Tag: legacy publishing
On Cheating:
My point is that Michael Derrick Hudson could have found a more effective way to promote his poetry, or so it seems to me. His strategy would never have occurred to me: There has to be some honor, even among thieves. But it is a strategy, however misguided, and strategy is what is required to compete in this very small game. My small submission ruses were hardly innovative. The obstacles erected by publications could be disrupted more cleverly and quite without the racial clamminess for which he opted. I encourage all poets and short fictions writers to find them. Code-writing writers should game the electronic submission portals, and figure out a way to automatically shuffle a story to the top of the digital pile. Bribery seems an option (if you’re submitting to me), although since most literary publications pay nothing or next to it, I can’t imagine the point. And if, as Hudson implies, race wins out then win the race race, I guess. Yet I bet it doesn’t, even for him. His 49 rejections—40 white, 9 non—strikes me as far from conclusive evidence. Besides, what I’m counseling is cheating: You don’t have to be an asshole. The submission process is a rigged casino game, though, and all is fair in love and literary magazines.
[“BLA and GB Gabbler” (really just a pen name – singular) are the Editor and Narrator behind THE AUTOMATION, vol. 1 of the Circo del Herrero series. They are on facebook, twitter, tumblr, goodreads, and Vulcan’s shit list.]
Tweets of the Week: Don’t count your chickens before they hatch
GABBLER RECOMMENDS: PG on The Shatzkin Files’ “No, the Big Five are not a cartel and it really ignores reality to label them as one.”
Passive Guy on Shatzkin’s article:
“Everybody who believes that 80% of the authors publishing with Big Publishing are not expected to earn out their advances, please raise your hands.
And the price-fixing that the Price-fix Six engaged in with Amazon is the very definition of cartel behavior.”
Read the post on The Passive Voice.
[“BLA and GB Gabbler” (really just a pen name – singular) are the Editor and Narrator behind THE AUTOMATION, vol. 1 of the Circo del Herrero series. They are on facebook, twitter, tumblr, goodreads, and Vulcan’s shit list.]
On New York Publishing:
“There was another consistent trend I found when interviewing zombie novelists for my article: fervent distaste for the New York publishing industry. And maybe that’s the real reason why publishers and agents never bothered reaching out to them; it’s not that they don’t recognize the sales and money potential for these authors, it’s that they’ve spent the last decade sowing so much bad blood within the writer community that they know approaching them for a book deal is a lost cause. Midlist authors have been burned once, and now with Amazon and their own marketing abilities they can ensure they’ll never be burned again.”
Read the rest here.
[“BLA and GB Gabbler” (really just a pen name) are the Editor and Narrator behind THE AUTOMATION, vol. 1 of the Circo del Herrero series. They are on facebook, twitter, tumblr, and goodreads.]