Publishing Truths I Learned at OmegaCon

Recently, I traveled to OmegaCon, a new Science Fiction convention in Birmingham, Alabama, to promote my paranormal travel handbook, Ghost to Coast. Because I was there to sell the book, I was only able to attend a few panels at Omega Con, but I felt as though I got a college education in marketing from those panels and from talking to the extremely helpful owner of Marietta Publishing from right here in my hometown of Marietta, Georgia, other authors, and Jim Mintz of Baen Books as well as the senior editor of Tor Books, and Hugo-nominated editor, Lou Anders.

These are some things I learned:

1. If you want to publish with a major book company, it will be a minimum of 6 months before your manuscript is even read unless you are already an established author.

2. If you don't have an agent or you have a bad agent, it may be two years before your manuscript is read, if it ever is.

3. A bad agent can be worse than no agent.

4. If your manuscript is read and it's interesting, it will be kicked to another editor. To go through the whole process and get accepted may take up to two years for any new author.

5. After you finally get an answer, it will probably be another two years before you actually reach print.

So, you are probably looking at 4 years from the time you submit until you are printed.

Of course if they pick up your book, you will get an advance. If your book doesn't sell, you don't have to pay the advance back. But:

6. If your book does not make its money back for the advance after returns within 6 months of publication, it will be sent back to the company, remaindered and either warehoused or sent to bargain bins and departments for discount sales.

7. If your book gets remaindered, you will not be able to sell another manuscript to that company again no matter how good it is, unless you have a best-seller elsewhere, and maybe not then.

So, if a person wants to be published, and they aren't already established and successful, what do these authors and publishers advise?

Self-publishing, such as Print on Demand, and Small Presses.

Lulu, which is the company I use, got a lot of great mention. I like them, too, very much.

The question, then, is how to market, but that's another article.