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DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING SUGGESTION IS ALICE’S DREAM. SHE ENTERTAINS NO EXPECTATIONS OF IT EVER COMING TRUE.
I think we should create our own publishing company for things like:
Ag’s Short Story collection
The RRRs
Et cetera.
Who’s with me?
It will be called MuseBlog Press. We can all be editors and writers. Of course we’d have to get several people to edit each story because none of us are particularly experienced.
Sigh. Such a nice dream.
Print-on-demand has really widened the opportunities for self-publishing. People sell books and CDs on CaféPress for just one example.
2- Hmm. *plots and plans*
So, does anyone agree with comment 1?
YAY COMMENT 1!!!!!!!
That would be flamablamablously flamablamablous!!
*utter brilliance*
3-considering that you’re the only one posting here…but yes. I would enjoy that. It would at least give me the motivation to finish a story to put myself in the records…
2- Or Lulu.
3- I do! Very most definitely yes. And me and Penty, with our SUPREME CONNEXSHONS, can make it like an imprint of Carus Publications or something similar. That is actually a great idea and would you like me to email Romana or something? Or is that taking advantage of my connections and we should do it ourselves.
Speaking of Romana, my dad just found one of her business cards and it’s really funny. On the front it has her name and under it all these antiquated synonyms for writer and on the back it says, “Will do boring things for money”. ROFLMAO.
1-I have a transcriptionist/book editor for a mother, she may be able to do some of the editing! We’d pay her well, of course…
We could print all the fanfictions too, and NaNoWriMos.
6- Oh, do email her, by all means. But she’ll probably never answer. That’s just my pessimistic view of it, at least.
Yay! People agree! Where shall we start?
oh, I agree. but I’d like to see more structured plans. I’ll become involved though! definately!
8- She sent us an apology letter the other day saying that she was sorry for not responding to our emails. Me and m y dad’s emails, I mean, but I hope she meant the MB’s emails too. Apparently she’s working three jobs.
10- Ah…
9- Yes. Structured plans. I’m thinking about them, but any suggestions would be very welcome indeed. *hint hint wink*
I agree, ‘twold be awesome. We could do a muser poem book… *dreams* Or finished&edited beyond recognition Nanos…
12- Or Muse Fanfics! Like mine…
What’s the advantage of printing your stories on paper? More people can read them on the Web.
14- One word. MOOLAH.
Robert (14): I know you think it’s rather ridiculous that everyone wants their work “published,” in print, but you have your work printed all the time. It’s just really cool to see your writing, or any work for that matter, on a piece of paper. It’s something that’s real, that you can hold, and that makes it much more exciting than something in a virtual world (on the web, I mean).
14- But there’s a sense of excitement about paste-and-paper books that I don’t feel about a web page. I hate reading books on the Web; I like to feel it in my hands.
Plus, it seems like it would be ever so grand to see your name on the cover of a book, and you would think, “I wrote that,” and you would be able to feel it and it would send shivers up your spine and it would make me so, so happy. It makes me happy thinking about it.
But the Web does have advantages, such as the fact that it doesn’t take up nearly as much paper. I might feel nearly as happy about it being on the Web if it seemed more official; a published story with my full name at the top.
I guess I want to be acknowledged, in a way, though I don’t want to be famous. I want people whom I’ve never met to read my stories and enjoy them. And think, “This girl is a good writer.” And maybe be inspired to write themselves. And I feel that that couldn’t happen on the internet. It’d just be one of those obscure web-books on a boring web page with size 14 Times New Roman font and a white background, an amateur thing without a publisher or an editor.
Wow. That was a long post. But do you know what I mean? Anyone? I’ve nothing against web-books, but the ones I’ve seen don’t really seem like books.
It’s not ridiculous, but it does present certain practical difficulties. Paper costs money (lots of money, at the moment) and uses resources. Printing books costs money, too. Once they’re printed, books sit around in boxes taking up space until someone mails them somewhere — another expense. Words and bylines do look wonderful in print, but if you want them to reach readers, that’s not a very efficient way to do it. That’s why more and more magazines are going online, some of them exclusively so. Even my own magazine, Science, has more readers on the Web than in print.
There’s no denying that print has a certain mystique. Still, I wonder whether it has anything else going for it nowadays.
15- *laughs* Ah, that’s so POSOC.
16- And that’s so Pan. Everyone has such distinct personalities, ways of writing, it just makes me so happy.
12-That’s what I said.
13-I said that too.
Does anyone even read my posts? (No.)
20- Of course I read your posts, Beavo!
Okay, Alice and the GAPAs. (Of course, they might not read my posts, but every once in a while I post my last name or city or cuss, and they snip it, so I’m pretty sure they do.)
Im not too good with the technicallities of it all but I could contribute a column on “The ups and downs of apricot tart” do you know how good it tastes???
but it gets everywhere….
and I say PAPER on the few times when my name is in the school newsletter do you know how good you feel to see your very OWN NAME unless, of course it was a typo…..
(18) I know what you mean, Alice. A bound copy of my MFA thesis, a book of poems, sits on a shelf in the UNCG library. It’s not pretty — one of those nubby, dark green, faceless library editions — and the likelihood anyone will pick it up and read it is next to none. But I admit, it’s still exciting to open the covers and turn the pages — or look it up in the card catalog.
This is one reason I mentioned print on demand, as you can have the satisfaction of holding an actual volume in your hand, without all the expense, clutter, and waste Robert mentioned. I have firsthand experience with the latter — the historic society that employs me published its second book a couple of years ago. We’ve sold a few, but the majority of the run sits in boxes taking up space. I doubt they’ll ever make back the investment. With print on demand, the same number of sales would have brought in some income.
Right now I’m reading a book about physics published in PDF format. It’s circulating in its 21st revision since the original publication in 1997. The formatting and layout are as carefully attended to as any book on paper. It has cover art, a dedication page, illustrations, the works. It also includes animations and links — features print can’t provide.
A novelist friend got her start in ebooks. Several of them performed well enough that the publisher eventually released them in paperback. Lately I’ve been seeing articles about books that first built a following on the Web before being picked up for print. Enough of them have been successful that publishers themselves are having to rethink the conventional wisdom.
There are so many different routes to publication these days, there’s no reason to tie yourself down to one strategy, especially when the traditional one is subject to such a high proportion of serendipity.
uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…………… glamoflam tapokal masong lay doma! There i was speaking JIBBERISH!
oh and yeah i agree!
Okay. So we have two options.
Web-books
OR
Print-on-demand
I like print-on-demand better, but that has several problems. Then again, so do web-books. I’ll explain later.
I don’t like to look at books on a computer. to hold a book is nicer.
28- I wholeheartedly agree. Staring at a screen makes my eyes hurt.
BUT, to do Print-on-demand we need capital (a thing I don’t have and won’t have for quite a while) and a way of exchanging money (when we sell a book, the profits have to go to the author).
The first could be solved by working. The second could be solved by…something else. Like…something.
18- Yes. And the web can crash, if people disappeared or something it would just be gone, lost. Paper books might not last in the elements for very long, but it’s still there… and if the internet goes down, what would you do?
24- I like the print-on-demand idea, yes. But if it’s only online, then it’s just kind of lost in chaos. If people were to actually find it, and go back to it, that would work just as well, of course, but… I don’t know.
Reading on the comp hurts my eyes too.
29- Well, splitting money a hundred odd ways would get us about nothing. Donation? Buy this book to support ____ ?
30- Hmm. *thinks*
31- I was sort of of the opinion that the proceeds from each book would go to the author, but then there’s all that other stuff…
Or some charity that we’d all agreed on.
I like the idea of donation. I’m not attempting to get rich from writing or even get paid for writing. We could donate the money to Muse.
Well, obviously we’d need advertisements! Put it in your email signature, recommend the books to people, buy your friend one for ens birthday.
I just want to read the books!
I’d pay sixteen dollors per book.
34- You’d have to if we bound it perfect bound. It costs $7 (!!!) to bind, plus .03 cents per page.
35- wow! the bindings so much. but the pages are cheaper then I’d thought they’d be.
36- I know.
36- err, binding takes work. but it is fun (does anyone else bind books here?, no I couldn’t bind all of them, hand binding is more of an art than publishing…)
I think we should try to find a good print on demand thing. Doesn’t Amazon have something? I’m not sure. I definitely think we should go with paper (if we do this at all) since it’s so easy to get things published on the web that it’s not really special anymore. I would definitely pay a lot of money ($16 or whatever) for a book that I wrote if it was good quality and good writing.
And if we needed somewhere to donate the money, why not Muse/MuseBlog?
39- Yeah!
1- Oh yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And for those of us with attention spans not long enough to write novels or long short stories, we should include all the ” write off an image or picture” threads, too.
A question for Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)- if it does well enough on the internet, does the publisher pay all expenses to put it out in print?
35- I thought that said ‘3 cents per page’ at first (speaking of bad eyes) and was like ‘holy crap we’ll be broke’ until I noticed the .0. So nevermind.
38- That sounds like fun! Do you get to design covers or anything too?
I want to publish this children’s story about how a fish turned into the color blue and the sky and stuff. It’s really hard to find a reliable company that is still taking material. Usually the open ones are either very small or very tricky, and the company I wanted to submit to is closed AND does not allow the author to use their own art. They have artists there who do all the art for the books. That would really frustrate me having my story with someone’s art if the person wasn’t my friend or somebody I chose.
I have an idea for a children’s book about two little kids trying to build rockets and space capsules out of cardboard and stuff and learning a lot about space in the process.
44- that sounds cute!
45- Thanks. I have no clue where ideas come from. I pull it out of my sweaty socks.
Ack! This one died faster than the last one!
It’s not dead, we’re still here.
Ah. Sadness. My joyous idea became . . . less joyous. *glowers at random web sites*
We need the books to actually find their way into book stores. Or at least, that’s my opinion.
19 – And that’s so Alice. It’s true. Everyone does have their own style.
I think the MuseBlog publishers idea is great. I unfortunately have no idea how it would work.
50 – Me neither. I’m going to do a little Google searching and see what I can dig up.
I just found a company called Xlibris that seems pretty nice…buying paperbacks are about $15-$20, though, depending on the number of pages, and hardbacks can be up to $30.
52 – Sounds good to me. I assume we’d go the paperback route.
53 – Paperback would be best for a book’s first printing. If it’s a complete flop (I’m not suggesting it would be) then you haven’t paid just that much more. (However, you have wasted trees, but we won’t get into that.) If your book is a big hit, go for a 2nd printing with hardcover so generations can tote it around.
The logistical one of the group would like to point out that Web and Print both had advantages / disadvantages.
Pros:
Web = No wasted trees, less pollution because you do not cut down trees & process them, does not need ink, cannot be ripped, torn, burned, cannot give papercuts [Draws a blank because she can’t think of more yet]
Print = Can be toted portably, does not require electronics / electricity to read, cannot be hacked into and changed! There is a certain something about seeing your name in print.
Cons:
Web = uses a computer, which uses lots of electricity. LOTS. Can be hacked into. If the web / your network / your computer gets fried… you’re hosed.
Print = Gives papercuts. Can more easily be destroyed. Wastes trees. (sorry, it does – however, if someone comes up with a synthetic paper, cheaply & eco-friendly…)
[[These aren’t all arguments, just a few]]
But hey. It’s your choice. I think it would be a “Greatest Moments of Muse-ing” type thing with fanfic and best articles and such, don’t you. What’s the best name so far?
And Robert has a great point. You could start on the web and turn it into print and have it both ways!
54- The whole tree thing is what turned me of the idea of publishing in the first place (I mean the first place, right after the RRR was finished).
I don’t know.
At the moment, I’m leaning toward trying web-books and seeing what happens. If we’re really lucky we might get published in paper.
But at the same time we might not get published at all, because it’s on the web and anyone can read it so what’s the point?
56 – We should try that print on demand thing.
57- I should research it more. I shouldn’t get turned off because of ONE website and their opinions.
my goal is to get my story, or series i should say published, but it isn’t done, so i can’t do it just yet. i don’t even know if a publishing company would accept it.
58 – Good idea.
I would be honored if this could be publishe on the muse press.
[Jeeves, I posted your story on the Books in Progress thread, where you already have received a comment. –Rebecca]
Now, how about this? We could make a website, put our stories there, and ask for donations to get them published. Now, the biggest problem with this would be figuring out the donation system.
62- No. The biggest problem would be that putting them on the web is publishing.
Not exactly. I think if you make your own site, and post stories there, that doesn’t count, you see people doing it all the time, like things their cat did and so on, it would be a little unproffesional thing like that. Plus, as you a member, can you tell me if it’s too late to join the muse acadamy RP?
Sorry for the off track question.
64- Yeah, but they aren’t the entire book. If you can find the entire book on a free website, no one is going to buy it or wait for their library to get it.
66- plus, you have given up first publication rights.
No, we’d post segments. It’s just an idea, however, whatever I can do to help the Muse press, count me in.