We’ve been happy to receive lots of positive feedback from writers about both how fast (within 7 days) and how helpful our first reader responses have been; you can see some of their comments on our site.

And we know that writers submitting to their chosen editors through our service have their manuscript looked at within three weeks or less. With that kind of response time, the writer can move on to celebrating or looking for another publishing avenue. In the traditional model, the writer can still be waiting up to 6 months later (or longer).

Thanks,

Karen

I was part of a discussion just yesterday with some UK writers about vanity presses, and how the relatively low cost/risk of small runs via self-publishing or e-publishing effectively renders the old appeal–vanity presses’ perceived simplicity–void. A new model, which will be embraced more or less out of necessity by major and indie houses, alongside the self-publishers et al that already utilize it, is already here. Pay-up-front vanity presses (as opposed to honest self-pub services) won’t be able to keep afloat, because their business depends on unsavvy writers who don’t know any better, a demographic that, at least in my opinion, is quickly shrinking in size. (Moreover, VPs are built on the same bulk-production sand that has left major houses with warehouses full of remaindered books: just swap a warehouse for one’s living room.) As Michael Bhaskar says on The Digitalist, “Lets not wait for the future anymore; it arrived in about 2006.”

In response to Bhaskar’s assertion, I wrote, “It is true that ‘the future is here,’ and new forms of writing and reading, and technologies devised to such ends, have given the processes of composition and creation a more democratic bent. That will, in terms of lasting effects, be more significant than the forms themselves.”