Thursday, January 26, 2006

Blogging at TT Today

I' blogging at the Whiskey Creek Press-Torrid's Torrid Temptations blog today, so pop on over and check it out!

http://torridtemptations.blogspot.com/


And can I just say something that's a little (OK, I guess a lot) mean?

It makes me really uncomfortable to see self-published authors talking about how they spoke to groups of high schoolers or jr. high schoolers about "How to get published."
Because they're not, not really. If your "How to get published" speech can reasonably consist of "Pay someone x amount of dollars for x number of copies to sell on your own, because that's what I did," you're not actually giving these kids anything useful and are actually hurting them.

Don't put the idea in their heads that you need to pay to get published. That mindset is why scam artists like PA do so well. Because there are so many people out there who don't know that your publisher is supposed to get your book in stores, not you.
Like the quote a while back on Miss Snark, where a Snarkling wrote in to say they told someone about their book, and the response they got was, "My cousin is saving up so he can be published too."

Don't teach kids that kind of thing. If you're going to give a talk as an expert on being published...you should be traditionally published. Full stop.