Advice please?
Hello Red Bird, I have arbitrarily selected you for advice, since I am brand-new to this site, registered yesterday and have found it rather overwhelming. There is so much going on that I have struggled to find where to start, really.
Here's the thing. I have just completed my first book, my autobiography called White Zulu, it's an account of how I grew up on a remote cattle ranch in the South African Bush, raised by the Zulu staff, and only went to school at the age of 12.
Nowhere could I find an agent to represent me, so I did the obvious thing and went to Austin Macauley, who kindly offered to print my book for the princely sum of nearly £3000. I'm severely disabled and live on benefits as it is, so there's no way I could cough that up. Also, bearing in mind that this is a publishing outfit masquerading as a publisher, but in fact a vanity publisher. If I really wanted to self publish. I could get a good product for £800. But I am in no condition to do the marketing once I have had the printing done.
AM have a reputation of producing a very shoddy product, and there is no bookshop that has any evidence of caring, even one of their publications.
In South Africa, all the big publishing houses allow one to submit unsolicited work, so I sent my submission off to Penguin/random, Jonathan Ball and the Marsh Agency, all of whom acknowledged receipt about three weeks ago, telling me that it would take a few weeks before I heard from them again.
Must I carry on waiting before I hear from the big publishing houses? Should I send them an email saying that I have interest here in the UK, but they are my first choice of publishers? Or should I go ahead and self publish, bearing in mind that once one has self published, none of the publishing houses will touch you? All in all I have a trilogy, +2 other books to offer, in other words, a stable for any publisher who would take me on. I'm using speech recognition software to write this, so please forgive any anomalies that occur. All my best, Fi
Hello Red Bird, I have arbitrarily selected you for advice, since I am brand-new to this site, registered yesterday and have found it rather overwhelming. There is so much going on that I have struggled to find where to start, really.
Here's the thing. I have just completed my first book, my autobiography called White Zulu, it's an account of how I grew up on a remote cattle ranch in the South African Bush, raised by the Zulu staff, and only went to school at the age of 12.
Nowhere could I find an agent to represent me, so I did the obvious thing and went to Austin Macauley, who kindly offered to print my book for the princely sum of nearly £3000. I'm severely disabled and live on benefits as it is, so there's no way I could cough that up. Also, bearing in mind that this is a publishing outfit masquerading as a publisher, but in fact a vanity publisher. If I really wanted to self publish. I could get a good product for £800. But I am in no condition to do the marketing once I have had the printing done.
AM have a reputation of producing a very shoddy product, and there is no bookshop that has any evidence of caring, even one of their publications.
In South Africa, all the big publishing houses allow one to submit unsolicited work, so I sent my submission off to Penguin/random, Jonathan Ball and the Marsh Agency, all of whom acknowledged receipt about three weeks ago, telling me that it would take a few weeks before I heard from them again.
Must I carry on waiting before I hear from the big publishing houses? Should I send them an email saying that I have interest here in the UK, but they are my first choice of publishers? Or should I go ahead and self publish, bearing in mind that once one has self published, none of the publishing houses will touch you? All in all I have a trilogy, +2 other books to offer, in other words, a stable for any publisher who would take me on. I'm using speech recognition software to write this, so please forgive any anomalies that occur. All my best, Fi
Last edited:
