Though Not Seemingly Possible, Some Authors May Not Feel Jolly About the Publishing Industry

December 15th, 2004 · No Comments
by Booksquare

Over at M.J. Rose’s Buzz, Balls & Hype, the letters to Santa continue. Or, in this case, letters to the Book Biz Santa. For the past three days, she’s posted a series of three letters to publishers from authors (common theme: without authors, there would be little to publish). We strongly recommend checking out all three days (this being a blog, you scroll up to get to the end…it’s like a fun game only with a mouse).

Just a few favorites from Day One:

1. No more legs, asses or boobs on the covers of women’s fiction. Believe it or not women readers are not interested in each other’s body parts.

Amen! And another amen!

7. PLEASE EDIT MY BOOK. Even if you know it will sell and get reviewed because of my name and my previous books, even though you recognize the many good qualities in the manuscript I have turned in, if you think it needs a serious revision, please, please, ask me to do it.

And from Day Two:

10. Please stop sending books and authors out without a proper web presence. We’re just shy of 2005 and it’s ridiculous for a book and an author not to have something more on line than their book cover and bio at the publisher’s main site. Increasingly, readers get their information from the internet. Saying your author “isn’t tech savvy” or saying that their book “isn’t for that audience” doesn’t cut it anymore. In 2005, not giving a book adequate web presence is like not listing it in the catalog.

In other words, this Internet thing is not new. They have it everywhere. Only in the publishing industry does this seem to be a novelty. This is especially hard to fathom as we’re sure editors do as much shopping on eBay as the rest of us.

Wrapping up with Day Three:

16. We’re not crazy, please don’t treat us as if we are. If we seem upset at times, consider that this might have something to do with being in a career where we have very little control over whether our books are accepted, edited, publicized, distributed, promoted, reviewed or bought. We can work on a book for five years and the publisher can make decisions that will effectively kill it in five minutes. This tends to make the author a little tense.

File Under: Publishers and Editors