Why buy the cow when you are giving the milk away for free?
It’s my opinion as a publisher on giving too much of your work away to gain fans is a big mistake—huge. “Why buy the cow, if you are giving the milk away for free?” Worse than that—giving it away too soon.
With those statements, I have just made writers everywhere gasp. Unpublished authors should never show their work. A publisher does not have time to come to you, so they are not reading your work. I have on occasion, a very rare occasion, found a story by accident. But I also take pause, because if you give too much of your story away, it can be stolen. Why torture readers with work that hasn’t been presented to a publishing team? Things get changed, moved around and polished. You have basically just made fans read work they won’t ever see in the same light. Save your unfinished or unpublished work for a writing group, a close friend, or family. Put together a pre-reading team like I did when I was a new writer.
As an executive editor, I have and will continue to delete submissions with only links to where I can find the work they are submitting. You must send a query, at the very least. That is like applying for a job and refusing to do an application and handing them a card with links to where to find your credentials and resume.Some new writers like to post their work as they write it, one chapter at a time, until they give the entire story away. Now that’s just fear that is all it is. If you have confidence in your work, you know in your heart of hearts that you will be published and your book will sell.
Once your book is contracted and fully edited and you have the green light from your publisher then it’s okay to start showing segments of your work, before it goes for sale.
It’s great to be out there making friends, schmoozing and mingling. But you shouldn’t try to sell to your readers until you have something to sell them.
Next week, The Etiquette of the Published Author. It’s never too early to start learning that now.
Dawn Binkley
Executive Editor
Hellfire Publishing
The only real exception to this, in my opinion is when you're going a serial. That does come out one chapter at a time and builds to the end. Some readers are not found of serials, but I've done them and like to do them. It's not a confidence thing for me. I just plain like them. :P
ReplyDeleteI wish I could say I wasn't guilty of something like this, but even I have posted excerpts of my work. I know it will change and be polished and my readers may never see that particular piece of work, but I feel like maybe they'll see something and like it. Maybe they'll even look forward to seeing it published.
DeleteI've done lots of things backwards in the writing industry and I can only hope it helps, not hinders. Good post!
I absolutely agree and see it all the time, and have told others to not give to much away. Your headline is one of my favorite saying, Dawn! Why buy the cow when ya get the milk for free, which one normally hears from a man...so I made one up for the women to say....why buy the pig when ya can get the sausage for free..LOL Just had to throw that in. ;)
ReplyDeleteGreat advice as always...However, we all know that I do share and give out short stories all the time, for the most part those are not being published, just fun reads for any who care to stop by. To me it's okay to share ones talent, just not what you plan on submitting. Though, I am guilty also of having one of my free reads published. ; ) We as writers do need to be careful and we all learn as we go!