Today’s prompt will be short but, hopefully, sweet.
Left by the side of the bed of room 321 of Pineview Hotel, folded neatly, police officers found the following note in a flowing and elegant handwriting:
Dear humans,
I don’t know how you do it, but I’ve had enough pretending to be like you.
Officer Wallace was the first the wall sucked in.
I’ll be continuing with what turns out to be a series of posts related to the publishing industry. Why? Because I’m halfway through revising my second novel and when it’s ready (whenever that may be) I intend to approach agents for that as well. Which makes me curious about an industry I want to be a part of, but know very little about.
All compliments and credits go to the original writers of every post I’ve reblogged, who researched and wrote about the subject so we can read them and learn a thing or two.
Today I draw your attention to Kristen Lamb’s Blog. Some of you might read her blog. For those of you who don’t, click on the link and spend some time there. There’re are a lot of things to read and learn from her in almost every aspect of writing and publishing.
A while back, she wrote an article about the nuts and bolts of the traditional publishing business called The Ugly Truth of Publishing & How BEST to Support Writers. Once again, I was shocked after reading it. Shows how little I know about important things. For me (and perhaps for others like me) traditional publishing meant writing a book, editing it to the best possible shape, getting an agent (oh, how glorious moment that’ll be!), and then
magic would happen and it’d eventually reach a publisher who would love it, and I’d see it on shelves of bookstores. Then I’d write another novel, and another, and I’d get paid a percentage. Simple as that. After all, once we choose to publicise our art and feel good about earning some money from it, we become entrepreneurs.
So, hands up, how many of you have actually ever wondered how a writer gets paid once you buy one of their books? Ever heard of terms like “remainder copies” or “print runs” and how they affected the writer’s wallet? I sure didn’t. I still don’t, ’cause I have a feeling this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Okay, hands up then, how many of you believed (before you started writing or met one of those strange creatures called writers) that writers make a lot of money? If not a lot, then perhaps a decent amount of it.
Almost every friend I have who knows I write has the same misconception.
Read Kristen’s post and see how things really are. It’s a long read, but you’ll learn so much from it.
Not long ago, I published a poll where I asked published writers who visit my blog to tell the rest of us which publishing path they chose and why. Apparently, within some of these categories are subcategories, and since I’ve been trying to gather and present you with as much info about publishing as I can, I figured those of you about to have something published, or who want to try a different publishing path than traditional, might find the following interesting.
A while back, Jane Friedman posted an infographic outlining the five key publishing paths. Since then, she has updated that infographic with a new one which includes more available and up-to-date publishing options. Don’t you just love infographics? Full of knowledge, condensed into a single image.
Needless to say the poll I mentioned earlier is still open and will remain open and wouldn’t mind a few more visiting published writers to drop by and click one of the options there. If you haven’t seen it yet, now’s the time 🙂
Harry pulled his collar to the wind and the damp, and squatted. Even his smoke had a hard time staying lit in this weather. He glanced at the other well-tended graves to the left and right.
“Waste of space. Should ‘ve let you out for the vultures.” He took the smoke out of his mouth and spat on the dirt mound. He stood up, ignored the popping sounds his knees made, dropped the cigarette, and stomped it with his foot.
“Sure took your sweet time dying. I thought you’d never give up.
“You thought right,” a voice behind him muttered.
A couple of weeks ago, I reblogged Lara Willard’s post about the different choices a writer has to get published. Even though I decided that traditional publishing was what I wanted, I’d still like to know what the other side has to offer, because deep down I haven’t rejected the idea of self publishing something. However, since I’m not yet published (either self pubished or trad published) I’d like to know the pros and cons of each.
So I turn to you. What is your take on this? Why did you choose the publishing path you chose? I’d really appreciate it if you took the time to answer. Please feel free to reblog this (in fact, I’d be very happy if you did), or talk about it to as many of your writer-friends as you can. The more people answer, the clearer the picture for me and others will be. So far, the options I know about are the following:
A) Self-publish
B) Traditional Publish (either through an agency or through a small press. I think we can all agree that vanity presses should be excluded)
C) Hybrid
If I’ve missed any other option, please comment. You can select more than one option.
I chose
C) to be a Hybrid writer because:
Please specify in the comments.
As I said, I don’t really know the benefits of either option, which made it very hard for me to come up with questions that will cover as many probable answers as possible, other the almost cliché “I wanted the best of both options.” So, for you, the hybrid writers, I would appreciate it if you could take the time and answered in the comments section.
After a few weeks I intend to return to this post and discuss the results.
Thank you all for participating. Please feel free to reblog this.
