Your Hosts: Dan, Mary Robinette, Howard, and Brandon
It sounds like a mean thing to say, but it’s not a wrong thing to say. A publisher is a corporation, and a corporation doesn’t have friends. It has contractual relationships. We can make friends with people who work for publishers, but those are not the same thing.
Liner Notes: here is an archived copy of Dave Brady’s essay about “company loyalty”
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, and mastered by Alex Jackson
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:17 — 14.2MB)
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Business research! Make a list of publishers who are releasing new books by new authors in your space. Watch for editor and author names.
Active Memory, by Dan Wells
The core quartet, Dan, Mary Robinette, Howard, and Brandon, took another crack at Brandon’s intensive course on career planning, focusing on your relationships with your publishers. Business partners, yes, friends, no. You may have friends who are editors, but the company is not your friend. At times, what the company, publisher or agent, sees as incentives may not be what you see as incentives, and you need to push for your own goals. Plenty of good examples, available in the transcript now in the archives.