X-Ftn-To: acdouglas 

"acdouglas"  wrote:
>>[snipped - original post is below]
>>I would also say that you can have superb quality and
>>not have your books published because the establishment is set against
>>you from the start.
>---------------------------------------------------------
>
>That's pretty much a (generally) self-serving myth.  There are some 50,000
>(fifty thousand) new titles published in print each year.  My guess would be
>that very, very few "superb quality" mss get missed.

This is theory, and it doesn't map well into the real world. A
real-life example:
I published my book in Croatia and got excellent reviews in the papers
(see reviews on Amazon). I can choose between the best publishers in
the country. However, when I sent the manuscript of the English
version of my book to the American publishers, do you know what
happened? None of them even bothered to read it. From one, I actually
got a letter saying more-less that they can't bother with reading it
because their schedule is full, and if I'm stupid and incompetent
enough, I can try again next year, so that they'll have the pleasure
of not reading it again.

Now, what would you suggest me to do, eh? What I did was to have my
Croatian publisher open an account with the LightningSource and set
the book up for PoD. And even now, I need to find a way to create
public awareness of the book because it will otherwise vanish in the
ocean of other books.

>Is it really tough to break into print for a new author?  

Almost impossible, even if you are damn good.

>But a vanity press is not the answer.  

Of course it is not the answer, but it can be a good beginning. The
answer seems to be in a combination of a good manuscript, good
editing, PoD printing and distribution, and a heavily financed
marketing campaign.

-- 
Homepage: http://www.danijel.org