The ones I keep waiting for, watching for, hoping for?
The ones who are going to lead the revolution into the great new era of publishing, when authors are treated as though they have some sense and some artistic merits of their own?
The truth is, I don’t really want to self-publish.
I just want to have the level of control that I believe every author needs to have, and deserves to have, over his or his work. I don’t ever want to be in the position of having my cover present a person who is not a character in the book (Google [Liar cover Justine Larbalestier]), but that doesn’t mean I want to be the cover artist for every book I ever do. I don’t want my back cover copy to spill all of the plot’s beans as it so often does for mysteries (which is why I never read anything on the cover except the title until after I’ve read the book), but I don’t want to be all on my own trying to decide what to put there, either. I certainly don’t want to have to list every single title in every single place it should be listed. I don’t want to market. I don’t want to sell. And for that matter, I’m terrible at both!
I don’t want to self-publish, and I only came at it by default when I realized that the publishing world was only interested in writers who would allow the editorial and design staff to cut and paste as they felt necessary, rewriting and rewording the manuscript until it fit their cookie cutter, renaming characters, changing place settings, cutting whole scenes if they needed to in order to make it into just exactly the same pablum they’d printed over and over and over.
I just want to write what I need to write, and then have it published.
Why must there be a choice between the old way (We’re the publisher and you’re the writer. Don’t insult us by telling us you think you know what the cover should look like. Don’t insult us by telling us you know how to spell or punctuate. You don’t. You’re a writer. You’re not as smart as an editor. The editor will have final say over everything you do until you’re famous.) and the new way, where I have to be all of the people, wearing all of the hats.
Where are the NEW publishers?
Hasn’t one single solitary publisher made the switch yet?
Sorry. Rant over.
I feel your pain, I don’t really want to self publish either. I was hopeful at first that small publishers would be open to more authorial control but I haven’t found that to be very true.
A few places have taken a stab at doing things differently, they just don’t seem to do all that well (HarperStudios for example).
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Levi,
Don’t sound so disconsolate, man. The publishers you’re talking about are about 90% of the ones already in existence, you know? I know folks who run and folks who are in with presses from the small to the mid, and know people who’ve published with imprints of large houses–these publishers adore thier authors, never try to force alterations down anyone’s throats, give author final say on everything (even things I personally don’t think they should, sometimes!). There are horror stories out there, sure, but they don’t come from the sort of places you seem to really want to publish with. Remember, it isn’t “Self publish or else be a cog, be a commodity to someone doesn’t care about literature”–there are thousands of presses out there, man, thousands–you’re just talking about having to go fielding your work around, you know? It has to be done, really it doesn’t make sense from a business perspective or a respectable artistic perspective not have it set up in such a way, but I’m sure you know that. A publisher will take a manuscript if they read it, like it, and think they can do something with it, something for themselves and for the author–you wouldn’t even self publish if you didn’t think you could do something with it, you know? If you were a publisher and someone submitted a manuscript you didn’t care for, you wouldn’t say ‘Well, let’s publish this anyway because we both can make some money with X or Y or Z distribution system, I suppose, doesn’t matter what the book is’. If a publisher likes a book–people I know personally, man–they will move mountains to publish it, to find a way to make it viable on all fronts–no one is going to fall on thier sword arbitrarily, you know? Don’t lose heart. Remember, at the same time most authors aren’t able to live on what they make writing, most publishers aren’t able to live on what they amke publishing. Don;t let the exceptions become the rules to you, man, you’re too good a guy.
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I don’t know what are the rules and what are the exceptions, but I do know that with all of the agents, editors, publishers, etc, that I follow on Twitter and whose blogs I read, it’s hard to go a week without reading something along the lines of “Feel free to include the working title of your manuscript when you query, but remember that it WILL change. The publisher picks the title.” Or “One sure way to insult your editor is to say that you know what the cover should look like. You don’t.” What about the simple fact that every set of submission guidelines on Earth (ok, probably only 99%) says to submit the manuscript in some certain font, some certain size, double spaced? They’re clearly not interested in the author’s wishes when it comes to page layout.
Google Justine Larbalestier. See what happened to her cover when her publisher decided that a book with a black person on the cover won’t sell, even if it’s about a black person. This sort of failure is not rare. In fact, it’s all too common to hear or read an author’s complaints about the cover of a published book. These decisions should lie with the author. Not necessarily the design itself, but certainly every author should have a totalitarian-dictator-level veto over all decisions made about the book.
Back up from there a bit, though, and consider the oddness of the query system itself. It’s simply not possible to judge the quality of a story by what the author or anyone else says about it. We can talk about a book till the cows come home, but all you’re going to get from it in the end is what I think the genre is and whether or not I liked it. If you want to evaluate it yourself, you need to sit down and begin reading. Oh, but that takes too long, the agents/editors/publishers all howl! No, it doesn’t. No one is ever going to convince me that reading a 300-word query takes less time than reading 300 words of a manuscript, and it certainly can’t tell you anywhere near as much about the quality of the writing.
What the industry needs, what authors need, what readers desperately need, is a publisher (actually many of them) who will consider everything an author has put into the book, including cover design, page layout, back-cover copy, etc, and evaluate that. If it’s something the publisher believes can make money AS IT IS, then the publisher takes it on. Then the author (who is by nature a creator and not a seller) can go on to the next one, while the publisher publishes — that is, “makes public.” The publisher does all of the marketing, listing, placing, etc, and takes a cut of the income. When the entire publishing industry is built upon the principles that no author knows anything about titles or covers, that it is irrelevant if the author’s friends and family read it and liked it, that every manuscript from every author needs to go through a dozen more pairs of hands, to be edited not just for actual errors, but for voice and style and because “What author knows anything about punctuation?” then the entire industry is cheating authors and readers both.
The change is coming. The publishers who will see authors as the full creators of their own art are coming. And the world will be a better place for it.
Levi
You have to wonder what they really can tell from that two page synopsis you spent more time writing than the actual manuscript and a cover letter that sounds like it was written by a machine with a people pleasing disorder. It would be nice to hear about publishers trying new things and going different directions but I guess nothing will change unless someone who wants change actually makes it happen.
Thanks for sharing your rant with us.
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Oh, I’m always willing to share my rants! Thanks for dropping by.