My heart bursts its banks, spilling beauty and goodness. I pour it out in a poem to the king, shaping the river into words. (Psalm 45:1)

Welcome to our new blog!

Note that this blog is primarily for members of CWOSA. Only those members who have signed up as authors to the blog are able to post on this site, although all may leave comments.

You may not pass on any posts from this blog without permission of the author, but you may pass on a link if you wish to share something written.

To join CWOSA, you are required to either be a Christian writer or aspiring writer who lives in Southern Africa, or a Southern African Christian writer living overseas. If you qualify and wish to learn more, click on this link.

TOPIC OF THE MONTH - SEPTEMBER

1. Read the topmost post, then click on "comments".
2. Read the last comment to see the most recent addition to the story.
3. Copy/past the entire story to date into a new comment box.
4. Add a further three words.
5. Click on Comment as. If you are signed in, your name will appear. Click on Publish.
6. If you're not signed in, click the small dropdown arrow, and select Name/URL. Give us the name we know you as, and click on Publish.

Remember! This is meant to be a story!
Have fun!

Tuesday, 23 August 2011

Vanity Publishers

Excerpts from an email concerning Raider Publishers:

I hadn't heard of Raider Publishers, so did a check on "Preditors and
Editors" (http://pred-ed.com/) a well-known site where you can check out
possible dodgy sites or organisations in the writing world. They list Raider
as a "Vanity Publisher".

I then Googled Vanity Publishers to find something I could send you on the
subject. Here's one that is straight-forward and tells it like it is:
http://www.writersservices.com/res/ri_vanity_publishing.htm

Basically Vanity Publishers are not well regarded. They are similar in some
ways to self-publishing BUT you have to figure out a way to check up that
they produce the goods - and it costs you a LOT of money. If you're going to
go that way, you would be safer with straight self-publishing or even e-book
publishing. And Val's your lady to talk to in that area.

However I would urge you not to give up on traditional publishing. You're
young and have a long time ahead of you. Now is the time to build up your
platform so that when you get to the point that you ARE ready to publish,
you have a marketable proposal and a presence on the Internet. Start working
on short articles: devotions, anthologies, blogs, etc, so that when you get
to sending out a query letter/proposal for your book, you have a list of
published articles you can give to impress potential editors.

Re traditional Christian markets (and non-Christian) - You're right that
most only want solicited manuscripts, but not all of them. There are some
that are open to new writers.

Re. agents - you should NEVER pay an agent to market your work. This is a
problem here in S.Africa in that the few agents I have heard of DO charge -
so any others of you with a different experience are welcome to shout me
down on this. Overseas agents do not accept money up front. (Some will
charge you for postage, but I imagine with emails today that is no longer
likely.) They get their money out of commission from the sale of your book -
a payment that goes on as long as the book is in print.

Problem is again - many of them don't take on unsolicited writers. Sigh.

Posted by Shirley Corder at 13:43

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