Someone posted this on my blog today:
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I run a literary service and a small publishing company.
The majority of the manuscripts we publish come through the literary service, where we test market them on the web with anyone who wants to read them and report on them.
We charge a fee through the literary service for two reasons:
1). When we allowed free submissions, we were so overwhelmed by submissions that we could not even go through them all. Ninety percent of them were painfully bad. Now, with a fee, we get much fewer submissions, which allows us to truly 'read' them, not just skim them, and the quality of the writing has gone up ten-fold. Evidently, people are not as blind to their writing's worth as we generally believe, because if they're asked to put some money behind it, they are not as convinced as they were a moment ago that they have the next best-seller.
2). Test marketing takes time (setting up the ms, tracking the reader demographics and the reader reports) and money. The fee charged in no way makes a profit. We make our profit from book sales (hence, why we test market. We want to know we have a winner).
Double Edge Press/Cutting Edge Literary Services
http://cuttingedgeliterary.com
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Visit the site and form your own opinions.
I'm alerting Writer Beware and P&E as well. Spread the word.
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I run a literary service and a small publishing company.
The majority of the manuscripts we publish come through the literary service, where we test market them on the web with anyone who wants to read them and report on them.
We charge a fee through the literary service for two reasons:
1). When we allowed free submissions, we were so overwhelmed by submissions that we could not even go through them all. Ninety percent of them were painfully bad. Now, with a fee, we get much fewer submissions, which allows us to truly 'read' them, not just skim them, and the quality of the writing has gone up ten-fold. Evidently, people are not as blind to their writing's worth as we generally believe, because if they're asked to put some money behind it, they are not as convinced as they were a moment ago that they have the next best-seller.
2). Test marketing takes time (setting up the ms, tracking the reader demographics and the reader reports) and money. The fee charged in no way makes a profit. We make our profit from book sales (hence, why we test market. We want to know we have a winner).
Double Edge Press/Cutting Edge Literary Services
http://cuttingedgeliterary.com
-------------------------------------------------
Visit the site and form your own opinions.
I'm alerting Writer Beware and P&E as well. Spread the word.