I am hoping to converse with you (singular or plural) about this, just for some pointers about a particular thing about which I am kicking around the idea of submitting to places… Nothing detailed in the conversation, just looking for some basic advice. In the conversation I’d describe the work in question, and it is quite short ftr, but I’m not asking anyone to read anything.
PM me if you’re willing to help me out here… Thank you…
I’m not in publishing, but if you don’t get any bites here, you might try over at the Absolute Write forums. They have all sorts of subforums covering every aspect of writing, and they could probably answer your questions.
If non-fiction, I can probably offer some useful advice. Or at least what not to do.
To the person who PMed me–you have PMs turned off for yourself, so I’m unable to reply!
I’ll just go ahead and put the text of the PM I tried to send here, anyone who wishes should feel free to reply.
I’m just trying to figure out whether this thing is plausibly submittable or not. I’m happy with the quality of the writing–or at least, if it needs substantial improvement on that front it’s beyond my ken to do so anyway so I won’t even worry about it.
But it’s strictly speaking only twelve pages long. Each page contains a complete section. I envision illustrations on facing pages, expanding it to 24 pages. I cannot illustrate it, but I read that generally just the text is to be submitted and the publisher finds illustrators when there are to be illustrations.
But it’s not a kid’s book. It’s a playfully subversive ™ retelling of some episodes from the New Testament, using a tone and some contextualizing apparatus taken from Zen literature. (It reads like a series of Zen stories, or Koans in some cases, followed by pretend “commentary” in the style of Mumon’s commentary in the Gateless Gate. Sorry if these references mean nothing to you, but I am not sure how else to explain the effect without just making you read the thing. 
)
So the thing would basically be a booklet, rather than a book. With illustrations. Not for kids. On spiritual or religious themes. Aimed at an audience interested in both Christian and Zen tropes.
What the heck can I do with such a thing?
Okay, just if it helps at all, or if you are curious for any reason, here is a link to the thing in its current form. There are a couple of tweaks that still need to be made, but this is what I’m substantially happy with. It is not necessary, I think, to read the text, I don’t want to lay that obligation down on anyone trying to help me out in this thread, but I do provide the link just in case you do want to see what I’m talking about.
Who prints stuff like this, if anyone? What can I do with it?
It’s probably fiction–it’s a series of 12 very short stories* with fictionalized “commentary” following each one.
*Not in the sense of the genre “short short” but in the sense of a literal reading of the phrase “very short story.” Stories that are extremely short. But not short shorts like you’d read in an anthology with that phrase in the title.
These days, the department that handles author submissions for publishers is either “Mail Returns” or janitorial.
I know I know.
I’m just hoping there’s something I can do with this thing beyond sharing it on facebook. 
Publish it yourself and sell it on Amazon, using the various small-publisher sites and tools to help promote it. The technical steps are easy. Their ease, however, does not absolve you of following all the steps of editing, proofing, page layout and so forth.
Yup that’s the problem for me for self-publishing. I don’t know how to do any of that in a way that ends up looking actually good. (Passable I can do but who wants that? I can make it look okay on my computer screen as a word document but I know that’s not what it takes.)
Plus in that case I’d definitely have to locate (and pay) an illustrator myself.
So those are practical problems, but if that’s what is necessary then that is what is necessary. I’m just casting about for options at this point.
My apologies for leaving my account unable to accept PMs (and, wow, there’s a lot of other options I discovered on my control panel page, as well!) and not watching this thread in the meantime.
It also looks like the reply I posted here earlier didn’t get captured on the board (that part wasn’t my fault) so I’ll post it again.
The publishing industry has grown to be multi-layered and rather complex, largely in the name of specializing roles in an effort to produce the best products for the market.[4]
Back when I was in a college Creative Writing course, one of our required “textbooks” was a current copy of Writers Market[1]. I encourage you to get a copy – or I think I saw an on-line subscription version a couple years back and that might be a more up-to-date resource. Basically, it’s a list of all the publishing companies, their genre, specialties, imprints, contact information (but see the next paragraph) submission rules, payment terms, etc. The print version had the listings organized by genre in one section, same listings organized alphabetically in another section, same listing organized by imprint in another section… So basically the on-line version is easier to deal with because the sorting is handled via database controls and your search is much easier and you don’t have to waste all that paper on the redundant reorganizations.
Note, however, that some publishing houses don’t accept unsolicited materials. Instead, they deal only with agents, who perform the task of sorting through the zillions of unsolicited offerings (slush) that would otherwise be one of the jobs of an editor’s assistant[2] and then they act as the intermediary between the writer/author and the publishing house’s editor. An agent, of course, will take his percentage of the profit from a published book – profit being the tiny bit left after the editor, reviewer(s), copy-editor(s), illustrator(s), marketer(s), printer, distributor, possibly the warehouse worker(s) and the shipper all get paid to do what they do for the writer’s content.[4] Therefore, agents are listed in Writers’ Market as well.
And then there’s even some agents who won’t accept unsolicited materials either. They’re working with their own stable of authors[3] and don’t have time to deal with slush piles either. Instead, they subscribe to the magazines in the genre (plural) that they specialize in (Asimov, Spyglass, Dragon, whatever) and watch for authors whose articles show promising style as well as meeting whatever grammar and mechanical writing standards they require. So there are also magazines listed in Writers’ Market, as well.
Thus, if you haven’t done so already, it behooves you to get some shorter representatives of your style and mind published in magazines related to your content. Doing so shows you can adjust your content to meet specifications without losing your message. Doing so repeatedly not only builds your vitae but also shows you’re not just a one-shot wonder – and starts getting you noticed by agents (see above).
–G!
[1] There are also variants called Poet’s Market and Songwriter’s Market. They use similar formats and are probably compiled by the same company.
[2] Anecdote: When I worked at Harcourt, I was an assistant to the Editor’s Assistant, primarily working on a specialized side-project. I happened to scoop up an unsolicited abstract from the fax machine. Since we officially didn’t accept slush, the Editor’s Assistant probably would have thrown that fax away without even reading it. Even if she had read it, she didn’t have my background in sociology (particularly social movements and change) so she would not have recognized the abstract as related to the Encyclopedia of Ethics that we were already compiling. I convinced the editor to turn that unsolicited abstract (slush) into The Encyclopedia of Nationalism which ran as a companion-piece released with the Encyclopedia of Ethics. They both got awards in our industry. [The EA got credit for this, not me.] My point is that slush piles aren’t always crap and it’s still debatable whether they’re good or bad for the industry.
[3] My Creative Writing instructor noted this on the first day of class: There’s a lot of people who write. A lot of writers even have their writing printed and distributed. An *Author *doesn’t just write as a primary vocation; doesn’t just make money from the effort. An *Author *produces works that sell to the public, for a profit, repeatedly. Better authors sell multiple distinct works that sell to the public, for a profit, repeatedly. Writers write; Authors get published – and paid.
Disclosure/Warning: I am a very biased (former) industry insider.
[4] There’s an alternative model currently known as self-publishing. Back when I was still part of the industry, we called it Vanity Press. It cuts out a lot of people who stand between the writer and the reader, in some cases leaving just the writer and the printing company and maybe the press operator and bookbinder (if the printing company owner isn’t doing those jobs himself) and gives a lot of writers the chance to [del]stroke their vanity[/del] honestly say they’ve published something. Amazon and self-publishing companies tout this as a better model because ‘there’s just too many hoops to jump through and arbitrarily-raised fences to leap over’ that it means the average writer can’t possibly get his foot in the door. And, with the bigger publishers buying up the smaller publishers there are fewer and fewer places for the average writer to submit his work.’ I, on the other hand, recognize that an editor is staking his career on a writer’s ability to write and satisfy an audience (or various agents’ abilities to find and represent such writers, in which case the agent is staking his career on the writer’s abilities). I also recognize that the better printing companies work with particular publishers because they know that the editors in those publishing houses have good reputations for signing up high-quality content-makers. Publications that come out of publishing companies are also handled by copy-editors, marketers, distributors, and book dealers – all of whom need to make a profit so their employees can focus exclusively on their role while being able to eat. So while the Amazon and Vanity Press models will let the writer keep a larger percentage of the sale price of a book, that writer typically loses the benefit of expert copy-editors, reviewers, marketers, shippers, and book dealers. Lacking specialists to do those things for her, the vanity writer must assume those roles. Copy-editing is mostly easy with computers being able to spell-check everything. It’s tougher when writing fiction or highly technical documents that contain words that the average spell-checker can’t handle. Reviewing can’t be done for one-self and friends and family tend to filter negative criticism in favor of maintaining relationships. Marketing is a craft and skill best left to experts, as is properly shipping dozens of books at the best prices. More importantly, if a writer must act as her own marketer (and shipper) she’s spending time and energy learning to market and ship while not spending time doing what she should: writing. A publishing company usually has on-going relationships with artists as well, freeing the writer from having to find, solicit, review, and choose an illustrator (if pictures are going to be a part of the book). So my tendency is to encourage publishing houses to pay editors to make decisions (and stake their careers) on the publish-ability of content. Those who can make the cut get the benefit of all the specialists the publishing company needs to assign; those who can’t make the cut should continue honing their skills and craft until they can make the cut.
Pretty much TL;DR but if you expect publishing to revert to the days when every author and every MS had an equal chance for a fair review and opportunity (and I was a working writer in perhaps the last decade of that era)… you’re smokin’ some gooooooood shit.
The big houses are commercial entities run by bean-counters and unrealistic expectations; the only future of publishing is small houses down to individual publication.
Agreed. All other things being equal and assuming that you’re a good writer in the first place, the big publishing houses are great if what you’re writing appeals to a large enough audience that it will sell a lot of copies so the editors will take a chance on it. But what if you’re a fantastic writer but you write in a genre that has a small fan base?
I know pro authors, bestselling authors, who’ve self-published some of their work. I’ve talked to editors and published authors and industry folks (admittedly within a limited genre range–science fiction/fantasy/horror) and quite a number of them have reiterated that self publishing doesn’t have the stigma it used to have. Nowadays, it’s just another viable option in a writer’s arsenal.
Do you still have to be good? Sure. (Although, tell that to E. L. James, who originally self-pubbed her “Fifty Shades of Grey” and ended up making a fortune when a traditional publisher picked it up.) Should you still get your books professionally edited, spend the money on pro artists for covers (or at least pro designers, if you can’t afford a full original-art cover)? Of course, if you want to give yourself the best chance for success. But to lump self publishing in with “vanity press” is, IMO, outdated thinking. It’s entirely possible for an author to publish a book (and a quality book) with zero out-of-pocket expenses. You don’t have to pay for a big pile of inventory anymore, with ebooks and on-demand publishing. You just put together a good product and make it available to the public, and places like Amazon take care of the printing and distribution.
Do most self-published authors fail? Yes. But most traditionally published authors don’t do that great either. There aren’t that many bestsellers out there. A lot of good books sink without a trace.
The book I co-authored with a fellow doper and was picked up by a reputable publisher has sold about two thousand copies. It is going into paperback next year. I routinely see people who self publish claiming success when they’ve sold ten or twenty copies. There’s a huge difference between those two numbers.
Much of what is self published is often simply not that good and often has serious errors. My husband has a kindle and he downloads a free self published book on his kindle from Amazon every so often. I know he’s done so because I see him sitting there shaking his head in disgust. Much of what is traditionally published is at least edited. I read at least a book a week sometimes more. I love to read. When I can get just about any book I want from a tradition publisher on Amazon for four bucks including shipping or free at my local library (and for quarters at library fundraising book sales), I see no reason to read nearly anything self published. When there are thousands of books published each year, why waste time with stuff from the virtual slush pile? There is a very true element in the vanity press accusation, one that doesn’t deserve to be simply ignored or shoved aside.
I’m not arguing with you that a lot of self-published content is bad–poorly written, poorly edited (if edited at all), and shoved out the door by authors who know nothing about the process of putting together a book that people will want to read. Believe me, I know you’re right. All I’m saying is that it’s not a given that a self-pubbed book is going to be crap, and that if you’re writing in a niche market (or maybe one that the industry considers oversaturated, so it’s hard to break in as new talent when they’ve got so much content from established authors that they don’t need any more from new writers), sometimes self-publishing is the way to go if you want to get your book out there. It’s just another option.
Sure, you’re going to have an uphill climb gaining readership, because you don’t have the marketing clout and other resources of a traditional publisher behind you. But on the other hand, if your primary aim is to get your book out there in front of readers and you know what you’re doing, self is a perfectly viable and respectable path to follow. Especially if you’re willing to do the research and take advantage of the marketing channels available to you.
I think that maintaining an active blog, or otherwise having a strong online presence, is a big part of getting any sort of publishing deal whether self-published or not.
I’ve had three non-fiction books published by major publishing houses. The first one, I picked up on a niche trend (which, lucky me, took off) and emailed the publisher with an outline. That one was published in 2003, has sold tens of thousands of copies and been translated into several other languages and I still get nice quarterly revenue checks. in the mid-2000’s I was very active in blogging and writing online content, and I was approached by Globe Pequot Press to write two non-fiction books for a set fee.
When I was more active blogging and writing online content, I was working really hard at it. Many, many hours per day. I’ve thought about going the self-publish route recently because I have some ideas, but I’m not sure I want to invest the time required to promote it.
I also second the absolute write forums suggestion. That place is a goldmine of information.
Hence the term among those of us who take the art form seriously: self-printed.
“Publishing” implies a full slate of necessary and professional steps, whether done by one person, a few freelancers, or a division of Random House.
One of the things I do is complete publishing services - for author/publishers - and I’ve learned to give up if they don’t understand within five minute what I do for them. I wish them well and agree that the interwebz has all the info they need to turn their Word ms into a Real Book.
(Which is true… but we have somewhat different interpretations of “all” and “book.” 
)
Another publisher checking in. What you’ve written sounds ideal for a magazine. Maybe a university journal. Esquire. The New Yorker. Something like that. But they would only pay you a flat fee for it. It, in itself, will not make you rich, even if the magazine sells millions of copies and you win a Pulitzer.
However, it could buy you a lot of attention. If you intend to keep writing short stories for magazines, of if you’re yearning to write a novel or a non-fiction piece or even a screenplay, a solid reputation and creating a desire for “More!” So you could post it for free and create a name for yourself.
Illustrators cost far, far more than authors–tens of thousands vs a few hundred for an author’s work.
If you could expand it to even 40-50 pages, I think you’d have more of a shot at a book/let.
I self-published my first novel because I tried traditional publishing for about 18 months, got a few nibbles but nothing more, and I was tired of waiting. It didn’t sell many copies, but it was worth it because of how unpleasant the querying/submitting/waiting was.
I’m in the process of trying to get my second novel published – but this time I probably won’t wait nearly as long as I did last time before pulling the plug and self-publishing if the queries don’t work out. More and more self-published authors are finding success, and I’m confident that if my book is good, then it will find an audience, whether it’s self or traditionally published. And if my book sucks, then I don’t lose anything by self-publishing.
Maybe my first book wasn’t good enough, or maybe I just needed to be more patient. In any case, self-publishing is pretty easy (and virtually free these days), and there’s really nothing to lose – if your book is great, it might become a hit… and you keep nearly all the profits! If your book is not really ready, you can always edit it and try again.
If a self-published book fails to sell, and you have some ideas to make it better, it’s trivially easy to pull it from the virtual shelves, revise it, and then put it up for sale again, and no one but you will be the wiser.
The insiders really don’t seem to like it, but what’s my alternative? Just wait, keep querying, and hope? What happens after a year, two, or five? Do I just throw the book away? My plan is to keep writing, hopefully at the pace of about a book per year. I’ll submit each one to agents, but I’m going to move on after a few months, and self-publish if no agents are interested.
If I’m a good author, eventually one of my books will catch on, no matter how they’re published.