[stylist] Topic for discussion

[Tessa]

Hi Bridgit
I don't know about throwing your mfa in the trash but it doesn't help.
Last year I attended a talk by a member of the Ontario Arts Council, they provide grants for artists enabling them to carry out their art. In order to apply for an arts grant you must have 2 or 3 published pieces and self publishing is not allowed. I think the reasoning is that publishing validates your work, someone else besides yourself feels your work is good enough to publish, whereas in self publishing there's no outside validation. As I said in another post anyone and everyone can self publish, because they're self publishing they don't feel the need necessarily to be as critical of their work that they would if they were sending it to a publisher. The problem of course is that there are fewer and fewer publishers publishing fewer and fewer books so it's getting more difficult to go the traditional route.
You read about authors who received dozens of rejections before finally finding a publisher for their material, it's disheartening to say the least. 
Personally I think I'm going to go the traditional route as much as I can. 
The thing with self publishing is that you have to do it all writing and marketing. If you get a publisher they help out with the marketing. and promotion, of course they take a good cut of the book income but they're doing the work. I know people who have gone both routes, one of the ladies in our little writing group writers northwest four women who share writing and critique for one another had a book accepted by a publisher only to have them go out of business, a second publisher accepted one of her books then proceeded to slash it to a point where she was having to write almost an entirely new book. So definite prose and cons either way.
Tessa



----- Original Message -----
From: Bridgit Kuenning-Pollpeter via stylist  <stylist at nfbnet.org>
To: his'Writers' Division Mailing List'"  <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Date: Wednesday, October 5, 2016 11:03 pm
Subject: [stylist] Topic for discussion

>
>
> I'm curious to see what others on the list think of this. I thought it might
> make for a good writers discussion.
> 
> I'm getting my MFA in creative writing. I've been told by the program,
> editors and publishers that if we self-publish, we are throwing our MFA in
> the garbage. I recently sat in on a lecture with a publisher from Red Hen
> Press who once again backed this comment up. He advised against us
> self-publishing because it would be a waste of our MFAs.
> 
> Discuss, please.
> 
> Bridgit
> 
> 
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