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Rie Sheridan

The Pleasures and Pitfalls of E-Publishing

There is a tidal-wave coming. Even though some might say it is already here, the wave is only brushing the shore. E-publishing is revolutionizing the writing industry. It has already changed the way that writers and editors interact by making it possible to query, submit, edit, revise, and resubmit a piece to a publication halfway around the world within hours. For example, my editor-in-chief and I have never met, though we have worked side-by-side on publication of Verge Magazine since August 2000. We send dozens of messages a week back and forth perfecting edits. This type of instant access, whether by e-mail or one of the electronic messaging systems is a great tool for writers and editors.

But there are also downsides to the e-publishing world. Far too many e-publishers are amateurs with websites and dreams of becoming editors, who will accept almost anything for publication. Writers desperate for publication and lured by promises of payment will submit their work, only to be disappointed when they realize the unprofessional manner with which their work is handled. Working with one of these e-publishers can taint the writer’s professional credibility and reputation.

It behooves writers to research their prospective e-market as closely as they would a print publisher before submitting their manuscript to an e-publishing house. I submitted a fantasy to a certain house and was ecstatic to have the piece accepted. It would only cost me $300 to be a published author.

First of all, you shouldn’t have to pay anybody to publish your work unless you are consciously setting out to publish it yourself and are paying them for the set-up services.

There are several legitimate publishers that fall into this category. Look at the list on the Electronic Publishing corner of About to see a few of the choices in both the pay and non-pay publishing markets.

While I was trying to make up my mind whether or not I wanted to make that financial commitment, I read the sample chapters for all the works that the company posted for sale on their site. There was not one of them—including the one written by the editor-in-chief of the operation—that would not have benefitted from a spelling and grammar check. Some of them were almost unreadable.

You must be just as cautious in your research of potential e-publishing markets as you are in print publications. Don’t let the ease of access lull you into a false sense of security. Unless you are personally familiar with the staff or know people who have had experience with a company, don’t go in blind. Read what your potential market offers in its stable before you submit your work. Make sure that you want to be associated with the publishing house before you accept a contract.

As I say, you shouldn’t have to pay anybody to publish your work unless you are consciously setting out to publish it yourself and are paying them for the set-up services. In this case, you are venturing into another realm altogether, which is perfectly acceptable, if that is what you are setting out to do, but make the choice intelligently.

Two main types of publishing require author capital and both exist in the e-publishing marketplace as well as the traditional print world. These are the "vanity press" and subsidy publishing.

Basically, vanity press is a rather derogatory name for self-publishing that reflects the way many people look at self-published books. When authors self-publish their work, they are responsible for all expenses. They apply for copyright and ISBN numbers. They handle all marketing and publicity themselves. In other words, it is strictly their baby. The bad news is, this requires considerable up-front capital to produce a piece that will be saleable. The good news is, you get to keep all the profits you do make. The bad news is that many people have pre-conceived biases against buying a self-published book. The good news is many professional authors, as diverse as Henry David Thoreau and John Grisham, have self-published at some point in their careers.

Subsidy publishers, on the other hand, share the costs with the author. For a fee, they take care of getting your book online. However, many of these services do not include editorial proofing or content suggestions; they print what you send them. Unless, of course, you want to pay extra. They do not market your work, they just make it available to the electronic bookstores. Usually, they do pay royalty for sales, but in some cases they split it with the author.

For those wanting to do their own thing, plenty of resources exist. A search on Altavista for "e-publishing" turned up almost 36 thousand sites. Of course, not all of these hits relate directly to the publication of your own work—or publishing at all, for that matter—but several of them look interesting. For example, E-ditorial offers professional e-publishing software and tips. Free-ebooks offers an e-publishing guide. For a mere $49.95 (current price at least) you can upload a Word file to Ebookomatic, and be selling your book within minutes. And X-libris, a site endorsed by Piers Anthony in an online chat I attended, offers several levels of editorial services to a prospective self-publisher.

Look at what other people have to say about a publisher. Ask fellow writers who have submitted to e-publishers what their experiences have been. For example, a fellow writer here at WVU had accepted a contract with one publisher, which included specific promises. When they failed to deliver, she stopped her deal and went with another publisher whom she highly recommends. When asked about her experiences, she replied with the following:

"NBI [NovelBooks, Inc.] charges nothing for any of the work they do on your book. (In all truth neither did the other company, but I couldn't trust them past that.) I am not interested in subsidy publishing. I would only go with a reputable company, who charge nothing for their participation. They do the covers, the editing, some advertising (although if you want to sell bigger, you have to do some on your own), promoting of the site and your book, all electronic formatting costs and the printing of your book. All you have to do is make the corrections on your manuscript in a timely fashion, approve of the cover for your book and advertise however much you wish to do. "Penny Hussey, the President and CEO of NBI, was once a vice-president of my former company (RFI). I've known her for quite some time and respect and admire her greatly. When she left RFI, I knew something was wrong. From that time on, RFI took away all advertising and publicizing in any bookstores, stopped making CDs and diskettes (both a part of the contract). You could only buy downloads at their site and their site only. They promised POD but never delivered."

This is the kind of advice that is invaluable to writers looking for a home for their manuscripts. In fact, based on her recommendation, I queried NBI. As a direct result of that query, I now have two book contracts with NovelBooks. One of them is for the novel that I almost paid to have printed.

Keep in mind that e-publishers are not places to submit your work if it has been turned down several times by traditional houses and you simply don’t want to have to revise it before sending it out again. Also, if you think that your work is not "good enough" for print publication then it probably isn’t good enough for e-publishing either. Remember, if e-publishers accept work that isn’t fit to be printed, then the industry will become a minefield of vanity presses and work that isn’t worth reading; and being published electronically will become a liability rather than the asset a writer is looking for.

If you have a book that you think is ready to go, take the time to have someone with editing experience look it over. It is probably worth the expense (it has proved so in my personal experience) to consult a "book doctor" for an initial edit before submitting it to a publisher—electronic or otherwise.

To summarize: research before you submit anything, anywhere. Don’t be so desperate to publish that you compromise your standards or denigrate your work. Be sure that your work is the best it can be before submitting it anywhere. Take advantage of all the wonderful new resources that the electronic age is offering writers to query, submit, edit, and network with others in the field.