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This won’t be an erudite blog – it’ll probably be more of a venting of current angst – but hopefully it might be helpful to anyone else involved in what I call para-writing ie. all the work that writers do that has something to do with writing but isn’t actually the thing itself! I love it – I’m not someone who wants to write all day, everyday – but it certainly has its moments.
So – the history. For the last three summers I have run a 3 day creative writing course for adults, with the aim of publishing an anthology of their work. The first year we published ‘Banbury Stories’, the second year we published ‘New Stories for Old’ and this year we are still hoping to publish ‘Oxfordshire Originals’.
This year, one of the students approached me to explain that he was a small publisher himself. He publishes directories. He knows the process and thought he could do a better job than could be done through Lulu. He was interested in the idea of us forming a sort of co-operative. We would all agree to buy 7 books but would not contribute anything else to the cost of publication and he would aim to promote the book commercially. He thought he could cover his expenses and even make a small profit for us all. For him it was an experiment in publishing something more creative, he explained – and the group would get their work published to a higher specification at little extra cost. He hoped, if it was a success, to publish further anthologies of Oxfordshire Originals on the same basis – not quite vanity publishing but heading in that direction.
I am not a risk-taker on the whole, but on this occasion I thought it was worth a shot. The student seemed to know what he was doing and be very genuine and I still believe that he is. I agreed to be the editor of his version of the anthology as an experiment. Unfortunately, I don’t think he had enough awareness of how time-consuming editing is and we have, I think, had a misunderstanding about what was meant by ‘the stories are to be ready by the end of November’. To cut a long story short, despite my best efforts and protestations, he has gone to press with a book which has far too many minor errors in it for my liking.
I explained my discomfort and asked him to get in touch with his printer urgently to delay the print-run but he has refused and instead is threatening to abort the whole project . I therefore emailed the contributors to ask if they would prefer to go ahead or for me to do my usual Lulu version after Christmas and I’m waiting for the verdict. So far, its 2 all! Meanwhile, the student has emailed the contributors, telling them that I’ve lost faith in the project (untrue) and offering them a different deal which really is vanity publishing.
Deep sigh. What do I learn from this apart from not to take risks?
1. Not all publishing is done to the same high standards of editing! Clearly certain directories are not!
2. Just because someone is a publisher, he/she won’t necessarily know how long the process of editing fiction takes.
3. We are vulnerable. I feel my goodwill has been taken advantage of here. I have put more time into this than if I had been creating my own publication, all unpaid, but am not being treated as an equal partner in the process. I may be being paranoid but I think there are people out there who see publishing as a way to make a quick buck because other people are so keen to be published. That makes writers who also work as creative writing teachers vulnerable and also their students.
4. Some people don’t care about perfection – they just want something published. Others care

Hey, if you want to pay someone to publish your book, for just $3,499, you can get the “Hollywood Connection Publishing and Marketing” package from AuthorHouse, which includes such exciting items as a “personalized back cover.”

The website says:
“The Hollywood Connection publishing package features premium AuthorHouse publishing and marketing services and includes:
- Hollywood Coverage service – a concise synopsis of the book that is the industry-standard tool for identifying viable new material.
- Placement in AuthorHouse’s Hollywood Database, which is accessible to movie and television writers, agents, directors, actors and producers.”

Yeah, I bet that “accessible” database is used a TON by all those producers and directors.

But wait, there’s more. For just, $6,199, there’s “Hollywood Rainmaker Publishing and Marketing.”
And this has all of the above, plus:
“- A professional Hollywood treatment of the book written by a professional screenwriter.
- All rights to ownership of the treatment.”

I can picture the “professional screenwriter” right now. He or she is muttering under his breath that he never thought he would end up doing this.

The press release says: ““Several AuthorHouse books have made it to the big screen, including ‘Legally Blonde’ and ‘September Dawn,’ and we’re pleased to provide authors with these exclusive opportunities to be discovered,” said Keith Ogorek, senior vice president of marketing for Author Solutions, Inc.—AuthorHouse’s parent company.”

But I think this is disingenuous. The movie Legally Blonde, was filmed October-December 2000, and released June, 2001. The AuthorHouse edition of Legally Blonde was published in 2001, after the movie was already in the can. And September Dawn? It was filmed in early 2006, and the book came out in 2007. The author herself says, “A prolific producer of many major motion pictures once told me that the story of how my first screenplay, September Dawn became a movie was a miracle. It began when I brought the first draft of September Dawn to my very dear friend, Christopher Cain of Young Guns fame.”

So I think AuthorHouse is twisting the truth. But hey, if you can make some money....

Remember folks - money should flow to the writer. Not away.

When my first book was published in 1983 by Atheneum Books for Children in New York, things were black and white. You were either published by a reputable publisher (usually in New York) or you used a (gasp!) vanity press.

There was only one real distinction: real publishers paid you, and vanity presses (self-publishers) required you to pay them for services rendered. It’s still the definition I go by. I can’t make a living by paying someone else to publish me.

Blurred Outlines

Today, new writers are confused. I can tell by the large number of email queries I get, questions from my students, and email “blasts” announcing someone’s “just published” new book by XXXX vanity publisher of some kind.

I hate to see my students and other new writers get suckered into this. If you look at your options and still choose to self-publish, that’s one thing. But I find it alarming how often I hear that writers are plunking down HUGE amounts of money to some vanity press, thinking that that’s the way it’s done.

Take Time to Study

Today I found a terrific discussion (and at the end of the article, read the definition of terms) that it would be wise for every writer to read. It’s at the Writer Beware blog and called “Blurred Distinctions: Vanity Publishing vs. Self-Publishing.” 

This would be a great blog to subscribe to, by the way. Knowledge is power, but you need to take time to be informed.

STATUS: And here I said I wouldn’t be blogging again for the holiday week. I couldn’t help myself.

What’s playing on the iPod right now? IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT by R.E.M

Yesterday I posted my blog entry rather late at night. This morning when I woke up, realized that there was something else that was hugely bothering me about Hyatt’s post and his accusation that agents would see vanity publishing as a threat.

He makes the rather naïve and short-sighted assumption that an agent’s only job is to act as a conduit between publisher and writer—that our sole purpose in life is to limit the access between aspiring authors and publishing professionals.

In other words, he’s playing off the assumption of what new or uninformed writers might believe about agents.

My job as an agent is to protect the author. Period. And as an agent, I do that in so many ways—fighting hard for fair contract clauses that protect and benefit the writer is just one small example.

If I didn’t embrace this position fully, that my job is to protect, I wouldn’t have spent the last four years devoting countless hours to this blog which freely distributes crucial information about the publishing industry to any writer looking for it.

And for no fee whatsoever. This info is free—in every sense of the word.

Oh, I’m working myself up to quite a rant this morning….I’m going to check my blood pressure now.

So I don't spend much time on MySpace any more. Like most people, including all the teens I know, I've migrated to Facebook. On both MySpace and FaceBook, I accept pretty much any friend request that's offered.

But maybe I should be more picky. Because when I get a blanket message that went to every single person in someone's "friends" list, it does not really seem like a friendship. It seems like what it is, an effort to turn me into a sale.

The message was something like this:

"Hi Friends,
The softcover version of my book TITLE REDACTED is still on sale this week through Publish America's online store. The cost is $6.99, a big savings from MSRP $16.95. My book is also available in hardcover for $21.95. [Yeah, most books cost $21.95 for an early reader hardcover. And PublishAmerica is a vanity publisher. They will publish anything an author is willing to pay for.]

Here is a synopsis of my humorous early chapter book targeted to children ages 5-8:
[What follows is a tale that involves a naughty 5 year old, the accidental (and presumably humorous) killing of a pet, a visit to Santa, and barfing.]

Please don't try this at home. I don't mind a sales pitch, but it's got to be more subtle. And for something I would actually want to buy.