Hairy, I just wish someone would make the damned thing. Can't seem to get anyone to get excited about it. I think you could probably put the whole thing together for under a million. Have your people call my people.
Hairy, I just wish someone would make the damned thing. Can't seem to get anyone to get excited about it. I think you could probably put the whole thing together for under a million. Have your people call my people.
I'm in that category known as "the literary novel", which basically means my work doesn't fit into any category. On the high end of it you have Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, et al., though my work also has one foot in the thriller/mystery category, which is why I'm sometimes reviewed there.
I'm currently in very preliminary talks to do something very different--a memoir, which of course these days is a lucrative genre that has nearly overtaken the novel in terms of popularity.
Memoir novel?
I have four short stories that are memoirs of the same character. That series will be my second effort at a S.F. Anthology.
Give me some refs on good memoir novels if you got any. I want to see how those are written in contrast to S.F. and tales.
Adam, a memoir is nonfiction; a novel is fiction, though there is such a thing as an autobiographical novel, one that draws to some degree on the actual life and events of the author.
"I believe that discrimination exists in Hollywood, but ... its much less of an obstacle then poor writing, poor marketing, poor networking and being a whiny little bitch." -- JKK
I wasn't passing judgment on what's foolish or not. Just stating the fact from my point of view as a novelist. To get a novel self-published is like masturbation: there's an expense of energy, a moment of satisfaction, and zero progeny. But it's all done on your own. At least when you make your folly of a movie you've involved others who may share to some degree your enthusiasm for a project.
ya but is it possible to take you're little self published book and knock on doors? Camp out at Oprah's mansion? Stalk Oprah? I mean, you must be able to self market it to some extent?
ya but is it possible to take you're little self published book and knock on doors? Camp out at Oprah's mansion? Stalk Oprah? I mean, you must be able to self market it to some extent?
Unlike a self-produced film, which can easily be a calling-card to bigger and better things, a self-published book in and by itself signifies that all of the mainstream publishers passed on it. You're not dealing in a single object but one that's mass produced--printed, bound, reviewed, distributed.
If you publish a book on your own dime you will have boxes of them and may, if you like, give them away or set up readings in your home town where you'll sell them out of the box. And if this is your goal, well, that's fine. But most of us who write for a living like to see our books paid for by someone else, a check in our pockets, and newspapers reviewing them--and I don't mean the Podunk Daily Shout.
I think what Jake's saying is if you vanity publish a book you're signifying that you are a failure right of the bat because no other publisher worth his salt considered if any good in the first place to publish the book commercially. For some writers vanity publishing is the last resort. A kind of recognition of your own failure to write a book worthy of publication by a industry publisher.
I suppose it's down to the writing, the story, genre, plot, characters, dialogue, time setting, locations used, canvas, theme, tone, prose... Maybe its a sign of good and bad writing that one writer is published and another not? I don't know.. Maybe there are commercial considerations and whether the work can be considered commercial to at least break even on the royalty payments and publishing costs.. A lot goes into developing talent at a publishing house.. They tend to invest long-term with a good one..
Vanity publishing is okay for some stuff, maybe you have written a book in an area of Genealogy, something like that.. That is a big market and one can promote this kind of stuff on a specially created web site these days..
But generally I'd agree with Jake, vanity publishing is for those who can't accept their work isn't good enough to be published commercially, so rather than accept defeat they publish themselves..
What is the opinion of folks here about being published on the internet, as opposed to in magazines, etc?
I hear that some short story Science Fiction or Fantasy genre websites exist (they're subscription sites) and some are starting to pay decent per word rates etc ...
Obviously, that would be edited, better-than-the-schlock-anyone can "self-publish" by themselves on the internet ... and getting paid is getting paid ...
But would you agree or disagree that there's not much glory in being published only on the internet (we're talking fiction here ... not those Earth-shaking blogs that change human history once some troll has put it on the net) ???
sigpic "As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves." -Mahatma Gandhi.
Tabby, publishing is a very old-fashioned business and one that's slow to move with the changes, which is both good and bad. The printed page is to some degree the goal of any writer of fiction. It becomes something that can't be altered (as writing can be on the Web), something that can be passed along, something that can be sold, read, reviewed, reprinted.
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