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Dare To Be Bad Revisited For 2017
Dare to Be Bad (I initially published this blog back about six years ago. I have updated it a little to fit going into the new year.) Kevin J. Anderson credits me with coming up with the phrase, but it was a catch phrase that Nina Kiriki Hoffman and I used in our early years of our short-story-per-week challenge. I think Nina might have said it first, but it was our chant. And I have repeated it over and over during the last few decades. Both to myself and to other writers. Now in this new world of publishing, it still applies, maybe even more. Back in my early years,…
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When Writers Face the Deadly Saying… “What’s the Point?”
Tonight’s Topic: When Writers Face the Deadly Saying… “What’s the Point?” This topic is the reason why I have been talking about the addiction to results and the other topics last week. This is how it manifests. Read those from last week and then read below. (Tomorrow I will go back over ROI and how it works with tracking money without numbers.) —— THE DAY Made it up to WMG Publishing around 1:30 to open up for the regular Sunday writer’s lunch. The restaurant we met in is moving, so until they reopen, we’re meeting at WMG in the kitchen and bringing our own lunches. Then I stayed around until almost…
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The New World of Publishing: Top 10 Reasons Why I Would Never Publish Traditionally
Got an interesting question last week when sitting having dinner with an old friend. He wanted to know why I said I would never go back to publishing novels with traditional major publishers. Now over dinner, with my friend having no background in what was happening in publishing, that question because impossible to answer. So I muttered something about bad contracts and moved on. Now understand, I published over a hundred novels with traditional novel publishers and made my living doing that for a few decades. So why not now? What changed? The industry changed, that’s what. Traditional publishing is flat not what it was when I was selling books…
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The New World of Writing: Dare To Be Bad
This is another modern major update of a post I did about three plus years ago about a topic that has been talked about in the Productivity Online Workshop. I’ve mentioned this topic a few times before in places, so I figured it would be time to be clear on it again and update this into this modern world of indie publishing. Kevin J. Anderson did a good blog on the topic of taking a chance with your work, about “Daring to be Bad” on a first draft and getting it down. Read his blog here, it’s short. And even though he put it up in 2011, it’s still there and can be…
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The New World of Publishing: Reversion Clauses Again
When and how do you get your book back when you sign a traditional publishing contract? That simple question will be the one aspect of your contract that in twenty years you will still be swearing about, long after the validation of being published by a “big publisher” has faded. I am NOT going to go into specific language of reversion clauses. That is the clause (or clauses) in your publishing contract that tells you when you get your book back. Every clause is different from contract to contract and from publisher to publisher. You need an IP attorney (not an agent) to tell you what each clause means from…
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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: Having Fun… Again
(Note: I wrote this in July 2013 and am posting it here again up front (without a word changed) because, to be honest, I’m getting a lot of certain types of questions from writers. This works as an answer to those questions. So here it is again. You might want to read it again, even if you remember it from July.) Having Fun Yeah, I know. A weird topic for a blog: Having Fun. Over the last week or so I had the fantastic pleasure of being in a large room for a week with thirty-five very-well-published professional writers, all excited about writing and publishing and having fun. That’s right. In…
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The New World of Publishing: How to Keep Your Writing Going for All of 2014
This an almost complete update of a post I had here in late 2012. I figured it was worth my time and energy to get this updated and out again, especially since so many of you have been watching me with my “Writing in Public” posts and some of you are even subscribing to Smith’s Monthly to read what I actually write. Thank you, everyone, for that support over the last year. It’s made this all great fun. Some basics to start: Any business and production plan you decide to set up for yourself is made up of goals that can be attained with work. The focus of the goals…
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The New World of Publishing: Some Perspective on 2013
Interestingly enough, 2013 was the second seemingly stable year in the new normal we are all living in the publishing industry. Does that mean that nothing changed? Of course not. Some things changed, but not like 2009-2011. And some things will continue to change. But when you step back and look at the business in general, the changes in 2013 were pretty minor and predictable and normal. So I figured, as I did last year, to try to give a little perspective on the past year from the advantage of watching and living inside of publishing for thirty-five years now. Traditional Publishing In 2013, traditional publishers were in a normal…
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The New World of Publishing: Helping Readers Find Your Work
This is the third article in a series. In the first article, I suggested that writers should just stop begging at the doors of traditional novel publishers. I was talking about novels and only novels. In the second article I talked about how a person could make a living writing only short fiction. So now I’m going to go on here for a minute about the value of doing short fiction in this new world. And the incredible value of selling your short fiction to some traditional publishers. It seems to me that everyone out there in blog land yells about visibility. This article is about helping your writing be…