Grabbing for a Falling Knife
Let me get this out of the way up front: to me, “published” means “for sale to the public”. It doesn’t mean good or important or priced appropriately or printed on paper. Money has to change hands at some point, either with me being paid directly for my words (up front or in percentages of sales) and/or the publisher being paid for my words.
As I write this, I’m chewing through comments from my beta readers on my novel. By the time this blog post goes live, my novel WIP should be finished. As I discussed last month, this doesn’t mean it’s without flaws, but it’s time to get it out the door. I was going to spend a while chewing over all the options in an angsty, dithery state. Format for a self-pub via Amazon? Craft a query letter and start shopping for an agent? Try direct subs to the slush pile at Tor, Angry Robot or Baen?
Then I saw an opportunity that looked pretty good. I described it all in a blog post I wrote back in September in which I said I was going to submit this book to Harper Voyager. They announced that from October 1 – 14, they would accept unagented submissions. The books they wanted included interesting and fresh sci-fi, 80 – 100K words. If accepted, it would be an e.book deal under the Harper Voyager banner, with a not-very-likely print run as a possibility. It sounded OK to me, for reasons that I went into in greater detail in the blog post.
Curiously, though, there was one commenter who was vocal, even Wendigian in his opposition to this idea. The only thing a big six house (or any house, for that matter) could offer beyond what you could do yourself is a print run that appears in stores, online and brick-and-mortar. Without a print run, the commenter said, this was a deal to run screaming from. Other commenters offered rebuttals, nuances and other viewpoints. Mostly, the advantages of being under a major banner are related to accepting a smaller slice of a bigger pie, and doing it without big upfront costs. I’m not opposed to exploring the traditional publication route. In fact, I’d more or less decided to go that way with my Grammarian WIP. This open window from Harper Voyager pushes the timeline, but not all that much.
I’m under no illusions here. I know that adding my book to this slush tsunami is like buying a lottery ticket; I’m not counting on anything coming from it. While this review process runs its three-month course, my intention is to continue polishing the book, re-crafting the query letter, subbing to agents and other outlets.
By the time you read this, that road of opportunity will have almost closed. I wonder if I went through it?
I still say Voyager’s e-only deal is attractive exclusively based on how much they will do to promote it. You know how much you’ll do, and have inklings as to how successful you can be on their own. Will Voyager magnify that substantially enough for it to be worth your while, and do good enough business for them that they’ll want to flip their print option and retain you?
Valid points, John. I think the timing is just not going to work for me. Today is October 10th, and I still have polish edits to make to the manuscript, in addition to writing the query. Can I do that in the next four days? Maybe.
You mentioned you were going to submit in this window. Good luck!
I wonder too… are Voyager going to put the same editorial investment into their e-imprint as they do with their paper imprint.
If they are there is an added incentive there, including, as John pointed out, the exposure of Harper-Voyager as a worldwide imprint.
It’s now the 12th and the window is disappearing. Looking forward to hearing what you ended up doing.
Alas, the window closed without me. As I described on my blog, this book is not quite ready.
I’ll have to rely on other opportunities.
Without having read your other post on the subject – if it’s not going to be printed and distributed to retail outlets, a publisher would have to offer more than their logo on the artwork. What are they doing to connect you the readers (the hopefully paying public)?
Deadlines without money to enforce them are just stress. At some time you have to publish, but often you ‘know’ you’re not ready. Better for you to wait than disappointing with obviously flawed work.
I don’t release videos without watching them a few times and re-cutting. Art is never finished, only abandoned
Apart from me blathering on, this is an interesting post. Thanks for sharing so openly.
Better for you to wait than disappointing with obviously flawed work.
That’s exactly what happened. The book was close (so very, very close) to being ready… but it’s not ready. Some lines are clunky, some words are repeated, some action isn’t as crisp as it should be.
So close… and yet that’s the kind of thing readers will stumble over. I’m unwilling to send in a flawed product with a cavalier “I’m sure the editor will take care of that.”
So, I’ll keep plugging away at it.