About a Publisher

January 21, 2008 · Posted in Writing

You’ve probably heard me mention a few times (most likely at the “original” Chocolate for Dogs blog) about having Like Glass “professionally” published — i.e. through an actual publishing house. I wish I could say I was posting now to say it was finally accepted (or even rejected; as I’m sure any author will agree, waiting to hear back is almost as bad as hearing “Sorry, not for us”).

Alas, I’m not, though I wanted to just post a … what’s the phrase … “shout out”? Yeah, that’s as good as any I guess — a shout out to the company, Rager Media. They’re based in Akron, Ohio, and they have a blog I wanted to introduce you to, The Akrocentric. There’s a lot of posts there about publishing (of course), and a lot of stuff about Akron itself — if, like me, you come from an area where the locals look on the city with high levels of contempt, it’s quite a strange and refreshing experience. I honestly never heard of an “Akronism” (not to be confused with an anachronism, a word I more closely relate with my current locale).

The company is quite new for the publishing industry — roughly a year old — but they’re already starting to make a few (albeit small) waves, with Jonathan Baumbach and Gary D. Wilson both getting good reviews — Baumbach’s You, or the Invention of Memory in the LA Times, and Wilson’s Sing, Ronnie Blue reviewed in the Chicago Sun-Times and on Kansas.com (unfortunately, both of those reviews are older than either site allows access to — if you can find a link, by all means let me know).

Rager Media’s “official” website (i.e. .com) is a little … well, under the weather. Which is strange, because when I first made my acquaintance with the company (~ June 2007) it was quite nice — nothing spectacular, but attractive and friendly. As a web developer I admit I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to websites, even though the design aspect (read: the pretty stuff) of web development was always a little beyond me. There is a lot of good information there, though, and a lot more info on their authors than I can put here, so be sure to check it out.

As I said, they’re still quite new to the business, so they’re swamped with submissions at the moment, and they don’t have the staff yet to keep up with it. I was speaking with the editor-in-chief, Christopher White, today, and he was saying that one of the main reasons they haven’t gotten to my novel yet was that they’re trying to give the authors personal attention, and there’s still a few of their “earliest” authors they haven’t gotten to.

That’s the way it should be — I’d much rather know that my work was accepted (or rejected) by someone who was giving it a serious effort, instead of just glancing through it and tossing it out because they just weren’t in the mood to read it. Even if it means having to wait a little longer to hear anything about it, it’s definitely worth it.

Be sure to check out the sites though, and take a look at the two books I’d linked to above (though I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you that your primary interest should lay with my book, of course — which, for the time being, is still in my hands).