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The New World of Publishing: The Assumption of Agents
After that head-shaking article by Don Maass, and the funny response by Joe and Barry, I decided it was time to update a post I did about a year ago in this series. So here it is… Among all new writers these days, the myth is strong that they need an agent and that agents are just here and a part of the new book world. It seems to radiate through every word I hear from writers lost in the myths of starting up as fiction writers. It’s like you bought a house and someone is living in the basement and you believe without ever a question that you must…
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The New World of Publishing: The Assumption of Agents
Over the past few weeks I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about and by agents in different forums. For example, the White Glove Program Amazon has started, or a post about “Hybrid” agents. Both were linked to on ThePassiveVoice and you can find them there in the last week of March if you really care. What struck me clearly is the belief, the solid belief, in these articles and many others, that agents are just here and a part of the new book world. It seems to radiate through every word. It’s like you bought a house and someone is living in the basement and you believe without ever…
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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…
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Oh, my…
All I Can Say… I was sent a couple days ago a court case about one author taking the work of another author. This has been a public case and I am going to make no comments on the case itself or let any comments through about the case. I do not know the facts beyond what I have read in the suit. Of course, there is an agent in the middle of the entire mess. And also named in the action. No comment there other than I stand by my solid belief that all agents are crooks and steal writer’s money. So why am I writing this… why am…
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Last Day of Weekend Sale
Ends Midnight Monday Night West Coast Time Since everyone here in the States does sales (as I just pointed out yesterday), we decided to see how many writers were paying attention and give those who were a three day sale of any workshop they want to get on Teachable for 50% off. That’s right, any, from the lifetime subscriptions to the June regular workshops, and everything else as well. For example, I thought this surprise sale might get a few writers signing up for the full year of THE DECADE AHEAD or maybe BITE-SIZED COPYRIGHT. First quarters on both are all up, and we are through the 9th week of…
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I Feel Bad for New Writers… Part 7… More terminology
Outdated Terminology Continued… As I said before, ew fiction writers coming in now are really torn between all the myths and hype of traditional publishing and all the myths and hype of indie publishing. But as I said back in the first post of this series, the paperback era of big publishing is pretty much done, and the distribution of fiction is changing over to the electronic era of indie publishing, with indie writers in charge. These kinds of major shifts in fiction distribution to the readers has happened four major times through the history of this country, with each new era lasting about 50 years and the transitions lasting…
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I Feel Bad For New Writers… Part Five… The Upside
The Choice Between Two Paths… This entire series has been talking about the choice new writers coming into professional fiction writing have between the old methods of traditional publishing and the new world of indie publishing. If you have not read the first five parts of this series, please do so now. This will make more sense if you do so. So in this chapter, I want to quickly go over what is possible for success on both paths. Traditional Publishing… For many, many, many writers, simply having a book published by a traditional publisher is the success. Period. And many writers don’t ever want to leave their professional job…
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A Second Way to Go…
Part Three of This Series… First two parts were in my blogs the last three days. I started this off by saying I feel bad for the young writers coming into fiction publishing today. They are torn between the myths of the old traditional publishing world and the myths of the new indie world. Publishing is smack in the middle of a transition to electronic and indie publishing. Over the last two hundred years, these transitions have taken 25 years or so before publishing stabilizes for 40-50 years. We are around year 14 right now in this transition. So in last part of this series I talked about how a…
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Value of IP…
Most Writers Never Think of This… But again most writers don’t understand copyright, which is a form of Intellectual Property (IP). Now some writers understand that anything they write has value, although I must admit it takes early stage writers a period of time to get past their egos and their false assumptions that they know what is good or bad in their own work. Interestingly enough, value of IP doesn’t much care about quality, at least in the early stages. Also 90% of all writers I have talked to have zero understanding that the work product they create around a book or story also has IP connected with it…
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How To Keep Learning When the Money is Tight…
For Most Writers, It Is Always Tight… But the question is real and wow do I remember a ton of years where I had an intense desire to learn and no money. How do you keep learning? Now, some background on me. I went to three years of law school. I paid my way through college by playing on blackjack teams. I also tended bar and drove school bus and owned a bookstore. Yup, did all of that while going to law school. I got done with law school and my own desire was to be a writer, not a lawyer. But I had spent all the money and three…