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  • I think both publishers and authors need to work together and do everything they can to make a book a success. Most successful authors, and their publishers, will tell you that the harder the author works, the more chance of success. The author works, and the publisher works; it should be a joint partnership. Two heads are usually better than one, no matter how successful you are. It's a business for both parties. It's a win, win.

  • My understanding of what a traditional publisher is paid for is to manufacture the book into a solid and page filled format and to advertise the product. They make far more off the book then the author who created the work from nothing more then imagination and hard work. If the traditional publisher is to make the majority of the money, they should perform the majority of the work. Granted, this is simply my opinion.

  • At the end of the day (I'm a devout cliche lover) what sells a book? Not talking about the known authors who get a full page in the NY Times Book Review. I've seen and read so many testimonials from new authors who really put themselves out there. Recently attended a signing by an author attended by a group of twelve, ten of whom were family members. That seems to me just a step up from going door to door, books in hand. Surely the traditional publishers are far more efficient in creating buzz.

  • No, I don't. Marketing a book is hard work and takes contacts. The traditional publishing industry has those contacts. So why is it that they will not use their contacts to help sell more books which makes them more money???

    And why is there an A list and B list which no one talks about??? Some bring promoted and others not so much???

    Publishers also work with newspapers. More contacts. 

    I believe that traditional publishing should not be put out of business, but they should review their business model and see where they are failing because they are imo. It is good to have editors vet an author's work and suggest improvements. It is good to have marketing departments design a great book cover which will pull in a reader. So I am all in favor of traditional publishers continuing - but they need to get smarter and start looking at the reader/buyer of their products and get over themselves in what they think is best. Many times they don't provide what the reader wants.

    That is a bad business model!!!

    If they were on top of the market - self-publishing would never have gained a foothold. And Amazon would have failed like many predicted it would in the late 1990's.

    • Believe me, a writer has to do anything and everything over and above anything a traditional publisher does for your work. I was there with Putnam.

      Excuse me, therefore, if I post the nice review I got today from Foreword Reviews for my new novel, SAVING JANE AUSTEN: 



      SAVING JANE AUSTEN

      A Comedie Grotesque



      ForeWord Reviewfavicon.ico

      For an author who only published six novels (the posthumous Sanditon is a partial novel not published until recently), Jane Austen’s Regency-era fiction has immense staying power. Not only have her books spawned innumerable fan-fiction items, works such as Pride and Prejudice now have sequels, prequels, and spinoffs. Many of these works continue Austen’s characters’ stories or take those characters down fictional side roads.

      Then there are the zombies (Pride and Prejudice), vampires (Emma, Jane Bites Back) and sea monster send-offs (Sense and Sensibility). Starting about 2009, the idea of creating a mashup of Austen and a horror icon took root, beginning with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. One could argue that this trend has continued with other historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Edgar Allen Poe in computer games, movies, and fiction.

      Saving Jane Austen belongs with those novels, but it’s quite different in approach and content. Daniel Curzon takes a decidedly satirical view of Ms. Austen and her writing style, crafting a novel composed of e-mails between the cryogenically frozen and revived head of the famous authoress and an elderly American rare books dealer (now retired) named Aubrey Oxbridge, president of the What Would Jane Austen Do club. More than this, by way of summation, would spoil the fun.

      Curzon’s Jane Austen retains her era’s viewpoint on matters public and private. Her lack of a body to which her head can be attached—and the limitations thereby forced on her—doesn’t stop her from getting back to writing. What she produces is a dizzying blend of nineteenth-century British society and modern life that seems to want to go in two directions at once. It’s also hilarious.

      Curzon is very adept at taking on the Austen writing style and melding it with a contemporary story of a woman transported into the future who must learn to adapt. This novel mirrors Austen’s focus on Regency-era class divisions and social manners by bringing in several topics of current concern (gender identity, neo-Nazis, immigrants, and longer lifespans) to replace them. The result is a roller-coaster ride, chuckle-per-page gem that will probably outrage “true” Austen fans and delight readers who can handle humorous approaches to famous authors. Satire is an acquired taste, and one which Curzon uses to great effect.

      This is not a beach read by any means (one must know at least the basics about Austen to get the majority of the humor): Saving Jane Austen is a novel best enjoyed by readers who like guilty pleasures. It’s a book well worth savoring.

      Janine Stinson
      August 6, 2012


      Foreword Reviews: Book Reviews and Coverage of Indie Publishers
      Book reviews, articles, and interviews highlighting independent-, university-, and self-publishing.
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