Query writers who were rejected by agents at Objective Entertainment have been puzzled by the sudden flurry of new mail they've received. Why, after months have gone by since the rejection was received, logged, and deleted, were they getting yet another letter of rejection that directed them to a dead end?
Get out there and be pro-active, the agency suggests. Why not try publishing it yourself? How about AuthorHouse?
Anyone who's been at the query game long enough has learned that self publishing is not the way to get your words out there for all to see. There's no publicity department, no editor, no support staff, no distribution network, and that means no sales beyond your family and friends.
Why would a respectable agency even suggest such a thing?
They get $100 for every author who takes the bait, for one. And AuthorHouse more than makes it back in the money they earn off of a writer's dreams of success.
AuthorHouse needed the extra revenue, apparently, or at least their parent Author Solutions did. They're looking to corner the market on the vanity press industry, and that doesn't come cheap.
The Indiana-based corporation owns iUniverse and AuthorHouse and Xlibris, among others, and now it's sunk its profits into expansion. They have bought up Trafford so that they can rope in the Canadian writers as well.
Sure there's money to be made in the vanity business. Why shouldn't I join AuthorHouse's affiliate program? All I'd need is one fool to get suckered in and that $100 would be mine, to pay for stamps and paper and envelopes. That would be one less manuscript being submitted; one less writer competing for a literary agent's attention.
No, I can't. I can't do it.
It's Holy Week. To commit such a grievous sin as that, only days before Easter....
Yet, there's obviously a profit to be turned on the dreams of those who long to see their words committed to paper.
Lead us not into temptation.
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