Publishing discussion with Kate Ristau – June 2021

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

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