Kate Ristau, folklorist and writer, former director of Willamette Writers, presented a Power Point program on various avenues to publishing. She also volunteered to be a resource if anyone has questions about publishing.
The link to today’s program is http://kateristau.com/publishing-primer/. Other links to topics in her presentation are the following: _________________
The program covered five avenues to publishing: Journals and magazines, Indie (self-publishing,) small presses, hybrid, and traditional publishers. Highlights of her talk included
· every writer’s experiences are different (so imagine an asterisk next to every piece of advice),
· everything changes all the time in publishing (so what got published two years ago might not be saleable today)
o journals might have a whole new set of editors next year (so, sometimes, you can resubmit a couple of years after a rejection)
o markets change – what sells today depends on what’s selling today
o trends change – dystopian still sells, but don’t call it dystopian
o look at https://wccls.bibliocommons.com/v2/search?query=writers+market&searchType=smart to get Writers Market from the library
o search places like submittable by genre, poetry, scifi etc, and bear in mind some seriously specific “calls for submission” just might inspire you to write.
· pros and cons of each type of publishing (look at http://kateristau.com/publishing-primer/.
o Jane Friedman https://www.janefriedman.com/
o Joanna penn https://www.thecreativepenn.com/
o Jeff Goins https://goinswriter.com/
· And finally, the main question to ask a prospective publisher is how they will distribute your book
o Do you take the book to local stores
o Will it just be on Amazon
o What help will you have getting it into stores and to readers.
Kate also introduced us to a new development in publishing: Kindle Vella that launches in July. It is a method of publishing serial fiction. https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/GR2L4AHPMQ44HNQ7 where readers get the first three chapters free then spend kindle coins to read on. You won’t make a lot of money, but it might make you visible.
Kate added suggestions about finding and using an agent and how to check whether an agent is legitimate. One resource is Writer Beware https://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-beware/ . Another is Absolute Write Water Cooler https://absolutewrite.com/forums/index.php