Writing Biz Knowlege Input Needed

[aeriedraconia]

Dear FList,

I need your collective advice in response to a post in a community I maintain  that someone is being published by Author House and that they recommend going the self publishing route  if the regular publishers were too elusive.

In good conscience I thought I'd point to writer_beware for starters.  What would you say to the people possibly

Comments

[eneit]

first off you tell them it has to be their own choice, but the need to know exactly what they are doing, and why, and the possible ramifications, both good and bad, need to be discussed. A lot of people jump up and down and tell these writers what idiots they are, which is great if you want to get them offside straight away

[green_knight]

I feel that a vanity press is the worst of all worlds. They *cannot* deliver on the promises of getting their books into bookstores - if the big NY publishers can't get all of their books into stores, vanity presses with less clout and less reputation can't do it squared.

Self-publishing is an option if you want to be a publisher, but in that case, cut out the middleman, pay lulu.com $99 for an ISBN number, and hire the professionals yourself instead of paying a vanity press - that way, *you* get to choose the people who'll work for you, which is a much better deal.

Some stories simply do work better with the small press format

That's a good point. I'm currently shopping a novel that isn't, IMHO, going to end up in New York - I'm hoping it will interest an agent, but I am well aware that it's unlikely to sell. Good little book, just not High Concept enough. Ideal candidate for a small press.

[aeriedraconia]

That's another really important point that the major bookstore chains Will Not carry self-published books.

[green_knight]

I don't know if you follow Joshua Bilmes' blog - http://brilligblogger.blogspot.com/ - but he has a habit of going around bookstores and looking for his clients' books. He's a top notch agent selling to top notch publishers. Not all of them are in all of the big chains

[eneit]

I agree with you, vanity press is the worst of all worlds. I don't know how people expect to do really well out of it, I can only think of two success stories, and both of those authors utilsed the self publishing soley to get the attention of mainstream publishers, and were prepared to invest thousands in production and promotion.

[aeriedraconia]

"regular publisher proves too elusive"
Those were my words, the actual quote is this:
"...you want to have it published, and you're having a hard time getting a contract with a publishing company".

Thanks Eneit, you made some really great points too.
I looked up Author House on writer_beware's Predators and Editors page:
http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/peba.htm

Scroll down and you see this entry for Author House:
"AuthorHouse (formerly 1st Books): Not recommended. A vanity publisher.

5/17/06 - If you don't know by now, AuthorHouse lost a libel suit in court. It seems that the courts and jury decided that a publisher couldn't disavow itself of what it published. In other words, AuthorHouse should have vetted what it accepted before publishing. Now they owe several hundred thousand dollars and may have to pay even more in punitive damages."