Wednesday, June 11, 2014

?!?

Wow!  I thought I'd seen everything when it came to publishers but this one really threw me,

"NOTE: Imagine asking for payment information at the very beginning of a job interview. Bad form? Yes. Now imagine doing the same prior to submitting a query or book proposal and before having either accepted. Bad form? Yes, with a very high probability of excluding the inquiring party from future consideration. Good form? Follow the above guidelines, down to submitting in PDF format. If your manuscript is accepted you will be given a detailed publishing contract, which speaks clearly to your remuneration."

I wonder if they ask their plumber how much he's going to charge before he does a job for them or if they just pay whatever they feel like and hope the plumber doesn't rip the toilet out of the wall.  Why should a writer submit to an anthology call without knowing up front what the payment is?

5 comments:

Al Tucher said...

I sometimes wish I could go through life with that kind of chutzpah. It would make things so much easier.

For me.

sandra seamans said...

Yes! And wouldn't it be nice if we could submit a story and if it's accepted tell them how much we want to be paid :)

Fiona Glass said...

There's a lot of it about. I saw a publisher today who claimed he would both publish your book and represent you as an agent; he spent a badly-edited paragraph ranting about vanity publishers and then demanded $2,500 *up front with the submission paperwork* to 'cover costs'. O.o

sandra seamans said...

It seems that for every good publisher, there's a dozen bad ones, Fiona.

sandra seamans said...

No, I don't want to get sued for defamation of character :)

They're a small press that isn't on the crime fiction radar but I like to post odd things like that so other writers can watch out for them.

I'm always surprised at how many writers will pay to submit or get published, Thomas, no matter how many warnings are out there.