Subsidy Publishing - 4th portion of the 4 Types of Publishing series by Jo A. Wilkins

A subsidy publisher is a publisher that acts like a commercial publisher. They do produce books and go through most of the steps of a commercial publisher. However, even though they put manuscripts under contract, they do not print them unless they get their authors to pay for the cost of publication. They usually hide this criteria under the guise of having the author purchase a certain number of books before production. This usually amounts to 1000 to 2500 books.

With the exception of certain types of publishers such as university or scholarly presses, any publisher that requests a fee from the author is a subsidy publisher. These types of publishers are, in most respects exactly like the commercial publisher. In most cases, the authors are the only ones who know they are paying to have their books produced. As with commercial publishers, the books are owned by the publisher and remain in the publisher's possession and authors receive royalties on the books sold.

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Vanity Press - 3rd portion of the 4 Types of Publishing by Jo A. Wilkins

When the amount of submissions to commercial publishers became so large that 99% of those submissions were not being read unless you knew someone in the industry to send your work to, vanity presses were born. These vanity presses are known under various names, which I will not list here for obvious reasons. They did not start out as publishers, but as entrepreneurs who saw a need in the industry and tried to fill it. They, in most cases, do not edit the content of construction of your work.

A vanity press is exactly what this division of publishing implies; its total existence is predicated on stroking the author’s ego. They do not care if the content will sell or if the cost of their services are bloated to the author who pursues their offered avenue of either publishing or marketing. One vanity press offered getting your book reviewed by the New York Times for a mere $2500. If you didn’t bite on that, a few weeks later they offered a sale on the service for $1900. I know, because it happened to me. They kept it up until I told the representative that I knew I could send my book to the Times for nothing and I also knew that they did not waste their time reviewing books without sales or ones from a vanity press.

Another portion of their marketing scam is to offer a publicity kit and schedule book signings for you. When I took them up on the offer, I received a list of the bookstores in my city (that I could have compiled from my phone book), 100 invitations, and two posters to put up at the signing. They also let me know that they no longer set up book signings for the author. For all this, it only cost me $750.

·         No selection criteria

o   If you send a vanity press the telephone book on a disc, they will print it into a book for you and list it on their site for sale. They do not care about the content or construction of the book you send them.

o   I have a friend that sent her submission in to them like we are told we are supposed to submit, in a double spaced document. They printed her 250 page book on 500 pages with all the double spaces so it cost her twice as much to purchase her book.

·       While a commercial publisher's intended market is the general public, a vanity publisher's intended market is the author.

o   A vanity press will list your finished book on their website with a thousand other books. If the reader looking for a book happens onto their site, the reader is lost unless they know your name or title to enter into the search. A vanity press is out to sell your book to only one person – YOU.

So, you can see that vanity presses are out to take the desperate author who wants to see their work in print to the proverbial cleaners.  Although self-publishing has its place in niche areas, this type of self-publishing is what it hampering the publishing industry. Their only aim is to make a profit off frustrated authors.

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Time Management—Writing Every Day By Denice Whitmore

Being a writer can be a tricky business, especially when starting out. After all, life doesn’t stop because we want to chase our dreams. Many of us start writing as a hobby. Everyone has hobbies—things we do occasionally because we enjoy doing them. But when we decide to take the leap and change our writing from hobby to something more fulfilling it can be daunting and scary. Becoming a serious writer takes planning and time management.

I consider myself a stay-at-home mom first and foremost. I have four very active boys ages 21, 14, 10 and 8. I am chauffeur, cook, financial manager, activity coordinator, chore overseer, homework tutor, laundress, seamstress, therapist, first-aid specialist and giver of hugs and kisses. I am also a book editor and writer, both of which I do from home. And recently I went back to school to finish my degree. Life gets pretty busy around here. Daily planning is a must.

To be a full-time writer, it is important that you set time aside every day to write. Some of my friends from school would get up at five in the morning to do their studying before their kids got up for the day. This minimized their distractions. It’s a good strategy to use for writing as well. I’m more of a night owl than a morning person. I like to write after my kids are in bed for the night. This is tricky in the summer since they never want to go to bed. I am also lucky that all my boys are in school. During the school year I usually have a good five hours each weekday to edit, write or work on school work. The strategy that works best for me is to have a focus for each day of the week. I edit two days a week, do school work two days a week, write two days a week and take Sundays off. The important thing here is to set time aside every day or every week to do nothing but write.

Another setback to writing is distraction. How many times have you sat down at your computer to write and your email dings or you get a Facebook notification? Next thing you know, an hour has gone by and you’re still staring at a blank page. Here are some suggestions to eliminate distractions.

First, NO INTERNET! It is too easy to get distracted on the internet. If you need to research something for your book make a list of things to look up or questions that need to be answered and work on them another time. This will help you stay on task writing which is the goal of the time you have set aside. If you have to, turn off the wi-fi. All your notifications will be there when you turn it back on.

Second, find a quiet place to write. Turn off the TV. If you like to sing along to the radio, don’t listen to music with lyrics. I like to listen to movie soundtracks and classical music while I write. Sometimes the music even affects the tone of my writing.

Third, turn off your cell phone or put the phones in the other room and let the machine pick them up or let them go to voice mail. I screen my calls because my children are at school and you never know when one of them will need something urgently. Think back to before we had cell phones. If we weren’t home they had to call back. In most cases you can talk to someone after your done writing with no harm done.

Lastly, let your family know that you are writing and you need them to leave you alone for the next hour or two. Impress upon them how important it is to you and how much you appreciate their support. My husband is very supportive of my writing. He reads my first drafts and my second and my third…He knows it makes me happy and does what he can to be supportive. Your family will, too.

In order to be a serious writer, you have to write. If you don’t make time to write on a regular basis you can’t improve your craft. The more you write, the better writer you will be. With a little time management, you can make things happen and become the writer you want to be.

Keep writing.

How Does it Feel to be a New Editor by Rachelle Abbott

I am excited for this new opportunity to work for Mystic Publishing and learn more about writing, editing, and publishing. I am not a huge fan of change, and I would be very content with a predictable, stable—boring even—life; however, I have become far too familiar with the adage, “The only thing constant is change.” I am sure I am not alone when I disclose that my life has not enfolded exactly as I planned. That is not a complaint, but merely a confession.

My bachelor’s degree is in secondary education with a major in English and journalism. Initially I planned to teach for a few years, save money (I know laughable on a teacher’s salary), and eventually go to law school. Let me make a long story short. I fell in love, married, taught for 5 years, and then stayed home to raise 7 magnificent human beings—at least that is my hope for them when they are fully grown.

Reading has always been an important part of my life. I have been a part of many book clubs and a few writing clubs as well as secretly aspiring to be an author myself! I am not yet ready to debut a best-selling novel, but hopefully that will be a part of my future.

The circumstances of how I ended up in editing can only be described as an evolving process accelerated by a series of events that put me in contact with the right people at the right time. That is a story for another post. I don’t believe in coincidences, but I do believe in a Higher Power that is involved in my life.I am fortunate to work with and learn from some amazing people here at Mystic Publishing.

The most challenging part of this new adventure is teaching a middle age dog new tricks. I have never liked feeling incompetent or inferior. While deep down I still think I am an intelligent person, I am now doing something I have never done before (which involves new specialized terminology as well as new rules to writing— the writing rules teachers teach students, don’t always translate the same for writing novels), but I am doing it while living with 4 teenagers in my house. Anyone who has teenagers doesn’t need further explanation, but just in case, let me explain: it is a daily assault on your intellect. Teenagers know how to parent better than you; they know all the answers to every question, and they are not afraid to let you know it!

My best resource in this business is my fellow editors. I can question and discuss things with them. The internet is extremely helpful as well. I have decided my college research papers would have been so much easier in today’s world with awesome search engines unlike my research experiences of the 1990’s. A lifetime of reading definitely hasn’t hurt either.

The most rewarding part of being an editor is working with authors. I am intrigued that their words and imagination can breathe life into fictional characters and stories. The revising/editing process can be long, frustrating and even exacerbating at times, but in the end, it is satisfying to see the final product of hard work turn into a published book!