MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - With this attitude, is it any wonder new authors don't trust the system?

neilmarr · 08-03-2010, 05:09 PM

Hya Steve: I read your last post carefully (twice) and, sound as your initiative seems to be on the surface, I must instist that no legitimate agent or publisher will give it a second glance ... only vanity press under whatever name it chooses to apply. It cannot and it will not work.

On top of the 'real' work, I read at least ten unsolicited submissions a day. And I'm a wee fish in a great big pond. When I decide to down tools, do you really believe I'm going to trawl for more hit-and-miss stuff on some online posting site? No bloody way. After fourteen or sixteen hours I'm more interested in a nighcap and sleep.

What you are proposing here is fine in principle. In practice, it doesn't stand a snowball in hell's chance of atracting serious attention. I agree -- that's a darned shame. But all you would be doing is providing a target-specific market for cowboys who want to cash in on the authors themselves.

Gosh, Steve; please don't think of this response as criticism of a noble idea. It is merely realistic.

And I'll tell you summat: I opened a similar site to that you propose in 1999. It was called the BeWrite Community. It attracted over 3,000 writers and ran for over five years. The idea was to offer, freely' professionally edited work in specific genres (similar to your idea?) in the hope of attracting agents and publishers (either spontaneously or who we regularly and individually pitched).

We ended up with around six million perfectly presented words. Know how many we sold? Not a single one! That's why we opened BeWrite Books as a publishing house to give our guys the break they deserved. We were floggin' the dead donkey even twelve years ago.

Busy folks do not need someone else's slush pile. They're already presented with the best without asking ... and 98% of even those submissions are for the can.

Cheers. Neil

Very best wishes. Neil

08-03-2010, 05:09 PM	#47
neilmarr neilmarr Posts: 7,215 Karma: 6000059 Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Monaco-Menton, France Device: sony	Hya Steve: I read your last post carefully (twice) and, sound as your initiative seems to be on the surface, I must instist that no legitimate agent or publisher will give it a second glance ... only vanity press under whatever name it chooses to apply. It cannot and it will not work. On top of the 'real' work, I read at least ten unsolicited submissions a day. And I'm a wee fish in a great big pond. When I decide to down tools, do you really believe I'm going to trawl for more hit-and-miss stuff on some online posting site? No bloody way. After fourteen or sixteen hours I'm more interested in a nighcap and sleep. What you are proposing here is fine in principle. In practice, it doesn't stand a snowball in hell's chance of atracting serious attention. I agree -- that's a darned shame. But all you would be doing is providing a target-specific market for cowboys who want to cash in on the authors themselves. Gosh, Steve; please don't think of this response as criticism of a noble idea. It is merely realistic. And I'll tell you summat: I opened a similar site to that you propose in 1999. It was called the BeWrite Community. It attracted over 3,000 writers and ran for over five years. The idea was to offer, freely' professionally edited work in specific genres (similar to your idea?) in the hope of attracting agents and publishers (either spontaneously or who we regularly and individually pitched). We ended up with around six million perfectly presented words. Know how many we sold? Not a single one! That's why we opened BeWrite Books as a publishing house to give our guys the break they deserved. We were floggin' the dead donkey even twelve years ago. Busy folks do not need someone else's slush pile. They're already presented with the best without asking ... and 98% of even those submissions are for the can. Cheers. Neil Very best wishes. Neil Last edited by neilmarr; 08-03-2010 at 05:13 PM.