Want to be published?
So many of us do, but there are a lot of pitfalls that are easy to fall
into. We have seen many people fall into the subsidy publishing trap and be
heartbroken when they realise that they have been
chosen not because of the quality of their writing but because subsidy
publishers will often publish anything so long as you buy the finished
product. So many people win their awards that they are completely
meaningless.
The following article was
published in the March/April 1999 edition of Poets
& Writers Magazine
Please read it, please remember it and please be open eyed when dealing with
subsidy publishing.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Poets & Writers, Inc., 72
Spring Street, New York, NY 10012.
Amy Holman's Tough-Love Guide To
Publishing
AMY HOLMAN is a poet and the director of the
Literary Horizons program at Poets & Writer, Inc. She counsels writers on
their professional development through publishing seminars, writers conferences, and
the internet. Her poetry is published in literary journals and in The Best
American Poetry 1999 (Scribner, 1999).
SUBSIDY PUBLISHING: DON'T BUY IT
Everyday, someone calls my office asking me to
identify whether a publisher is legit. It's the bane of my job. I don't mind
the callers, I mind that subsidy presses have any
success at all.
My job is to assist in the professional development of authors at various
stages of their careers, which means helping them identify journals and
publishers, contests and grants, that would be
receptive to their particular work. I encourage all writers to be
discriminating regarding to whom they submit and with whom they sign a contract.
Just because a publisher expresses interest in your work doesn't mean you
have to let him publish it. When considering the licensing of publication
rights to their work writers should ask themselves this question: Will this
publication further my professional development? This does not mean you
should automatically favor big publishers over small presses. In my opinion,
it does mean you should always choose a standard publisher over
a subsidy press.
All subsidy presses -- no matter how persuasively they present their
publishing terms -- require payment from an author before they agree to
publish that author's work. What that means is that the author is paying for
the printing of his or her own work, whether of an entire run of books or by
purchase of, say, the anthology in which the work appears. All writers are
susceptible to the prospect of seeing their work in print, but I always tell
writers to resist acting on impulse and to think of their whole career, not
just the one book or single publication at hand.
Keep this thought in mind, if it makes it easier: If a writer, when
applying for a grant or award, lists publications with a subsidy press or
journal on her application, it is very likely no legitimate editor or award
judge will take that writer seriously.
The best way to identify a subsidy publisher is to know how a legitimate
publisher deals with authors. A legitimate publisher will choose a work based
on its merit. A legitimate publisher will print, package, promote, and
distribute for sale an author's work and (here's the key) pay the
writer for this opportunity. Many literary journals pay only in the form
of a few copies of the issue in which the writer's poem or story is printed;
other journals also pay cash. Larger magazines regularly pay in legal tender
and author copies. In book publishing, payment is made either through a
standard royalty contract that gives the writer a percentage of sales
revenue, ranging from 7.5 to 15 percent depending on the printing (first,
second, third...) and the packaging (paper or cloth), or through an agreement
that gives the writer a portion of the print run that she can sell herself.
In small and university press publishing deals, the royalty rate is often
calculated on the net receipts of sales to wholesalers and distributors,
whereas with larger houses, the rate is calculated on the retail price of the
number of books distributed. Sometimes a publisher will grant the author a
cash advance on the royalty payout. All legitimate book and journal
publishers give the author several copies of the publication as soon as it
rolls off the presses.
Let's be clear: The one who pays is the publisher.
If it is the reverse - if the author is the one forking over the dough -
then it best be a self-publishing venture in which
the author makes all the decisions and all the profits. So let me rephrase
that for emphasis: A legitimate publisher pays the author, not the
other way around.
SUBSIDY presses are successful because they make an author believe they
enjoyed his or her work, that it is being accepted based on its merit. Don't
believe it. Subsidy presses accept the work of writers who are gullible
enough to believe paying for publication doesn't devalue the process. I've
seen advertisements in major newspapers for contests offering thousands of
dollars in prizes for a single poem, but in this type of contest you could
put line breaks in advertising copy for furniture polish and become one of
hundreds of semifinalists. No author copies are awarded to these
semifinalists, but they are given the "opportunity" to have their
poems printed in an anthology if they agree to purchase a copy (prepaid) for
$59.95. (For a point of comparison, the Norton Anthology of Poetry, the
renowned English class text, costs $46.25 for nearly 2,000 pages of poems.)
Some of these subsidy presses make authors pay extra for a byline.
Many of these operations also make other "offers" concerning
semifinalists' poetry for which the poet can
pay-cassette recordings, plaques, radio readings, conventions. Here's another
comparison to keep in mind when you re deciding
whether to work with a subsidy press: When a poet and a fiction writer win
the prestigious, career-advancing contests that the literary journal Nimrod
conducts, they are paid prize money, their work is published in the journal,
and they are flown - at Nimrod's expense - to the writers conference
affiliated with Nimrod in Oklahoma, where they give a reading of their
work. The semifinalist of a subsidy press contest who is invited to attend a
convention, has to pay for her airfare and accommodations, and when she
arrives, discovers that she is one of hundreds of semifinalists competing for
the same prize.
Subsidy presses may say that they send their books and journals to libraries
and bookstores, but most purchase managers are savvy enough to know
subsidy press products when they see them. Some of the calls I get about
the legitimacy of presses are from librarians who are simply double-checking.
So if a subsidy press says in its pamphlet that it sends its books to
bookstores and libraries, do not assume that managers and librarians actually
purchase the books for resale or lending - what's commonly called distribution.
Instead, try to find out how often their books are returned to them.
Here is an important rule for a writer to live by: Do not pay anything
up front. If you have to buy a subscription to a magazine before it will
consider your stories or poems for publication, then you are paying for
publication.
A favorite ruse among subsidy book publishers is to draw up a contract
asking a writer for $1000 to $2,000 to publish a novel or collection of
poetry; in exchange, the press will offer the writer a staggering 40 percent
royalty on the books. If the author agrees and pays the money, what often
happens next is this: The subsidy press will print a cheaply designed book;
its total costs will be considerably less than what the author paid. The
press earns a profit; the author gets a book that will be difficult -- if not
impossible -- to sell. Last year I spoke with a woman whose second effort, a
children's book, was under consideration with the same subsidy press that had
published her first book, a novel for adults. The press was planning a
two-color cover design for the children's book that was identical to the
cover used for her novel. Even if the press did distribute her book to
bookstores, how could it possibly compete with slickly packaged Newbery Medal
winners and colorful pop-up books? For her up-front money, she was going to
get 40 percent of nothing.
May I just say how much I hate the way these subsidy publishers feed on
writers' hopes and dreams?
WRITERS owe it to themselves to scrutinize their opportunities to publish.
There are some presses that won't say they are subsidy presses, but when you
read the information about what they offer, they do not appear to be standard
publishers, either. Writers reading through entries in
reference books such as Poet's Market should comparison-shop -- read
the labels, in a sense. Compare standard publishing listings to ones that
strike you as odd. For example, if a press listing says something like,
"We do not distribute through chain bookstores, but rather by direct
sales and through independent booksellers," you'd better read the rest
of the listing with a critical eye. Many small and independent presses
overcome the plight of competition with the chains; some even turn a nice
profit without unduly involving the authors they publish. If a press's
listing says that its payment policy for publishing a poetry collection is a
few author copies but no royalties, you might pass it by (pretty meager, you
might think) or you might keep reading. After all, author copies are a
legitimate form of author payment. But if the listing continues with
something like, "Before we go to press, we require an agreed-upon number
of prepaid orders," your radar should be on full alert.
I won't say that it absolutely can't be done, but I will suggest that it
is a pitiful task for a poet to try to sell a book of poetry that her
publisher refuses to back. If you want to look further into the possibility
of publishing with this press, you should call and ask some pointed
questions:
- What will the retail price be?
- What's the design going to look like?
- What are the names of some book-stores or libraries
near you that carry the press's current titles (so that you can inspect
the quality of its design and printing)?
If you don't get satisfactory
answers to your questions, turn the page and look for other publishers to
submit your work to, because chances are those prepaid copies will be just
about the sum total of the entire print run...and if that's the case, you're
not being published-you're being printed.
SELF-PUBLISH rather than enter into a deal
with a subsidy press. Dan Poynter and Tom and
Marilyn Ross have written exceptionally instructive books on this pursuit, The
Self Publishing Manual (Para Publishing, 10th ed., 1997) and The
Complete Guide to Self-Publishing (Writer's Digest Books, 3rd ed.,1994), respectively. Better yet, seek an established
legitimate publisher from the vast array of university-affiliated, small,
independent, alternative, and large publishers who will be interested in your
writing and who have qualified staff to produce and publicize your book.
Everyone wants to make some money from publishing, but the legitimate
publishers expect to make it on book sales, not from the author's wallet.
The Poetry Webring
would like to thank Poets &
Writers Magazine for agreeing to allow us to reprint this article.
Please visit their site which
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The Poetry Webring
has no financial connection to Poets &
Writers Magazine.
Chesil submitted the following to a subsidy press
and won a semi-finalist award:
Two Red Socks
I used to have two red socks,
Now I just have one
And I don't know
Where the other one's gone.
Did the other go out one night
To try and find some fun?
Or did it go down the pipe
To leave one all alone?
I used to have two red socks,
Now I just have one.
I do wish I knew
Where the other has gone!
You have been warned!