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megwritesGood on the SFWA for coming out with this statement denouncing Harlequin's self publishing imprint. And while we're at it, a pat on the back to the RWA for also not tolerating these shenanigans, either.
My hats off to both organizations and those that made the decisions. Especially the RWA. I can only imagine that it was not an easily reached decision on their part, but they acted correctly. Proving that the romance genre does, in fact, possess some of the most awesome people on God's green earth.
Frankly, I'm appalled that Harlequin would do this. It's so clearly a grab for money meant to prey on naive and desperate writers. It's little more than a confidence scheme. The name change tells me that Harlequin knows this and there is some sense of corporate guilt in knowing that they're basically trying to line their pockets on the desperation of the unpublished.
I'm reminded of the guiding principle of the con from Hu$tle, "Find someone who wants something for nothing and give them nothing for something."
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arcaedia also known as Jennifer Jackson, has a pretty good write up on it as well, and I echo her sentiments entirely.
There is a time and a place for self publishing, and it's for people who want to stay strictly amateur and have no interest in profits or distribution or recognition. Want to put out a cook book for your church bake sale? Self publish! Want to distribute some family stories and memories amongst relatives and loved ones? Self publish! Want to give a book of your short stories to a few friends who've asked to see them time and again? Self publish!
Yes, some have gotten extraordinarily lucky, but so have some people who buy lotto tickets. All the other millions who buy tickets just blow their money and have nothing to show for it.
When you want significant money and distribution to enter the equation, you need to work with other people on professional terms that ensure that you get compensated for your work.
Unfortunately, the self-publishing con doesn't want you to know this. They want you to think that you're cleverly by-passing those stodgy, elitist publishers and agents and editors who sit around cackling like the witches of endor while breaking the dreams of innocent, unpublished writers who are delicate, special little snowflakes that just need someone to recognize their snowflakeyness.
Those editors and agents and publishers are not some big scheme to break your heart that someone put there just to be mean. It's a system and an industry that functions the way it does because that's, more or less, what works best.
Yes, there are kinks in the system - but the fact that enough people make money (including writers) for it to be an industry should tell you that something.
Even if the industry went paperless and electronic tomorrow, agents, editors, and publishing companies would still exist in some form. The business of getting a lot of people to read this Really Great Book Over here still requires the same steps. Someone has to write the book, someone has to check that the book is actually good, someone has to distribute the book to places (virtual or real) where readers can acquire the book, and someone has to tell lots of people about the book so they will go to that place and buy it.
Which means that companies will still need to exist who profit from marketing and distributing books by having a wider network than a single author could muster on their own, and go-between agents will still exist to mediate between writers and those companies.
And that means that anyone who tells you that you, too, can be a famous author in a few easy steps just by paying a small free is still going to be giant crook. Even a big company like Harlequin.
My hats off to both organizations and those that made the decisions. Especially the RWA. I can only imagine that it was not an easily reached decision on their part, but they acted correctly. Proving that the romance genre does, in fact, possess some of the most awesome people on God's green earth.
Frankly, I'm appalled that Harlequin would do this. It's so clearly a grab for money meant to prey on naive and desperate writers. It's little more than a confidence scheme. The name change tells me that Harlequin knows this and there is some sense of corporate guilt in knowing that they're basically trying to line their pockets on the desperation of the unpublished.
I'm reminded of the guiding principle of the con from Hu$tle, "Find someone who wants something for nothing and give them nothing for something."
arcaedia also known as Jennifer Jackson, has a pretty good write up on it as well, and I echo her sentiments entirely. There is a time and a place for self publishing, and it's for people who want to stay strictly amateur and have no interest in profits or distribution or recognition. Want to put out a cook book for your church bake sale? Self publish! Want to distribute some family stories and memories amongst relatives and loved ones? Self publish! Want to give a book of your short stories to a few friends who've asked to see them time and again? Self publish!
Yes, some have gotten extraordinarily lucky, but so have some people who buy lotto tickets. All the other millions who buy tickets just blow their money and have nothing to show for it.
When you want significant money and distribution to enter the equation, you need to work with other people on professional terms that ensure that you get compensated for your work.
Unfortunately, the self-publishing con doesn't want you to know this. They want you to think that you're cleverly by-passing those stodgy, elitist publishers and agents and editors who sit around cackling like the witches of endor while breaking the dreams of innocent, unpublished writers who are delicate, special little snowflakes that just need someone to recognize their snowflakeyness.
Those editors and agents and publishers are not some big scheme to break your heart that someone put there just to be mean. It's a system and an industry that functions the way it does because that's, more or less, what works best.
Yes, there are kinks in the system - but the fact that enough people make money (including writers) for it to be an industry should tell you that something.
Even if the industry went paperless and electronic tomorrow, agents, editors, and publishing companies would still exist in some form. The business of getting a lot of people to read this Really Great Book Over here still requires the same steps. Someone has to write the book, someone has to check that the book is actually good, someone has to distribute the book to places (virtual or real) where readers can acquire the book, and someone has to tell lots of people about the book so they will go to that place and buy it.
Which means that companies will still need to exist who profit from marketing and distributing books by having a wider network than a single author could muster on their own, and go-between agents will still exist to mediate between writers and those companies.
And that means that anyone who tells you that you, too, can be a famous author in a few easy steps just by paying a small free is still going to be giant crook. Even a big company like Harlequin.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-21 05:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-21 06:46 pm (UTC)Where I have a problem, like you, is when a reputable publisher like Harlequin creates a vanity press option that simply preys on the impatient or the naive. The party with the biggest gain would be Harlequin--not the self published author. That's just wrong wrong wrong.
ETA: And it makes me wonder if they will be looking at their slush pile and passing on things that they might have accepted and taken a financial risk on in the past and re-routing these individuals to their vanity press. I see many of those hopeful authors being too afraid to say no thanks, I'll keep shopping this around and succumbing to the pressure to cough up a "nominal fee" for publication.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-21 07:32 pm (UTC)Well, vanity publishing is just a sub-set of SELF publishing. There are lots of companies out there who let you use their press name, so it's not something you set up yourself - but who will basically print anything you send to them.
I've had friends who self-pubbed on a small scale and were happy, but they had small scale goals. One put out a collection of her erotica which wouldn't have fit with anyone category because some stories were hetero, some gay, some were kink, some were vanilla. I had another who published her first NaNoWriMo novel which was a fanfic to profic conversion with a self-publishing company that lets you keep copies online for download - and she was happy that she could pimp it out to a few limited people on boards in that fandom and what not so they could pay and download it because it was related to their interests.
And in those cases, they had no reason to try to hassle with agents, presses, etc. But they also had no expectations of profits or big distribution, either.
But Harlequin isn't targeting those folks, they're targeting people like me who want professional publication and who, unlike me, may not realize that a self-pub and/or vanity press is highly unlikely to be professional quality or net much success for the creator.
I see many of those hopeful authors being too afraid to say no thanks, I'll keep shopping this around and succumbing to the pressure to cough up a "nominal fee" for publication.
I agree, and I think there was some discussion that Harlequin did have plans to do that (I can't find the links, sorry, so I can't confirm 100%) - but I also think that Harlequin is also unfairly trading on a name that's been trusted as a reputable, legitimate, big name publisher for decades to lure people in. Even if they change the imprint name, knowing it's attached to Harlequin seems to be an implicit promise of it being better than something, like, PublishAmerica. And it's not.
I don't think it's just the naive/impatient who stand to get taken advantage of. Because even first timers who've done their homework might get suckered in. They tell you to beware of predatory agents and vanity publishing - but when it comes from a household name company like Harlequin, a lot of otherwise smart people might let their guard down.