- Joined
- Feb 13, 2005
- Messages
- 3,126
- Reaction score
- 768
- Location
- Near Cincinnati
- Website
- www.allensedge.com
I have a few reservations.
I had submitted my horror novel to about 150 or so agents, it was rejected by everyone. I never submitted to publishers. Last year I did a beta swap with another AW member, and this member pointed out a lot of problems with the story. I agreed with her assessment and decided to trunk it, thinking I might revisit in the future and do a massive rewrite if need be.
Since then, I've written a YA novel that is currently being queried (with two current fulls out).
Two months ago an AW member posted in Announcements about her new book coming out. I checked it out and discovered it was a local press (in my city). It's small, they don't publish very many titles, do POD and eBooks. I decided, what the hell, I read their submissions and decided to "test the waters" and see if they'd be interested in my novel. I also wanted to test their acceptance threshold. Did they accept just about anything? (No, their catalogue is pretty small.) But would they accept my book, the one every agent in the U.S. rejected?
After a month, yes, they accepted.
I feel like I should be rejoicing, but I keep coming back to the old axiom: it's better to not be published than badly published.
Is going with this small press "badly published?" I checked out their books on amazon. The covers are not bad, and the sample I read had a grammatical error and punctuation error on the first page, but the story was compelling enough to keep me reading the first three pages. And it wasn't bad prose or anything.
So here's what gives me pause.
Do I go through with this? Obviously there will be little bookstore presence outside of a few local ones. I don't know what kind of promotion they do, but googling their name does show they're active in attending conventions and things. I just can't see any information on the experience of the owners. I have a feeling this is an author-turned-publisher kind of business. And this isn't always an avenue for failure, but it can be.
Since this is a trunked novel, I have nothing really to lose.
Thoughts?
I had submitted my horror novel to about 150 or so agents, it was rejected by everyone. I never submitted to publishers. Last year I did a beta swap with another AW member, and this member pointed out a lot of problems with the story. I agreed with her assessment and decided to trunk it, thinking I might revisit in the future and do a massive rewrite if need be.
Since then, I've written a YA novel that is currently being queried (with two current fulls out).
Two months ago an AW member posted in Announcements about her new book coming out. I checked it out and discovered it was a local press (in my city). It's small, they don't publish very many titles, do POD and eBooks. I decided, what the hell, I read their submissions and decided to "test the waters" and see if they'd be interested in my novel. I also wanted to test their acceptance threshold. Did they accept just about anything? (No, their catalogue is pretty small.) But would they accept my book, the one every agent in the U.S. rejected?
After a month, yes, they accepted.
I feel like I should be rejoicing, but I keep coming back to the old axiom: it's better to not be published than badly published.
Is going with this small press "badly published?" I checked out their books on amazon. The covers are not bad, and the sample I read had a grammatical error and punctuation error on the first page, but the story was compelling enough to keep me reading the first three pages. And it wasn't bad prose or anything.
So here's what gives me pause.
Do I go through with this? Obviously there will be little bookstore presence outside of a few local ones. I don't know what kind of promotion they do, but googling their name does show they're active in attending conventions and things. I just can't see any information on the experience of the owners. I have a feeling this is an author-turned-publisher kind of business. And this isn't always an avenue for failure, but it can be.
Since this is a trunked novel, I have nothing really to lose.
Thoughts?