(no subject)

[alg]

Good morning! I have been awake since six am, and wow! It is a beautiful day. I have the windows open, and there is a wonderful cold breeze blowing in. My bedroom window faces Manhattan, which means it faces the water, even though I can't see the water, and I get wonderful breezes -- although when it's freezing outside and the wind chill is, like, negative seventy-million, it's not so much fun.

(All I want this morning is a cup of coffee and a Danish. Wow, how bad do I want a Danish? Pretty badly. Instead I had a crescent roll. Not quite as good, but what's a girl to do?)

I want to thank again everyone who provided me with links and stories on Monday -- that was awfully nice of you guys and I really appreciate it! I am well on my way to recovering (especially now that my dentist has called in a new prescription for me, and I have much stronger painkillers, phew).

Now that I can focus for longer than 500 words, I am ready to write more about demystifying publishing.

I am really glad that these entries are helping y'all. And I am flattered that so many people are reading them -- I know I tend to be pedantic and long-winded, so it's amazing to me that you guys can get through these entries. *g*

I do want to remind you that these answers are by no means universal. Remember the first rule: Don't be an idiot.


Publishing is Hard!

Writing is an art, but publishing is a business -- and here are a few basic suggestions on how to navigate that business. Complete with explanations of various departments within a publishing company, and how they all work together to make your book. And, of course, my witty and charming commentary!




Thanks for reading; I hope this has helped at least some of you!

Comments

[alg.livejournal.com]

started a small press and learned everything from the beginning and doing all the work myself

Wow! Congratulations -- you must be really motivated. *g*

Sales -- at Tor, at least -- is a very complicated thing, and I'm not entirely sure exactly how it works still (and I am also not sure what's proprietary information and what's not), so I am going to play it safe and not say much. But I will say that there are a whole lot of people on our sales team and they are separated not just by account, but also by regions of the country.

[alg.livejournal.com]

Hey, Paul! You're welcome, I'm happy to do this. And, hey, bookseller! I am gonna write a post about you guys soon! *g*

Good luck with your novel, man!

[alg.livejournal.com]

Woo, scholarly publishing! Give your production editors a hug from me, too -- that's gotta be a tough job. Man, I cannot imagine how hard it must be to run production on stuff like that. (You do textbooks? Or... what?)

I have never sabotaged a book (no matter how tempted I've been) -- it's my line too. But I am not worried about being polite when someone is nasty to assistants. Or me. I am very public (within my company) about it, and people are always surprised -- they say, "You too? S/he did that to me!"

Sharing information is never a bad thing, IMO.

[doteatop.livejournal.com]

In software development, we call this a painting-the-bike-shed (http://www.bikeshed.com/) dispute.

[alg.livejournal.com]

My pleasure! I'm so glad people are finding it helpful. :)

[alg.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, you've never seen me say Holy Viggo before? It's all the fault of k_sims, one of my authors.

I am absolutely happy to take the time! (And there are no stupid questions. Only stupid people. ;) No, I'm kidding. I was raised by the editors at Tor to believe that sincere questions should be answered sincerely, so don't worry about it.)

[annathepiper]

Well, it's at least got me in the ballpark, and before I was still out circling on the freeway looking for the right exit! It's helpful indeed. Keep it coming! ^_^

[alg.livejournal.com]

You know, I thought Crash was a terrible movie, but I also really didn't like Brokeback Mountain at all, so I am not the right person to ask! I think Proulx is way overrated; her writing is pretty good, but I don't get what all the fuss is about.

You're right, though -- that's pretty classless.

[alg.livejournal.com]

You are very right!

[mariannelee.livejournal.com]

Thank you for taking the time to post this. I'm putting it in my memories.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Mostly I fell into it from the misconception abotu publishing and lingering belief in self-publishing as an option. I edited an anthology (Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre - thought of the title first), lost the publisher (someone else who had a small press but only for his own stuff), read many many awful stories, picked out 11 that were pretty good, lost a couple of friends (also amateur writers with issues especially when it came to listening to what an editor says about their prose), 86'd my own story and put the thing out 6 months late.

And started Dybbuk Press (http://www.dybbuk-press.com) as a way to get it out there (with jaylake telling me abotu Lightning Source so I wouldn't have a warehouse full of these books) and learned things like

1. Send review copies out BEFORE the book comes through.
2. The Amazon Look Inside the Book is your friend. Sure someone might be able to download your entire book piece by piece from it, but if no one knows what's in it, no one is going to buy it.
3. Never use the Amazon BXGY to pair Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre with The Great Gatsby (I got much better results by pairing it with the Brett Easton Ellis book)

I'll learn more later. But if I actually try selling the books to book stores, it's still going to be a hit & miss proposition. I can see why you'd have regional sales people since there are still a lot of small bookstores around the country like Dreamhaven that carry mostly science fiction.

Thanks. And I friended you, but I see you declared that cool either way.

[alg.livejournal.com]

My pleasure. I hope it's helpful! :)

[alg.livejournal.com]

Hah!

Well, if you have Jay helping you, you're on the right track. As I bet you know, he's a clever, brilliant guy.

You know, I'm told by people who know -- like Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Cory Doctorow -- that letting people download your book for free on the internet actually helps sales rather than hinders them. So I wouldn't worry too much about that. :)

Good luck with your press -- it sounds like you're on your way. (And what I've said here isn't the way a lot of small presses do it. Really. This is NYC publishing, big houses, lots of books, lots of money.)

Oh absolutely

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to reinforce your point, and point out the "remembering the good ones" bit. I hear a lot about remembering the nasty people, and I know it's true for me, too. I also know that for me at least the converse is true—I will quite happily do all sorts of things that technically aren't my job for someone who lets me know that they appreciate the work I do.

(And I always get excited when someone reminds people that production and editorial work really hard for not a lot of money to make books. So thanks!)

Also, I've had authors who seemed to believe that sending us a bottle of wine or a box of chocolates when a book was in stock was somehow going to make us forget that they'd been utterly dreadful to us during production. While the goodies were lovely, and certainly did mitigate the bad feelings, I'd have cheerfully traded my share for a little less hostility and a little more cooperation during the process.

Re: Oh absolutely

[alg.livejournal.com]

I'd have cheerfully traded my share for a little less hostility and a little more cooperation during the process.

Yes.

YES.

[joannemerriam.livejournal.com]

This is fantastic. Thank you so much.

And thanks for talking about how hard production works. I work in the analogue of production for a printer (we do banking products, it's really nothing like publishing in most respects) and I can so relate.

Re literary writers' organizations, some states have state-wide organizations. Sometimes they are helpful and sometimes not. I've heard really good things about the New Hampshire Writers' Project for example (have no direct experience with them). So that's another option for the lit types. Because I could, I retained my membership in the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia when I moved to the U.S. So people who live in states that have no organization might be able to glom onto the one in the state they were born or something; it's worth asking.

[casacorona.livejournal.com]

I noticed. It's good.

I don't know how many times I've heard the following:
"I hate that cover."
"What would you rather see?"
"Gee, I don't know. I just hate this one."

And it's not even directed at me. I'd turn into a raving psychopath if I was an art director.

[tharain.livejournal.com]

::snickers::

Off topic, but that icon is just wrong.

::snickers some more::

[anonymisty.livejournal.com]

I didn't even see Brokeback - I live in the boonies, and the closest showing was too far away to bother - and I agree with you about Crash. I rented it, then spent the two hours waiting for something to actually happen.

But the Academy rarely asks me for my opinion....maybe they lost my email address. *grin*

[handworn.livejournal.com]

It's a good point about everyone considering themselves a judge of art, but there have often been books (SF/F, mainly) I've had which I've hidden from some people in my life because I was embarrassed by the lurid badness of the covers.

How much, in your opinion, would it change things if the book-distributing and bookselling oligopolies were broken up, with resulting less pressure for tutu'd elephants?

[alg.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't know how Irene does it!

I thought Anthony was going to throw his computer out the window last week when he had that conversation. (Were you in the office for the meeting where they said one of his covers looked like a poster for a LifeTime original movie, but didn't offer *any* critique at all as to what they *wanted*? Argh.)

[alg.livejournal.com]

I did not even get through fifteen minutes of Crash. I just... couldn't relate to any of the characters. I would have been much more impressed if it had been a subtle movie about the way racism creeps into the everyday lives of even the nicest of people. I felt too bludgeoned -- and I just didn't buy it. I know that shit happens, but I did not for one second believe it in the movie.

[alg.livejournal.com]

I knew that there were things like the Willamette Writers and stuff like that; I didn't realize most states had them. Thank you so much for pointing that out -- I've linked to it in my post.

[alg.livejournal.com]

This is a tough question.

Anyone can make a bad cover for a book. A small press who doesn't do a lot of business with booksellers like B&N, a large publisher who does. Anyone.

And anyone can truly believe in their heart that their bad cover is beautiful.

Most of my experience is in the romance section and my own opinion on this is based on anecdotal evidence. When covers are too "experimental," even if we can convince the chains (B&N, Borders, Walden, etc.) to carry the book and put it face out, we still do not get the same sales.

People are attracted to covers for many different reasons, but mostly because the cover of the book tells them what is inside. It is, I am told, a fact of the industry that if there are wings or a dragon on the cover of a book, it will sell.

I consulted pnh about this, because he is the head of SF/F at Tor, and has been for many years, and is widely regarded as one of the top SF/F editors in the world. Here is what he said (quoted with permission):

The fact is, the strongest force operating here isn't Evil Big Publishers or Evil B&N or Evil Wal-Mart; it's consumer conservatism. If anything, B&N is notably skillful at second-guessing the exact contours of consumer conservatism, because they don't have any particular aesthetic ax to grind; they just have a strong idea of what works and what doesn't, based on a VERY LARGE DATA SET.

He also noted that the William Goldman rule ("Nobody Knows Anything") is always in effect -- we don't, as a general rule, know if people buy books because of the covers, in spite of the covers, or without even noticing.

So my answer is.... I don't think so, but there's really no way of knowing for sure.

[alg.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! I hope you find them all helpful. :)