Category: Culture

Guestblogger Travis Tea (alias Mary Catelli) writes:

Once upon a time there were — and there still are — some writers who helped new writers against scam tricks in the publishing industry.

You can read about them: at Writer Beware http://www.sfwa.org/beware/ or at Preditors & Editors http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/

The writers involved were SF and fantasy writers, and one publisher that was warned against was PublishAmerica, which described itself as a traditional publisher but had such untraditional practices as a one-dollar advance, and requiring you register your own copyright (leaving you $29 in the hole, because it costs $30.)

Apparently it hurt.  Or so we deduce from the comments here:

"As a rule of thumb, the quality bar for sci-fi and fantasy is a lot lower than for all other fiction."  So they warn to run away away from SF or fantasy writers, who are obviously without a clue.

http://www.authorsmarket.net/experts.htm

And indeed, this particular screed seemed to point quite clearly:
http://www.authorsmarket.net/youreyes.htm

Some SF and fantasy writers were discussing this posting online.  During the course of which, someone proposed that we should try to get published by PublishAmerica.

James Macdonald took this and ran with it.  He drew up an outline, asked for volunteers, and send out the chapter descriptions.  Indeed, one he sent out twice, to two different writers. 

I asked for, and got, one of them.  And so I sat down to channel my inner clueless newbie.  I went on for two paragraphs on describing the setting, neglecting any research, and ignoring what I already knew, down to forgetting that polo is played on polo ponies.  And I expanded those paragraphs for a page each — carefully ensuring the opening sentences of the first paragraph contradicted its last sentence.  And then I told, in a flat-footed style, the story he laid out for me.  I made up for the opening by chopping parts up into itsy-bitsy paragraphs, one sentence, or one word.  I introduced one character by cutting and pasting the description from the two paragraphs I had been sent.  I larded their conversations with said-bookisms — far-fetched substitutes for the word "said."  When it was coming in under the length he asked for, I reached for those handy chocolate, fattening parts of speech:  adverbs and adjectives.  Whenever my fingers slipped, I trusted the Microsoft spell checker, which hates all writers and tries to make you look like an idiot; if it could correctly work out the word, I twisted the misspelling until it suggested something else.  Most work of all, in one paragraph I switched tenses every sentence.  That I had gotten used to doing on autopilot.

And then I sent it off.

Meanwhile, other writers were also channeling their inner newbies.  James MacDonald collected them all, put them in the order received, left one chapter out when the writer was unable to make it, fed several into a text generator to produce another chapter. . . . my little efforts at inconsistency are but the smallest part.  People change race.  They die in one chapter and return in the next without a comment.  They wake up and it was all a dream — AND THE STORY GOES ON.

Online, the chatter went on, but when MacDonald said he would tell us the title it would go in under, I posted "NO!"  It was a private location, but never post anything to a private discussion that you don’t want to see on the front page of a New York Times — and once I posted it, the chorus arose.

The rest of the operation was carried out as Top Secret. 

Therefore the next I heard was of our happy acceptance.  They had, of course, had the contract vetted by a lawyer and though it would have been fun to carry the hoax all the way — have it published — the lawyer didn’t think it wise.  So the news was announced:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/1/prweb202277.htm

From here you can see the acceptance letter and the contract:
http://critters.critique.org/sting/

Alas, a month after PublishAmerica accepted it, the day after the news was publicized, they read it.  "Upon further review it appears that your work is not ready to be published."

Fortunately, we were able to find a new publisher:  lulu.com, where we were not fed the same line as at PublishAmerica.

Also, you can download the electronic version for free from the "sting" link.

The story as told by James MacDonald:
http://www.sfwa.org/members/TravisTea/backstory.htm

The website in question has a great deal more information.  Read the blurbs:
http://sfwa.org/members/TravisTea/blurbs.htm

And then compare to the list of known authors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Nights

Before Travis Tea gives us the inside story on Atlanta Nights, I thought I’d introduce him.

To the left is his picture from his author’s page over at lulu.com.

And here’s his bio from his own web site:

It was a dark and stormy night the night Travis Tea was born in the small town of Sweethome, Alabama. Though ever proud of her only son, his mother Senilla continually mourned the loss of the little princess who never would be, Travis’ stillborn twin sister, Madge S. Senilla moved the family from their ranch-style house to a ramshackle shack on the outskirts of the cemetary where the baby was buried. After five years of such living, his father, Ben-Ali, took Travis, and they began a nomadic existence, travelling the highways and byways of America’s southlands, often staying with various of his father’s relatives, many of whom provided inspiration and impetus for his future ambitions.

Travis grew swiftly into a young man, but to a father grown hardened, burly and surly from hard labor, he was. . . not to put too fine a point on it. . . a disappointment. Always of a non-descript and introspective type, Travis made few friends, and buried himself away from his father’s scorn in the pages of magazines and cheap paperbacks purchased at any convenient drugstore. In those pages, he was transported away from his life of toil, and soon began to write for his own amusement. His dear maiden Aunt Vanna was the one who told him in the first place that he was as good as any writer out there. Only one piece from this period is still extant, though Travis holds that shred of napkin close, and will not deign to share it with the general public at this time.

For his 18th birthday, Travis gave himself the gift of a future, and signed up for a hitch in the National Guard. Not quite fitting in with the others, he kept company with his imaginary little brother, Insanna, who would whisper to him at night, and kept him going. While Travis served his country, his father capitulated to his loneliness, and returned to Senilla, who, though Travis had always sent letters home to her, barely realized the men had been gone. Upon his return from the service, Travis wrote a very special story for Senilla’s birthday, which he entitled "That’s All Right, Mama." After the story had been read to her, his mother miraculously recovered her sense of the importance of her living family members, and resumed her place as matriarch of the home.

Travis threw himself into his writing. He wrote at night; he wrote on weekends; at mealtimes; and between work shifts. He enrolled in several correspondence courses in writing, and though lessons were not always delivered in their entirety, and some may never have arrived at all, he perserveered. Though several applications to writers conferences were inexplicably rejected, he perserveered.

In June of 2004, following a particularly vivid dream that stretched over three long nights, Travis began work on his first full-length novel, Atlanta Nights, and by dint of his his dedication to his craft, and phone conversations with his cousin Atrossa helping to drive the plot, and cousin Vapidda helping fashion the words on the page, the novel was completed by July.

Currently, Travis’ family has quit the locality of the cemetary, and moved into a posh suite at the nearby Motel 6. Travis continues working on his next novel, travelling as need be to make personal appearances and perform dramatic and not-so-dramatic readings of Atlanta Nights. He designed, updates and maintains this website with the kind assistance of the Sweethome, Alabama Public Library and HTML for Dummies.

A number of years ago some sci-fi and fantasy authors wrote a book called Atlanta Nights. The book was not sci-fi or fantasy, because the prospective publisher (PublishAmerica) had publicly dissed sci-fi and fantasy authors.

PublishAmerica claimed to be a respectable publisher, though its critics claimed it was a vanity press.

After reading its diss of SF&F authors, several decided to exact revenge by writing a deliberately bad novel and getting PublishAmerica to agree to publish it, thus exposing the literary "standards" of the house for what they are.

The manuscript was not only filled with bad grammar and spelling, misused words, and internal contradictions. It also featured things like an "accidentally" duplicated chapter, an inexplicably missing chapter, and a chapter written by a computer program.

The manuscript was then submitted to PublishAmerica under the pen name Travis Tea (get it? say it fast).

The plan worked brilliantly. PublishAmerica offered to publish the book.

At least, it did until the authors publicly announced that the book was a hoax and then PublishAmerica did a "further review" that determined that the manuscript was "not ready to be published" after all.

Despite this setback, Atlanta Nights was eventually published and can be read online or ordered in hardcopy.

It also has some of the most remarkable blurbs in publishing industry history. For example, Jerry Pournelle raves:

"Don’t fail to miss it if you can!"

But best of all, it turns out that Travis Tea is a reader of this blog, and later today, Travis will give us the inside scoop on Atlanta Nights!

Yee-Haw!

You say you’re desperate not to be published but that your manuscript is insistent that it is ready to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world. How do you satisfy your manuscript’s ambition to make the rounds of literary agencies and publishing houses while still ensuring that you will fulfill your own dream to remain unpublished? Screwtape has some advice for you on how to make sure you are rejected:

"We’ve often imagined ourselves giving a talk that would have a title along the lines of ‘How to Get Yourself Rejected.’ The target audience would be new writers, though we think everyone could stand to learn something from these tried and true secrets for ensuring rejection. In fact, if everybody applied these lessons to their daily lives, they’d be able to avoid that first date with a person to whom they’re attracted, that lucrative and promising job, that bank loan essential to achieving a dream, or whatever it is they claim to want — in other words, all those forms of success that complicate lives unnecessarily.

"But we’ll confine ourselves to encouraging writers with ways to get themselves turned down by agents or publishers, and trust that you’ll understand how to apply these lessons in a broader context. Nor are we going to insult anybody’s intelligence by telling you about the really basic, simple ways that a writer can ensure that no one will read her query letter, let alone her manuscript. We’re sure you already know about obvious things like using unusual fonts and paper, though we will point out that a really fuzzy, beat-up printer for your letter and manuscript is certainly a plus. Extra points if you could dig up a dot-matrix, though of course the real prize goes to those who handwrite their letters. That takes a special person."

[…]

"Anyway, you get the idea: do your worst, think only of yourself and not of the person reading your letter (let alone the person who supposedly will read your book), and you’re bound to fail admirably!"

GET THE ADVICE.

For those who need a bit of tutoring in applying to the broader context, to which Screwtape alludes, take special note of that last paragraph. A sure-fire means of being rejected in any context is to not put yourself in the position of the person whom you want to accept you and think of those means by which you can make that person’s job or life easier. In the art of learning how to be rejected, selfishness and self-interest is a virtue.

You say you’re desperate not to be published but that your manuscript is insistent that it is ready to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world. How do you satisfy your manuscript’s ambition to make the rounds of literary agencies and publishing houses while still ensuring that you will fulfill your own dream to remain unpublished? Screwtape has some advice for you on how to make sure you are rejected:

"We’ve often imagined ourselves giving a talk that would have a title along the lines of ‘How to Get Yourself Rejected.’ The target audience would be new writers, though we think everyone could stand to learn something from these tried and true secrets for ensuring rejection. In fact, if everybody applied these lessons to their daily lives, they’d be able to avoid that first date with a person to whom they’re attracted, that lucrative and promising job, that bank loan essential to achieving a dream, or whatever it is they claim to want — in other words, all those forms of success that complicate lives unnecessarily.

"But we’ll confine ourselves to encouraging writers with ways to get themselves turned down by agents or publishers, and trust that you’ll understand how to apply these lessons in a broader context. Nor are we going to insult anybody’s intelligence by telling you about the really basic, simple ways that a writer can ensure that no one will read her query letter, let alone her manuscript. We’re sure you already know about obvious things like using unusual fonts and paper, though we will point out that a really fuzzy, beat-up printer for your letter and manuscript is certainly a plus. Extra points if you could dig up a dot-matrix, though of course the real prize goes to those who handwrite their letters. That takes a special person."

[…]

"Anyway, you get the idea: do your worst, think only of yourself and not of the person reading your letter (let alone the person who supposedly will read your book), and you’re bound to fail admirably!"

GET THE ADVICE.

For those who need a bit of tutoring in applying to the broader context, to which Screwtape alludes, take special note of that last paragraph. A sure-fire means of being rejected in any context is to not put yourself in the position of the person whom you want to accept you and think of those means by which you can make that person’s job or life easier. In the art of learning how to be rejected, selfishness and self-interest is a virtue.

Having done a few posts on different kinds of publishing and which kinds to avoid, let me now start by giving some advice on how to start writing in a way aimed at getting published.

1. Most importantly, START WRITING! Don’t wait until you’ve read a bunch of theory before you start. Just start. If you don’t get in the habit of writing–and writing regularly–you won’t get good at it.

2. Be prepared to write a lot of stuff that never gets published. This is your practice work. Everyone learning any skill has to practice, and writing is no exception. As a result, relax. Don’t worry about whether this stuff is good enough to print. Don’t have that as a goal for your initial writings.

3. Become aware of what you read. As you read stuff–particularly stuff you like–ask yourself questions, like: "Why did he say it that way?" "How could he have said it differently?" "Why didn’t he?" "What is it about this writing that I like?" "What don’t I like?"

4. Get some books about how to write. There are lots of them out there, and they’re specialized by the kind of writing your want to do (e.g., non-fiction, fiction, science fiction, detective, romance, western, etc.). Read them.

5. Get the book Elements of Style by Strunk and White. This is a very short book offering concise writing advice. It is the standard work for beginning writers. Has been for decades. It’s also cheap.

GET THE BOOK.

6. Start getting feedback on your writing. This is very important, because if you don’t do it, you won’t know how others see your writing, and you won’t make progress past a certain point. Unfortunately, this is also a tricky step.

The easiest thing for most folks to do to get feedback is to hit up their friends and relatives. But there’s a problem: Your friends and relatives (at least the ones you’r likely to hit up) will want to be nice to you. That may interfere with their being honest with you. Honesty is what you need, though, to know whether your writing is succeeding or failing. Another problem is that your friends and family likely are not professional writers themselves and thus may not be able to help you make that much progress.

An alternative that many beginning writers try is joining a writers’ group. Just about every town has these (if you know where to look), and if yours doesn’t, you can start your own. Writers in the group meet, share what they’ve written, and critique it. But there’s a problem here, too: Writers’ groups tend to turn into groups of friends, which raises the niceness vs. honesty problem mentioned above. Worse, writers’ groups frequently end up spending most of their time socializing and comparatively little time critiqing writing. Also, while the writers in your group probably know more about writing than your friends and family, they usually aren’t professionals. Most of the writers who attend these groups are amateurs, and so there’s a limit to how much they can help you progress.

I speak from some experience on that one. I myself used to be a member of a sci-fi writers group. None of us (at the time) were published, and we turned into a group of friends and then started socializing and stopped working as a writers group. I still miss those guys. (Sniff.)

Another alternative is to take a writing class or–better–a series of writing classes. These are commonly available at your local community college. There are also some online. DO NOT NEGLECT TAKING COURSES THAT TEACH GRAMMAR AND PUNCTUATION. THESE ARE VITALLY IMPORTANT FOR GETTING PUBLISHED. Taking courses usually solves the niceness vs. honesty problem, because your teacher typically will be much more honest with your than your family and friends. (In fact, you may be horrified at all the red marks that come back on your homework.) Better, the teacher also probably knows more about writing than your family and friends–and there’s a good chance he’ll know more than the members of your writers’ group, too, at least about writing in general (if not your particular genre of interest).

The ultimate feedback is sending your material off to publishers (for professional publications, not vanity presses). This is the final threshold. If you can successfully get past this one (and it will take some doing), you’ve arrived in the world of professional publishing.

But that’s a whole ‘nother story.

In the meantime . . . START WRITING!

If you read how-to manuals for writing, one of the frustrations you will encounter is that the term voice is thrown about with abandon.  Publishers want "fresh, new voices"; you are implored to "develop your voice"; you will be advised not to "compromise your voice."  You know what a voice is in spoken language, but how do you develop one in your writing?

Basically, your written voice is the unique way you put together words into coherent streams of thought.  A strong written voice is as distinctive as DNA.  A reader can glance at words you’ve thrown together on a page and have a good idea who wrote them without glancing at the byline.  For a demonstration of written voice, cruise the blogs and note the different styles of writing.  Mark Shea, Amy Welborn, Kathy Shaidle, Jeff Miller, and Tom Kreitzberg are all hugely successful Catholic bloggers with instantly recognizable "voices."  I submit that one reason for their success is that they have developed powerful "voices" that set them apart from the rest of the congregation in St. Blog’s Parish.  When you visit their blogs, you’re not just there for the links but for their "take" on the day’s events.  That’s the power of "voice."

So, how do you develop a written voice?  Do you plunge into writing your manuscript, hoping that one will emerge over the next 80,000 words or so?  Sure, if you want to remain unpublished.  As Jimmy has noted in his recent series of posts on How Not To Get Published, the best way to remain unpublished is to try to write a book before you’ve had any experience at writing.

If, for some inexplicable reason, you’d rather eventually be published, here’s another idea for developing a voice:  Start a blog.  Even if you keep it as a more-or-less "private" online journal where you write a post or two a day, you’ll be exercising your voice.  Blogging will do several things:  You’ll be exercising your voice; you’ll be writing on a regular basis; and you’ll be overcoming the "stage fright" that can hinder your writing.  The last is one of the steepest hurdles in voice development because if you are timid about how your thoughts sound to others then you are going to be timid about experimenting with your word choice and with how you construct sentences, paragraphs, articles, chapters, and so on.  Regular public writing, even for a very small audience, is one means to overcome that.

Or you could pour out thousands of words into manuscript form, stuff the pages in a Jiffy bag, and post them to all the New York slush piles.

You decide.      

A few years ago there was an ad on TV (by IBM or Xerox or someone like that) which was about a class being lectured by a sour, old, unlikable, unsympathetic creative writing professor.

The professor was explaining–in his sour, old, unlikable, unsympathetic manner–that it costs publishers thousands of dollars to produce, publish, and warehouse a book and, therefore, the vast majority of his young, hip students were doomed never to be published.

Through the micro-lecture the commercial contained, one of the hip, young students is shown smirking and rolling his eyes, until finally he can’t take it any more when he hears about the money aspect, and so he gets up and says, "That’s not true!"

The then explains to the sour, old, unlikable, unsympathetic–and now shocked–professor, and to the rest of the class, that there’s this new PRINT ON DEMAND (POD) process that uses digital technology to keep a stored record of the book, which can then be printed a few copies at a time, whenever there is an order to be filled. Even if the order is only for a single copy.

"So now," the student concludes, looking at the hip, young students around him, "we can all get published!"

The professor frowns. The class cheers. Go to the IBM (or Xerox, or whoever) logo. End of commercial.

When I saw this ad, I immediately rolled my eyes. It was unlikable for a whole host of reasons (like dissing old people and professors in a classic example of contemporary "cult of youth" prejudice).

But let’s think this through:

Haven’t we had Xerox machines for an awful long time? (At least, longer than any of the hip, young kids in the ad have been alive?) Couldn’t they "get published" by using those? Further, can’t anyone who wants to today go online and start a web page or a blog and get published that way?

Of course, that’s not what they mean. The kids in the commercial want to get published by having their work come out in the format of a book with a square spine and a full-color cover and all.

Okay, haven’t we had vanity presses for longer than any of these students have been alive? Anyone who wants to can "get published" through those with a real square spine book with a four-color cover and everything.

In fact, isn’t there even an appeal to vanity in the student’s joyful declaration that "Now we can all get published"? (It being, of course, understandable that an unpublished author would want this. It’s a very human and very understandable desire.)

What’s new here?

Basically this: Digital technology allows the printing costs to be lower since the book is produced in an on-demand manner. There also aren’t the same warehousing costs.

But the costs will still be substantial, at least if you want a professionally done book (as opposed to something you wrote and edited yourself in Microsoft Word). There are still all the charges for editing, copy editing, proofreading, typesetting, and cover design that the print on demand process doesn’t magically do away with.

Print on demand publishers also are frequently hooked up to the Internet and to online booksellers like Amazon, but vanity presses are starting to do that, too.

What we’re talking about here is just a somewhat cheaper vanity press process.

Done right, that not a problem. It blends into the self-publishing phenomenon, which can be entirely profitable and respectable (or a total disaster). Some folks have had very good experiences self-publishing, including using POD technology to self-publish.

But it is unjust and manipulative to hold out print on demand as a magical way of getting published to the aspiring author as if using this process would mean the same thing as getting published through a professional publisher.

What print on demand will mean for the typical user is that the person will get the satisfaction of knowing that a few dozen or hundred copies of his work have been printed off and sold (possibly to the author himself so he can give them away to relatives and friends) and that if someone stumbles across it on the Internet that that person could order a new copy.

That’s all fine and good, but it does not mean:

1. That there will be more than a small handful of copies in print.
2. That the book is professionally edited.
3. That the book is professionally designed and laid out.
4. That the book is remotely as good as one done by a professional publishing house.

As a result, indiscriminate use of POD technology will create an "amateur" stigma that continues to attach to many POD authors, just as if they had used a traditional vanity press.

Because basically what we’re talking about here is just a new way to get vanity press-quality books done–at least as long as it’s done with a "Now we can all get published" approach.

Getting published through a service that is undiscriminating among authors will not mean as much as getting professionally published, and it is unjust to and manipulative of POD commercials or services to pretend to authors that it will.

If he wants to do professional quality work through a print on demand service, that’s great. He’ll achieve respectability as an author, and he’ll deserve every bit of it.

But technology (thus far) can’t bring writing up to professional standards, and if this technology is used as a means of publishing material that would have been eliminated at the slush pile stage then it will simply result in more bad books being in print and more dissappointed authors out there.

Yesterday I ragged on vanity presses–and for good reason. Many of them are outright scams, and others operate in a very shady zone.

I want to make it clear, though, that I don’t diss self-publishing at all. In fact, I’ve considered it myself.

What happens in self-publishing is that you basically start your own publishing house.

Why would you want to do that, though, when there are lots of publishers out there already?

If the answer is that your manuscript won’t be accepted by a professional publisher then that’s usually a bad reason to self-publish. It usually means that the manuscript isn’t up to professional standards. (It can mean that the manuscript is aimed at a very small market that the big publishers don’t serve, but then there are lots of small market publishers who you could sell it to.)

Here’s the best reason to self-publish: You stand to make more money. By being your own publisher, you get to keep all the money the publisher usually keeps. Hence, you stand to make more.

Only maybe not. Standard publishers already have established publicity and distribution chains set up, and you’d be building one from scratch. Unless you have a really hot product, you likely couldn’t sell as many copies.

On the other hand, if you do have a hot product, you may be willing to push the product in a more aggressive way than an existing publisher and you might sell more copies.

You might even sell enough that the book trips a big publisher’s radar and they get interested in purchasing the rights from you to print an edition of it themselves.

So why wouldn’t you want to self-publish?

Because in exchange for getting to keep the money a publisher usually does, you also have to do all the things a publisher usually does, as well.

This means that you have to (or pay someone to):

• Observe the legal requirements needed in your state to create a new business.
• Edit your manuscript.
• Copyedit your manuscript.
• Proofread your manuscript.
• Typeset your manuscript.
• Design the cover for your book.
• Get blurbs for your book.
• Find a printer.
• Negotiate with the printer.
• Shepherd the book through the production pipeline.

And that’s only the beginning! After your book gets back from the printer, you’ll have to (or pay someone to):

• Write ad copy.
• Design ads.
• Purchase places for ads.
• Contact booksellers.
• Obtain placement with booksellers.
• Try to get the book picked up by major distributors (not the same as booksellers).
• Fulfill orders.
• Do your own book keeping.
• Pay your own taxes.

Aaagh!

And those are the reasons I ultimately chose not to self-publish.

I want to write, not be a publisher.

But I wanted to make it clear that I don’t have anything against self-publishing. It can be very profitable and respectable–or a total disaster.

If you’d like to learn more about self-publishing,

GET THIS BOOK.