Thursday, June 14, 2012

A Sample Chapter Online by Terry Burns


My client group is discussing the in’s and out’s of putting the first chapter (or more) of their work in progress online. Work that is put online for a critique group such as our own ‘crit room’ or any restricted access forum is not considered published, but any work that is put online and is accessible by the general public IS considered published. Some of these sites have a major number of followers, maybe even more than a printed version would sell to.

Why would an author want to do this with an unpublished work anyway? The usual justification is hoping an agent or editor would run across it, like it, and contact them asking for more. This has happened, but it is very rare. For the most part agents and editors have enough to wade through without going online searching for more. A majority of agents and editors won’t even go online searching when someone gives them links to material instead of providing it in a proposal as requested, but that’s a different topic. I believe the potential of ruling a work out by publishing it online outweighs any potential on accidentally interesting an agent or editor in the work.

As to the weight any particular publisher would give to material that has been published online, that varies from paying no attention to it to having it rule the project out for them. It would probably depend on how much of the work had been put up. For some publishers if any at all has been put up they don’t much like it.

My own opinion is that I don’t like to put any work online until it is contracted for publishing and even then after consulting the publisher. Some would not want it to be done at all unless they do it themselves and others have rules about how it can be done. I believe they feel there is no point in courting a potential problem when they have plenty of submissions by people who have not made their work public. Most if not all of them who wouldn’t mind restrict it to a maximum of one chapter.

It can make a difference if a work is entered in contests. In contests the judges are sent the contest material without the author’s name attached. If the work has been published online WITH the author’s name attached it can contaminate the judges pool for the work. Many contests will not accept a work if that has happened.

How about blogs or social media? Publishers used to pay little attention to them, but that isn’t the case any more. Audiences for these now go up into the thousands and most publishers consider them a significant marketing tool. The number one sales tool for a book is name identification or “buzz” and having a strong online presence is a major way of doing that, hopefully beginning long before there is a book to promote.

Let’s talk about nonfiction. It used to be that non-fiction books were much easier to sell to a publisher than fiction. Not so much these days, and I believe the reason for that is just what you are talking about, the amount of material that is online for free. If someone pitches me a project and I know all of their research was done online I know all of the material in their book is available for free. It may still have value to a potential buyer since that research has been done and all of the material assembled in a logical order . . . or it may not. There is no telling which way a publisher would come down on that question.

Is an author who has a regular blog now considered ‘published?’ Actually, yes, and the degree of the publishing credit would depend on the number of regular followers. We can look at it like this, a blog with a couple of hundred followers would be like having a writing credit of writing something like a church newsletter. One of my clients has a twitter account with over 40,000 followers. That is the equivalent of being a regular columnist in a small magazine.

The bottom line is that online publishing has changed or evolved in the past few years and many aspects of it are looked upon in quite a different manner. But then that’s the only constant in the publishing industry . . . change.


4 comments:

Timothy Fish said...

When I wrote Church Website Design, several years ago, the amount of free information that was available online is one of the reasons I thought it was worth the effort. But that was case where there was too much information online. I wanted to help readers filter the noise. I saw a similar situation with Extending Art of Illusion, but that was a case of the information online being out of. If we can learn anything from the sales figures of the two books, the amount of free information online is an indication of how interested people are in the subject. There seems to be much less interest in developing plugins for Art of Illusion than I had hoped, but Church Website Design continues to sell.

sally apokedak said...

Thanks for this post! Especially the part about novels being disqualified from the Genesis contest is helpful.

I'm going to take this under advisement.

I have two books showcased on the internet. I put them up because I've heard so many agents and editors say they Google you if they are remotely interested in you.

My problem is that I've been following the rules so long and I've gotten nowhere, so I'm feeling like living dangerously.

I have a book that took first place in Genesis, took first place for the year on Novel Rocket, earned me an SCBWI work-in-progress grant, made two editors from respected mid-sized general market houses court me, and got me an agent. And yet, here I am, unagented and with no contract.

This is a freeing place to be. I feel just like I did when I hit a certain age and decided I didn't care if people pointed their fingers and laughed, I was going to get in a suit and go swimming, because, doggone it, old, fat ladies like to swim, too. :)

I'm having fun with my writing and having fun building blogs for it and illustrating it. I'm liking it so much, I may go whole hog and publish it myself. We shall see.

Much to think about. Thanks for this post. Wouldn't it be nice if God just emailed directions to us in black and white? :)

Terry Burns said...

We do a first page critique on our website, but I don't believe that is enough content to be a problem with publishers. As far as Genesis goes I believe they feel evan a first page where the name of the author is identified could contaminate the pool of judges. For that reason, Diana does warn people that they should not participate in the first page feature if they are considering entering Genesis. But I have to agree, it would be so much easier if God would just tell us what He wants in an email. Or maybe He does sometime and we are just not hearing Him.

sally apokedak said...

ha. Or he tells us in a blog post and we are hard of hearing. :)