SLG Now Open to Digital Submissions! (And commentary.)

[slg_news]

It being the 21st century and all, we have decided to expand our submissions policy to include digital submissions! Now, not only can you forgo the self-addressed stamped envelope as long as you include an email address, but you can send us your submission through email.

Don't go crazy yet, though. All of our other submission guidelines still apply

Comments

[slg_news]

I'm venturing forward with much trepidation! But I'm excited -- there's good stuff out there online, and since I can't chase it all, maybe this will make it easier for people to show it to us.

[eyepatchmcgee]

that is pretty exciting! I expect your inbox will become horrifically bloated though! haha. I'm working on my comic, SLG is one of my favorite companies. Once I get some stuff thats good enough together I'm going to submit. *slaves away at ye olde drawing board*
Will anyone from SLG be at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda this weekend?

[slg_news]

I'm excited. I keep having to stop myself from checking the submissions inbox.

We're not going to be at SPX, though I'm not sure if some of our eastern seaboard artists will be attending.

[plattcave]

Completely agree with your point that a writer or an artist deserves to make a living, and that if one book a year is the maximum output, they should be able to survive off of it. But as I just posted on your site, the average advance for a novel is just $5,000. Some authors get more. Many get less. No one can live on that paltry amount of money.

The suggestion that big advances have caused problems in the publishing industry is absolutely correct, but it's not on the five-figure range you mention. It refers to huge six- and seven-figure advances paid to celebrities and politicos for books that did not end up selling well. (99% of those were probably non-fiction.)

Think how many copies of a book a publisher must sell to recoup a $55,000 advance. You're looking at 50-100,000 copies. Most books are lucky to break the 10,000-copy barrier. Until that changes, or until the publishing industry is willing to support books in a way that *makes* that happen, bigger advances aren't going to happen.

[slg_news]

Right -- I wasn't clear at all in how I put it, but I was trying to say that for us to pay someone a $55,000 advance would be equivalent to the seven-figure advances that larger publishers have paid

[slg_news]

I'll refer you to a New York Magazine article, "Have We Reached the End of Publishing as We Know it?": http://nymag.com/news/media/50279/ Large advances mean that publishers can afford to publish only known authors or to chase a few new authors that they hope will be the next big thing.

The large advances it refers to are six or seven figures; I was kind of facetiously equating a $55,000 advance from a smaller comics publisher to that kind of advance from a Random House or Harper Collins. Moreover, I was kind of making it clear, just as our sub guidelines do, that there's not often a lot of money to be made here, so an expectation that might be appropriate when you're dealing with a larger publisher are not appropriate here.

[xray_studios]

Assuming that a book in this instance is written and drawn by one person, and is at least 100 pages, the $55,000 isn't that far off current standards for larger publishers, and is less than some publishers I have worked for.

Though perhaps unrealistically high page rates are part of the problem, rather than the solution. Personally, I prefer the percentage of sales based pay structure. Also, I don't believe in advances. Why should I get paid for work I haven't done yet?

[plattcave]

"Why should I get paid for work I haven't done yet?"

So you can afford to *do* the work.

Most advances aren't paid before the work is done. If a book is sold unwritten, the creators might get 25% up front, another percentage when the book is turned in, and the last amount of the advance when the final edits are completed.

Since a book can take a year or two to come out after it has been completed and turned in, and advance is necessary if a creator hopes to, you know, stay alive long enough to enjoy any possible income from the book's sales.

[xray_studios]

Once a book has been complete and turned in, it's no longer an advance for work not done. So the scenario you describe there is not what I was talking about. I did not say that a person should not be paid until release.

Yeah, the first book can be a challenge, but hardly impossible survival wise. After the first book, you work on the second while living off the money from the first. And so on.

[slg_news]

Traditional publishing is getting a wee bit hurt from the advance model, though they're shelling out tons more than $55,000. And page rates, I think, have more than a whiff of work-for-hire about them, so I don't think they're appropriate for creator-owned projects.

And an aside that does not apply to you: I've heard cartoonists point out how long it takes to write and draw a graphic novel, and how are they going to live while they do it, but you know what? That is what prose novelists do. The publishing industry might decide you're the new face who they can market, but they probably won't, and you're going to be out a couple of years or more of writing a novel and looking for an agent or publisher. I wrote a damn book while I was working full time and going to school full time, and I might never see it published. If you're doing comics or a graphic novel, you don't even have to finish your book -- publishers want a script and a few pages, but if you get interest, you can finish your book in the full knowledge that someone has agreed