<Takes a deep breath.>
I need a word to describe the feeling I got when someone I only vaguely know (from a large genre marketing site, where we exchange no more than pleasantries) announced proudly they’ve just had their first book published, and I was really happy for them, until I looked up the book on Amazon and realized it’s been published by some crappy little small press that can’t edit and can’t market, and has pages of cautions warning as such on Preditors & Editors, Hi Piers, and AbsoluteWrite, and most of their already-published authors use whiny excuses for low sales…but it’s not a vanity press, so I can at least not knock my not-friend’s judgement on that.
<Whew.>
The word isn’t schadenfreude, because I’m deriving no pleasure at all from what I suspect is this person’s impending misfortune. I can’t warn this person, because then I sound like an elitist buzzkill with an axe to grind against poor, scrappy little start-up indie publishers.
And I’m not that person. I adore scrappy indie start-up publishers – if they’re competent about it. Most don’t seem to be. This particular publisher has been around long enough it should have shaken all the loose bits into place, yet it still has distressingly low sales, loose acceptance guidelines, the unrealistic expectation of paying its editors and artists through royalties alone, and a bunch of other warning signs.
Signs the other author has been around long enough in the marketing group to at least have HEARD ABOUT.
So what I’m going to do is stay silent, and offer comforting platitudes a year from now when this person is ranting about how they only sold ten copies or less of their magnum opus, can’t get their rights back, and is an online flamewar with the owner/editor/still-loyal authors.
I’d like to think the applicable word is ‘practical’ rather than ‘cowardly’, because I recognize I can do nothing at this stage.
If you figure it out, let me know. I had a similar experience with a friend recently, only he keeps going back for more, and his books look terrible, and are over priced, and his covers are shameful, and he’s damn well better than this. All I could figure to do was to gently suggest that he find a new pub for his next series, that he’s got the sales and the chops to find someone better now.
That’s really all you can do. Ree. Anything more might risk the friendship, until he’s finally over the ‘honeymoon’ stage with this publisher. Some authors never get there.
I nominate “pragmatic” as your word. She’s made her bed, albeit poorly, and your cautions and should-haves cannot help her now that the final corners are tucked in, however crookedly. All you can do is step back and let her learn a hard, hard lesson without your help.
I know. The author isn’t enough of a friend that I’d feel okay saying anything, right now.
This is why I’m deeply skeptical of contacts created from #pitmad, large blog hops, and huge online marketing groups – because the aforementioned shaky publishers are always well-represented, both in numbers of authors and in author testimonials. Research *everything*.