Red Flags

FoamyRules:
Now, as a person who never published with anyone, I was wondering what are the red flags to be aware of while researching publishers.

Click to expand...

This all depends on whether you're talking about publishing a novel or publishing short stories.

If you want to get a novel published then what you want is:

1. an advance - money should always flow towards the author and an advance represents the publisher's faith in the book and in its own ability to sell the book;

2. distribution - can you find the publisher's books in your local bookstore? (By "in" I mean, "on the shelves" and not "available to order from"). Publishers that take print rights need to have some kind of in-store distribution in place in order to maximise sales.

FoamyRules:
what exactly is a vanity press?

Click to expand...

There are a lot of definitions out there, but basically it's any publisher that wants money from you in order to publish your book - whether that money is classed as a "self-publishing" fee, a "marketing fee", an "editorial services" fee etc etc etc. Vanity publishers may claim that they are selective and only take books on strict criteria but ultimately, they want your money.

Vanity publishers are also generally characterised by their inability/unwillingness to sell your book to the general public. They count on you effectively selling it to your friends and family (for which they will still get the bulk of any sale price and only pay you a small percentage). I've seen some vanity publishers try to counter this by offering authors 60%+ in royalty rates but if you're the only person trying to sell it, the chances are you won't shift enough copies to make back the money you spent to be published in the first place.

Publish America pays a token advance of $1 but it's the equivalent of giving you a peppercorn and they count on making money from you by selling you dubious marketing and promotion services.

FoamyRules:
what would be the best options for someone looking to publish their stories?

Click to expand...

If you want to get a novel published, then your best bet is to try and find an agent. Preditors & Editors and Agent Query are the best place to start and you should do your research on the agent's criteria and submission requirements. You can also check out agents here on this Forum for information on response times, whether particular agents are looking for particular books etc.

If you're looking to publish short stories, then check out www.duotrope.com, which lists short story markets. Start at the publications paying professional rates and work your way down.

Most of all though, you should be prepared to do a lot of research and the best thing you can do is educate yourself on the publishing industry and how it operates. AW is a good site for that (and it's worth checking out this forum in particular) but you should also check out the Writer Beware Blog because it highlights scams and things that you should consider.

If I can give you a reading recommendation, then I'd recommend checking out a copy of MERCHANTS OF CULTURE by John B Thompson. It's an overview of the publishing industry in the US and the UK, explaining the main players and how the industry has come to be in its current form. Thompson is a sociologist so the opening chapter is all about research techniques, but once you get past that, it's an interesting read that gives you enough information and know-how to counter some of the bullshit that new publishers/scam artists/vanity publishers put out there.

MM

Writer Beware has an entire section on vanity presses that may help to answer your question.

- Victoria

Your age doesn't matter to an agent. It's all about the story.

Just remember, busy agents get 100 queries a day they take on fewer than a half-dozen new clients a year. And the busy agents are the ones you want. Competition is fierce so your material has to be damn near perfect to get any attention.

Drop by the Share Your Work boards. Have a look at what other people are doing, visit Query Letter Hell and have a look at the query letters and how much time and effort goes into a good one. Get involved, and when you have 50 posts on AW you can share your own stuff, and get critiqued.

Welcome to the club.

The simplest approach is to see which writers have been published at the same place, and in the same way.

A vanity press is simply when you pay them, instead of them paying you. Never give anyone a penny. Money should flow to the writer, never away from the writer.

FoamyRules:
But as a college student does that seem like a far reach?

Click to expand...

Nope. All an agent cares about is whether you've produced a well written manuscript with a story that s/he can sell. You don't need to mention your age in your query letter and people get published from the age of 15 (Christopher Paolini) to well into their 90s (Diana Athill).

MM

FoamyRules said:

Any other advice anyone's willing to give will be really appreciated

Click to expand...

I have some advice! And it's great advice but it requires a little work and a lot of patience from you.

You've taken the first step by signing up for AW. Welcome!

My suggestion is to start reading the forums. Hit those sections that are relevant to your interest. AW Roundtable is good for general discussion about all things. Basic Writing and Novels is good for general writing discussions. Then hit up your genre.

Read the stickies. Plan on reading them more than once. Right now, and then when you get a few months under your belt by being here. You'll pick up more information than the first pass. Get involved with conversations. We're a chatty bunch and a bit opinionated but we all love to talk about writing and reading. You'll learn a lot about writing and about publishing in the threads and comments, even in threads you didn't think would cover it.

Go into Share Your Work and read the critiques. Offer to do some if you're comfortable. But the exchanges there are always informative.

There's a wealth of information here, a whole lot of people who know their stuff. Read read read and don't forget to always keep writing!

I think the first thing you should be preoccupied with is are you writing or trying to write *stories* or *novels*. Some people do both, but they are very different skill sets.

If you are doing stories, then those you (generally) sell directly to the publication (online or in print) yourself.

If you are doing books, then those can be sold directly to the publisher, but it's usually better for you if you can get an agent to take you as a client and then the agent sells it to the publisher. Also, with stories and books there is also the possibility of e-publishing them yourself and then offering them free or selling them yourself with no middle man, although it's much more difficult and time-consuming to wear all these hats at the same time. Most of us are not good at everything.

I hope this helps

FoamyRules:
I've been told by many that it makes no sense for someone my age especially since I'm still in school to even want an agent because since they only accept like a handful of clients each year, they're looking for people with more experienced in writing, and that they prefer people to already have their degrees.

Click to expand...

Whoever told you that knows bollock all about publishing.

Look, publishers and agents really don't give a stuff about your age. Helen Oyeyemi, Catherine Banner and Christopher Paolini all got offered publishing contracts when they were still teenagers (I believe that Catherine Banner and Helen Oyeyemi were 15 and 18 respectively when they got their agents).

What matters is the quality of the manuscript.

The chances are that the novels you've written aren't currently of a publishable quality (I don't say that as a judgment on your age but rather as a generalism). The best thing you can do is to put some samples of your work up for crit, or look for a good beta reader on the Beta Forums here who will go through your manuscript and tell you what they think needs to be improved. The more opinions you get, the more likely you'll be able to identify what's good about it and what needs more work. Be prepared to be bruised and don't take critiques personally.

Educate yourself about the publishing industry. If you write in a particular genre, then look up bodies and networking groups such as the SFWA, the SCBWI, RWA etc. Many organise conferences or conventions where you can meet other writers (published and unpublished) and meet agents and editors as well and hear what they're looking for.

If you want to write novels, then focus on novels. I wouldn't personally look at self-publishing anything until I'd been through the commercial publishing route.

Similarly, with short stories my advice would be to check out Duotrope and look at professional rate paying magazines etc first and work your way down before self-publishing them - if only because you could probably make more that way (plus magazines will generally release your rights after x period of time, so you can get paid for the story, get an audience for it and then release it yourself for a fee later).

Finally, just be prepared to look, listen, ask questions and learn. Publishing is a marathon, not a sprint and AW is a pretty friendly place in general (although some of us growl a lot).

MM

Just remember though, that if you DO manage to get a contract (that requires massive amount of sweat and toil), you are still in school, and when agents sign, they want to sign someone who can crank out book after book. That's hard to do with school stuff.

You are still in school, so you have studying and projects and tests to worry about.

You have some of your most formative life experiences in school, so I would continue to write now, doing the absolute best you can during this point in your life. Be as productive as you can, but concentrate on getting your education. When you have reached the end of that stage, after reading AW religiously, and polishing polishing polishing your work, THEN worry about getting it published.

Hip-Hop-a-potamus:
Just remember though, that if you DO manage to get a contract (that requires massive amount of sweat and toil), you are still in school, and when agents sign, they want to sign someone who can crank out book after book. That's hard to do with school stuff.

Click to expand...

I disagree slightly with this because it really depends on (a) the conversation you have with your agent as to how you see your career going, (b) whether you're writing in a particular genre (e.g. I know that some fantasy imprints want to put out a new book each year from new authors, whereas with literary fiction publishers you can be allowed more time for the next manuscript), and (c) whether you get a 1 book, 2 book or 3 book deal.

In my MA class, one of my classmates got a 2 book deal for her historical romance, which is predicated on one book being released in the autumn of this year and a second in the autumn of 2013, while another classmate only got a one-book deal (albeit for a nice chunk of case) for his historical adventure and their agent's advised them to take their time on their next book.

I do agree with you though that school must come first. Getting the best education you can will serve you well in later life and give you more options beyond writing.

MM

Momento Mori said:

I disagree slightly with this because it really depends on (a) the conversation you have with your agent as to how you see your career going, (b) whether you're writing in a particular genre (e.g. I know that some fantasy imprints want to put out a new book each year from new authors, whereas with literary fiction publishers you can be allowed more time for the next manuscript), and (c) whether you get a 1 book, 2 book or 3 book deal.

In my MA class, one of my classmates got a 2 book deal for her historical romance, which is predicated on one book being released in the autumn of this year and a second in the autumn of 2013, while another classmate only got a one-book deal (albeit for a nice chunk of case) for his historical adventure and their agent's advised them to take their time on their next book.

I do agree with you though that school must come first. Getting the best education you can will serve you well in later life and give you more options beyond writing.

MM

Click to expand...

You said it better than I could (still being unpublished!). This is coming from someone who is self-conscious that I only have a BA [for when I do finally get published-- I refuse to say IF].

My advice is to take a really deep breath and change your focus from GETTING PUBLISHED to learning your craft and finding your fictive universe and voice. Along the way, study the (ever-changing) industry.

Only if you're very lucky will you not need the patience of an Ent. So, cultivate that patience, pay your dues (a set number of words written a day, every day), take your chances in the market when you're ready and well-educated, and...

Don't be hasty.

Oh, and read like a maniac, in your preferred genre and out of it, fiction and non-fiction. Pick out passages you like and ones you didn't, and try to dissect them to see *why* they work. It will help your own writing.

When I took Creative Writing at the local JuCo, I had more published credits than my professor had. However, since I wrote that "genre" stuff, I wasn't a real writer. (Riiiiight!)

Still managed to get an honors A from that course, (plus placing two poems in the literary magazine that year). I just figured out what he wanted to read and then wrote accordingly. I've been doing that at work as a tech writer for years. *grin*

Oh, and Hip-Hop, I've only got a BS in History and a AA in English. Sure, I'm working on my Masters now (28 years later), but degrees don't mean squat when it comes to being a writer. Either you have the chops or you don't. No fancy piece of paper makes you a writer. So, don't apologize for "only having a BA".


(Not that education's bad - or I wouldn't be still a student at this late date.)

Richard White said:

When I took Creative Writing at the local JuCo, I had more published credits than my professor had. However, since I wrote that "genre" stuff, I wasn't a real writer. (Riiiiight!)

Still managed to get an honors A from that course, (plus placing two poems in the literary magazine that year). I just figured out what he wanted to read and then wrote accordingly. I've been doing that at work as a tech writer for years. *grin*

Oh, and Hip-Hop, I've only got a BS in History and a AA in English. Sure, I'm working on my Masters now (28 years later), but degrees don't mean squat when it comes to being a writer. Either you have the chops or you don't. No fancy piece of paper makes you a writer. So, don't apologize for "only having a BA".


(Not that education's bad - or I wouldn't be still a student at this late date.)

Click to expand...

Thanks Richard!

I'd love to get a Creative Writing grad degree, but there are only two programs up here, and the one in BC makes you work on 3 areas. That's frustrating. I only want two. Anymore than that would be a waste of my time and money!