Reprinted from Elsewhere
In my never-ending stream of copying my earlier posts from elsewhere: this is from <a href="http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/001541.html#001541" target="_new">Making Light</a>.
<hR>
Let's see if I can clarify a bit more about the difference between vanity publishing and recording your own music to sell after your gig:
There's no quality control in the world of vanity press publishing.
With the self-published musician, there is quality control. If the musician weren't at least half-way competent, he'd never have the gig in the first place to sell the disks after the show. And you've already heard his music, and you've liked it enough to want to have a bit of it to take home.
With the self-published fiction author, most times the manuscript is ... slush. No one would read it willingly.
The exception to this is in non-fiction. If you happen to be the world's foremost expert on some obscure subject, you can write and self-publish a monograph and have people pay you for a copy. If you're delivering lectures from the platform, you can say "Copies of my book are available at the back of the hall," and no one will blink. If you're written a local history, you can sell it in a local bookstore -- no interest anywhere else in the country, lots of interest right in that one location.
Note, though, that in all those cases there is quality control. You first have to have a reputation as the world's expert on something, or you have to have hired and filled the hall, or you have to have convinced the bookstore owner to carry your book. None of those things are easy.
If someone says "It's easy. Just give me your credit card...." that person doesn't have your best interests at heart.
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Another factor in quality of product in the vanity fiction area is the availablity of legitimate outlets.
If you were living in the 19th c. and you'd written the very best erotic novel in the world, it couldn't get legitimately published, and so would be privately printed. A fair number of the privately printed 19th c. erotic novels are pretty good.
Here, now, if you've written the very best erotic novel in the world, there are any number of legitimate, advance-and-royalty paying, sales in major bookstores, publishers who will be slavering to hear from you. Thus the only erotic novels that are vanity published are either a) very badly written, or b) of such small niche interest that it wouldn't repay publication (the erotic potential of women's
right middle toes, and even then if the book is really the Best in the World, it could be legitimately published as Magic Realism and those who liked that sort of thing would get an extra bonus), or c) actively illegal (pre-teen bestiality incest, frex) (And some of those can be well-written too, if you can get past the squick factor).
Getting down to the main point: if you've written the greatest sword-and-sorcery novel in the world, lots of publishers will be lining up to publish you. If you've written a basically competent sword-and-sorcery novel, lots of publishers will be ready to publish you. If you've written a pretty-much-okay sword-and-sorcery novel and the timing's right, the book will get published, though perhaps after a few rejections.
Which means that the only sword-and-sorcery novels that you'll find from the vanity press are the ones where the author's only writing skill is the ability to write a check, and the very, very, exceedingly rare good book whose author was totally scammed. But no one will ever hear of that very, very rare book because readers and bookstores and everyone else go "avert! avert!" when they see the vanity label.
Very few read slush manuscripts for fun. No one reads a
second slush manuscript for fun.
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I've been reading <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1560252758/ref=nosim/madhousemanor" target="_new">
The Gangs of New York</a> which has some interesting descriptions of con games and swindles from the 19th c., things like selling gold bricks, the banko game, and a varient on the pigeon drop.
In the varient, the con man approaches a fellow and offers to sell him a bag of counterfeit money for pennies on the dollar (one enterprising grifter sent out advertising flyers through the mail making the offer). The bag of money is shown, and the mark is invited to take a sample to any bank to have the bill checked out -- it's such a perfect counterfeit that no bank clerk can detect the fakery. The mark takes the bill, goes, and wow! It really does work! This is great stuff. He comes back, buys the whole bag of counterfeit money, and -- when he opens it -- finds only cut up newspaper. (Need I mention that the reason the counterfeit bill passes muster is because it isn't really counterfeit?)
(Another scam, not mentioned so far in that book at least, involves going to the racetrack and going around advising people about horses that are sure winners. The trick is that you recommend every single horse that's running in a given race to various people. In the course of talking with the mark, you slap him on the back, putting a chalk mark on his coat. After the race, you hang out at the pay window, and watch for people with your chalk mark on his coat. As they're counting their money you come up and say "Hey, remember me? I gave you that tip. How about a tip for me?")
Not too bad a scam.
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Back to the literary scams of the current day:
We have some nefarious deeds decribed here:
<A HREF="
http://www.writersweekly.com/warnings/helping.html" target="_new">http://www.writersweekly.com/warnings/helping.html</a>
And more about the Helping Hand Agency here:
<A HREF="http://www.sfwa.org/beware/general.html#titsworth" target="_new">http://www.sfwa.org/beware/general.html#titsworth</a>
Find out the name of the detective assigned to the case!
<HR>
Here's something:
Not to be confused with the well-known
http://www.promedia.com/ we find
http://www.promediainc.net/.
Promedia Entertainment has apparently been placing newspaper ads all over the place, selling their training materials.
Who knew that there was such a screaming shortage of script readers in Hollywood that folks who had taken a $50 videotaped course could get high-paying jobs working at home reading scripts?
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And ... next, a grammar quiz:
Golly.
<a href="http://quizilla.com/users/BaalObsidian/quizzes/How%20grammatically%20sound%20are%20you%3F/" target="_new">How Grammatically Sound Are You?</a>
I, of course, am a Grammar God.
