Thursday, May 24, 2012

Some advices for new authors...


It is a well-known fact that men are extremely inventive and horrible at the same time. There are many shrewd ways to steal and cheat some of the criminals use. Some of them are so skillful that could get round any law. There’s no exception it seems for any kind of business, branch and job. Including publishing, of course…
I cannot say I am the ultimate expert in all the good and bad sides of the long and hard process of books’ birth. Yet, my experience could save any new author a lot of anger, money or frustration. If you’ve written a book and are desperately trying to find a publisher, you’ll definitely come across some “ladies” and “gentlemen” who will “like” your manuscript so much that they will immediately offer you their services of “literary agents”. But when you agree to sign a contract, it will “turn out” that your nice work needs a lot of “editing”… Then, an offer will follow to edit your book in exchange of some money (not too much, compared to other similar but real services), so that it could be really “ready” for the market.
These guys will just take/steal your money and do nothing of their real job, searching and finding a publisher and then earning their percentage of the sold books (about 10 % usually). They will not just steal your money (after their “editing” your manuscript won’t be ready for the market), but your time too. As while they are lying to you that they are editing your work and after that are offering it to many publishers, you could search for and find some real offers from real literary agents and publishers…
I know I shouldn’t post anything offensive for anyone (and use no bad/foul language, though in this case I would really like to), yet I have to share my personal experience with such a lady. A few years ago, Jillanne Kimble, the so called “literary agent”, offered me to represent one of my books (Tale Of The Rock Pieces), but insisted that she had to edit it first, in exchange of some money, of course. As I’m not a native American or Englishman, I knew my work was not perfect, so I signed a contract for editing and then representing of my book with this “lady”… It was a big mistake… Then, I had to wait for nine months to finally receive an “edited” copy of my manuscript and to be really surprised to see that Mrs. Kimble had just put some commas and altered a couple (literally) of words. When I asked her (so many times) what was happening with representing of my work to publishers, she sent a response that so far no one was interested in my book. Then, when I asked her to let me know to which exactly publishers she was offering my manuscript, she just sent and answer: “They are a lot…” Well, finally I realized I was cheated in the most shameless way. I found some good sites with good, useful tips for authors, like writersbeware.org/com and talked to some friends all over the world who were more experienced than me in such matters and send an e-mail to my “literary agent” to let her know that we must put an end to our deal as she was not doing anything of her obligations…
Be aware of such persons, dear authors! If you need editing, use the services of editors, not “literary agents” who try to cheat you and just steal your money, though everything will seem legal. Or try to learn to write better, following grammatical rules, proper punctuation, etc, so that you won’t need any editing, though it seems a really hard task… 
http://www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/TaleOfTheRockPieces.html, http://allanbard.hit.bg, http://allanbard.hpage.com, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Author-Allan-Bard-Ivan-Stoikov-Fan-Page-Strategic-Book-Group/121092637984053,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yw3a5n00FI, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qUA8Avl7ew,

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/ivanstoikov.allanbard, http:// www.allanbard.blogspot.com, www.allanbard.wordpress.com

                  

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