| Project: A-Kon - Sunday
- Authors |
 They all have
horror stories about editors, titles, advances and publishers who don't
seem to care about their passion to write. But these authors who appeared
at Project: A-Kon all say they can't resist the drive to create new books.
P.N. Elrod, Gilles Poitras and Helen McCarthy agreed that it's too expensive
and risky to publish their own books, so they need to search for a publisher
who is sympathetic to their projects. |
 In Great Britain,
first novels typically sell only 500 copies, and publishers are reluctant
to take on new talent unless they see a chance of making money from them,
said McCarthy. "Books demand to be written," McCarthy said, citing her
book on Hayao Miyazaki. "You write because nobody else will give you the
books you want." |
 Poitras, who
wrote The Anime Companion as his way of letting fans know about the unexplained
cultural references in anime, noted that "Japanese do the same things we
do for very different reasons." The book was carefully researched to make
sure there was a specific source for the cultural notes, but not everything
had a solid source. Those more nebulous items were turned into the book's
sidebars - and Poitras said they were the most fun part of the book to
write. Take the cliché of sexual excitement causing mens' noses
to bleed: Poitras said he could not nail down the source of that until
he got an E-mail message from a Japanese man who said his mother told him
not to stare at a pretty girl or his nose would bleed. That was enough
for Poitras, who inserted a similar sidebar in his book. |
 Earlier, this
site listened to anime fan fiction writers. When Elrod was asked if she
had a suggestion for those writers, she replied with the story of her experience
with a fan who sent her a fan fic based on Elrod's Jack Fleming vampire-detective
character. The fan may have thought she was paying a compliment to Elrod,
but Elrod was angered, not liking any unauthorized use of her work. The
authors noted that fan fic writers have graduated to professional work,
but they warned those aspiring authors that never should submit a fan fic
to a publisher - and they should avoid any tinge of plagiarism if they
want to succeed. |
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