Monday, May 6, 2013

Pitfalls Of Publishing May 6, 2013

Dear Literary Loves,

Oh my goodness.  What a disappointment week that has just ended.  I have never been so disenchanted with the publishing industry in my life.  Honestly, I'm beginning to wonder if traditional publishing and literary agents will survive the onslaught of self-publishing considering what I am now witnessing as a new memoir writer on the scene.  My major irritations this week included:

A)  A publisher that is turning to mainly producing vulgar material.  I don't know why; they used to be a reputable publisher.  Now I'm beginning to see an abundance of books that are just plain not worth my time.  What happened?  I don't know.  Maybe they are trying to cater to women in their 20s or something?  Some of the twitter posts by the editors of this press also have me gravely concerned.  I mean, really, a post about foreskins?  If you can't do better than that, please just hang it up cause this Generation Xer says you are not worth my time. 

B) A publisher that should be jumping through hoops to sign me has basically gone incommunicado.  I'm serious.  They say they want to publish and give priority to the unheralded writers that traditional publishers tend to overlook.  Well, I sent two of their editors letters via snail mail with an enclosed SASE and that was back on February 6, 2013.  Nada.  Haven't heard a thing.  I've emailed them saying I'm giving you every opportunity as a small press that doesn't require aurhors to be agented to have at this memoir, but you are leaving me no choice if you can't even respond to a personal printed letter with an envelope and stamp provided.  And to not respond at all via email?  This doesn't bode well for a house with responsiveness and priority to its authors. 

C) What's with Riffle Books?  Requiring readers to be invited before they can join?  What are you encouraging reading or social networking and pretentiousness?  Please.  The site connection takes forever and then you want me to sign in via Facebook or Twitter which I think are vain.  Get Real Folks. I'll be over at Good Reads if you want my recommendations.

D) On Querytracker we've got an agency that has practically not one literary agent responding to queries.  Seriously.  It's like their query box is for looks only.  Not one writer has been given a courtesy of a response to a book query in quite some time.  Why even bother saying you are looking for new authors?  This just reeks of unprofessionalism.  Writers on Querytracker are upset, but i posted that it's a bad pattern with this agency and I wrote them off a long time ago because of their nonresponsiveness.  And if you think I'm going to sign up to interact with one of their agents at a conference or literary festival, forget it.  The funny thing is the lead agent for the agency was offering a course on writing a winning query letter!  I was like, are you kidding me?  They can't even deliver a query response in over a year.  I'll take my money elsewhere darling.

NOW LET'S ALL PRAY I HAVE A BETTER WEEK WITH THE PUBLISHING POWERS THAT BE THIS WEEK.

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