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Kay, so here's rant number two. This rant shall be entitled:
Vanity Publishing.
So, why am I ranting about vanity publishing, you might ask? Because vanity publishing is one of my pet peeves. In case you don't know what vanity publishing is, it's a type of publishing where a company will publish ANY book, no matter how good or how bad it is. The catch? You have to pay them, and the price almost always ranges in 4-5 digits.
The problem I have with someone using vanity publishing is that it means that they're usually not good enough for regular publishing. Many people who turn to vanity publishing have been rejected by several different companies. And yet, it doesn't seem to sink in that maybe, MAYBE their book just isn't good enough to be published.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but giving publishers the option of rejecting a book was to try to make sure that no crap hit the market. If they sent out a crappy book and it didn't even sell five copies, they'd be out thousands of dollars and their reputation would probably take a landslide.
And another thing about vanity publishers is that they usually have a bad reputation since they'll publish anything, since that means they've most likely published a lot of crap. Many book stores won't even buy books from vanity publishers because they're afraid that it will just be another mediocre attempt at literature and it won't sell at all, therefore they would be out of the money they used to buy the books in the first place.
So what am I trying to say? Simply that if you want to get published, vanity publishing isn't the way to go. If someone has to pay for their book to be published, they either need to seriously re-think their plan or seriously re-think themselves.
And that's all for today. Until my next rant
 MissMysty · Mon Jan 16, 2006 @ 08:03pm · 0 Comments |
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Greetings, and this is my first post in Maemi's Rants About Writing.
Okay, so rant 1:
Idiots and Constructive Critism
As you might have guessed, I go on the Writer's Forum a lot, and I rather enjoy the company of many people I meet. I see smart comments, reasonable arguments, and intelligent critism by people who know what the hell they're talking about.
And then, there's the others
If you've ever been on Neopets, they're called 'n00bs'. If you don't like chatspeak, you can just call them idiots or ignoramouses depending on the level of your vocabulary. But whatever you call them, they're still the same. They post on the Writer's Forum with their ideas for stories and their own rants (usually about critism they got). These rants are contradictory and have poor vocabulary. More often than not their argument falls apart by the second page (if it even gets that far), and they start ranting about how all the posters in the thread are wrong, they're right, and more often than not they end up leaving when no one defends them.
These people make me twitch. They always seem to think they're 'so mature'. And, I'll admit, I'm fifteen and can be immature if I want to be. But when I'm talking about writing, I swallow my pride and let people critique. If they gave me comments saying they really liked it, that's great, and I know that I'm doing something right. If they give a comment that there's something I could improve on, I seriously consider it. Yes, I may, in the long run, ignore it. But at least I don't rant to people who don't even know me that 'they're being so mean!'
There's a certain thread I've been to recently that comes to mind. I won't mention who the poster was, but they seemed to have a problem with people leaving comments such as 'this is cliche'. Yes, it's vague, but it's valid, and should make you think 'oh, maybe I should look this over and/or re-write it!'. Not according to this person. They thought we should fix all her mistakes for her, not just say there are mistakes. In other words, she wants to be a poet, but she's too lazy to self-edit. Wow, and people say I have a bad work ethic.
My point is, if you're going to be posting in a forum, expect critism on your writing. No one's perfect (I know I sure as hell am not) and to think so is ignorance in itself.
And that's my rant for now
PS: If you want to see that thread, check out my post history. You should be able to identify the topic by the post I put in it biggrin
MissMysty · Thu Jan 12, 2006 @ 05:09pm · 0 Comments |
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