Comments for Ponderings, paranoia and publishing

Comment on CatNav Reviews the Five Stop Story App – 10 out of 10! by Ruth

Ruth — Fri, 11 May 2012 20:54:43 +0000

Thanks Jen! I was really delighted to receive it.

Comment on CatNav Reviews the Five Stop Story App – 10 out of 10! by Jen Brubacher

Jen Brubacher — Wed, 09 May 2012 11:51:57 +0000

Great review, Ruth! I’ll make sure people know about it.

Comment on Have you missed the boat? by Joan A. Martin

Joan A. Martin — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 05:06:42 +0000

Very nice article and straight to the point. I am not sure if this is actually the best place to ask but do you people have any thoughts on where to hire some professional writers? Thx
http://www.businesstraveltours.com is my website.

Comment on Traditional or Self-Publishing? by Ruth

Ruth — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 09:56:39 +0000

I agree. “If they think it will be profitable….” But there is a lot of subjectivity in that judgement. I read somewhere that only 1 in 5 of books released by major publishers are actually profitable, so I don’t think publishers have a crystal ball when they are thinking trends and profitability. However, they probably do have access to a lot of research which will help.

Comment on Traditional or Self-Publishing? by Suellen

Suellen — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 17:18:46 +0000

Any publisher would be dieglhted to publish your work *if* they thought they could make a profit by so doing. That means your stories have to stand on their own merits against published stories written by adults. Being merely good for your age isn’t going to cut it.As an aside, most of the major publishers (the ones who can get your book into bookshops) won’t consider your book unless you have an agent. An agent’s job is to sift through the thousands of mostly-unreadable manuscripts that wannabe authors send him every year and forward the ten or twenty that he thinks stand a chance to whichever publisher(s) he thinks will be most interested in them.

Comment on Traditional or Self-Publishing? by Ruth

Ruth — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 14:50:31 +0000

Thanks for commenting. I agree that it’s nice to be able to say “I was published by x traditional publisher.” But I don’t think it’s so nice that it justifies the kind of royalties they take. As you say, blogging and POD/e-books seem to be a good way forward.

Comment on Traditional or Self-Publishing? by Ruth

Ruth — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 14:45:45 +0000

The Writers & Artists book in the UK is also very good for finding UK agents and publishers. There doesn’t seem to be a Kindle edition though, which is odd.

Comment on Nanowrimo: Was it good for you? by Yoshimi

Yoshimi — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 14:35:47 +0000

Hmm it appears like your beiswte ate my first comment (it was extremely long) so I guess I’ll just sum it up what I wrote and say, I’m thoroughly enjoying your blog. I as well am an aspiring blog blogger but I’m still new to everything. Do you have any points for newbie blog writers? I’d really appreciate it.

Comment on Traditional or Self-Publishing? by Anitha

Anitha — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 04:38:37 +0000

I agree to find the information to use the best would be the Writers Market book, and or wisbete. Further contact the publishing company and see the response. If they give you a contact address, phone number and email or wisbete then you can check them out first hand rather than relying on third parties information. I find the online ezines, such listed Editors and Preditors, Absolute Write and a few others tend to call themselves experts when they really are a group of writers testing the marketplace and list publishers and agents under the Writer’s Beware without clarification or notification of any kind to the agents or publishing companies.

Comment on Traditional or Self-Publishing? by Bobias

Bobias — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 04:22:30 +0000

There, there. Of course he’s wrong, but the psiublhing industry wouldn’t be in the state it’s in right now if they hadn’t become so entrenched in their opinions.Sure, it *used* to be that vanity presses put out shoddy work. It’s probably still true, because they’re simply printing presses they’re not small publishers, and newb authors didn’t know the difference, and in that sense they were preyed on. But really, that was the 90s. Where has this guy been?Nowadays, yes, traditional psiublhing is about gatekeepers, and also to a lesser extent it’s about status. There’s still a cachet to having your business book published by Simon and Schuster: it signals to the rest of your status conscious world that You Have Arrived. So in the sense that it’s a well-trod (but quickly disappearing) path to the recognition you crave, traditional psiublhing still serves it’s authors in some small way.But if you *really* care about your ideas, and want to incubate and nurture them, you’ll start a blog, be active in forums, spread your ideas far and wide, and keep a nice POD or e-book on your sidebar for fans to explore.