Are you writing SF/F? If so, you have been to cons, right? I ask, because I had a coworker, back in the early nineties, who told me his wife was working on an SF novel, but hadn't been to a con, no time.... I jumped up and down, and finally they did make it to Armadillocon. And he came in the Tuesday after the con, and she'd asked him to apologize to me, that I'd been right, that she really DID need to go.... My daughter, far more knowledgeable, knew she needed to go back to Real cons when she finished the first draft of her fantasy... was it last year? Year before?
No, you don't have to loose all rights. I've hit three agents, and it's been with the third since Dec, and I'm still waiting to hear.... BUT: last year at Balticon, I went to a presentation by Bilmas of Jabberwocky (it's his agency) entitled "so you want to be an agent". In that, he talked about for the average Big 5 publisher boilerplate contract, they normally negotiate something like 75 or 80 points, including world rights, etc. I spoke with him after, and if I wind up directly submitting to a publisher (most WILL NOT ACCEPT unagented novels), and it's accepted, I will go to him and have him deal with the contract... and it would be well worth my while. As he put it, even if it doesn't get me more money, it gets me rights.
Writing isn't just a hobby or a love or a need, it's also a business, and you must treat it that way.
]]>I was in an APA for about 15 years. We had someone like that in the APA. Y'know, an awful lot of fonts look so much alike that it's hard to distinguish them. And then there's others, that you take one look at, and you understand why they were used once, and NO ONE ever wanted to struggle through reading that font again.
And no, I've never considered trying to read Fraktur.
Finally, being as how I'm bouncing three shorts, and there's the novel, I know from submission guidelines that the publishers or agents or editors do not want to read in your beloved font, they want Times Roman or Courier, I forget if they want 10.5 or 12pt, 1.5 or doublespace.... But then, I read the guidelines. I don't want them to reject me out of hand.
]]>Manuscript Preparation http://www.sfwa.org/2008/11/manuscript-preparation/
The form is incredibly useful as a tool, not just for submissions. Think of the classic manuscript page as a "container" to fill. When filled completely it is 60 characters across and 25 lines down. The classic "word" was five characters and a space, so each "line" could hold ten "words", thus a page would hold 250 "words". The reality of course is that a filled manuscript page has white space, that part is critical and is missed by most people. The white space is important.
When publisher shifted from paying writers by the "page" to counting "words" it divorced the process from the final book. A 100k "word" novel is larger than 400 "manuscript" pages, yet 400 manuscript pages would have been considered 100k in the past.
You had people like Frederick Van Rensselaer Dey, writing Nick Carter, who filled whole digest magazines published weekly. He would write 33k by hand each week, yet that was based counting manuscript pages, not "words".
Nick Carter digests http://dimenovels.lib.niu.edu/islandora/search/mods_primaryName_author_ms%3A%22Carter,%20Nick%22
]]>When I write by hand, I use a standard "wide rule", 70 page spiral, filling only one side. If I fill one page and start the next, I have to fill it as well. In the Long Ago and Far Away, I would scribble a brief sentence or two in a tiny notebook I carried. I'm still trying to understand those notes. I learned that words on the page can grow to something greater, but the page must be filled to have those words grow. Get Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, or Writing Without Teachers by Peter Elbow for more about "Free writing".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Elbow#Writing_Without_Teachers
Filling each page is the same as filling a classic "manuscript" page. I count each page as 250 words. I name, date, and number each page as I go. When the spiral is filled, I pull the wire, then clean the left edge; most spirals have a clean perforated line to tear on. I then put the pages into three-ring binders based on how they are labeled. I scan the pages and have them in pdf files so I can have them there on the screen to read. There is no valid OCR option, so I simply read what is on the scanned page. The hand written page acts as a mnemonic for me. There is more information triggered by the memory of writing the page, than is on the page itself.
When I type a page, I use a simple editor like Bean that lets me set a classic manuscript format, one inch margins, half inch gutter, double spaced Courier 12. It is the classic 60 characters across, 25 double spaced lines down. I save it as rtf so that it keeps the manuscript format.
There is a structure and a rhythm to filling the hand written page, or the classic manuscript page. That first half page drop, then filling each page. Not letting the last page be just a few sentences, but filling to "The End". It drives the process forward because I know what my "page count" needs to be.
I've been doing this for decades, and it is a joy to work at my own pace, for my own production schedule.
whitroth @50 said: Writing isn't just a hobby or a love or a need, it's also a business, and you must treat it that way.
Sorry, Mark, but we seem to be talking past each other. I recommend that you read the Kris Rusch links that I posted above before you commit to anything. You will find that the stuff you keep saying has no basis in reality. The steps that you make now can have longterm adverse impact on trying to make this a "business". When I saw your comment I instantly said to myself, "You really shouldn't use words that you don't understand." Sadly, I don't think that you will read the links, and five years from now you will be wondering what happened. Like I've said, I'm not trying to score points here, but I can see the train-wreck that is about to occur, and I understand why, because you feel the need to have your book published by a "Real" publisher so that it can get recognition and be up for awards.
As far as going to conventions: I don't even know where to start explaining my shock and horror when as Licensed Professional Civil Engineer, I attend the Santa Fe Nebulas in 1998 as a "fan". Bedlam is the closest word. I of course did not learn my lesson, so later, as a member of SFWA, a "Real" published writer, I was exposed to even worse and let my membership slide. I look at what happened as a lesson well learned. I was lucky, Spinrad was the SFWA President at the time, and everything he said made so much sense, so I walked away from the madness.
When Indy opened up in the past ten years, I saw that I no longer needed to try and "thread the needle" to get my stuff in print. Think of the story Diamond Dogs by Alastair Reynolds to describe the process of going through Trad Publishing. No thanks.
This has been fun, but I really have to get back to work. Thanks for letting me kibitz. HA!
]]>I get where you're coming about writing on paper. I tried note-taking on a laptop at a couple conventions, but it wasn't the same feeling/memory as writing on paper.
For what it's worth, one of my pet bugbears about writing for publishers (peer-reviewed journals, genre and other magazines, book publishers): the kind of author guidelines that require us to format pages in a specific way (e.g,. 12 point double-spaced Courier) are archaic and long overdue for being replaced with a more modern approach. Yes, people who have been brought up with this system can do a decent job of estimating the length of an article or book after a few years. Yes, after you've spent 10 years reading the same font, you can read it more efficiently. But you can gauge the length more accurately and faster by simply pouring the text into a properly formatted template. And learning to read most standard fonts isn't hard. As a budding SF/F author (3 sales to anthologies), it frustrates me every time I have to reformat a manuscript to comply with some publisher's weird variant on the standard MS guidelines.
I say this as someone who has managed fairly busy publication departments (7 years government, 10 years private sector) and who has been desktop publishing since the early days of PageMaker (ca. 1987). I know whereat I speak.
allynh: "because you feel the need to have your book published by a "Real" publisher so that it can get recognition and be up for awards."
Again, for what it's worth, the point of having a "real" publisher instead of going the Indie route is that you have a staff of experienced people helping you with quality control, with the gritty details of publishing, with marketing your book, and with getting your book into bookstores and the hands of online readers. Yes, you can do all this yourself. No, you can't do it without a difficult learning curve and a willingness to invest many hours of work that most of us can't afford. There are many things I criticize about traditional publishers, but they do a far better job than most indies at getting stories into the hearts and minds of readers.
Also, it's important to distinguish between the humans you deal with while prepping a book or story for publication (editors), who are not the soulless bloodsuckers who write contracts for publishers (lawyers). A publisher is in business to earn money for its partners and stockholders, and earning money for their authors is nothing more than a means to this end. Understand the distinction makes it much easier to work with publishers: enjoy your interactions with their human minions, and hire an agent to infuse your manuscript pages with garlic to deal with the bloodsuckers.
allynh: "I don't even know where to start explaining my shock and horror when as Licensed Professional Civil Engineer, I attend the Santa Fe Nebulas in 1998 as a "fan"."
You seem to have approached conventions with entirely the wrong attitude. I attend a couple cons every year because it lets me meet hundreds of people who really get why I'm so passionate about F/SF and would love to chat with me about it to compare passions. We have a small SF/F community where I live, and for various reasons (distance, busy lives) I don't get to meet most of them more than occasionally. But at conventions, I can spend 2 or 3 days chatting with people who send me home energized and eager to start writing again -- plus with a reading list pages long. Plus, I get to interact with the pros, most of whom are pros because they love fandom and the things we all want to talk about. Try conventioning again with that attitude, and you'll come away with a different impression. It will still be bedlam, yes, but we're all sharing the same good crazy.
]]>Using classic "manuscript" pages:
Think about it, I don't send stuff to Trad publishers or magazines, yet I use classic "manuscript" pages as a way to power the writing. Having that "container" to fill, knowing that if I start a page, that I have to fill the page, that's what drives the words. Look at the Bob Ross videos above. He doesn't just fill part of a canvas, he fills the whole. When Dey wrote the Nick Carter stories, he knew that he had to fill 132 manuscript pages each week. That "archaic" format is powerful.
About "Real" publishers and "Agents":
It's clear that you have not read the Kris Rusch links I posted above. Do so, you will thank yourself, down the road.
About conventions:
My point about being a Licensed Professional Civil Engineer, is that I would attend Engineering conferences each year, filled with Professionals. Aware of our responsibility to the public, to make sure that what we built did not kill people. Yeah, sure, the Stone Faced Structural Engineers would occasionally crack. You knew that you were in trouble when their eyes would start to twitch. Just their eyes. Then with the battle cry of, "Timoshenko", they would draw their slide rules and begin to duel. That's okay, we didn't mind, that's how Stone Faced Structural Engineers are. After all, some of my best friends are Stone Faced Structural Engineers. I stand in solidarity with them. Timoshenko!
So you can imagine my shock and horror when I attended the Santa Fe Nebulas, and wandered among the Lotus Eaters, the children trapped in magical thinking. People who were anything but Professional. When I later joined SFWA as a published author, and had access to the inner sanctum, the flame wars and toxic cliques were appalling. When I questioned the zeitgeist that they were trapped in, I was basically told, to eat shit and die. So I went back to the real world.
Now imagine what it would be like for me, someone used to "Professional" behavior, to go to a SF convention knowing what I know about "Agents" and "Real" publishers. I made my living kibitzing. Solving problems, answering questions, making things work. How long would I be able to remain silent once the Lotus Eaters start speaking in hushed reverent tones of "Agents", or when they make the sneering comment about the losers who have to, tsk, tsk, self-publish as a last resort.
No thanks. HA!
]]>Taken together, both perspectives provide a holistic view of the complex system known as fandom and SF/F publishing. Taken separately, neither perspective describes the whole situation adequately. In short: YMMV.
Based only on what we've written in this thread, I'd speculate that I'm a "glass is half full/let's make lemonade" kind of guy and you're a "glass is half empty/lemons suck" kind of guy. À chacun son goût.
]]>Episode #33: Dean Wesley Smith on the Myths of Writing and Publishing https://www.theprolificwriter.net/episode-33-dean-wesley-smith-on-the-myths-of-writing-and-publishing/
]]>I had reasons for my choice*.
I've read some of Rusch's posts which are filled with useful hints. I can see why Rusch, with decades of experience as an author and editor; with contacts throughout the industry; with knowledge of who does their job, who can be poked into action and who is a waste of time; with friends who will promote her work; with a name that makes people pay attention; with reviewers interested in her work; and all that; has come to the conclusion that agents and traditional publishing are a waste of her time. If I can get someone to promote my work and educate me on some of this stuff at the same time for a contract that I find acceptable, well that's what middle-men in the market are for. If I can't then I guess I'll spend the next three years trying to figure this stuff out for myself.
Meanwhile typewritten letters and telegrams are in Courier. Telegrams are hell on daily wordcount targets. You write the telegram in as few words as possible, then immediately cut out a third of the words. A quick review and alteration using a telegram style guide cuts out still more words. You end up having spent three quarters of an hour reducing fifty words down to twenty eight.
]]>I bought the Dover edition of When the Sleeper Wakes by Wells decades ago. He has single paragraphs that go on and on, page after page. I tracked down the text version on Project Gutenberg. I need to work through it and break up the paragraphs, turn it into an ebook that I can read without going nuts. Glug!
In those three years while you are learning, keep publishing. People who do that find they are making real money. But that means you have to have many books in the system. Publishing is long term, and having a body of work matters, so publish the next book so I can buy it. HA!
Read through all the Rusch posts a few times and you will get all of the critical business advice that you need. She has a huge number of posts about business. You get the equivalent of a Master Degree reading through her stuff. Deeply scary.
It's not that she thinks Agents are a waste of her time, it's that most are not, shall we say, "acting in a clients best interest."
She found many times that foreign rights were never sought by her agents, or foreign royalties never paid to her. Now she routinely licenses foreign rights herself and has the checks paid to her.
She is an anthology editor and is constantly trying to get short stories through agents who could not be bothered to work with her. She contacts other anthology editors to ask about their problems with various agents, and they tell the same stories.
She often asks:
Why would you let a third party, who is not a lawyer, negotiate a contract. She goes into detail about contracts that have clauses scattered throughout that essentially strips you of all rights to your own work. She recommends that if you get a contract from a Trad publisher to use an IP Lawyer to work on the contract. But as a new writer, there is little chance of making those changes, especially if the publisher is only offering a few thousand for your book. They will simply drop you.
Why would you let a third party have the publisher send all royalty checks to them, and maybe pass on a payment to you, after taking a 15% cut. Too many agents have been faced with the need to pay their own bills, then deciding to send money on, or not.
An agent may have a dozen books that he is negotiating with a publisher at the same time. If he starts trying to "improve" your contract, it is easy for the publisher to use that as a reason to kill the deals on all twelve. The agent is taking care of himself first, and will not do something to have the publisher close the door in his face, not over a contract that will only pay him 15% of a few thousand bucks. He will make the best contract deal for him, not for the "new guy."
Most agents today make you sign a contract with them, giving them a piece of your copyright for life. An agent can fire you at the drop of a hat, but it is almost impossible for you to fire them.
If you are able to fire your agent, they still get the checks from the publisher, still take their 15% cut even though you fired them, because the contract they helped "negotiate" says to always send the money to the agent, not the writer.
When an agent dies, who suddenly has control of you as a "client." Remember, the publisher sends the money to the agent. How do you get paid at that point.
Rusch has lived the horror stories of dealing with major agents and some big firms playing fast and loose with the rules, and she has collected many more stories of such.
I could tell a Story about my own quest for a major agent, how I got the run around each time, where he wanted me to rewrite or use an expensive book doctor that he knew, or when I sent him book after book and he told me that I was writing too much, but we won't go there.
I shudder when I remember trying to "thread the needle", but I'm much better now. HA! Read Diamond Dogs, it is too close to Trad reality. Run away from the madness. Go Indy.
]]>Your Magic Bakery Of Intellectual Property Rights With Dean Wesley Smith https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2017/07/31/intellectual-property-rights-dean-wesley-smith/
]]>Business Musings: My Day in Negotiation http://kriswrites.com/2017/08/16/business-musings-my-day-in-negotiation/
]]>My observation is that some people are businessmen, and some people are writers, and relatively few are good at both. Indy writers that do well tend to be in that last category. The problem is when you're selling, you're not writing, and vice versa -- there's no division of labor.
The two traditionally-published writers jumped on the chance to stop being indy. They were terrible at self-promotion and were making less than they eventually made as a published writer, a LOT less. Even though there are now middle-men involved, those middle-men are very good at the things that those writers were very bad at.
The remaining indy writer is actually desperately hoping to find a way to be traditionally published, because the grind of selling and promoting means she has no time to actually write. She's also suffered many of the mistakes that indy writers inevitably fall into -- Kickstarters that result in weeks of tedious, unpaid box-stuffing; months of fighting with printers over printing errors and whose fault they are; spending thousands of dollars on boxes of books for a con at which she sold two books, then having to pay to ship them all back and store them in her living room.
Being an indy writer is hard. I respect anyone who can make money at it because it's basically doing three or four jobs at once, jobs with very different skill sets. It's a bit like how some people sell their own house and pocket the commission -- they sometimes make out like bandits, but most people seem to do better if they hire a realtor, you know?
Now, most people I know who have gone the indy route have done it for lack of alternatives. I can see how an established artist, with a well-known name, who already has lots of industry contacts, could probably make more money doing it themselves -- although at the cost of time and effort spent on running a business instead of writing. But for people starting out, it's a massive time sink with little reward. Most small-time indy writers I know are viewing it as the minor leagues, hoping to attract the attention of a publisher.
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