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A Fellow Writer:
By William E. Steinman:
May 15, 2006:

Occasionally, I receive interesting and helpful input from other people in the writing and publishing game. This is one such missive. It comes from a person like myself who has encountered the brick wall of silence in the publishing industry first hand. He too is trying to get his work recognized. Here is his email followed by my reply. Except for concealing my corespondent's identity, I have not changed his message.

Hi William (Bill?),

You have done me a great favor relative to Partner's. Thank you. They were touted as successful in a recent Press Argus issue, and I had considered contacting them...much time saved, and B.S. averted. I would not have paid them as I do nothing without the review and advice of my attorney, but I might have had to sue them, and why bother?

I have read a number of your pieces, and I note that you have given up on
the publishing attempt. From your writing style, I think that is too bad.

A number of years ago, when I worked for a printing firm, I conducted a
small experiment which might interest you. I had written a book of short stories, and had it printed in 250 copies and shrink-wrapped. Using the "Writers Guide to Publishers and Agents", I selected about 240 Agents and Publishers at random, and mailed out with SASE's of sufficient postage to return the copy to me. The results were both enlightening, and (if looked at correctly) hilarious.

It took about a year or so for the 125-ish responses that I actually did receive to trickle in. Not one single returned copy had the shrink wrap split. I can thereby fairly realistically imagine that none were read.

I then picked an Agent at random and, in a pleasant and engaging tone, called the lady just to ask what "the real deal" was with all of this. Her answer was priceless.

It turned out that she and three other ladies had been in the "Agent business" for about 25 years. She was/is a very nice lady, and knew what she was talking about..

Twenty years ago, she received perhaps two or three dozen "over the transom" (readable) submissions every week. She actually did read a few pages of each one, and did occasionally select one for further pursuit. When I spoke with her, after PCs had become commonplace with local printers attached, she was receiving several thousand manuscripts a week. Obviously, none were ever touched. If SASE's were clearly attached, they would throw the material back in the mail, but that was all. The rest went in the dumpster.

SO...the question remains, how does one access the publishing marketplace. To date, I have learned a great deal about what does NOT work, but what does? I can't believe that all authors advance themselves via joining local "Writer's Groups" and other such uses of the time I do not have to commit.
There HAS to be a better way.
But...what is it? Any further ideas? Thoughts? Concepts?

btw: I started my own publishing company, SAN-Registered with ISBN's, too.
"Name-of-firm Publications"

Best of Good Fortune!
Mr. X.

My reply:

Dear Mr. X:

Thank you for you kind email. I had to go back and reread what I had written about Partners in my "Writing and Publishing, series. That was essay "W&P 54 The Gaffer's Shorts." I still stand by what I said. They are not the ally of writers and small publishers. Not at all! I consider them, in particular, to be my adversaries. Your own experience is quite interesting in that it matches, very closely, my own encounters with the publishing industry. I think of it as a stone wall of silence.

The agencies problem of unsolicited manuscripts which you discovered has come to my attention previously. It is a serious problem and we cannot, in good conscience, blame the agencies. The world is full of people who think they know how to write, but do not know beans. A person who has spent 4 or 5 years learning to be an engineer, for example, will think he can know how to write with no effort or experience required. One need only look, as I have, at a few manuals and instruction booklets written by these same people to know how ridiculous that is. As you pointed out, the computer has made it easy for them to overload the industry with their tripe. The problem becomes, how do you and I get through that and convince the agencies to look at our work? I still cannot answer that question.

However, I have not completely given up on publishing. I have given up on the traditional approach to marketing through distributors and via my website. I am concentrating on writing now, but I am still making efforts and thinking about how to get my work before the public. My most recent effort has been an attempt to find an agent who would be willing to represent me to a large publishing house. To date that has been as unsuccessful as all my other efforts.

So far, I have sent out 20 query letters to agencies and received 14 negatives. The others have not responded. My experience is, the agents are a bit more civil than the publisher's editors, but not at all interested in reading my work. Of course, the annoying part of all this is the flat refusal to even look at the work. It is rejected out of hand, sight unseen.

Until now, I have been working with the list of agents from the "Writer's Market" book. That may have been a mistake, but it was all I knew. Even though all of these agencies have said they are actively seeking new writers, I have found that is not true of the ones who have responded to my queries.

I did get one bit of valuable information from an agency called "Cornerstone Literary Inc." They were kind enough to give me the web address of the Association of Authors Representatives. That site seems to have a very comprehensive listing of literary agencies. The address is http://www.aar-online.org/ I have copied out several of the agencies from this listing. I will be sending queries to them in the near future. We shall see.

Meanwhile, I am still considering how to get my work to the public by other means. If my agency attempts fail, as I expect they will, I will think of something else. If I find anything that works, I'll let you know. The nice thing about being a writer is that other writers are not natural competitors. Except for the hard cover pulp trash, each of us has a unique product so we can share what we learn without fear. Speaking of sharing, your email caused me to realize that others may be interested in my efforts at marketing. With that in mind, I will post my agency query letter as an essay in my Forum.

Thanks for your input:

Bill:
William E. Steinman, Editor, Wesoomi Publishing
Thoughtful titles by and for thoughtful people
P. O. Box 656, Ortonville, MI 48462-0656
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