Hi all. I have recently read that most, if not all, publishers and agents will always lean to the more established writers other than take a chance on new ones. If this is the truth, what chance do us budding/aspiring writers have? It's the same with script writing. The media tend to also prefare who or what they know. Is there anyone out there who would give a 'newbie' writer a chance? If there is it would be good to know who and where.
Well I am a debut author who has been published. My publisher is JGSCR publishing, who you may not know of, but is just me and my boyfriend's initials. I did try the agent /publisher route but after a number of "Very good but not our type of book" comments I gave up and self-published.
Self-publishing is ok I think. I will receive all £8.99 of every book I sell through York Publishing Services. I know I have to do the marketing but I have been busy doing that for the last six months anyway.
Why would you want to go through an established publisher? and be lucky to get £1 a book,(probably much less) or have your book held up until they have completely re-edited it to the point of it no longer being your book in the end. I got told that if I had managed to interest an agent it may have been a year or more before the book saw the light of day.
My book is most likely to be the only book I will write, and after working on it for 7 years didn't want to wait any longer.
If you want to buy my book you'll find it on the York Publishing distribution site http://www.ypdbooks.com/
When you research publishers for submitting your work to, you'll find that many only accept work from agented authors, but there are some that make a point of saying that they welcome submissions by new authors. The chances of being accepted by the 'big boys' are so slim as to be virtually non existent, but smaller and independent publishers will be willing to at least consider a new author's MS if they are currently open to submissions.The competition is huge, the wait to hear back from publishers is usually very long & many just say 'if you don't hear from us within 6 months your submission has been unsuccessful.' It's a grim and time consuming business, researching each and every publisher to see if they are open to submissions, whether they accept your type of MS, fulfilling their sometimes extensive submission criteria... Self-publishing is better respected now than it used to be, provided the author has produced a well written body of work and had it thoroughly proofread & edited before release.
Hi Adrian. How right you are we do live in the dream. But sometimes I think it can make you ask yourself 'what's the point'? It would be nice to see a debut author from this site actually say 'I'm being published.' Ah well, dream on.