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Some additional links on the Atlanta Nights sting:
Jim Macdonald gives the authoritative version of the project and its origins in a series of posts at Absolute Write.
A historical footnote: The hatching of the plot at AW in December 2003.
Sherwood Smith’s account in her journal, and Beth Bernobich’s in hers.
Crooked Timber picked up the story.
SF writer Derryl Murphy, who contributed a chapter, has written a series of posts about the project: My Worst Sale Ever, Updates on the Bad Book, PA and Da Nile River, and, very usefully, a list of known authors and their chapters.
A suspiciously similar cast of characters can be found in the book’s back-cover blurbs.
And here’s a chart of the book’s sales to date at Lulu.com.
Addenda:
Sorry about the inaccessibility of the chart at Lulu.com. Jim Macdonald used this laptop while we were both at Vericon, and he must have used his password to log in to the site.
Tenebris has been following the story. So has John Scalzi:
Here’s a quick rule of thumb: Don’t annoy science fiction writers. These are people who destroy entire planets before lunch. Think of what they’ll do to you.
MacAllister Stone let me know about a fine rant by Megan Lindholm/Robin Hobb, about PublishAmerica taking advantage of naive writers:
Damage is done to a writer when he is told that his book is ready for press and will succeed when in reality it’s riddled with errors and inconsistencies. When a new writer is told that to receive a dollar advance for the book is normal, and asked to submit a list of friends and relatives who might buy the book, then we are treading on very thin ice between vanity press and scam. The Print On Demand copies of books that PA creates are expensive, most reviewers refuse to even look at them, most libraries won’t take them, and worst of all, most book stores do not carry them. Some book stores will order PA, but most refuse because if the books don’t sell, they can’t return them to PA. If you have a genuinely good book and you take it this route, you have most likely given it the kiss of death. …I hate that the victims are young or new writers, who really don’t know how the business works. I hate it when anyone is deceived on the basis of inexperience. It is not what PA does so much as all the assertions that it is ‘better’ than going through the old mill of the standard publishing. An “us against them” attitude is cultivated on their message boards, in which established writers and publishers are portrayed as deliberately trying to hold new writers down and out. This is so unfair to the many editors I know who are absolutely ecstatic when they discover a new talent and a great new book.
Digital Medievalist, a.k.a. Lisa Spangenberg, has written a couple of essays. One is about Atlanta Nights:
These writers engaged in public cacosyntheton, synchisis, acyrlogia, alleotheta, amphibologia, anacoluthon, and every vile cliché, transparent plot device, and literary offense ever to have thrived in the slush pile.
She liked it!
The other essay, longer and more serious, is about PublishAmerica’s editorial practices:
I first heard about PublishAmerica while having dinner with a friend in late 2001 or early 2002. He told us he’d sold a novel; he was published as a scholar, but this was his first time as a novelist. We could see his excitement as he told us the publisher was “very Internet savvy,” and had said that they’d see his book got into traditional bookstores and well as being available on the ‘net. I’d never heard of the publisher, which was unusual given how much time I’d spent at libraries and book stores, and attending numerous ALA and ABA conventions, but I didn’t worry about it then.Several months later we received a disturbingly amateur letter from PublishAmerica inviting us to buy a copy of our friend’s novel. I knew then they weren’t a legitimate publisher; the language on the order form and cover letter made it very clear that PublishAmerica was a printer, and I suspected, a poor one, judging by the odd syntax and blurred type on the letter and order form. Even the price of the book was odd. The order form price was $21.95, a hardcover price for a slender trade paperback.
Skip forward to Con José, the 2002 World Science Fiction convention. A fannish acquaintance showed me a table where her book was on sale by consignment. It was a thinnish trade paperback, for just under $20.00. The cover was a bit odd looking; it was obviously stock footage, but the bleed was wrong and the colors weren’t quite right. When I looked at the text my heart sank. There were lots of very basic errors, things like confusion between its and it’s, confusion between possessives and plurals, “would of” instead of “would have,” lines of text repeated at the bottom of one page and again at the top of the next, outright spelling errors … The typography was so awful that it was difficult to read the text. Lines were frequently dropped, resulting in short pages, and the text had so many rivers it was hard to read an entire page. The publisher made no effort to kern; none at all. There were reversed and unmatched quotation marks, broken ellipses … it was bad.
But worse than the amateur typesetting, proofreading and design, was the fact that the book desperately needed an editor, a real editor, someone who would have spotted the continuity problems, like the character whose name was spelled differently at different points, and the time and date problems. It was pretty clear that someone had performed crude formatting and made a token effort to proof read, probably relying on spell check, but mostly dealing with formatting issues. It also appeared that the formatter was someone who liked commas, I mean really liked commas, and thought every sentence needed one, or three. My acquaintance said that yes, there were commas introduced spontaneously, and some other errors, but PublishAmerica explained that the printer had introduced them and they would be corrected if the book sold well enough.
The errors I spotted were not introduced in the digital printing process, since digital printing relies on a digital file provided by a publisher. The book had not been professionally edited, copy edited, or proofed. It looked to me like the book was a straight dump from Microsoft Word to .pdf. I’ve subsequently learned from other PublishAmerica authors that my fannish acquaintance was lucky; others have had even more serious errors introduced into the ms. These are not the actions of a professional publisher, with genuine editorial expertise.
That’s a restrained telling, and true throughout. By report, PublishAmerica advertises editorial positions in their local Pennysaver. Their text production cycle is to conventional publishing’s production practices as those mockup cardboard computers you see in office furniture stores are to the real thing.
Here’s her own list of pertinent links.
One of the many unlovable characteristics of PA is that any of their authors who stop drinking the Kool Aid are subjected to crushing verbal abuse. This is a relatively short, mild example of a letter from PublishAmerica.
A local Maryland paper, the Frederick News-Post, has done its own story about PA: PublishAmerica: A friendly biz, or an author’s nightmare? Among other things, it discusses PublishAmerica’s misrepresentations about its brick-and-mortar distribution, which is nonexistent.
Ann Crispin is quoted on the sheer discouragement that hits most PA authors after they’re published and the realities of the situation sink in:
Ms. Crispin said her online group has tried to spread the word about PublishAmerica’s practices to prevent authors like Ms. Kendall from becoming completely disillusioned with the publishing world.“Some people decide, after all this is done, that they’ll never write again. That’s sad,” Ms. Crispin said.
Online message boards at Writer Beware and Absolute Write are filled with page upon page of writers’ complaints against PublishAmerica. Ms. Crispin recalled one PublishAmerica author, Dee Power of Fountain Hills, Ariz., who said she submitted a manuscript to PublishAmerica in which she deliberately repeated 30 pages of the same words. She eventually was offered a contract by the company.
“I have the e-mail offering me the contract,” Ms. Power said.
“They claim to have editorial gatekeeping,” Ms. Crispin said, “but I’ve never seen evidence of it. … What they’re doing is not illegal in the ways we see with some of these fly-by-night companies, but they are deliberately deceptive and they treat their authors as though they’re dirt.”
As with all the other newspaper stories, ditto the letter referenced at the previous link, you also get to see Larry Clopper, co-owner of PublishAmerica, explaining that with the exception of a few chronic malcontents, all their authors are deliriously happy.
jiminy crickets. talk about refusing to let go.
"They overprice these books, they sell them to the friends and families, and that's it. That's as far as authors are ever going to go," said Jenna Glatzer, a professional children's author.
Ken,
Let's analyze this.
What is a "professional children's author"?
What is a "professional child"?
Since "children's" is possessive, does that mean that the author is owned by children?
"The most insightful and revelatory jacket quotes I've read all year!" - Michael Pullmann
I won't be surprised if Atlanta Nights polls the highest in one of the novel categories next year. If it does, it would be another well deserved shot at PA.
Can anyone actually read the sales figures on mylulu.com? It requires a login, and I quail in terror of the idea of pointing BugMeNot at a self-publishing website.
Even with my login, Lulu wouldn't let me read the sales statistics. I suspect it doesn't recognize me as an author. I'd love to see the figures, though!
Sales of Atlanta Nights: To date, 43 copies.
(IOW, over half-way to the average sales by your average PublishAmerica author.)
Are you hinting that I should buy another one?
:-)
Whoops, sorry about the sales figures problem. That's what I get for letting Jim Macdonald use the laptop while we were both at Vericon. He must have logged in to Lulu.com. I'll ask him whether he wants to reveal the sales figures.
Everyone should buy multiple copies.
Whoops, there's Jim already. That's what I get for posting a comment I'd drafted before taking a nap.
I need coffee.
James D. Macdonald:
"Everyone should buy multiple copies."
Nabokov gave a flimsy reason to do so for "Pale Fire," namely to have one open to the poem, and one to read the novel purporting to be a commentary on the poem by an increasingly obviously unreliable narrator. Question: how to embed armtwisting towards viral duplication in a deliberately antiliterary book in which a quotation from Nabokov, unless grammatically convoluted as this is, would be mandatorily blue-pencilable?
JVP: Oh, Nabokov was full of it. Obviously the solution was to tear the pages with the poem out of the book and keep them seperate from the rest.
...
Remember: it wasn't Nabokov talking, but Kinbote.
Jonathan Vos Post wrote:
> Nabokov gave a flimsy reason to do so for "Pale Fire," namely to have one open to the poem, and one to read the novel purporting to be a commentary on the poem by an increasingly obviously unreliable narrator. Question: how to embed armtwisting towards viral duplication in a deliberately antiliterary book in which a quotation from Nabokov, unless grammatically convoluted as this is, would be mandatorily blue-pencilable?
Well, not Nabokov, nor Publish America, but Milorad Pavich's _Dictionary of the Khazars_ was published in a 'male' and 'female' edition, the two differing by one word on an undisclosed page.
Or so they claim... We have both editions in our house, but I've never gone looking.
One of the interesting side effects of using Lulu.com to publish Atlanta Nights is that people who might have considered using PublishAmerica even though they realize they're a rip off, now are finding out about Lulu.com.
That's kind of nifty.
For the second edition of Atlanta Nights, the one with ISBN and, maybe, (please?) a forward, why not Quark/InDesign/Framemaker the file?
I got a nice email from Lulu on Friday that my copy had shipped. But the notice about the blurbs on the back cover didn't show up until after that. Wonder if I'll get them.
Oh--Robin Hobb/Megan Lindholm indulged in a rare rant about PA taking advantage of young/inexperienced writers, in a post on her newsgroup.
http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=read&group=sff.people.robin-hobb&art=6444
(I'm really going to have to learn to write those links. *sigh*)
Is Robin Hobb/Megan Lindholm one person with two authorial names or two people who cowrote something?
Brad DeLong, confused...
Robin Hobb/Megan Lindholm are one person. :)
Brad,
One person with two pen names. Among other things, she co-wrote "Gypsy" with Stephen Brust-- which is a weird and lovely book.
Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm are the same author. I'm kind of wondering when we'll see Lindholm's old books published under the Robin Hobb name in an attempt to increase sales. Though I'm not sure the publisher is the same...
I think that Robin and Megan should collaborate on a shared world novel of some kind.
Since I've been (with a mixture of glee and terror) following the various PublishAmerica threads, I was thrilled to find that Fandom_Wank has ummmm ... previously taken stock of the situation. There are two threads, one at F_W itself, and one at otf_wank, both worth reading.
I'll try to post the urls here, but I'm not very good at it, so apologies if it doesn't come out right: http://www.journalfen.net/community/otf_wank/7062.html
(one of the PA authors pops up trying to be snide and superior - really in the wrong place to try that)
and:
http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/255051.html
(reference is made to the Maniac Mansion game and the "Three Guys Who Publish Anything" ad)
Reading the comments of the PublishAmerica authors, rampant spelling errors and all, was hilarious, until I realized that they are the very ones who are getting taken advantage of. Then I just felt bad, and vaguely sick.
Oh, my. Barbara, I went to the otf_wank thread, and oh, my.
I think my favorite part was:
"As for my punctuation, be careful what you criticize. Those of us who know better will see you for the fraud you are. But I can see why a high school grad would get confused, I am, after all, university educated. Would you prefer I spoke using shadow puppets to help you understand?"
Why, yes. Yes, I would.
(Also, the PA authors board thread with the poetry in praise of spellchecking made my head hurt a lot. Or maybe that was from banging it against the desk.)
elise:
"As for my punctuation... Would you prefer I spoke using shadow puppets to help you understand?"
Shadow Puppet Cop: "Aha, Bad Bart! Stop or I'll shoot!"
Shadow Puppet Bart: "You'll never take me alive, copper!"
Shadow Puppet Cop: "Okay, I'm shooting you. Bang! Bang!"
Shadow Puppet Bart: "Oh, no! A bullet went into my belly, making a round hole shaped like a period!"
Shadow Puppet Cop: "Not exactly. See the trickle of blood coming out? That makes it a comma."
Shadow Puppet Coroner: "The autopsy reveals that the body of late Bad Bart has only a semi colon."
the transcript of an online chat with the author of the Post article on POD publishing and PublishAmerica is here
The PA author being raked over the coals in the otf_wank thread is now one of PA's most vocal detractors. And the guy who came to PA's defense in that thread isn't thrilled with them these days either.
I am coming in on this whole thing rather late. I have a question,was this "novel" submitted to publish America? If so, was it accepted? If so, why is it now with Lulu?
Part II: Is this the same book Clapper said resulted in some sort of legal or criminal action because it was submitted with some sort of malintent (is malintent a real word?? If not, I declare it one).
Why is the sky blue?
WordDude, the truth is out there.
I have been admiring the first paragraph of Chapter 40, which discreetly indulges in a much finer-gauge error than the average Atlanta Nights chapter:
Irene checked her face in the mirror and the gun in her handbag just once more before she found the reserve she was looking for in herself. Popping in a fresh breath mint (just in case), she pushed open the boardroom door to confront the three people who had ruined her life and killed her love.I could wish that Irene had kicked in the door, but that's mere quibble.
Do I have a theory about who wrote it? Could be. I could also be deliberately misleading you. I'm still not telling.
It's not an error, T, it's a feature. See "Have Some Madeira, M'Dear" from Flanders and Swann.
Zeugma is generally regarded as ornamentation; here it's a vice.
I'm determinedly avoiding using Atlanta Nights as a core text for a discussion of the rhetorical figure as vice.
But that doesn't mean I won't come back to it later.
worddude, you appear to have overlooked the link "the authoritative version of the project and its origins", right at the top of this very post, yes?
I'm just proud to belong to the same species as whoever came up with "y'all'll"
julia:
Just for the L of it, how about:
"y'all'll, llamas included, drool at this..."
Well, "missed" might be correct, but this forum does not appear on my computer as it should. I can see the top, or I can hit f11 and see the posts, but never can I see the whole thing...it's awkward to say the least. I imagine I'm missing a lot.
I beg everyone's pardon for my pithiness, but after reading the letters from PA that Teresa linked to, I can't avoid saying this:
PublishAmerica really isn't living in the reality-based community, is it?
Has anyone tried an ipso lorem submission to PA?
Worddude — In case you still haven't seen it, the nickel tour summary: Hoax novel written; hoax novel submitted to PA; hoax novel accepted by PA. Hoax revealed to great fanfare; PA withdraws acceptance. Free of PA, novel printed and sold through Lulu.
There. That was mercifully brief.
Well, gosh, thank you Ray. You have no idea how much I appreciate a straight-forward answer to my question. Your mother (or someone) obviously spent some time raising you properly.
Julia: Actually that construction is often used in spoken language, but I have to admit I haven't seen it written out before. I, myself, have said things like, "If all y'all'll move over to this side of the room...", and I grew up in only a semi-Southern state.
MKMK
I kind of like the way it sounds, but it looks godawful funny in print.
Confession: since my two year stay in NC, I sometimes say "didden" (as in "I didden see it") when I'm tired.
"The world is full of bad books written by amateurs. But why settle for the merely regrettable? Atlanta Nights is a bad book written by experts." -- TNH
Here's a thumbnail history of the sorry affair.
Here's the press release.
Atlanta Nights now has an ISBN: 1-4116-2298-7
Price is still $11.94 at Lulu.com
http://www.lulu.com/content/102550
That's right! Atlanta Nights is now* available** in brick-and-mortar bookstores from sea to shining sea!
Approaching*** one million sold!
* Or will be, whenever Bowker updates their database.
** Over at the Special Order desk, along with the PublishAmerica books.
*** With the speed of a turtle on Qaaludes....
For those who prefer to read your badfic on an ebook reader, Atlanta Nights is now available from Embiid Publishing.
I love that chapter 34 was computer generated. If the rest of the book is as farcical as the back cover, then I need to find a multi-autographed copy where the proceeds will be donated to SFWA's medical fun.
If only negative examples could teach people how not to do something, this would be a great lesson.
As I read this thread and its links I got this vision of Punch and Judy hitting one another on the head with PA novels. And on that note I'm going to bed.
I've just realized I misspelled Steven Brust's name, upstream.
I am a doofus.
Worddude, Ray Radlein is indeed a nice guy, but your messed-up browser isn't visible from here.
Nicole, that's not an uncommon pattern. PA's most fervent defenders tend to be authors whom they've accepted but not yet published, or authors in the first flush of publication. A year or more out from publication, they're likelier to be sunk in depression, or hanging out in the PA thread on Absolute Write.
Newsbreak: Atlanta Nights has ISBNs!
print: 1-4116-2298-7
e-book: 1-58787-256-0
Atlanta Nights is #4 on Lulu's best sellers of the week.
That letter from Publish America is really vile.
Surely the company has to have crossed some legal line.
Quote: Worddude, Ray Radlein is indeed a nice guy, but your messed-up browser isn't visible from here. /Quote
Yeah, well I should hope not. I'm typing in the nude.
Just a note on that point though, there was a discussion last week on another forum with people would could not read this site. I told them about the f11 trick, but it's not a smooth ride for many of us with IE.
Just a note on that point though, there was a discussion last week on another forum with people would could not read this site. I told them about the f11 trick, but it's not a smooth ride for many of us with IE.
What version of IE are you using? There was a problem viewing the individual post pages here with IE 6, but the page template was changed and since then I've had no problems, and no one else has mentioned them either.
Worddude
I've seen the Search page issue, but frankly haven't tried to figure out why it's doing that.
But.
Don't use I.E. Really. It's not safe at all, it's a veritable invitation to disaster. FireFox is worth at least taking a look at--and there are other alternatives.
L
I am usually using IE6. It's not that big of a deal, honestly. I can live with it although I might be missing a few things but anyone visiting the site for the first time might not figure out the f11 thing and just leave.
elise, Fandom_Wank is one of the joys of my life (rather like my husband, and for some of the same reasons).
Do you think he meant sock puppets rather than shadow puppets?
Just popping back to let you know that the wankers have discovered Atlanta Nights:
http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/620064.html
and it's being suitably appreciated.
Barbara, thanks for the link. I just read through the blurbs (hadn't taken time before). ROTFLMAO,,, until I'm giddy. One of my own personal fave jokers contributed to the blurbs.
Oh, which one? But they're all so good.
I'm going to have to get hardcopy from Lulu, I think. But ... the cover at the e-books is way cooler than the Lulu cover, especially the way the title scrawls over the woman's eyes. Sigh.
Question - will Atlanta Nights be listed on Amazon? Should we all go there and give it 5-star reviews?
Still enjoying this and its wonderfully bad prose. Kudos for the phrase: "the memory of a great man who had walked the earth like a rock in the sand".
"These writers engaged in ... acyrlogia"
That's "acyrologia."
Teresa,
My we use this quote of yours below either on the front of the ATLANTA NIGHTS book cover or inside?
"The world is full of bad books written by amateurs. But why settle for the merely regrettable? Atlanta Nights is a bad book written by experts." -- T. Nielsen Hayden
Reading that manuscript has somewhat of a highway accident effect on me; you know it's not right to look and you *want* to look away but you just can't. And it keeps getting worse.
To anyone involved in that book reading this I say: Awesome work! And by awesome, I really mean awful!
One measure of success for a book may be a mention in Bookslut.
Vera, if "we" is the same outfit on whose behalf Jim Macdonald and Sean Fodera asked me the same question yesterday, the answer is yes, yes, and yes.
The supplementary answer is that it was a signed review in a public venue, and if you have to get formal permission to quote from those, the industry is in big trouble.
I just finished chapter 28 of Atlanta Nights, and must say I felt gypped at the end of it. Ignoring the formatting errors, ...creative spelling and punctuation, nonstandard grammar bits, and gratuitous POV shifts (along with the fact that it, like all the rest of the book, seems to be a chapter from some entirely different book), chapter 28 isn't half bad. I'm even kinda interested in the rest of whatever non-existent novel it's part of, somewhere in the great library of unwritten books.
Teresa,
Yes and thanks for verifying! :-)
Alsafi:
The Invisible Library
"The Invisible Library is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library's catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound."
Please note: The catalogue used to list entries by pseudo-author and pseudo-title. These have been removed to save space and because they weren't visited very often. However, if you want them back, please let me know. The Oddities section was removed because it's redundant.
The Crimson Hexagon
"The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resume, a commentary . . . More reasonable, more inept, more indolent, I have preferred to write notes upon imaginary books."
-- Jorge Luis Borges
Sadly, I received a mass-emailed letter today from the last person I would think be taken in by a vanity press scam: my copyright/trademark attorney, who is extremely Internet & research savvy.
He was taken in by Llumina Press.
And is doing what all such authors do: putting his fingers in his ears. He doesn't want to admit to himself that it's a vanity press & not a real book publisher. He really thinks it was a good deal (check out their editorial rates: Elric and I calculated that one of their "edits" [copyediting, not even line-editing, from the description] would cost someone who wrote a 100,000-word ms. a whopping $29,000. You read that right. Just for editing. The a la carte list continues from there...). Unlike PA, they don't even typeset for nothing. Granted, you get what you pay for with PA, but if you pay these guys the $900 for typesetting and production, you still get crap. And I thought PA was bad.
He also thinks it will honestly be "in" the bookstores, just like Llumina's website claims. Same vague claim that all the scams pull. It's astoundingly awful what these guys are doing.
It's saddening. Worse because this guy is the last I'd think would be taken by the routine.
I so want to write back to him and say, "You yell at me all the time to NEVER do anything contract-wise or legal-wise without talking to a lawyer, usually you. And you did this without first talking to me, a publishing professional?!"
Worst of all? The book isn't half bad, and it has an audience. If he would have called an agent, I'll bet it would have found a niche sale. I told him that two years ago. He didn't listen, apparently.
I got my package from Lulu last night, and I have to congratulate whoever set up the page grid. Just magnificent.
Whoever you are, you have achieved Typesetting That Made Me Giggle.
Man oh man, this site is fun. "Y'all'll" be pleased to know you've kept this weary Aussie writer-type entertained through many a sleepless night. I lurk and laugh, and love the lot of you.
Julia, out of curiosity, what made you giggle about the typeset? (I haven't seen the book). I assume that in keeping with the general theme they've somehow done it as wrongly as possible as well; I'm curious in what ways typesetting can be amusingly wrong.
Daniel,
Let's just say that there are very many fun things you can do with text justification. . . . :-)
casts around for an example - the page numbers, which are practically on top of the last line of type on each page, and which don't have the same baseline as the text, and which appear, at a glance, to be in different places on different pages.
and yes, the text justification was fun :D
although I have to award the highest honors (the coveted Golden 22-Year-Old AD) to whoever force-justified "I'm not"
"Publishers and Sinners. Possibly the most astonishing novel ever written, Atlanta Nights by 'Travis Tea' was created to test -- preferably to destruction -- PublishAmerica's claim to be a serious 'traditional publisher' with old-fashioned trappings like editorial standards...."
The Runcible Ansible
David Langford
The Infinite Matrix
Okay, so I have a question, and maybe someone can help me with this:
Why do so many people assume that it's their job to pay for the success of their book?
I mean, if there's a common thread in all of the PublishAmerica apologetics I've read, it's their sincere belief that PA is doing them a major favor by putting their book into print -- and that's all they expected. Who are they to ask for promotion and advertising? Doesn't everyone buy copies to resell? If you want your book on bookstore shelves, it's just logical that you have to do it yourself, right? Anyone who wouldn't buy fifty copies of their book and drive around to every bookstore in the tri-city area asking for shelf space is just lazy.
Now, some of their beliefs I can understand. For example, a bunch of editors talking about the slush pile can easily translate as "goddamn new blood, wasting time we should otherwise be spending polishing Stephen King's gold-plated toothbrush, oh how we hate them all" when a frustrated wannabe writer listens in. (And then along comes a traditional publisher who doesn't care if you're unknown, because your work is sure to resonate with an audience....)
But I honestly don't understand how you can fail to see that everywhere in the publishing industry but PA, big pots of money are given to you before even one copy is sold, and then the publisher does the marketing and promotion for you! If anyone said to me "Here you go, a pot of money for you, now just sit back and write another book while we work our asses off on your behalf." I would be thrilled.
What am I missing? What sort of mind do I need to not grasp that publication can mean money, up-front, and in (relatively) copious amounts?
Anticorum's puzzlement brings to mind David Rising's book How to Get Published FREE: And Make Money. I read the title, and waited for my brain to catch up, and thought, "Well, yes, that's how it's supposed to work."
But he makes it sound like another scam.
How to get published FREE and make money: when you get your work into the retail chain. There is a story or an idea in everyone. It's just a matter of finding out what works for you and getting those creative juices flowing. There are much more than just books that can be published to bring in some extra money. With this method of publishing you will not have to wait six months or more, just to get a rejection notice from a traditional publishing house. You could have your material in the retail chain in as little as six weeks from the time you submit it. The fact is you can get your work published in book form and up for sale at zero out of pocket cost to you. This book will guide you through what to do to get your material published: Books, Magazines, Music, Poetry and Short Stories. Work from home and at your speed. Marketing your book on all of the major online websites is also detailed in this book.
I leave the exploration of the irony that his book is published by Lulu as an exercise.
"A bunch of editors talking about the slush pile can easily translate as 'goddamn new blood, wasting time we should otherwise be spending polishing Stephen King's gold-plated toothbrush, oh how we hate them all' when a frustrated wannabe writer listens in."
Only if the "wannabe writer" is an idiot.
Think it through. If you're an aspiring unpublished writer, do you want the average quality in the slushpile to be high? Why would the news that it's not be something to get offended over?
If you're an aspiring unpublished writer, do you want the average quality in the slushpile to be high? Why would the news that it's not be something to get offended over?
Because there's a persecution mentality mixed in. Many people never reach the part of the logic chain that says, "I can write in complete sentences with few grammatical gaffes. I'm ahead of 60% of the slush pile already!" They stop at "Gee, the editors reading the slush pile really think we aspiring writers are all idiots. I'm never giving them a chance to make fun of ME that way!"
That's understandable. Stupid, mind you, but understandable.
Honestly, at the risk of destroying the last shreds of any reputation I may have for being writer-friendly, it seems to me just extraordinary to want to pin one's flag to the mast of the slush pile.
I think, Patrick, that you have on advantage over a number of writers: you've actually seen a slush pile. Most people who become discouraged by the prospect of editor's complaining about the slush pile usually haven't seen one and don't have a grasp on the types of compositions therein.
I, personally, and others I've known have at one point in time or another thought that the slush pile consisted almost entirely of stories that were perfectly spelled and punctuated but that simply lacked an engaging enough storyline or interesting enough character or whatever. The slush pile, in our minds, was filled with a staggering number of perfect, publishable books that were passed up because they weren't as good as This Other Book Over Here.
I'd venture that most of the people who pin their flags to the mast of the slush pile don't realize that, as OG pointed out, by being able to spell they already have a leg up on a sizable chunk of the competition.
I'd venture that most of the people who pin their flags to the mast of the slush pile don't realize that, as OG pointed out, by being able to spell they already have a leg up on a sizable chunk of the competition.
Oh, no. That was a summary of a conversation that started when I passed Teresa's Slushkiller post on to someone wondering about the chances of a slush manuscript. I was soundly berated by a third party and accused of actively trying to discourage people from trying to get published.
It may be significant that the people involved who took Slushkiller as encouraging were the ones with a good command of English grammar, while the ones who were offended should probably recognize their own writing styles in Atlanta Nights.
Patrick, people are desperately searching for an alternative to joining the slush pile, and there doesn't seem to be one. Even getting an agent doesn't eliminate the slush pile from the writer's perspective; it just shifts it to someone besides the editor at the publishing house.
I'm convinced that many new writers think that there's a Slush Room at each major publisher. Every Monday an editor goes in and pulls out three manuscripts at random that will be Published. The editorial assistants then package the rest up with rejection slips and take them to the Mail Room to be aged for a year before returning them. The slush room fills until the next week's ritual.
Not long after PW started its "My Say" guest editorial page (not quite twenty years ago), they ran a piece from a self-described "business consultant," who took the industry to task for its insulting attitude toward the valuable material sent in unrequested.
His solution (and if you hang around here, you could guess that he would have a solution in his hip pocket) was that all publishers should contribute money, editorial time, and the occasional sacrificial intern to a joint clearinghouse agency that would read everything, make decisions, and then distribute the Good Stuff to publishers by some means he didn't actually get around to explaining.
The punchline was the comment that "if even 10% of the material is worthwhile, this will pay."
It drew one very polite but amused letter from someone at Knopf.
I don't know what the exact motivation for this item was -- the natural guess is that Mr. Consultant had been trying to push his book and failed, but there are all sorts of equally tired possibilities. (If so, one would guess it had to be a novel -- there was a time when Tennessee Tuxedo and Chumley could have published their book on Getting Rich as a Consultant.) And, in the end, it doesn't speak very well for the consultancy.
I thought Atlanta Nights was a brilliant concept, flawlessly executed. I was riveted in my chair -- except for the (frequent) moments rolling around on the floor laughing.
I haven't started submitting my writing anyplace yet, but it seems to me that the slush pile is just the equivalent of musical & theatrical auditions. Presumably nobody likes the stress of auditioning, but if you think your work is fabulous, you should want to participate in a process designed to separate the wheat from the chaff.
For some reason a lot of amateur writers seem to think that their work should be judged purely by the quality of feeling that goes into it. But if they have to go through the slush pile, unfeeling junior editors who can't see past trivialities like grammar and pacing will cast aside their masterpieces. Clearly a more senior editor, someone with real depth of feeling, wouldn't be bogged down by the mere technicalities that are all a junior editor can see. Meanwhile the senior types spend their time sucking up to established authors and ignoring the diamonds in the rough, who are being trod upon by the uncaring slush pile readers.
Etc.
A true Southerner would know that in addressing more than two people, namely a bunch to use true Southern technical terminology, it would be said this way: "All y'all'll be pleased to know you've kept this weary Aussie writer-type entertained through many a sleepless night."
Quick question - anyone here ordered books to the UK from Lulu? What're the shipping rates like?
(It tells me *how* they can be shipped, but not how much it'll cost. Usually I find that suspicious, but I'll give them the benefit.)
"Meanwhile the senior types spend their time sucking up to established authors and ignoring the diamonds in the rough, who are being trod upon by the uncaring slush pile readers."
Quite right. Except, wait, we're not "sucking up to established authors," we're lolling about in our offices eating bonbons and reading the National Enquirer. Or maybe the SFWA Forum. I get so confused.
Oh, sure. Now you'll try to convince us that editors *read.* Good luck with that one.
By the way, how was today's ep of Dr. Phil?
Re: slushpiles.
Deep, dark secret here. I once submitted a Bad Novel to an agent. The slush-pile reader, with whom I was slightly acquainted, was intestered in it. I suspect that her interest was mostly the result of my being able to spell and punctuate. She referred the MS to the agent, who, fortunately for me, realized that the novel was a nasty memoire/Mary Sue and rejected the thing.
Decent writing might get one past the first cut but not necessarily part the second. My decently written but utterly foul "novel" got enough send-us-some-more letters followed by this-does-not-suit-us letters that I eventually understood the lesson.
Lesson: it's hard to write good stuff. However, we all knew that, right?
Having been following the Neverending Thread's links to the PA boards, I've been having a depressing thought of my own, a bit different from the question of whether the aspiring but credulous authors have seen a slush pile ... and ooh, here's an idea to make our genial hosts blench - how about a webcam of the Tor slush pile, so those who have cleverly chosen shocking pink envelopes etc. can see their mss rise through the ranks?
Wait, I did have a thought. Okay. I kept wondering how much the hopeful authors read - what authors they liked, what genres they favoured, did they buy new or used? Too often it seemed that they didn't read very much at all, let alone in the genre they hoped to break into.
Reading the posts of the hopefuls reminded me distressingly of the anecdote about the farmboy who wanted to be an author, and when interviewed about it, said he figured the hardest part was getting all the lines to end at the same spot on the page.
Maybe it's a false impression. I kept remembering Teresa's remarks about thinking with one's reader brain, though, and wondering whether they had access to that mentality. Maybe they're too busy with the huckstering to have time to read.
Did anyone else find it chilling that one of the sections on PA's advice pages is called "Death of a Writer, Birth of a Salesman"?
(Anyone who has the correct text for the farmboy story, please share.)
The major problem hired slushpile readers have, imho (and having been one back in the early '60s I know whereof I speak) is that reading too much of it can destroy your critical faculties. Soon anything spelled correctly, punctuated properly, and with relatively few adverbs seems a veritable masterpiece. Which is why no one reads slush for days on end.
I always tell my workshop students that simply by being there to learn something, they have already lifted themselves into the top 5% of slush pile. And that only about 1% of slush is actually publishable. (That's being generous.)
A few years ago a consultant was hired by Boyds Mills Press, a children's book imprint of Highlights Magazine. He actually came up with the reccommendation that they'd do much better if they'd only published books that would become bestsellers. Yeah. Brilliant!
Jane
As someone who has not yet escaped the slush pile (not that I've tried in, oh, about eight years), I think the key to PA's appeal as an alternative lies in two concepts that seem contradictory but aren't:
1. PA's claim that if you're not already famous or well-connected, editors and publishers will treat your brilliant first novel with disdain. (Aha! That's why they rejected me! My name isn't Stephen King!)
2. The writer's secret fear that maybe the manuscript that seemed so right, so perfect during the writing of it, may nevertheless be not quite as good as Big Name Author's latest. Coupled with #1, that spells almost certain rejection. (And who wants to go through all that again? With PA, I can show those stupid snobs that there's a company out there that appreciates and nurtures my Unique Artistic Vision. If I work at it, my book can be the next Eragon!)
Trust me. I "know" my book is worthwhile. Nevertheless, the idea of sending it out again inevitably brings up dark, scary thoughts of "What if it never sells?" To stave off the despair, I try to convince myself that if I do another edit, and another, it will finally be good enough. In the meantime, at least I'm putting off the feared rejection just a little longer.
Up to a point, that's a helpful gambit. After a couple of major rewrites, many substantial edits and most of a sequel, my first novel is a heck of a lot better than it was when Tor rejected it however-many-years ago. Still, I'm rapidly reaching the point at which I run out of excuses to pop the latest version of it into an envelope.
Many thanks, Evil Genius, for the tip. Obviously we're just not southern enough down here!
Patrick said:
> Think it through. If you're an aspiring unpublished writer, do you want the average quality
> in the slushpile to be high? Why would the news that it's not be something to get offended over?
Because the unpublished writer identifies every manuscript in the slushpile with their own. And no matter how many times you attempt to describe the average quality of those manuscripts, the writer will still be thinking, "but one of those is mine, he's talking about my manuscript."
I'm sure I'd have a hard time believing it, if I hadn't taken the time to read a manuscript a friend-of-a-friend asked for help formatting for submission... or at least the first few pages of it. I couldn't take any more of it than that.
So, assuming that's an average slushpile manuscript, I can easily separate theirs from mine. Without that benefit, any discussion of the quality of slush would just be abstract and hard to visualise.
I think every writer should have to read at least one slush manuscript. It might help everyone.
Woo hoo!
Atlanta Nights hit the LA Times!
http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-et-hoax5feb05,2,5388025.story
Please publish this dud
To test a publisher's selectivity, a group of writers collaborated on a book. Their goal: Make it stink.
By Scott Martelle
Times Staff Writer
Feb 5 2005
The moral of this story is: Never tick off a science fiction writer.
More than a year ago, a website run by PublishAmerica, a controversial Maryland book publisher, took a swipe at some of its vociferous detractors among sci-fi and fantasy authors as "literary parasites" who "looted, leeched or plagiarized their way to local stardom."
That caused what "Star Wars" aficionados might call a "disturbance in the force."
...
I've been thinking about what Patrick said about the slushpile. Rationally, it makes sense: if you're competing against the other manuscripts in the slushpile, it does you no good for them to be excellent.
But if you're an unpublished author listening to people talk about how bad most of the slushpile is, it's easy to interpret it not as "I'm better than those clowns, I'll get in" but as "they expect the slushpile to be crap, they won't give my book a fair chance."
Or, if you've put a lot of yourself into your book, it may feel like dating: if the group of people whose attention you want keep publicly disparaging people like you, you're not going to be encouraged. It's not easy to remember the distinction between "most of the slushpile is crap" and "all of the slushpile is crap, and the people who send those unsolicited manuscripts are crap".
Harry, locally, I watch Spike TV's "MacGyver" reruns instead of "Dr. Phil," even though I've already seen all the "MacGyver" eps. (Okay, I could turn the TV off between the soap operas I like and the news at 4, but when I do that, I frequently miss the beginning of the news.)
There was some discussion of formatting earlier on in this thread, so I feel some justification for butting in with a question:
Should it be one space or two spaces after a full-stop (period)? Or doesn't it matter?
When I learnt to type, *cough*teen years ago, I was taught to leave two spaces.
I'm sure I've seen a comment somewhere on Making Light about how two spaces are bad -- but my browser crashes every time I try to use this site's search function. Googling brought up nothing useful, except this: http://www.webword.com/reports/period.html -- which is more about text on the internet rather than text in books.
Here is a better link directly to the LA Times article about ATLANTA NIGHTS.
Not sure how this bypasses subscriber registration, but I found it referenced in a couple of blogs via Google.
When you're typing on a typewriter (or when you're preparing a manuscript in Courier for submission) you leave two spaces after a period. When you're running justified type, you leave one space after a period.
In other news:
Lulu Sales Rank: 58
Hits: 20,875
Sales: 144
Royalties: $162.50
Mentioned on 402 web pages.
Discussed in 85 blogs and LiveJournals.
Patrick said:
> Think it through. If you're an aspiring unpublished writer, do you want the average quality
> in the slushpile to be high? Why would the news that it's not be something to get offended over?
Vicki - haphazard pick from said book here
I've been thinking about what Patrick said about the slushpile. Rationally, it makes sense: if you're competing against the other manuscripts in the slushpile, it does you no good for them to be excellent.
Granted Sturgeon's Law says the average will converge to cr*p as the numbers increase - still I'd hope for publication surrounded by quality and so maybe I'd hope for something better than trunk stories in the slush as well?
Objectives may differ. I suppose there is a reason market reports have called themselves Scavenger's for these many years?
You want what is published to ==> good (your published work is surrounded by quality) as what's in the slushpile ==> crap (the stuff you're competing against to get published) as the numbers go to infinity.
If the system works correctly, this is what happens.
In other news: Atlanta Nights Tee Shirts and such. Proceeds to go to the SFWA Emergency Medical Fund. Tell your friends.
"as the numbers go to infinity" I rather suspect response time is indeterminate but perhaps countable large?
Slashdot has picked up the Atlanta Nights story. That should drive some traffic toward Lulu and away from PA.
On the Atlanta Nights t-shirt page, why is the main picture different from the one (matching the Lulu cover) shown on actual shirts?
(I like the main picture better.)
"Or, if you've put a lot of yourself into your book, it may feel like dating: if the group of people whose attention you want keep publicly disparaging people like you, you're not going to be encouraged. It's not easy to remember the distinction between "most of the slushpile is crap" and "all of the slushpile is crap, and the people who send those unsolicited manuscripts are crap"
Don't forget:
"But...but what if I'M one of the crap ones and just don't realise it? ANGST! PARANOIA! AAAIE!"
The main picture on the CafePress site is the cover from the Embiid ebook edition. That isn't on any gear yet because the graphics using that picture haven't been uploaded yet.
Slashdot will likely also drive some traffic here. Hope the servers can cope (although it's likely to be a smaller than usual Slashdot effect).
The full text is available (free download) at Embiid.net in Palm, Rocket, and Windows formats.
Cool. I don't think I'd spend money on a dead-tree version -- even if it does help support a good cause -- but I'm willing to invest in a free download.
Has anyone read Jim Crace's article in the Guardian, of letters to the importunate unpublished?
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1405386,00.html
Is it really a Bad Thing for the first sentence of a novel to include the character's name? Or is he making that up?
Call me Ismael.
YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.
In other news: Atlanta Nights Tee Shirts and such.
Shouldn't that be Atlanta Nights Tea Shirts?
A fair piece upthread, Mary Dell wrote, "Presumably nobody likes the stress of auditioning, but if you think your work is fabulous, you should want to participate in a process designed to separate the wheat from the chaff."
Yes, but what if the business was set up such that you were only supposed to audition at one place at a time, and that place would typically wait a year or more to get back to you?
Would that be a sign of a well-run business?
Ooh! This is a good game.
"Emma Woodhouse, handsome clever and rich, with a comfortable home and a happy disposition..."
(in fact Pride and Prejudice is the only one that doesn't drop someone's name in the first sentence)
"When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating..." (admittedly it's a sequel and I skipped the prologue)
"'Come home, Tenar, come home.'" (okay, technically another sequel, but the original wasn't about Tenar).
"Roger, aged seven, and no longer the youngest of the family..."
"My father's family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer than Pip."
"'Do come out of that dream, Moril,' Lenina said."
"Stavia saw herself as in a picture, from the outside..."
I'm going to stop now, because there are other things I should be doing.
Ooh, Aquila, I knew five of those! And I don't think there's anything wrong in introducing the main character straightaway. As a reader I get irritated if there's lots of random description before the story gets going. I want to know who's doing what and where -- not how pretty the primroses are, or how strangely the autumn light plays about the hillside, etc.
I've raided my collection of children's books. How about:
"Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do..."
"The trouble started the day Howard came home from school to find the Goon sitting in the kitchen."
"William and Ginger and Douglas and Henry (known as the Outlaws) walked slowly down the road to school."
"The carriage gave another lurch, and Maria Merryweather, Miss Heliotrope, and Wiggins once more fell into each other's arms..."
"Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening Hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen."
"Taran wanted to make a sword; but Coll, charged with the practical side of his education, decided on horseshoes."
Darn it. Sorry for double-posting, but I forgot to say 'thank you' to James for responding so quickly to my two-spaces question.
Thank you, James.
Nice of Jonathan Vos Post to link to my "Runcible Ansible" column at The Infinite Matrix. However, using the "index.html" link brings up the latest column, and the one that mentions Atlanta Nights is now here.
Charlie Stross tells me that he's waiting to see the first novel "in the grand tradition of Charles Stross". At once I thought of contributing a reader's response at Lulu.com, but pity stayed my hand. Instead, perhaps, I should offer the blurb line sent to David S. Garnett when he demanded that everyone in British SF plug his book Bikini Planet sight
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