I was asked why I stopped trying to find a more traditional publisher to handle the prose books since they would have all the extra marketing skills etc to sell titles?
It isn't so much that I stopped looking it is the fact that publishers are simply not interested and have moved away from reading and publishing and gone more for publishing by committee -with members and their own prejudices and biases.
This is what I got from one publisher regarding The Red Papers last year:
"Dear Terry,
"Thank you very much for your message and for sharing the background to your extensive work in wildlife study and conservation, as well as the details of your two publications.
"We appreciate your dedication and the long-term fieldwork and research that support these titles. To help us better understand the scope and potential fit of your work with our editorial line, we would kindly ask you to complete the attached proposal form. This document will allow us to gather key information about the content, intended audience, and objectives of the books. It also outlines how to send further material should the proposal move forward.
"Once we have the completed form and any additional documentation you wish to share, our editorial board will carefully review the proposal. If we feel there may be a possible fit, we will be in touch to discuss next steps.
Thank you again for considering Lynx Nature Books. "
Now, considering that the company had as best a synopsis as I could give of the work which covers decxades of study, research and field work as well as gathering very rare images how else can you make the work of interest to a publisher?
Controversial and against dogma -fully referenced from official publications and works that back up the statements and not "Well I heard" as seems more common these days. We now KNOW what the original British Isles wild cat looked like as well as the fact that we know when Scottish zoologists declared (in 1897) that the Highland wild cat had become extinct. It can now be proven (not that it ever needed to be) that there were indeed three variations in Old British foxes.
Original: since 1900 dogma set it that meant that generrations have been misled by people who like to call themselves experts but who preach dogma. It has taken decades of archive research as well as investigation to not just prove what is stated in the books as facts but even more to get physical evidence in the form of taxidermy specimens to prove the case.
The Red Paper: Canids (2010) was called by the late Sir David Bellamy "explosive for British natural history" -and that version of the book was "sparse" com,pared to the 2022 version.
Perhaps publishers want to save themselves embarrassment from decades of inaccurate books they have published?
And, no, I never heard back from Lynx Nature Books. I did hear from another publisher that my manuscript had gone through the first committee to be looked at, then that the second committee had approved "the book being listed" to be looked at. A year on and nothing.
Three years ago I was informed by one publisher that with modern societal changes they needed to look at books and consider gendere diversity and ethnic diversity and what my book could contribuite to that. I was writing about researchy on wild canids and felids and just what the hell anything else had to do with that I have no idea.
Unfortunately, I am not included in the long list of virtue signalling tick boxes.
The Red Papers were accepted three times by a publishing editor only, a month or so later, the same editor telling me that "At the moment the book does not fit into our upcoming schedule". I later learnt that one publisher was very unhappy with one of the editors as they had been publishing the modern, false British natural history for decades.
I have a big collection of books on or referring to foxes in the UK. Each and every one of the authors has just done what we would call today "copied and pasted" from others. An incorrect fact published in 1950 is copied (almost verbatim) throughout the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and ad infinitum. Lying about factual history is never good.
Then we come to the "World mystery" books. Heavily researched and referenced with some -truthfully- very rare or thought lost photographs and images (we know they are lost images because author after auther states this...they just never went to the source material). The photographic image of the City of Brtistol that appeared in the sky over Alaska. Gone forever.. well, no. I found it.
Many "mystery creatures" (cryptids) took years to dig down to the actual facts in the sources to sometimes surprisingly identify and only through archive research did I find a newspaper report of what might have been the first gorilla from Africa in the early 1800s.
The truth may well not be "sexy" or "hip" but for each animal identified or each mystery looked at and solved there are those that are not. You follow the facts and the reference sources to the truth -or the mystery.
Sadly, unless you scream "cover up" or push sensationalist but provable false claims publishers are not interested. Back in the 1980s -yes, the 1980s- one publisher "loved" my manuscript but, in writing, asked whether I could not just add in claims of government cover ups, threats and so on to "spice it up"? I responded that I could only write about provable facts and my own experiences and would not lie to spice things up. My book suddenly became very uninteresting!
I am an archivist, researcher and historian so what do I do -just gather all the material in files andf let it gather dust until I am no more and it all gets burnt or thrown into a skip and lost forever? No, I do what most stupid people like me do: self publish in the belief that people would sooner have fact that sensationalist lies.
There are a lot of us stupid people around.
