How to Measure the Value of Editors

[Worldwalker]

Hal Clement is one of the reasons I don't go to SF cons anymore. There's a big empty Harry-shaped space (with of course a big empty camera-shaped space attached ... was he born with that thing?) ... as I said in another thread, there are too many ghosts.

It's a quandary. There are lots of folks with a vested interest pushing self-publishing as the solution for writers trying to get a book out there. And there are probably instances where self-publishing is the way to go, such as books that appeal to a niche market too small for a regular publisher to address. But for most folks, sorry, but submit and get rejected by someone who might pay you until you break through is still the way to go. Going self-published to avoid the possibility of rejection is an automatic fail.

I may go the self-publishing route, ebook variety, with something I'm writing right now. It's just a story I'm messing around with for fun and to get it out of my system so I can get more productive work done. There is, in all probability, either no market for it or a very, very small one. That's the kind of case where there's really no choice except self-publishing because of the strictly limited commercial appeal. (and it will probably be bereft of professional editing, because I can't shell out the cash for a book that will probably sell 5 copies, all of them to MR members who like my forum posts)

But that, I think, is an exception. I know going in that there's no damn market for it. It's not something a publisher would buy, not because it's not well-written, but because sales to 5 MR members won't pay for them to take the manuscript out of the envelope. If I thought it had commercial potential, I'd be shopping for an agent. Since I know it doesn't, I'm thankful that there is a way to deliver it to the 5 people in the world who would want to buy it.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Hal Clement is one of the reasons I don't go to SF cons anymore. There's a big empty Harry-shaped space (with of course a big empty camera-shaped space attached ... was he born with that thing?) ... as I said in another thread, there are too many ghosts.

For me, too, but it doesn't stop me from going to cons. I believe Harry was a guest at the very first con I attended, decades ago, and it would probably be easier to list the ones I attended he wasn't at. He described himself as an SF fan who happened to write the stuff, and the money he made from writing SF paid for the conventions he liked to attend. I still expect to see Harry when I turn the corner at a con.

(No, he wasn't born with the camera. I believe he got into it seriously after he retired from teaching.)

I'm at the point where I read the obituaries in things like Locus first, to see if anyone I knew has died. There are a few, bless them, who started in the Golden Age and are still with us, like Fred Pohl. To celebrate his 90th birthday, his wife Elizabeth Hull edited an anthology in his honor: http://us.macmillan.com/gateways-hull

I attended a Boskone a few years back largely because Fred would be a Special Guest, and I wanted to shake his hand and thank him for his contributions to the SF field while I still could. (He agreed the field would be a different place if he had never been in it, but declined to speculate on whether it would be better or worse... )

Despite the ghosts, there are too many of the living I only see at cons. We toast absent friends in the bar.

I may go the self-publishing route, ebook variety, with something I'm writing right now. It's just a story I'm messing around with for fun and to get it out of my system so I can get more productive work done. There is, in all probability, either no market for it or a very, very small one. That's the kind of case where there's really no choice except self-publishing because of the strictly limited commercial appeal. (and it will probably be bereft of professional editing, because I can't shell out the cash for a book that will probably sell 5 copies, all of them to MR members who like my forum posts)

But that, I think, is an exception. I know going in that there's no damn market for it. It's not something a publisher would buy, not because it's not well-written, but because sales to 5 MR members won't pay for them to take the manuscript out of the envelope. If I thought it had commercial potential, I'd be shopping for an agent. Since I know it doesn't, I'm thankful that there is a way to deliver it to the 5 people in the world who would want to buy it.

And that's precisely the sort of thing self-publishing is good for.

If you just need the write the thing and get it out of your system, and don't expect any sort of sales or money because the audience is too small, self-publishing is a very valid option. If you are trying to make any appreciable part of your living writing, it isn't.

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Dennis