Comments on: Agencies Becoming Publishers–a Trend and a Problem http://www.sfwa.org/2011/06/agencies-becoming-publishers-a-trend-and-a-problem/ Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Sun, 21 Jan 2018 14:20:34 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.2 By: EMoon http://www.sfwa.org/2011/06/agencies-becoming-publishers-a-trend-and-a-problem/#comment-66115 Wed, 29 Jun 2011 17:01:15 +0000 http://www.sfwa.org/?guid=dbf971a2ec0255b824943a51a070ad5b#comment-66115 Some writers with publishing experience who want to dip a toe into e-publishing (publishing novellas themselves, for instance) do not have the time to do all that’s necessary to produce an e-book. Yes, I know the argument that it’s always better to do it oneself, but I also know the reality that writers with one or more day jobs, major family responsibilities, etc. are already pushing the envelope just getting their writing done. And some of us are simply not good at the other stuff (and telling us we have to be doesn’t give us those talents or skillsets, just adds to the stress level.) Writers have different needs and different non-writing commitments.

Such writers will be looking for services that can lighten their load with e-book production, while not limiting them in contractual ways, as their traditional publishers have, and producing more profit per unit. The advantages to mostly-self-publishing (with the aid of a point person who coordinates the technical stuff) include a shorter gap from writing to seeing the work for sale, as well as less time lost to submission and negotiation. (As we all know, it can be months from proposing–or even submitting a finished work–to the contract actually being signed, and longer after that for money to appear, and far longer–typically over a year from a book being turned in–until publication.)

I see little risk to *experienced* writers who choose to let their agent be the point person for this. Yes, it’s a different relationship, and should require a separate contract recognizing that. But if the writer has already decided to present a specific new work first as an e-book, not through his/her regular publisher (which is the only way those who have no out-of-print backlist can get a toe in the independent e-business end), and needs a point person, then the agent is a known quantity.

Yes, the writer could look for someone else to be point person–someone the writer does not yet know or having a working relationship with…at a greater cost of time and effort. Some would argue this is far preferable, but I think it depends on the individual writer.

]]>
http://www.sfwa.org/2011/06/agencies-becoming-publishers-a-trend-and-a-problem/feed/
www.sfwa.org
crawl=CC-MAIN-2018-05
6304
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:6B42VQLAMMT3A3VY2UDXBOSNRONZ6LOR
<urn:uuid:1fcfe79c-5324-48da-8e34-9bc93fe21ed9>
2018-01-22T00:23:25Z
104.25.246.32
application/rss+xml
sha1:YC3DL5H22IJPLVXRXXHPJWRCPFJ7RVXQ
<urn:uuid:267dc09c-9bc8-4877-a7c9-acd9d616428a>
http://www.sfwa.org/2011/06/agencies-becoming-publishers-a-trend-and-a-problem/feed/
length
response
<urn:uuid:993bbdc8-f8ed-44d5-9144-91cef1f532ab>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-146-219-137.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2018-05
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for January 2018
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf