Thursday 17 February 2011

Submission 17th February 2011.

It never ceases to amaze me, the way some inexperienced authors think the world works according to their own skewed vision of it.

Case in point. We had a submission query in yesterday, note I said query, and not an actual submission itself.

The entire e-mail was basically three sentences (albeit one of them was quite long and included a web address).

Sentence 1. I’ve written a science fiction book, and released it on ... its fully edited and I have a cover, and you can find it on such and such a site.

Sentence 2. I’ve picked your company to publish it.

Sentence 3. I want a non-exclusive contract and royalties of x.

There was then quite a curt sign off.

That was it, the whole shebang.

I have no idea whether the guy was 8, 18 or 80, although I suspect the middle figure is nearer the mark. My gut reaction, and my partner’s gut reaction was to tell him to “go forth and whistle”, but luckily I refrained from doing that, and since it was the early hours of the morning over in New Zealand, I had the opportunity to react before she did.

Out of sheer curiosity I clicked on the link for the book, only to be dumped onto the site’s home page rather than the book page it purported to link too. It took a couple of minutes digging to find out why this self-publishing site didn’t want to show me the book. Apparently the author had flagged it as age restricted due to the level of violence in it, and the only way I could look at the book was to register and join the site – not something I was prepared to do.

By now, I’d calmed down a little so my reply was polite, informing him of my inability to see his book, and if he was truly interested then he should submit it. Secondly, I pointed out, politely, we would under no circumstances sign a non-exclusive contract for e-book rights. In fact I don’t know a single publisher who would, except for specific geographic rights that is – certainly not have two versions of the same book, with the same cover competing against each other. There is a world of difference between publishing rights, and copyright.

Finally I pointed out his exorbitant and pre-emptory demand for such a high royalty right was totally out of the question.

That e-mail elicited a nice exit e-mail, thanking me for answering so promptly and telling me “we weren’t for him.”

I bit my tongue... hard! It’s a good job I don’t swear very often. I felt like it several times.

3 comments:

  1. Ignorance is bliss. Yes, I'd say closer to eighteen than eighty.

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  2. Ah, the life of a publisher to we twits. You did far better than what I would have thought to say. I'd say you have great internal dialogue to write into a story. Thanks for the laugh today.

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  3. Hey, at least he said thank you, lol. Maybe you should have included a link to "Publishing for Dummies". It's chock full of information on what to do/not do and what to expect. And the snipe would have been justified.

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