First of all, thank you to all have replied again. A lot was written here since I last checked this thread, but Helix, thank you for the publishers you mentioned. I'll be checking them out soon. And Old Hack, thank you for that link to HapiSofi's rebuttal. I'll return to that in a minute.
But first, I want to say that I'm pretty well baffled at how there's been so much hostility toward the very idea of creating a list of better of publishers. I'd never have guessed that there'd be so much resistance to the idea. There's that "Two Thumbs Down" thread. How could anyone think something like a "Two Thumbs Up" thread could be a bad thing?
Agents
Now then, I will talk a little about my own situation, since people keep bringing it up. I've actually contacted around a couple dozen agents in the last two months about my book. So far there hasn't been too much interest. I think part of that might be my query letter, but I recently rewrote it and I now think it sizzles. I'll probably get in touch with some more agents in the future.
Nonetheless, it got me thinking about whether it's really so necessary to have an agent, for one. If it's really worthwhile, then yes, I'd like to find an agent. Admittedly I could be wrong, but much of what I've read lately (the stuff that I already linked to, as well as some other various stuff) points to the publishing industry being so entrenched with its current practices that there's often not a lot in the way of negotiation allowed on contract clauses, royalties etc. So, yes, the agents are allowed to negotiate some changes, but mostly within fairly narrow parameters. I'm probably not going to find too many publishers that normally offer 10-15% royalties that would be willing to give me a rate of 40 or 50% or higher royalties, for example. (But if any of you know about exceptions, I'd love to hear about them.)
I'm going to continue to look for an agent. I haven't given up. But if I can find a great publisher out there without needing an agent, and help a bunch of other authors do so as well with this sort of thread, why is that a bad thing?
Anyway, I don't believe having an agent is inherently necessary to the process of publishing. But yes, I suppose there probably are some publishers out there that will only accept submissions through agents. So then, I suppose I'm also interested in finding good agents that are out there. This thread is meant for good publishers though, not agents. But if anyone knows of somewhere I can find a list of really good agents, I'd be interested in seeing that too. But I haven't seen anything like that on AW thus far.
Konrath
Now, as to the link you shared, Old Hack. I found that very interesting. I read HapiSofi's post, as well as Konrath's Bedtime Story. Probably the single thing that stuck out the most to me was that Konrath built his audience via Hyperion. I definitely think that most new authors would have a very tough time building an audience without a publisher behind them that can reach that audience--and that's a big part of why I want to get a publisher, rather than self-publish. Unfortunately, it may be that Konrath doesn't recognize the benefit of having had a publisher in the beginning.
On the other side, HapiSofi said regarding Konrath, "In the past, the publicity was all about his books. Now it's all about him -- and, as he's going to find out, he's a finite subject." I don't know how Konrath has marketed himself or his books since the rebuttal on May 13, 2011, but I did look at about half a dozen of the books he's published on Amazon since then. All of them had Amazon rankings in the hundreds, thousands, or ten thousands. I've looked at the Amazon rankings of quite a few books over the last few months, and most I've seen have rankings closer to 1,000,000. So I really don't think Konrath has made a "hash" of his career, as HapiSofi seemed to think. He still seems to be going strong, his books still selling quite a few copies. And of course that's just through Amazon. I expect he has even more sales through his website.
Anyway, Old Hack, I think it's key to get lots of information from different sources on this sort of thing, rather than relying on just one source. I'll look into Joanna Cannon, for one.
And I suppose Konrath probably has an agenda, as you said. I suppose he wants to justify his own choices, the course he's taken as an author. But right now that course does look pretty good to me, and I suspect that even more than justifying himself, he probably wants to help authors get published fairly, and in a manner in which they make a lot more money than many would if they were to focus solely on publishing through publishing companies. As I think about it, I suppose there are probably some self-published authors out there that would have had more success if they had instead gone through publishers to get their work out. But there are also probably those authors published by publishers that would have been more successful had they self-published. I think a lot of it comes down to the specific situation the author is in, what their book is like, and how well that meshes up with different publishers.
But I also think there are going to be some publishers out there that just stand out from the rest. I'm happy to continue looking for a good agent, but with this thread I'm also starting to look at the option of cutting out the agents.
Right now, I think that my original presentation of this thread could be to blame for there being so few people contributing the names. I think I'll split the thread up to focus more on my original intention.
