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

[WooF owlswick@xxxxxxxx]

On Tue, 24 Nov 1998, Yo Intl. wrote:

> R. Tennenbaum:
> >Not necessarily welcome news for writers, btw. (Sorry for going far
> >afield, but there are a number of us here.) Authors and putatives
> >should be aware that it's apparently becoming harder and harder to get
> >back the rights to one's book from a publisher: "out of print" no
> >longer has any connotation. Instead, the deal with electronic book
> >publishing is apparently to offer royalties at the same percentage as
> >hard books -- even though, of course, the overhead is a mere fraction
> >of book printing and distribution.
>
> But... with hardware developing the way it does, could you not simply
> become your own publisher?

No: the really hard work of publishing isn't the writing -- or
the designing -- or the typesetting -- or the actual production
of copies; the hard work, the utterly and absolutely essential
work, is in publicizing, and distribution. I speak (well,
keyboard, but you know what I mean) as one who's done all of
these -- with my own weakest elements those that follow
production.

Bear in mind that -- with almost anybody self-publishing --
potential buyers will assume that anything self-published is
probably bad. On the other hand, while an individual reader may
dislike the subject of a book from a major publisher -- Knopf,
Tor, and Harcourt-Brace come to mind -- the content will be of
professional quality. A major function of publishers -- and
therefore, of lit'ry agents -- is to separate the good from the
bad, and send back the bad manuscripts. Rejection rates among
publishers of both books and magazines run in excess of 90 per
cent -- and for good reason.

George Scithers of owlswick@xxxxxxxx