[Contest] Xerox Aspiring Authors

But can't you enter this contest, get your free copy (or 100 copies) AND submit your book to a proper publisher? They don't appear to be publishing your book, just printing bound copies, and they don't appear to be taking any rights. Heck, if your book is good enough to win/get published, you'd end up with ten grand instead of five.


What angle have I missed, Jim?

<laughing> Yeah, I'll go for the ten grand. Just as soon as I write a book....and as soon as I take up residence in the USA....



<And in case anyone cares, I can say, speaking from experience, that Viable Paradise IS the workshop you've been looking for.>

James D. Macdonald said:

That's another reason you're not going to see Print-On-Demand kiosks in malls anytime soon. In addition to needing an au pair service tech, you'd have to keep the thing churning and burning 24 hours a day to earn back the purchase price.

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Oh, it's worse than that. The real money comes into the picture when you have to pay for cooling and venting, and electricity--and the service contract. You have to get a service contract; there's no way around it. You also have to buy supplies from Xerox (what a surprise!)You'd probably want to pay for special sound proofing too--this is not quiet equipment. The fan system alone is enough to make me wear headphones. Venting is also a necessity because not only do the ink and adhesives smell, they're not exactly healthy. Can't see a Mall going for that.

I'd probably go with IBM for a mall; the DocuTech is seriously nifty, but overkill for mall startup--and that's not a viable business. Really. It's not going to work, and Xerox, Canon, HP and IBM all know it's not. What they think will happen is service bureaus in malls, where you submit files, pay a production and print fee, and the goods are delivered to your location. Kinko's wasn't being whimsical when they joined FedEx; they'd been talking for at least two years.

'Sides, no one buys DocuTechs at the all-in-one level; you lease them, and get a new one every two years.

Well, if you're planning to go POD anyway because you have a small niche audience, and you think POD will work for you, there are worse ways to go about it. Simply by entering this contest, you pay no set-up fees and get one free printed copy of your book. And maybe you get more, if you happen to be one of the prize winners.

However, from my reading, it looks like they choose the ten finalists based on a 200 word synopsis only! They don't even look at the books themselves until they have chosen ten on the basis of your cover blurb. So, if you want to win, you can't just write a good novel--you have to write the most interesting cover blurb.

James,
Congratulations on your story in F&SF! Just out of curiosity, do you mind telling me how long it took from acceptance to publication? I've had a manuscript sitting at TOR for over a year now, still waiting for them to read it. I've been told that it may take them two years to get around to reading a manuscript, and another two years to print it - if it's accepted!