It never ceases to amaze me, the way some inexperienced authors think the world works according to their own skewed vision of it.
Case in point. We had a submission query in yesterday, note I said query, and not an actual submission itself.
The entire e-mail was basically three sentences (albeit one of them was quite long and included a web address).
Sentence 1. I’ve written a science fiction book, and released it on ... its fully edited and I have a cover, and you can find it on such and such a site.
Sentence 2. I’ve picked your company to publish it.
Sentence 3. I want a non-exclusive contract and royalties of x.
There was then quite a curt sign off.
That was it, the whole shebang.
I have no idea whether the guy was 8, 18 or 80, although I suspect the middle figure is nearer the mark. My gut reaction, and my partner’s gut reaction was to tell him to “go forth and whistle”, but luckily I refrained from doing that, and since it was the early hours of the morning over in New Zealand, I had the opportunity to react before she did.
Out of sheer curiosity I clicked on the link for the book, only to be dumped onto the site’s home page rather than the book page it purported to link too. It took a couple of minutes digging to find out why this self-publishing site didn’t want to show me the book. Apparently the author had flagged it as age restricted due to the level of violence in it, and the only way I could look at the book was to register and join the site – not something I was prepared to do.
By now, I’d calmed down a little so my reply was polite, informing him of my inability to see his book, and if he was truly interested then he should submit it. Secondly, I pointed out, politely, we would under no circumstances sign a non-exclusive contract for e-book rights. In fact I don’t know a single publisher who would, except for specific geographic rights that is – certainly not have two versions of the same book, with the same cover competing against each other. There is a world of difference between publishing rights, and copyright.
Finally I pointed out his exorbitant and pre-emptory demand for such a high royalty right was totally out of the question.
That e-mail elicited a nice exit e-mail, thanking me for answering so promptly and telling me “we weren’t for him.”
I bit my tongue... hard! It’s a good job I don’t swear very often. I felt like it several times.
Ignorance is bliss. Yes, I'd say closer to eighteen than eighty.
ReplyDeleteAh, the life of a publisher to we twits. You did far better than what I would have thought to say. I'd say you have great internal dialogue to write into a story. Thanks for the laugh today.
ReplyDeleteHey, at least he said thank you, lol. Maybe you should have included a link to "Publishing for Dummies". It's chock full of information on what to do/not do and what to expect. And the snipe would have been justified.
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