Business End

Articles about the business aspects of publishing and self-publishing.

Am I a “Real” Author If I Only Publish Ebooks?

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This post, by Jim Edwards, originally appeared on Dvorah Lansky‘s Book Marketing Made Easy.

For some authors this is a real concern. They write books to gain credibility and readership as much or more than they do to make money. Being perceived by others as a “real” author is very important to them, and for good reason. However, the world of “books” has changed dramatically in the last decade. What made you a “real” author just a few short years ago may not represent what can actually make you a legitimate author today.

What is a book?

A book is a unique publication with a beginning, middle and end aimed at a specific target audience. Length can range anywhere from a few dozen pages to over a thousand. Readers can enjoy real books either in physical (print) format, or in electronic format on any of the hundreds-of-millions of ebook readers, iPads, and computers in the world. Real authors publish their work as ebooks and don’t even think twice about it.

What counts as a “published” author?

In the “old” days, a published author had a traditional publishing house and everything that went along with that (including tying up your rights for eternity, doing all your own marketing, and earning a pittance on each sale). NOW, a published author is someone who has their book for sale where people can find it and buy it (online or offline).

Amazon Changed The Game

I got my first taste that the world of publishing had changed in the late 1990’s when I was still selling real estate. I’d written and self-published a book about how to sell your house yourself, and was using it to help build my business. A home seller in the area told me “Selling Your Home Alone” wasn’t a real book, not because I didn’t have a publisher, but because she couldn’t find it for sale on Amazon!

 

Read the rest of the post on Book Marketing Made Easy.

The Smartest Thing In Publishing Is To Be Flexible

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This post, by Kassia Krozser, originally appeared on the fortykey publishing blog on 11/5/12.

The only certain thing in publishing nowadays is that everything moves really fast. If you should describe the actual situation with three adjectives, which ones would you pick and why?

I’m not so great with adjectives, but here are three words I think describe the current state of publishing:

 

Uncertain. Nobody knows what the next year will bring, much less the next ten years. In 2007, people were brushing off digital as "less than 1% of our business". Or, it wasn’t something that needed serious attention. Today, trade publishers (U.S., particularly) are seeing approximately 20% of their business coming from digital sales. The thing is, the changes in the print/digital selling mix are uneven.

On top of that, *nobody* really knows how big the digital marketplace is. If you poke around outside traditional publishing, you know self-publishing is seeing huge gains. But what only gets attention is a small portion of that self-publishing market. Beyond the stories that make the headlines (or invite scoffs and skepticism among certain ranks of publishing insiders), there is a a massive marketplace. Now maybe most of those people aren’t making a fortune, but they are disrupting traditional publishing channels.

Exciting. Technology is making it possible for us to reimagine storytelling. It’s also allowing us to get books and other things we read (the list is so long) into the hands of more people than ever before. Right now, I am particularly interested in how innovation plays out in the world of education. The State of California is making a huge push toward open source digital textbooks. This is going to encourage new entrants into the marketplace, and, if history holds true, they won’t be thinking of textbooks in the same way established players do.

Entrenched. One major problem I see across all types of traditional publishers is a desire to maintain business as usual. This is completely understandable — this digital thing is so new, so uncertain, and, frankly, the print model is still working very, very well for most publishers. But, as you note, everything moves really fast these days, and if anyone is stuck in the mode of "that’s how we’ve always done it", they will be left behind.

That sounds harsh, but the publishing industry (as we know it) doesn’t control "publishing" the way it once did. Or maybe it never did, but it seemed that way. Either way, there are smart innovators out there ready and able to fill voids left by publishers who are too busy standing in place to take advantage of how this market is changing every day.

Could you point out an example of innovation in publishing that is worth to look at in the next future?

 

Read the rest of the post on the fortykey publishing blog.

Want To Be Read 100 Years From Now? Here’s How.

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This post, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, originally appeared on her The Business Rusch.

 

So, you want to be an artist. You want to be one of those writers everyone has read, even though you’re long dead. You want your work in libraries, on bookstore shelves, and in digital format. You want professors to assign your work, or kids to sneak that “crap” that everyone decries but everyone loves.

There are two very simple ways to do this:

 

 

1. Write a lot of good stories. Not beautiful words. Good stories. Remember, fiction gets translated into a variety of languages, and in those languages, your original words get lost. Only stories get translated, stories with great characters, great plots, and unforgettable moments. I wrote a lot about this over the summer. Start with my post titled, “Perfection.”

2. Establish Your Estate Long Before You Die. Your copyrights will outlive you. That’s how they’re designed. If you don’t know what I mean by this, then get yourself a copy of The Copyright Handbook, and start reading it now. You don’t sell fiction; you license copyright. Learn what that means, and learn how it will impact your estate, your heirs, and your legacy.

You’d be surprised how much of the entertainment news you consume is about estates. You’d be surprised how much of the books, movies, games, and television you consume exists because someone handled an estate well or someone handled it poorly.

Or didn’t have an estate at all.

Don’t be like our friend Bill Trojan who, long before he died, would say about his (considerable) estate, “I don’t care what you do with it. I’ll be dead.”

My husband Dean Wesley Smith fought Bill for years to get a will, because Bill had some very collectible books and extremely rare pulp magazines, things that had only one or two copies left in existence. Dean thought it a crime for those copies to die with Bill, and badgered Bill into getting a will.

Bill finally executed one, an annoyingly inadequate one, that caused us a lot of legal problems just to get validated. Dean blogged about this entire saga (including the legal issues) earlier this year. If you want a scare story about estates and what you might leave your heirs with, read this.

 

 

Read the rest of the post on The Business Rusch.

25 Twitter Accounts to Help You Get Published

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This post originally appeared on Online Education Database (OEDB).

We here at the ol’ Online Education Database can’t promise that following these Twitter feeds by periodicals, bloggers, agents, editors, and writers will score you a coveted publishing contract. But we can promise that you’ll more than likely find at least one of them extremely useful when researching the five Ws (and one H) of getting your name out there as an author. And if these don’t work, chances are they link up to a microblog that does. And if that doesn’t work, then the blame probably sits with you.

 

  1. Writer’s Digest:

    One of the best routinely released resources for authors provides updated information about the state of the publishing industry, generating ideas, self-editing, and everything else they need to know.

  2. Publishers Weekly:

    Follow this absolutely essential Twitter feed for all the latest news and trends regarding the publishing world; after all, knowing how it works is half the battle (Disclaimer: It might be a little more or a little less than half).

  3. GalleyCat:

    Media Bistro’s GalleyCat blog (and, of course, accompanying Twitter) focuses on delivering the headlining stories about publishing today and tomorrow. Also probably the next day and the day after that.

  4. Carole Blake:

    She didn’t write THE book on how to get published, but this literary agent wrote A book on how to get published. Head to her Twitter for expert advice regarding the writing and submission process.

  5. Kevin Smokler:

    Publishing and other media collide in one illuminating resource for writers and wannabe writers trying to make it in the business as it transitions fully into the digital age.

  6. Victoria Strauss:

    As the co-founder of Writer Beware, this veteran writer knows what her fellow artists need to look out for to prevent being preyed upon by publishing scams.

  7. SPR:

    The Self-Publishing Review posts up advice, reviews, and other resources devoted to helping writers launch their careers autonomously.

  8. New Pages:

    New Pages catalogs literary journals looking for submissions, so it would behoove every short-form writer out there to check them out regularly and see what new opportunities pop up.

  9. FreelanceWritingJobs:

    Like the name says, this is one of the top resources where writers head to find themselves some gigs to launch their careers. It might not be about publishing what they want, but it still provides links to numerous opportunities as well as advice.

  10. Writers Write:

    Another fully fab resource where writers turn to for advice and publishing news as well as information about what relevant jobs are currently available around the United States.

 

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes 15 more Twitter accounts for writers and authors to follow, on OEDB.

5 Ways To Get Your First Draft Material Out Of Your Head And Onto The Page

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This month, thousands of people will write 50,000 words, but these will not be fully formed books, for this is an outpouring of first draft creative material and that is a hugely important distinction.

First draft material is allowed to be crap, and often is and it’s meant to be so.

So don’t worry! A perfect sentence does not appear fully formed on the page, and it is not followed by another one, and another, to create a perfect story in one go. That’s not how writing works – but it is the myth of writing which we must dispel.

“Writing is rewriting,” as the great Michael Crichton said. Remember that, and then go write 50,000 words of first draft material that you can shape into something marvelous later.

So how do you get your first draft material from your head onto the page? Here are some of my tips.

(1) Set a word count goal

This is why NaNoWriMo works so well for people, as you have to write around 1700 words per day in order to ‘win’. Many pro-authors, like Stephen King, have a goal of 2000 per day, even birthdays and Christmas.

If you don’t have some kind of goal, you won’t achieve anything. I really believe that. It also breaks the work down into manageable chunks.

For a full length novel, say 80,000 words @2000 words per day = 40 days of consistent writing

For a novella, say 30,000 words @2000 words per day = 15 days of consistent writing

Of course, you have the editing process after that, but you can’t edit a blank page. So set your word count goal, and get writing.

[Personally, I always use word count goals in the first draft writing phase, but I don’t do that many fiction words every day of the year.]

(2) Write Or Die

write or die This awesome software at WriteOrDie.com is a way to burst through the internal editor that snipes at you as you write a load of crap in your first draft phase.

The software allows you to set a goal in time or word count. I started with 20 minutes, and then you have to keep typing or it will play some psycho violin music, or the screen will start turning red, or in kamikaze mode, your words start disappearing. At the end of the session when you reach your goal, trumpets sound and you can save the text.

I highly recommend this if you are struggling. This is how I wrote 20,000 words in my first NaNoWriMo and created the core of Pentecost. Maybe 2000 words survived the culling/editing but you have to write a lot of crap to shape it into something good (at least when you’re starting out anyway!)

(3) Scrivener

project targets

Scrivener Project Targets

I wax lyrical about Scrivener all the time, but it has some cool productivity tools. You can set Project Targets, so 50,000 words for example, and you can also set Session Targets, so mine is set at 2000 words. Every time you sit down to write, you can have those targets floating by your work and the progress bar moves so you can see how its going. Very motivating.

I also like to put as many scenes in as possible before I start writing, so I have somewhere to start each day. So right now, I have 11 one-line scene descriptions that I can fill in as I go along. I will change them, add to them etc but it means that whenever I sit down for a writing session, I can start filling in the blanks if I don’t know what else to do.

There’s also a Compose mode so you can fill the whole screen with a blank piece of paper. Keeps you focused:)

(4) Set a timer for focus sessions, and use Freedom or other software to turn the internet off

As part of my daily productivity tools, I set my (iphone) timer for 90 minutes and then I write, or edit, or work on a specific project for that long. But you can start with 10 mins or 15 or whatever you can manage.

The important thing is not to get distracted in that time, and DO NOT check the internet or twitter or your email or make a cup of tea or anything. You can use software like Freedom to stop you accessing the ‘net if you really can’t resist without help.

(5) Get up really early and work while your brain is still half asleep

sunriseWhen I wrote my first novel, Pentecost, while working full time, I used to get up at 5am and write for an hour before work.

Johnny B. Truant recently did this to write 2 novellas in 2 months (although he started at 4am some days – ouch.)

I think the early morning helps because your brain isn’t polluted by everything that has happened in the day, and your internal editor is still asleep. However, this totally depends on whether you’re a night-owl and your family situation etc etc … so find your own groove, but the point is, you need to schedule some time that you don’t have normally to get stuff done.

[Here’s another productivity tip. I got rid of the TV nearly 5 years ago, about the time that I started writing, blogging and changing my life – there’s some correlation there!]

Trust the process of emergence

I heard this in an interview with Brene Brown on Jonathan Fields’ Goodlife Project, and it is totally true.

Even if you plot your books, sometimes you won’t know what is coming until the words appear on the page. Something happens when you commit to the page, to the word count goal and you write through the frustration and the annoyance and the self-criticism.

Creativity emerges. Ideas emerge. Original thought emerges.

Something happens – but only if you trust emergence.

You can see the process work itself through by checking out the journey of my first novel. It starts in NaNoWriMo 2009 with my first draft material and ends with 40,000 books sold nearly 2 years later. The core idea completely changed :)   but I hope it will encourage you to see that first drafts are just the beginning.

If you don’t force yourself to get the first draft material down, you will never have anything to work with. So fight resistance and get it done.

How do you get your first draft material written? Please leave a comment below. 

 

Image top: Bigstock Shakespeare, Flickr CC Sunrise by Pilottage 

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

Self-Publishers Aren’t Killing The Industry, They’re Saving It

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This post, by Ed Robertson, originally appeared on David Gaughran’s Let’s Get Digital site.

There’s a lot of talk at the moment that cheap books are destroying the industry.

In traditional publishing circles especially, fingers are being pointed at self-publishers (and their chief enablers, Amazon), who stand accused of encouraging a race to the bottom, of devaluing books, and training readers to pay ever-cheaper amounts – making the whole book business unsustainable.

Today, I have a guest post from Ed Robertson – author of Breakers and Melt Down – which takes issue with that view. His logic is compelling, based on a historical look at book prices. This is really worth the read: 

Self-Publishers Aren’t Killing The Industry, They’re Saving It

I’m a self-publisher. An indie author. Whatever you want to call me. I’ve read many articles about how self-publishers are killing the book industry. I’ve heard it from big publishing houses. From the president of the Author’s Guild. From traditionally published novelists and agents and even other self-publishers. If I want, I bet I can find a new one of these articles every single day.

But I won’t, because I no longer believe them.

Self-publishers don’t have the power to kill the publishing industry. I don’t think anyone does. But we do have the power to change it. We already have – and paradoxically, this change isn’t a change at all. And instead of killing books, this change has helped resurrect them.

We aren’t the first to be accused of killing the industry. In 1939, Robert de Graff threatened to kill publishing, too. At the tail end of the Great Depression, when hardcovers regularly sold for between $2.50-$3.00, he started selling paperback Pocket Books for $0.25.

To put that in 2012 dollars, hardcovers cost roughly $40-50. The new paperbacks, the first of their kind in American markets, cost the equivalent of $4.16. In modern terms, a book that once cost as much as a coffee maker now cost as little as a cup of coffee. A book that once cost as much as a full tank of gas now cost as little as a gallon.

In just over five years from that 1939 launch date, Pocket Books sold 100 million paperbacks.

But it wasn’t all high fives around the burgeoning paperback business. One publisher at Penguin was so aghast at the tawdry covers on his books he wound up selling off the entire line. Others worried openly about the death of the hardcover industry. On the concept of skipping hardcovers entirely and printing straight to paperback, even Pocket Books’ own VP Freeman Lewis said, “Successful authors are not interested in original publishing at 25 cents.”

But they were, of course. Particularly genre writers who didn’t care if this new format was disgraceful. Because it sold. Readers bought their books by the millions. As the format was being denounced as the playground of hacks, authors like William S. Burroughs and Philip K. Dick got their start with bargain-priced paperback-only prints (specifically, with Ace Doubles that sold two novels bundled for $0.35). The history of the era is fascinating – a short yet rich article recaps it here – but what is most interesting to me is that initial $0.25 price.

 

Read the rest of the post on Let’s Get Digital.

Indie Author vs. Indie Entrepreneur

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As you may have noticed, it’s been a LONG time since I’ve posted here. There are good reasons for that, like the fact that my former house was foreclosed in August and I had to move on short notice, plus some divorce-related challenges that I can’t really detail for you here. 

But I’ve been thinking about this post for weeks now, and I’m sorry to tell you that it won’t come as a welcome insight to everyone. Still, judging by the recent blog posts or inactivity of many of my online writer friends, I don’t think it will come as a huge surprise to very many of you, either.

I’ve said all along that in order to really make a go of earning a living as an indie author, one must approach it with all the verve, dedication and business acumen of an entrepreneur. I stand by that to this day, but here’s what’s new: maybe not all of us need to be, nor even want to be, indie entrepreneurs.

This new paradigm of indie author-entrepreneur (I’ll abbreviate it to IAE in this post) is totally different from what the idealized picture of being a Published Author was just a few short years ago. While the IAE has much greater control over her work and career, with that control comes greater responsibility, too.

You’ve got to SELL, SELL, SELL. You’ve got to PROMOTE, PROMOTE, PROMOTE. You’ve got to LEARN, LEARN, LEARN. You’ve also got to WRITE, WRITE, WRITE, because having a large published catalog is one of the commonalities among indie authors who are truly making a living at it. And once you get that momentum ball rolling, you can’t stop pushing it, EVER. Not if you want to continue selling, that is.

So making it as a fulltime author means working at it, fulltime. It also means coping with the same stresses and uncertainties as any entrepreneur: unpredictable income, all the administrative duties and headaches that come with running a small business, the constant pressure to produce and promote, et cetera.

A few years into it, many indie authors are stopping to reassess. The initial rush of excitement over being able to call our own shots and write our own tickets is over, and now we’re wallowing in the morning-after hangover realization that being a successful IAE means spending at least as much time on the business and promotion side of things as on writing. 

All those years we spent daydreaming about being a Published Author never included scenes of bookkeeping, coming up with promotional campaigns, buying our own ISBNs, boning up on ebook tech, strategizing over our books’ prices, and so on. We weren’t daydreaming about running a small business, but unless we’re willing to go back to the old ways of querying agents and praying for a mainstream publishing contract, that’s exactly what we have to do.

Those who are trying to transition to being a fulltime IAE while working a fulltime job to pay the bills are finding it very difficult, if not impossible, to manage. It was never easy finding the time to write, let alone query agents, enter contests and so on; being an IAE adds many, many more hours of work to the authorship equation.

I’ve concluded that for me, it’s just not worth it. 

I’m not willing to give up so much of my life to this effort, even if I knew for a certainty that I’d be a Joe Konrath at the end of it: making a comfortable living as a fulltime IAE. I’m not willing to trade years of stress and 80-100 hour workweeks to achieve that particular goal, then continue working 60-hour workweeks to maintain it. Considering that I was never in it for the money anyway, I guess this is not a difficult decision for me to make. For those who are struggling with it, consider this:

Being the next Konrath may not be realistically possible for most of us indies, anyway. Remember, Konrath went in with the advantage of already having a large back catalog of mainstream-published books (plus the royalties that go with them), and he was already a fulltime author before he went indie too. His journey to fulltime IAE was much shorter and less difficult than what the rest of us are facing.

At the outset, my goal for my novels was to get them published and know they’d reached an appreciative readership. My hope as an indie author overall was to see indie authorship go mainstream and become a respectable alternative to mainstream publishing within my lifetime. I’ve achieved the first goal, and seen my hopes for indie authorship realized far beyond my original notions, and much more quickly.

I have a ‘day job’ I love that’s steeped in books and media (Editor in Chief of Kindle Fire on Kindle Nation Daily). I’ve come out of a marriage of over 18 years, and I’m facing the happy prospect of building a new life for myself, exactly how I want it to be. I’m also thoroughly enjoying these regrettably short years of remaining time before my kids are grown and out on their own.

So while I’ll still write and publish, I’ll continue to run Publetariat, and I’ll remain active in the publishing and indie author communities, I’m not working toward the goal of becoming a fulltime IAE, and I guess I never really was. Anyone reading this who DOES want to be a successful IAE, you have my admiration and I support your choice completely. I’m certainly not making any kind of value judgment, or trying to imply there’s something better about my choice in this.

All I’m saying is, if you have decided, like me, that being a successful IAE isn’t really your dream after all, that’s okay. Choosing a different path does not make you a failure. Just be glad that as indie authors, we now have the flexibility to design our own career trajectories. As with pretty much everything else in indie authorship, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. 

 

This is a reprint from Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton‘s Indie Author Blog.

When Do You Need A Little Ritual? When You Want To Do Some Magic

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So… I am someone who has long scorned the idea of “having a set of writing rituals before starting to write.” I didn’t like the idea of having these little OCD things I had to do before writing. Or these “stalling techniques”, however one chooses to look at them. But I’m thinking perhaps I was looking at the situation all wrong. Sure it ‘could’ become a little OCD. It ‘could’ be a form of procrastination. But it also ‘could’ be a way of training your brain to get you into the right frame of mind to write.

This is a little bit related to the question of ‘where to write’. I never considered that very important either. Have laptop, will travel. Anywhere and everywhere was “where to write”. But I’m beginning to look at that differently as well. Especially given my tendency to go long stretches of “working all the time” and then long stretches of “barely working at all” (which doesn’t balance out to optimum productivity in case you thought it did). I have no balance.

The benefit and the problem of working for yourself from home is that you can do anything you want. It’s a benefit for obvious reasons but it’s a problem because it can become this unstructured free-for-all where you don’t know where your work ends and your life begins or vice versa. And maybe these walls are all artificial anyway and unnecessary. That’s what I thought for awhile, until I started feeling like I was in constant limbo. While working I wanted to be or could be “not working”. While not working I wanted to be or could be “working”.

It started to become impossible to be in the moment of what I was doing because there were no boundaries. I’ve worked in nearly every room of my house at all sorts of wacky hours of the day, to the point that everything has blurred together and my home is my workplace. Not in the sense of: “it’s where I work”, but in the sense of seeing it more like a workplace than like a home. It would be like living in the back office of Amazon or something. Does Amazon even have a back office? They probably have 500 of them.

Anyway. So I was thinking… what I really need is some routine and structure in my life and a clear separation of work and home. So I thought about renting an office. Not like traditional commercial rental but a single SMALL office for one person to sit in with a desk and work. Or some kind of “coworking” situation where there are multiple cubicles and you’re only renting one of them. It would basically force me to get up and be up during normal work hours that other humans work, get ready, get out of the house, and “go to work”. Very clear separation.

I mean it’s not perfect. There is the tedium of getting ready and commuting and eating up time and gas money. And then the ongoing office expense. But it’s definitely a clear work/home separation and more mentally healthy than what I’ve been doing.

I called a few places that had the sort of thing I was looking for and talked to them but one of the places had no vacancies, and the other one only had large offices currently available (translation: expensive!) or a coworking situation but there weren’t even cubicles. And really… honestly… I need a door, or some sort of subdivided semi-private space in which to work.

I’m sure I could sublet some cubicle in some back corner or some small closet of an office somewhere. I’m sure there are plenty of businesses that have more space than they actually need/use and they wouldn’t mind someone subletting a little of that space from them for a few hundred bucks a month. But, I DO have a spare bedroom in my house.

I haven’t turned it into an office yet because at first I thought I didn’t really NEED a dedicated office because I can “work anywhere”. And then, once it became clear to me the perils involved in that… I thought that just setting up a home office surely wouldn’t/couldn’t be enough. But Tom says I’ll be surprised if I am consistent and don’t play in the office or work in any other part of the house and keep consistent office hours. (This is based on his personal experience going through what I’m going through and then having his own office when he worked from home for himself in the past.) Sure, this doesn’t get me out of the house, but if I can keep the routine and the separation, then I can shave off the time I’d spend commuting and be finished with work faster and have a bit longer free time for the rest of the day… time during which I can leave my house and interact with others.

So I’m going to try the home office thing first. I’ve got a great room that is literally a blank canvas with nothing in it. I’m going to set it up in a way where it is functional and has a ‘professional’ feeling but also where it has a creative feeling so that it’s a place I want to go to work and create. I’m going to spend a little on this because otherwise I was going to spend a lot spread out over indefinite months to rent space that I’d probably still want to spruce up a bit.

I’m going to try to be consistent with the room being specifically for work and not bringing work out into the rest of my life or the rest of my life into work, and keeping sane, consistent work hours. If I do these things, it may be enough structure/separation. If not, I could look into an off-site option. But I was also thinking about the kind of specific environment I want to create in, and the truth is that I have a lot more freedom to create that environment in space that is truly my own than in a rented cubicle or nook.

And then I got to thinking about how I’ll probably have my own coffee maker in my office so during work time I’m spending my time mainly “in my office” and not wandering all over the house in various procrastination exercises… like hot beverages. That was what led me to the idea of rituals and how I’ve poo pooed both the idea of pre-writing rituals and a specific space/room for writing.

But structure and routines are important both to make life feel more organized and manageable and also to get into the mindset you want to be in for various activities. So I’m going to try this space and ritual thing to see if that helps me to create the kind of structure and routine that I need to keep my writing sanity.

I’ve always felt writing was a form of magic. Why wouldn’t one have ritual and significant space for that? 

 

This is a reprint from The Weblog of Zoe Winters.

25 Motivational Thoughts For Writers

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This post, by Chuck Wendig, originally appeared on his terribleminds.

 

With NaNoWriMo about to storm surge the writer (and wannabe-writer) community, this seems a good time to both tickle your pink parts and jam my boot up your boothole in terms of getting your penmonkey asses motivated. So, here goes — 25 motivational thoughts for writers, starting in 3… 2… 1…

 

 

1. You Are The God Of This Place

The blank page is your world. You choose what goes into it. Anything at all. Upend the frothy cup that is your heart and see what spills out. Murder plots. Train crashes. Pterodactyl love interests. Vampire threesomes. Housewife bondage. Demon spies! Cake heists! Suburban ennui! You can destroy people. You can build things. You can create love, foster hate, foment rage, invoke sorrow. Anything you want in any order you care to present it. This is your story. This is your jam.

2. Infinite Power, Zero Responsibility

Not only are you god of this place, but you have none of the responsibility divine beings are supposed to possess. You have literally no responsibility to anyone but yourself — you’re like a chimp with a handgun. Run amok! Shoot things! Who cares? There exists this non-canonical infancy gospel where Jesus is actually a little kid and he’s like, running around with crazy Jesus wizard powers. He’s killing them and resurrecting them and he’s turning water into Kool-Aid and loaves into Goldfish crackers — he’s just going apeshit with his Godborn sorcery. BE LIKE CRAZY JESUS BABY. Run around zapping shit with your God lightning! You owe nobody anything in this space. It’s adult swim. It’s booze cruise.

3. The Rarest Bird Of Them All

The easiest way to separate yourself from the unformed blobby mass of “aspiring” writers is to a) actually write and b) actually finish. That’s how easy it is to clamber up the ladder to the second echelon. Write. And finish what you write. That’s how you break away from the pack and leave the rest of the sickly herd for the hungry wolves of shame and self-doubt. And for all I know, actual wolves.

4. You’re Not Cleaning Up Some Sixth Grader’s Vomit

You have worse ways to spend a day than to spend it writing. Here’s a short list: artificially inseminating tigers, getting shot at by an opposing army, getting eaten by a grue, mopping the floors of a strip club, digging ditches and then pooping in them, cleaning up the vomit of nervous elementary school children, being forced to dance by strange dance-obsessed captors, working in a Shanghai sweatshop making consumer electronics for greedy Americans, and being punched to death by a coked-up Jean-Claude Van Damme. Point is: writing is a pretty great way to spend a morning, afternoon, or night.

5. Abuse The Freedom To Suck

Writing is not about perfection — that’s editing you’re thinking of. Editing is about arrangement, elegance, cutting down instead of building up. Editing is Jenga. Writing is about putting all the pieces out there. It’s construction in the strangest, sloppiest form. It’s inelegant. And imperfect. And insane. It’s supposed to be this way. Writing is a first-time bike-ride. You’re meant to wobble and accidentally drive into some rose bushes. Allow yourself the freedom — nay, the pleasure — to suck. This is playtime. (Or, as I call it: “Whiskey and Hookers” time.) Playtime is supposed to be messy.

 

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes 20 more pieces of motivational assistance, on terrribleminds.

Varieties of the Publishing Experience

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I’m not sure how many of you—authors who took the leap, self-published your own books—know quite how heroic you are.

I bet a lot of you have already published books, but there are even more writers who are still thinking about it, reading about it, testing the waters.

And that’s a good idea. There’s no reason to rush into self-publishing, particularly if you think about what you’ll be taking on.

 

There are a lot of skills you’ll have to learn, new companies to research, service providers to vet. It really can be a lot of work, and it can test your own resources, the assets you bring to publishing, and your native abilities. Sometimes, even your character.

True, there are some people who are passionate about getting their work out there, and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to see their book in print and up for sale. I admire that kind of dedication.

But I also know that not everyone feels that way. There are lots of people who would like to publish, who might even have a book finished or almost done. But they haven’t made the decision to move forward.

Making Choices Isn’t Always Easy

A very successful author called for a phone consult recently to talk about the exciting prospect of publishing her own books.

We talked about her newest book and her publishing background. Then I started to talk about the kinds of tasks she would confront as a self-publisher.

As the list went on, I could sense her drawing back. And I was right.

This author had absolutely no interest in running a publishing business, buying ISBNs, setting up printer accounts and all the other little details that go into establishing yourself as a publisher.

So why do it? Why make yourself miserable doing stuff you hate?

In the end I suggested she find someone within her extensive network of authors and entrepreneurs to partner with, someone who enjoyed that part of publishing as much as she enjoyed meeting people, speaking, and networking about her work.

Together, they might make a dynamite combination that could be the beginning of a great publishing business, since one was already a bestselling author.

I think the moral of this story, if there is one, is to be honest about what your capabilities are, what things you enjoy doing, and what you can barely tolerate.

You know, the stuff that always seems to slip to the bottom of your to-do list, that you procrastinate about because it’s just easier to avoid.

On the other hand, you can format your book by yourself even if it doesn’t give you a lot of joy. Why? Because you only have to do it once.

But if it’s one of those things that you just keep putting off, it’s not that hard to find someone to do it for you.

On the other hand, if you hate bookkeeping or tracking expenses or keeping receipts, maybe you shouldn’t be in business at all. Accurate recordkeeping is a prerequisite for most successful businesses, and if the idea of tracking costs makes you want to scream, look for a different solution or see if you can outsource that part of your tasks.

Sometimes you have to look for ways to free yourself up to do the things that only you can do. If those are things you love to do, you’ve got a winning proposition.

My takeaway today is that there are lots of ways to get into print and participate in the amazing possibilities in book publishing. Maybe for you it’s going to be getting focused training in the publishing process that will give you real self-confidence as a publisher.

Or you might be better off looking for help with the tasks you don’t want to tackle. As long as you don’t lose control of your own book, there are lots of solutions out there that can work for you.

I’m curious: how have you dealt with all the tasks you take on when you publish? Have you outsourced, or gotten training? Let me know in the comments [on the original post].

 

 

This is a reprint from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

Popular Highlights On The Black God's War

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This post, by Moses Siregar III, originally appeared on his blog and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission. It seems like the Most Popular Notes feature on Amazon’s Kindle may be a very useful tool for authors; who among us wouldn’t want to know which passages our readers felt most strongly about?

So I bought a new Kindle Paperwhite, and it’s almost an amazing e-reader (Mostly, I love it, but there are some issues with the “white” part when using the built-in lights–namely, the background isn’t a uniform color). One nice new feature (okay, I lied. It’s actually an older feature even on my trusty kindle2, but I hadn’t realized that until today) is that if you click to “View Notes & Marks” on a book, you’ll sometimes get to see the top ten most popular highlights on the book.

 

Some books show these highlights and some books don’t. And you’ll probably see more highlights on your device than you’ll see on a book’s page at Amazon.

I’m one of the lucky ones, because my first novel does show the top ten highlights. Because I haven’t had any big news in awhile–semi-kidding, although if you want to follow my author news, my Facebook Author page is the best way, or on Twitter @MosesSiregar–I’m going to paste the top ten highlights (selected by the readers) from The Black God’s War here. I’ll list them in order with the most popular highlight at the bottom of the list.

1) “I know know how to fight him. His gods are a projection. They are just as false as this world. I know that. I will win.”

2) “You are a master in a tiny field. The ultimate truth still lies far beyond you. There is no end to evolution, to the unshackling of chains.”

3) [this is one a bit spoilerish] “his domain also includes the dark processes of life, including the balancing of what you might call sin. Our concept is karma. It suggests that whatever we do returns to us because in truth there is no separation between us all. So when we act upon another, we act upon ourselves. Evil acts come back to us, while good deeds bring good karma. As I understand your Lord Danato, it’s as if he is a god of karma.”

4) “The mind is the master of the physical world. The physical isn’t observed by the mind–it’s actually dependent on the mind.”

5) “Introspection, clarity, and creative imagination must come before action.”

6) “It’s the most recent worst day of my life,” she said. “Thank you for asking.”

7) “The descent to Hades is the same from every place.” -Anaxagoras [this is a quote, not my words]

8 ) “A man must act on his conscience. I would rather die than live by no greater principle than my own survival.”

9) “This is why our desires must be questioned before we undertake any great endeavor. If our values are flawed, our actions can only produce imperfections.”

10) “I believe it is not important how long you live, but that you give yourself to living. Live as only you can, with every part of you fully engaged.”

It was definitely fun for me to see what readers have highlighted in the book. Do you have any popular highlights on your favorite books (or on your own books) that you really like?

And if anyone still manages to read my blog even after all of my updates have been going to FB and Twitter rather than here, and if you can remember–without going back to the book–which characters said each of the above quotes, give it a shot in the comments [section beneath the original post] and if you get them all right I’ll have to figure out something really cool that I can give you. Maybe a signed copy of book two?

 

The Business Rusch: Rights Reversion

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This post, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, originally appeared on her The Business Rusch blog.

Over the last couple of years, a number of writers have written to me to ask how to get the rights to their traditionally published novels reverted back to them.  These requests increased while I wrote the most recent short series, “Why Writers Disappear,”  and finally, one of the readers mentioned via e-mail that I should do a blog post on getting rights reverted.

It’s a good idea, so I’m taking it. 

When a writer signs a contract with a publisher to have a book published, that contract includes which rights the publisher is licensing and at what cost/percentage of that cost. All of this is based on the copyright, which can be sliced down to minute fractions, and each fraction licensed.

For example, a writer might license worldwide rights to publish the book as a hardcover novel in the English language. The other rights, from e-book to audio to mass market paperback, would not be included in that particular contract.

Some contracts are short, some are ten and twenty pages long. Each contract will delineate what the rights licensed are, what the publisher will pay the writer for the use of those rights, and when the contract expires. All contracts need an end date to be legal, and so you’d think that book contract would have a set time period. It’s pretty convenient: both parties know the contract expires on a specific date. The contract can be renegotiated around the time of expiration or renewed on a yearly basis, until one party decides to cancel the contract, or, or, or…

Before we go any further, I want to make something very, very, very clear. Often, writers in the comments section of this blog ask a question about contracts that assumes that all book contracts are the same. Some writers might understand that contracts differ, but those writers then believe that all bestsellers have the same contract, and all midlist writers have a different one.

Here’s the truth of it, folks. You—one writer—can have twelve book contracts with the same company, and each contract might have different terms from other contracts. In other words, you might have spent your entire publishing career with one publishing house. You might write the same type of book year after year, and you still might have twelve different contracts, with twelve different terms, including twelve different reversion clauses.

I know that’s hard to wrap your minds around, but it’s an important thought, because if you believe that all contracts are the same, you’ll end up signing something that’s bad for you. After all, Famous Writer (who publishes with the same publisher) signed that contract, right?

No, not right. Famous Writer is different from Famous Writer Two. One is a great negotiator who hires an IP attorney. The other is a terrible negotiator with an even worse agent. The great negotiator with the IP attorney might have a better contract. But he might not. Because the terrible negotiator might be too famous to piss off, and the publisher automatically offered terrible negotiator better terms than great negotiator.

You don’t know, and can’t know, and probably never will know.

So you must make decisions based on your own career.

  

Read the rest of the post on The Business Rusch.

Random House, Penguin Agree to Merge

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This story originally appeared on Publishers Weekly on 10/29/12. 

In a deal that had been months in the making, Pearson and Bertelsmann announced Monday morning that they have signed an agreement to form a joint venture that will combine the businesses of Random House and Penguin. The deal, which is expected to close in the second half of 2013, will make Penguin Group chairman John Makinson chairman of the newly named Penguin Random House company, while Random House chairman and CEO Markus Dohle will be CEO. 

Under the terms of the agreement, Bertelsmann will own 53% of the joint venture and Pearson will own 47%. The joint venture will exclude Bertelsmann’s trade publishing business in Germany, and Pearson will retain rights to use the Penguin brand in education markets worldwide. Bertelsmann will nominate five directors to the board of Penguin Random House, and Pearson will nominate four.

The announcement came after word leaked Sunday that News Corp. was considering making an offer for Penguin, but Makinson said the Pearson board is committed to the Bertelsmann deal. And Pearson and Bertelsmann executives made it sound like they were proceeding as they expect the merger to move forward.

“This combination with Random House – a company with an almost perfect match of Penguin’s culture, standards and commitment to publishing excellence – will greatly enhance its fortunes and its opportunities. Together, the two publishers will be able to share a large part of their costs, to invest more for their author and reader constituencies and to be more adventurous in trying new models in this exciting, fast-moving world of digital books and digital readers,” said Pearson CEO Marjorie Scardino.

Thomas Rabe, chairman and CEO of Bertelsmann, said: “With this planned combination, Bertelsmann and Pearson create the best course for new growth for our world-renowned trade-book publishers, to enable them to publish even more effectively across traditional and emerging formats and distribution channels. It will build on our publishing tradition, offering an extraordinary diversity of publishing opportunities for authors, agents, booksellers, and readers, together with unequalled support and resources.” 

 

Read the rest of the story on Publishers Weekly.

The 22 Rules of Writing

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 Today I have an infographic for you based on tips and advice on storytelling shared on Twitter by Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coats.

Emma set out "22 Rules of Storytelling" based on what she learned working for the animation studio (responsible for such blockbusters as the Toy Story series and Finding Nemo). In my opinion there are some real gems for fiction writers in all formats and genres here.

The infographic was created by Jessica Bogart of PBJ Publishing, and is shared with her permission.

 

 

 

Note that I had to reduce the size of the graphic to work on my blogging platform. If you can’t read it clearly, you can access the full size (5 MB!) version at this website.

If you would like a printed, poster-size version of the graphic, you can buy it from Jessica’s Etsy store (not an affiliate link).

I particularly like Rule 12: "Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself." As a writing tutor myself, I can testify that one of the most common mistakes in new writers’ work is predictability.

I also love Rule 19: "Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating." If you stick to this one rule alone, it will put you ahead of 90% of fiction writers immediately!

I hope you enjoy reading "The 22 Rules of Storytelling". If you have any comments about it or suggestions for additional rules, please do post them below.

 

This is a reprint from Nick’s Writing Blog.

 

Should Charity Be Profitable?

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 A news story this week asked “Is ABC Going to Far in Covering Robin Roberts Illness?” The journalist was speculating about whether the network’s “concern” had crossed the line into exploitation in an attempt to boost ratings.

It’s a very fine line and a subject I’ve been thinking about a lot lately because it applies to authors, charity, and book sales. Many authors have donated the profit, or part of the profit, of a new book to charity, typically a charity or medical cause that corresponds with a theme in the story. And in doing so, they boost their sales and visibility.

On the surface, this seems noble, and we did it on the Crime Fiction Collective blog when the tornado tore apart Joplin Missouri. We all donated all of our profits during a certain time period to a Joplin family, who was very grateful for the help. I even think it was my idea.

But the more I ponder this trend, the more I believe that for myself, charity needs to be separate from commerce. Any donation I make should be done out of compassion and goodwill alone—without profiting from it directly through increased sales.

But why not accomplish both things at once, when it seems so expedient? I’m not sure I can articulate why I’ve come to feel this way. Except that rooting for your book to sell is a completely different emotion and experience than sending money to help others in need—perhaps even a contradictory one.

I understand why authors do this. Their hearts are in the right place. And the readers who buy those books are even more commendable. They’re figure they’re going to spend money on books anyway, so why not make a donation to charity at the same time?

Many businesses also run these campaigns. A pizza parlor down the street often donates part of its one-day profits to a charity, school, or foundation. Everybody wins.

And I understand what ABC is trying to accomplish: educate viewers, raise money for medical research, and boost its ratings. But has it gone too far? Probably. Charities are by definition nonprofit, and raising money for, or donating to, a cause without directly profiting from the effort seems more noble. Yet goodwill results naturally from generosity, so indirect benefits are inevitable, but they’re not the same as direct profit.

I’m not saying it’s wrong for authors to connect their books to a charity. It’s just not something I’m comfortable doing myself. But I’m probably in the minority here. What do you think?

 

This is a reprint from L.J. Sellers’ blog.