More and more the sales department of a publishing house is determining what will and will not be accepted for publication - with what seems to be a standard test: if the sales department does not envision sales of at least 30,000 copies of a book, forget it. More and more it becomes harder to find a major house that will look at a manuscript not submitted by an established literary agent. Fortunately, there are many small press publishers still available for non-agent submissions. When one of those publishers has some success, a major house has occasionally offered to make it a subdivision of its operation and help with distribution and promotion.
More and more the big discount distributors and sellers - Barnes and Noble is the major example - are taking the bulk of the market by offering discounts based on volume, and lesser distributors and booksellers cannot compete with that. More and more books are being remanded quickly and sold off at prices far less than the original cover price.
There is too much competition. An individual author has a dismally poor chance of making money on a given book. You have to be lucky as well as persistent with self-promotion. There is also an increasing trend for publishing houses to operate in the same way as vanity publishers: the author has to pay for printing and publicity. Prestigious publishing houses, especially those that produce books by scholars, are resorting to that method of operation out of financial necessity.
Although you are not leaving us just yet, how do you want us to remember Burton h. Wolfe?
Burton:
As somebody who told the truth at all costs, bearing in mind my favorite quotation from George Orwell (Eric Blair): "There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad." 1984
Norm:
Is there anything else you wish to add that we have not covered and in particular to Lucifer's Dictionary of the American Language?
Burton:
GET THE BOOK AND READ IT!
Thanks Burton once again for participating in our interview.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
