Posts Tagged ‘publishing’
I have just learned that the production process for “Loneliness and Revelation“, my fifth book, is now underway. I’m a little surprised to see that the official release day will be the 29th of October, 2010, which is 14 months from now. It’s not unusual for a book to need a year from submission of manuscript to availability on the market, but I was hoping it might be available in time for KG next year. Well, I can’t complain: I’m sure this date was selected to ensure the book gets into the fall and winter catalogues for that year. (There’s probably not enough time to get it into this year’s fall and winter catalogues.) Anyway, 29 October is two days before Samhain: an auspicious time of year, after all. And this way, I continue the trend of producing at least one new book in every even-numbered year since 2004. 
I’ve also learned that the book has been assigned its ISBN number: 978-1-84694-355-3, and that it will be 160 pages long (short and sweet!), and will cost £ 10.99 in GBP, or $ 19.95 in USD.
We’ll be posting more info as it becomes available. In the meanwhile, I’m now well underway with writing the next book, tentatively entitled “Twenty-Two Sacred Relationships”. Here’s the table of contents so far:
1. Mind and body
2. Friends
3. Loving couples
4. Families
5. Elders
6. Rural landscapes
7. Urban landscapes
8. Hunters and animals
9. The Kitchen (i.e. people and the food we eat)
10. Storytellers
11. Musicians
12. Scholars and books
13. Teachers
14. Healers and patients
16. Soldiers
17. Sailors, Ships, and the Sea
18. Athletes
19. Leadership
20. Citizenship
21. The Market
22. Life and Death.
If you can think of anything that I should consider in each of these, or any other relationships I should include, let me know. I am hoping to be done a complete first draft by around winter solstice.
I got an email from one of the editors at Weiser yesterday. They are still considering my two non-fiction proposals. They are particularly interested in “A Wiccan Testament”. The decision will not be made until the next editorial meeting. But my novel was rejected.
Well, the rejection of the novel sucks. But it’s nothing to get too upset about. On recieving the rejection note, I sent a proposal for the novel to erynn999‘s publisher, Megalithica – Immanion. They are a small-ish publisher based in the UK. They look better organised than Dubsar House, the hole-in-a-wall publisher that printed my first book. Erynn reccomended Megalithica; another friend of mine was critical of them. But since no other publisher (so far) has shown any interest in my novel, and since even with P’s critical remarks understood, they can’t be worse than Dubsar house, with their embarrasing typos, no marketing / distribution to speak of, piss-poor typesetting and layout, bad corporate communications, the foreword entirely missing, etc etc… Therefore, I figure I’ve nothing to lose.
As I said at the TPC: the dilemma facing pagan authors, given the fact that the bottom appears to be falling out of the pagan publishing industry, is this:
1. To go with small publishers (which I’m prepared to do, although I prefer not to)
2. To signifigantly dumb down the quality of the text (which I’m not willing to do)
3. To self-publish, which is not as easy as it may seem, and is almost never financially sound.
Meanwhile, I’m going to keep trying bigger publishers for my non-fiction books. Folks, any magical help to get Red Wheel / Weiser / Conari Press to publish my books would be greatly appreciated!
Isaac thinks that Llewelyn would be a good home for my non-fiction. He told me he had dinner with one of the Llewelyn staffers at Pantheacon, a few weeks ago, and that this person showed great interest in the Wiccan book, the philosophical book, and in a second edition of Dangerous Religion. I’m a little skeptical. Publishing with Llewelyn may very well kill my academic career. Janet and Gavin advised me that Llewelyn gives their authors dodgy contracts. Still, Llewelyn’s distribution and exposure is totally amazing. They get their books into every tiny occult shop in the world. And as book royalties are still a fairly big portion of my income, it’s likely I’ll make decent money publishing with them.
Friends: Any advice for me? Any words of encouragement, or warning? What do you think of Llewelyn these days, and should I offer my books to them?