|
|
This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
|
|
Author
|
Topic: Book writing and self-publishing
|
|
|
|
|
John Walsh
Film God
Posts: 2490
From: Connecticut, USA, Earth, Milky Way
Registered: Oct 1999
|
posted 11-20-2005 08:29 PM
In the USA, children's books have become popular, so there's a lot of competition, thus it's harder to get one published. I mean, Madonna wrote a children's book (although I bet she had a ghost writer.) Some of these children's books seem strange to me, like 'Walter the Farting Dog.' I'm not against it, but I don't get either, which means I guess I'm really the old fart.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
|
posted 11-24-2005 04:23 AM
My first one finally came out in August. The process of researching, writing and editing it took around three and a half years.
Self publication, fiction and/or writing for children are not areas I know anything about or have any experience of; though a friend of mine has published two political/crime thrillers. When we compared notes, we found many points in common as far as dealing with publishers is concerned.
Step 1 is to do some careful research to identify (i) the nature and size of your potential market, (ii) whether there's a gap in that market, and (iii) which publishers already have a track record in selling to that market. This should produce a list of publishers to target.
Step 2 is the book proposal. Different publishers have different guidelines for what they expect to see: but basically this document is a sales pitch which states what you're offering them, how many and to whom do you expect it to sell, what your evidence for that is, what your track record is to show that you can deliver, etc. etc. Sometimes they'll want extra, more specific information relating to your proposal: how many illustrations are there, who's going to foot the bill for clearing them; that sort of thing. Many publishers have guidelines for submitting proposals (and even a PDF form in some cases) on their websites.
A publisher will want evidence that you can deliver what you're offering. In my case I hadn't published anything of that length before, but had published a few journal articles and reviews; and so I included a sample of those with the proposals. For first time authors of fiction, I gather that the usual route is to submit a sample chapter. A publisher's reader will look for written style, evidence of ability to construct, sustain and develop a consistent plot, and so on and so forth.
If the publisher bites, then step 3 is agreeing and signing a contract. Read it carefully, making sure that there's nothing in there you're not happy with (like making you liable for a five-figure sum for copyright clearance on pictures, for example).
Step 4 is the easy bit - writing the thing.
Step 5 is realising that you'll never make the deadline, you're less than half way through the first draft and you've already exceeded the agreed word length. In the case of Moving Image Technology, I was working to a limit of 100k words and the finished first draft came in at 142.
Step 6 is the editing and revising process. The publisher's reader(s) will come up with a whole load of queries and suggestions, while at the same time you'll have accumulated a list of them yourself - things you decide to park during the process of writing the first draft but now need checking out and putting to bed. In my case it was checking and double checking names/dates/facts etc. This is only a guess, but I'd speculate that with fiction, checking for plot consistency would be a big issue - you don't want to introduce a character in chapter 1 as having had his right arm blown off in the war, and in chapter 3 have him shoot someone with the gun in his right hand.
Step 6 gets repeated several times, probably (3 complete trawls through the text in my case). Eventually you just have to decide to call it a day and send it to press. Minor gremlins are bound to get through: so far I've spotted three typos in the final, published version of Moving Image Technology and two factual errors that slipped through the revisions stage. In the case of non-fiction you may have to do an index as well. In my case, I had to produce the list of terms, and then they linked the page numbers to them.
Step 7 is fielding a bombardment of queries from the publisher over the final proof layout, marketing and promotion.
Step 8 is getting your hands on the finished book and waiting for the reviews and sales figures to filter through. I haven't heard anything about sales so far and only two reviews have appeared so far to my knowledge (one very positive, one slagging it - so the scores are even at the moment!).
One thing that does occur to me is that if you do decide to go down the self-publishing route, you're shouldering all the financial risk and all the marketing effort single-handed. OK, if you sign with a publisher, (s)he'll take a hefty cut: but a publisher will also take a lot of work and up-front investment off your hands, too. My royalty will only work out at around £1.15 per copy sold; but the quid pro quo for that is that I haven't lost any money if it fails to sell and ends up in the remainder stores.
Anyway, good luck! I'm now in the proposal writing stage for my next book, a biography of Lee de Forest. Having chatted informally to three publishers they seem much less enthusiastic than was the case with Moving Image Technology, for the simple reason that the potential size of the market is a lot lower. In retrospect I was pretty lucky with my last project, and will probably end up having a rougher ride with this one.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
|
posted 11-24-2005 07:20 AM
Drat! Should have thought to send my proposal to them! ![[Mad]](mad.gif)
Had a quick look at their website, and from what I can see, McF doesn't do self-publishing (or at least if it does, it doesn't advertise the fact). Given that the front page of McF's website states that...
quote: McFarland's Website
McFarland is a leading U.S. publisher of scholarly, reference and academic books. Located in Jefferson, North Carolina (in the Appalachian Mountains), McFarland publishes books that can be found in libraries worldwide.
...it would seem that they're essentially in the same niche market as Edwin Mellen Press, i.e. small print runs of hardback monographs and reference books which sell to a very restricted market, mainly university libraries. Certainly the only McF books I've got are ones which ended up in remainder shops for around a fiver: with list prices in three figures for some titles, individuals are hardly likely to buy them.
However, unlike Edwin Mellen Press, McF doesn't seem too particular about what it publishes. Some of their reference stuff is obscure but can be useful. But many of the monographs are, frankly, the result of dubious 'research' and writing, the example (The Theatregoing Experience or similar title) Michael Coate took apart on this board being but one. That book looked to me like it must either have been self-published or the result of an editorial review process that went horribly wrong; there were just so many holes in it.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
|
posted 11-25-2005 09:06 AM
Ta for the congrats.
quote: Tim Reed
I summarily dismiss considering the purchase of anything from McFarland. They are over-priced, considerably more than the library binding justifies. I suspect they are little more than a technical vanity press.
I have wondered if they're in the vanity publishing market (i.e. the author pays them to print, distribute and market the book), but if they do accept contracts on that basis, there's nothing on their website which says so. I've also noticed a lot of McF titles in remainder shops: whenever I have a London meeting I usually try and pop in to the remainder shops on the Charing Cross Road which have good film/history sections, where there'll often be 3 or 4 McF titles, often going for as little as £5 for a hardback.
quote: Peter Berrett
Move over Enid Blyton.
'Woof woof', said Timmy!
BTW, she had her problems with publishers, too.
quote: The Sunday Telegraph, 20 November 2005
Enid Blyton, one of Britain's best-loved children's authors, was branded a racist and ridiculed for her absurd plot lines by her own publisher, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
Documents discovered in the archives of Macmillan show that the company, which had previously published eight of the author's works, was scathing about her 1960 offering The Mystery That Never Was.
An internal assessment of the book, which was submitted at the height of the author's fame, does not pull any punches. The report compiled for Macmillan by Phyllis Hartnoll, the theatre critic, who also worked as a reader for the company for 35 years, is critical of almost all aspects of the work.
Ms Hartnoll wrote: "There is a faint but unattractive touch of old-fashioned xenophobia in the author's attitude to the thieves; they are 'foreign' (though one of them is called Harry and they generally talk in English) and this seems to be regarded as sufficient to explain their criminality."
The book tells the story of a boy called Nicky Fraser who invents a mystery tale while he is home for the Easter holidays. Nicky, who is aided by his best friend Ken, hopes that a false trail of clues will engage a visiting uncle who has been feeling down.
To the amazement of both boys and the uncle, the clues become real and the mystery takes on a life of its own. The story reaches its climax when the boys confront a group of thieves in an underground cave. Ms Hartnoll is scathing about the plot, which she says has "no merit beyond superficial competence".
"The characterisations are painfully thin and the plot does not stand up to examination," she wrote. "We never know why the treasure was left in the cellars or how the thieves know about it. They behave with incredible stupidity and the device of signalling from the hill, which would have attracted the attention of half the neighbourhood, is transparently absurd." She concludes: "This is not a book that would reflect any credit on our list, and I think we should reject it."
The review is one of hundreds of readers' reports in the Macmillan archive which have been recently purchased by The British Library. Ms Hartnoll's comments seem to predate criticism of Blyton which became fashionable for a short time in the 1980s. In 1982 Channel Four's Comic Strip series lampooned some of the author's most famous characters in Five Go Mad In Dorset.
The revelation that a company which published her work was making similar criticisms in 1960, however, will surprise many. Gillian Baverstock, 74, the author's daughter, said she was unaware of Ms Hartnoll's review and last night defended the book. "It is not one of her best but it is a perfectly acceptable story," she said. She added: "I think in those days when you were looking for characters or people who did wrong things you went for foreigners or people from foreign climes. It gave the story an extra frisson."
Tony Summerfield of the Enid Blyton Society, last night said he was astonished that Macmillan had been so scathing about the book given that the company had previously published some of her most famous works including the hugely successful Island of Adventure.
He said that Ms Hartnoll came across as a "prim librarian" in her review and was guilty of reading a children's story with an adult's eye. "Enid did not give a damn about what the critics said. All she cared about was what the children thought. I think Macmillan were stupid to turn the book down because she was selling very well at the time."
Blyton, whose books have sold 400 million copies in 40 languages, would appear to have had the last laugh. The book was subsequently taken up by Harper Collins who printed it in 1961. It was published again in 1965 and 1983. Blyton, whose most famous creations included Noddy, The Famous Five and The Secret Seven died in 1968.
Other readers' reports in the archive concern the works of Vladimir Nabokov, William Golding and C P Snow. They show that Macmillan was not adverse to publishing titles which were criticised by its professional readers if it thought there was a chance of commercial success. In 1951 it published Snow's The Masters, a story of academic intrigue at Cambridge, which its own reviewer had described as "wooden, seldom lively and a bore".
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
All times are Central (GMT -6:00)
|
This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
|
Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM
6.3.1.2
The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion
and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.
|
Home
Printer-friendly view of this topic