Then why not email a published author?
Because that's just too simple and obvious.
And intimidating.
I recall sending a short story to a couple people who edited Star Trek anthologies back in the day, thinking they might put it in their next book. They were fans just like me or I'd have never done anything so daft.
There was no information of how they worked their magic to get into print, none, and it never occurred to me to ask for publishing guidelines from the house because I didn't know such things even existed.
I didn't know ANYTHING about how publishing worked.
Now--which such information everywhere and emails addies all over the place--you'd think people would know better, but they don't. Certainly the vanity and self-pubbing ads muddy the waters for neos.
Some of you are dead-set on seeing them as victims.
In this case, yes. Publishing's respected granny is telling girls to take themselves to the brothel across the street and pay to get work. If HQN IS sending newbie writers who don't know any better over to DA, then that is totally wrong.
DA can operate and charge whatever they like, that's their business, and anyone choosing to use them ain't my affair.
But DA's website looks like the HQN website, and it's all to easy to conclude that one's very special romance will be on racks in stores right next to the HQN titles. There's no declaration on the DA site to state that's never going to happen. If there is, it's in the fine print.
Yes, some of the people
are genuine victims being misled. Until some self-entitled, impatient idiot with more money than sense proves otherwise to me, I give them all the benefit of the doubt and will warn them away from HQN's disgusting conflict of interest.
JulieB sent me a link to
Konrath's blog post today.
He's talking about self-publishing rather than vanity publishing, but thankfully points out that the real money for newbies is selling a book to a house, not going out on one's own.
If a terminally smug lemming absolutely insists on jumping off the cliff, then let 'em go. Sometimes that's what it takes to get through to some, and even then it might not work.
My look out is for the writer who's in the same spot I was back in the day--someone who wants to sell a book, but has no idea how. These days it's just too easy to be misled. Teaching them about Yog's Law usually does the trick, though!