Sundog Rising!
Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog
Seeking a Publisher in the 21st Century
Part Two: A Short History
Just for the record, I am a published writer.
I’ve had poetry and short stories published in a number of journals and magazines, in four anthologies, and I’ve sold one book of short stories and one book of poetry. The only thing I find irksome in this list is that I think of myself primarily as a novelist, and I’ve yet to sell a novel.
I was on a bit of a roll between 2000 and 2005, getting stuff out onto the market regularly and meeting with more success than rejection. Then I got ridiculously sick, requiring emergency open heart surgery, and I kind of lost my momentum …
When I sat down to write again, things were different. Actually having blood flow to your brain changes the nature of your imagination. Things were richer than ever in every way, but by the time I got back to examining the markets again, two things had changed. I was older, and the publishing world was very different. Ask any bookstore owner.
I started sending out material in 1978. Reality check: in 1978 you didn’t own a personal computer and word processing software was a thing of the unimaginable future. So you manually typed everything you wrote and sent it out into the world only by snail mail. There were photocopiers, so you didn’t have to type anything more than once, but still. Think about that for a moment.
On the upside, publishers were remarkably accommodating by today’s standards. You went to the Library, checked out the Publishers Guides in the Reference Section, they told you who was interested in what and where to mail your manuscript. No restrictions. And they were interested in original ideas … Migod, even the nonconventional.
I don’t remember exactly when, but sometime in the late eighties or nineties the cost of paper went through the ceiling for publishers. At that point, things changed …
Suddenly companies who were open to anything before only wanted to hear about new versions of exactly what had worked well for them before. And the big companies demanded you have an agent submitting your material for you, before they would look at it anymore.
Through the nineties and into the new century these restrictions multiplied. Many publishers started listing that they no longer accepted new material; unsolicited manuscripts of any kind became practically verboten, query first please; the number of companies stating they only accepted submissions from agents multiplied; simultaneous submissions to more than one publisher went right out the window; which coupled with increasingly long reply waits meant you were lucky to hit three publishers in a year with the same manuscript; and some companies began specifying they would only accept new submissions certain times of the year.
At the same time the Internet arrived, and e-publishing slowly grew, expanding the industry in a new direction. But very few people seemed to have a clear idea of how all that actually worked. As I illustrated last week, for every market that stays on the web, nine disappear in a month or two. Chain bookstores are now where you go to buy hand cream, tea, and tacky little crafts, because the sale of hard copy books isn’t going to cut it for them anymore. As the drive continues to have everyone reading some electronic tablet you can hold in your hand rather than something with physical pages, radical changes in the face of publishing follow suit.
According to one e-newsletter on the writing industry I receive, 2013 marked the first year in modern publishing history where self-published books represented more than fifty percent of all books published. Even the august Writers Union of Canada voted two-thirds in favour in March of this year to admit “qualified” self-published authors for membership.
So, like it or not, more and more the answer of where to seek a publisher for your work lies in the image looking back at you from your own mirror.
Live Event! Coming Soon!
Cinco De Mayo Poetry
A people’s holiday event featuring Mexican Poetry
Read in Spanish by Liliana Romanowski and in English by John H. Baillie
And new and selected poetry by Winnipeg activist poet Ron Romanowski
author of Incantations from the Republic of Fire
Monday May 5, 2014 7PM
McNally Robinson Booksellers
1120 Grant Avenue, Winnipeg
In the Atrium
Admission is free
*******
REALITY FICTION UPDATE!
And what is Reality Fiction, you may well ask?
Simple. The concept of the Reality Television Series translated to the printed page. 40 characters from my backlog of generally unpublished material are gathered together to compete in a different theme each Episode, with one or two characters being eliminated each sequence until there are only two left to fight it out in the final. The winner gets a short novel of their own as the grand prize.
But somehow, things always seem to go horribly wrong ...
What’s happening now?
Clambering out of the radioactive past, when scientists were mad, the women were lovely, and the monsters were black and white … The Giant Insect Episode! Thursday, at …
http://realficone.blogspot.ca/
REALITY FICTION TOO! EPISODES TO DATE
EPISODE TWENTY-SIX: SUPERHERO
“The Professor Evil Sessions”
EPISODE TWENTY-FIVE: JUNGLE ADVENTURE
“The Third Eye of the Many Legged Python”
EPISODE TWENTY-FOUR: PULP FICTION
“The Red Moon of Pango Pango”
EPISODE TWENTY-THREE: STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
The Imp of the Reverse
EPISODE TWENTY-TWO: FAIRY TALE
Princess NoName
EPISODE TWENTY-ONE: THE WEDDING
Dearly, Beloved
EPISODE TWENTY: EXISTENTIALISM
Face the Hangman
EPISODE NINETEEN: ABDUCTION
Abduction/Apperception
EPISODE EIGHTEEN: MELODRAMA
“Terror in Tarnation! A Thrilling Narrative in Three Acts”
EPISODE SEVENTEEN: POETRY
“landescapes”
EPISODE SIXTEEN: SILLY EUROPEAN SPY SPOOF (DUBBED)
“Diet Ray of the Stars!”
EPISODE FIFTEEN: EROTIC SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE
“The Shadow of Her Passion”
EPISODE FOURTEEN: FLYING:
“Sky Calling”
EPISODE THIRTEEN: SLAPSTICK:
“The Phantom of the Werewolf”
EPISODE TWELVE: DAIRY FARMING:
“Early One Morning”
EPISODE ELEVEN: BURROUGHS:
“Chapter Nine”
EPISODE TEN: WEREWOLVES:
“The Silver Solution”
EPISODE NINE: WRESTLING:
“Suckerslam XIV”
EPISODE EIGHT: JANE AUSTEN ROMANCE:
“The Proud and the Senseless”
EPISODE SEVEN: THE JAZZ AGE:
“The Bucky-Dusky-Ruby Red Hop!”
EPISODE SIX: SUBMISSION:
“Re-Org”
EPISODE FIVE: MASQUERADE:
“The Eyes Behind the Mask”
EPISODE FOUR: SELF HELP:
“Sausage Stew for the Slightly Overweight Presents:
Some Several Suggestions Guaranteeing Success for the Mildly Neurotic”
EPISODE THREE: NUDIST:
“If You Have To Ask ...”
EPISODE TWO: FRENCH BEDROOM FARCE:
“Un Nuit a Fifi’s!”
EPISODE ONE: STEAMPUNK:
“The Chase of the Purple Squid!”
A J.H.B. Original!
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