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Killing Even More Sacred Cows of Publishing: #3… Getting An Advance to Help You Write Your Book
Book three in this series. Book one was KILLING THE TOP TEN SACRED COWS OF PUBLISHING. Book two was KILLING THE TOP TEN SACRED COWS OF INDIE PUBLISHING. Both books are available everywhere in electronic, paper, and audio. What I call a “Sacred Cow” is basically a myth spread around publishing like the truth. Myths such as “rewriting must be done for every story.” Myths such as “you need an agent to sell a book,” or “sell a book to a different country.” And so on. You can either buy the first two books to get all twenty of the Sacred Cows, or just click on the tab above and read them…
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Challenge, Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing, On Writing, publishing, Topic of the Night, Writing in Public
Another Sacred Cow Treatment
ANOTHER SACRED COW TREATMENT Well, read one too many articles about the stupidity of giving a traditional author an advance so they could be free to write their book. That myth had to be stabbed at with my little sword. Oh, and I got back to work on the novel. —— THE DAY Did an interview for a podcast this afternoon. Great fun and I’ll link to it when it comes out. Then off to walk, then to the mail, the store, and back to WMG offices where I worked on different stuff until 7 p.m. including starting on the Sacred Cow chapter. Home to cook dinner, watch some television,…
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Topic of the Night: TIME GOES BY
I have talked a ton about the value of long term thinking and understanding copyright. So for fun tonight, let me give you a fun example of what is possible. And what Kris and I are planning in the future. Let me take the book Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Long Night. Kris and I wrote the book in 1995 and it was published in 1996. Twenty years ago. I think the contract on it was an all-rights contract combined with a work-for-hire contract. At least all the later media books were, but not sure on this one, I will have to check the contract. If I remember right, the novel itself…
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Topic of the Night: One Reader
ONE READER: New and Old World I have been been just sort of thinking through different aspects of the new world of publishing compared to the old world. And adding in what is success in this new world and time and other factors. It has been kind of fun and I hope to continue approaching this from different angles at times. Not all the time, just at times. So for a moment here, I want to be clear on the summary of some of the clear differences between when I sold my first novel in 1987 (not first novel written) and the world now. First, what was happening thirty years…
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Heinlein’s Rules: Chapter Eight and Epilogue
HEINLEIN’S RULES Five Simple Business Rules for Writing CHAPTER EIGHT On to the fifth rule. Rule #5: You Must Keep It On the Market Until Sold. “It” in the rule refers to your story or novel. In 1947, when Heinlein wrote this rule, for the most part the only markets were pulp magazines. Paperbacks were just gaining strength and hardback publishers were very, very selective. So all short stories and most novels were sold to pulp magazines, and the few digest magazines that were starting up, and maybe to the slick magazines such as Saturday Evening Post, if you were good and well-known as a writer. But as with…
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Heinlein’s Rules: Chapter Seven
HEINLEIN’S RULES Five Simple Business Rules for Writing CHAPTER SEVEN On to the fourth rule. Rule #4: You Must Put It On the Market. “It” in the rule refers to your finished and not rewritten story or novel. On the surface, this rule is very, very basic. And yet it was this rule that I had the most problem with over the years. This and Rule #5. Old Traditional Publishing World What Heinlein meant when he wrote this business rule in 1947 was that you had to send your story to some market that would buy it, publish it, and pay you money. When I started with these rules…
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Heinlein’s Rules: Chapter Five
HEINLEIN’S RULES Five Simple Business Rules for Writing CHAPTER FIVE Moving now to the third rule. Rule #3: You Must Refrain From Rewriting Unless to Editorial Order. So this is the rule that gets all the attention here in the modern world, even though it is the first two rules that stop most want-to-be writers. And the fourth rule also stops writers who can finish something from becoming professional writers. Everybody in this modern world looks for ways and reasons around this rule. That’s how ingrained the modern myth of rewriting is in our culture. One good thing right off about this rule. If you don’t rewrite, just get it…
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Some Great Posts
Some Great Posts On the site Women in Science Fiction, Kris is hosting and doing some great stuff, as well as having guest blogs there. Vonda N. McIntyre has the most recent guest blog there. The one before that was Judith Tarr. Worth reading and following that site, folks. And, of course, before it is gone, get the story bundle pictured above. Stunning amount of great reading for $15.00. http://storybundle.com/scifi The web site with the blogs and Kris’s writing on the topic is at: http://www.womeninsciencefiction.com/ THE DAY IN GENERAL Mostly all day I worked on workshop stuff. Then home for a short nap, dinner and news. I got in here…
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How to Write Fiction Sales Copy: Chapter Three
HOW TO WRITE FICTION SALES COPY CHAPTER THREE (Summary. This book is coming about because I need to write 32 story blurbs for the 32 short stories I wrote in July for a book titled Stories from July.) In the first chapter of this book, I touched on what I call “The Author Problem” and gave a basic formula that I sometimes use to give blurbs a structure. And in chapter two I laid out another formula for writing blurbs. This chapter, my friend, professional fiction and extraordinary comic book writer, Lee Allred put in the comments on my web site a great way of looking at blurbs to stay out of…
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The New World of Publishing: The Real Price of Traditional Publishing
Authors Pay a High Price for Traditional Publishing. This new world of publishing now allows authors to make many publishing choices after they finish a book. That’s a great thing compared to just ten years ago. Now an author can go the old traditional route, they can go full indie and do everything. Or they can publish somewhere in the middle, taking responsibility for all the work, but hiring out parts, or all of the tasks needed to be done. A thousand choices in the process now. And that’s a very, very good thing for authors in the abstract. But all choices have costs. This post is about the costs of…