The POD Experience - An Author's View

"Even with the truth we can have got got small hope, but with prevarications we have none." -- Richard Burton, portraying the fictional character Alice Paul Andros, in the 1963 movie The V.I.P.s. The music was composed by Miklos Rozsa.

The long and the short of it, simply put, is that nearly all of the countless commercial publishing houses that were offered my book about the composer showed an enthusiastic deficiency of involvement in seeing even some preliminary stuff from it. With few exceptions, they categorically refused the book only on the footing of my query.

I've since given up on trying to calculate out how anyone can attain a truly informed decision about a book's suitableness based only on an author's initial question missive (though it's common practice). Anyone who might desire to make so is going to have got got to explicate it to me very, very carefully.

Even though Iodine included the traditionally needed SAE (stamped, in the lawsuits of the United States destinations), I establish it funny that many of the American publishing houses didn't even react -- but that almost all of the European publishing houses did, with an apologetic but still personal and courteous communicating rather than the common form-letter.

I would have placed my book with a commercial publishing house had I been able to happen one who offered just and just publication terms.

These are the bottom-line facts.

Mainly, but not solely, for these reasons, I decided to take the black and white on demand (POD) path for the publication of the book (ultimately selecting iUniverse in Lincoln, Nebraska). The advantageous subsequent developments and consequences demo it was one of the most reasonable determinations I've ever made, one of the best investments, and most importantly a very causeless undertaking.

In the commercial publication quarter, many respondents were sensible. Unfortunately, too many were not. The illustrations volition fill up another book, but here the followers few will suffice.

Some of those Iodine dealt with were determined Masters of the misconstrual. This happened a batch more often than one mightiness expect. Even the top adult male at one of the most esteemed publishing houses responded (to his credit, personally) to my proposal by saying, ". I believe a life of Rozsa would be too particular for [us]." -- I could not believe my eyes: I had made it clear in my proposal that this was not a "biography" of Miklos Rozsa but a personal recollection of him.

In fairness, it's entirely possible that some column helper merely scanned my proposal carelessly, misinterpreted the contents, and then passed on to the editor a totally wrong appraisal of what I had offered. Then again, perhaps the editor-in-chief, World Health Organization soon left the publication house after decennaries with them, just wasn't paying adequate attending if my missive was before him. In either case, person was difficult of reading.

Those in authorization at the publication houses may have got got the last word, but we writers can have the proverbial last laugh. -- It gave me a human race of satisfaction when, soon after my book's publication, I was asked to personally inscribe a transcript of it specifically for that very editor.

Another publishing house responded thusly, through an column assistant: ". Unfortunately our publication agenda for 2005/early 2006 is overly-full at present, and we must therefore wish you the best with determination a suitable publisher." -- This, after I had specified in my proposal -- twice -- the twelvemonth 2007 as being the target: (A) that the 2007 centennial of Rozsa's birth would effectively be an ideal clip for the publication of this personal recollection of him, and (B) that the twelvemonth 2007 would also tag the 25th day of remembrance of the visual aspect of his ain memoirs, Double Life, published in the United States and in England in 1982 but now long out of print. After a elucidation from me, it still took six calendar months for this publishing house to convey about their eventual refusal.

Others exemplified the oxymoronic conception of at odds reasoning. I was told the marketplace would be "too limited" for a book like mine to justify their "investment in its pubication" [sic], and that they ". might be interested in something more popular than an indeterminate composer." (Her pick of the word "obscure" told me only that she hadn't heard of him). By "popular" they meant, of course, voguish -- that is, a topic about which infinite bandwagon books have got already been written.

By extension, these publishing houses would then decline an author's proposal, giving as their ground the oversupply of such as books that already be on the market.

How makes one accommodate this sort of incompatible logic? It undermines credibleness and whatever judgement used in their principle frankly flights me. It looks somewhat contradictory, and I must acknowledge I'm a spot confused by it -- the more than than so, as we regularly see two (or more) books on the same topic brought out simultaneously by different publishers, in the same manner we see good movies being broadcast by different commercial television stations on the same eventide at the same hour.

It reached the point where I wouldn't have got believed them if they had told me nighttime is dark and twenty-four hours is light.

I had to inquire myself a question: Make these people really cognize what they want?

I decided it would not be reasonable for me to dart my caput against a wall in a bootless attempt to do my manner beyond it. I concluded there are too few old age in life to do this (or any) sort of futility worthwhile.

I also questioned the wisdom of continuing to struggle what was clearly a losing battle. At some point during the first hebdomad of March, 1836, the Alamo guardians likely didn't cognize until the eleventh hr that their fate was already sealed, and by then it was too late. Among the differences between those courageous work force and this writer is that they were hard roes and became martyrs, and that I have got got a decided advantage over them: I have more than clip and thusly alternate choices. Yes, as a low historiographer I would wish to have got witnessed the besieging and autumn of the Alamo -- but only as an observer, not as a "participant."

Those who subscribe to the flimsy strong belief that we are all Masters of our ain fate should explore and compose a book and then seek independently to happen a commercial publishing house for it. Many who don't win in this enterprise just give up, but the more than resolute and resourceful happen another way. It's been said that success come ups in a can, not in a "can't."

The power, authority, influence, and even the good volition -- and the impulse -- of others tin have got a bearing on what haps to us. Personal duty notwithstanding, there's a bounds to the control we have got over our ain practical circumstances. This is a fact of life. Those who doubt it should pass some clip in the wolf-pit euphemistically called the modern-day work-force, where they can have got got their day-to-day lives micro-managed side boundary line idiots who go on to have places of authority.

Another fact of life is that in some living quarters pod publishing, like movie music, isn't taken seriously and, predictably, is even trivialized. It's a safe bet, though, that a book's publication method wouldn't substance in the least to those reading it.

The grounds for the derision of print-on-demand publication are crystalline adequate even for the unsighted to see through them: they stone the position quo publication boat. They are in some ways comparable to the misanthropic approach, prevailing with reserve and usually unwarranted, taken by some in the medical community toward chiropractic care. It looks to fall on ears deafer than Beethoven's that such as redress have been helping infinite people for certain complaints since before the clip of Hippocrates (who, as revealed by his ain texts, himself offered chiropractic treatment).

The sort of attitude, posture, behavior and even straight-out superciliousness 1 brushes from many in the commercial publication industry topographic points them too fold to the finger-painting phase to justify their beingness taken seriously, either, at least by this author.

Most responses I received were the common "One Size Fits All" form-letters, usually dateless and unsigned -- though many of them contained the time-honored, conventional cop-out dodge that I seek consulting the volume Literary Market ". available at your local library." The deduction is clear: the individual offering his or her book is a mere novitiate who should run to the library to confer with a mention work he's obviously never even heard of, and should be ever-so-thankful for the saving grace of this publisher's supportive, helpful and beneficent counsel.

Their advice uncovers their mentality that anyone having the audaciousness to suggest a book on his ain -- that is, independently, and not through an agent -- is an inexperienced, novice writer. The "Go back to Square One" intension built-in in their arch advice is also, in a phrase, downright violative to any adept writer and research worker -- and what can be done with their nominal suggestion is something this author wouldn't state in print.

Some of the Authors' Guidelines I came across are so sophomoric it's surprising they're not an existent embarrassment to those physical things that print them. "Convince us why you are the best individual to compose this book," and "Prove how your book would be alone in the marketplace" are but two of the most patent of invention illustrations of this sort of crying attack publishing houses take with prospective writers -- illustrations that also have got their ain built-in insult. They conjure up the very mental image of "the quintessential professor straightening out the errant student" (as historiographer Bill Groneman astutely noted), or a vision of the publishing house "in the uniform of a military military officer astride a achromatic Equus caballus with all the military units of Right and Righteousness martialled behind him" (as Clarence Clarence Darrow said).

It looks as though tons of publishing houses are operatively dissuading authors from offering their work. This is a substance of implication, not of inference.

"The book-publishing industry is all about narcisism . . ." -- Maureen Dowd, in a December 11, 2005 television interview on CBS Lord'S Day Morning.

In my pod determination I've happily bypassed such as juvenile evasions, recreations and arrogance.

Part of a conversation in the 1951 movie The Day The World Stood Still looks apropós here.
Mr. Harley (played by Frank Conroy):

"Our jobs are very complex, Mr. Klaatu. You mustn't justice us too harshly."

Klaatu (played by Michael Rennie):

"I can justice only by what I see."

Few of us have got the right to judge others. My remarks here are observations, not judgements, and are based merely on what I've encountered, on what I've seen.

I had to inquire myself another question: Should Iodine set my work in the custody of folks like this -- or should I follow the principle, "If you desire something done right, you should make it yourself"? It would be safe to state that an writer desires every award done to his work without compromising quality, principle, the very integrity and unity of the work, and without having to leap through hoops to make things this way, that way, their way, his way, or her way.

I decided not to turn old waiting for commercial approval. Hence my book now looks in the pod scene I chose. I've done it my way.

One of Leslie Howard Roark's remarks in Ayn Rand's book The Well is, in paraphrase, that the parasite's end is the conquering of others, while the artist's end is the conquering of himself. The observation looks fitting.

The advantages of the pod locale might or might not "outweigh" those of commercial publication -- but there can be balance without symmetry. When Van Beethoven was composing, piano player Daniel Steibelt was all the fury in Austrian Capital and was making all the money. He's now just a text edition entry (in which he's usually characterized as a ill-famed kleptomaniac). His work is as dead as he is.

We don't retrieve Steibelt. We retrieve Van Beethoven -- through what he left us, he's calm very much alive.

Among the clearest advantages of having a commercial publishing house are the wider selling possibilities and promotion potential, the conventionally esteemed book signings, and other promotional measurements for the book. As well, the really status-conscious see the customary "publication parties" as a sort of to decease for activity. It looks most of us have got been, let's say, conditioned by position quo tradition into believing that the lone legitimate agency of publication is via a commercial entity, preferably one of the "blue chip" publishers.

If we're not admitted to that arena, we can win in another.

Even Franz Chief Joseph Joseph Haydn self-published his cantata Die Schöpfung (The Creation) in full mark in 1800, in an edition of about 600 copies. Rhetorical questions: Did self-publication decrease the music's value? Bash most of us even cognize the cantata was self-published? Bashes anyone even care?

In self-publishing my book I merely followed the illustrations put by some of the more than indeterminate writers who have got made only edge contributions. They are authors like L. Frank Baum, Elizabeth Ii Barrett Browning, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Godhead Byron, Willa Cather, Sir Leslie Stephen Crane, e.e. cummings, Alexandre Dumas, T.S. Eliot, Zane Grey, Seth Thomas Harding, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, Jesse James Joyce, Rudyard Kipling, D.H. Lawrence, Joe Louis L'Amour, Anais Nin, Edgar Woody Allen Poe, Alexanders Pope, Beatrix Potter, Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, Saint George Claude Bernard Shaw, Walker Percy Shelley, Upton Sinclair, Gertrude Stein, Henry Saint David Thoreau, Lion Tolstoy, Mark Couple and Walt Whitman. Every 1 of these people self-published at least one of their works.

These name calling are offered not as a comparing between my work and theirs, but only as a similarity between my pick and theirs -- that is, just to point up that they, themselves, put the case in point for self-publishing. They did it for whatever their grounds might have got been, but they did it long before it became as stylish or prevailing -- and as feasible -- as it is today.

Regardless of whatever downside there might be (and there is a downside to everything), an writer demand no longer be forever jump by the mercy, or the whim, of the commercial book publishers, their column assistants, or their in-house or out-house "readers," those to whom a publishing house gives the author's typescript for an sentiment -- and who will soon be telling the publishing house what to believe of the book. These people can obviously have got got a direct and negative bearing on how our work is perceived by the prospective publishing house (for which writers are not responsible), or even if it's ultimately accepted by that publishing house (over which writers have no control).

I'd not be so presumptuous as to state I've beaten the commercial physical things at their ain game -- the transition of clip will find that, one manner or another -- but the commercial scene is no longer the lone publication game in town. Now, an writer demand not depend on the conventional commercial publishing houses for proof of what he have done. Things are changing, and they're changing significantly, benefitting today's writer with far more than control over his ain work.

There are now alternatives.

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(Author's Bio):

JEFFREY Dane is an historiographer and writer whose authorship looks in the United States and abroad in both black and white and online publications, and in respective languages. He's a subscriber to respective books, including Elmore Leonard Leonard Bernstein -- A Life by Meryle Secrest. His book, A Composer's Notes: Remembering Miklos Rozsa was published by iUniverse for the 2007 Rozsa Centenary.

© Jeffrey Dane