The future of publishing

Skipping the tricks for the treats

It’s Halloween! (And also Diwali. Or Diwalloween.) But you know what’s NOT scary? The very lovely notes we’ve been receiving from writers whose manuscripts we read but, for various reasons, chose not to take on as publishing projects. Yes, people whose work we have declined have been emailing us with gratitude for our process and our feedback, and that feels really good. One of our goals was (IS!) to bring more transparency, respect, and integrity into the submission process, and we are very, very happy that so far we seem to be succeeding.

This is what publishing can look like!

Here are some (de-identified) examples. If you recognize your own words here, please know how much we appreciate them.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read the manuscript. While I'm disappointed [TITLE] didn't meet your standards, I am EXTREMELY grateful for the feedback you gave me. I've gotten the note from several agents now that the book is too long, but none of them read further than the first few chapters before telling me to check back with them after I trimmed 30,000 words. I really value the specific notes you gave me and I will keep them in mind as I do another revision with an eye on trimming and strengthening. Thanks again for your time and consideration. Thank you for all you contribute, from both the author side and the small press side. 

Thank you for getting back to me with your thoughts about [TITLE], I've been digesting them the past few days. I'm encouraged and optimistic about your feedback—it indicated to me you truly engaged with the work. I haven't always gotten that level of engagement from editors and publishers, so as a writer I appreciate it on a pretty deep level.

What I also appreciated was that you offered actionable feedback that I can take into revisions. This also falls into the "not always the case" category, so I felt grateful for your specific, concrete ideas. I also appreciate the kind tone of your e-mail—as a writer, but also a person with the experiences you read about in [TITLE], kindness is no small matter around the material. I also felt that you left the door open for the future for [TITLE] with Galiot, which is lovely.

I'm very grateful for your consideration and for your thoughtful and detailed response. Your comments are a very useful as I continue to think about the audience for this book and the best ways to connect with them. I appreciate your recommendation to strike a better balance between sharing more in certain areas at the beginning (like [example] and [example]), while not sharing too much right away. I'll try to thread this needle better! Thank you again for your time and feedback, and I also wish Galiot Press much success!

The Future of Publishing

Well, we all know the future of publishing is Galiot, right? I (Anjali) got to be on a panel on this not-so-small topic at a joint program put on by Emerson College and the Boston chapter of the Women’s National Book Association. It was a sold out event (if one can say sold out about a free event) and it was such a delight to speak to and with an audience full of young, energized people of diverse backgrounds looking to enter the publishing industry and make a difference. I was so impressed by the students who came up to speak with me afterwards. They were professional, eager, and already doing bold things: writing books, creating publishing collectives, running open mic events. This is the future of publishing: people not afraid to take matters into their own hands and do things differently.

Panel, hosts, and audience at the Future of Publishing event

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In support of new approaches

We read numerous newsletters about publishing and bookselling, written by people I (Henriette) will call the public intellectuals of the book world. We’ve been saving observations that confirm what we’ve been feeling, thinking, writing about, and saying for the last few years, as we’ve been building Galiot Press. Here’s a small sample.

On the notion that books should be sold only in bookstores—and in independent bookstores, at that:

“There has been no moment in American history when most books were sold in (what we call) bookstores. In the early days of the republic, people bought them directly from printers, or by subscription, or maybe at stationers. Later in the 19th century, department stores were the most popular. Drug stores and newsstands have always moved many copies. And of course, while Amazon absolutely screwed up American publishing, it is the ‘everything store,’ and buying a book from there online—which is often the cheapest, quickest, and least ableist option for many Americans—is not categorically different from buying one from Dillards fifty years ago, or the General Store a century ago. Never, ever (here is me, always screaming about false nostalgia) have most Americans purchased books at bookstores.”—Anne Trubek, Founder of Belt Publishing

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Trubek again on the truth about print-on-demand technology in the current moment:

“. . . today a POD book is usually indistinguishable in quality from an offset or digitally printed one. Trust me! Really. (I get a lot of pushback so I’m going to overemphasize this.) You have bought them, read them, never noticed they were POD. Saying ‘PODs are crappy’ today is like saying ‘that small one pound computer on a lap can’t possibly be as good as the very large, heavy machines on desks! It’s terrible that people are sacrificing quality by using to such tiny light machines!’”—Anne Trubek

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Publishing and publicity expert Kathleen Schmidt points out the financial inequities of traditional publishing:

What about the authors who have written excellent books but are left hanging because there is nothing in the budget for them? Or, what about books from small publishers that deserve attention but are overlooked because influencers and reviewers feel obligated to highlight big titles? This has been a problem in the industry for some time and must be addressed. It isn’t healthy for book publishing that we can predict which books will land on The New York Times Bestseller list.

Schmidt goes on to describe how this affects publicity budgets and efforts:

I’ve long said publishers shouldn’t acquire books they can’t get behind with a publicity or marketing budget. This remains true, but most of the industry is in a vicious cycle: publishers need to acquire a certain number of books each fiscal year to meet billing requirements set forth by CEOs and CFOs (billing=how many copies they ship to retailers), so all titles will never receive equal support.—Publishing Confidential

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And then there’s the overall business model of what should now recognize as old-school publishing:

“But the new-generation publications listed above [Substack journalism newsletters] are serious operations, with editors, well-compensated reporters, strong, focused editorial remits, and high-quality production. And yet their future is bright. They have leaner business teams, less tech and administrative overhead, and effective business models that, assisted by available-to-all technologies, just work. The most forward-thinking of that list even share ownership with the writers, offering some of the spoils and spotlight to the people who contribute the most value to their businesses."—Hamish McKenzie, Substack Co-Founder, in Substack Reads

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Print on demand. Going beyond the bricks-and-mortar store. Treating all books equally and well. These are some of the core principles of our model at Galiot Press.

People who have years, decades, of experience in publishing and media are talking about these necessary changes. We are putting them into practice.

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For memoir-writers

In addition to reading a lot of publications on publishing, we both follow a lot of people who write about, well, writing. A recent post by Brooke Warner at She Writes Press called How to Show the Whole in your Memoir reminded me of a few manuscripts I’ve read recently, and I wanted to share her words as they may well be of use to some of you writing memoirs. Brooke focuses here on how memoirs need to include both self-assessment and societal interrogation:

How to hold this binary of self-assessment/societal interrogation is a central question for memoirists, and a central struggle. One of the reasons is because many memoir writers start their memoirs as a first-person account of “what happened” to them. The “what happened” is your scene writing. The narrator of what happened to you is a character—you, the writer—relaying your experience. It’s possible to tell a good story of what happened to you by only utilizing this limited narrative perspective, but it’s not enough for memoir.  

Both self-assessment and societal interrogation, I would argue, are the terrain of your reflective narrator (as opposed to the “in scene” narrator)—the you who knows more than the character to whom the experience happened (you as a child; you in your twenties; heck, even you last year). The world is a bigger place than what you, the character, knew at the time. And your reflective narrator is allowed to write about what you know “now” without needing to tell us when exactly you made the connections you’re making in your memoir. This is the work and integration of self-assessment.  

(I recommend you read the entire post.)

Deep breaths

These are fraught times. We are all living with a lot of stress. Please remember to take time to breathe, to hug your loved ones, to read broadly and deeply, to connect a bit with nature. Fall has been stunning here in New England, and we had, in addition to an amazing display of foliage, a rare sighting of the Northern Lights. We’ll leave you with these images.