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Sitting and Laughing….
Just Couldn’t Stop Laughing… I got sent this newsletter that I tend to read every month. It is from a major traditional published person, a former editor and so on, who has her head so far up the ass of traditional publishing, I have no idea how she sees anything clearly. And she often does not. She pretends to pay attention to indie publishing, then does a sad and so uninformed piece of Pay-to-Publish, I got disgusted. But that is not what made me sit and just laugh and have a hard time stopping this afternoon. She did an article about how the AALA (American Association of Literary Agents) revised…
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Interesting Discussion
Strangely Enough, With a Book Agent… Civil as I could keep it on my side. Honest, I was a good boy, for the most part. But my normal blunt self. (And no, I will not tell you who I had the discussion with.) Something came from this discussion that I thought I had better remind folks about here. If you have a friend who is looking at a book agent, ask these questions of that friend… One… Have you done a credit check on the agent? Two… Will the agent automatically, for all clients, split payments from all publishers, meaning the publisher sends out two checks and two sets of…
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Very Tempted…
To Say I Told You So… But that would be petty. (Grin) Yes, this is a post about book agents. You see, for the last decade or more I have been trying my best to talk sense into normally very intelligent people when it comes to agents. But the myth is so powerful that really smart people do the stupidest things when the word “agent” is mentioned in publishing. Example… Writers allow agents to tell them how to write a novel, even though the agent has never written a novel in their life. Yet writers will rewrite and rewrite to try to please some agent, spending years of time. Example……
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One Fun Thought
I Think Agents Are a Bad Thing… For most of you reading this, that is a well-duh. So it dawned on me that one agent or some publisher could buy this package from Data Guy and with very little work figure out EXACTLY what any agency is making from all their clients book sales. (Not advances, book sales.) Of course, it won’t include overseas and movie rights and such as I said in the long post before this, but it should be enough information to make any agent or agency in New York quake in fear at this personal information about all their authors getting out. That just makes me…
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The New World of Publishing: A Return to the Past
A Look Back at January 11, 2011 That’s right, I wrote the following post on January 11, 2011, talking some about the coming war between writers and the problems with the future of agents. I was looking back at some old posts to clean them out and stumbled on this and was stunned. I remember warning people of the coming war between writers and getting laughed at. Not sure anyone is laughing anymore, sadly. Take a look back at 2011. Anything I put in (Bold Italics is a comment I have added tonight.) ———— Okay, time to talk about agents and their future in this changing world. Mary Kole, who…
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The New World of Publishing: The Assumption of Agents
After that head-shaking article by Don Maass, and the funny response by Joe and Barry, I decided it was time to update a post I did about a year ago in this series. So here it is… Among all new writers these days, the myth is strong that they need an agent and that agents are just here and a part of the new book world. It seems to radiate through every word I hear from writers lost in the myths of starting up as fiction writers. It’s like you bought a house and someone is living in the basement and you believe without ever a question that you must…
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The New World of Publishing: Some Perspective On 2012
Interestingly enough, 2012 was the first seemingly stable year in the new normal we are all living in the publishing industry. Does that mean that nothing changed? Of course not. Some things changed, but not like 2009-2011. And some things will continue to change. But when you step back and look at the business in general, the changes in 2012 were pretty minor and predictable and normal. So just for fun, I thought I would go over what I consider the fairly major changes in publishing that happened so far in 2012. And try to give a little perspective from the advantage of watching and living inside of publishing for…
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The New World of Publishing: Why Bad Agent Information Gets Taught
For decades, the business of publishing fiction didn’t seem to change much. In fact, for a major industry, it stayed stuck solidly in practices decade after decade, with only slow and often minor-seeming shifts. But now something changes daily in this business. The point of this blog is to try to explain why some myths exist and why some bad information gets taught still by very smart people. And I hope the best way to show this is to just show the changes in agents over the years. So let me take on once again the biggest and most powerful myth of all: Agents. And how we writers got into…
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The New World of Publishing: Traditional Publishers Are Getting What They Deserve
A beginning note: This post came about because lately I’ve been getting the writer-as-center-of-the-universe questions a great deal. Writers believe that when they send in a manuscript to an editor, it is the only manuscript on the desk. Writers believe that when they take on an agent, they are the agent’s only client. Writers believe that their advance is the only money publishers will spend on their book. That sort of silliness, which drove the writing of this post. Keep that in mind when reading this. Thanks! Traditional Publishers Caused Agents to Become Publishers. Let me simply say that traditional publishers deserve what they are getting. And my question is…
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Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: The Agent Section
Series Note: I am now working on updating each chapter and putting together this book, finally, after over 100,000 words that started back in 2009. So I am updating each chapter and putting it up here now for those who have not seen them. However, since I started this series, agents and what they are doing in publishing has changed dramatically. In fact, things have changed so dramatically since I started this book concerning agents, I am not, repeat, not going to include the agent posts as reprints here. Why? Can’t stomach it is why. I will explain below. If you want to read the old posts, including tons…