This posting is a bit of a warning, as much as it is a blog of my views on a particular topic.

When I was an author prior to dabbling in publishing, I often speculated what motivated publishers in their contracts and general relationships with their authors. I often assumed a lot of negativity. From a naive point of view I considered many of the contractual elements as being rather complex and extreme.

Now, I know there are unscrupulous publishers out there, and some of them do hover among the establishment, but as a publisher I also can see the other side of the ‘argument’. I will focus on this.

I can’t, for legal reasons, go into details, but I can say that despite only being in business for just over a year, and publishing 11 titles by end of this year, we have had contractual disputes or disputes that ran counter to what we consider to be the spirit of contract. Since then, mind you, we have tightened our wording. In most of these cases, it was authors who changed views on what they wanted, and sought every means to make it happen (or planned to). I pondered on more than one occasion why these things happened.

Firstly, it might not have been totally cynical, but rather, an act of ignorance. I can sort of live with that reason, and in one case an author made corrective action and we are grateful for that. The other reason is selfishness. If an author thinks they made a mistake going with us, or that there is a way to reinterpret the contract so that the publishing regime is realigned with the author’s new agenda, this is cynical. This is selfish. This is disloyal.

Disloyal. One use of the term is associated with a superior-inferior relationship, where the inferior doesn’t obey. I don’t mean this. I am talking about a small company that tries its hardest to support authors – to give them a leg up in the long ladder of a writing career, and expecting the authors to return this loyalty by sticking with us by contract and what it entails. If an author wants us to publish a title, we ask to have full rights to publish it – print, electronic, smoke signal, and worldwide. This is what our contract basically says. We expect no other copy of anything resembling  the manuscript to exist on any publicly accessible source. etc etc. It is amazing, in the short life of our company, that we encountered something in this space on three occasions. Disloyalty.

Cynicism aside, we have an absolutely fantastic family in IFWG Publishing. And I mean family. A bunch of writers who are like a small, virtual community and where many of us participate in writing workshops and joke and kid around. it is a by-product of mutual respect and loyalty. Yes, I am affected enough by the negative side to write this blog, but I can also say that the good far outweighs the bad.

So I return to my original thoughts. Yes, as a publisher, working with a myriad of people, some of whom can be disloyal and even downright wacky, it is critical to protect my business. Yes, a contract has to be wordy and long. Yes, I have to be tough on first publishing rights. Yes, I do have to be literal at times. But I also believe I have to be loyal to you, the writer, as well, and prove I am no hypocrite.
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I wrote the following in answer to a fairly similar question posed in a writing forum that I am a member of. I wrote it quickly, but when I reread it, I realized that I said a lot, with relatively few words. So, here it is!

It all depends on what you want to do with your story, and with your career.

1. You can try to publish your work through small presses – some are more picky about quality and polish than large presses, but there are also fringe/specialist presses that aren’t fussy. If you find and befriend the latter, you might be able to publish quickly. If all you want is to see your work printed with limited market penetration, this is one way to do it.

2. If you are dead keen on getting street cred in the publishing world, without compromise, you have a long journey and you should just keep trying until you get the break. In that case, it is NOT smart to show more than a few pages of your serious material in public access Internet sites (like this) – otherwise you lose what some publishers consider important – "first publishing rights".

3. You can self publish. There are options here. You can do it all yourself, buy your ISBN, get copyright, go through services like Createspace and end up spending fairly small amounts of money and you have something someone can buy through Amazon. It doesn’t market your product – that is up to you, and there is no professional polish, formatting, editing, done. For the vast majority of people who do this, they will have sub 100 units sold, the majority by you, family and friends. But you might think this is ok

4. You can self publish through a self-publishing company. They use Createspace, Booksurge, Ingram and other services, depending on how the company is set up, and many of them are mercenary. They will charge quite high for the services and they will not be fussy about the quality of your work. If your work is unpolished or (forgive me) crap, they wont care, and it will be reflected in the product. They will not edit your work unless you pay for it, and the editor isn’t always THAT good. If you pay for cover art, they will provide it. If you want it marketed, they will do it for money, otherwise, the vast majority will do nothing. Sales are rarely good, much like doing it yourself. Again, this might be what you want.

5. There are a few companies out there that offer a form of hybrid service – you pay them to publish you, and they look after full service, and may even refuse to publish you until a minimum standard is met, despite the client’s willingness to pay. This is the best of both worlds. Again, sales are not necessarily great, but at least you are given the equipment to optimise your chances.

With regard to self publishing, it has a lot to do with the final product. How good it is. Traditional publishers will openly say that a self-published work spells the doom of the title ever transferring into traditional publication. Bullshit. Matthew Reilly, Christopher Paolini and Grisham are examples of the contrary. The fact is that if you sell between about 2000 and 5000 units, agents and publishers will start showing interest. Having said this, boy do you have to work to get your stuff marketed, and also… it has to be good. There is no quick way there.

Also, those of you who want to hold out to get the traditional path break – think long and hard about that too. Luck aside (hey, I would like to win Lottery too), it is a long journey. Most specialised small presses will publish you but is it success? Look at the quality of their work – many are as nearly appalling as most self-published works. Limited. Almost worthless.

Now to dispel the biggest myths. First, if you actually get the break and publish your work through a tradpublisher, don’t give up your day job. On average, a successful writer needs about 10 novels drawing in royalties before a reasonable income can be got. Secondly, when a traditional publisher offers to publish you, they will probably invest about 50K worth of print run (about 5000 units) and spread it among the 120,000 outlets (work that out) and then they will wait and see. Most outlets will try a new author/title out for about a week or two, and if no sale, they will return it for pulping. If it isn’t received well within about 2 weeks, a publisher will simply let the title go to pasture – and the publisher owns the rights to the novel, so the author can’t do anything with it, except try to drum up interest. That’s it, you see, tradpub or not, new writers need to do the work. Publishers will not invest marketing money (beyond about 10k) if your name isn’t Dan Brown.

So where do you go? I think it is relatively simple. You give yourself every chance possible to get your name out there, and do it smartly. Most self-publishing activities, if handled well – the right publisher, the right polish, the right marketing, and the right product – has to be good, will never harm your chances to get traditionally published, but at least you get a foot into the industry and you LEARN from it.

Research every step of the way.