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Literary Agent Stupidity…
Or Better Put… Don’t Look At Your Agent… They Didn’t Take Your Money… They Have a Cannon of Ethics… That’r right, the organization that pretends to govern literary agents has put out Cannons of Ethics for literary agents. Yeah, right… Only way you can make sure that a literary agent will not screw you is to never hire one. Even then, be careful if you are in the same room with one. And, of course, the writers stupid enough to hire a literary agent in 2026 are also too stupid to do a basic background check on the person or a criminal record check on the person or their business…
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Why Am I So Negative About Traditional Book Publishing?
I Got That Question in an Email… It wasn’t from anyone who had taken a class with us, and I laughed and almost just deleted it as I do most spam emails. Then I looked at it and googled the website that came with it and realized the person was a writer, or in the early stages, and someone had pointed this person to some of my really negative posts about traditional publishing. And this person was honestly having an issue with me blowing up the dreams of having a major publisher sprinkle fairy dust on a book and proclaim they are a REAL WRITER! So being the real ass…
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GOT A QUESTION ON LAST NIGHT’S POST…
An Honest Question… So figured I would try to answer it here. The question was how much of an advance would a writer need to get to make around 40K per year in traditional publishing when a $50,000 three book deal gets a writer between $4,700 and $9,000 plus per year. Again, the comparison from last night was nothing but bookstore sales, no major licensing, which traditional publishers would keep most of it anyway, unlike indie writers who get to keep it all. Well, the easy answer is just divide all that yearly amount from last night into $40,000 and then multiply it by $50,000 to get around a $350,000…
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Anthropic Day…
Today I Set Aside to Submit Anthropic Claims… Unbelievably mind-numbing. I did one three-hour session to do the easy ones this afternoon. Then another two-hour session to finish those up and do some of the more difficult one. The three more hours tonight all difficult ones. I got 47 total titles submitted and I have a hunch I will find another 15 or 20 in this coming week to do one more submission before the deadline. Kris has in about 70 titles already claimed and I found another 15 for her tonight and she had a bunch she had already found. We should be north of 150 titles claimed. Better…
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Top Five Dumbest Business Practices in Traditional Publishing…
The Top Five Dumbest Business Practices in Traditional Publishing I wrote this originally eleven years ago. Thankfully, I know of no indie writer who still believes in all this. But new writers do come in with the “dream” of publishing a book with one of the four big publishers left. Sadly, there is often nothing that can change their mind and they are lost. From the real world perspective, publishing is really, really, really known for its head-shaking stupid business practices. But inside of traditional publishing, these practices have become so common and set in “the way things are done” as to be defended by otherwise sane business people. So…
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Loss of Trademarks…
Writers Just Shovel Money into a Fire… By the very nature of what we do as Indie writers and publishers, we are creating trademarks. Common Law trademarks, but still trademarks. I always thought trademark meant “lawyers make more money.” But the reality is we all create trademarks all the time with our books, our series, our businesses. And no law says you must register them. And don’t let any fly-by-their-wallet lawyer tell you that you must. The term “trademark” basically means you are doing business (trade) with a name (mark). And trademark is basically the right to exclude someone else from making money with your name in the same area…
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Limits in Writing and Publishing…
Everyone Sets Their Own Limits… Actually not completely true. Everyone’s limits are set by what they learned from others, mostly non-writers spouting myths they learned at some point. And there are major myths that most writers never get past. — Writing Fast Is Writing Poorly — Everything Must Be Rewritten — Everything Must Be Perfect Before Publishing These myths and so many more are what limits each writer. And the myths were encouraged by agents who were never writers and also traditional publishing that could only handle so many books from a writer, usually just one per year. And the fear of what others will think stops millions of writers…
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7th Story and Kickstarter Success…
NEW WRITERS HAVE NO HISTORY… And I honestly would not expect a new fiction writer coming into publishing for the first time to have any perspective on what happened, often before they were born. So I am trying to imagine what a new writer faces today in 2025. A dumping ground on social media of really bad opinions and information that just makes it all seem impossible. And with their craft, they carry a ton of destructive baggage from teachers. Rewriting, polishing, beta readers, workshops, you name it. A hundred ways to destroy anything original in a new writer. Then the publishing world itself looks totally overwhelming. Publish your own…
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Second Day of Challenge…
The Fiction Writer of 2025… Back in traditional days, when I came in, fiction writers had employees called “agents”who jumped to the writer’s beck and call and fetched drinks and chased money. They lived off of 10% and then 15% of what the author made and never said a word about a writer’s work. That was not their job. Writers were the artists, agents did the scut work. Writers built careers over dozens and dozens of novels, sometimes moving houses regularly. They did none of their own promotion because publishers had sales forces and there was only one way to sell books and that was through what was called the…
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Fiction Branding… Part 4
Stories Don’t Spoil… But wow can authors kill them. I have to deal with this topic before I can move on into branding and how to do it and the reasons for it. Back in the day (say the 1960s through the 1990s), writers would sell a short story and then toss it into a file cabinet. A lucky few stories got reprinted, but the attitude was that once a story was published (no matter the market), it had spoiled and was no longer of value. Writers did this with books as well. I can’t begin to tell you about the hundreds of boxes of manuscripts, proofs, and spoiled matter…