Patricia J. Parsons

Backstory, Book publishers, Self-Publishing, Uncategorized

The trouble with publishers (Part 1: Let’s talk vanity publishing)

Posted on 24 Jan 201224 Jan 2012 by Patricia J. Parsons

confessions — My "first" novel published by the now defunct Carlton Press, New York

It’s time for me to begin to come clean about a part of my publishing backstory that I have yet to explore. That is the story about my relationship with editors and publishers. Apart from my periodic arguments with editors about comma placement or the use of the singular verb after “one of” (I lost that argument – seems that there are several different rules none of which I was privy to prior to meeting this particularly particular editor), my relationships have been based on a serious skepticism (on my part) about their ability to recognize a quality book or predict whether or not a book will sell. If an editor loves a submitted manuscript, he or she might go ahead and publish. That doesn’t mean anyone else will like it! I am also skeptical about their ability to actually sell a book. I’ll start at the beginning.

If you visit my web site that gives you chapter and verse on my books and other assorted writing through the years, you’ll see that my work has been published by a variety of publishers – different countries, different sizes, different missions – and even different publishing models.

Two of my co-authored books were actually published by the same publisher – and it’s that publisher that has me thinking about my journey through the publishing business over the past twenty-plus years. I’m thinking about it now because I have a book at this publisher again – a book that is half way through the review process, with positive signs all around, when the editor who is enthusiastically responsible for the project resigns to take up a new (and presumably more lucrative) position with another publisher. I can’t blame him, but I was informed about his imminent departure only two weeks in advance, and that was weeks before Christmas. I’ve heard nothing from the publisher since. Hello! Author out here! Anybody listening? If the percentage that an author receives from book sales is any indicator, I’d have to say that authors who are not famous (i.e. do not have name beginning with, let’s say for example “O”) are the lowest on the totem pole. Apart from how hard this is on one’s (my) ego, it just seems wrong to me.

So…back to the backstory. My first book was published by a small non-fiction, trade-book publisher in Toronto – that has since gone bankrupt. This isn’t surprising – happens to publishing houses all the time. Let that be a cautionary note to authors. But I’ve told that story before.

Since then, I’ve offered my books to a variety of publishers, many of which have actually offered contracts and eventually published them. But I’ve also ventured into self-publishing. Oh, yes. Self-publishing.

Before self-publishing had any kind of credibility (one of my assumptions here is that it has risen a notch or two on the cred barometer in recent years,) it was referred to strictly as ‘vanity publishing.’ Presumably it was vain for an author to pay to have his or her book published. I’ve never been sure why it isn’t ‘vanity recording’ when a musician pays to have a CD recorded and subsequently distributed, but I digress.

According to him, a man by the name of Jonathan Clifford coined the phrase vanity publishing around 1960.[1] Clifford’s lifetime crusade was for honesty in the vanity publishing world. It is true that over the years, authors who could not get – or did not try to get – mainstream publishers (more about that breed later) would pay to have their work produced, and those vanity publishers would suggest to the authors that they could, perhaps, just maybe, probably get rich. That was the problem. As Clifford says:

If you cannot find a mainstream publisher to publish your work at their expense, you must look on the whole process of publishing not as money invested to make you a return, but as money spent on a pleasurable hobby which you have enjoyed and which has provided you with well-manufactured copies of your book. If you do also manage to make a small profit, then that should be looked upon as an unforeseen and unexpected bonus![2]

Today, the notion of the vanity press (versus other self-publishing options) seems to be tied into the issue of promises made by these entities – promises that they cannot possibly keep – and into their lack of editing. So, the term self-publishing has arisen and seems to have taken on a less pejorative connotation.

Self-publishing, from the author’s point of view though, is exactly the same as vanity publishing. The author pays. And any author who thinks a publisher, regardless of whether they make you pay or they pay you, can predict much less guarantee sales success of your book, is naïve in the extreme. Unless you have a name that is widely recognized, there is no way to predict sales. This is where my personal skepticism begins to creep into the relationship between author and publisher. But, what seems like a hundred years ago now, I did take up with one of those vanity publishers two years after my first non-fiction book was published by a ‘real’ publisher.

The book was called Confessions of Failed Yuppie. Yup. And it was funny. Without benefit of even a modicum of editing (not one syllable was altered nor one typo corrected), this vanity press took my substantial fee and provided me with two cartons of the 130-page, hard-covered books. I was thrilled. But something kept me from mentioning its provenance to anyone– although I’m not sure anyone would have cared. Many of my friends read the book and told me that they were amused. I even still get a small check every year from the Public Lending Right Commission because there are copies of it in libraries across the country. Anyone want to read it? [Side note: literary blogger Donigan Merrit tells the story in his blog entry dated September 8, 2011 that his first job out of undergrad was as a copy-editor for Carlton Press. It never occurred to me that they employed any!]

So, what’s wrong with this kind of model? What makes a vanity-published book, or a self-published book less worthy than a book published via the more traditional publishers? In a word, quality – but not necessarily quality of the content, story, theme or writing. Quality of the editing. Vanity publishers never offered editors. That’s where today’s self-publishing models differ from their predecessors. Today’s self-publishers often offer editing services – but you’ll have to pay for them.

Next week…Adventures in self-publishing.

Want a laugh? Here’s the back cover of Confessions of a Failed Yuppie. Remember that it was 1991…

[1] Vanity Publishing: Advice & Warning. http://www.vanitypublishing.info/

[2] http://www.vanitypublishing.info/ [accessed January 24, 2012]

Journals, Writing craft, Writing rituals

Blogging as writing practice

Posted on 17 Jan 2012 by Patricia J. Parsons

Just like athletes and dancers, those of us who call ourselves writers need to “practice” our craft and “warm up” before embarking on a new piece of work.

Whenever I’m faced with the prospect of a brand new writing project and find myself sitting in front of that blank computer screen, fingers poised over the keys, I need to feel that I am in practice and that I’m warmed up to begin properly. So, how do writers practice when they’re not writing something destined for publication in one way or another? And how do we warm up for the task at hand?

Over the years, many writers have simply kept journals. I’ve done that myself and I continue to do it. I love my journals as any of my regular readers know. I have journals for a wide variety of things. But they do serve me two very different purposes.

The first purpose is for me to have a place to write down ideas as they come to me. Most writers do this and these days many will do it electronically on IPhones and IPads or other electronic devices. I do this as well, but for me there is nothing like my nice pen and my Moleskine journal(s).

Plan B journal — What kind of book notes & ideas reside in this journal? Hmm...

The second purpose for me in keeping journals is for writing practice. Writing guru Natalie Goldberg says, “It’s good to go off and write a novel, but don’t stop doing writing practice. It is what keeps you in tune…”[1] I’ve always loved her approach to writing practice; keep your hand moving. That works fine when I use a pen and notebook, but it’s not so useful when I’m at a keyboard. Maybe it should be, but it isn’t. That’s where blogging comes in for me.

Just like everyone else out there, when blogging first started to become a force, I started a blog. I thought that I could use the blog to make some of the work I do at the university available to a wider audience – but I wasn’t committed to it, and as I look back on the exercise now, I think I really wanted to learn the technical aspects of blogging more than I wanted it to be good pieces of writing. But blogging can be that practice Natalie talks about.

Consider this: if you are a writer, you need to write every day – or at least those five days a week that you devote to “work.” (I know, some of your friends don’t think you’re actually working when all you seem to be doing is sitting at home diddling away on the computer – my mother thinks that if I’m not in front of a class or at a meeting, I must not be working. I wonder where she thinks those books come from?) But you don’t always have a big project – and sometimes when you do, all you seem to be able to do is stare at that blank screen. This is where blogging as writing practice comes in.

Blogging, however, can only be a practice if you are committed to it. This means that you commit to writing almost every day and posting at least every week or two. But do you have to make your every blogged thought available to the masses? In a word, NO!

Not every blog has or needs to have an audience. You can actually blog away with your settings set on private. It does not need to be searchable by the Googles of the world.

For most people, blogging requires an idea that triggers a personal response that then becomes the basis of a blog post that begs for reader response. Blogging in this scenario is a very public activity that begs for that dialogue. Blogging as writing practice, on the other hand, does not need an idea, or an angle. It does not need an audience, and certainly doesn’t need any feedback. It just needs the writer to begin with a word or two – such as “I remember…” as suggested by Natalie Goldberg – and fingers to the keyboard, repeating that two words every time the ideas stop flowing. What’s very important here is that what you write doesn’t even have to be good – it just has to be.

This is how I justify spending time on this and my other blog – the other blog is one that chronicles my other passion – travel. They started out as ways simply to practice and warm-up before a big project. They have, obviously, evolved. That’s the nice thing about writing practice (even in your journals): you never know where they might lead. They just don’t need to have an objective at the outset. Happy blogging!

The Common Craft video reminds us that blogs are “news” of the 21^st century – but as writers, we know better. Blogs can be anything we want!

[1] Goldberg, Natalie. (1986, 2005). Writing Down the bones. Shambhala Publications, p. 17.

Books

What’s a ‘real’ book?

Posted on 12 Jan 2012 by Patricia J. Parsons

In light of the the digital advances that are currently taking our breath away, any self-respecting book lover has to have considered the question of what constitutes a real book. It used to be easy to answer: a book is that ‘thing’ you hold in your hands that has pages bound between two covers. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe a book is just what the writer writes and what the reader reads. But if that’s true, then a digitally distributed haiku qualifies as a book. Or is there a length rule? If a piece of digital writing is a certain length, maybe then it’s a book.

Most of my books have been made available by the publishers as e-books these days. When I say that, I mean that the books were originally published as pages bound between two covers. But when I’m writing a book, that book resides on my computer’s hard drive. When I put the finishing touches on the electronic file, is it a book yet?

So many questions; so many opinions. If you haven’t seen this new video yet, you might like to take a look at their answer to the question and then join the discussion. (By the way, it’s done with stop-motion not animation. The producers went into the bookstore from 6 pm to 10 am for five nights and moved books and things. Quite a job!).