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The New World of Publishing: Making a Living with Your Short Fiction Updated 2013
Way back, over three years ago now, I did a post in my Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing series called “Myth: You Can’t Make Money Writing Fiction.” And then I wrote the basis of this post about one year ago right now. And things have changed so much, I wanted to update this now, and then I will follow this with another short fiction post on a slightly different area of short fiction. But in this post, I want to go after a saying that used to be almost 100% true before four years ago. “You can’t make a living writing only short fiction.” Not so true anymore. Why…
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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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The New World of Publishing: Publishing Reversion Clauses
In all the craziness of people getting angry at Random House for no advances and forcing authors to also pay for production, a major point was glossed over by almost everyone. When and how do you get your book back? Now John Scalzi touched on this in a fashion in a couple of his posts, but I always got the feeling from those posts he felt it didn’t matter that much. And for him, at the moment, it doesn’t. All his books are in print and Tor is treating him well for now. But that simple question will be the one aspect of your contract that in twenty years you…
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Expectations…
One of the Big Evils… Expectations can come from about a billion places for all of us. But most of the time we don’t even know when we have let an expectation in. Sometimes we do, though, and those are so deadly so fast, it is amazing. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I have heard a writer say, I’m going to quit my day job for one year and I hope to be making a living after a year. Of course, that is flat insulting to any professional writer who has worked years and years to learn their craft and business, but we all know that…
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Editing and Reading Observations… Part Two…
Editors Are Super Readers… Our job as editors is to try to figure out which stories the readers of our publications will like. But if you are putting your stories up indie and not many are selling, you might want to pay attention to some of these points I am making from an editor perspective. I find it fascinating how many writers have no understanding of the advanced levels of craft in fiction writing. They often think that major bestsellers who sell hundreds of thousands of copies of every book are just marketed better, or lucky, when actually those writers have learned the craft of grabbing and holding readers. But…
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The Myth That Writing is Hard…
I Wrote This in 2009… I have updated it for 2023… It is long but I thought it needed to be said again. And note, this was written before I was doing a blog per day. ————- This myth comes in many forms and has many faces, but let me put it as plainly as I can to start. Myth: To be Good, Writing Must Be Hard. (And it can’t be fun.) Total hogwash, of course, yet it is stunning how many new writers believe this, and how readers, when they bother to think about it, believe the myth as well. And, of course, almost everyone who teaches creative writing…
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Guest Post By Kris…
This is from Kris’s regular business blog series, but I thought it important enough that I asked her if I could reprint it here. Important mind set change for indie writers. Thanks, Kris… ———- Business Musings: Stars Kristine Kathryn Rusch Me and the Google spent what I almost termed a “dispiriting” hour as I searched for the 21st century’s superstars in a variety of fields. I say “almost termed” because, when I think of it, “dispiriting” is the wrong word. Adult me, who loves this modern world of indie publishing and going directly to the reader, doesn’t mind the lack of superstars or “big names” as most people call them.…
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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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October 1st…
Coming Up In Three Days… So many, many writers had really bad writing summers. And October first is a chance to save the year. Three months until the end of the year. You can get a lot of writing done in three months. Set a new challenge, focus on some project that will be fun and get you restarted. October 1st is a wonderful date. Wash away all the “I wish I had…” from the spring and summer and just sit down and have fun telling stories. Stupidly enough, it really is that simple. I will follow my own advice and let you know what I am going to do…
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THREE DAYS LEFT FOR STORYBUNDLE
Great Books and Reading in This Bundle! I curated a new Storybundle called VISIONS OF THE FUTURE. Some really, really fantastic science fiction from a lot of writers. Since I sort of buried this the first time under talking about a ton of steps I did, here is my initial blog once again about the Storybundle. I am very excited about this one. Great writers, great stories. But only three days left to grab this one. VISIONS OF THE FUTURE BLOG… I knew, without a doubt, I was going to really enjoy putting Visions of the Future together as a StoryBundle. I just love science fiction of all types, and any form…