On Ghostwriting

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff posted on Bookview Cafe on when to break up with your ghostwriting client, which also applies to editing clients and writer-writer collaborations.

I've never done a ghostwriting job, but I've collaborated on writing projects and I absolutely agree with her that you have to be able to trust your partner. If your collaborator or client starts going squirrely on you, it's time to bail.

Note that Maya was getting paid for her work regardless of whether the books got published, but bailed because she didn't want to deal with the squirrely client, money or no money. Sounds like she made the right choice.

Check it out..

Angie

2016 Anthology Workshop

It's been over two weeks since I got back from the Anthology Workshop. I meant to do a write-up about it before this, but I caught some kind of crud on the flight home (best as I can tell, looking at the likely incubation period) and I've only just gotten over the hacking and sniffling. I hate trying to sleep when my sinuses are clogged up; I think the sleep deprivation is worse than the actual hacking and sniffling. :P

Anyway. Great workshop as always. I only sold one story (an SF mystery to John Helfers for an anthology called No Humans Allowed,) but I had a great time anyway, and learned a lot. I had a chance to talk to a bunch of folks, get to know some new people and some people who've been around, but we just never had a chance to really sit down and chat before.

The whiteboard John built his TOC on. My story's on the right, in darker marker; it was a "Hold" at first, and he decided to add it at the end, when he was filling in stories to make his wordcount.

We wrote stories ahead of time, as always. About 45 attendees wrote about 250 stories, totalling 1.1 million words of fiction. The reading was like a tidal wave, seriously. We're supposed to be learning to read like editors -- who definitely do not read every word of every story that's submitted -- but it's hard when you're dealing with quality this high. If this were open-submission slush, most stories could be rejected after a paragraph or two. That's not the case here. This is a pro-level, invite-only workshop, and people who attend are ridiculously good at this stuff.

Six of the editors -- John Helfers, Kerrie Hughes, Kris Rusch, Mark Leslie (aka Mark the Kobo Guy), Kevin Anderson and Rebecca Moesta -- had established books they were reading for. We got guidelines for one book per week we were writing, and had a week (or a bit less) to write a story in accordance with the guidelines and get it in. Dean Smith was the odd guy out this year; he read all the stories and had to put together an anthology out of the ones the six other editors didn't choose, coming up with a set of stories that created some kind of theme as he went. He ended up with a bunch of stories on the theme of Hard Choices, and he had to fight a few of the other editors for some of those stories.

It was fun to watch. :) If the editor for whom a story was specifically written doesn't want it, any other editor who thinks it'd fit their book really well can steal it. All the editors with established books had dibs over poor Dean, who often found himself wanting a story, but standing in line behind two or even three other people. By the time he put his TOC together on the last day, he said the process had been a lot harder than he'd expected. I definitely wouldn't want to have to do it, although watching him do it was educational.

Most of the workshop was spent watching and listening as the editors went through the stories one by one, evaluating, disagreeing, arguing. There were a lot of WTF?? expressions scattered through the week as one or more editors loved a story that one or more other editors hated. Discussion got pretty heated once or twice. In the middle of all of this, Kris reminded us that this was because the stories were all very good. If this were a beginner workshop, where all or most of the attendees were still learning how to write, the editors would all agree. Obvious flaws would stick out to everyone. In this group, everyone can write, so the disagreements and arguments were all a matter of individual editors' taste. Even the common disagreements that sounded like craft issues -- like Kris and Dean insisting that a lot of stories had "no setting" (since they're both really aware of setting) while John and Kerrie often loved those stories and thought they had just the right amount of setting, or that the characters and plot were so interesting they hadn't noticed or didn't care that there wasn't much setting -- were really matters of taste. There are readers like Kris and Dean, and there are readers like John and Kerrie.

And that's the point. Just because one editor, or even five editors, rejects your story, that doesn't mean it sucks. It might just mean it wasn't to that editor's (or those editors') taste. Keep trying. Some of my stories that didn't sell would've sold to one of the other editors if they'd been editing that particular volume. Which is the point. Keep going. Too many writers get a rejection or three, decide the story sucks and stop sending it out. Don't do that!

As we've done before, we had sign-up lunches in small groups with most of the editors, and a few other subject matter experts, like Christy Fifield, who writes fun cozy mysteries, and is a hotel Controller in her day job; she's a great source of info for finance and accounting and such. We also had an audio expert, and someone who writes comics for major publishers, for folks who are interested in that. I went out with John, Dean and Christy, and had a great time with each of them, and the other writers who signed up to go with.

Other days we grabbed lunch with whoever was available, and there's plenty of talent in the room and lots of brains to pick. Dinner was also chaotic in a fun way, and I hung with a lot of different people at various times. Sometimes it's fun sticking with a few friends -- I usually do that at SF conventions, that sort of thing -- but at this kind of event, the more people you can hang out with and get to know, the better. The networking at these events is worth the workshop fee all by itself.

Allyson, the Publisher at WMG, announced that they're starting up a companion line of anthologies called Fiction River Presents. These will be reprints of stories that've already been in Fiction River, remixed in various ways. Fiction River is starting its fourth year now, and a lot of people only heard about it recently. Doing the reprint volumes is a good way of giving folks different mixes of stories, so if one theme from the past didn't appeal to you, maybe another will and you'll see some stories you'd have otherwise missed.

From the WMG site: "Appropriately, the first volume, Debut Writers' Showcase, commemorates first sales by up-and-coming authors. Future volumes will revolve around themes such as family, thrillers, offbeat stories, and Readers’ Choice."

My first professional sale was "Staying Afloat" in How to Save the World, and that story will be in the Showcase volume.

Othere random bits I noted down during the workshop:

Short fiction is an entryway to your work for people who've never read any of your other stuff.

Anthologies are an exception to BookBub's one-book-per-author-at-any-one-time rule. You can only have one novel up at a time, but you can have multiple multi-author anthologies, or a novel and an anthology, or whatever combination.

If you're looking to build up your sales ranking on sites like Amazon, advertise sales on multiple sites in succession rather than all at once. Start with BookBub and then go through others week by week. BookBub will raise your book up the ranks, and the smaller lists will keep it up there.

A workshop attendee who writes romances puts out a new short story each month. He makes it free on his blog for a week, with a buy button on the page. He sells a few during the free week, then when the story comes off of free, sales shoot up. He sells the e-books for $2.99 and paperbacks for $5.99, and he gets bookstore/warehouse sales; he sees batches of 10-15 of the paperbacks selling. He does this once a month, and now makes a third of his income off of short fiction this way.

"Free" is the most popular search term on Kobo, always, no matter what else is going on or what hot book's been released.

Writers are generally pretty awful at writing our author bios. I'll admit I hate doing it, and the standard one I use isn't great. An author bio should talk about your writing. It doesn't matter that you have five cats unless there are cats prominently in your work. It doesn't matter that you like to garden or knit unless your characters are gardening, or some detail about historical knitting is a plot point in your story. What do you write? What have you published? Have you won any awards? Or been nominated? Made any significant bestseller lists? When writing your author bio, remember -- not too long, not too short, not too modest. Most of us seem to have a problem with that last bit. :P

If your story is set during a big, horrific event, it's hard to get your readers to hang on to it. If you deal with it head-on, it's better to deal with a smaller part and make it representative of the larger events, with a close emotional grab. Trying to deal with the whole, sweeping thing will probably require a lot of tell-tell-tell narrative, which can get boring. Keep the reader down IN the events, focused on a representative character. Also, use little details, like in the middle of a huge event that's caused shootings or protests or whatever, there are going to be closed streets. Have your characters deal with that, to make the larger events have an impact on their lives in a given moment.

Make your manuscript readable. Small fonts are bad. Courier is iffy.

Make sure your name and the page number are in the header of every page, because some editors still print things out to read. If they drop a stack of pages, or they go for coffee and the printer spits the pages for a dozen stories all over the floor, the editor's not going to bother to play literary archaeologist to figure out which pages belong to your story and what order they go in.

Give your story a significant file name. Some markets call out file name formats, in which case follow that. But if a market doesn't specify, don't call it "Story.doc" or "Fantasy.doc" or whatever.

Story titles should be memorable. On the one hand, that means that calling something "Aftermath" or "The Game" or "Conflict" probably isn't a great idea because that kind of title doesn't call a particular story to mind. On the other hand, words and names in your title should be reasonably familiar and pronounceable. You want readers to be able to talk about your story to their friends, and editors to be able to remember your title when thinking about their up-coming book or issue, or when talking with their staff. They can't do that if they can't remember or pronounce your alien name, or your transliterated Arabic phrase. Put the linguistic fireworks in the story, not in the title.

First person can be very distancing because the reader is NOT the person doing whatever

There's a convention of a type of mystery fiction by people who don't know police procedure perfectly and that's fine. You're just aiming for a different audience of readers than the folks who are experts on procedure and make that a major focus of the narrative.

Put something in the body of the e-mail when you sub a story, or even just edits. Blank e-mails with just an attachment end up in the spam filter. Also, you're trying to foster a relationship with the editor, so say hi, looking forward to working with you, something. Not a Christmas letter, but a line or two.

If a published story gets picked up for a reprint, gets into a Year's Best, nominated for an award, whatever, let the original editor know. They might want to use it in their marketing, and even if they don't, it's a fuzzy to them too, just to hear about it.

If you're writing about one of a series of events, what's special about this occurrence, this character? Why are you writing about this particular one and not the previous one, or the next one, or the first one? Let the reader know why this person/thing/occurrence has a story written about it.

We were talking in the workshop about the layoffs at Random Penguin, which happened while we were there. Someone there who knows people at PRH said that Nora Roberts's editor was one of the people layed off, which... seriously? How could anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together for mutual warmth argue that that particular editor wasn't pulling in enough money for the business to justify their salary?? o_O So when word came out about a week later that Ms. Roberts had taken a hike up the road to St. Martins, I wasn't at all surprised. That was a ridiculously expensive round of layoffs for Random Penguin; I'm sure someone was called to explain WTF they were thinking, or will be when the company start to feel the lack of Ms. Roberts's sales in their bottom line.



We had a funny thing happen on the way home. I rode back to Portland with Lyn, who was driving, and Laura. We stopped at Laura's hotel to drop her off, and ran into Brenda in the parking lot. Brenda had dropped Michele off at the airport and decided, spur of the moment, to stay at that hotel herself. Lyn had planned to drive farther before stopping, but with two other writers from the workshop there, she decided what the heck, that she'd stay there too, so she ran in to get a room. I think she and Laura ended up sharing. I had a room at another hotel a couple miles away, and was having dinner there that night with a writer friend who lives in Portland. Under other circumstances, though, it would've been pretty awesome to have one more "workshop" night at the hotel. Or better yet, if they'd all been in mine -- it's the hotel I always stay at when I'm flying out of Portland, and my husband got a great deal on a suite. I had a for-real suite, with a main room and a separate bedroom, and my main room had a full size dining table and six chairs. We could've stayed up for hours gabbing. :) Maybe next year.

I had a great conversation with Amelia, and a decent flight home the next morning. I came down with the creeping crud a couple of days later, but the trip itself went wonderfully well. I'm already signed up for next year, and there's still space. If you write short fiction, the Anthology Workshop is an awesome experience, and one I can't recommend strongly enough.

Thanks to Dean and Allyson for organizing the event, all the editors for helping make it happen, and all the attendees for making it rock. So long as they keep throwing these workshops, I'll keep going.

Angie

Workshop and Sales and Business

So the first chunk of the year was pretty hectic, and I'm just getting back to normal. I wrote six stories in six weeks starting in early January, for Dean and Kris's anthology workshop. The way this works is, there are six professional editors, each editing an anthology that'll be brought out as part of the Fiction River line. Writers who've signed up get guidelines (book title, length requirements, theme, sometimes more info depending on the editor) and deadlines. The deadlines were one per week for six weeks, each Sunday, midnight Pacific time, no late subs accepted, no excuses, period. A lot more students got all six stories in than any of the instructors expected, although considering how Dean pounds the pulpit of getting your butt in the seat and your hands on the keyboard and doing the work, about how writing faster means spending more time writing not just typing faster, of how to make it as a pro you need a good work ethic (see previous about spending more time writing), I'm not sure why they were surprised. :) Personally, I was kind of afraid to sub fewer than six stories and then show my face at the workshop, so I didn't. Anyway.

The workshop was pretty awesome, although hectic. We all read all the subbed stories, which totalled about 250. So between writing for six weeks, then frantically reading up to and through most of the workshop, I did very little else for the first two months and change of this year. Once we were all settled in Lincoln City and got rolling, the way it worked was that the editors sat up at the front of the room, with the students in rows, sort of like a college classroom, but with rectangular two-person tables instead of those awful little desk-chair things. Lots of laptops and notebooks for taking notes.

We did one book per day. All the editors commented on each story, with the editor who was actually editing the book going last. Other editors either pretended they were editing that particular anthology, or in Kris's case she pretended she was still editing F&SF, and in Dean's case he pretended he was still editing Pulphouse Magazine. They went through the stories one at a time, each editor saying whether they read all the way through and why or why not, whether the story hit any of their reader cookies or anti-cookies[1], and whether they'd buy it. The final (actual) editor did the same, but if they said "Buy" they actually were making an offer. Or sometimes they held a story to the end, then looked over all the held stories and made final buy/no-buy decisions while building their TOC on the white board in front of the class. That's always fun to watch, and instructive.

The point of having all the editors talking about all the stories is to show us that editors disagree. I think we all know this on an intellectual level, but still, there's a strong tendency in Writerland to assume that because a story gets a form rejection right off the bat, the story must suck. Some writers send a story out once or twice and never again, convinced it's garbage because it didn't get bought right away, or because it only got form rejections. (Kris, a bestselling writer, an award winner in multiple genres, got three form rejections just that week. Which is a pretty rude thing for an editor to do to a name writer, but still, it happens to everyone.)

Actually seeing the editors not only disagreeing but actively arguing with one another makes quite an impact, though. Three editors tried to convince Dean to buy the story I'd written for his book. They failed, but they all (including Dean) were pretty sure I'd sell it somewhere else. (It's sitting in an SF magazine editor's queue as I type.) Three editors tried to convince Kris to buy the story I wrote for her book. They failed, but again, everyone agreed it'd probably sell. (And it's sitting in a mystery magazine editor's queue.) People were still needling Dean about the story of mine that he'd passed up days later. Kris said they'd talked about it at home while they were reading submissions, but she couldn't convince him, and neither could all three professional editors when they ganged up on him in class.

Now, all this was a wonderful balm for my disappointment at not making this or that sale, but the point is that three professional editors would have bought that story if they were the one editing that particular anthology. We all know that different editors produce different anthologies, that two editors doing similar books with the same or similar themes will put together books that feel different, have a different subtheme or a different point of view, and therefore a different list of stories. We all know that. But seeing it playing out in front of you, sometimes with raised voices or pointed jokes or annoyed scowls or incredulous expressions? That makes you feel it, not just know it, and I think that after watching the editors arguing over stories one is less likely to think, Yeah, I know a lot of stories just had to find the right editor after fifty submissions, but MY story sucks.

Watching an editor narrow their holds down to the final roster is instructive as well. I imagine most of us have had the experience of being told in a rejection letter, "I had enough great stories for four books, but unfortunately I can only publish one," or something similar. It's easy to think, Yeah, but my story wasn't quite great enough, or maybe, The editor's just being nice, letting me down easy. But actually watching an editor agonize over the decisions makes it clear that this is hard. One of the editors, I thought she was about to start crying a number of times, and particularly when she was letting down people whose held stories didn't quite make it.

One difference I noticed from last year was that there weren't as many invites. Last year each book was at least half full by the time the workshop convened. Name writers were invited to submit, presumably to get some names on the covers that'd help sell the books. (How to Save the World, the book I sold a story to, has David Gerrold and Laura Resnick on the cover, among others.) That makes sense; anthologies are a tough sell anyway, and it's clear why Kris and Dean, as the series editors and owners of the publishing company behind Fiction River, would want to give their new anthology series the best launch possible. I was expecting the same thing this year, actually, but there were very few invites this time.

Which isn't to say there won't be any "names" in the books. Aside from Kris and Dean, who write stories for all the anthologies, Lisa Silverthorne and Ron Collins are regulars at the anthology workshop; their names regularly appear on the covers of SF magazines. And I spent the workshop week sitting next to Cat Rambo. (I managed not to ever fangirl her, because I am not a complete dork one hundred percent of the time. [cough]) But they reported that the series is doing better than they'd expected, reviews have been good, and they're gearing up for more publicity and some experimentation.

One of the experiments came about during one of the aforementioned sessions of agonizing over the final buy list on a book. There were three more stories Kevin Anderson, who's editing Pulse Pounders -- basically a collection of short thriller type stories -- wanted to buy, but he didn't have the budget. Mark LeFevre, the Kobo Writing Life guy, was also attending the workshop. He cornered Kevin, Kris and Dean during a break and made an offer on behalf of Kobo to help fund the three extra stories for a special expanded Kobo edition of the book. There'll be an expanded edition of Kris's book too, Past Crimes, a collection of historical mysteries. He was actually willing to do Kobo special editions of all the books, but Kris and Dean want to start slowly, with the two books that they think have the widest audience. The reasoning is that because this is something new, they want to give it the best chance to succeed. If they do special editions of all the books and some don't sell well, it might be taken as a failure of the expanded edition concept, rather than just the individual books selling slowly. They want to give the concept the best chance to succeed, so it can become a thing that other editors/publishers and other e-book vendors would consider doing.

Another new thing is that they're filling and scheduling books a lot farther out, so that they can get ARCs done and available in time to send them out to the major review sites the requisite 5-8 months in advance. For that reason, the two books I sold stories to won't be out until 2015.

Oh, right, I sold a couple of stories. :) John Helfers, who bought my story for How to Save the World last year, is editing a book called Recycled Pulp this year. It's a cool idea -- he created a bunch of ultra-pulpy sounding titles, and we had to write modern, non-pulpy stories that fit the titles. Each writer who wanted to sub for that book sent in three numbers between 1 and 250, and we got back three of the titles off the list. We could write to whichever title we wanted. My story is called "The Crypt of the Metal Ghouls," and it was a lot of fun to write.

Kerrie Hughes is editing Alchemy and Steam, which is pretty much what it says on the tin. Kerrie really likes alchemy -- it's one of her reader cookies -- and she wanted stories that were a blend of alchemy and steampunk. I wrote a story called "The Rites of Zosimos," with plot points based on some actual concepts a Greek alchemist named Zosimos of Panopolis wrote about. She liked it a lot and it'll be fun working with her. And I think I might get a series out of the setting/characters. [ponder]

Alchemy and Steam is scheduled for April of 2015, and Recycled Pulp is scheduled for December of 2015.

And I might have some work lined up for later this year -- more info 1) when/if it happens, and 2) when I can talk about it. There's awesome networking at these workshops, though.

Random notes from the workshop discussions, both during the week around stories and on the last day when we did break-out sessions with experts in various areas:

Kris told some stories about crazy-ass things writers do to get an editor's attention. Everyone's heard the story of the guy who sent his manuscript in a pizza box, with a pizza in it, right? With a note saying something like, "Thought you'd enjoy a snack while you read...?" I heard that online back in the 80s. Well, Kris had a better one. When she was editing F&SF, she'd head down to the Post Office regularly to pick up bins of mail, and she got a note to go pick something up at the window. The Postmaster came up holding an envelope dangling at arm's length. The envelope was black and covered with actual (not fake) cobwebs, and had actual dead spiders glued to it. O_O The Postmaster asked her, "Do you want this?" Kris sort of stared at it and said, "No." Postmaster said, "Good," and went to throw it away. Seriously, who thinks that kind of thing is a good idea?

Writers are usually wrong about what genre their story is. If you have something out in submission or indie pubbed that's not selling, and you're pretty sure it's a good, well-written story, that might be why. Have a few people read it cold, then ask them what genre they think it is. You might be sending it to the wrong editors, or have it tagged as the wrong genre/subgenre at the vendor sites. Genre is a marketing tool, so if you mess that up, everything else about your marketing of that story collapses.

Ever notice how SF in books and magazines is such a tiny genre compared with SF in movies and TV shows? SF is huge everywhere except in the books and magazines where it began. Originally, SF stories all had basically the same endings -- science triumphed and the good guys always won. Then in the seventies, SF sort of collectively decided to go all literary, and a story could have pretty much any ending, including negative or depressing or bleak ones. Genre readers like knowing approximately how the story is going to end, though, so SF has lost a lot of readers, both people deciding they didn't like the new stuff and leaving, and older readers dying without being replaced by new readers. (I can confirm that the attendees at SF conventions centered on book/magazine fiction are greying; I'm probably on the low end of average age at most of those cons, and I'm 50. Whereas media SF conventions and comic book conventions are full of kids in their teens and twenties.) Literary fans expect their endings to be variable, so they read literary and like it. Most SF fans, though, expect science to triumph and the good guys to win, and since the seventies, fewer stories delivered that. So most SF fans watch the movies and TV shows but don't read the books or magazines. Most fans of book/magazine SF don't consider the TV/movie fans to be "real" SF fans, but come on, seriously? [sigh] There are still stories with that kind of ending, but you're not guaranteed to find one if you pick an SF book at random off the shelf. In trying to be literary, SF is slowly strangling itself. (I've heard discussions on the convention side that in a generation or two, the traditional, fan-run convention for people who read SF will vanish as its attendees -- and the people running the conventions -- age and die. Same thing, from the readers' perspective instead of the writers'.) The take-away from this discussion, IMO, is that if you want to build a good fan base with your SF, and attract younger readers, write stories where science triumphs and the good guys win. Or if that's not what you're into, that's fine but be aware that your reader pool is shrinking.

Genre is moving toward being an author name rather than a traditional genre category. (Dean is pulling all his different genres, written under a pile of pseuds, most of whom nobody knows are him, back under his Dean Wesley Smith name.) You can make this work, especially going indie, but it'll take longer to build your reader base if you're writing all over the genre map. Although in reality, if you do want to write across various genres, it's going to take you a while anyway. It takes a certain number of books/stories -- individual titles -- to hit a tipping point where your discoverability starts fueling itself. This number, which seems to be between 25 and 50, depending on a lot of factors including luck, is per genre/name. So if you write SF/F, romance and thrillers, for example, it'll take 25-50 titles in each genre to get your sales and visibility in that genre to take off, if you're publishing under three names. It's looking like publishing three different genres all under one name doesn't change that very much; a lot of readers still read only one genre, although that's slowly changing.

(Related story -- I was talking to a writer friend who knew a third writer who was complaining that his career hadn't taken off, his sales were abysmal, he needed an agent because he had to have the career help. [sigh] I poked around and saw that he had three pen names, each with one book published. [headdesk] Well, no wonder he hadn't taken off! Three books under one name would still make him a newbie and almost invisible so far as the readers are concerned. The way he's been doing it, though, from the POV of the readers he's three newbie writers, each of whom has only one book out. No wonder readers hadn't noticed him. Same thing, though -- visibility is about volume, about having enough titles out there that readers have a chance of tripping over one and then finding the rest.)

Speaking about short fiction, once an editor starts buying your stuff, show some loyalty to that editor. If you sell an SF story to a magazine, send that magazine all your SF stories first, give that editor first refusal on your stuff. Particularly if you're writing a series, always send new stories in that series to the same editor who's been buying the series. Offering a series story first to someone else, a different magazine or an anthology, is rude and unprofessional.

When you set up your business account for your writing income (you did that, right? especially if you're indie pubbing?) refuse overdraft protection. If someone hacks your account and overdraws it by a few thousand, the bank will be happy to give them that money, then not only charge you that amount but also the overdraft fee.

Be careful about (book) contracts from British publishers, which are reportedly even worse than book contracts from American publishers.

John saw a contract which said that if the copyright laws changed in any way in the future, you automatically agree to it, in perpetuity. It's unenforcable, but would still be a pain to deal with.

Some setting details are what Kris calls phony setting. So frex., if you say your characters are in "a renovated church," each reader is going to have a different image in their head, which are all probably going to be different from the image in your head. Actually describe the setting so the picture in the reader's head is at least close to the one in your own. That prevents sudden jolts later on when you refer to something that doesn't at all match what the reader was imagining.

The Cricket magazines (which pay wonderfully well) have a horrible contract, but if you tell them you can't sign it, they'll send you the good one.

Hard fantasy is like hard SF, but the fantasy is the tech -- it's explained, works consistently, and has the nuts-and-bolts feel that hard SF has, if the world actually worked on magic. (I actually write a lot of hard fantasy and didn't know it. :) )

We talked some about how Audible was lowering its royalty from 50% to 40%. Dean says that's a good thing because their business model is sustainable now. Also, they're dropping the dollar per sale that they paid directly to the writers -- circumventing the publisher -- whenever an audiobook was sold. They did that to force the publishers to clean up their accounting. A writer who got $X whenever they sold X audiobooks knew that they'd better see X audiobook sales on their royalty statement from their publisher. I wish the e-book vendors would/could do something similar and force the publishers to clean up their e-book accounting the same way.

We talked some about manuscript formatting, and how italics has replaced underlining in modern manuscript formats. Although if a market still demands paper submissions, assume they're also old-fashioned in their formatting, and use underlines.

The choice to quit the day job and go completely freelance is usually made at a point of crisis -- a lost job, frex. -- rather than because a reasoned decision has been made. Start thinking about what you'd do and how you'd do it. What if you lose your job next month? And can't find another one in a month or two or six? Do you know how to gear up to get your writing paying more of the bills, or any of the bills? Having some idea of what to do and how to do it if you have to transition over to full time writing Right Now will make a horribly stressful life roll a little easier.

If/when you do go full time, cut expenses as much as you can. Protect your writing time; that's what pays the bills. If you're selling regularly, a cleaning lady can be a good investment. If you make $30/hour or $50/hour on your writing, it's totally worth it to pay someone $15-$20/hour to wash dishes and vacuum and do laundry. Also mowing the lawn, pruning the trees, cleaning the pool, whatever. Protect the writing, and spend that protected time writing.

Don't let the publishing overrun the writing; one suggestion is to set aside one day per week for doing your publishing work, formatting and covers and uploading and updating the accounting. The rest of the time, write. New words of fiction. Research isn't writing, outlining isn't writing, editing isn't writing. Marketing/promo is most definitely not writing. (One of the worst things you can do is write and publish one book and then spend the next year on marketing and promo. Don't do that. Write the next book. And the next and the next.)

One way to protect your writing time is to stay organized. Checklists are good. So are systems you can implement over and over again. Have a long-term plan so you know what you want to accomplish (including non-writing tasks, like learning to do covers, learning to format POD paperbacks, setting up and starting to collect sign-ups for a newsletter, learn/implement a more comprehensive business accounting system, take a class -- larger one-time goals you want to hit) and in what order you want to do them. That way, when you find you have time/money for a larger task, you can look on your list and see what's next, rather than have to dither around, doing "research" and making the decision over again every time it comes up. Your goals and ordered list can change, if there's a reason, but making that list in the first place is part of your long-term planning.

Have similar plans month-to-month. List deadlines for any trad-pub books or stories you're doing, plus goals for finishing writing on Book C, formatting on Book B, a cover for book A and uploading it to vendors P, Q and R. Monthly goals should be realistic, based on how much time and/or money you have to spend, but treating it like a business with goals and deadlines makes it that much more likely things will get done. (No, I'm not this organized yet myself.)

Schedule time to learn stuff. There's a lot to learn if you're going freelance, especially if you're indie pubbing. The learning is going to take time, so plan that into your schedule. Protect the writing, but make learning something that'll help your business a strong second priority.

You need at least 15-20 titles up, per pseudonym, before it's worthwhile to do any marketing. (Yes, there's a pattern here.)

Whew. That's just hilights from what I wrote down in a notes file. There was a lot more, and I absolutely got my money's worth. I felt the same last year when I only sold one story, and the year before when I sold none. This is an awesome workshop, and Dean is taking sign-ups for next year right now. The workshops on the coast are invitation only, but you can write to Dean and ask for an invitation. Explain your experience and your goals, and why you want to attend. I had no pro-level sales when I wrote and asked for an invite, and I got into the anthology workshop that year. It's doable, and it's absolutely worthwhile.

Angie, getting back into the groove

[1] A reader cookie is something you just love to see in a piece of fiction. If you're really into Cthulu stories, then that's a reader cookie for you. If you love stories about soldiers, or cyberpunk, or grumpy protagonists, those are reader cookies. Something you seriously dislike, bad enough that it might prevent you from enjoying a story, might even prevent you from reading the story, is an anti-cookie. If you really hate stories with a child protag, or a lot of car-mechanic-jargon-babble, or spiders, then that's an anti-cookie. Sending an editor a story full of that individual's anti-cookies means the story will probably be rejected, no matter how good it might otherwise be. Unless it's absolutely stupendously fabulous in every other way.

Follow-Up on the Libel of Quoting

I'm ridiculously busy right now so this is going to be short, but Mr. Sean Fodera, referenced in my previous post, has hired a lawyer to tell him that linking to an article that quotes him saying something stupid is not, in fact, a libelous action for which one can be sued. He's posted a very thorough apology to Mary Robinette Kowal in which he also points out that he does not represent his employer (MacMillan) in any way when he says stupid things in public.

There are a few interesting roundaboutations and caveats in said apology, but whatever. I only hope he's learned something, and is planning to duck out of sight for a while.

Angie, who still has about 90 stories to get through by Saturday

Serials, or, How to Make Your Readers Hate You

Can we talk about serials for a minute?

I know serialization is supposed to be the hot new way of sucking extra money out of readers. (Oops, was I not supposed to say that out loud?) But you know, most readers can actually do the, like, second grade math required to figure out how much the whole story cost them. If your short novel is coming out in five two-dollar parts, or your normal sized novel is coming out in ten two-dollar parts, a lot of people are going to do the above-mentioned math and figure out that you're ripping them off. 'Cause seriously, ten bucks for a short novel in electronic form is ludicrous. So is twenty bucks for a regular sized e-novel. If this is how you price your "serial," then you (either the writer or the publisher, whoever came up with the scheme in any given case) has absolutely no moral ground to stand on when readers start complaining, in print, on their blogs or on Goodreads or wherever else. Because that? [points up] That's a major rip-off.

Better yet is when the writer/publisher/whoever fails to let readers know up front that a story is, indeed, a serial. When a reader has bought what they think is a short story or a novelette and is reading along only to find that the story cuts off abruptly at the end, leaving them hanging, needing to wait..wait...wait for the next installment, and fork over another chunk of cash to get it? Yeah, you're going to get complaints about that, too. And again, you'll have no grounds whatsoever to whine about those complaints, even when they're made publicly. The reader who posts to their blog or leaves a comment on a vendor site or a social reader's site to complain about your stealth-serial isn't being mean or sabotaging you or whatever. They're making a legitimate complaint about your lack of up-front disclosure that you were selling them a fraction of a story.

Let's look at an example. I don't usually call out specifics when I'm writing about a general trend, but this one's unfortunately perfect.

Monty Gets Arrested is up on Goodreads with four ratings and a 3.0 average. This isn't a lot of ratings, and the average might improve with time. But what's significant here are the comments. One commenter, who left a one-star rating, says, "It's not even half a story." Another, who left two stars, says, "Not bad, just .. way too short. More like a chapter than a book." A third said:

Ok I am not rating this right now cause I'm mad.
I didn't realize that this was a short story to be continued....
And not continued soon, but a whole month away. I just read Anitra Lynn McLeod series Seven Brothers for McBride and I had to wait a whole 7 seven days for the next installment. And let me tell you that was a raging 7 days and each Saturday Anitra came through with the story.
Now I have to wait a month for the next installment? This was ok but I don't know that I care enough to 'post-it note myself' 30 days out.

Wow, great marketing strategy this turned out to be.

Someone came along and commented to one of the reviews, explaining that Monty is a five-part series, with parts to be released once a month. I'm assuming this person knows the writer, or works for the publisher, or whatever. Okay, that's good information to have. Why didn't the publisher give it to us? Because this good information should've been given to the readers before they spent their money.

Monty's page on ARe (a popular e-book vendor site specializing in romance) says nothing at all about the book being the first part of a serial. The full title is Monty Gets Arrested (Marshall's Park #1), but that's also how series books are often titled; it looks to a savvy reader like there are going to be more books about Marshall's Park. Which is fine; if you like Monty, you'll probably be interested in reading more books set in the same place, by the same writer. But nowhere on this page does it say "Serial," or "Story to be continued," or anything similar. The reader (potential customer at this point) is given no hint that they're not buying a complete product, or that they'll have to pay more money to get the rest of the story.

Obligatory statement that I'm not writing this to rag on the author. I have three of her books on my to-buy shelf on Goodreads, which means at the very least she can write good summary blurbs. Her total average rating on Goodreads is 3.82, which is very good; she can clearly write stories that readers enjoy, and I expect to enjoy a few of them when I get around to it. For that matter, the summary blurb on Monty makes it sound like a fun story. I'm betting the problem here is with a publisher who thought they could make an eventual $9.95 for a 57K word novel (assuming all five parts cost the same and are about the same length) instead of the more usual $4-5.99 a novel that length would bring in if sold as one book, and who apparently hoped no one would notice or complain about their shenanigans.

I'm not going to say that serialization is a bad concept entirely. Rather, I'll say I've never seen it implemented well, in e-book form. Serialization goes back to the days when newsstands were full of magazines carrying fiction (heck, it goes back to the days when there were newsstands) and many of those magazines serialized novels a chapter at a time, or a chunk of chapters at a time. Purchasing the magazine got you a lot more than that issue's serial, though. Even if the serial was the major selling point of the magazine (as magazines with Dickens's work often were, as I understand) the fact is that there was still more to read once you were done with the serial installment. Even if the only effect was psychological, it's the psychological effect of realizing that you just paid money for a fifth or a tenth or a fifteenth of a story that I'm talking about here. A reader who'll pay $2.99 for a 12K-word novelette -- a complete story -- might well balk at paying $2.99 for a 12K-word chunk of a longer novel, when they realize that the whole novel is going to cost them $15, and that they're used to paying $5.99 at most for a single (complete story) e-book of that length. The psychological effect is exactly the problem, and saying it shouldn't be that way doesn't make it vanish.

What it comes down to is that serializing a longer work and selling the parts individually is a sales and marketing strategy. The publisher is trying to make more money selling the parts separately than they'd make selling the work as a whole. Wanting to make money isn't a problem -- everyone who doesn't consider this a hobby wants to make money. The problem is when you're doing it so blatantly that your customer can't help noticing your hand rooting around in their pocket.

Some readers like serials, and are maybe even willing to pay more to get each chunk of story as soon as possible. Okay, that's great; selling serials to people who like them is a good idea. If you're targetting readers who like serials, then let the readers know up front that you're publishing a serial. There's no excuse for letting someone buy what they think is a complete short story or novelette, only to spring the surprise on them at the end that the story is incomplete. Announce in the marketing material -- within the summary blurb would be a good place -- that this is part of a serial, with more parts to come (and previous parts if it's not the first). Give the readers the information they need to make a valid decision whether to hand you money for your product. Some people will decide not to buy, yes. But the alternative is to deal in bad faith, and have people complaining about you in public afterwards. This kind of behavior might make you a few more dollars now, but it'll lose you customers in the long run.

If you're going to sell a serial, act in good faith. Let people know what they're buying before they give you money, and then see how many do. However much money you make when everyone knows what they're buying? That's the measure of whether serials are successful.

Angie

Writer Hit by Trademark Bully

I've been watching this one develop all day, since I saw John Scalzi's post about it, and things look to be turning around for the writer involved. Still, she's still pretty firmly in suckland at this point, and the fact that it's happening at all is outrageous.

MCA Hogarth wrote a book called Spots the Space Marine and self-pubbed it. Games Workshop (a large game company that publishes the very popular game Warhammer 40K) has recently decided to exercise its trademark of the term "space marine" -- it has the term trademarked in the area of tabletop games and video games -- against fiction. It sent a DMCA notice to Amazon, claiming that Spots violated its trademark, and Amazon took the book down.

Wow, where to start?

First, Games Workshop does not own the term "space marine" in the context of fiction. There've been space marines running around SF for about as long as there's been a recognized genre called science fiction, and maybe even longer. Doc Smith and Robert Heinlein had space marines. There's reams of prior art. Just because GW's got a lock on the term in the gaming arena doesn't mean they own it in fiction too, and the fact that they've started publishing fiction recently doesn't change that.

Second, as Cory Doctorow points out, the DMCA doesn't cover trademarks, only copyrights, so Amazon was under no obligation to comply with the take-down notice. They chose to do so freely when they didn't have to -- a thwap of the salmon to Amazon for being an auxiliary idiot here. (The comments to Cory's post are pretty entertaining, if you're at all familiar with Heinlein's Starship Troopers. :D )

Third, someone at Games Workshop must know their trademark assertion is completely bogus, because they're going after a tiny little indie-pubbed book, but (so far as I've heard) haven't said so much as "Peep" any of the big New York publishers who are "infringing" just as much on their supposed trademark, but who all have lawyers on staff.

This is pathetic behavior on the part of Games Workshop. I don't know where their legal advice is coming from, but it's not a source I'd ever hire, because it's making them look like idiots.

The legal blog Popehat is calling for pro bono help for Ms. Hogarth in fighting this crap, which she can't afford to do on her own. (Which GW counted on, I'm sure.) Popehat has a good track record with this sort of thing, as when attorney Charles Carreon sued Matt Inman; I'm betting they can get help for Ms. Hogarth too, and I'm looking forward to reading about the results.

I've been a gamer since I was a teenager. I played in the same FRPG campaign for almost twenty years, until I got married and moved away from my group. I used to work as a developer/gamemaster for a company that does online multi-player RPGs. I have no local gaming group, but still play computer games. As a member of the community Games Workshop is trying to do business in, I have to say that I'll never again buy one of their products, ever. They're a pack of cowardly, bullying douchebags and don't deserve my business. I hope a lot of other gamers make the same decision.

And I hope a trademark attorney or two responds to Popehat's call and gives Games Workshop a good smack upside the head on Ms. Hogarth's behalf. They definitely need a few brain cells jarred loose.

Angie

Oatmeal vs. FunnyJunk and Charles Carreon

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Pitching Guest Posts

I just got an e-mail from a stranger offering to write a guest post for me. Okay, I'm open to the idea. Except in this case, the pitch letter was very badly written. (A couple of sentences had no period, and one sentence had two periods; maybe he thought they averaged out? plus the plural intro to a singular example, and the fragment that just wandered off into the ether.) Also, the one topic suggested had nothing whatsoever to do with writing or publishing or e-books, my usual topics, nor even about social justice issues, which I also blog about sometimes. It sounded like this person had already written a post on tips for "medical health insurance" (redundant, anyone?) and was sending a generic (badly written) letter to as many blog owners as he could find and hoping someone bit. He said he'd read "http://angiesdesk.blogspot.com" -- yes, the full URL rather than the blog's name -- but looking at the topic he suggested, I frankly don't believe him.

I have to say, I wasn't at all impressed. I wrote up a critique of the pitch letter and sent it back, because I'm a writer and this guy presenting himself as a writer sort of ticked me off.

A couple of years ago, I got another offer from a stranger for a guest post. This one actually sent me a custom letter, or possibly a generic letter that was well enough written to look custom, which is close enough. We went back and forth in e-mail a couple of times, and I told him that I usually post about writing, publishing, e-books, that sort of thing, and that I'd look at anything he came up with on those topics. I should've been more specific.

Again, I got the impression the guy -- despite his apparently personal approach and his discussions with me -- had never actually read my blog. What I got back a few days later was a post on "E-Books 101," a sort of, "Electronic books, or e-books, are a rapidly growing phenomenon in the publishing world. An e-book is an electronic media file..." blah-blah-blah, basically explaining what an e-book was and how it worked and cetera, as though writing for an audience who'd never heard of them before.

Umm, no. Anyone who reads my blog knows what an e-book is [cough] and probably knows more about them than this guy did, even after he did his research and wrote the piece. It sounded like he hit Wikipedia or something, then summarized the basics.

After these experiences, the primary advice I'd give anyone who wants to go around pitching random guest posts is to READ THE BLOG YOU'RE PITCHING TO. That should be pretty basic, right? Apparently not.

Know your audience, which is the audience of the blog you're pitching. Just because a topic is new to you doesn't mean it's new to the readers of that blog. Read the blog, see what's been discussed in the last dozen posts at least, and note the level of discussion. A blog by an electronically published writer, addressing other writers, isn't going to need an "E-Books 101" type post; that's ridiculously elementary for a professional audience. That's like going to a blog for foodies and pitching an article on the difference between stirring and folding, or a post explaining what truffles are. :/

Write to the level of your target audience. If that's going to require significant research on your part, then it will; consider that before sending off your pitch.

And if you plan to pitch your writing skills, learn to write first -- bad grammar and punctuation in your pitch letter aren't going to win you any gigs. [eyeroll]

I'm open to guest posts, but I'm not going to loan my soapbox for just anything. As anyone who looks at my calendar list can tell, I'm not exactly desperate to keep up a steady stream of material here. I post when I have something to talk about, and if I don't then I don't. I'm okay with that, and I'm not going to post something I don't think folks who read here will be interested in just to get something up that day or that week. Particularly if I've never heard of the writer, I'm going to be pretty choosy about guest material; random pitches, even if well written (which the first one from a couple of years ago was) aren't going to make the cut.

Angie

[ETA: comments closed because idiot spammers Will Not Give Up despite the fact that blogger doesn't let any of them through. :/ ]

WorldCon Part 2

Another panel I made it to was John Scalzi's "A Trip to the Creation Museum." I'd previously read Scalzi's blog post about the visit and had a great time reading it. I knew it'd be even more fun in a room full of like-minded folk, so I made sure to get there to hear it live -- I even managed to get a seat. :)

Scalzi explained in the panel how this came about. The Creation Museum (which is exactly what you think it is) was built within a reasonable distance of Scalzi's home, and someone asked if he was going to go. He explained exactly how unlikely it would ever be that he'd visit such a place, even under considerable duress. A bunch of people thought it'd be hilarious for him to go, though, so he finally made a deal -- he'd go if the people who thought it'd be hilarious raised $250, which he would donate to Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. He says on his blog:

As of 11:59 and 59 seconds (Pacific Time) last night, the "Drag Scalzi's Ass to the Creation Museum" donation drive raised $5,118.36. That's 256 times the admission price to Creation Museum, a multiple I find both amusing (from a dork point of view) and gratifying, since it means what tiny bit of income the creationists running the museum gain by having me pass through the door will be utterly swamped by the amount I'm going to send to Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Would that it worked that way for every admission to that place.

For those of you who were wondering, some statistics: The first milestone for this fundraiser, the $250 to get me to go at all, got passed within the first hour of posting the challenge. The $1000 mark got passed about 12 hours later. The $5,000 marker got passed last night sometime between 6 and 11pm, while I was out on a date with my wife, celebrating our anniversary. I'm particularly pleased about hitting the $5k mark. The least amount donated was $1; the most was $300. More than one person donated more than $250, usually with the notation "Ha! Now you HAVE to go!" Multiples and variations of $6.66 were amusingly common, although the $5 suggested amount was the amount most received.

The people at Americans United were reportedly delighted by the donation, if a bit bemused by the curiously specific amount. :)

The panel was indeed humorously awesome and I'm very glad I went. The visit report is funny too, scaled down a bit to take the solo experience into consideration. Highly recommended.

I went to another panel that I'm not going to name specifically, since I want to do a bit of constructive analysis, although I suppose anyone who gets ahold of the program book could figure out which one it was, since I have to give some detail to get my point across. :/

All right, fine, it was on world creation for writers, how to create a realistic world for your science fiction story. I've been to such panels before, and they've all gone pretty much the same way, which isn't a compliment. What tends to happen is that there are several scientist types on the panel, one or two who are into the astronomy and planet creation end of things, and one or two who are into the smaller scale geology and biology end. The logical thing to do is to start out with the creation of the star system and the planets, talking about dust clouds and star spectra and magnetic fields and galactic arms and gravity and such. You have to have all that before you can have any small scale geology, much less anything biological, so starting with the bigger picture makes sense.

The problem is that the panelists get used to the idea that the stars-and-planets people are doing all the talking at the beginning, and... they usually just keep on doing all the talking. One person in particular has been on every similar panel I've ever attended; this individual really likes to talk, to jump in, and even to interrupt. To give the person credit, they're a good speaker and know a lot about the subject and are very eager to share that knowledge, which is cool. But, as has often happened before, this person plus the other stars-and-planets person ended up doing about 85% of the talking. The biologist did about another 10-12%, and the geologist squeezed in whatever shards of speakage were left.

This isn't an ideal way to run a panel, and the moderator did nothing to get things under control.

Again, there was a lot of great info presented here, but it was frustrating to watch all the same. And judging by the look on the geologist's face through the last third or so of the panel, that person might well be thinking twice next time an invitation shows up to be on panels. Or maybe their lunch didn't agree with them. At any rate, they didn't seem to be having a great time.

I think (if anyone cares what I think) that in future it'd be better to split this panel into two. Let the stars-and-planets people have a panel all to themselves. They'll do a great job with it, and it'll end up being essentially the same panel they've given for however many years, without the bother of having to talk over and interrupt those other folks. Give the smaller-scale geologists and the biologists -- maybe add a botanist and an oceanographer to round things out -- their own panel, talking about smaller scale landforms, climates, biomes, and what sorts of life might develop under different conditions. That'd be at least as useful to SF writers as the stars-and-planets panel, and separating them out seems to be the only way to give the smaller scale planetbuilding speakers a chance to get more than five sentences in edgeways. Everyone wins.

Angie

How Not to Respond to a Bad Review

Of course, the proper response to a bad review is no response at all, but if you absolutely have to say something to the reviewer, Jacqueline Howett's response to Big Al's review of her book The Greek Seaman is a textbook example of what not to say and how not to say it.

Big Al gave Ms. Howett's book a two-star review that I thought was even-handed and clear, and very kind, considering the rating. He said "I think you’ll find the story compelling and interesting," which is something any writer would love to hear. What brought the rating down were the extensive spelling and grammatical errors. Big Al reviews indie books published on Amazon, and it looks like Ms. Howett didn't hire an editor, or if she did then she needs to ask for her money back.

Ms. Howett popped right up as the first commenter, saying "You obviously didn't read the second clean copy I requested you download that was also reformatted, so this is a very unfair review." She went on to say that she'd gotten four- and five-star reviews on Amazon, and that she'd "stick to" them, thanks. Then she posted three more comments, each one quoting those good Amazon reviews. Because clearly Big Al and the people who read his review blog were just dying to read those reviews, and couldn't figure out how to go to Amazon and find them for themselves.

This was bad enough. At this point, Ms. Howett had already made herself look defensive and foolish, but she didn't stop there. A couple of anonymice commented negatively on her behavior, then Big Al responded, saying that he had indeed downloaded the newer copy. It sounds like the second version was to fix formatting issues that came up in the file conversion, but those weren't the errors Al was talking about in his review. He repeated that his rating was based on editing and proofing errors in the text itself, and gave examples:

Here are a couple sample sentences from the first two chapters that gave me pause and are representative of what I found difficult while reading.

"She carried her stocky build carefully back down the stairs."

"Don and Katy watched hypnotically Gino place more coffees out at another table with supreme balance."

I understand what both are probably saying. I do question the sentence construction.

Wow. Okay, those examples make it clear exactly what errors he's talking about. That second sentence in particular is incredibly awkward, and any competent editor would've squawked both of them.

Ms. Howett comes back:

My writing is just fine!


You did not download the fresh copy.... you did not. No way!

[sigh] She goes on after that, telling him to remove the review because it was "in error," calls him a liar for saying he'd downloaded the fresh copy, and generally rants and rambles. She also says:

Besides if you want to throw crap at authors you should first ask their permission if they want it stuck up on the internet via e-mail. That debate is high among authors.

Really? I don't know what authors Ms. Howett hangs out with, but none of the authors I know think that reviewers need to ask the author's permission via e-mail before posting a negative review. That's not the way things work on my planet, and as a writer I wouldn't want them to; reviews are for readers, and reviewers have to be free to speak their honest opinion. It's to everyone's benefit if readers have a way to feel confident that they're buying books they'll probably like; people who enjoy most of the books they buy, buy more books. If someone isn't going to like one of my books for whatever reason, I don't want them wasting their money on it. I'd rather they buy something they will like, and maybe try something else of mine later that's more likely to suit their taste.

The comment thread goes on, with Ms. Howett eventually reduced to cussing people out. She doesn't seem to have any conception of just how big the internet is, or how connected, or how quickly word (and links) spread whenever something entertaining is going on, and unfortunately her indignant ranting is very entertaining. :/ The review post went viral, spreading through Twitter and Facebook to other places where writers hang out and share news. (Thanks to Emily at the EREC blog for posting the link I saw.) After around noon yesterday, comments piled in fast and hard, and most of the 307 comments went up between then and 4:36, when the last one went up before Al closed commenting down. The density of commentary indicates a lot of notice and interest, surging up as the news circulated. Once word started to spread, it took only a few hours for the publishing end of the internet to hear about this, and at that point I'd say Ms. Howett's reputation was pretty much shot.

It really looks like she thought she could safely act out on what seemed at first to be a tiny little review blog with few readers; if you look at older posts, comments were extremely sparse before Ms. Howett's demo of unprofessional behavior. Maybe she thought she could yell at the blogger without anyone ever hearing about it? If so, she got a harsh lesson in just how small our chunk of the internet is, and how quickly a crowd can gather to gawk at a wreck, even on a street that usually gets little traffic. I hope she realizes now how she trashed her own reputation by her behavior, and keeps that in mind for the future.

I also hope she spends some time studying her craft. The way her comments are written just confirm the impression one gets from the samples Al posted that Ms. Howett's grammar is very weak. Al said the story itself was good, and that's the hard part; if she's a good storyteller, then she's most of the way there. Learning craftsmanship is very straightforward, if a writer will only admit that they need to learn. Ms. Howett clearly does, and putting some effort into the learning would let her show off her already praiseworthy stories to best advantage.

I'll be keeping a set of virtual fingers crossed for her.

Angie

Working Edits

This came up in a discussion on my publisher's author list, and someone asked if I'd blog about it so they could point newer writers to it. I'm always happy to share, so here it is.

On scheduling, for short stories, it's usually not that big a deal, time-wise. For longer stories (or short stories with a tight deadline) I recommend at least reading through all the comments as soon as you can, to get an idea of what's there and what it'll take to work them all off. Some editors (particularly one person I've worked with, but I'm sure there are others) have this habit of giving you these short little comments that ripple through the whole manuscript, so getting through the edits can end up taking a LOT longer than you thought after just a quick skim.

After that, I mentally sort the comments into types; each type takes a different amount of time and/or thought to work off.

There are the facepalm types, the obvious mistakes that you have no idea how they got into the manuscript, the ones you want to hug the editor for catching 'cause it saved you from looking like an idiot. These are easy, usually just a quick accept and you're on to the next one.

Next are the quick fixes, the ones it's not tough to do but you have to make the change yourself rather than accepting an editor's change. Still easy, almost as fast as the above.

Sometimes a suggested fix is completely off because you miscommunicated so badly in the original text that the editor got the completely wrong idea of what you were trying to do. (This is often traceable to CUT/PASTE errors, although sometimes it's just raw talent. [cough]) In this case, it's great to have the problem pointed out, but the actual fix will be something totally different. This one usually takes some time to figure out, and requires a fix AND a note, to explain what was up and why you rewrote those three paragraphs on page 28 instead of the marked line on page 91.

Then there are the things that make you go "Huh?" If you don't understand why something was changed, and you can't figure it out (style guides come in handy here, as does Google), don't be afraid to ask. You might learn something new about grammar or punctuation or whatever, or you might find that it's a miscommunication, as above. Note that having time for a few back-and-forth conversations like this is another reason to start working on your edits well before their due date.

Note that some things are just house style. Every publisher has their own weirdnesses; you can't really argue, much as you might want to sometimes. Grit your teeth and deal, and keep in mind that it's no better anywhere else -- at best it'll be a different flavor of weirdness.

There'll probably be some times when you just plain disagree with your editor about how something should be written, and this is where it gets delicate and takes some consideration. There's a balance here between being a prima donna who's a pain to work with, and being a conscientious pro who wants your story to be the best it can be. As with the "Huh?" items, be ready to discuss these with your editor. Explain what you're trying to do and why you think your way is the best way to do it, and listen to their side. If your editor has a better idea, great; it might turn out to be a case of miscommunication again. If not, you're entitled to argue against a change if you're sure about it, but be SURE you're sure. If you're new to this, you're probably better off going along, but if you've been writing and studying writing for a while (like several years at the very least; more is better) there'll be times when you're really sure. Bottom line, it comes down to what the publisher as represented by your editor is willing to agree to, but don't be afraid to make your case if you feel strongly about something.

Since Shawn mentioned regionalisms and specialized knowledge, that's another kind of fix that maybe shouldn't be fixed. I remember having to explain to an editor what "teabagging" was once; obviously she didn't hang out with any gamers :) but it was a term my character would have used. If specialized dialect or terminology gets flagged, consider whether it's clear in context what you mean, and whether it needs to be perfectly clear; sometimes it doesn't. If your SF characters on a starship about to blow up are running around in a panic, blarking the frammistats and clearing the ion squoozers and rebooting the hadron dingusizers, it's probably obvious to the reader that they're trying to fix a technical problem, even if each exact word isn't clearly defined. :) Too much of this sort of thing is a bug rather than a feature, but a little can add flavor without actually losing the reader. But as Shawn also mentioned, if the editor and both proofers are all going "Huh?" then it probably needs to be reworked.

Re: disputing changes, how much is too much? The way I look at it is that we each have a kind of bank account where we deposit good will. Whenever you want to buck someone else, you're spending out of your good will account with that person. (This is true for every relationship you have, not just publisher edits.) If you spend until your good will is gone, you might find that person doesn't want to interact with you anymore, whether it's a lover who disappears, a friend who backs off, an employer who fires you or a publisher who decides it's too much trouble to contract your fiction anymore. Before you squawk a change, think about how much good will is likely in your account, and how much of it you'll need to spend on this change. Being professional in how you approach the situation will spend less good will than being indignant or snarky or whiny; being able to explain clearly what you want and exactly why will spend less good will than some vague, hand-wavy artiste type rant.

Make sure you always have a positive good will balance. And yes, I know this isn't exact -- it never is when you're dealing with other people. What it comes down to is making absolutely sure you feel strongly enough about a change to want to argue against it, absolutely sure you're right that your way is better (better for the story, not just for your ego), and that you're direct, polite and professional in how you handle the discussion. If there's any doubt in your mind about it, don't; save that good will for when you feel like you'll have to change your pseud and switch over to another genre if the book goes out as it is with your name on it. [wry smile]

And make your deadlines. Turning things in late spends good will too; save it for the important stuff.

Angie

Housekeeping, Bad Writer Behavior, and Bigotry

Just a few things in passing. First, I updated (after a couple of years of neglect, I think) my bloglist on the sidebar, so folks who are interested in what other people read now have an updated list of which blogs and cetera I'm subscribed to. If yours is there and I spelled your name wrong or something, please nudge me and I'll fix it.

Second, it seems there hasn't yet been enough negative, condemnatory publicity about authors who pitch fits on the internet, whining about critical commentary and getting all defensive about bad reviews on Amazon, so Rob Thurman is giving us more material. I think she's a great sport for sacrificing her professional reputation to give us an excellent negative example. Let's all give her a hand, shall we? Thanks to Writtenwyrdd for linking to this.

And third, I'm sure everyone's heard about Constance McMillen, the high school student in Mississippi who wanted to bring her girlfriend to the prom only to have the school cancel the event rather than let a couple of lesbians show up holding hands or something. Wow, overreacting much? The case went to court and the judge decided that the school was in the wrong, but (if I'm remembering correctly) refrained from ordering the school to hold the prom anyway because at the time there was a private prom being organized by parents and it was understood that Constance and her girlfriend would be welcome there. Well, someone decided that their town hadn't gotten enough bad press (maybe that's where Rob Thurman lives?) so Constance and her girlfriend, along with a few other students, were given time/place information for... a fake prom. No, seriously. They showed up at a country club to find seven people there, plus the principal and some teachers from their high school acting as chaperones, not that there was much to chaperone.

Two students with learning difficulties were among the seven people at the country club event, McMillen recalls. "They had the time of their lives," McMillen says. "That's the one good thing that come out of this, [these kids] didn't have to worry about people making fun of them [at their prom]."

The more I hear from this young woman, the more I like her. Unfortunately she lives in an area with more than its fair share of folks who indulge in master-level gluteal haberdashery. I mean, seriously, did they hold a meeting of the Cool People and decide which students were the unclean undesirables who'd be shunted to the fake event? I can just imagine their delight in realizing that by coming up with a plan to shuffle the lesbians off to the fake dance, they could do it to those other weird, uncool kids too! Score! :/

I'm sure Constance is counting the days until graduation. I hope she has a wonderful time in college and has an awesome life, because she absolutely deserves it for the way she's handled this whole outrageous situation with grace and dignity. And I hope the people -- students and parents and school staff alike -- who participated in turning what should've been a simple, fun prom into an ever-growing mound of hate and bigotry all get what they deserve as well.

Angie

Will You Read My Story?

Josh Olson, the writer who did the screenplay for A History of Violence, wrote an article for the Village Voice entitled I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script, explaining exactly why he, and many other pro writers, won't read scripts, stories, novels, outlines, treatments, etc., that hopeful newbies try to hand them. Although his tone is rather harsh [cough] he makes some excellent points and I agree with him; pro writers don't owe random newbies anything. If they're asked by a random newbie (or even a newbie with a vague connection, like a spouse's brother's roommate or similar) to read a story -- or recommend the newbie to their agent, or share names/numbers/e-mails for editors, or whatever -- then "Sorry, no," is never a rude response and doesn't merit any immediate abuse or later bad-mouthing to others.

There've been some interesting responses from around the net, and Cleolinda over on LJ has the best collection I've found, along with some personal input of her own. She's a published writer herself, and has had relevant experience.

The original piece and some of the responses focused on obligation and courtesy and favors, and whether or not a pro owes anything to random newbies. Some of the other commenters point out that there are also legal issues involved, and that pro writers can be and have been sued for plagiarism because they read (or could have read, whether they did or not) some newbie's story or idea, and later came up with something on their own which the newbie thought was too similar. See David Gerrold's link in Cleolinda's piece, in particular, for an excellent take on that side of the question.

This issue affects every writer, both published and hopeful, and I recommend everyone read this set of posts.

Angie

Reviewing

I've been thinking about doing some sort of books feature, an irregular review sort of thing. I read a lot of books, in various genres of fiction as well as various topics of nonfiction, and I certainly have strong opinions about pretty much everything, so one might think this'd be a great fit for me.

But then recently, a friend of mine pointed me at a contest a writer was running, the prize being some number of ARCs. You enter the contest, and if you win you get the free ARC and agree to blog about it.

And right there was where I balked, and started thinking about it.

What if I didn't like the book? I had something like that happen a while back, where I entered a writer's contest and won a free book. She actually sent me two (or rather, her publicist did); one was the novel that'd been promised, and another was an anthology where the writer had contributed one of the stories. The letter from the publicist expressed eagerness to see my blog post about the books after I'd read them.

Ummm....

What if I don't like them? And in fact, I started with the anthology, since I like short stories, and it turned out I didn't like it. The story by the writer who'd run the contest was the best one in the book, but that wasn't saying much. To this date I still haven't tried the novel, and I might never; I might end up just donating it to a library or something, because the short story really did nothing for me and I'm reluctant to dive into something longer and more complex by the same writer. I suppose it's very possible that this writer is more comfortable with and better at longer forms, but I still have that unpleasant taste left on my mental tongue and just don't feel like seeing for myself.

I didn't really feel bad about not blogging about these books, though, because it hadn't been spelled out when I entered the contest that a free pimp-post would be expected. I'm not going to feel guilty about backing out on a deal I didn't know I was making, and besides, I doubt that writer or her publicist would care to read what I'd write, if forced to. So.

The thing is, if I were to do a "What I'm Reading" sort of series, I'd want to write about all the books I read. I suppose I could only do the ones I liked, but that feels like cheating. And if there's a purpose to the thing, then for the sake of people reading the pieces, I should talk about what I didn't like as well, and why. I've never had much respect for review sites or review magazines where everything gets four or five stars; they feel like hired shills masquerading as reviewers, whether they're actually getting paid or not. I think reviewers have a duty to dish out the bad along with the good, and I'm obsessive enough that if I did this at all, I'd want to do it thoroughly.

Interestingly enough, I don't mind doing in-house reviews for my publisher. When anything book-size (usually either a novel or a longer anthology) is released, there's a review written by one of Torquere's other authors right there along with the book's summary and excerpt and all. Of course, they're always positive. I think the difference here is that they are marketing pieces and everyone knows it. There's no pretense of a completely independent review. And no, writers assigned a book to review aren't pressured to recommend it. I was actually assigned a book once which I didn't care for at all and simply could not recommend. I let the staff person who coordinates the reviews know and she was fine with it; these things happen, she said, and it wasn't a huge problem. They've bought more stories from me since then, and I've even gotten more review assignments, so clearly there's no retribution attached to backing out of a review. I felt bad about it at the time, but having this happen has actually made me feel better about the process; knowing that there is an out makes it clear that if a writer wrote a positive review it's because they actually did like the book. And not including a negative point of view works in this case because, again, it's a marketing thing and no one's pretending otherwise.

Although this brings up another issue -- reviewing books by my own publisher. I read a lot of Torquere books because I like them and there are some excellent authors writing for the house. I'd just as soon not get into an argument with anyone who might come along and accuse me of conflict of interest, though. And in all honesty, I would feel weird posting a negative review of a book by my publisher. I haven't loved every single one of them, and I'm sure another one will come along eventually that I'll dislike. But there's a family or team sort of feeling among the writers (which might well be the case with any smallish press; I haven't worked with any others to know) and it feels... I don't know, disloyal maybe? to be posting the occasional negative or even scathing review of one of their books. Especially if I know the writer -- wow, awkward! [wince]

So I guess I could just make a policy of not reviewing books by any publisher I've written for.

I still have misgivings, though. I think the main problem, here, whether the books I'd be reviewing were by my own publisher or not, is that I'm a writer myself. Any negative review would feel (or might look to a reader) like I was trashing the competition, which is always uncool. Ironically, it'd be easier if I weren't a writer; as a reader and only a reader, I'd have no problem offering up my opinion, because it'd be pretty clearly unbiased. (Or as unbiased as a human opinion ever is, but at least there wouldn't be any kind of competitor-bias in the mix.)

A lot of other writers review, some informally on their blogs and others for a living. I used to love reading Spider Robinson's reviews in Analog back when, for example, and I have no problem now reading reviews by another writer, whether formal or casual. It's only when I think about being the writer doing the reviews that I start to get squirmy. :/

Am I the only one who stresses out about this sort of thing? Am I overly polite? Just over-thinking? Any opinions, from other writers who review, or anyone who reads reviews, or anyone else who has a random opinion to share...?

Angie