Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[dejavroom]

Waiting for the reply of a publishing house re: a book I'm working on (I sent them the 40% already done). Since there's no way they're gonna publish an unknown author in Brazil[1], the best thing I could come up with to try and game the system was to start writing a pastiche along the lines of those "Jane Austen With Zombies" books, only better (because my book doesn't have fuck*ng zombies). It's supposed to be a pastiche of H. P. Lovecraft and Machado de Assis, who is usually acknowledged as the finest writer this country ever produced (I concur, he's big league; Harold Bloom has some nice things to say about him, and if you're interested in checking the dude out, he's got stuff translated to English). So it wouldn't be my name selling the book, it would be Lovecraft's and Machado's. But I'm not expecting a reply anytime soon, so that's more like a non-event, really.

[1]What with Brazil not having sufficient interest in literature to justify a gamble in the market, even if modest. Sucker comes to a publishing house with a manuscript under his arm, he says "Please I have something special if you only give it a chance", but what is heard: "Hey I want you to throw 20k in the toilet for me, then flush it. C'mon, I'm a good guy...". It's not like everybody is avidly waiting for the next big literary event down here. People are fine with soap operas as the forum for the public conscience - that, and reality shows. So a poor market begets poor commercial practices, to the point where the major occupation for an editor in a market-oriented publishing house consists in reading imitations of successful books (such as 50 Shades of Blaglrarbalg) to try and get some of that sweet action - so it's not even a search for The Next Big Thing, it's a search for The Same Big Thing, With Another Name.

[side_show]

Hey, you're only 40% done.  You have plenty of time to work in zombies.

[wombat]

Brazil sounds the same as the US as far as the publishing market, really. Except that here you can't approach a publisher with a novel until it's 100% done, and you certainly wouldn't be expecting 20k for a first novel if you did get an offer, so if that stuff is realistic you should count your blessings.

[dejavroom]

Brazil sounds the same as the US as far as the publishing market, really. Except that here you can't approach a publisher with a novel until it's 100% done, and you certainly wouldn't be expecting 20k for a first novel if you did get an offer, so if that stuff is realistic you should count your blessings.

Well, kinda... you can't deny that wherever there's more money circulating, people will be more willing to take risks, and more likely than not there will be a system in place. And your market is so super rich & structured... what I mean is, you really have a WAY of how things are supposed to work, a circuit, and people can use that to become better professionals.. Down here you can count yourself lucky if you even get a rejection letter, most of the times you just never hear from people again (and when you do get a rejection letter it's just a template with your name punched in, they don't bother adressing you particularly in any way that makes you feel as if there is a human on the other side). In the 30's, Lovecraft could send a story to a magazine in NY and if they liked it, bam!, sweet check coming in the mail. We don't have something like that even today here in Brazil. Completely different relationship with literature and the printed word down here (kinda like the way barbaric people would treat runes & sigils, really). The US just smack me as a land of people who more than anything want to do good business, and if they get passionate about your idea, boy, you're set. In Brazil, since nobody works with the assumption that money will be made, it's more like... "who do you know", "who vouches for you', "well yeah ok but now you owe me big" etc etc... Petty stuff from a petty place, you know?

(Regarding the 20k thing, I was thinking more about all costs involved in printing & marketing, not like payment for the writer nor anything like that. I don't even know how the calculations for that are supposed to work. Also these are the people who will put out my translation next year, so I'm in more [shall we say] intimate terms with them, and that's the only reason I went to them w/out the thing being 100% done.)

[wombat]

Down here you can count yourself lucky if you even get a rejection letter, most of the times you just never hear from people again (and when you do get a rejection letter it's just a template with your name punched in, they don't bother adressing you particularly in any way that makes you feel as if there is a human on the other side).

This is 100% true here as well. I feel like I should throw a party when someone bothers to send me a rejection letter.

Also it makes me LOL that you think US publishers have any concept of how to "do good business." My experience with a major publisher gave absolutely no indication that they have a clue how to make money right now, other than by publishing books by people who are already famous. Which only confirms what you will read in the media about the state of the business. Sure, there is some truth to the stereotype that Americans are good businesspeople, but the thing is, those people do NOT go into book publishing.

I also long for the days when a person could make a living sending stories to magazines but you know, the difference is not geographic, it's the times. There was no TV in the 1930s and average people read magazine stories for entertainment. We all have a different relationship with the printed word now.

I mean, disclaimer, I have no clue about anything about Brazil except you have good animals (where there are any left) and speak a language that's like Spanish with a bunch of the letters missing. But from what you say about the publishing business, the grass is not quite as much greener here as you think it is, is my guess.

[jaydub]

Don't look too hard a the later ultrasounds or it will indeed become obvious.

That made me think of the Mad About You baby ultrasound episode.  Dating myself.  Hmm.

Also, congratulations Melanie!  The baby is doubly blessed with parents who considered and decided he/she is wanted, and that an awesome lady like you will be his mom.  Sympathies on the early pregnancy awfulness.  Hopefully, like my wife, your triggers will go away once you deliver.  My wifes triggers went away.  Not my wife herself.  Except for puke.  But then maybe thats not a weird trigger anyway.

[pmcd9]

Don't look too hard a the later ultrasounds or it will indeed become obvious.

Unless the child turns out to be Roast Beef.

[dejavroom]

This is 100% true here as well. I feel like I should throw a party when someone bothers to send me a rejection letter.

Also it makes me LOL that you think US publishers have any concept of how to "do good business." My experience with a major publisher gave absolutely no indication that they have a clue how to make money right now, other than by publishing books by people who are already famous. Which only confirms what you will read in the media about the state of the business. Sure, there is some truth to the stereotype that Americans are good businesspeople, but the thing is, those people do NOT go into book publishing.

Really? Well, that's good to know, even if it's a bit disheartening. Guess I have some updating to do on my stereotyping...

[wombat]

Really. The publishing industry here is running round like chickens with their heads off, trying to figure out how to deal with the 21st century.  I'll just give you one anecdote which isn't about economics, but which serves as a perfect metaphor: When my book was being copyedited, we had a huge amount of back and forth argument about how to format references to websites in the bibliography. So basically, in 2011, copyeditors at Penguin had not yet figured out how to put a website in a bibliography.

And publishers and agents are so apparently so overwhelmed with more submissions than they could possibly publish that "we will only reply to your query if we are interested" has become the standard way of doing business. Sometimes I wonder if there are more people who want to write books than who want to read them.

[jaydub]

All of the big book seller chains that crushed the local Mom & Pop book stores in the '90's are collapsing here in CA.  I can only speculate that it is due to Amazon eating their lunch.  The problem is that I don't think Amazon does as good a job selling books as brick & mortar stores did.  My wife and I easily dropped $150 every couple months when we took a detour through Barnes & Noble or Borders on our way back from Target.  Its easy to take a flier on a new author, especially if you chatted with the store staff and they recommended something.  I know Amazon has a similar feature, but at this point I don't put the same weight on a computer algorithm's output as a breathing human's with some simpatico we've established through chatting.  What have I replaced my book reading time with?  I suspect you're looking at it.  There's a whole lot less of my money going into the publishing industry, and I suspect that is true more broadly.

[jay-ell]

I'm seeing this in the board game industry as well. A lot of people come in, play games from our library to try them out, then go buy them on Amazon.com. Which is a real joke, because we're cheaper than Amazon on 90% of what we sell because we offer 20% off list price on everything, all the time. We run a thin margin but it's the only way to stay competitive in this economy.

[linnea]

Holy shit, Mel, this is fantastic news!!!

I know how sensitive this is, so I will keep it on ULTRA-SECRET quiet status until we get to see the awesome creepy ultrasound picture.

Congratulations!

[CortJstr]

I will use my first post back from my hiatus to say congrats to Mel.

And JL, I wish my FLGS charged anything other than MSRP. Or was friendly. I mostly order from Thought Hammer or Amazon these days. TH is cheaper but only does free shipping on orders over $100 so Amazon comes out cheaper if I only need 1 or 2 things.

[side_show]

One neat thing about being pregnant is that the medical system really switches to be patient centred.  I can get my obstetrician and ednocrinologist on the phone whenever I need input, usually either right away or with a call back within the hour.