My own Journey: Part 1

 Hello again, fellow castaways on the shores of time.

This week, let me kind of give you some background on my own publishing journey, and it may help you navigate the waters through the scam jobs waiting for you to sail through their minefields.

I started writing Becoming NADIA back in 2003. The story came to me in a nightmare so vivid, I woke up in a cold sweat, not even knowing where I was. That's a pretty intense feeling, as you can imagine.

So, anyway, the rough draft poured out like water in a total of 55 days. And here was I, the beginning writer, all full of myself because: "Look what I did. I wrote a book!" And to be pretty honest, I think I was pretty proud of myself. So should you be, if you write a whole novel of 85,000 words, whether it be in 55 days or 10,000 days. We all know that's a lot of work.

The problem was: I had a book, and had no idea how to get it to market. Kind of like where some of you are. I was hungry, starving to be an honest-to-God "published author."

Fortunately, my place of work had this book exchange, kind of like a Little Free Library, on the second floor in a bookshelf, and in that bookshelf one day I found my first key to unlock that door to publication. It was a book by Scott Edelstein, titled "Manuscript Submission." The tagline was a short line about how to format my baby and get it ready, and how to start the submission process with publishing houses.

Please get that book and read it. It has some outdated information in it, but I guarantee it will open your eyes to some valuable tools for your toolbox.

Now, here was my second hurdle, which I ran smack into and tripped. Here I am telling on myself just a bit. I thought that I could just whip out a story and just like that, the acquisitions editor at Random House would read it and cry, and tell himself, "Where has this been all my life?" Because I believed in that story SO MUCH at that time, I knew it would become an instant best-seller, and I would become financially independent overnight.

Silly me.

After the first ten form rejections, I was ready to tear my hair out. What was wrong with these people, that they can't see how fricking BRILLIANT this story was?

To be completely blunt with you, and with myself, I was a total idiot. I'll get to more of that later.

I started stumbling across organizations like SFWA, the Science-Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, at sfwa.org. Go ahead, look it up. These are the big money professionals: The Ben Bovas, the Ray Bradburys, the Olivia Butlers and Andre Nortons. The BIG folks. Their website has a lot of useful information, besides listing their great roster of members. Now, to be a member of SFWA, you have to meet a whole list of criteria. And these are the folks who give out the Nebula Awards.

One of the pages on their website has a sample contract that serves as a template of things to look for. Another page recommends a good critique group.

What is a critique group, you ask? Well, let me tell you. A good critique group is one whose members will be brutally honest, and expect the same from you. One that respects the art of writing enough to make each other better at it. "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." That includes women, too.

I thought that I had to keep my work under a tarp until the Glorious Reveal, when I could unleash it upon the world, and everyone would close that last chapter with a wistful tear. Really, I did think that. Yeah, to be so full of oneself that you are at THAT point, you got a comeuppance coming. And oh, boy, did I ever.

I got a free membership at Critiquecircle.com. I highly recommend it. Now, to post your work for critique, you have to earn credits. You earn credits by giving other writers feedback on their work, and then you can post in return, and they give you feedback on your work. That's how it works. I can't speak to other critique sites, but that's how it works over there, and it works well.

So I finally get to post my first chapter, and a sixteen year old girl calls me out on so many errors in technique: Overuse of adverbs, needless repetition, Point of view: I mean, she was a real technician. It hurt to hear all that, to be honest. But at the same time, I knew she was trying to put me in a higher place, with real skills. It's one thing to be a storyteller; it's another thing to be a WRITER.

I spent the next three years polishing and correcting all my numerous boo-boos, and still tripping over other hurdles in the process.

After I got it punched up, I started running it through the mills again, and got acceptances from companies that wanted to publish my book for the paltry sum of 3,000 dollars. I nearly signed with them until I looked a little deeper  and uncovered the scam. Look at my previous posts on publishing to get a little more insight on it all.

To make a long story slightly shorter, I finally got a deal with a small press out of Montreal, and published 5 books through them, until the house closed due to health issues. But I got into self-publishing, and re-released all my work, and here I am: Working hard, writing hard, and trying my damnedest to help you all avoid the pitfalls I fell into.

We'll get more into the details of my journey in future posts.

Till then, keep the light on. 

On Publishing, Part 4: Hybrid Publishing

 If you have not, go back and read Parts 1 through again.

Here is where there should be much discussion, and I am open to being wrong. But someone is going to have to prove it to me. And here is what I want to be wrong about, but as of yet I am not:

"Hybrid Publishing" is just another euphemism for vanity publishing, and so far it looks like another scam job you should run away from.

Any "publisher" who makes more money from authors than from book sales, in my opinion, is ripping off the author.

Here's how it's supposed to work: The publisher accepts the book. The publisher provides editing services and cover art. The publisher formats the book AND ACTUALLY PUBLISHES THE BOOK. The publisher then receives moneys from people who buy the book. the publisher pays the author a share of the profits from said book sales.

Notice how I said "The publisher pays the author'" and not, "the author pays the publisher." That's called The Golden Rule: The gold flows one way.

I recently had a brief exchange with someone who claimed she was a hybrid publisher, and tried to tell me her business was totally legitimate. I invited her to come on here and discuss my concerns. She went quiet. I never heard from her again.

And yet, here I am, open to being wrong.

The supposed business model of hybrid publishing supposedly goes like this: The author pays the publisher anywhere up to five thousand dollars (That's $5,000.00 for comparison) for the publisher, to offset editing costs and cover art, formatting, and publishing, including issuance of ISBN and copyright registration.

So what is the author getting for their five grand? 

First off, we have to ask ourselves this: What is the acceptance rate for these hybrid publishers? About the same for vanity presses, which are proven scam jobs? That would put it at, basically, 100% acceptance. Congratulations! You are now a published author!

But what if your manuscript is (let's put it kindly) lousy to begin with? Wouldn't a reputable publishing house suggest they fix a few things and resubmit later, at least? Remember, an editor's job is not to "fix" the entire manuscript. That would mean they have to write the book all over for you, in which case the story is no longer yours. In addition, it's not fair to ask an editor to rewrite your poorly written manuscript in the first place. Editors' time is valuable. Their job as content editors is to offer suggestions on content, helping you the author remove repetitive or useless information, tighten the story up, or flesh out other parts. All these changes would remain in your voice as the author. You might go back and forth a few rounds with this editor before your work goes to a line editor, who preens it for grammar, syntax, catching typos and such. By the time you're through with these two stages, your baby is bright, clean, has a fresh diaper, and is ready for cover art built by a talented graphic artist.

All that to say that any publishing house with a 100% acceptance rate is a scam job.

You have to remember that you are way too close to your own work to just trust it to a quick spelling and grammar check. You need someone who can be brutally honest with you in a way that forces you to become a better writer, and who understands they have a vested interest in making this work the best it can. If they already have your money, they have no interest other than letting Microsoft Word do a cursory check, and there are your "editing services." Wasted money.

All the rest of these "services" can be done for free on KDP, or Draft2Digital. Even your ISBN is free on both those sites. If you want to buy a block of ISBNs, you can. 

Now, if you are this (or any other) hybrid publisher, and you want to prove me wrong, I am right here. Willing to listen, willing to talk. Shoot me a comment. For that matter, anyone can shoot me a comment. 

I won't bite. 

We have more  to talk about, and I promise I'll get to that in coming editions. Till then, keep the light on, and DON'T YOU DARE F--ING STOP WRITING.

On Publishing, Part 3: Vanity Publishing

 On we go, fellow castaways on the literary sea.

This week, let's explore Vanity Publishing.

As much as I want to throw up in my mouth every time this subject comes up, it's a thing, because these vanity publishing scam jobs are still raking in money hand over fist from beginning authors.

So first of all, let's clarify a definition here: A "Vanity Press" is a company that makes its money from authors, not from books sales. Here is how it works:

You receive an email or a letter saying, "Yes, we love your story! Let's put it in print!" Okay, maybe not in that exact phrasing, but you get the gist here. All they want, they say, is three to five thousand dollars to cover editing services and a cover, and they PROMISE they'll get it onto Barnes & Nobel's shelf! Now, who in their right mind would turn that down, I ask? Why, no one, of course!

And that's how I very nearly got took. Because I didn't know how the business of writing is supposed to work. So let me lay it out for you, and it's right here where The Golden Rule comes into play. The Golden Rule of Publishing is this: The Gold flows FROM the Publisher, TO the Author. I'm convinced to this day that that is the case.

Here's what actually happens: They deliver almost ZERO actual editing. Maybe a cursory proofread. Nothing else. They Give it an amateurish cover, because who can really tell? You're too damn tickled and proud to finally become A PUBLISHED AUTHOR to realize that although your baby is cute, it needs a good, thorough chewing and a back-and-forth between you and your editing team. But what do I know, right? Then they set the price point at some ridiculous altitude, and let it languish in the sales basement of Amazon. Because they don't care how many you sell. They've probably promised you 100% of the profit, and told you you can keep your copyright.

But look at the contract you've signed: A seven-year, exclusive contract for all publishing formats, and if you're not happy, all you need to do is buy the contract out for another five hundred dollars.

They don't care how crappy your manuscript is. They have a 100% acceptance rate. Every book gets the same treatment. You make ZERO sales, and they don't care. They move on to the next sucker.

PublishAmerica is one of those companies. Whitmore Publishing. Dorrance. There are way too many to keep up with, and even so, some companies have even told me, "We have no room for your manuscript, but one of our publishing partners has agreed to look at it." Oh, boy. Don't hold your breath. This just gives the illusion of selectiveness while continuing to draw you along with that bait of "becoming a published author."

Do yourself a favor: look up a book called "Atlanta Nights." It was written by a group of top-selling, professional authors to expose PublishAmerica for the scam job it is. They deliberately wrote the most horrid, train-wreck punctuated, nuclear disaster they could come up with. Each author was assigned thee different chapters (not even sequential, but maybe I'm wrong), and they weren't allowed to communicate with each other. Guess what? It was accepted. And "published." Then the authors blew the cover off the joke.

One young man I worked with at my day job, came to me and asked my opinion on the novel he had published through PA. So I bought a copy. At twenty-five dollars. And it was horrid. A prologue so long it should have been a chapter in itself and revealed way too much of the plot later. Made me not even want to bother with the rest. But I fought on. Lord, I fought on. Sentence fragments, poor grammar, numerous spelling errors, lengthy expository passages, all stacked up. I couldn't finish.

Doo yourself another favor: Check out the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's webpage, Writer Beware!

https://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors__trashed/writer-beware/

Here, I just gave you your first contact in the professional writing community. That's where I started to wake up and realize that not all was sunshine and roses in the publishing community, and there were actually people who only wanted to take my money and run.

So, I'm getting a bit long-winded here, I know, but I want you to know you have options, and you need to take yourself seriously enough (and believe in yourself enough) to not pay these fly-by-night operators any of your heard-earned cash, because they are going to allow trash to be put on the market in your name, and a reputation is ten times harder to restore than to establish. There are no shortcuts to a smooth, quality product that people will want to read again and again.

As usual, leave your comments here if you want to discuss any of these concepts, and if I am helpful at all to you, let me know.

Let's do this!