Author: Tony J.
Date:   11-14-09 16:33

Apparently a partner with Barnes&Noble Booksellers; it claims to be a collaborative publishing venue. As the traditional publishers give advances (some small or great), WriteLife claims to use what would be your advance for the production, editing, and marketing the book. There is no upfront cost and you make 50% of royalties and the company places the books in the Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble's database.

<http://www.writelife.com/poetry/homepage_au.asp>

My question, then; Would this be a legitimate way to get your novel out? Would such a service 'taint' your name in the eyes of prospective Literary Agents/Publishers? It seems like it wouldn't put you in the vanity publishing-category. There are no words that say how selective they are with accepting manuscripts, but I imagine it'd be somewhere in the middle of POD and Traditional Houses. I'm thinking it may be a good way to give you some credentials when you do seek an Agent/Publisher. Also if it does well, wouldn't there be a chance that a big publisher would buy it?

Please check it out, if you're unfamiliar, and see what you think. I'm curious to see how this new Collaborative Publishing thing might help us get into the market.

Thoughts? (Also, apologies if this topic has come around before... I didn't see it in the many old posts I scanned.

Author: Gary Kessler
Date:   11-14-09 16:43

This is essentially what PublishAmerica does, isn't it? It would not gain respect from the industry if it wasn't selective in what it published. If it made some quality cut by publishing only about 20 percent of what was submitted, it would probably be treated as a real publisher. And if it actually had the manuscripts edited, which PA obviously doesn't do no matter what they claim.

Author: Tony J.
Date:   11-14-09 16:49

So... I should start with querying agents; then these sort of things as a last resort?

Author: Gary Kessler
Date:   11-14-09 21:51

Depends on what your goals are for the work and how good the work is.

Author: Frank Baron
Date:   11-15-09 15:18

From the link above:

"Our mission is to offer everyone the opportunity to write, publish, share and sell their literary works of art."

Everyone? So much for selectivity.

And listing the book on Amazon and Barnes & Noble means nothing. There's millions of books listed there. How many of the hundreds of thousands of the self/vanity/subsidy published ones have you purchased? If you want to be taken seriously as a novelist you need to walk the same hard road as those whose books you find on the shelves of your local bookstore. That means going the writing-the-book, querying-agents/publishers route.

Good luck.