I am hoping to find in WS an ambitious writer/blogger who might wish to undertake a new and wonderful project

As I have mentioned before it's increasingly difficult to peddle one's works. As the veteran AWAD’er will no doubt agree, I myself am no latter-day Hemingway; but if he were alive today he would have a new reason to commit suicide

Although it was never easy, the process today is daunting. With the old kind I remember from my youth, you simply send a MS and if they liked it they published it and you got paid for it by the word or in the case of a book, you got royalties. But today it seems impossible to do it the old way apparently because the traditional publishers are so inundated. Since word processing makes it an estimated 25 times easier to compose and so for that reason there are 25 times as many writers, within a given period each one gets probably 625 times as many MS's on speculation

There are a daunting number of online sites where you might get published (Googing “online-publisher” will get you the better part of one million hits) but which are also devoid of any sort of compensation. Though a recent development is the “free” site where you might get a pittance for your article or book—Helium.com and lulu.com respectively come to mind--they all seem excessively complex. On the first page of any such site there are ten links and each link gets you a page with ten more links ad infinitum whereupon you eventually just give up. After much tribulation I had nonetheless successfully joined Helium, hoping I might submit an article but continuing links to more new requirements finally discouraged me

To further set hurdles, as late as 2003 most legitimate publishers astoundingly wouldn't accept a digital MS but required you snailmail a printed copy, presumably with return postage. If Ayn Rand were rejected by 12 publishers before she found one willing to publish her first major novel (The Fountainhad), today she might still be unsuccessful after 625x12 = 7500 tries and about $30,000 in postage

So there is in fact, a new kind of publisher predominant who will laugh if you suggest they pay you and instead, if you want to get your work in print you pay them. Then they might require additional payments if you want them to find a market for it but even then if it doesn’t prove successful you of course don’t get a penny from anybody. But you did get to choose its font and page size and the appearance of the cover

Thus in the digital world where sending manned rockets to the moon got so easy we quit doing it 40 years ago, it seems to me there ought to be an easier way for the aspiring author to find a suitable market. So somebody who knows how to do these things should start a new site. It would be easy to use and would work as follows:

The hopeful user would submit an email or a post containing boilerplate such as his name and address, the sort of pub for which it’s intended, and identify means of remuneration such as Pay Pal, etc. He would simply include his MS—a magazine article or book, for instance--as an attachment. That’s all he would be required to do

Admittedly the software for this new site I propose would be elaborate, demanding, and difficult in its algorithm because for instance it would have to be familiar with the requirements of thousands of publishers and therefore it might take months or years for even a highly competent crew of Administrators to establish. But it would be a boon to millions of amateur, fledgling, or even erstwhile writer such as I and possibly the professional who can’t spend a lifetime attempting to find a market for each composition, discourse, or document

After a quick scan if Admin of this new sight considered the MS at all promising, it would set into motion software which submits the MS (in digital form of course) to pubs —mags or booksellers—considered compatible. If not of course the author would soon get a rejection notice. Given even an outside chance, however, he might get the attention that would otherwise require him ten years of sweat and tears to perform alone; while eventually the Admin of this new site might realize a few cents’ profit by a modest cut from any successful pub or even in the case for instance of a best-seller, a substantial return


dalehileman