alg | (no subject)

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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Thanks. Having started a small press and learned everything from the beginning and doing all the work myself, I like reading this to understand how a larger company works. The fact that there's actually a sales team to sell to Target, B & N, etc. surprises me and gives me the same feeling of "oh I really should have known that. I'm an idiot" that I got when I realized that most companies send review copies out BEFORE the book is officially published.

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.

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.

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.)

Yeah I was weary of it until my book was just sitting on Amazon with a clever title and no author that anyone knew about and then I got around to sending Amazon the book and I've actually gotten sales that way.

Although

jourdannex just gave me permission to use her journal entries verbatim. That was probably the best coup of the book, although anyone can read most of them for free on her LJ.