• On Writing,  publishing

    The Magic Bakery: Chapter Five

    Chapter Five… I get a lot of questions about pen names and if writers should use pen names in this modern world of publishing. So let me use The Magic Bakery to explain my answer to that question. Now understand, the reason for this book about The Magic Bakery is to help writers understand copyright and the magic power of copyright in this world. But the metaphor of the bakery can help in business logic as well. And in sales. And in promotions. For example, understanding the power of free is clearly illustrated in The Magic Bakery and I will get to that in a later chapter. But for this chapter,…

  • On Writing,  publishing

    The Magic Bakery: Chapter Four

    Chapter Four… I started off chapter three with a question and an answer: “How do you slice a magic pie? The answer is simply as many ways as you want.” But first you have to have a magic pie to slice. You have to have copyright to license. And that is the rub, the place where so many writers flat run into a massive wall. It takes time and a lot of practice and knocking down personal demons to produce new stories and novels regularly. Anyone can do it for a short time. A year. Maybe two. But then with just a few cases in their Magic Bakery half full and the rest…

  • On Writing,  publishing

    The Magic Bakery: Chapter Three

    Chapter Three… How do you slice a magic pie? The answer is simply as many ways as you want. The wonderful thing about copyright is that you can license any part of it. And you can name the part and dictate the terms and define the shape of the part. I know this is difficult to imagine. And the pie analogy sort of falls apart because pie is a physical thing that can only be sliced in so many ways. But image the pie is solid and you have a saw that can slice off a piece so thin you can barely see the slice under a microscope. Yup, you…

  • On Writing,  publishing

    The Magic Bakery: Chapter Two

    Chapter Two… So what makes this bakery so magic anyway? Copyright, that’s what. As the Copyright Handbook says, “Copyright is the legal device that provides the creator of a work of art or literature, or a work that conveys information or idea, the right to control how the work is used.” So what is so magic about that? All countries in the world have copyright protections in one form or another. As of the writing of this chapter, almost all countries in the world have signed onto one copyright convention or another, agreeing to the basic aspects of copyright protections. In fact, here in the States, copyright protection was written…

  • On Writing,  publishing

    The Magic Bakery: Chapter One

    Chapter One… Digging down into all the vast areas of how writers sell books and the business of selling fiction, I figured the best way to start this would be on the surface, explaining some real logical, but forgotten (by writers), business concepts. So an example: A young writer (not in age, but in experience) writes and finishes a first novel. And somehow manages to avoid all the traps of rewriting and letting a peer workshop kill the book. Fantastic! This is a real event and once published should be celebrated. First novels are important to every writer. Get copies out to family, tell friends where the book can be bought, and…

  • On Writing,  publishing

    The Magic Bakery: Copyright in the Modern World of Fiction Publishing

    Introduction… Indie writers make great money these days with their small and medium-sized businesses. Some make millions, while at the same time others sell few books. The writers selling few copies tend to look for reasons why they are not selling. I could spend a lot of time listing all the reasons writers find for a book now selling, but almost always the reason is a very simple business reason. Inventory. And a complete failure to understand what they are selling. But that seemingly simple answer has a vast universe of issues around it. And understanding inventory in publishing takes an understanding of copyright. So for this book, I am…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    The Magic Bakery and a Disappearing Bundle

    Full of Magic Pies… I have been working with Kris on the Strengths Workshops and in both the business and the sales workshops, the concept of the magic bakery keeps coming up in varied ways. I had forgotten how powerful the concept actually is. I haven’t talked much about the magic bakery here in the last few years. And to really understand all the ramifications of it and how to use it, you will need to take the Strengths Workshops, both business and sales. But for those of you who do not have a clue what I am talking about, imagine your finished story is a pie. The copyright property…

  • Challenge,  publishing

    Licenses Are Not The Ends of Roads

    Today I Got a Lot of Questions… After yesterday’s post, a number of the questions I got privately had the subtext that a license has a one-time-and-out thinking. Nope. — You license your novel to your own corporation. It is your corporation so you license everything inside that copyright to the corporation. It must be in a contract, so you make sure the contract can be cancelled if you want at any point, but you license the novel to your corporation. — Your corporation then licenses out things like electronic books to all the places, paper books, audio books, translations, and so on. Money flows into your corporation. — Say…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Trademark for Fiction Writers…

    INTRODUCTION… For years and years, when asked about trademarks by fiction writers, I flat told them to not worry about it. The reason I said that is simple: Fiction writers can’t seem to understand copyright. Trademark is another level of protection for different reasons completely. And far, far, far more complex then copyright. Fiction writers have this wonderful way of being sincere about learning copyright and then never finding the time. They write stories and novels for years and years and never once understand where the money comes from or what they have created. And by doing that, of course, they leave more money than they make on the table,…

  • On Writing,  publishing

    Think Like a Publisher 2014: Production and Scheduling

     As traditional publishers grab for more rights and become even more difficult to work with, more and more writers are moving to indie publishing. As they make the jump, they ask basic questions on how to do it, how to be treated with respect as a publisher, and even how to do simple things like setting up a publishing business. And questions such as how they get their books into bookstores. You can do that. Honest. I’ll talk all about it in coming chapters. But the key on almost everything these days is that you, the author, are starting a publishing company. An indie publisher is still a publisher, the…