Self-publishing redux

[obarz]

Having tried this once before and having had ample time now to heal, careful this time to don Don Quixote's armor, I will try again. (For those intersted in seeing a forum discussion shot down to flames I commend you to an earlier discussion in this section similarly named.)

I'm Otto Barz. I'm associated with YBK Publishers in New York City producing and publishing books using the print-on-demand (POD) method.

I'm happy to answer any questions I can about print-on-demand publishing from anyone interested in how this can be helpful in the pursuit of their publishing effort. I'm also willing to talk about what I know about the traditional publishing business as it is juxtaposed to these newer methods. (But, please, no philosophical harangues as I am willing only to discuss that which I know something about.)

 

[Prolixic]

Yeah, read that one obarz. I don't know if they were thumping you or just the industry.

How bout these: If you can get published in journals or magazines is it a good idea? Does it look good to a publisher or do they care? What about publishing your work on websites? Any insights there?

You ought to take a look at the thread about fan-fic and chime in on that one. (Its in General Book Discussion: Fan Fic Homage or rip-off)

 

[Ell]

obarz wrote:

Having tried this once before and having had ample time now to heal, careful this time to don Don Quixote's armor, I will try again.

Otto, glad to see you back and sorry if you felt dumped on previously.

BTW, I thought you did a fine job holding up your end of the discussion.

Ell

 

[Dawn]

obarz, i read the previous post and didn't think you were being dumped on. Of course, you can't help the way you feel. I thought it was a healthy discussion, which is encouraged here. Please feel free to express your opinion.

I hope to read more from you!

 

[obarz]

Sorry Prolixic, let me sidetrack for a moment to discharge the electricity I seem to be attracting from Dawn.

>>didn't think you were being dumped on. . .a healthy discussion. . . is encouraged here<<

If you'd like to talk about that please invite me to join you in another thread and we can seek health together. In this thread I'd like to discuss publishing.

>>get published in journals or magazines is it a good idea?<<

Yes. Any notoriety will be helpful in enabling you to point out how others appreciate the work you do. If your work is nonfiction then it's very helpful in that excerpts are easy to pull together in publishable form--teasers; enough good stuff from your work to be useful to the reader, but not enough to detract from the main body of the text. Fiction is harder. In fact, so hard that some really famous authors have had to offer their whole book online to attract attention. Don't know how to overcome that problem.

>>What about publishing your work on websites? Any insights there?<<

Another don't-know-for-sure--I'm reasonably computer savvy and have done a lot of reading and thinking about e-publishing. YBK doesn't embrace it yet. Beside YBK, we operate a publishing services business. It buys copyediting from freelancers and lately we are being asked by our publisher-clients to save money for them by having the copyeditor do the keyboarding of changes while he or she is thinking through the editing as it is viewed on the wordprocessing screen. There is objection to doing this. It slows editors down because they don't like to read that way--paper and pen[cil] are much preferred. While some of them are willing to try, it seems almost none rise to engage this method. Perhaps, as screen-oriented youth come of age, there will be less objection--maybe even acceptance.

So, too, I think, is there not great willingness among recreational readers to spend a lot of time with the screen. It just ain't as portable as a printed book. To wit, e-books can be made to appear on the screens of somewhat-larger-than-regular cell phones--smaller still than pocket paperbacks--but I'm not tempted to try to read them. If I dare to prop that cellphone somewhere that I can read it without holding onto it, I know it's going to fall over.

Ell--Thanks for your support.

Otto

 

[Prolixic]

ZZZZZZZT! You brought up that last discussion, remember?

However...Ebooks seem to more convenient. You can carry the Library of Congress around in your cell phone these days, or at least access it. But, theres something special about the experience of actually holding a book in your hand, hearing and feeling the page turn--its a hard act to follow. (As lies and I once noted its much easier to subdue a burglar with a hard bound War and Peace than with, say, a tiny cell phone.)

On the other hand I can read a whole lot faster on screen and much prefer to edit copy on screen. Printing a copy, penciling in the changes, and then making the changes is a huge pain. Especially when you're just going to print out another copy to submit anyway.

So, obarz, is it just the data-entry/editing thats slowing the process down, or are readers just stuck in a rut--even a pleasurable rut like reading a real book? Or, is it an industry issue, meaning publishers are unwilling to believe they can hold a wide enough profit margin by selling electrons rather than paper? Or a combination of them all? Or is that a philosophical harangue?

And on that "propping the cell phone" issue, that whole vision deterioration thing stinks IMHBAO. All I can say is thank goodness for lasik.

 

[obarz]

No question about e-books being a concept that exudes the potential for convenience. My opinion is that it doesn't fulfill that potential. Certainly not for recreational reading; that which I think most people think of first as the vehicle for e-books. I've never used an e-book reader (except the downloadable ones for use on one's computer--which I did not like as I'm tied enough to my computer for other reasons than to want to sit there to do fun reading). I'm simply not drawn to the idea. And it would seem that few are.

I'm not surprised that you would not want to do pencil and paper correcting as a writer. The function I was describing, copyediting, requires close scrutiny of the text and regularly flipping back and forth between sections of a manuscript (to see how a similar circumstance was handled elsewhere). Also, the author needs to be able to see what changes were made by the copyeditor and while Microsoft Word does have a facility for tracking changes that does work, it's somewhat cumbersome to interpret and more so to have an annotated discussion--much easier to scribble in the margins.

As to the industry's acceptance of e-books, there is the issue of the unknown and the old axiom of "you can tell the pioneers by the arrows in their backs." I don't think that it's an issue of absence of profit margin because prices will be structured to yield a profit (or not) based on the simple supply and demand concepts of economics 101. I rather think there's not much supply right now because there's not much demand.

 

[Prolixic]

From Obarz:

The function I was describing, copyediting, requires close scrutiny of the text and regularly flipping back and forth between sections of a manuscript (to see how a similar circumstance was handled elsewhere).

Pardon my obvious ignorance but, why?

 

[obarz]

Copyeditors do a number of things at the same time as they go through a manuscript. They not only do the obvious like correct grammar and check spelling, but they mark head levels in nonfiction--Big head in bold most important, so label it #1. Nextmost in importance is #2 and so on. Often authors don't show the heads according to a hierarchy, they just throw in a head. The copyeditor checks for internal consistency of data presentation--was this abbreviated before? Is it being abbreviated the same way this time? They also mark the manuscript for factors that involve the typesetter needing to do stylistic things such as numbered lists (or not when some lists are numbered while others would be better in paragraph style), bulleted lists, alpha outline lists, etc. They determine how work quoted from another source will be stated in the book--as extract or, if brief, run into the sentence in which it is discussed. And so on.

Granted, the above has mostly to do with technical nonfiction works. The fiction writer thinks of copyediting as a spell and grammar check, but fiction often has more characteristics than just simple prose or dialog.