM by James D. Macdonald

Randall P. --

I think the distinction -- and I say this as someone hideously frustrated by the traditional publishing process -- is whether or not the form of publication will do what you want.

So far as fiction goes, self-publication trades money for some small number of copies of books; without unlikely contacts, expertise, or success, that small number of copies will not achieve wide distribution, and has in consequence no hope of significant reviews, sales, or audience.

(Vanity publication trades rather more money for some delusions of success, since the real scammers don't even provide you with books.)

If it's non-fiction, and there's already a known small audience -- the thirty years' work to produce a detailed monograph about the winter survival strategies of the bumble bees of Baffin Island -- that's ok; the other ninety people and two hundred libraries on the planet who care will be delighted to buy a copy, and the print run of 500 gives you something to sell to the next generation of grad students.

Fiction, though, fiction is art. And art cannot succeed without reaching a wide audience. (Sometimes it gets there by very twisty or lengthy means, but get there it must.)

Self-publication provides no opportunity to reach a wide audience; traditional publishing -- being in the business of selling art -- will provide that opportunity.

So, for my money, if I can't convince the representative of some publisher that my writing has enough potential friends to be worth taking a financial risk on, I should keep trying. It's not a good measure of artistic quality, but it's the one I've got.

Posted June 2, 2004 12:55 PM by Graydon

Graydon, excellent thoughts. I guess my debate in regards to self-publishing is in whether or not the actual chance has been given. I've read Slushkiller and other discussions related to it and I find it be to be fear-inducing. I'm not going to delude myself by saying that my fiction is the greatest thing ever written, but I know what I've got is good stuff.

I wonder whether someone like myself would even be given the chance. I wonder whether someone would actually take the time to read what I've written as opposed to just dismissing me because I wasn't "recommended" or "referred". It seems that this world is a place of connections and if you don't have the connection, you're not in the "club". I have no connections, so how am I going to break into that world?

So to relate this to self-publishing, I guess the problem for someone like me is how long do you keep trying before you say, "Hey, if no one will give me a chance, then I'm doing it myself."? Has there ever been a self-publishing success? (I mean for someone who has done the leg work themselves and not sold out to the highest bidder once a little heat has been produced by their book.) Forgive me naive postings, but these are the debates one has with themselves when they are beginning a process such as this.

Posted June 2, 2004 1:27 PM by Randall P.

Actually, I can think of a couple of cases in which authors have achieved reprints of books with very high used-copy prices -- both in SF/F.

I'd be willing to bet that in these and the other cited cases the publishers had more to go on than just those prices, especially since before the rise of Internet used-book selling as we know it today, the pricing information would have been very hard to track.

But yeah, the number of copies already out there is certainly a consideration. If people are paying $100 a pop for copies of a book which had a run of 1,000 or so, it's not entirely unreasonable to assume that there are a bunch more people who would like to buy copies at more reasonable prices. If people are paying that much for copies of something which has 20,000 copies extant, my assumption would be that the market is collector-driven, or something along those lines (assuming the book didn't become incredibly popular asfter publication for some reason, but then the publisher presumably knows about that anyway).

Posted June 2, 2004 1:36 PM by Dan Blum

I'm pretty sure I disagree with the claim that "art cannot succeed without reaching a wide audience." I've experienced plenty of art that never reached a wide audience, but was "successful" as far as I was concerned. Heck, I've read unpublished books that I thought brilliantly successful in several ways, but I didn't think Tor Books would be any good at publishing them. That didn't mean I didn't think they were artistically "successful." When I'm evaluating submissions to Tor, my bottom-line question isn't "Is this a good book?" (Although that's an important one.) It's "Is this the kind of book we can do well?" We can't do everything. No publisher can.

To remark on a different post, I'm definitely sure I don't understand why anybody, after all times we've explained otherwise, would still claim that these conversations are about "bashing" the idea of "self-publishing." What the hell do you think Making Light is? Chopped liver? A salaried job? An organ of of Time Warner?

Self-publishing is great. Many fine things have been self-published. Once in a blue moon somebody gets rich from it. A few times in a blue moon, somebody makes a living from it. Warning against the veils and glamours of vanity presses is not the same thing as crusading against "self-publishing." If you plan to self-publish, what you want is a printer, not a vanity press. Learn the difference.

Posted June 2, 2004 1:37 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

CafePress has kindly set up operations as a POD, and while it's a bitch to get the typesetting correct in PDF format, if you just want to have a book in your hands, or to give to your grandma, it's ideal. I printed a copy of my first novel just to have it (I keep it on my desk for inspiration as I write out the next query letter for it,) and it cost me a grand total of 20 dollars. It seems to me if somebody wanted to go the self-publishing route, that would be the ideal way to do it. At least it doesn't cost money up front.

Posted June 2, 2004 1:54 PM by S. Mitchell

Patrick,
I think part of the conversation here is someone like me actually "learning the difference". The illusion of vanity presses is very real and part of the process of reading pages like this is for me to see the pitfalls of these presses. It's hard for me as an unpublished writer to see the perils of such organizations because it is so enticing.

Forgive my choice of words when I used the word "bashing", but as I said, this is a learning process for me and it's a little bit disconcerting for a person who likes this community and these discussions to be ripped because I came in late and haven't read the other nine thousand posts. Cranky, cranky...

Posted June 2, 2004 1:54 PM by Randall P.

Randall's more recent comments slipped in while I was growling at his earlier one. The role of fear and anxiety in this process is real. I'd be the last to say I think it's easy to be an aspiring unpublished writer, nor do I much care for the Panglossian notion that it's just fine that people should have to jump through hoops.

My problem is that given that the core mission of most book publishers is not to administer the perfectly-fair Slush Olympics, I'm not really sure how to make matters better. I do think we take way too long at Tor, but see previous sentence. Our actual prime directive is to do a good job at publishing what we've already got.

Posted June 2, 2004 2:02 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Randall and I are clearly continuing to post almost simultaneously. Back on the Well, the term for this was "slippage."

Posted June 2, 2004 2:03 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Oh, great Patrick! Post something nice just when I put "cranky, cranky" in my post. Now I feel like a jerk. Can't we put those winky-winky emoticons here so that I don't have to look like a dork?

Posted June 2, 2004 2:06 PM by Randall P.

Randall P: I wonder whether someone like myself would even be given the chance. I wonder whether someone would actually take the time to read what I've written as opposed to just dismissing me because I wasn't "recommended" or "referred".

Dude, you do realize you're asking this question on the blog of an editor who, last time I saw her in person, was enthusing to me about a novel she'd bought out of the slush?

It *happens*. So put that aside the best you can and expend your energy on your *writing*.

Posted June 2, 2004 2:07 PM by Kate Nepveu

Randall P. --

So far as I know, not only has there never been a self-published fiction success, a self published fiction success is impossible, because soemone who self-publishes simply cannot get at the book distribution network in any useful way.

There have been a couple of cases of self-published works coming to the attention of people who could offer them publishing contracts (and thus access to the distribution network) and I'm personally unsure whether that counts as a success for self-publishing or not, but inclined toward 'not'.

As far as connections go, I think your mistake lies in presupposing that connections are necessarily, or even probably, beneficial.

Publishers -- and by extension those editors who are working for publishers of genre fiction -- have two serious challenges when it comes to aquiring new books, at least so far as my own highly imperfect understanding goes.

The first is that they are horribly understaffed, so that the work of getting what they've got out the door is not sufficiently encompassed by normal business hours. This leaves only narrow slices of time to consider any new works, slices of time which are not sufficient to the volume recieved by a couple orders of magnitude. (Something which seems to apply at houses which don't look at unsolicited submissions, as well as those which do.)

The second is that there is a long standing trend for individual sf books to sell fewer copies; this is in large part a side effect of the total title count exploding, since the total sales of sf books is trending up. It's just that it's taking many more books worth of sunk costs to do it.

That puts margins down, it makes the consolidating distributors complain about price points, and it causes push back from retailers who have sales volume expectations.

Which means that an acquiring editor is looking at not 'will this book sell?' so much as 'is this book likely to have the least bad sales prospects of all the books that I could buy this month?', or, 'are we going to do good enough job of helping this book find its friends to make the effort worth our while?'

You will note that this is at least a six chicken question; there's a lot of unknowable future in it, and the available means of entrail reading are quite bad. I consider it vaguely miraculous that mostly, the people and process involved get this right.

That isn't a process which connections are able to much affect. (Sales history, yes, but sales hsitory isn't connections in the sense that I understood you to mean.)

So, well, so far as I know, it's a choice between a process that might work and one which surely won't. That's an easy choice, at least if one is a purely rational actor.

Posted June 2, 2004 2:11 PM by Graydon

Kate,
That's the problem! I've been working on my writing for over a year now and now I'm done. All of a sudden I have to focus on getting published. Ugh!

Okay, everyone is now sick of me. Never meant for that to happen. I will refrain from posting for a week.

Love to all,
Randall

Posted June 2, 2004 2:11 PM by Randall P.

Let me address one other comment of Randall's.

"I wonder whether someone like myself would even be given the chance. I wonder whether someone would actually take the time to read what I've written as opposed to just dismissing me because I wasn't 'recommended' or 'referred.' It seems that this world is a place of connections and if you don't have the connection, you're not in the 'club'. I have no connections, so how am I going to break into that world?"

It's possible to both underrate and overrate the importance of the "who you know" factor. At Tor, we actually look at unsolicited submissions (albeit at a glacial pace). Many other publishers say they don't, but I'm pretty sure none of them enforce their "agented or previously-published authors only" policies with anything like rigor. The fact is that editors and publishers constantly need good new writers; nobody lives off an established stable forever. The problem of needing connections is a problem of human life; everyone with a pulse makes their way in the world by extending their awareness through friends, family, and acquaintances. Yes, you absolutely need "connections," in the sense of "maximizing the chances that your work will come to the attention of those who can do you good." That's true in all areas of life. It's also true of editors and publishers. You're trying to "connect" to them; but if your work is any good, they're also trying to connect to you.

Which isn't to say that everything in the garden is lovely and everything works as it should. But the basic task of navigating human networks of affinity and information isn't as daunting as you're making it sound, and I speak as an actual shy person. You've been doing it all your life. You're doing it right now.

PS: Please don't feel you need to "refrain from posting for a week." As to your "cranky, cranky" remark, you were right--I was being cranky.

Posted June 2, 2004 2:16 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Patrick --

I call success for art -- this particular chunk of art -- affecting the contents of a lot of people's heads; I call success as art working for whomever is experiencing it.

This may well be yet another manifestation of my lamentable tendency to split hairs into quarters, but I really do think that the "success for" kind of artistic success requires getting the art in front of a lot of people.

(This may be a good point to note that much of frustration with the traditional publishing process rests on my inability to write fiction which sounds like the utterance of a normal human being, and my perception of the consequences thereof.)

Posted June 2, 2004 2:20 PM by Graydon

I think there are different meanings of the word 'success' at play here. A piece of art can be a success without the artist being a success. Most painters die in poverty (or is that an urban myth?). That doesn't mean their paintings are failures as art. But they weren't "successful" art in that they failed to provide a living to the artist.

Personally, I think we're better off when art is made by amateurs in the true sense of the word - except that were that the case only the leisure classes would make art. But that's almost true now, except in music (and grafitti).

Posted June 2, 2004 2:33 PM by Xopher

Randall P: All of a sudden I have to focus on getting published. Ugh!

Yeah, it's an ugh. But, once you've sent your book off to the agents/publisher you've chosen as a good fit--you get to work on the *next* thing while you're waiting to hear. Which has to be more fun, right?

Posted June 2, 2004 2:36 PM by Kate Nepveu

Xopher, I think Graydon's usage had more to do with whether or not the work of art is able to communicate something to a public. So if an artist paints a picture, and the picture is hung in a gallery for people to see, thereby giving them the opportunity to share the artist's vision, the picture is achieving some modicum of success as a work of art, even if the artist is impoverished.

If a writer's deathless prose is not reaching a public because it's buried in all the dross of self-publishing, then the author's vision isn't being communicated at all. It's just languishing. And the book fails, not merely commercially, but also as a tool for sharing a vision.

Posted June 2, 2004 2:46 PM by jennie

jennie, that makes a lot of sense. If I pick up such a book and read it, it may move me (thus being a success in that instance) even if no one else ever sees it (making it a failure in general).

Posted June 2, 2004 2:48 PM by Xopher

The Midwest has cheap space, good phone lines, and an underemployed literate population.

And lower overhead costs, and better transportation links. The latter is surprisingly important. We've all moved books.

I think that the next Harry Potter book may go out on rail, if not barge.

Posted June 2, 2004 2:53 PM by Erik V. Olson

We're very sorry, Mrs. Rowling, but there aren't that many owls in the whole world?

Posted June 2, 2004 2:56 PM by Graydon

Keep track of OP books with high continuing demand? Heck yes. Some years back I copied off a long string of reviews from Ĺmazon, put them into tidy format, printed them out, and presented them to my boss. They all said one or more of the following things:

"I read the book back in college, and IT WAS AMAZING."

"Never lend your copy of this to someone else, because they won't give it back and you'll never find another one."

"Somebody should reprint this book."

Turns out he'd also been wondering about that. They were. The book's back in print now as a trade paperback, with a zippy cover by up-and-coming fantasy artist Gustave Dore. Sales are doing just fine. Since then, we've put Cowboy Feng's back into print as well.

Nancy, the fanfic universe has evolved some remarkably innovative, effective mechanisms for generating and finding the Good Stuff: Beta readers. Cumulative ratings. Archives. And of course, the entire "Mary Sue" body of critical theory.

As far as I'm concerned, the single foolproof way to tell whether your fiction is good goes like this: 1. Get yourself some good beta readers. 2. Write stories. Pass them along. Pay attention to your feedback. 3. When your beta readers start yowling for more, passing copies along to their friends, and thinking about stories of their own set in your narrative universe, you're ready to go.

Another thing I've noticed about the fanfic universe is that when they post advice and tips for writers, it's far less likely to be either a load of codswallop, like that gentleman who thinks you ought to lie in your cover letters, or lifted without credit from other sources. It's a universe that pays attention.

Jennie, Patrick was a freelancer for Q&Q, and legally I wasn't there at all. That was because Patrick still had Landed Immigrant status if nobody looked at it too hard, but I was technically just a tourist who happened to be living and working in Canada.

Claude, that place you linked to has weird stuff, seriously weird stuff.

James Nicoll, you don't have to keep ARCs. You really can give them away. And I don't see why you can't sell them, because everyone else seems to. The scrupulous ones wait until the book is out.

Thing is, they're given to you as a gift, free and clear. Far as I know, you can alienate 'em any way you want.

Kate, thanks for remember. I continue to think it's a swell book.

Randall, I'll admit that I get more irritated than could be warranted by anything you've done personally when I hear about how you have to have connections in publishing to get anywhere with your work. Sure, you get your occasional toxic epiphytes like Plum Sykes, but they don't last. In truth, while it can help a bit to know people, it's the book that matters.

Just ask JIm Macdonald, or John Scalzi, or Stephan Zielinski, or Maureen McHugh, how well Patrick or I knew them when we first encountered their writing. The answer's the same in all cases: we didn't know them from Adam. I wasn't really acquainted with Graydon, either, when he sent me a brilliant first novel that I've been brooding about ever since I rejected it. (He's sent me another one. I'm chewing on it.)

My favorite story of late concerns somebody-or-other's new editorial assistant, who found a book she thought was ravishingly swell in the slushpile at a midsize publishing house. But alas, the book had been on submission for a couple of years, the author had gotten tired of waiting, and the book had gone to some bitty regional publisher. However! By the time the intrepid young editorial assistant came around asking questions, the author had lost patience with the limitations of the bitty regional publisher, and was ready to hear new proposals. The author got back the rights, the editorial assistant was given permission to buy the novel in question plus two more, and at last report everyone seemed very happy.

We're a ramshackle industry, redeemed only by our love for good books.

Posted June 2, 2004 2:56 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

-ing.

Posted June 2, 2004 2:57 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

(quiets first-post nerves)

After Tina's post, I started wondering: should I think twice about working for a press that started as a vanity press? It's reputation and sales are improving, but some of the telltale practices remain, as well as an occasionally embarrassing backlist. The job would give me experience with print buying, title management, editing and freelance hiring--all good and useful things--but is the price somehow too great?

Posted June 2, 2004 2:58 PM by Kellie

Randall P.: That's the problem! I've been working on my writing for over a year now and now I'm done. All of a sudden I have to focus on getting published. Ugh!

Hmm. Focus on that while writing the next one, and the one after that, etc.?

(Of course, all I seem to be writing with any regularity are short pieces--poetry, short stories--and I'm sure others here can give you better advice! But that's what I'd be doing in your position.)

Posted June 2, 2004 3:07 PM by Yoon Ha Lee

Keep track of OP books with high continuing demand? Heck yes. Some years back I copied off a long string of reviews from Amazon, put them into tidy format, printed them out, and presented them to my boss.

Now, that I can see. Perhaps I focused too narrowly on the "price" aspect of Nancy's question. What people actually say about the book seems to me to be much more informative.

Posted June 2, 2004 3:07 PM by Dan Blum

Eep! What I get for not refreshing the page quickly enough. Sorry, Kate Nepveu.

Graydon: We're very sorry, Mrs. Rowling, but there aren't that many owls in the whole world?

Bwahahaha! I had to admit I was wondering if the quantities of owl--what's the word, fewmets? scat? pellets?--went to fertilizing mandrakes or something. (I've read 1.5 of the Harry Potter books, and watched two movies, so I don't know if this is actually addressed. It'd be amusing if it were.)

Posted June 2, 2004 3:12 PM by Yoon Ha Lee

Teresa,
I think my problem here is that this whole site has been a revelation to me. I feel like I've gone from zero to light speed in seconds. Everything I've read up to now has been "use your connections" blah, blah, blah, and then the first thing I ever read on this site was Slushkiller (thank you, cursor.org). For me, the simple notion that, while it doesn't happen often, success has come from slushpiles has made me change my way of thinking.

So, the unfortunate part about all of this is the fact that you're all having to watch me undergo a paradigm shift. (Which is why I thought I should stop posting, because sometimes I feel like an idiot!) The fact that the notion of "quality above all" might actually be a reality makes me feel a hundred times better about making an effort. Before I heard those words, a vanity publisher seemed to be a viable route because I wasn't in the mood to try to do what "couldn't be done". Then this whole thread started and I've had to reevaluate my plans.

Ah, well, never underestimate the service you provide. This website is like heroin for me. Enticing, coma-inducing heroin. Mmmm, heroin.

Posted June 2, 2004 3:15 PM by Randall P.

Jim McDonald: Have you considered the reputable PoD outfits, like Wildside Press or E-Reads? I know that writers like Lawrence Watt-Evans and Dave Duncan have gone that route with their otherwise out-of-print backlist, which I at least find gratifying...

Posted June 2, 2004 3:29 PM by Mike Kozlowski

Yoon --

Owls produce two kinds of post-predatory output.

Pellets are the bones and fur of prey swallowed whole or in big chunks with the flesh stripped off them by enzymes in the glandular stomach (raptorial birds don't have crops) wadded together by the stomach muscles and regurgitated. (The valve to the intenstines will only pass "finely divided matter". This is the same reason why ruminant manure tends to the very small pieces, while hind-gut fermenters like horses and elephants tend to the substantial manure, but I digress.)

Digression using inappropriate language? Is that loss of down?

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Pellets are much appreciated by naturalists because they provide such good evidence of what the owl (or other raptorial bird) is eating.

Droppings are the white splashes found around roosting sites, just like any other bird that isn't a grazer. They're too chemically concentrated to make good fertilizer. (Leeching for gunpowder, yes; fertilizer for the mandrake plants, not so good.)

Presumably whomever has to maintain the grounds at Hogwarts has some sort of magical assistance cleaning up the mess, because hundreds of owls would make a lot of mess.

Posted June 2, 2004 3:32 PM by Graydon

Randall:

Connections.

Connections can be useful, but sometimes in ways you might not think of. I connected with an agent via a friend who beta-read the novel - a friend who happens to be a creative writing lecturer with a couple of former students who have been successfully published with Real Publishers. That gave me a contact with one of their agents who was willing to consider taking on a new client. I still had to write a query letter, I was just able to say that someone he had reason to think a good judge thought my writing was worth looking at. The net result after three chapters and then another three chapters was that he liked my writing, didn't think he could successfully market a cross-genre novel (didn't help that this was shortly after the Earthlight closure was announced), but would like to look at the next one if it's mainstream. So no agent for *that* novel (yet) -- but the confidence boost from having an agent say that he wanted to see the next one is extremely useful.

What happens to it next is exactly what would have happened to it anyway. Check out potential markets, send query letters, or pick a likely-looking slushpile. (Er... our esteemed hosts might well get to see it eventually.) And the connections for that are the easy ones -- ask around for likely places to send it to. Lots of places online where you'll get good quality advice.

Posted June 2, 2004 3:34 PM by Julia Jones

Graydon: Oh! I should have looked that up. I'd read about pellets but for whatever stupid reason hadn't realized owls produced perfectly ordinary droppings, too. Consider me enlightened.

*looks at trash can of rapidly accumulating used diapers* Yeah, maybe I shouldn't think about such matters any more than I have to. :-)

Posted June 2, 2004 3:44 PM by Yoon Ha Lee

T.: I remember because it's on the little calendar in my head labeled "forthcoming books I want to read"! Purely selfish reasons.

Yoon Ha Lee: oh, don't worry--can't hurt to have good advice said twice, right?

Randall P.: you're all having to watch me undergo a paradigm shift : Cool. I find that very gratifying, even knowing that my contributions to that are teeny. Go forth and submit your book (after researching your targets and carefully following the submission guidelines, of course).

Posted June 2, 2004 4:06 PM by Kate Nepveu

Randall P. asked, and many people have responded to, "I'm anxious to see whether someone with absolutely no connections to the industry can get their work in the hands of the right people and get published."

Yes, they certainly can. From personal experience: my first sale, a 3 book deal, came out of the slushpile at Luna Books. I've gotten complete manuscript requests from the slushpile _3 times_ at Tor alone (hrm. One was a contest. Not exactly a slushpile, but also not at all because of any connections I had). Out of those 3, one was turned down with a "Please resubmit if you do a revision on this book," one turned into a sale somewhere else (one of the problems with the glacial pace Patrick mentioned, although to be fair to Tor, pretty much everybody responds at a glacial pace), and the third I'm still waiting to hear on.

It can happen. It *does* happen, every day. You said in a later post that part of it was you'd finished the book and now you had to face the scary attempt-at-publication process. It *is* awfully scary and it's incredibly time consuming and it's horribly frustrating, but it's also possible to accomplish it by simple dint of writing a good book. You don't have to be personal buddies with an editor or agent (that might not *hurt*, but you don't *have* to be!). You just have to write a good book, and grit your teeth and send it out and wait. It works. Against what seem to be all the odds, it works.

I'll be over here in the optimistic cheerleader section. *grin*

-Catie

Posted June 2, 2004 4:13 PM by Catie Murphy