On the Subject of The Printed Word
I love books.
Some might say I love books to an unhealthy degree. If you ever ask me if I want to visit Border's, the answer is yes. If you ever want to know what to get me for christmas, the answer is a book.
Its not that I read that much more than the average person, because I don't really. I read quickly, but I don't read all that much in volume. I just like to be surrounded by books.
I love to pile a bunch of books in my bed, strip down naked, and roll around in them, moaning with pleasure at the exquisite sting of every tiny paper cut.
mmmmm...
What?
Right.
So keeping in mind my love of the printed word, my suggestion for any aspiring writer is to avoid traditional publishers for a while.
Why?
Well, for years if you wanted to be an author, the way you went about doing it was to first write something, lets say a novel.
Once you have a novel, you have to submit it for publishing. In doing so, you can expect to be rejected. A lot. According to Ray Bradbury, you should pick a room in your house and put every rejection letter you receive up on the wall. When that room is completely wallpapered in rejection letters, then you can start to expect a acceptance letter.
And the thing is, a perfectly good story can be rejected by the publisher for a variety of reasons. If you are unknown, then they don't like to risk publishing your book because there will be no name recognition. Your novel's setting may not be in vogue at the time. The publisher may simply not be interested.
Now, suppose you do get an interested publisher. If you are a new author, your starting contract is going to be crap. You may end up signing your story rights away just to get it printed.
Once you wade past all of these factors, your book then needs to sell. And if it does, you can expect a few cents for every paperback sold. The publisher needs to recoup their expenses and make a profit, the bookstore needs their own mark-up, there is a buy-back problem if books on the shelves don't sell.
Its inefficient.
I suggest to any aspiring writer to try to make use of internet publishing.
I don't think that paper books will be disappearing anytime soon, but e-book usage is on the rise. That is especially true with new technology such as the iPhone and the Amazon Kindle.
An e-book can be produced for very little expense, and sold for very little money. The benefit is that there is no publisher or bookstore in the middle to take a cut of the profits. An e-book can be sold by the author for a few dollars per copy, and the author gets almost all of that sale.
Also, you don't need to worry about the mass appeal of your stories as much. A smaller market is still viable.
E-books don't have to go out of print. You can write and sell individual short stories or novellas, which are notoriously difficult to get published.
Also, a reader doesn't have to have the problem of only finding Book 3 and 4 in a series of 6,
an author's entire collection can be found online.
There are still problem's with the system. There is no quality control, advertising your work is hard, and people are not always eager to read a book in .pdf format.
That being said. If you are an aspiring writer, it may be something you'd want to look into.
Some might say I love books to an unhealthy degree. If you ever ask me if I want to visit Border's, the answer is yes. If you ever want to know what to get me for christmas, the answer is a book.
Its not that I read that much more than the average person, because I don't really. I read quickly, but I don't read all that much in volume. I just like to be surrounded by books.
I love to pile a bunch of books in my bed, strip down naked, and roll around in them, moaning with pleasure at the exquisite sting of every tiny paper cut.
mmmmm...
What?
Right.
So keeping in mind my love of the printed word, my suggestion for any aspiring writer is to avoid traditional publishers for a while.
Why?
Well, for years if you wanted to be an author, the way you went about doing it was to first write something, lets say a novel.
Once you have a novel, you have to submit it for publishing. In doing so, you can expect to be rejected. A lot. According to Ray Bradbury, you should pick a room in your house and put every rejection letter you receive up on the wall. When that room is completely wallpapered in rejection letters, then you can start to expect a acceptance letter.
And the thing is, a perfectly good story can be rejected by the publisher for a variety of reasons. If you are unknown, then they don't like to risk publishing your book because there will be no name recognition. Your novel's setting may not be in vogue at the time. The publisher may simply not be interested.
Now, suppose you do get an interested publisher. If you are a new author, your starting contract is going to be crap. You may end up signing your story rights away just to get it printed.
Once you wade past all of these factors, your book then needs to sell. And if it does, you can expect a few cents for every paperback sold. The publisher needs to recoup their expenses and make a profit, the bookstore needs their own mark-up, there is a buy-back problem if books on the shelves don't sell.
Its inefficient.
I suggest to any aspiring writer to try to make use of internet publishing.
I don't think that paper books will be disappearing anytime soon, but e-book usage is on the rise. That is especially true with new technology such as the iPhone and the Amazon Kindle.
An e-book can be produced for very little expense, and sold for very little money. The benefit is that there is no publisher or bookstore in the middle to take a cut of the profits. An e-book can be sold by the author for a few dollars per copy, and the author gets almost all of that sale.
Also, you don't need to worry about the mass appeal of your stories as much. A smaller market is still viable.
E-books don't have to go out of print. You can write and sell individual short stories or novellas, which are notoriously difficult to get published.
Also, a reader doesn't have to have the problem of only finding Book 3 and 4 in a series of 6,
an author's entire collection can be found online.
There are still problem's with the system. There is no quality control, advertising your work is hard, and people are not always eager to read a book in .pdf format.
That being said. If you are an aspiring writer, it may be something you'd want to look into.