If authors are being asked to do the publishers’ job of marketing and publicizing their own books, shouldn’t the publishers pay them for it, as they would pay a staff member or outside publicist?

M. J. Rose thinks so. In fact, she’s beating the drum to promote the idea. “In almost all cases, publishers are making it clear that they expect authors to supplement their marketing/PR effort in various ways and, in some cases, even soliciting the author’s help with both time and yes, money. As a result, today the author’s marketing/PR effort is often equal to or even greater than what the house is doing.”

Authors are subsidizing marketing and PR and but that’s not enough, says Rose, a well known and savvy publicist for authors (as well as for herself). She wants to change the way publishers compensate authors. Read about it in Publishers Must Change the Way Authors Get Paid

RC

We know of some novels that were buried by critics. But here’s one that was buried by its author.

A San Francisco area author named Mary Kavanaugh actually held held a funeral for her rejected novel, Family Plots. After sixteen submissions she decided not to slip quietly into Author Oblivion. Instead, she invited friends to “view” the book, as well as rejection letters and other relevant documents, in a virtual open coffin. She invited guests to “bury their dead dreams, too.”

Honest, guys, I don’t have the imagination to make this stuff up.

Here’s an excerpt from the obituary:

Family Plots, the first novel of Bay Area writer Mary Patrick Kavanaugh, died uneventfully on July 22, 2008, upon receipt of its final rejection letter. According to the coroner, the cause of death was “lack of interest from the mainstream publishing industry.”

The novel was born in 2001 at the University of San Francisco’s graduate creative writing program. Despite beginning its life babbling and confused, early caretakers said it demonstrated great potential to entertain. With the assistance of professors, writing students, editors, book agents, and a snappy blurb from one of the author’s famous writer friends, the novel made its debut in the offices of sixteen New York publishers, all of who flat out rejected it. The rejecters have each been invited to serve as pallbearers at the open casket service, giving them a bonus opportunity to kill this project, while simultaneously enjoying a holiday in the Bay Area.

Family Plots is survived by the author, Mary Patrick Kavanaugh, its agents, Judith Ehrlich and Sophia Seidner, two writing groups, three editors, seventeen proofreaders, and the harsh realities of a cruel publishing industry that drove it to this untimely death.

Funeral services were held on December 6, 2008, at 4 p.m. at Lifemark Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland. Those unable to attend may pay their respects via the webcast.

In lieu of flowers, the author is inviting friends and strangers to bury their own dead dreams and dashed hopes in virtual cemetery plots.

Click on her website and visit the cemetery (the flock of ravens is a particularly macabre touch). It’s all great fun.

Maybe her stunt will inspire a publisher to exhume the deceased or even resurrect it.

RC