You know, Renee, for someone who doesn't have time to answer questions here, you've got plenty of time to write these long screeds.
This has nothing to do with me not having a thick skin. It has to do with the fact that you are taking companies and individuals and putting them on trial here with the attitude that they are guilty until proven innocent.
We don't start with the assumption that every publisher will be good for a writer's career.
Especially when it's clear, from that publisher's website and from that publisher's attitude, that they have no experience, no qualified staff and no ability to accept critical feedback.
I'm sorry, but I don't care how long your community has been here. You have not earned enough credibility with me to make me feel I have to justify myself to you.
Likewise, your press has earned no credibility with us.
I'm sorry, but like I said. I don't know you. I have no reason to trust you or your intentions here. From my perspective, you have made yourselves an authority on this subject and are expecting that writers should trust your word based on your self-proclaimed authority.
That is nonsense.
No one here posts "this press is not recommended, because we say so".
We post, "This press is not recommended, because of the following reasons". We don't expect writers to blindly trust us, either - we encourage them to do the research.
And I'm curious - on what basis do you expect writers should trust
you when you ask for manuscripts?
The truth is, it's obvious some people here have been hurt by publishing companies that have gone under, or whose intentions were not honorable. This tells me that their opinion is biased, and they are going to shoot down anything new.
I've never been hurt by a publishing company that has gone under. Does that therefore convince you that my opinion is unbiased?
As for shooting down anything new, that is also nonsense. People here are fine with new agents and new publishers, as long as it's clear those agents and publishers either have experience (e.g. having worked for an established agent/publisher) or have a solid, workable business plan.
As opposed to having good intentions, a thin skin and not much else.
Every new venture comes with risk.
Different amounts of risk, though.
Would you agree with the saying, "All surgery is risky, therefore you should allow a first-year medical student to operate on you"? If you don't agree, why should we be told that every new venture comes with risk, and therefore we shouldn't critically evaluate an inexperienced startup press?
Tell me something, though. If every writer waited two years for a new publishing company to be “established” how would it get established with nothing to publish?
The time to get experience and credibility is before you open your doors, not after you've started asking writers for submissions.
Here's a hypothetical example to show you what I mean. If, tomorrow, Teresa Nielsen Hayden opened a new publishing company, I'd be the first to submit a manuscript. Even though that company is new. Why? Because Teresa Nielsen Hayden is an editor with decades of experience in the industry. She's not a writer who woke up one morning and thought, "You know, it would be really cool to be a publisher!"
Since you have no such experience to show, we caution writers to wait and see if your company pans out. Go
here to see how many presses and agents are no longer in business.
You are taking that decision from people with what you have set up here.
Wait, I have to get this straight.
Are you saying that we are taking away people's free will to choose a publisher by our commenting on your press?
Does it work the other way around, too? When I was skimming your Facebook page full of uncritical praise and compliments, did that take away my ability to make an informed decision?
Maybe instead of putting companies and individuals on trial here, you should instead teach writers the right questions to ask when approaching a publishing company or agent.
That tells me you haven't looked around this site (despite your insistence that writers do research).
Teach them how they can do the research for themselves so they can make their own decisions and yes, their own mistakes (since making mistakes is how we learn).
Making mistakes is fine. What we don't encourage here is amateur publishers making those mistakes off the backs of writers - in other words, using those writers' manuscripts as guinea pigs while the publishers get the experience they lack.
How fair is it to wrongly label a publishing company or literary agent as untrustworthy, based on your methods of evaluation here, and take away a potential opportunity that a writer could have had?
What makes you so sure such labels are wrong?
As I said, check out the number of presses which have gone out of business. If something walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it may be some exotic species of guinea fowl. Or it may be a duck.
If a company or individual is known in the industry to be untrustworthy because of bad experiences several people have had with them, then by all means make people aware of it.
You don't have to wait for people to have bad experiences.
Or to put it another way: if fifty people fall off the top of Mount Everest and die, I don't need to wait for someone to fall off the top of Mount K2 and die to conclude that yes, falling off the top of a very tall mountain is lethal. Even if that mountain is a different one.
Likewise, if we have seen fifty presses fail because they were started by writers who have no experience and who get hostile when questioned, we don't need to wait for other writers to report bad dealings with the fifty-first.
Also, no one is saying your company is untrustworthy, though I don't see much transparency either at this point. A lot of posters have said you have good intentions, and I still think you do, but that's nowhere near enough. A publisher can be very bad for writers without being an outright scam.
I don't believe your methods of evaluation here are professional nor ethical.
I don't think you have enough experience of publishing to correctly judge whether something is professional or ethical.
I would like to ask that Queen of Swords (and anyone else who has done or is considering doing it) stop taking quotes from my website, blog and Facebook pages to post here (especially when they are quoting others without their permission), using them out of context to further her agenda.
It's a public page. If you don't want someone to quote what is posted on a public page, make that page private.
The last quote she used about some start up publishers being able to do it right was only part of a conversation that had to do with the fact that the other party has been running into many publishing companies that charge the authors to publish with them.
So basically, this author's only experience so far has been with vanity presses that charge upfront fees, not with actual publishers.
She was wondering if I was doing the same thing, and when I made it clear I wasn't, she made that comment. So the quote was taken out of context for the purpose of discrediting me, and I don't appreciate it.
You're doing a good enough job of discrediting yourself and your press. No help needed there.
And my purpose in quoting that part of the conversation was to show that someone who is now an employee of your company seems to consider you are "bringing a little good back to the publishing world" by
not charging an upfront fee.
That is something taken for granted when writers are dealing with actual, reputable publishers. Why not simply tell the writer so - tell her that no reputable publisher charges a fee? Why instead imply that you are doing something different, something which makes you stand out from the "publishing world"?
This is exactly what I'm referring to about being “attacked”.
Accurately quoting something from your public Facebook page and commenting on it makes you feel "attacked"?
I really hope none of your books get negative reviews.
The “professional” way is to approach the person in private to ask questions
So now I'm curious. Do you think there is ever a time when questions can be asked in public, or should writers always email publishers privately?
And if that is the only way writers should get information, how do they know that the publishers are telling them the truth? I mean, if I privately email PublishAmerica (one of the worst vanity presses out there), I'm sure they will respond by saying they are America's number one publisher. They already do, actually, on their web site. What should I do then, if it's "unprofessional", according to you, to ask questions in public on forums?
Anyway, publications like Consumer Reports must be very unprofessional because they make people's opinions and evaluations public, rather than encouraging people to privately contact manufacturers if they have questions. Oh well, you live and learn.
and not to lay them over the coals publicly and put them on the spot. I don't see where this has ever been done to other companies in a legitimate fashion. Even writers who review companies and products for blogs don't publicly question the company or its products and then write about them. They do the research and ask the questions in private, and then they publish their findings.
This, more than anything else, tells me that either you're not experienced in the industry or you're flailing around in an attempt to defend your press.
Writers don't publicly question the company or its products? Oh my. Have you ever seen a book review blog like Dear Author?
Do you want to know how this situation could have been handled more professionally?
Oh no, I already know.
You could have answered the questions in a straightforward manner instead of writing these long spiels. I still wouldn't have been impressed by your lack of experience, but at least you wouldn't have come across as so defensive.
“Renee, it's great you have started your own publishing company, but there have been others who have done so in the past, and it has caused problems for many writers. I have some concerns I'd like to address and questions I'd like to ask. I may even have some advice that can help you. Would you mind if I contacted you privately so we could discuss this?”
So you would have preferred to get dozens of private emails, and you would have preferred to reply to each one individually? I thought you didn't have much spare time.
I will fight to prove my company's worth, if that's what it takes, but I won't do it according to your rules.
The only way you should do it is by making a success of whatever manuscript an author has submitted to you in his or her own inexperience and hope.
Come back and let us know if that happens.
Diploma in editing, here, and a couple of years experience in the industy, with MANY years reading about and investigating the industry before that. 