Kelly McClymer's Blog

I’m still getting my blog legs, trying to decide how to entertain my diverse audience of writers, readers, and family members looking for things they can use to make fun of me. So when the recent furor over a major publisher deciding to get into the vanity press business, I wondered if I should blog about it, or not.

But here’s the thing, everyone needs to be reminded that we can’t count on the shiny label that looks sooooo genuine. We have to take the time to check that label isn’t wrapped around a bottle of poison. You’re never too young to benefit from the lesson that most things ought to be put to the sniff test before we swallow them. For example, the idea that a traditional publisher isn’t being predatory by http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/11/19/harlequin-horizons-whats-in-it-for-you/ (which involves writing a whole novel, revising it, getting feedback on it, submitting it, revising it again, submitting it again, and then either becoming published or having a nice practice novel to put under the bed).

Sniff, sniff.When I first started thinking about actually selling my writing (I had written for as long as I first grasped a big fat yellow pencil), I turned to the science fiction magazines I regularly read (Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and Analog, as well as to Writer’s Digest and The Writer. In the back of these magazines was always a list of ads designed to appeal to the aspiring writer. When I first started (before home computers took off), this included people who would type hand-written or dictated manuscripts, editors who would whip a manuscript into shape (for a fee), and vanity presses like Vantage that offered an impatient writer a shortcut to publication (for a hefty fee).

Blecch! For some reason, whether because I had informed myself by reading about how writers I admired actually became writers, or just because I was so busy looking at writing short fiction for my two favorite magazines, I never thought paying thousands of dollars to get a boxful of books I would then have to hand sell to bookstores was the least bit attractive. Nope. I wanted to sell to one of my two top markets, and maybe one day write a novel and get an agent, a kazillion dollar deal and a movie & TV show (dream of the moon and live on Earth, I always say). I knew this at 20.

No thank you. I learned, over time, how much heart ache I saved myself by never once wondering in the long journey from dream to publication whether I should just do it myself. I saw plenty of other writers shell out $5,000 – $20,000 for a garage full of pretty books that no one wanted. Talk about heart ache. Instead of taking the short cut, I just kept writing and revising and submitting until I sold my first novel to a publisher who paid me (not a lot, but I didn’t shell out a penny of my own money).

Nowadays, it is much easier — and cheaper — to upload a book to iUniverse, Author House, or Lulu and have it distributed through POD or e-publishing technology. In some ways, that can strike an eager writer as a good thing. But thinking about all those past writers with their boxes of very expensive books to hand sell, I can’t agree.

First: there are a (very) few good reasons to self-publish. Family memoirs, specific topics with a clear and captive audience, keeping an out of print book available for new readers, etc. But there is never a good reason to self-publish without understanding what it entails (salesman hat on, always, relentlessly). And even then, to do so before your manuscript receives a professional edit is not kind to your readers, even if that just means your extended family.

Second: any publishing that involves the author shelling out money (rather than getting paid) is either self or vanity publishing. This is simplistic, but if you want to be a published author in the traditional sense, you need to be working with a publisher who pays you, not the other way around. When a publisher asks you to pay for your book, the business model has become predatory — and the writer desperate enough to pay is the prey. There are a thousand warning signs that you are dealing with predators. Writer Beware discusses them better, and more thoroughly, than I can in a raft of long and boring blogs.

But you get the books, says the desperate writer. Yes. You do. And you get the bill. Not to mention you get to be the pr person, the marketing person, the distributor, and the shipper. Which sounds better? — Your publisher pays you, the distributor, the pr person, etc. … or … you pay the publisher and then keep paying to market and distribute the books?

But it takes so long. I know. It took me what seemed like forever. There are plenty of free or inexpensive resources to help you bide your time as you wait. Writing groups, critique partners, industry blogs, wine (only if you are over 21 and not about to drive!), chocolate.

And here’s the thing: this advice applies to boyfriends/girlfriends, jobs, cars, houses, …. Pretty much any time you want something, you have to slow your roll, sniff things out, and watch your own back (even if it gives you a crick in your neck).

Kelly