OOC: more publishers

[sythyry]

I'll get back to the story soon, I promise.

In the meantime, a helpful non-LJ person has recommended Twilight Times Books to me. If you'd like to second the recommendation, or warn me against it, please do!

(Sorry I can't just add this to the poll in the previous entry, but polls are not editable.)

Comments

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Not quite like that, no.

I can send a book to one publisher at a time. The publisher will say they're going to give me an opinion in six weeks, but it's always taken six months for me.

Most likely they'll reject Wrath. Big publishers are, as far as I can tell, struggling nowadays. They prefer safe bets: familiar authors known to sell well, or, failing that, familiar subjects known to sell well. Wrath is neither. I don't know any books like it in the bookstore today, though there may have been some twenty or thirty years ago.

So, I'm going with small publishers, who can be more experimental. I don't expect a lot of success there either, but I have some chance, perhaps.

But some small publishers are better than others. If a three-person publishing company is in the process of losing a person, say, their books and authors will suffer. Some may be clueless about how to market SF novels. (I wouldn't know. I am clueless about how to market SF novels.)

I am pretty ignorant of the world of small presses. I'm trying to get whatever guidance I can. I don't know specifically who knows what about them, but I figure that Sythyry readers collectively know more about them than I do.

And if small presses don't work out in reasonable time, I'm going to selfpublish it, I think.

[kobolds.livejournal.com]

Well that was very informative and I can now understand the research for a good publisher.

In case it matters in your decision with the poll, the only bad thing I have heard about sofawolf press was delays in orders, but I cannot really attribute that to them, there are many possible reasons for it, including the UK's occasionally bad postal system, so you may want to discard my negative things vote from the poll.

Also, no matter who you publish with I eagerly await its release. And what happened to AMOI publisher? Did they turn down Wrath?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I didn't ask them, actually. I'm not sure they're much better than self-publishing.

[kobolds.livejournal.com]

You have bad experiences with them, or is Wrath just sufficiently out of their aea of expertese?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Wrath is close enough to their expertise. But I'm not delighted with how energetically they have been promoting Marriage.

[kobolds.livejournal.com]

If it hadn't been for Terrana I may never have heard of it (or World Tree)

[read-alicia.livejournal.com]

I can send a book to one publisher at a time. The publisher will say they're going to give me an opinion in six weeks, but it's always taken six months for me.

FYI - with the prevalence of the web (and increased submissions), it is no longer a detriment to your book if you do simultaneous submissions. All the authors in my circle simultaneously submit their work - it's sort of an unspoken rule. The game has changed :)

Usually, it goes down like this. Publishers have been saying for decades that they don't want simultaneous submissions and they aren't about to officially change that since it makes sense to keep it a buyer's market. However, if few people have the luxury of waiting to sell something anymore. Centers like Grub Street Press have conventions where you can submit your work to a bunch of publishers and agents in one day. And if two publishers find out that you sent the same work to them, they won't be as likely to toss the submission since they need work to turnaround quickly in order to make the press money. You'll notice in more acceptance letters these days, there's a sentence about "If the work is still available..."

Glad to help :) Submit freely, dear sythyry!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Oh really?

(Dern those unspoken rules. They're awfully hard to learn.)

Thank you much, Alicia!

[read-alicia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the amount of many rejection letters that authors get has reached critical mass and tipped the balance.

Just don't go overboard - I generally just submit to 3-4 places at a time, or 1-2 if I'm really pushing to have a particular publisher.