You could have a totally brans dpanking new gender angle for whining about New York [grin] - "oh look, they won't take me on because I'm a woman writing about men..."
But apropos the "epublished or PODed" comment - I was a witness as recently as yesterday to an encounter I saw from my car - a man knocked on the door of a local business establishment, not QUITE open yet but on the verge of being so and one which I was waiting for, too - and I was too far away to overhear actual conversation but what I saw was this man knocking on the door, the proprietor opening it, the man talking for a few minutes, then proffering some sort of poster-sized piece of paper, the proprietor looked at this, nodded, the two men shook hands, and the visitor left. It being now opening time, I sauntered up to the business in question in time to observe the proprietor fixing the poster he had just been handed into the shop window of his business.
It was an invitation to a reading and booksigning by a "new local author".
The book was prominently displayed as having been published... by PublishAmerica.
I think I must have winced out loud because the proprietor looked puzzled, and then said, "He was just here, he gave me this..."
So I told him why I had winced. He looked a little blank, which is fair enough - never having had literary aspirations of his own he had never tripped over this particular rock (or lifted it to look underneath it, as it were). But the point is - that poor bastard who was doing door-to-door promotion. It DEPENDS on people never having heard of PublishAmerica. And from here on he is branded. He will very quickly learn that if he had hoped to use this publishing credit in order to sell a book to an agent or a reputable publisher, all he has to say is that his last work was published by PublisAmerica and there will be eyes glazing over...
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Date: 2006-10-29 10:10 pm (UTC)But apropos the "epublished or PODed" comment - I was a witness as recently as yesterday to an encounter I saw from my car - a man knocked on the door of a local business establishment, not QUITE open yet but on the verge of being so and one which I was waiting for, too - and I was too far away to overhear actual conversation but what I saw was this man knocking on the door, the proprietor opening it, the man talking for a few minutes, then proffering some sort of poster-sized piece of paper, the proprietor looked at this, nodded, the two men shook hands, and the visitor left. It being now opening time, I sauntered up to the business in question in time to observe the proprietor fixing the poster he had just been handed into the shop window of his business.
It was an invitation to a reading and booksigning by a "new local author".
The book was prominently displayed as having been published... by PublishAmerica.
I think I must have winced out loud because the proprietor looked puzzled, and then said, "He was just here, he gave me this..."
So I told him why I had winced. He looked a little blank, which is fair enough - never having had literary aspirations of his own he had never tripped over this particular rock (or lifted it to look underneath it, as it were). But the point is - that poor bastard who was doing door-to-door promotion. It DEPENDS on people never having heard of PublishAmerica. And from here on he is branded. He will very quickly learn that if he had hoped to use this publishing credit in order to sell a book to an agent or a reputable publisher, all he has to say is that his last work was published by PublisAmerica and there will be eyes glazing over...