Saturday, August 05, 2017
Interesting forum on self-publishing at 2017 Outwrite LGBT Book Festival in Washington DC
Today I visited the 2017 Outwrite LGBT Book Festival in the
DC Center office space and surrounding atrium at 14th and U Streets
in Washington DC.
This year I did not have my own table; I’ll get into this elsewhere.
The most interesting part of the visit was a presentation in
DC Center’s largest room (on 14th Street ground level) from LGBT
book publishers and literary agents.
There was a discussion of what an author goes through if
he/she wants to control the process. It’s
usually necessary to hire a copyeditor and a typesetter (who is often the
same). It’s necessary to find a book
manufacturer, and prices can vary a lot (many companies exist in the Shenandoah
Valley and down in the North Carolina Piedmont). It seems that Milo Yianopoulos has controlled
the production of his book “Dangerous” after Simon and Schuster dropped him
after a controversy.
There was discussion of “guerrilla marketing”, and of the
tendency recently for trade publishers not to offer advances, which typically
have to be recovered from book sales.
There was mention of the use of pseudonyms and pen names,
and that in a real world some authors really need to keep their identities
secret, usually for reasons other than just being LGBT, like workplace conflicts or possible
security concerns for themselves or others around them. This is rather alarming.
There was discussion of “sea turtle authors”, often
introverts, who do not like to be pressed to sell aggressively, and are
perfectly content to let their “eggs” lie dormant.
I asked about print-on-demand publishers, like Author
Solutions. The group did not think well
of this business model, and referred to it as a “shadow industry” They felt money should go to authors
directly,, but that only works if the author owns the publishing entity. I did refer to the fact that POD companies
have been pressing authors harder to buy copies of books and build their own
stores and credit card operations, rather than depend on Amazon and Barnes and
Noble.
I did mention the SESPA bill from the Senate and the implicit threat to web speech, including eventually author websites.
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