Letters To The Editor For December 7th
Letters will return next week.
POD Authors Need To Hire Editors By Dougie Child
Authors, heed my words. Hire an editor. Find someone you have never met before, some good soul with a great resume and references, but someone who has no emotional interest in you or your project. Hire an editor who won’t give a rat’s shiny fanny whether your manuscript changes the course of history; hire an editor who just wants to know what your deadlines are and whether your check will clear.
That All-Too-Common “Life Threatening Illness” Excuse from a Deadbeat Publisher or Editor!
I sent a magazine a story a couple years ago now, and after repeated follow-ups (I’m a pretty patient person still working toward my first print fiction clip), I got word this summer that they had accepted my story for publication in their next issue. The e-mail said that their publisher had been in a life-threatening accident and was recovering, but they thought the next issue would be out soon. That was in July. I sent them an e-mail again in November to request an update as to when that issue would be coming out, but I haven’t received a response yet. In the past, I always got a response within a couple days. I can’t find any info about them when I do a web search, but they are listed in the 2006 Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market.
THE POWER OF NEGATIVE INSPIRATION By Doug Bright
It was 1965 and, at a time when most of my contemporaries were grooving up on the Beatles, I was a teenage folksinger–and proud of it! When I went to the recently built Seattle Opera House to catch Ian and Sylvia, Josh White, and my hometown’s own Brothers Four in one glorious show, it was one of the most memorable musical experiences of my young life. Unfortunately, the critic whose review appeared the following morning in a local paper was considerably less enthralled.
Angela Spills the Beans…
We had an absolutely wonderful Thanksgiving Day! It snowed here all day long and between that, and the homemade hot chocolate, and the cute snowman Frank built, and the children bringing down the Christmas decorations from the attic, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation playing in the background, the day couldn’t have been more warm and magical.
Why Won’t You Publish My Book? I’m Willing To Pay!
What does it matter if the market is “saturated” as you put it, when “oceans” of POD books fail to sell?
If “cold turkey”, a POD publisher suffers no financial loss in readying a book for sale, does it really matter whether it is thought of as a late comer?
One feels loathe in thinking that they, i.e. the POD publishers at large, presume to be gifted with an un-erring ESP as to what will sell and what won’t.
Letters To The Editor For November 30th
No letters this week. I guess everyone was too busy eating! 🙂
Stop Writing and Start Establishing Your Promotional Credibility By Patricia L. Fry
Let’s say that you followed the advice of several publishing professionals and prepared a complete book proposal. Good for you! It’s clear to anyone reading your proposal that you have a handle on your target audience. You did a good job of showing that there is a need for your proposed book. Your synopsis and chapter outline are superbly written. And your promotional plan is impressive, indeed, except for one thing. It’s fake, counterfeit, phony, bogus.
Should I Contribute To This Celebrity’s Book?
I’m curious. What happens to the unpaid (except in signed copies of the book) contributors when a well-known celebrity publishes a book with the stories and “wisdom” from ordinary writer folk? Do the ordinary folk get any publicity or press in the ensuing publicity tour? Does it hurt/help a writer to have their selections published in someone else’s best seller? I’ve been selected to have a story I wrote published in a celebrity’s book and folks are asking ME what happens and I have to say, I honestly don’t know! Can you clue me in?
Follow the Old Editor, Live With the New By Rose R. Kennedy
It’s been almost eight years, and I can still feel the gut wrench. Up to that day, I’d been contributing tens of thousands of words to a prominent how-to publisher’s books, all at a handsome per word rate, for an editor I’d met only by phone but adored.
Now, the voice on the other end of the line was telling me she would be in charge. This Ms. LB would give me a small sample assignment at the usual per word rate, but no promises.