Re: Off-topic on publishing (was: Re: Signature book)

[WooF owlswick@xxxxxxxx]

On Mon, 23 Nov 1998, R Tennenbaum wrote:

> On Tue, 24 Nov 1998 07:25:16 +0900 (JST), Yo Intl. wrote:

> The
> only real impediment would seem to be that a book needs the
> infrastructure of the book biz (ie, reviews and publicity), and if
> there's a concerted p-r effort against "independent publishing" (the
> agent I heard talking on the subject called it "disintermediation,"
> which I suppose is an apt enough description but sounds to me
> descriptive of a negotiation over an exhuming) the process could be
> retarded. But all it takes is one Stephen King to say, "Screw them,
> I'm taking it all myself" to make it work. All I can say is I hope
> it'd pay better than the ads on my web page do.

But -- how can potential readers discover that this book is good
and the other 90-plus percent are Simply Awful? Now, they depend
on the publishers' self interest in maintaining their reputations
for not publishing drek (yeah, yeah; I know: some of the stuff
you see published by major publishers may seem to you to be drek
-- but then, you haven't seen what gets rejected by those
publishers -- that's in many case Truly Awful.

I speak as one who's been reading-&-rejecting bad manuscripts for
the past twenty-odd years for various fiction magazines; what
goes on with non-fiction publishing is completely out side my
experience -- though I suspect that the situation is similar.

George Scithers of owlswick@xxxxxxxx