Double Vision: Understanding the Plethora of Publishers

Well I can’t say that I got a lot of writing done this week. But I did wade through the field of publishers to find prospects for my genre. Though educating oneself about the business of writing is important, by the time I got done staring at screen after screen of interrelated company names, I was suffering from double vision.

Once again, I found myself launched into another session of on-line learning by one of several writer’s blogs and resources that I read. Randy Ingermanson, creator of Advanced Fiction Writing.com sent out another of his ezines with a section entitled ‘Organizing: The Vision Thing’.

In his article, Dr. Ingermanson (PhD in physics, actually!), laid out a nice series of questions designed to help a writer focus on marketing even before completing the piece of work. Not that you design a novel by plucking from the peaks of mass feedback. That would be like writing a novel based on some bizarre audience participation exercise (remember 60′s game shows with the little box of buttons at every seat?); or worse, channeling Joe the Plumber instead of F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway. You still have to have a voice and it still has to be your story and it still must rise above the banal. But writing with a target audience in mind, helps answer some of the technical questions as you move through the process.

I encourage you to read the article yourself, but I had a couple of favorites. One question asked you to name between five and ten publishers that produce work in your genre.

I drew a complete blank. Sure I knew many of the big house names just from seeing them on the covers of books I’ve read. Yet I realized that, since publishers rarely ever accept direct submissions any more, I had spent all my time and attention preparing to win over an agent. In fact, had one of them asked me that question at a one-on-one pitch session, it would have stopped me cold.  To make matters worse, I suffer a psychological mental block for names when I am under duress. Ask me to spit out the cranial nerves in order or the various cell types in the pancreas…no problem, but ask me who you- wait, what did you tell me your name was 20 seconds ago? …you get the picture.

So I waded into several compilations of sci fi publishing houses I found on the web. Now, I’ve heard of Harper Collins but what the heck is Harper Collins Voyager Imprint? And why is it Del Rey and not Random House, or Ace Books and not Little-Brown? And who the heck is Tor? According to Worlds Without Ends, a sci fi cataloguing web resource, it’s only the year’s top publisher of science fiction titles, with twice as many out in the last year as the next nearest competitor.

Of course I know about the big names but after a little cross checking, I found the field of publishing to be a nerve-racking network of companies. It is a complex of a few big name houses, subsidiaries and associated smaller presses that rivals the incestuousness of the British Royal Family tree. Cousins marrying cousins, dogs and cats living together, and other confusing relationships that would probably make a good basis for novel series in itself.

The upshot of this was having to peruse wave after wave of novels in a crowded, some say shrinking, market niche. Most of the book covers I scanned, screamed out the name of the author in huge letters with a diminutive title line below, giving the name of the author’s third or fifth or in one case, twelfth novel! A bit intimidating for an unpublished writer with a day job and a night life. Anyone else out there feeling a bit like a skinny kid with a slingshot, a loin cloth and a very large antagonist?

At any rate, after scanning some of the titles and realizing how much more work I have to do just to understand my own genre, I committed some of the names and publisher’s ‘leanings’, as well as some of their more familiar titles and authors, to memory. I concentrated on those that seemed to have more single-title authors and a bit more high tech thrillers than fantasy or other-world sci fi.

For me, it’s not about name-dropping or trying to impress a potential agent. It’s about professionalism, about understanding the landscape of this screwy endeavor with it’s self- and e- and brick and mortar publishers. It’s about making a better choice when I finally pitch my completed work and I hear the magic words…’send me the whole manuscript’. I will want to know where my story is being sent and why. More importantly, I will have one more bit of litmus to test the connections and knowledge of the agent before me.

I hope that helps me next time, at the awkward moment when I am sitting in front of a complete stranger, doing that speed-dating-for-desperate-writers thing. Maybe I won’t feel so apologetic when she puts on the charitable look as I tell her that I have an MD instead of an MFA in English (or PhD!…it’s all in the letters). At least I will know that I am not rewriting War of the Worlds or Martian Chronicles or Jurassic Park ….

By the way, who was it that wrote that last one? I think the latest editions are carried by Random House-Crown-Clarkson-Potter-Harmony-Value Publishing-Villard… or something like that! Excuse me while I get my eyes uncrossed. Whether you have 20/20 with or without correction…having a vision for your work is very important in this game. Excuse me, while I go memorize the eye chart….I have an appointment with the ophthalmologist in about five minutes…

Thanks for reading. My next blog will cover my other favorite question that Mr. Ingermanson proposed: Can you envision a reader who would be perfect in every way for this book? Think about that one until next week.

Next Time

S