Might be easier setting loose a pack of wild dogs.
We just read this post http://kidlit.com/2010/06/30/self-publishing/ over on kidlit by an idiot of an agent called Mary. Okay, so idiot is perhaps unfair. She is clearly very afraid, for her job, for her way of life. We don't blame her. Changes are a-coming.
In fact, Changes are here. This could not be more obvious now. Six months ago if an agent bashed self-publishing usually one voice would pipe up to defend it (funnily enough, it was always Zoe. We think she has google alerts set up!) On this post, 75% of comments were pro-self-publishing.
Which, in turn, prompted Mary to write this... we'll be polite and just say blog post... in which Mary manages to ignore 80% of the pro-self-publishing comments, and simply focuses on the couple of people who pointed out old self-pubbed authors like Mark Twain. In the comments her view is once more showed up for the ill-thought-out and badly researched piss that it is. Someone lists modern self-pubbed classics like the Shack.
She points out that Christopher Paolini is a self-publishing success (except that he's not. His mother and father published him through their own existing small press).
But the thing that really got to us here at Scathach, the thing that really riled our feathers, was this... here is a woman saying
- you are all too stupid to know if your work is good or bad
- and clearly far too stupid to send it to someone impartial to judge it
- and if you send it to an editor you are paying they'll say its good cos you're paying them so DON'T TRUST THEM
- and clearly even though I am getting paid too, I'm not getting paid for looking at the m/s and judging its worth, so I keep my integrity, and YOU CAN TRUST ME (told you she was an idiot)
- and all this, all this utter shit about how she is the only one who can judge the quality of your writing, and yet her blog clearly illustrates one point above any other
- Mary doesn't know the difference between there, their and they're.
- SO HOW THE FUCK CAN SHE JUDGE US?
