Small press interviews
Cheryl Morgan has been running a really interesting series of interviews with small-press publishers in recent issues of Emerald City. This month she interviews Ben Jeapes, former editor of the British small press Big Engine; among other things, Jeapes points to a web page he put up on How not to get published, detailing an exchange he had with an author. The author (who hadn't actually submitted a manuscript) says, ". . . well, then, I don't think we can use you as our publisher! Sorry 'bout that, but we have our guidelines just like agents and publishers do and if they don't match, well, you don't get to publish our book. . . ."
Of course authors should walk away from publishers who they don't want to be published by. But when the author's first contact of any kind with a publisher is to send them email rejecting them as a publisher, it suggests to me that the author may be a little out of touch with the way the industry works.
. . . Back to the interview: I hadn't realized that the authors for 3SF #3 didn't get paid. Yikes.
Anyway, if you haven't been reading Cheryl's interviews, they're worth looking at. (So's the rest of Emerald City, mind you.) She's previously interviewed Sean Wallace of Prime Books, Marc Gascoigne of Black Library, and Pete Crowther of PS Publishing.