November 10, 2004

Should You Submit to Publishers? By James Robert Daniels

Lin and Larry Pardey told me that they were the first authors who fired their publisher. They're sailing through life, literally aboard their sailboat and in a literary way as successful authors and publishers. When I fired my own publisher, I learned a lot - the hard way. The book began under contract with an ebook publisher. Just what every author wants - to get published. Except that I didn't like my contract.

The royalty terms were not bad; even the advance was reasonable. My big objection was that the publisher wanted "all rights." A writer shouldn't sign over all rights to anything (except for big bucks). Ask Angela. My book, a career guide, was not likely to become a Movie Of the Week. But I did hope to see it in print some day, not just on the computer screen. And I wanted it to be read. The publisher also retained all distribution rights. They would sell it exclusively on their web site. This seemed crazy. After all, why not spread it all over the web, get it out there with Amazon and Barnes and Noble?

The terms were not negotiable. The publisher insisted that lots of other authors were perfectly willing to write these career guides under these conditions. Besides, they wouldn't have decided to publish it unless they expected to sell at least 1,000 copies. Okay. I signed the contract and started writing.

The deadline arrived, and I had a manuscript ready to submit. It was just about half the required length. My editor was understandably disappointed, but willing to let me revise and rewrite and submit a longer manuscript. But wait! I considered my options. Yes, I could gather more material and interview more people. I could make the manuscript twice as long. I could even make it better.

On the other hand, I was still unhappy with all of these things:

* the terms of my contract

* myself for giving up all rights

* the obscure website of a new e-publisher as the sole outlet for my book

I declined the editor's offer of more time, instead taking advantage of the fact that I had broken the contract. I decided to self-publish.

By the time the book was done, I had found that it was so crammed with interactive Internet references and links that the best format for it was an electronic one after all. I published it as an ebook with Booklocker.com, distributed it all over the web and released it on a high-quality CD by NoSpine.net in the UK. An inventor friend, Melanie Loomos of buttpillow.com arranged a cover shoot with professional photographer Dion of Miami Beach and super-model Anka RomenskyóI flew down from Seattle for the day. Unnecessary, yes. But FUN!

One of the first things I learned was the importance of a title. Unable to use the ebook publisher's original title, Career Guide to Become an Inventor, I settled on the new name, How To Become An Inventor. It was not a good title for this particular book.

The hardest lesson I learned, though, is that publishing is a business. And it takes a lot of time that could be spent writing.

But I did learn a lot about publishing, editing, book production, promotion, wholesale and retail marketing, the ISBN and bar codes and Amazon and Barnes and Noble and press releases and a lot of other things that every author should knowóno matter how much we really do not want to know this stuff! I don't plan to self-publish again. Trust me. But I am now a publisher. That's an experience. And you can't be a writer unless you're experienced. Good, bad or indifferent, experience is life. To write, you've got to live. That is the one benefit above all of firing my publisher. What's next? Getting a sailboat.

James Robert Daniels is a freelance writer in Port Townsend, Washington. He's been published since 1975 in books, anthologies, magazines, newspapers and online publications and has been a WritersWeekly.com subscriber since 1997. How To Become An Inventor, a guide to beginning a creative career, is available here: http://www.booklocker.com/books/378.html.