RIGHT, no point fucking dicking around here with this one, because I have spent a significant amount of time zooming around various website, blogs and so forth and then, this morning it finally slapped me right in the god dam face.
GETTING PUBLISHED!.
Yes folks, as just about every man and his mangy, flea bitten, one legged, crusty arsed dog wants to be an author, there are I suspect no less than several thousand things which you must do, before you send your “ I just spent 2 years writing it” Novella to a publisher.
From what I have seen, its already got to have been….
Market researched
Written
Interviews with papers, media outlets, book stores, radio stations and possibly a reading by god himself already arranged.
Costing done as well, then toss in the oh so god dam cleaver section on “ WHY ITS GUNNA SELL”.
This my good friends is just to TIP OF THE FUCKING SPEAR!, if you want to be published.
NOW, pop down to your local book store or any one of the mega chains and take a look at what they have on their shelves, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work out what the next little item is going to be. Sitting there you will find an inordinate amount of what joe average will call SHIT. I’m not published, I’m really not even an author in the GREAT SENSE of the fucking word, just a hack, but I do know crap when I see it and those shelves have plenty of the shit.
Next effin hate, I’ll bet my god dam arse the stupid fucking fuck-knuckle of a football player didn’t do half this shit and I see in the paper he is now a PUBLISHED person, which they say, he adds to his list of achievements. GET FUCKED!, I don’t think the gollie headed nupty could string four words together, certainly not unless there was another naked female in the room and then even, it would be dribble laced.
I know, I know, its marketing and I may well be an arsehole going for the TALL POPPY THING….NO!, I’m not. Blokes a fuckwad and there is a writer behind him who has basically done the lot as far as I am concerned.
But back to why I have a serious case of wanting to find a publisher / editor and string the fucker up by his thumbs or her thumbs and generally kick the living god dam fuck outta them.
Tell me, what does a writer do………HEY, guess what, they write, no they don’t do marketing demographic research because in all likely hood they fucking suck at it, possibly suck at writing as well, but why do people list all this stuff that a wannabe Author should do, before sending in the work, knowing full god dam well they shall, in all probability have done a piss poor job of the exercise. Is this almost asking that the author fail, before they get anywhere. NO, I’ll tell you just how they disguise the whole exercise I think. ITS so they do less fucking work, YEAH YEAH YEAH, They have your interests at heart if they decide to pick up your MS, yeah they do work, but don’t try and make out like they give away a PINT OF FUCKING BLOOD in the task of getting that deal.
In some cases, Its who you fucking know, not what ya fucking know. So why , can anybody tell me WHY, WHY THE FUCK must the biblically long fucking paper exercise be completed , along with the MS, and then submitted, I’m just fucking gagging to know. After all, go back to the shelves and have an optic and some of the FUCKING CRAP within.
I really suspect that some of the STEPS, some people put forward in this industry is almost a perpetuation of outright fucking stupidity, I know full well there is a need to vet stuff, but the current structure they have, based on what I see on the bookcases and in the BIN, is somewhat flawed. I’m also willing to bet, that this is the way its been done for a long, I mean LONG FUCKING TIME.
In light of posts on e-books and on line publishing, I cannot help but wonder, if some of the alleged fucking GURUS will actually have a look and see what needs to be CHANGED IN THE PROCESS, because , Again, I’m willing to be it’s the same as it has always been and quite simply. THAT’S FUCKED, that’s not progressive.
Now just a small foot note. Not all editors are like this I would suspect, but unless someone can show me how my current line of thinking is WRONG, there bigger proportion of these individuals ARE!.
Can’t help but wonder just how many flops are out there and whether or not the BIG books subsidise the POOR FUCKING CHOICES the so called fucking Geniuses make that go TITS FUCKING UP!.
Dummy spit OVER!
HAVOCK21's....Forward O.P. 
It’s the same as with the music industry H. The advent of electronic/online availability of music has actually made the traditional ‘publishers’ – the record labels – even more scared, and more cautious, and more likely to only go for middle of the road tripe which is guaranteed to sell, especially from established names, rather than taking a punt on new voices/faces/artists/authors. See also Hollywood, all they produce now is by-the-numbers crap (or sequels/prequels/franchise spinoffs of by-the-numbers crap) because they’re spooked by the erosion in their profits from other media sources (eg vid games) and aren’t prepared to take any risks.
The only realistic response for new authors is to embrace the electronic methods of publishing – in the knowledge that getting a payday out of it is unlikely in the short term, but there’s much more chance people will actually get to read your work and develop a following that way.
It’s a tough one H. It takes a long time to properly read a manuscript and as you say, every man and his dog has one. Therefore if publishers and agents read everything submitted they would never get anything done.
From having watched JP and listened to JB the path seems fairly obvious. Get published in a smaller form first. Be it magazines, newpapers, short stories, anything to show you are committed to the craft. Then you just need the right idea at the right time.
It seems to me from the outside that there is not a whole bunch of money in Aussie publishing as the market is small. I suspect some of the big international publishing houses are a bit like Hollywood and the execs publish based on a formula rather than quality.
I think like any industry, the big players tend to take the safe route and the smaller players take a few chances as a point of difference.
Don’t worry about editors and publishers, H. Just write because you want to, and you need to, and you have to do it. We’ll always read your stuff and the rest of ’em can get stuffed!
Jen 😀
I take OFFENSE SIR….
I am NOT….repeat: NOT…..one legged!. One eyed maybe…but LEGGED???……NOT!!!!.
Guys, I do get the reasoning behind a lot of what happens, but I must say, I find some of the requirements to be Archaic at best, fucking culpable at worst. I haven’t submitted anything yet, I’m simply not at that point in time, but reading various forum correspondence this morning, sorta flipped me out a touch, its so fucking cumbersome and so much of the onus is placed upon the writer I couldn’t help but wonder when something is not EXACTLY as this fucking wankers want, it gets binned. how much good stuff gets lost in the mix. How many people simply shake their head and say, fuck’em. I wonder. because I see what is on the shelves and wonder about the level of intelligence of publishers some days.
because so much SHIT, is sent out, I have a suspicion they then get the majority of revenue / profit from the medium to larger sellers, authors that is. That then means the smaller , very prevalent loads of SHIT, are a drain on profitability and show a very significant amount of poor fucking judgement on some individuals behalves, I suspect mainly because thats the way the SYTEM IS. I wonder who has challenged it, when did it suffer a significant shift in operation last, or has it been like this for the last 100 years. If it has…ITS FUCKED, nothing is tht good and that right to not undergo significant redevelopment over that period, IMHO.
Naut, i hear what ya saying, bu thats the OLD way, thats what I am questioning. you see, anybody who over 12 months or two years who can sit down and write a book, lets say 120K, in good format, reasonably well edited, deserves a fucking medal. Not necessarily be published, but simply getting to that point is a BIG FUCKING achievement in itself, that gets lost think in the, you should do smaller work, get sml articles published, do mag work and so forth.
Sure H, I have run two marathons and that was bloody hard work but I don’t expect anyone else to care or pay me for it! Or watch the 20 minute video.
Manuscripts take time to read and judgement of them is always going to be subjective. I don’t think it is realistic to expect everything submitted to be read. That said there is there are many paths to publishment (is that a word?).
JP was working for The Age in a non-writing field, but still submitted a few articles to the Sunday Age(?) that got published. That didn’t help him get an agent or flog his manuscript. He hit on the idea to write a non-fiction book of interviews with Aussie authors discussing the writing process and how to get published. He sold the idea to a publisher and was then able to get an agent by saying “here is a deal all done, all you need to do is write some contracts and take a percentage”. Once he had an agent and a publishing history it was much easier for his agent to get him a fiction deal.
JP’s process took years of trying and rejection. He has a Master’s of writing (or whatever it is called) and built up a history so people would take him seriously. He then hit on an idea for the book Literati that gave him the break he needed.
I understand your concerns with some of the crap that is making it into print, but remember taste is subjective and there are plenty of good books being published.
To me the really disappointing thing about publishing is money side of things. If you are only published in Aus/NZ then you really better hope you sell a lot of book and have a day job if you want to eat AND live in a house.
Great rant! GOLD GOLD GOLD
You do have to know your audience. You have to be writing for a segment of the book-buying population, or nobody who prints for profit is going to want to know you. But all that other stuff — the interviews, the appearances, the readings — they’re supposed to happen AFTER publication.
For what it’s worth, you’re right: there’s a big problem in publishing. It’s called the diminishing market. And it’s a bit of a cat that chases its own tail.
Once upon a time, publishers kept a backlist of famous and classic books in print, and books by wellknown authors. This backlist provided enough of a profit to keep the publishers going, and allowed them to work with and develop new authors as they came along.
Enter the Eighties.
1) The word processor turns EVERYONE into a writer. There were always nutbags willing to manually type a 150,000 word manuscript — but they weren’t all that common. Once the home computer became universal… shit, every dick and his dog jumped aboard.
2) Book sales went down: hey, you can get movies at home now. And interesting computer games. And Internet access. There’s a lot less time in the average reader’s life.
3) Big Fraggin’ Companies bought up and merged most of the publishing businesses. And Big Fraggin Companies don’t make a quid competing with themselves, so they carved away the material they were publishing, trying to narrow it down to ‘profitable’. Which means a lot less time and money available to develop new writers.
4) In the pursuit of ‘profitable’, market people divided up the book-buyers into ever smaller demographics. Consider science fiction, for example. Used to be just ‘sf’. Now it’s cyberpunk, steampunk, space opera, hard sf, military sf, soft sf, sf romance… and if your book doesn’t slide NEATLY AND CLEARLY into one of those establishd bookbuying slots, why — the publishers get a bit loose in the sphincter, because they don’t know who they’re supposed to sell it to.
This last point is particularly irritating, because it leads to lots of copycat fiction. Harry Potter sells? Great! Lets commission about a thousand new Young Adult fantasy books about kids growing up in weird magical worlds! Sure, maybe one in a hundred will be worth reading, but that doesn’t matter: we’ve got a MARKET here!
And that is precisely why you’re seeing so much shit on the shelves. There’s no impetus to publish anything new or different: what the money men want is what sold YESTERDAY, except bigger, more expensive, and maybe with a cute fluffy kitty character to attract the furry readers. Or something.
That’s what an author faces now. Not only do you have to have your manuscript, but you have to be able to say who’s going to buy it, and why. Which means you’ve got to know what’s selling, and to whom, and where, and you’ve got to write your manuscript accordingly.
Alternatives? At the moment, fuck-all. Small press is helpful as a place to get started. Self-publishing via the ‘Net is not yet a useful thing: just a way to get you to pay someone else for your book.
That may change – but it won’t be fast. As long as print publishers can suck money out of a bookbuying audience, they’re going to continue to try and keep electronic distribution and publishing under control. So until the day that REAL e-readers are as available as books, we’re stuck with this.
Just look at Murph and the crap he’s gone through and continues to deal with.
Try and get some short stories up and going first. The market research relates to targetting an audience, fitting what you write in a saleable niche.
That was a great rant, now stop ya whingeing ya big blouse and get on with putting up some more of “Intense”.
Naut, I do understand where you are coming from, I also fully understand where and how a lot of Published people have gone thru the hoops so to speak to build up that CRED thing. I’m not pissed as such for ME, its just having looked at it extensively i see significant flaws which seem to be perpetuated with a regularity that defies the imagination.
Lerm: I had another POST POST, re read, I was kinda pissed I guess…lol
Flint, I had not gotten halfway to the bottom of the post and I knew it was you..lol. As usual, very good insights, LIKEWISE FROM YOUR END NAUT.
I guess its the path that must be at this point Trodden, but that sure as fuck does not mean i have to like it, I just will, when the time arrives have to DEAL with it.
I see what you’re saying-it’s a bit like the old ‘you can’t get a job without experience, and you can’t get experience without a job’ conundrum.
I’m like you-I go to a bookstore, look at some of the stuff on the shelves, and think “Who the hell thought this would be a good read?”. There’s so much chaff that it’s hard to find the wheat.
Well, gotta go now. I’m busy writing ‘Harley Porter and the Thinker’s Rock”. It’s about a completely different boy wizard than the one that woman in England wrote about. I’ve been working on this book for fifteen years and that cow undercut me!!!
Yeah, that’s it. That’s the ticket…
LOL. YD.
ON THE HEAD. SMASHED THE FUCKER ON THE HEAD!.