A Prejudicial Pitfall of Self-Publishing

[aurelio]

Aurelio, and the more I think about it the more it seems like you may have approached the completely wrong person. If he is a freelancer who doesn't even review books that often (as I think you said), he probably has to have everything he does approved in advance. But someone who writes a regular or semi-regular column on SF for a newspaper or a magazine almost certainly does NOT have to get approval for the books he or she reviews. If a reviewer like that read your book and loved it -- someone with a track record, whose editors respect their opinion -- and added it in along with reviews of other books, its highly unlikely that someone higher up in the heirarchy would object and strike out that part of the article.

Yeah, I was at a big animation Christmas party here in LA, and I just ran into him. My book came up in the conversation when he asked what I'd been up to. He's specifically a reviewer for animation, and animation related books, so I think he was simply trying to inform me more than anything. I was kind of hoping for a referral.

I think what you said above makes sense, Kelpie. I would hope that an established reviewer would be able to cover whatever book they deemed worthy, and it is hard to imagine a paper would really fight a reviewer over covering a self-published book. The big trick is to make it past the door, so to speak.

I had hoped my site would help, because of it's unusual nature, and it has definitely opened the door with several blog reviewers. So far the print papers have seen fit to ignore it, but I definitely haven't given up yet!

And Jenna, I already entered EVE in the Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards! (as well as several other competitions that allow self-published books - some don't). I hope it's not a hoax (I'm always sooo suspicious - aren't I?). Does anyone here know anything first hand about Writer's Digest?

[Leto]

Try to see these guys : www.moutons-electriques.com. They just started their publishing business but so far it's good quality. And they do translations.

[I, Brian]

Isn't "Writer's Digest" a self-publishing company in its own right, anyway?? Or is it an independent press?

[Teresa Edgerton]

Writer's Digest is a magazine with a fairly large circulation (that is, it turns up pretty much wherever magazines on writing do turn up in US bookstores and magazine stands). They also publish books on writing, which also turn up in a lot of places. From which I conclude that they are a fairly large specialty type of press. They've been around forever.

This sounds like the kind of contest they would hold, and the scale of the prize money sounds about right for the kind of contests they run.

[aurelio]

Try to see these guys : www.moutons-electriques.com. They just started their publishing business but so far it's good quality. And they do translations.

Thanks for the information, Leto. I'll check it out.

Thanks to you too, Kelpie. So, it sounds like Writer's Digest is legit. It seemed like I'd seen their publications before. When I looked around the web, there were a LOT of other writing competitions that required one to send a fairly sizable fee to enter. Those seemed to raise red flags with me - also, I'm a skinflint.

I avoided those.

[I, Brian]

Thanks for the clarification, Kelpie - sometimes I am in real danger of letting cynicism overwhelm better sense.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Well, sometimes it's a fine line between caution and cynicism. You may have noticed that I am not a big fan of cynicism, but it's only practical to be cautious about some of these things.

As Aurelio pointed out, there are a lot places that charge fees for entering their "contests." Anywhere there is a fee involved, that's a definite danger sign. But Writers Digest is both legitimate and long-established, and while I can't comment on the value of the services they offer to the winners, I don't see how entering their contest could possibly hurt -- and it might do a lot of good.

[littlemissattitude]

I believe Writer's Digest also publishes "Writer's Market" every year, which lists publishers, what kinds of work they publish, how many titles they publish each year (in the case of book publishers), sort of what they're looking for, and how to get in touch with them to submit work or to get a copy of their manuscript guidelines, and whether they want query letter only, query letter and treatment, or query letter and sample chapters. As I recall, they have listings for book publishers, magazines, and poetry publishers. I haven't looked at a Writer's Market in a couple of years, so I could be missing something or adding something in that isn't there. I need to take a look, as I notice that the "Writer's Market 2005" is already on the shelf in the reference section of my local library branch.