Worldcons, addenda to some much more coherent advice

sartorias has a wonderful post about etiquette guidelines for Worldcons here:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/sartorias/31706.html

The guidelines are, in many ways, for new writers, or for new writers who hope to treat the Worldcon as an entry into the professional world. They're very helpful, excellent pieces of advice, to which I would like to add:

2a. You can learn a lot by attending program items featuring agents.

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Publishers, Vanity Presses and evil, a digression

Is there any chance you could link me back to your discussion of vanity
presses? I've been having a dreadful time trying to convince a first-time
author I've been editing not to go with a vanity press. She took a class
and believes that publishing houses are the work of the devil (?!). Any
info much appreciated!

Everything I say here is about fiction. In fact, it's about genre fiction in large part. Non-fiction is different. If you have a non-fiction book, you can read this, but it doesn't apply to you.

I mentioned in one or another of these rambling posts that the reason I started all of them in the first place was the mention of Vanity Presses. valancy made the above comment in one of the topic threads, but I wanted to break it out to address it at length. Which is, yes, how I do anything <wry g>. It's not one that's overly dear to my heart in the same way that bookstore neep is, because it's not a large part of my life.

But the relevant comment was that an editee of valancy believes that publishers are evil, which is her reason for wanting to go the vanity press route.

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