Originally Posted by Hitch
I wanted to comment on the "...greedy publishers" text.
A decade ago, I would have thought that yes--publishers charge too much, they gouge us because they control the book, etc.
That was before I worked through 3500 books, with their author-publishers. My understanding of what an actual publisher goes through, just trying to put out ONE SINGLE BOOK, in a decent, readable fashion, is now far greater and deeper.
Yes, I know--there will be self-pubs here who will object. "Oh, no, I write my books, design my own covers (or pay for...) and upload my own book. I do everything!" And yes--hundreds of thousands of you, clearly, exist. But so do the other kind of authors--those who in their hearts, really wanted to be PUBLISHED by a BPH (Big Publishing House) and who are loath to do any of the publisher's tasks, themselves. I've learned the real costs, of JUST answering an author's emails, during the production of one lousy ebook. I can't even fathom what it's like for an actual publisher, taking an author from contract to published book status, over the course of 18-24 months.
Our typical first-time author will emails us FORTY TIMES (40), over a two-week production period--and 99% of those emails have absolutely nothing to do with us, or what we do. (For those who don't know, I own/run an ebook production business.) Those emails range from "do I need an ISBN" (no) to "do you know someone who's good at marketing?" (no). I've lost count of the books I've seen that need editing; I can probably count on two hands the number I've seen that don't. (Out of over 5,000 books that I've quoted).
I work with a large number of traditional print-layout houses, where the production of a print book, with an author-pub client, will take months--typically, 6 months to a year. That's JUST the print layout and an edit, possibly. That has nothing to do with everything else that goes on around a book being produced for publication.
I talk to those folks all the time, and hear what they go though. I've seen many finally pubbed books that take years--just to get through the print-layout process. JUST to do that. Granted, in trade publishing, the publisher owns the rights, and controls that process to a large extent--but still. I'm boggled, quite truthfully, at the difficulties inherent in this intersection of business and creatives.
Flatly? There is no amount of money, on earth, that could convince me to ever--ever--become a publisher. No, thanks. (Not to mention, of all the trade-pubbed authors I've known, not ONE was ever satisified with "what my publisher did for me." All of them think that their publisher ripped them off, or didn't do enough marketing, or, or or....
Moreover, all of you--all--have now seen what agents and publishers have been seeing for years. Now, it's published, but before, only they saw them. The manuscripts that nobody in their right mind would publish; the ones where you'd shut it, before you finished the first paragraph. Now they're books.
You think that Publishers have some unlimited budget, to sit there and plow through submissions, like what you now see as published dreck, on Amazon? That they have a "gem" rate of 10%? (One out of every ten has something?). Of course they don't. Their rate is probably closer to 1%, assuming their rate is anything like what we're all seeing.
Hell, it's probably LESS than that. The old ways--silly things like writer's groups and critique groups, etc., seem to have utterly fallen by the wayside. I can now tell, with a few thousand words, which writers that come through our shop have had CW courses, or been in a critique/writing group. There's just something that you can sense or feel or know. (Probably the simple quality of the writing--that experienced hand.) The "instant gratification" mode seems to have completely taken over publishing, as well. ("We don't need no stinking writer's groups!") I pity the slushpile readers at publisher's/agents, I truly do.
I've got more respect for what they do, and how they manage the losers and the winners, than I did 10 years ago. Honestly, I don't know how they keep their sanity, much less their profits. Greedy? Not hardly, from what I've seen.
Hitch
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