Category: business

Watch Out!

I already addressed in a couple of posts about how writers can get victimized monetarily by publishing companies that charge fees for any number of services they offer their authors–and my one exception to paying presses was the fee that presses may ask for when they run contests for manuscripts once or twice a year.

But new reporting has come out that some presses are charging ALL submitters with fees, and that these certain publishers are owned by known bad actors in the indie publishing world. Read the full article here:

Showcase Magazine, Ephemera, C & R Press, Steel Toe Books, Fjords Review, PANK Magazine, American Poetry Journal…oh my? (substack.com)

I’m transparent enough to admit that I sent Hurricane Baby to two of these publishers. I’m out about $50 to people who may not have even been interested in publishing anyone, much less me. One publisher on this list I withdrew from very early in my querying process after reading a Writers Beware post from Victoria Strauss, an invaluable member of the literary community who researches and collates publishing scams and the scammers that run them.

The other I withdrew my book from after reading this article.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I looked at reputable organizations to find these publishers–various literary magazines maintain databases of small presses. and these trusted publications never had anything indicating that these presses were in any way suspicious. We’re on our own, folks.

Just goes to show that some people will do anything to make a buck. And others will be silent about these bad actors and are therefore complicit in their schemes.

The takeaway? Research, research, research. Make sure you know something about who you are sending your work to. Check them in Google. Scan for their names on Twitter and other social media. Give their website a detailed look–one way I weed out publishers is if I have never heard of any of their authors. If a place gives you bad vibes for any reason, don’t submit there.

The only way we can choke out these people is to decline to be a part of their income stream in order to make our point–that it’s wrong to take advantage of people.

Update on Numbers

So I decided to look at numbers again for Hurricane Baby’s querying journey–here we go.

Queries submitted: 38

Rejections received: 15

Places still on the list to send to: 10

I did get a lot of rejections over the holidays, but I was expecting that so I am still okay about it 🙂

I am going to send another query this afternoon or tomorrow, to Prairie Schooner Book Prize. More places open up in February, so I have a plan to continue submitting for the rest of the year, just about. And I may find even more to send to. We will see.

Persistence pays off. That’s what I’ve been told. So we will see. Wish me well!

Hurricane Baby the Play Update

I finally got to talk to the artistic director of Mississippi Repertory Theatre, the group that is going to put on Hurricane Baby this spring. We had been missing connecting for a while–we talked once over Facebook, and I had made a few calls trying to catch him at the theater but always missed him. So we finally had a chat.

He had a lot of good ideas about putting the play together–he talked about using news footage of Hurricane Katrina on the projection screen the theater has during scene changes (which there are several). We had a very productive discussion about fees, which is the main reason I wanted to talk to him–some theater companies I won’t name like to nickel-and-dime their playwrights, but he didn’t sound like that type at all.

He told me I would get a royalty for the rights to use the play and I would get a percentage of the tickets as well, which is what I had been told to look for by another theater-friend of mine. He said he would invite me to a rehearsal to see a run-through and get my ideas about costuming, the scenery, the tech rehearsals, etc.

And we closed the discussion with me sending him another play of mine that he said he would be interested in for the next season–it’s set at a suicide hotline, a very simple two-person show that could be used for touring. So we will see what comes of this collaboration with them.

I was very pleased talking to him and hearing about his vision for how to produce it. I look forward to working with them. He talked about doing it in early April, which would be great. I will keep you all updated as to its progress in the next few months. Thanks for reading!

Sketchy Replies

I’ve had a very interesting pattern develop in some of my rejections for Hurricane Baby–three of my six rejections have offered to publish my book in a self-publishing format. They want me to pay them a fee to print my book, edit it, and distribute it.

This kind of offer is sketchy for several reasons.

Each house that has done this advertises themselves as a traditional publishing house. That means if they take you on, they are making a commitment of their own money to the project and therefore, have a vested interest in recouping that investment.

Offering what are essentially vanity press services makes me think that maybe they weren’t on the up-and-up to begin with; maybe they never publish anyone with their own money and don’t pay royalties. It makes me think I dodged a bullet in dealing with them.

They try to make it sweeter by saying I can keep more of the profit off of each book sale under this arrangement. Well, if they have no money invested, they therefore don’t have any motivation to help me sell it; therefore, I am essentially the publisher, and they are simply a printing service. If I wanted to do that, I wouldn’t be sending it out to other publishers; I’d have already done it myself.

I am pointing these red flags out because so many of us are so desperate to get our work out there. We want to have our voices heard. But book publishing is not a charity endeavor–someone has to make money. I know my book needs someone’s expertise to get into bookstores, to be edited professionally, to be marketed effectively to readers.

Any publisher that offers a service where you pay them for any of these components needs to market themselves as what they are–a printing service for authors prepared to sell their books wholly by themselves. I’m not saying that is wrong–calling yourself a hybrid publisher or a for-fee publisher keeps your intentions aboveboard. To advertise yourself as anything else borders on the predatory. Writers live on hopes and dreams. Sometimes the hopes and dreams overcome our business sense.

All in all, you want someone who will champion your work–not simply collect a fee from you. I will not name the companies here–just warn you to do your due diligence in steering clear of anyone that might have your money flow to themselves instead of the other way around.

By The Numbers

So today is going to be a numbers post about how trying to find a publisher is going. These numbers are after being on submission for about a month and a half–I sent the first queries out on September 7.

Total queries to publishing companies sent–33

Rejections–4

Number of queries through Submittable–14

Number of queries through QueryManager–1

Number of contests entered–10

Number of publishers I still plan to send to–14

Queries to agents–0

By the time I send out to everybody on my list, it will have been on submission for a year.

I am trying to give this book its best chance to get published I can. That’s why I’m sending it far and wide within the parameters I mentioned in an earlier post. No use in sending it to people who don’t publish what I’ve got. So we will see where things go from here.

Wish me well. Happy writing!

Indie Publishing

So I have been scouting out small presses, university presses, and independent publishers for Hurricane Baby: Stories. You know what? The US has LOTS of them–and many take submissions directly from authors without need for an agent. So what criteria am I using in selecting the people I send my manuscript to?

Number 1) I am looking for established presses. Presses that have been around for a while. Presses that know what they are doing. Presses that have a process for what they do. I do not want a press that is a flying by the seat of its pants publishing my work. So I look at the history and mission of the press.

Number 2) I am looking for someone who is buying what I am selling. Not many presses deal in short-story collections. I am looking for information that says explicitly that they publish short-story collections.

Number 3) I am looking at presses that are located in my geographic area. Since I write Southern stories and characters, I look for Southern presses. I have sent to a few presses that are located outside of the American South, but not many. I want someone who can read in a Southern accent because that’s how I write.

Number 4) I look at presses that deal only in electric submissions. A few presses and prizes out there still require sending a paper copy of the manuscript. I judge them for this–it means, quite frankly, that they aren’t evolving with the times. It’s the 21st-century. Electronic submission is where it’s at.

Number 5) I am not ruling out presses that may require a submission fee, especially for contests. Lots of people won’t pay those fees out of principle, citing that the money is supposed to flow to the writer, not the press. I’m not doing it often, and there is a limit to what I plan to spend. But let’s not act like writers have never spent money to send off their manuscripts– postage and printing costs for sending in a finished paper manuscript was expensive, too.

Number 6) If I’m really on the fence about a particular publishing house, I look for something intangible that says, “We take your work seriously.” One press I have really been considering published two books by a professor of mine–but I just don’t like the tone of their website. I want a press that means business–in every sense of the word. So I’m not sending there.

Bottom line–publishing is a business. And I want a press that has an established track record publishing what I am offering that ultimately understands my work and has the means and the vision to do so. So far, so good. Thanks for reading!

Professional Milestone

I experienced an important professional milestone this week—I got my first rejection of Hurricane Baby: Stories on Friday.

Why do I phrase it that way? Let me explain.

The rejection was from the same group that included my novella, Looking For Home, in their 2018 novella anthology. I enjoyed working with them and felt like they should get a crack at this project as well as other presses that I have not worked with before. I pitched it to them as a novel-in-stories (which may be a misnomer for this project, but I thought it was worth a try). They sent a very nice note saying it wasn’t a fit for them and wishing me the best of luck with it.

So what did I do?

I got back online and found another strong, independent press to send the manuscript to, checked over my list of further places I want to send it as they open up for submissions, and kept typing away at whatever I wanted to work on.

Back when I was pitching my first novel to New York publishers in 2006 (when there were more than the Big Five), I was just that sanguine about those rejections, too. But as the rejections kept coming, I sank into a depression. At first I was saying, “I’ve been rejected by X of the finest publishing houses in New York.” But as the time wore on, I started to seriously doubt myself and my work.

I’m not doing that this time.

I have set a date for when I will stop sending it out. I am the only one that knows that date. And I have a plan for what I will do if everyone I have already sent to and plan to send to rejects it. What I know now that I didn’t know then is that rejection letters are not grades. The world will not end every time I receive a rejection. I need to act with grace and humility for my own sanity. Grace for myself and humility about my work.

One of my MFA mentors said one time in class “Not everyone gets an agent and a New York publisher.” I have to trust that the work will find its audience when the time is right and the audience is ready.

Different writers handle rejection differently. One of my MFA mates sends her work to two more outlets every time she gets a rejection. Others delete the rejection from their email and never think about it again. Others say they wallpaper their office with their rejections. Still others shoot for 100 rejections in a year—and say that if they experience only a five percent acceptance rate, that’s five places their work appears during that year.

The journey doesn’t end with one rejection. That’s the takeaway. 

Gutsy

I did something kind of brave last week.

I was trying to encourage a friend of mine to apply for a job/internship. She was scared because she knew how she would feel if turned down. So I just talked with her for a bit about how all of writing is scary and the fact that she had done cold interviews and gotten stories done was proof of how brave he was and to be brave about this, too.

Don’t know if she’s done the application yet or not. But I took the advice to heart as well.

I submitted my fiction story “Sow The Wind” to the Best American Short Stories volume for next year. It published in January 2022 with Swamp Ape Review. https://www.swampapereview.com/sow-the-wind

“Sow The Wind” is I think the best short fiction story I’ve ever written. The last scene came to me very vividly, and then I had to work backwards and figure out how to get to that last scene. Then I had to make sure I had the scenes in the right order. Swamp Ape Review is the first place I sent it, and they accepted it very quickly. So that tells me it had the effect I wanted it to and all.

All a story needs to have to apply to Best American Short Stories is to be 1) published in the last calendar year 2) in English 3) by an author living in the United States. It’s a big deal to be included. And I think the story stands up well as a story and I wanted to try this venue. So I nominated myself over email since it was an online publication.

All they can do is say no. 🙂 And I have just as good a chance that the answer might be yes. So I took the risk.

What’s a risk you want to take with your writing career? Take it. All they can do is say no.

Work Vs. Play

So here’s an eternal question for you–how to balance the day job and the creative life.

I am finding that I am too tired from the day job to write creatively during the week.

I try to reserve my weekends for family. Especially my Sundays. I try to rest during the weekend and recharge.

But if I don’t write creatively on a regular basis, my mood goes south.

I don’t quite know what to do.

I’ve been avoiding my nonfiction project for about two weeks now: I spent yesterday with Bob going Christmas shopping and usually try to reserve my Sundays for rest and church.

But I know I don’t need to go very long without working on a creative project because a week’s delay turns into two weeks, then three, then a month, then before I know it, the New Year will be here, and I will be grumpy that I didn’t accomplish much creatively.

But I also know I need to make time for what is important to me. My family is important. My day job is important to me. Rest and recharging are essential as well. But somewhere I need to find the wherewithal to write.

I need to think on this and restructure my week somehow.

Again, an eternal question. I need to remember why I found work and why my writing is important to me as well. I will solve it. I just need to think harder about it instead of just letting time slip through my fingers.