My own publishing story, part of it anyway.

I should constantly remind myself that what I write here, for better or worse, for astute or just plain dumb, may turn out to be imperishable. And that's score one for the web; when I have grown bored with further editions of City Comforts and no longer bother to keep reprinting it, there will be some little bit of me preserved in some foreign field of a server.

That's the good news/bad news about the blogosphere.

***

My own publishing story is simple. No one else would. Or rather, the terms which they offered or their manner of dealing with an author left no doubt that from the publisher's standpoint it is a buyer's market and that they were very clearly the buyer. I did all the things they say to do: a polite letter with a sample chapter (which looks amazing like the final book -- the proposal clearly was parent to the child) sent to an agent. (The idea of actualy getting directly to an editor at a "real publisher" is just too naive for words.) Well after a few months of that, of letters, and of phone calls to agents personally known to friends (they handled their books), I realized that I was no longer working on my book but working on a their proposal --- for some person who knew far less about the subject than I did. And I realized that that was silly. So I decided to simply publish it myself, if only as a xerox at Kinkos. Undiscouraged, I kept working on the book and in a slightly later version --- maybe 85% through --- I finally did find a publisher. A real one. A terrifc guy, very successful, a real professional who would be well-known to anyone in the publishing biz. He offered an advance, in writing, and it was a very reasonable one in fact; he loved the book and he was sincere, I am sure. But then when I asked about the publicity campaign for my book, and said that I would forego my advance if he would match it with a like amount for promotion, well all of a sudden the phone calls were not returned. I guess publishers don't like authors who ask business questions.

That's ok. It's working out fine and I am having a lot of fun. Just remember that publishing is a whole separate task from writing and that publishers do indeed earn their money. And probably the most important thing they do is hardly the actual manufacturing -- for most simple books like mine, you just find a good graphic designer and a good printer and they do all the work -- but it is the promotion and marketing. And the most important thing publishers do is create 'buzz --- to snow the cultural gatekeepers of our society...the editors of big newspapers and magazines...so that they will actually read the book and review it. The only thing publishers manufacture is opinion.

The problem of course -- and this is my surmise about how things work at say, The NYT Book Review or equal -- is that the editors don't have enough knowledge of the field (and after all they are generalists so that is understandable) to have the self-confidence to be able to determine whether a book is worth reviewing. So they indirectly rely on the opinion of the publisher, who of course indirectly relies on the judgment of the agent. You can argue that it's a reasonable system in that it does separate out a lot of junk. But then again, it also relies on whether a prospective author is institutionalized i.e. connected to an institution to give authority. Without that, the gatekeepers won't let you in.

Comments

[fritz schranck]

I agree wholeheartedly:
http://www.sneakingsuspicions.com/a01182404.htm#012004

BR,
Fritz
/f

[BaySense]

Philip Greenspun has similar thoughts -- in a lot more detail: http://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/dead-trees/story.html

Dave