Category Archives: Publishing business

Advances

11 March, 2008

Further to yesterday’s post: the size of your advance says nothing about your capabilities as a writer. It speaks only to your publisher’s assessment of your market value. They can get it wrong. How a book does is very often a crapshoot.

Several NYT bestselling authors I know of received tiny advances for those insanely huge selling books. I also know some first-time novelists who got six-figure advances, who not only didn’t earn out, but didn’t sell 10% of what they needed to in order to earn out.

In all cases the books were EXCELLENT.

It’s luck and chance and forces beyond your control.

For those who don’t know what an advance is or what earning out means go here.

Let’s talk about luck

10 March, 2008

Since I finally managed to sell a book, I’ve had a fair few letters asking me how I managed it and what advice can I give a struggling unpublished writer. I also read lots of other writers’s and agents’s blogs and they all get the same question, which boils down to this: No matter how hard I work and how often I submit I cannot get published.

All I can say to that is that I was unpublished for almost 20 years. It sucked. I kept writing but, I admit, sometimes I quit submitting for years at a time because I was sick of being rejected. Rejection is foul. I’ve never gotten used to it.1

It’s true that the surest path to publication is to keep on writing and writing and writing. Then you have to keep submitting. It also helps if you’re talented. Those are the facts.

But there are a small percentage of people who just can’t get a break. (Let me emphasise though that it is a small percentage. Most people not getting published aren’t any good. I’ve seen those slush piles.) Such as the writer who submits a publishable chicklit book at a time when that genre is dead in the water. Had they submitted five years earlier they woulda been published for sure. Then they turn to vampires where there’s a glut and get the same result. Or they’re bought by a house just before there is a major restructuring and their contract is cancelled. Or editors keep falling in love with their books but sales & marketing does not. I’ve seen all of these happen.

Luck has an even bigger part to play in published writers’s lives. Right now there seem to be skads of six-figure deals for YA books; ten years ago there were almost none. But even if your genre is hot, as YA seems to be at the moment, that doesn’t mean you’ll wind up with the big bucks. The vast majority of YA deals I read about on Publisher’s Lunch are “nice” deals. That is, the advances2 are between $0 and $50,000. I’d be willing to bet that most of those deals are no where near $50k. Most surveys I’ve seen peg the average advance in most genres at between $5,000 and $10,000. That’s why our Real World Deal Descriptions make more sense than those of Publishers Lunch.3

My guess is that less than 10% of writers, even in a hot genre, are getting big deals. What separates them from the other 90% of writers?

Luck.

The majority of the teen books that I’ve read and loved over the last few years were paid advances of $20k or less. Sometimes, heaps less.

I know of New York Times and USA Today bestsellers who are still only getting “nice” deals. This is especially true in romance.

I’ve seen horribly written, completely unoriginal books get huge advances and heaps and heaps of promotion and sell like crazy. I’ve seen other bad books get the same treatment and sink like lead balloons. I’ve seen good books get the huge treatment and fail. I’ve seen good books get the full treatment and do really well.4

What makes the difference? Who knows? But luck has a lot to do with it.

Getting a big advance, being well promoted, and generally noised about does not mean you are a great writer; it means you are a really lucky writer.

  1. And the bad news is that even after you get published you still get rejected. [↩]
  2. Go here to learn what an advance is. [↩]
  3. I’m kind of bummed they never really took off. Though Publishers Lunch did change what a “nice” deal is and added the “very nice” category. [↩]
  4. Of course, my notion of what’s a “good” or “bad” book will most likely vary from yours. [↩]

I am sick of

9 March, 2008

Today I am sick of the intramanets. In particular I am sick of

  • People dismissing whole genres on the basis of having read, at most, a handful of books, but more often having merely looked at the covers. I’m especially sick of Romance being dissed in this way.

  • People who read blogs solely to get offended.

  • People not being offended by stuff that really is offensive. Namely misogyny, racism and general nastiness. I’d provide links but I’m trying to get my blood pressure down not up.

  • People who dismiss a whole mode of storytelling, i.e. first person or omniscient.

  • People who attempt to drum up controversies out of nothing.

  • People who give publishing advice based on scanty or no knowledge.1

  • Bourgeois people who accuse books and other people of being “bourgeios”. Look in the mirror, mate!

    • There’s more but that will do for now. I’m unplugging the intramanets so I can go and be cranky offline.

    1. I’m prolly guilty of this one. I’m so sorry! [↩]

    The Non-infringability of Plot and/or Ideas

    28 January, 2008

    People’s confusion over what plagiarism is sometimes drives me to loud and angry screamage. Thus I was thrilled to read Candy’s recent post, On Ideas, Repetitiveness and Copyright Infringement over at Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books:

    There seems to be some confusion regarding the status of ideas in copyright law. You can’t copyright a plot or an idea. You can only copyright the specific expression of that plot or idea as recorded in some sort of tangible form. Think about the nightmare of attempting to nail down and legislate a plot or idea for a story. How specific would you have to be before you could declare something unique enough to copyright?

    “An angst-ridden story about a vampire falling in love with a human.”
    Dude, if you can copyright that and collect a small fee every time somebody published that story, you could have your own giant pool of gold coins to swim in, Scrooge McDuck-stylee. (Side note: doesn’t that sound like a painful idea to you? Because it always has to me.)

    “An angst-ridden story in a contemporary setting about a vampire warrior falling in love with a human woman.”
    OK, that’s a little bit more specific, but c’mon. (Also: goddamn, think of all those germs on all those coins. There is a reason why we call it “filthy rich.”)

    What. She. Said.

    Read it! Memorise it! Tattoo it all over your body!

    I am so sick of people thinking that retelling a story is plagiarism. If that were so then we would have, at most, ten novels. All books about vampires, zombies, middle-aged English professors are not the same (well, okay, some of them are). It’s not about the story you tell so much as HOW YOU TELL IT. Why is that so difficult to understand?

    Georgette Heyer did not plagiarise Jane Austen. David Eddings didn’t plagiarise J. R. R. Tolkien. Walter Mosley didn’t plagiarise Raymond Chandler. I did not plagiarise C. S. Lewis.

    The next person who says to me, “Oh my God! Did you see that Certain Writer’s next book is set in a future world where you have to have your skin removed and replaced with carbon when you turn sixteen? That is just like Scott’s Uglies books! He should sue!” That person will get smacked. HARD.

    There are bazillions of science fiction stories where something happens to you at a certain age. Logan’s Run anyone? And many more stories set after the apocalypse. There are even a fair few that deal with physical beauty and its enforcement. Like those two Twilight Zone episodes, “Number 12 Looks Just Like Me” and “Eye of the Beholder” (both based on short stories).

    Watch them and read Scott’s books. The only thing they have in common is an idea. The characters, the mood, the texture of the writing, the way they makes you feel is very different. Scott paints an entire world with three-dimensional characters and relationships; those eps can only lightly sketch in world and characters. Given that they’re short and Scott’s books in the Uglies world add up to almost 400,000 words, that’s not surprising.

    Same goes for the ridiculous claim that Melissa Marr is ripping of Laurel K. Hamilton’s Merry Gentry books. As if.

    Holly Black refutes the claim succinctly:

    I can only assume that Ms. Henderson didn’t realize there’s an entire genre of urban fantasy faery books published in the 80s like Terri Windling’s Bordertown anthologies and the the novels of Emma Bull, Charles de Lint, Will Shetterly, Ellen Kushner, Midori Snyder and many others.

    It is really bizarre to me that she would point to the Merry Gentry series as though it was the first to use faerie folklore in a contemporary setting.

    Plagiarism happens when you steal someone else’s words. If that future world book with the carbon skin had the following opening: “The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.” And featured characters called Telly, Shiy, and Daniel who ride hoverboards and wind up starting a revolution and are described with language that is very close to how Scott described Tally, Shay, and David and have very similar dialogue, well, then I might start to be a little more concerned.

    But remember Scott’s opening sentence is already a riff on the opening of William Gibson’s Neuromancer: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” It’s a little science fiction joke/homage. Homage is not plagiarism either.

    Lots of books echo the words of other books. On purpose. To bring them to mind so that the reader (if they recognise the reference) can remember the earlier book and enjoy the light it casts on the one they have in their hands. Literary echoes done well are cool.

    Writers are influenced by the writers who went before them. Every single book they’ve read, movie they’ve seen, place they’ve been, conversation they’ve had creeps into their work. I know that if I hadn’t read Enid Blyton, Angela Carter, Charles Dickens, Isak Dinesen, Raymond Chandler, and Tanith Lee obsessively as a kid my writing would be very different. Without Flowers in the Attic and Alice in Wonderland I might not even be a writer.

    Pretty much all writers borrow plots. Even when they’re not aware that that’s what they’re doing. I was not thinking of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe when I wrote Magic or Madness. Borrowing a plot is NOT a bad thing. It’s what writers do. Shakespeare did it. Afterall, there aren’t that many plots: Stranger comes to town and changes everything! Person goes on a journey and changes themself! Two people fall in love but their family is against it! Two people meet, hate each other, then gradually realise they were meant to be together!

    Think about telling a joke. Some people do it well. Some people are total shite at it. It’s not the joke—it’s the way it’s told.

    Here’s a game for you. How many novels, movies or whatever can you think of that fit the following descriptions. The first two are lifted from the Smart Bitches:

    • A woman dares to make the mistake of evincing sexual desire and unconventionality, the punishment for which is death
    • Scrawny, gormless boy enjoys a series of wacky adventures and eventually triumphs over adversity
    • Teen girl discovers she is faery, not human, and becomes entangled with a handsome faery
    • Teen copes with drunk/drug-addicted/loser father/mother and learns own strength

    Thus endeth the rant. I must now go back to my idea and plot stealing. Novels don’t write themselves you know.

    Writing = hard

    20 November, 2007

    Fellow writers, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re looking at your manuscript covered with line edits by your editor and you come across something like this:

    I could feel felt . . .

    And you stare it. Really? Really? I wrote “I could feel” when I could simply have written “I felt”? What was I thinking? Why is my editor a better writer than I am? Gah!

    And then there’s this:

    I could still feel the warmth of where his thumb had been1

    I wrote “the warmth of”? I’m, like, the WORST writer ever. I totally deserve all the paper cuts this stupid manuscript is giving me. Every single one. Even the one across my nose. Maybe especially the one across my nose.

    1. On her forehead, okay? Don’t go thinking rude thoughts. My fairy book is very chaste. [↩]

    Not that anyone asked . . .

    13 November, 2007

    . . . but I am hundred per cent in favour of the WGA strike. Doris Egan, who’s a writer on House,1 eloquently explains why. And, yes, a lot of it is about dosh. Why the hell shouldn’t writers be adequately compensated for their work? Here’s my favourite bit:

    By the way, I’m not at all sure this understanding [about money] goes up to the CEO’s office; how can it, when that CEO can be handed sixty million dollars just for quitting? Someday I must tell you the story of the famous exec who said, “Why not make this character middle-class? Let’s say he makes $300,000 a year—” and the writers all stared at him.

    That’s right the folks who are keeping the writers from having a fair cut of the work they create think $300 grand a year for one person is a middle class wage. Words completely fail me. It’s like those people who crap on about the outrageous amount male basketball players earn but don’t say a word about the insane earnings of the people who own and run the teams and leagues. An athlete’s career is short and physically dangerous.2 Execs get to keep on raking it in when they’re old and grey.

    You really have to wonder at a world where it’s the executives around the creative folks who make the obscene amounts of money while most of the creatives are grateful to be paid at all.

    Now, to be clear I am not referring to the producers or any of the other staff who are currently out of work because of this strike. That’s right, this strike means lots of people, not just writers, are going to be without pay for the duration. And most of those people—unlike the writers—don’t have a strike fund to keep them going. Not that the big bosses up top give a damn about any of them.

    I believe I’ve ranted enough.

    1. and also wrote some of my fave fantasy novels of the early 1990s [↩]
    2. The majority of those who become pros rarely have more than ten solid earning years. [↩]

    Lunch, darling

    7 November, 2007

    A friend will be in town next week to meet her agent and some editors who are interested in her writing. She is very nervous and asked me what to expect. I directed her to agent Kristin Nelson’s blog where a while back she gave the lowdown on the shennanigans that take place at agent-editor lunches. It’s shocking stuff!

    They eat food and gossip! Who’d’ve thunk it?

    I then revealed to my friend that the exact same thing happens at editor-author lunches. Food is et and (rarely) wine is drunk, and the publishing industry, family, friends, mutual acquaintances, as well as Ugly Betty, and books just read are discussed and dissected. Much fun is had.

    I found this all very puzzling when I had my first lunch with an editor. I was an unpublished wannabe. A writer friend of mine had arranged for me to meet her editor. She’d described me and my writing in very fulsome terms and the editor had asked to meet me even though she hadn’t read my book yet (very unusual).

    I was very very very VERY nervous. I spent days practising pitches, figuring out how best to describe my finished novel, and all the other ones I had on the boil. Come the day though, the subject of my writing never even came up. The editor did not ask a single question about my finished manuscript, about what I was working on, where I saw myself in five years, what kind of speech I planned to give when I accepted the Nobel—nothing like that. Instead we talked about the publishing industry, mutual acquaintances (actually our one mutual acquaintance—the writer friend who set us up), as well as Buffy (it was a while ago), and books just read were discussed and dissected. Much fun was had. Hmmm, I thought, What was this lunch about then? Why did we talk about everything under the sun other than my book?

    Years later, when I was published and had an actual writing career, a different editor took me out to lunch. I’d been told this editor was a big fan of my work and very interested in publishing me. (I agreed to have lunch because I was curious and because I’m extremely attracted to free lunches especially at really good restaurants.1) However, over lunch the subject of my writing never came up. I was not lavished with praise or wooed, instead we—you guessed it—gossiped about the publishing industry, mutual acquaintances, and books we loved and hated. It was excellently diverting, but not at all what I’d expected.

    So what are those lunches about? Kristin Nelson says they’re about creating a connection, getting to know each other, figuring out if there’s any possibility you could work together. The writing stands or falls on its own. If the editor who took you out to lunch reads your ms. and hates it then that’s that. Doesn’t matter how charmed she was by you over lunch. Or that you both share a passion for mushroom hunting, or American Gothic, or the Angelique books, or all three—if she’s not into your book you remain unpublished.

    For me it means those lunches are both less and more intimidating. Less because you’re very unlikely to have to pitch your book—something I’m not that good at. But more because what they’re really doing is seeing if they like you. I don’t know about you, dear readers, but that reminds me of my first day at school, hoping that I wouldn’t say or do the wrong thing and that someone would like me. I had many first days of school and it never got less terrifying.

    On the other hand, pretty much every lunch I’ve had with an agent or editor has gone really well: editors and agents are my people. We almost always love the same things: not least of which is books and publishing. We have a tonne to say to each other. I cannot remember a dud lunch2. So that nervous-first-day-of-school feeling usually evaporates within a few minutes and is completely gone by the time you find that one book that’s sold millions that you both hate.

    So my advice is relax and enjoy. If you can . . .

    Oh, and don’t spill water all over the person taking you out. I’ve done that. Not a good look. At least it wasn’t red wine . . .

    1. It was at a really good restaurant. [↩]
    2. well, sometimes the food has sucked. [↩]

    A drop in the ocean

    18 October, 2007

    Several people have been bewildered by my enjoyment of this article about the Frankfurt Book Fair. Don’t you get depressed by how it’s not about the authors? they ask. How it’s about books as product? How there are so many, many, many books?

    Nope.

    Books are products.

    That’s not all they are, but it’s a pretty bloody important aspect, especially for those of us who are trying to make a living writing (or editing or selling) them.

    Publishing is an industry. Part of what it’s about—and has always been about—is making money. For most of its history most of that money has been made by people other than writers.1 That’s still the case. Sure, some writers do just fine. As it happens—at this moment in time—I’m one of them. I don’t make a tonne of money, but I’m finally making more than I did as a research fellow.2

    But the fact that my career’s toddling along okay (right now) is not why I read articles about “books as product” without blanching. That’s not why it doesn’t bother me to walk into a hall big enough for a city of dinosaurs that’s entirely full of books. I love books! I’m thrilled there are so many of them. And that there are so many people busily bringing them into existence.

    Long before I sold so much as a haiku I was fascinated by the industry. By how it operates from the booksellers to the sales reps to the publicists to the editors and agents and writers right through to the execs at the top of the multi-media conglomerates that own most of the big publishing companies in the world. I’m fascinated by the economics of small presses and medium-sized presses too. I want to know everything there is to know. One of the coolest parts of going with Scott on his book tour was meeting so many sales reps and booksellers and media escorts and gossiping about the industry and learning new stuff I hadn’t known.3

    I subscribe to Publishers Weekly and Publishers Lunch. I read a tonne of different publishing and bookish blogs by agents and editors and booksellers and librarians. Most of the conversations I have with fellow writers and with agents and editors and sales reps and other publishing types quickly turns into gossip about the industry. Who’s making the big deals? Which house is going after what kinds of books and why? Are the Twilight books the new Harry Potter?

    I’m not saying I think publishing today is all roses. It’s not. But it never was. I spent more than a year of my life reading through the letters of Judith Merril and other science fiction writers of the 40s and 50s. Their struggles to make a living are very familiar.

    Like Carole Cadwalladr I’m depressed by how few foreign-language titles are translated into English. By the books I think are hideously bad that do incredibly well4. But I remind myself that it was ever thus. The Pilgrim’s Progress is possibly the most boring book ever written. Twas a bestseller in its day. Crappy books have done well in the past; they’ll do well in the future. But there are always wonderful books flying off the shelves too.

    There are more books being published than ever before. There are more readers than ever before. I think that’s fabulous.

    I’d be depressed if we could no longer fill the halls of the Frankfurt Book Fair. If people weren’t excited about the latest books or by Doris Lessing winning the Nobel or by the latest crazy book deal.

    I guess I’m a publishing geek.

    1. Most editors and publicists and sales reps and booksellers don’t make much either. Seriously if you go into any aspect of the publishing industry trying to make your fortune you’re delusional. [↩]
    2. Barely. And only as of this year. It could change. [↩]
    3. For instance I had no idea media escorts even existed. [↩]
    4. that dreadful YA I mentioned recently better flop! [↩]

    Book fair horror

    15 October, 2007

    Carole Cadwalladr writes very entertainingly about the Frankfurt book fair. Especially about all the gossip. One of my favourite bits is her glancing mention of inflated print runs.1 Apparently this goes back much further than I’d realised:

    For as long as people have written books, people have sold them too, and this involves a certain amount of talking things up. Erasmus, in the 15th century, is said to have drummed up business here (the fair’s been going for 800-odd years) by claiming the first print run of his Colloquies was 24,000. And this in an age when the average number of copies produced was around 50.

    That wily Erasmus, eh? Though I don’t know what he expected to achieve when it was going to become clear that he was a bit of a fibber almost as soon as the words left his mouth.

    Publishing is a strange business. Read the whole article. It’s my favourite on publishing in ages.

    1. For those who don’t know publishers almost never release the true print run. They always exaggarrate the number. Sometimes by margins almost as crazy as Erasmus. [↩]

    book tour

    19 September, 2007

    In a bit over a week Scott is going on his very first proper book tour. Hooray! I am going along in my wifely capacity. Largely because everyone we know who’s done a book tour solo says it can be total misery. “Don’t do it alone!” they all cried.

    The whole book tour thing is deeply weird. Most writers never get sent on one and are desperate for it to happen to them:

    FOR the publication in July [2007] of her first book, “The Late Bloomer’s Revolution,” Amy Cohen imagined a promotional tour of bookstores in Sydney, Australia. And Paris. And a few places closer to home, New York City, would work, too.

    Then her publicist at Hyperion told her, as Ms. Cohen recalled somewhat tongue in cheek, “You aren’t going to Scarsdale.”

    Yet many writers who do get sent on tour really dislike it and start wondering what the point of the whole thing is:

    Why, I sometimes wonder, does anybody want a book signed? I have a whole wall of books by friends, and it never occurs to me to ask them to sign them.

    My wife, who has an abiding passion for hagiography—we have a surprising number of editions of Lives of the Saints, not one of them signed—has her own theory. As she explains it, a book signed by its author is a second-degree relic, not as precious as a finger bone, but on a par with a pair of cast-off sandals.

    I like the explanation, but how long before the bastards start wanting the damned books signed in blood?

    Writers who get to tour are aware that whingeing about it is unseemly:

    I was stuck in traffic yesterday, thinking about how awful book tours were because I had to get up early and not get enough sleep and deal with lots of different people and never get any down time to just relax and I remembered what it reminded me of: working for a living. Not that writing isn’t working for a living, but I used to have to put on pantyhose and go out to teach at 7:30 every morning and I was always on the run and there was never any quiet time and I almost lost my mind. Which is what most people do every damn day. Meanwhile on the tour, I was sacking out in the Hotel Metro eating amazing room service and bemoaning my fate. Tell me again why nobody here threw things at me? Note to self: STOP WHINING, YOU INGRATE.

    The folks I know who’ve enjoyed their book tour did it with someone else. Holly Black and Cassandra Clare had a fabulous time on their book tour earlier this year. The way a whole bunch of us did going to DragonCon together.

    There are lots of claims that book tours don’t work: That for most authors they don’t increase sales; or contribute to that writer being better known; and that more money is lost than gained from doing them. Others claim that you have to look beyond immediate money returns for the value of book tours.

    Although I’ve never been on an official book tour, I’ve done appearances back home and in the US of A, mostly I really enjoy them. I love meeting the people who sell and lend and buy and borrow my books. I love hanging out with folks who are knowledgeable and enthusiastic about books—YA books in particular—and gossiping and arguing with them. I find signing and talking to folks fun. I enjoy the Q & A sessions. And I love going to places I’ve never been before.

    There’s less than fabulous stuff too. I’m not wild about staying in hotels where the windows don’t open, having to eat truly horrendous food cause it’s that or faint, air travel and all the related hassles, but compared to the cool stuff all of that is minor. Also I’m lucky: I’ve never had to do any of it alone. I’ve barely done any events alone. We usually put on the Justine-and-Scott show which we both enjoy heaps and seems to go over better with audiences then when we do appearances on our own.

    For the authors who’ve toured—do you like touring? Consider it a necessary evil? And for those—like me—who haven’t do you want to? What are your expectations if you do tour?

    I’m also curious to hear from the publishing pros: what’s your take? Does it entirely depend on who’s touring? Do you think blog tours are more useful? Are there authors who, no matter how great they’re books are doing, you would never send on tour?

    And the booksellers and librarians who host authors on tour—what do you make of the whole thing?

    And those who’ve seen authors on tour doing appearances what do you reckon?

    Portraying not Condoning

    12 September, 2007

    Someone calling themselves Mony made this comment on my last post:

    How can someone who so irresponsibly condones teenage pregnancy get on her high horse about other writers?

    Now, obviously there are several logical problems with that statement. But they’re so obvious I won’t bother to address them. However, the comment does raise something that comes up A LOT for YA writers. The idea that if we write about something we approve of it.

    Thus Holly Black and Ellen Hopkins in their searing acounts of teens using drugs are all for drugs, E. Lockhart approves of Broadway musicals, Chris Lynch approves of rape, and Stephanie Meyer approves of vampires. And, I, of course, having written of a teenager getting pregnant clearly think that’s a fabulous idea.

    Except that I don’t. Nor do Holly Black or Ellen Hopkins condone drug use; Chris Lynch rape or Stephanie Meyers vampirism. (Though I suspect that E. Lockhart really does like Broadway musicals. Repent, Emily! It’s not too late.)

    We’re writers. We write about people, things, worlds, situations, acts we don’t approve of all the time. There is an argument about the existence of God in one of my books. One of the characters believes and the other is an atheist. If the mere act of writing something means I believe it then I must be profoundly schizophrenic. A character of mine is brilliant at mathematics and loves it; I am not and I hate it. Another character hates all fruit and vegetables; I love them.

    I am not my books. No author is. Not unless they’re writing autobiography and even then that’s only a part of their life and a part they’ve massaged to turn into a good story.

    YA writers depict the lives of teenagers. Some teenagers take drugs, many have sex, some get pregnant, a few kill other people, and some themselves. These things happens in the real world. How does writing about them in a novel make us responsible for these activities or just as bizarre approving of them?

    We YA writers try to write about teenagers as honestly as we can. Even when our books also features vampires and dragons and magic and Broadway musicals. It would be dishonest to leave out the parts of teen experience that some adults are uncomfortable with.

    Many of my characters do things I disapprove of and make decisions I think are deeply unwise. But if they didn’t they wouldn’t be themselves and I wouldn’t have a story to tell. Without conflict there is no story. There’s a reason that dishonesty, misunderstandings, and villiany are so frequent in novels: They create conflict which creates story.

    I see my duty of care in writing for people who are not yet adults like this:

    1. Entertain
    2. Do not condescend
    3. Be honest

    That is what I set out to do in all my novels.

    One Cherie Priest Forgot

    8 September, 2007

    In a bizarre oversight Cherie forgot to mention this golden rule of publishing—Never publish a novel which is a thinly disguised account of a murder you committed. It might help the cops bust you:

    In his debut 2003 novel Amok, Polish author Krystian Bala describes the torture and murder of a young woman whose hands are bound behind her back with a cord that is then looped to form a noose around her neck. According to a judge’s ruling this week in the western Polish city of Wroclaw, Bala was drawing not on his imagination for that scene, but on his own experience.

    Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. I thought we authors were smarter than that?

    Plus: killing people is wrong.

    On the other hand, his book was a bestseller . . .

    Cherie Priest tells the truth

    7 September, 2007

    The ever fabulous Cherie Priest has compiled a list of everything she’s learned about publishing since her first book came out. It is all totally true!

    My favourites:

    You will not be rich. Whatever money you might have earned from an advance will have been spent fully a year before your book appears. Maybe you paid off your car, or maybe you got that leather jacket out of lay-away at Wilson’s. Whatever, that money is LONG gone.

    My advances for the trilogy and my two scholarly books are long, long, long gone. I just got a royalty cheque for the scholarly books. Yes, they’ve both earned out! The amount: $200. I’m rich! My Magic or Madness trilogy has yet to earn out. I’m hoping it will by the next royalty statement (two and a half years after the first book was published; almost four years since I sold the trilogy). The only money I’ve received this year is from foreign sales of Magic or Madness. Enough to cover the rent . . . barely.

    Getting your foot in the door is not the hard part. It is the first hard part.

    Sing it, Cherie! People (especially aspiring writers) have this bizarre idea that you’ve made it when you have a book published. Au contraire. Most writers never make enough money to live off. Many writers don’t get reviewed, or win prizes, or sell more than a thousand copies. Even authors with a squillion published books. Being published does not mean that you will cease to be rejected. Selling your first book does not mean that you will sell your seventh or seventieth.

    There is such a thing as the law of aggregate success. You will also be offered more paying gigs, and if possible, you should probably try to take advantage of them. Some paying gigs (especially short markets) do not pay much, but there are plenty of very fine venues that can’t afford to offer a huge rate.

    I wouldn’t have believed that one until this year when for the first time I’ve been approached to write stories for well-paid anthologies. Cool, huh? Now if only I could write short stories . . .

    People will ask you questions about stuff you wrote, and you will say, “Um …” By the time your book actually comes out, it will have been a full year or even two years since you actually composed the material. You will have moved on to other projects, in which you are wholly immersed; and when someone asks about why character X in book one does thing Y, you’ll have no earthly idea. But you’ll be confident that there was an excellent reason.

    This is true beyond trueness. People keep asking me questions about the trilogy but it’s almost a year since I last looked at Magic’s Chld and way longer than that since I looked at the first two books. It’s almost ten years since I looked at Battle of the Sexes. I can’t remember a thing about it. All I know is the book I’m writing right now.

    You will acquire fans. This will blow your freakin’ mind.

    Oh, yes. I’m still embarrassed and weirded out and made ecstatically happy by people (I’m not related to or friends with) liking my books. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to it. I loves it.

    Say no to SFWA

    31 August, 2007

    Here’s why I will never join SFWA:

    The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to fraudulently remove numerous non-infringing works from Scribd, a site that allows the general public to share text files with one another in much the same way that Flickr allows its users to share pictures.

    Included in the takedown were: a junior high teacher’s bibliography of works that will excite children about reading sf, the back-catalog of a magazine called Ray Gun Revival, books by other authors who have never authorized SFWA to act on their behalf, such as Bruce Sterling, and my own [Cory Doctorow’s] Creative Commons-licensed novel, “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.”

    SFWA’s attitude to copyright has stepped over the line from luddite into barking mad. As a writer I love my fans. Adore them! I wish I had way more of them. Why on Earth would I join an organisation that is hellbent on prosecuting them? I completely agree with Cory Doctorow.

    Writerly naughtiness

    24 August, 2007

    Meg Cabot hates rewriting. In her rant against it she mentions that

    the first time I got a copy-edited manuscript back, I was so offended by anyone second-guessing all my research (this was in the days before everyone had the Internet, and I had done all of it in the library), I ripped all the Post-It notes off and threw them away and just sent the manuscript back without addressing any of them. And no one said anything about it!

    That’s, like, the naughtiest thing a writer could do. Well, other than being years late with a book, or stealing your editor’s car, or spouse, or, um, never mind.

    I do know of one writer who totally ignored their editorial letter. They changed a few things in the first chapter—very cursory stuff—and then sent it back with a cover letter saying how helpful the ed letter was, how much they appreciated it etc. etc. The editor wrote the writer to thank them for all their hard work and the book went through to copyediting. I think that one only works if your editor is lazy or insanely overstretched. It would never work for mine. They read every single word. Over and over and over again. Bless them.

    Now I’m wondering what other naughtinesses writers have gotten up to. Feel free to comment anonymously. No one here will reveal your dread secrets. Promise!

    Calling all editors!

    15 August, 2007

    Danica Eakins who starts her final year of high school in September loves books and wants to become an editor, but doesn’t know how you go about doing that. Could those of you who are professional editors give her some advice? Tell her about internships and the like?

    Here are her questions:

    I’d like to know things like, which university courses would be most beneficial, how does one actually find a job as an editor, what are the perks and downfalls of the job, what is the average pay, etc.

    I’ve never worked as an editor so I have only the vaguest inkling of the answers to these questions. I realise I don’t even know how much editors get paid. Other than it not being a lot. Not until you’re really senior and running your own imprint. Is that true?

    In the US of A do you have to move to New York City to make a living as an editor?

    Danica’s Canadian so what’s the publishing centre there? Toronto?

    Are there other jobs working with books that you’d recommend?

    Against blogging

    13 August, 2007

    Robin Hobb is against blogging. In a witty and amusing screed she argues that blogging will suck away all your writing time:

    For once a writer has entered that realm, there is no turning back. T’is true, so sadly true. Soon when your precious hour of free time arrives and you sit down to write, you will think to yourself, ‘oh, but I must do my blog first.’ And you will go there, and dutifully blog. At first, you will notice nothing amiss. It is pleasant to receive the daily dose of recognition from your readers, the gratifying feedback, and the responses that invite a response from you.

    But my dear friends, it is NO COINCIDENCE that blog and blood begin with the same three letters!

    I disagree. (Well, yes, they do begin with the same three letters but it’s DEFINITELY a coincidence!)

    Blogging is no more pernicious than knitting or cooking or video games or any other hobby or procrastinatory activity a writer can undertake.

    I love blogging. I do it pretty much every day. It makes me happy.

    My blogging roughly co-incides with my pro writing career. Since I started blogging I’ve written a book a year. This year (so far) I’ve written a book and a long short story and the first ten thousand words of a new novel.

    Blogging feeds into my writing. It’s a way of stretching the writing muscles that’s relaxing and fun. Without it I don’t write so good.

    Lately, I’ve realised that part of my writing process is to procrastinate. I need to futz around blogging, reading blogs, cooking, reading books, watching tellie in order to get my brain to the point where it’s ready to write. When I just leap into writing gears grind on gears and it ain’t pretty. Blogging and other procratinatory activities are necessary brain lubricants.

    Also blogging makes me feel like there are other folks out there writing and loving/hating it. Other people who are like me. It gives me daily access to several communities. When I blog cricket the cricket fans come out basketball ditto. I’m strongly and passionately in favour of blogging and the intramanets in general.

    This doesn’t mean that blogging isn’t a disaster for some writers. If you’re blogging when you should be writing and thus not meeting your deadlines then you’ve got a problem. When the procrastination gets out of control and eats the work then it’s time to stop. But then Worlds of Warcraft is a disaster for some writers, so is sudoku.

    I also come across writer’s blogs that seem to exist only because the writer has been told that blogging is great publicity for your books.

    No, it isn’t. Not if you don’t enjoy blogging.

    Cause if you don’t enjoy it you prolly aren’t any good at it and you’re writing the world’s most boring blog. Frankly, I am bored by announcements of award nominations/wins and other writerly achievements. I’m bored by my own. I don’t read other writers’ blogs to hear about that stuff. I read them to find out their opinions on American Gothic, politics, cats, mangosteens, their writing process and whatever else is on their mind. I read the blogs that are engaging, funny, whingy, moving, informative, mean, gossipy, snarky and fun.

    When I started this blog I used to crap on about my various writing achievements way more than I do now cause I thought that’s what you were supposed to do. As I’ve gone on I’ve cut those kind of posts down both in number and in length. And I try to post something interesting quickly afterwards. Blogs that are just a boast-a-thon are dire. I’m definitely considering saving that stuff for the newsletter and the front of my website and leaving this blog skite free.

    In short: Blogging rules! (But only if you like it and can get writing done as well!)

    Spelling (updated)

    8 August, 2007

    I am not a great speller. I wouldn’t say I was a terrible speller either, but I doubt I’d get many rounds into a spelling bee. I subscribe to two online dictionaries—the Macquarie and the OED—so I can check and double check words that look wrong to me1. For the last few years many words have looked wrong. Mostly because I spend part of my life in a country that spells differently from where I grew up. I don’t think it would be an issue if I were a solid speller, but because I’m not I live in a state of constant confusion.

    I am not alone. I know lots of writers who are only av. spellers like me. I know a few who are TERRIBLE. I will not name them—they know who they are. Hello, Sarah! But, for example, Samuel R. Delany is dyslexic. Great writer, not so great speller.

    I bring this up because I keep seeing over and over again in flamey online writing discussions people declaring that someone else will never make it as a writer because they can’t spell.

    Rubbish.

    Usually the comment they’re responding to is terrible for lots of reasons, such as badly constructed sentences, being illogical, ungrammatical, as well as poorly spelled. If the sentences were gorge, made sense, and were grammatical, a few wrong spellings wouldn’t be that big a deal. They’re not when you hand your ms. into your editor.

    Also, hastily written, off the cuff comments and emails do not equal a polished gone-over-a-billion-times manuscript.

    I truly doubt that an agent or editor—unless they’re totally pedantic crazy people—would pass on a genius ms. because it had some spelling issues.

    Not being able to spell does not make you a bad person or a bad writer. It is not a moral failing. It just makes life a little bit harder for your copyeditor and proofreader.

    Update: Okay, this is an irritable update as people seem to be thinking that I am saying there’s no need to proofread work before submitting. Au contraire! Of course you proof your work and get other people to look at it before submitting. Especially if you’re a crap speller. All I’m saying is a career as a writer is feasible even for those of us who can’t spell.

    1. Oh, okay and so I can spend hours finding out if “grunch” and “flird” etc. are real words. [↩]

    Money writing advice

    6 August, 2007

    Someone wrote to Victoria Strauss over at Writers Beware asking for advice on pursuing writing as a career. Namely will it make me money?

    Strauss was honest about what a hit-and-miss career writing is and how the vast majority of pro writers do not make a lot of money. Her respondee did not take kindly to the truth and wrote to Strauss to tell her that he was

    not worried about your discouragement. I understand, the history of the human race is but a brief spot in time, and its first lesson is modesty, but some people are better than others. I wouldn’t discourage anybody from having high ambitions, because the good of their success outweighs the bad of their failure. The successful ones always tell everybody to be more ambitious, which is why I think you’re biased and your judgement cannot altogether be respected.

    Aside from this being a breathtakingly rude response to someone who’s gone out of their way to give an honest answer the layers of delusions are breathtaking. How is telling someone the truth discouraging someone from being ambitious? If you want to be a writer the odds are that you will not make much money. Best to know that straight away because if that’s your main motivation then you’d be better off playing the stock market or getting a law degree or becoming a plumber or finding a rich spouse.

    I’ve been asked the money question by aspiring writers many times during my brief career (I’ve been a full-time writer only four years) and like Victoria Strauss’s correspondent they really don’t want to hear the truth. They want success stories. They want to be told that they will sell their first novel for six figures.

    They might. I know one first timer who did. But the vast majority of first-novel advances I’ve heard of have been under twenty grand. Way under. Mine was. Scott’s was. Garth Nix’s was. So was J. K. Rowling’s.

    If you don’t believe me subscribe to Publisher’s Lunch. Start counting how many of those debut novel deals are anything other than “nice” deals ($1-$49,000). Make sure to check how many books are in the deal. A “good” deal ($100,000 – $250,000) sounds fabulous but often those deals are for at least three books. I’ve seen a six-book “nice” deal which means the author got at most $8,000 a book.

    Strauss’s questioner ends by telling her:

    And if you don’t get it, maybe that’s why you’re not very successful. Write until your words bleed. I don’t see that color in your prose.

    His notion of success is all tied up with money and he has the hide to hell Strauss that she’s not a success? He hasn’t sold a book; she’s published many. The only thing Strauss is not a success at is telling him what he wants to hear: you, sir, are the chosen one who will earn gazillions.

    Hard work has a lot to do with success (though bleeding really isn’t necessary) but I know plenty of hardworking writers who don’t earn enough to support themselves, not to mention all the hard workers who’ve never made it into print. Talent and hard work are very necessary, but to make the big bucks luck is essential.

    You can be a very successful writer—well reviewed, award winning, decent sales—and earn only 30 thou or less a year. The majority of pro writers would be over the moon to be earning that much year in and year out. Money for writers is low and erratic. It’s August and I’ve been paid about $4,000 for my writing this year. I’m owed more but who knows when it will come? That’s the writer’s life right there. Just like any other freelancer.

    Besides what is a successful writer? There are many genius writers who made bugger-all writing during their lifetimes. You can’t tell me that Joseph Conrad and Emily Dickinson and Philip K. Dick weren’t successes. They’re still in print and they’re still read unlike gazillions of best sellers over the years. Who’s reading Coningsby Dawson and Warwick Deeping now?

    Ed Letters

    26 July, 2007

    Via Elizabeth Bear a discussion of how writers feel about getting editorial letters.

    First up, for those who don’t know an editorial letter is pretty much what it sounds like: a letter from your editor about your book, telling you all the things they want you to change in your manuscript. You only get an editorial letter if they’ve already bought your book.

    The responses over at Blue Rose Girls are varied and run from love to hate and back again.

    Me, I love editorial letters. I will go so far as to say that I find them sexy.

    Seriously, imagine receiving a long letter (I’ve had up to ten pages single-spaced) that is all about your book, that totally gets what you were trying to do, and has billions of awesome ideas about how to make it better. I get a yummy shiver every time I receive my latest ed letter.

    I’m lucky, of course, I’ve never had a bad ed letter. Mine have been not only full of insight and brilliant structural solutions, but they’ve been well-written and witty as well.

    My relationship with my ed letters runs like this:

    1. Nervous anticipation as I wait for the letter to show. Will we agree about how the ms. is broken?
    2. Ecstasy at the ed letter’s arrival and discovery that not only do we agree but my editor has noticed all sorts of other stuff I did not.
    3. Shivery joy as I imagine the fixed book. Magically it has all fallen into place. I can do this, I think. I can!
    4. Despair on the day that I begin the work as I realise that I haven’t in fact rewritten the whole book by osmosis from having read the ed letter multiple times, and that I have to sit down and figure out how to do all those excellent and elegant structural changes.
    5. Despair turns to ecstasy as I work out solutions and back to despair as I come up against the next problem to be fixed. And repeat. A lot.
    6. Ecstatic joy when the ms. is finally whipped into shape and sent back to my editor.
    7. Nervous anticipation as I wait for the second letter to show. Will we agree about how the ms. is broken?
    8. And repeat.

    I am a much, much, much better writer now then I was before I was professionally published. Part of that is because I write far more than I did back then, but a larger chunk of it is from being edited by professionals. My ed letters push me much farther than any other criticism I’ve ever received. My editors want my books to be the very best I can write as much as I do. They have a vested interest in them being good—it’s not only their job, but my success is their success, and my failure is their failure.

    To sum up: a good ed letter and thus a good editor are worth their weight in mangosteens. There is nothing finer!

    Enid Blyton

    17 July, 2007

    Via Garth, this fascinating article comparing Enid Blyton and J. K. Rowling. Here’s the paragraph that made me fall over:

    Enid Blyton wrote nearly 800 books over a 40-year career, many of them quite slim, as well as close to 5,000 short stories. She sold 200 million books in her lifetime, with few translations until the 1960s and 1970s, and has sold some 400 million altogether. About half of her titles are still in print, and they still sell 11 million copies a year, including a million for the Famous Five series and three million Noddy books.

    Wow! Rowling thus far has sold 325 million. So she will overtake Blyton (within the year I reckon) selling fewer titles (7 as opposed to 800) much faster. For the sake of Rowling’s health and sanity I hope she doesn’t up her output: Blyton wrote 10,000 words a day. The most I’m able to consistently write a day is about 1,500. I have written 10,000 in a day but it was during the sprint to finish my PhD thesis and I was not a sane or happy bunny rabbit doing it.

    Enid Blyton wrote the first chapter book I ever read by myself: The Magic Faraway Tree. I adored it so much that she was also the author of the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and etc. chapter books I read on my own. She was my first author crush. After the Faraway books I fell for the Naughtiest Girl books. Only to be disappointed when she learns her lesson and becomes good—goodness? Bleah! Why was she no longer throwing chalk?!

    Then I became so deeply obsessed with the Mallory Towers and St. Clare’s books that I begged my parents to send me to boarding school. When they refused I’d bully my sister into having midnight feasts with me. I’m not sure if they ever actually happened at midnight, but. I was very little when I was devouring her books.

    I also read Famous Five and Secret Seven but I never liked them as much as the others. Julian was a bully, Dick was a whinger, Anne was unspeakably wet, and George wasn’t nearly tough enough. I kept waiting for her to murder Dick and Anne. Never happened. I guess Timmy the Dog was okay. And the Secret Seven weren’t even memorable enough to rail against.

    I’ve never gone back and read her books again. Frankly, I’m too frightened of what I might find. She was one of the strongest influences on my becoming a writer and in particular in becoming a genre writer. My love for the Faraway Tree books led to my being exposed to all sorts of other wondrous books like the Susan Cooper’s, The Hobbit, Alice in Wonderland and Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy. I didn’t read these books just once but over and over again.

    Blyton taught me how to read, how to tell a story, about drama and suspense and action, how girls are better than boys, glasses make you ugly, and how dobbing your mates into the authorities is always best. Some of those lessons stuck a wee bit better than the others . . .

    I know Enid Blyton had little impact in the USA, but did you yanquis have comparable authors you fell for as a first-time reader? And non-USians, come share the Blyton love! Testify!

    Trailers

    14 July, 2007

    Two friends of mine have had their books made into movies. Karen Joy Fowler‘s Jane Austen Book Club and Holly Black‘s Spiderwick Chronicles will be out in September and next February respectively, and can now be seen in trailer form right now.

    I can’t tell you how rarely this happens. Lots of books get optioned, which means that someone has paid the writer for the right to make a movie based on their book. An option usually lasts a year and if work hasn’t started on the movie by the end of that time the option expires. That’s what happens in at least ninety per cent of cases; rarely do options result in films being made.

    I know lots and lots of writers who’ve had work optioned. I’ve come close to an option myself, but Karen and Holly are the first to have had an actual Hollywood movie made. It’s like a miracle. A well-deserved miracle. If you haven’t read their books you should—they’re awesome.

    I’m definitely gunna go see both movies the second they open. Can’t wait!

    Cranky readers

    2 July, 2007

    The tactic of writing to librarians to make them disappear books has been around for some time. The following is from Somerset Maugham’s Cakes and Ale (1930). The protag’s uncle is talking about his nephew’s friendship with a local author:

    “They bicycled together last summer, and after Willie had gone back to school I got one of his books from the library to see what it was like. I read the first volume and then I sent it back. I wrote a pretty stiff letter to the librarian and I was glad to hear that he’d withdrawn it from circulation. If it had been my own property I should have put it promptly in the kitchen stove.”

    Wouldn’t it be lovely to think that didn’t happen nowadays? Alas and alack.

    Aussies bash Aussies

    22 June, 2007

    The following is just me thinking out loud. I’d really love to hear from people who actually know about this stuff.

    A while ago I read a piece by Susan Wyndham about Oz writers getting much better reviews in the US of A then in Australia. I was hoping for lots of examples but Wyndham only talks about Richard Flanagan’s latest book. Not that that wasn’t interesting, but I’d love too see if there’s any substance to the impression and if there is then is it a new phenomenon or an old one?

    Within the world of YA I can only think of a few examples of Oz books being bigger in the US of A then at home. The Book Thief is the main one that springs to mind. It’s insanely huge in America and not especially big back home. The reviews in the US were over the top; I don’t know what they were like in Australia. Quite good I suspect but I doubt they’re as over the top as the US ones. Most Oz reviews of anything are less fulsome than US ones.

    Writers like Ursula Dubosarsky, Sonya Hartnett and Jaclyn Moriarty, for example, are bigger at home than in the States, which is a shame on account of they’re all BRILLIANT. (Go read!) And then there’s Margo Lanagan who’s been pulling down as many prizes and accolades at home as she does in the US of A.

    But YA is another world from mainstream literature. In Australia it barely gets reviewed at all whereas in the US there are gazillions of important review outlets: Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist, School Library Journal, Horn Book Review, BCCB (Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books), not to mention all the local newspapers and journals that review it. I’ve had reviews in The Washington Post, Wisconsin State Journal, Des Moines Register, and The Eugene Weekly. We’re a country of 22 million; they’re one of 300 million.

    In Australia reviews are pretty much irrelevant to a YA book’s success. Most of the big sellers have had very few reviews. It’s pretty much all word of mouth. For the grown up books reviews seem to be WAY more important, which leads me back to Wyndham’s piece and the comments it inspired. Is the harshness of some Oz reviews because their eyes are not dimmed by a romantic view of Australians and Australia? I’ve definitely seen strong responses to my work over there stem largely from my perceived exoticness. A response that would never fly here at home. I’ve been told many times by Yankees that they picked up my book because I’m Australian.

    And then Sonya Hartnett in her interview earlier this week was talking about how difficult it is for her to be taken seriously at home because she doesn’t write adult fiction. That attitude doesn’t seem as prevalent in the US. But then I haven’t really come across it at home either. But I’m very new to this game and I’m not very well known in Australia.

    Hmmm. Like, I said I’m not sure where I’m going with this. Just thinking out loud.

    Does anyone else have some thoughts?

    Starting out

    12 June, 2007

    Diana Peterfreund must have a looming deadline or something because she’s written two wonderfully helpful posts for writers who are brand new to the publishing industry. They include a glossary explaining what exactly, for instance, an agent does. Check ’em out!

    One of the things she glancingly touches on is the idea that the already published are actively resentful of up-and-coming writers and go out of our way to lessen their chances. If that’s true why then do so many authors’ spend huge chunks of time offering advice and help the way Diana is right now? (I mean other than procrastination reasons.)

    Publishing is very competitive. That’s true. Most professions are. But not in the way that most people think. One book being hugely successful can increase the chances of other books. J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books created a boom in children’s and YA publishing. Garth Nix says that before Rowling he was happily paddling along and then he got caught up in a tidal wave. He’s not the only one. I don’t know a single YA or children’s author who isn’t profoundly grateful to Rowling. She made our careers.

    If a person really likes a particular book they don’t (usually) just read that one book over and over and over again; they try to find other books they like as much. Many kids who loved Harry Potter have gone onto read Nix and Diana Wynne-Jones and Eoin Colfer and Jonathan Stroud and so on. It’s not the end of the road; it’s the beginning.

    Reading Dorothy Dunnett led me to Geraldine McCaughrean’s historicals and so on. Every time I hear there’s a new historical that’s approaching the genius of Dunnett I check it out as fast as poss. Jane Austen led me to Georgette Heyer. You develop a particular kind of reading thirst then you have to find the books to quench it.

    Time

    11 June, 2007

    Time. Time is a peculiar item.

    So said Benny (played by Tom Waits) in Rumble Fish. A movie I watched obsessively when it first came out. Nine or ten times in its first week of release (which was considerably later than its US release). But I haven’t seen it once since. So I may have that quote arse backwards. Fact remains, Time is weird.

    Some of your wonderful responses to my last post mentioned time management and the notion that you should have an estimate of how long a particular task is going to take you. Which is a brilliant idea. In theory.

    When it comes to writing I have no idea how long it’s going to take me to write or rewrite anything.

    I have written a first draft in six weeks.

    I have written a first draft in eleven years.

    It took me four months to rewrite Magic or Madness.

    It took me eight months to rewrite Magic’s Child.

    Sometimes it takes me less than an hour to write a thousand words. Other times it takes me many days.

    Some writing days run smooth and fast. Some run ragged and torpid. I can be writing with rhythm for weeks at a time, clocking in between 1,000 and 3,000 a day. No worries. And then it breaks down and I can’t write more than one hundred. Or ten.

    Maybe at some time in the distant future when I’ve been a professional writer for a dozen or more years (fingers crossed!) I’ll have a better sense of what I’m capable of. Right now I’ve only been doing this for (barely) four years. I feel like I’m still serving my apprenticeship. There’s so much I don’t know about my profession. Including just how much and how fast I’m able to write.

    I know I can write a book in a year because I’ve done it five times. But I don’t know if that’s going to be true of every book I write. It’s part of what makes contracts for unwritten books so scary.

    Am I the only one who’s this out of touch with their writing abilities?

    Waiting

    4 June, 2007

    Someone just asked me what the worst thing about being a writer is. Took me less than a second to answer:

    Waiting.

    I’m always waiting for my editors, or agents, or publicists, or someone to get back to me. Yes, all of mine are miraculously fast. Yes, I’ve never had to wait more than a week for notes on any of my books. But when you’re waiting for notes a week is an eternity! Sadly, my middle name is not patience.

    But the wait for money to show up is genuinely interminable, and the wait for my books to finally come out already? Ditto. I finish the bugger in, say June, and it doesn’t come out until March of the following year—if I’m lucky! In publishing land, that’s fast. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

    One of the longest waits is between finishing a book and getting reader responses, finding out if people other than Scott and my editors think it’s unchunderiffic. That’s partly why I send out my early drafts to so many first readers. Otherwise I don’t find out till the end of time what people think of it. But most of them don’t get back to me, or they do much later than they said they would. And because I do exactly the same thing to them I can’t get cranky. Not fair! (Well, okay totally fair, but bloody annoying!)

    The following true stories have random pronouns attributed to them in order not to reveal who the waiting writers are:

    Right now I have one friend waiting on an editorial letter. He was supposed to have it weeks and weeks ago. He’s going insane, unable to concentrate on other tasks because he knows the minute the ed letter comes in he’ll be thrown into convulsions because he’ll only have ten minutes to do the rewrite and it will probably involve having to throw out the whole thing and start from scratch. Editors can be cruel that way.

    Another friend has a proposal out for a series of book completely unlike anything she’s written before. She loves this project more than anything else she’s ever worked on. She’s in paroxysms waiting to see if it sells. What if it doesn’t? Will she be stuck writing books like the ones she’s been writing and is now bored of? Will it torpedo her entire career if this new series doesn’t sell? Aaaarghhhh!! She is in a total state and the proposal’s only been out a few days . . .

    And then there’s the waiting when you get given fabulous news and you’re not allowed to say a thing about it. That’s kind of a delicious yet frustrating waiting.

    I am waiting on one of those right now. It’s doing my head in. I know the trick is to put the waiting out of my mind and keep writing, but that is so so so much easier said than done.

    I am a much more patient person than I was ten years ago. And massively more patient than twenty years ago. But I’m still not patient. Gah!

    What I am excited about (short term)

    2 June, 2007
      Spending a whole day at Book Expo America collecting free books & hanging out with my YAers

      Spending a whole day lazing around reading manga

      Getting back to work on my new novel

      The big news that I may get to announce next week

      White chocolate and macadamia bikkies

      Our first New York Liberty game—tomorrow! (the Liberty’s at 3-0)

      Orlin’s fruit plate for brekkie

    What’s in your short term future that’s making you smile?

    Wondering about bookshops

    24 April, 2007

    When did bookshops start sorting their books by category? Does anyone know? Or have any theories? Did they model themselves on libraries?

    All my life they’ve been sorted that way. Some of the categories (manga) are newer than others (literature) but I don’t remember ever seeing a book shop without sections. Does anyone remember a time when they weren’t organised that way?

    And when were the very first bookshops? I know libraries have been around since forever but bookshops haven’t.

    I’m thinking of Jane Austen and not remembering a single bookshop and yet her characters have books. Were they from libraries? Or did they own them? And if they did where did they buy them? At a general store?

    Butterflies are ubiquitious (updated)

    4 April, 2007

    Best book ever!Oh noes! My evil friend Shana has pointed out that butterflies are all over book covers right now. My wee Magic’s Child is just part of a trend. It’s not unique and lovely and its own sweet self! (I mean aside from the other books in the trilogy. I’m down with it looking like Magic or Madness and Magic Lesson.)

    Still as book cover trends go, I’d much rather have butterflies than the dismembered women and girls that have been on the front of so many books for the past few years. You know the ones I mean? Where only torsos or feet and legs are visible. Scary headless women! Shapely legs and feet girls!

    I find them all deeply disturbing. Especially as they’re frequently on the covers of some of my favourite books. Like Maureen Johnson’s wonderful Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes and the new anthology, 21 Proms which is one of my fave recent anthos with stories from some of my fave writers like Libba Bray and, well, there are too many of them to name.

    Best anthology ever!I mean look at Ms Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes above. I bet she misses her head. I miss her head!

    And those Prom girls? How are they going to dance with the top halves of their bodies missing? Plus wouldn’t there be blood spurting everywhere? Isn’t that a bit too Carrie? Most of the stories are funny not bloody.

    I’m not saying there aren’t lovely dismembered women covers. The 21 Proms isn’t too bad at all. I’m just so very sick of them! Think of something else already. (But not butterflies. Forget about butterflies.)

    What cover trends are you most annoyed by? A while back I thought that if I saw another period painting cover I’d start throwing things. They were all so obviously an attempt to suggest that the book you have in your hands is a serious and deeply worthy book, one what will win awards. How could it not with a grand master certifiably genius painting on the front?

    So how about youse lot? Are there any trends in book cover designs that drive you spare?

    Update: Anne Ishii of Vertical Books says that right now it’s all about the eggs.

    Eggs!

    Great editing or great publicity?

    21 March, 2007

    I was hanging out with a fabulous group of young adult writers t’other night and we got into a silly debate about the following question:

    If you could only choose one which would you choose:

    the publishing house with a wonderful editor who brings out the best in you, or

    the house with fabulous publicity, marketing and sales departments?

    A surprising number of authors plumped for publicity because they have a brilliant group of first readers who can critique their books so that even without a great editor they’d still be getting a kind of editing.

    There were lots of attempts to cheat, like, “Can I have a pretty good editor and pretty good publicity?”

    No! This is a hypothetical. You have to pick one!

    A few people went into long rants about never having had either. To which we replied: This is a hypothetical, not real life! Stop moaning and pick one!

    I had two wonderful editors at Razorbill, Eloise Flood and Liesa Abrams, who really did make the Magic or Madness trilogy so much better than it would have been. Ridiculously better. Working with them was the best working experience I’ve ever had. It’s intoxicating working with great editors. Better than champagne (or whatever substance is your equivalent of champagne).

    If you’ve never been edited and want to get a sense of the process I recommend you read Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom. She edited such obscure books as Charlotte’s Web and Where the Wild Things Are. Many of her authors claim that she was a genius, reading those letters made me agree with them.

    I’ve also seen excellent publicity/sales/marketing teams at work, creating a hit out of a book that otherwise might have disappeared between the cracks. Sending the writer on pre-publication tour to meet all the “big mouths” of the genre, making a big splash at BEA/ALA etc, sending the author who’s set a book in a boarding school on a tour of boarding schools, setting up interviews and appearances with the big national media etc etc etc, creating smart and catchy advertisements online and off.

    Anyone know of a good book about a great publiciist/sales or marketing type?

    So what would you choose? Great editing or great publicity? And why?

    Getting paid, or, don’t quit your day job

    6 March, 2007

    I promised some friends that I wouldn’t blog about the business of writing for a while and I haven’t in ages so, um, you two? Avert your eyes.

    Recently some dear friends of mine sold books for the very first time. A small round of applause for their hard work and good fortune! Yay, them!

    And as you do (and as I did) they’ve started planning how to spend their advance money (such that it is). They were suffering from the missaprehension that they would be seeing the money sometime soon. I disabused them.

    Now I would like to disabuse you.

    Before I begin two things:

      1. I’m only talking about publishing payment practices in the US of A and I’m only talking about mine and my friends’ experiences of them. I have never worked in publishing. I’d be grateful and interested to hear about varying experiences both here and in the rest of the world. And I’d love to hear from those who pay as well as those who receive.

      2. I suspect some of you are hazy on what exactly an advance is. (I was.) An advance is a sum of money that is paid (or advanced) to a writer by a publisher against the future earnings of a book. So when a writer is made an offer of money for their book that offer is an advance.

      I sold my first book (not a novel) to Wesleyan University Press for US$1,000. I got to keep that money no matter what happened, but I didn’t get any more dosh from Wesleyan until the royalties (a percentage of each book sold, can vary from 5% to 12% depending on format) on the book exceeded the $1,000 needed to pay Wesleyan back.

    Here’s what happens when you sell a book:

    A choir of angels sing and fairy dust descends from the air

    Once you have accepted an offer on your book the nitty gritty of the contract must be negotiated. This is tricky to do and involves things like “escalation clauses” and “sub-rights” and is why it’s a stupendously excellent idea to have an agent do it for you. Believe me they earn their 15%.

    How long that process takes depends on whether your agent already has a specific pre-negotiated contract with the publishing house or not. When I negotiated my contract with Penguin USA for the Magic or Madness books it didn’t take very long because I had no idea what I was doing and said yes to pretty much everything. Ah, the perils of negotiating a contract agent-less.

    Once that’s done the contract has to be drawn up. How long that takes depends on the publishing house. Once it’s done your agent checks it. Believe it or not, sometimes there are things in the contract that shouldn’t be there, items that have specifically been negotiated out. This is another reason it’s such a great idea to have an agent.

    One of the items specified in the contract is not just how much you will be paid, but how you will be paid. Typically (but definitely not always) your advance is split into thirds. The first third you get upon signing the contract, the second upon delivery and acceptance of your manuscript, and the third upon publication.

    If you have a three-book deal of say $15,000 a book1 your total advance is $45,000. Thus you get $15,000 up front as the third on signing because you are signing for all three books. Then you get another $5,000 when the first book is delivered and accepted because that is a third of the $15,000 advance for that book. Then another $5,000 on the publication of the first book. And so on for the second and third book. Your $45,000 winds up being spread over at least three years, but sometimes more than four or five. This depends on how long before your first book is published.

    Back to the contract:

    Once your agent approves it, you sign it, and the contract is returned to the publishing house where the department that handles payments issues a cheque. I have seen the gap between signing the contract and receiving the cheque be anywhere between two weeks and a year. Any of you had a quicker turnaround? Slower?

    The gap between accepting the offer and the contract being offered can also be many weeks. So it’s not only possible but usual for it to take at least six weeks between the intial offer and your cheque showing up. And, frankly, six weeks is fast.

    And remember that’s just the first third. The other two thirds will come to you in third of a third parcels over the next few years. It means that your writing earnings could well look like this (minus your agent’s 15% which I haven’t taken out on account of my mathematical ability is not up to it):

    2007: $20,000 (payment on signing, delivery & acceptance of 1st book)
    2008: $10,000 (publication of 1st, delivery & acceptance of 2nd)
    2009: $10,000 (publication of 2nd, delivery & acceptance of 3rd)
    2010: $5,000 (publication of 3nd)

    It will especially look like this if, like me, you didn’t know enough to make sure that your three-book deal wasn’t joint accounted. I sold my trilogy in 2003 and although the first two books have already earned out their advances I have not seen any royalties. Nor will I until the third book earns out as well. That’s what joint accounted means: The accounting for all three books is tied together.

    It’s also increasingly unusual for a book to come out that quickly. I have several friends who sold books last year that aren’t scheduled for publication until 2009 (or in one case 2010). In which case their spread could look like this:

    2006: $20,000 (payment on signing, delivery & acceptance of 1st book)
    2007: $5,000 (delivery & acceptance of 2nd)
    2008: $5,000 (delivery & acceptance of 3rd)
    2009: $5,000 (publication of 1st)
    2010: $5,000 (publication of 2nd)
    2011: $5,000 (publication of 3rd)

    Obviously living on $5,000 a year is tricky. Most full-time writers I know are getting bigger advances than that, or writing more than one book a year, or doing other kinds of writing, or all of the above. Scalzi did a recent breakdown of his fiction writing earnings over the past few years.

    The more salient point: Most writers I know have a day job.

    Each one of those payments comes less quickly than you think it will. I naively thought that my payment on delivery & acceptance of my first book would come automatically as soon as my editor had accepted the manuscript. It did not come until I asked for it. Or rather several weeks after asking.

    This is not unique to publishing. It is, in fact, the lot of the freelancer: No matter who you work for, no matter what the industry, the gap between doing the work and getting paid is a LOT longer than we freelancers would like.

    Hope this has been helpful.

    Do please fill the comments thread with criticisms, questions and accounts of how it works in other places. I’m all ears. (Or, you know, eyes. Whatever!)

    1. That’s an above average advance for most genres I know about. I chose it because it’s easier to do the maths with an advance of $15,000. [↩]

    More on blurbs, plus zombies

    16 February, 2007

    I am so proud that my serious, soul-baring post about the trials and tribulations of blurbs wound up turning into a debate about whether unicorns or zombies are better. Sometimes I just love my genre people.

    This response to Scalzi and me on blurbing also made me smile. I am, indeed, very proud of this sentence:

    “How do you tell someone you shot their dog cause you really hate unicorns?”

    The writer of that post suggests that it would be amusing to just blurb everything and if you don’t like a book give it an ambiguous blurb of the “I cannot praise this book too highly” variety. Clearly they meant it in jest, but it reminded me that there are writers out there who do exactly that.

    Writers of this ilk let you know that they don’t like your book via their blurb:

    Justine Larbalestier’s Zombie Dancing is the worst kind of commericial romantic filth. My eyes they bleed! I would rather eat my own entrails than be in the same room with this “book”. Run away as fast as you can!
    —Discerning Genius Writer, author of genius books that sell very well thank you very much

    It’s only happened to me once (very early on in my career) but, wow, did it hurt. Basically in four sentences this famous (in Australia) writer said they thought my writing sucked and I had no future.

    Ouch.

    Frankly, I think writing ambiguous, indifferent, or bad blurbs in the real world is passive aggressive nastiness. If you don’t like a book, don’t blurb it. Writers are delicate fragile creatures. Don’t be pouring acid on them!

    To sum up, zombies are a zillion, bazllion, katrillion times better than smelly old unicorns, and blurbs are a tricky business.

    Blurbs

    15 February, 2007

    John Scalzi has a post up explaining his blurb policy. He even kindly explains what blurbs are.

    I think his policy is so spot on that I’ve adopted it (slightly amended) as my own:

    1. Yes, I am happy to look at books and if I love them I will blurb them.

    I adore reading my peers’ work and getting to read them ahead of publication is particularly exciting. It makes me feel like I’m really part of the Young Adult publishing world with my little ole finger right on the pulse. Not to mention that being asked for a blurb is an honour.1 It says that someone somewhere thinks my say so might be good enough to sell a book. That’s flattering as hell. I mean, Wow.

    So far I’ve been lucky: None of the books I’ve been asked to blurb have been bad. And yet I’ve blurbed only one novel. I’ve not blurbed books I thought were pretty darn good because I didn’t think they’d be a good fit with my audience. Or because they touch on certain taboos or bugbears of mine. (You know, like unicorns or negative portrayals of Australians.)

    I have now read and not blurbed several books by people I know and like and who’ve written other books I would have blurbed in a heartbeat. It sucks, but not as much as having my name on the back of a book that I feel uncomfortable about. I can’t have my readership thinking I endorse unicorns.

    I have to really love a book or think it’s doing something important or new to have my name on the back extolling its virtues. I don’t have the largest readership in the world, but I want my readers to know that if I’m talking up someone else’s book I’m really into it. That way if they read it, hate it, and call me on it, I can in good conscience say, “I blurbed it because I loved it. I’m sorry you don’t agree.”

    2. Requests for blurbs should come from the book’s editor or publisher, not from the writer.

    That’s the ideal, but sometimes your editor is too busy, or your press too small to do it, and it falls on your shoulders. I understand. I’ve been there.

    Scalzi gives lots of excellent reasons why it’s better for the blurb request to come from the publishing house than from the writer. I’ll add another one: it’s really embarrassing for a writer to have to ask another writer to publically praise them.

    I’ve had to ask writers to sing the glories of me. Even if I know they like my work, and are likely to be willing, it makes me feel like I’m going to throw up. I really really really hate having to ask. I’d much rather have someone else do that. I’d much rather not know if a writer chooses not to blurb me. I’d much rather not even know who was asked.

    And I’d really much rather have writers not know I’ve been asked to blurb their books so it never comes up that I haven’t done so. Having to explain to a friend why you won’t blurb their book is one of the world’s least fun things to do. Me, I don’t even like hurting the feelings of authors I’ve never met! Scalzi’s right, it’s just like shooting their dog. And how do you tell someone you shot their dog cause you really hate unicorns?

    I have several writer friends who have a no-blurb policy. I’m starting to think that’s a really good idea. The reason I can’t adopt it is that so many people have blurbed me. It would feel churlish not to blurb other people. I know from fan mail that people have picked up my books because of blurbs from Holly Black, Samuel R. Delany, Cory Doctorow and Karen Joy Fowler. While I don’t have anywhere near their audience, if a blurb from me will help someone new whose work I love, than of course I will blurb them.

    The other scary thing about blurbs—and let’s face it they’re a whole lot of terror for a writer—is that they’re really really hard to write. Seriously it’s easier to write a whole new novel than it is to write a good blurb:

    “You should read this book. It is really good. I liked it. Heaps.”
    —Justine Larbalestier, author of books that must really suck if that’s her idea of a good blurb.

    Gah!

    1. Though who gets asked is a mystery to me, seeing as how I get asked to do it so much more often than Scott “New York Times Bestselling Author” Westerfeld does. What’s up with that?
      [↩]

    Shiny, shiny, new!

    5 February, 2007

    There’s a lot of unwisdom about publishing (and pretty much everything else) out there on the mighty intramanets. Fortunately wise folks like Holly Black are battling the unwisdom with wisdom:

    I’ve noticed there is a trend to believe that a writer should get their first book out by any means necessary—that even paying to be published is establishing a “track record” that will impress future publishers. Scam publishers claim it all the time, but the claim has been made so many times that it’s trickled down into being part of aspiring novelist folklore.

    Don’t believe it. A track record tells the publisher what to expect from that author, which is why a poor track record is worse than none at all. Publishers are—like all entertainment—looking for the next big thing. Unpublished first novels are potential bestsellers just as much as they are potential anything else. That’s why “debut novel” sounds exciting and “sophmore novel” sounds, well, less exciting. Publishers aren’t looking for a track record. They are looking for a great book that they can sell like crazy.

    Publishing is a greedy, greedy machine that is always looking for shiny, shiny new authors! I know that’s hard to believe when you’re struggling to be published, but agents want to find new clients, editors want to find new authors, and publishers are desperate for the next Harry Potter, or Da Vinci Code, or whatever. And they don’t necessarily want it to be exactly like those books, they just want it to sell like those books.

    Published writers sometimes complain about up-and-coming writers getting all the attention. “I’ve published six books now! But do I get the advances of that shiny new author? No, I do not! Where’s the justice?”

    Those complaints are just as silly as the unpublished writers who are convinced the big New York houses are uninterested in new talent. You might have puny advances now, but you don’t know what’s ahead. Lots of authors who’ve had a bunch of not particularly successful books go on to have hits. Dan Brown is a good example. So is my old man. Scott’s first New York Times bestseller was his thirteenth book (under his own name). And Robin Hobb is a fabulous example of how to resuscitate a failing career.1 Sales taking a nose dive? Then publish under a different name.

    Obviously, not every published author is going to have the career of a Brown or a Hobb or a Westerfeld. The thing is though that you never know who’s going to have that break out book. It could happen to you. And if it doesn’t happen with the first book, it could with the thirteenth. Or when you change your name, or switch genres.

    You can find examples of every kind of publishing success story if you look hard enough. First time young novelist makes it big. First time old novelist who ditto. Overnight success story. Writer who has been plugging away forever is finally published with a huge advance, a big Hollywood deal, as well as graphic novel adaptation, and a Broadway musical. Many are the paths to publishing success.2 It’s good to keep that in mind while you struggle.

    Twenty years passed between my first submission to a pro adult market and my first sale. I aimed to be published by the time I was 18, then by the time I was 20, then by the time I was 25, then 30. All those ages zoomed by without publication. My first pro sale came when I was 35. By then I had long since stopped aiming to be an S. E. Hinton or Thomas Chatterton and switched to modelling myself on writers who didn’t sell until later in life, like Elizabeth Jolly and James Tiptree, Jr.

    That’s the beauty of publishing, unlike dance or any sport, there is a role model for you no matter how old or young you are, no matter what circumstances you’re writing in. And you don’t even have to give up hope on your deathbed cause there are plenty of posthumous publishing successes as well.

    See? In the world of publishing there can even be a bright side to death.

    1. Failing in terms of sales, not artistically—I’m a fan of the Lindholm books. [↩]
    2. And, yes, many are the paths to publishing failure. But let’s not go there, eh? This is me in Pollyanna the glad girl mode. [↩]

    Are short stories necessary?

    20 December, 2006

    Now this is interesting, the comment thread on Tobias Buckell’s survey results has turned into a debate about the efficacy of writing short stories for learning how to write novels and for establising your reputation so that it’s easier to get your novels published.

    Given that I can’t write a decent short story to save my life and have sold three novels I don’t think short stories are necessary to build a career as a novelist. Short stories and novels are very different kinds of writing. Being good at one does not mean you’ll be good at the other. There are the folks who are genius short story writers whose novels are well, um, not anywhere near as good as their stories. Like I said, they’re different forms.

    On the other hand, I wrote hundreds of (broken, crappy) short stories before I wrote my first novel. Every one of those stories taught me something about writing. So as I began that first novel I’d already had a lot of practice writing dialogue, describing magical anvils, blowing monsters up. All of which came in very handy when I started writing the fictional form that I’m much better at.

    Then there’s the publishing side of things. Science fiction has long had a very strong and vibrant short story market. So many well-known sf writers started out publishing short stories: Asimov, Pohl, Silverberg, Russ, Delany, McIntyre etc. etc. So it used to be true that a great way to break into sf was to make a name for yourself as a short story writer. It’s not nearly as true as it used to be. Though if, say, Ted Chiang had a novel to sell I imagine the editors would be lining up around the block.

    Romance and young adult and crime and other genres do not have anywhere near the same kind of short story market so that path into publishing is not available. You want a name as a romance writer then you have to publish novels because there’s pretty much no one publishing romance short stories.

    So here are my questions: How many of you write both short stories and novels? How do you see the relationship between the two forms? Is one harder for you than the other? Or does it depend on the kind of story you’re telling? Do you read short stories as frequently as you read novels?

    Survey Results

    19 December, 2006

    Tobias Buckell’s survey results are up. Remember? He was trying to find out how many novelists sold the very first novel they wrote. There were 150 respondents and 35% began their career with their first written novel.

    I’ll admit I’m surprised. That’s a bigger percentage than I thought. But it does confirm my anecdotal impression that most people do not sell their first novel.

    Thanks, Tobias! Will you be keeping the survey open? Be great to get even more respondents from other genres.

    Outlining

    22 November, 2006

    Rebecca asks: Do you outline? Or do you just have a general concept of what you’re going to write? I know you do that spreadsheet thing, but do you start out that way, or not until after the first draft? Or something else entirely?

    I have outlined. And I prolly will again in the future. But I hates it. There, I’ve said it: Nothing drives me crazier than outlining.

    The Magic or Madness trilogy was outlined. It had to be because I sold it as a partial.1 And when you do that the editor wants an idea of what they’re getting. It took me weeks and weeks of round-the-clock work to produce that outline. It was hell. It made me scream and throw things. All I could think was, Why am I wasting my time writing this sketch of the novel when I could just be writing the bloody novel?

    Writing that outline was far more painful and agonising than writing Magic or Madness. But I have a sneaking suspicion that part of why MorM was so fun and relatively easy to write was because of that outline. Everytime I got stuck, I pulled it out, had a good old squiz, and hey presto was back on track.

    On the other hand, my first (unpublished) novel was written without any kind of outline and I had a lot of fun writing it too. But it was written under only self-imposed deadlines and over many many many many years—I started it in 1988 and finished the first draft in 1999.2

    I also wrote the first draft of Magic’s Child without an outline. But the ending kept not working. I rewrote it countless times and it kept defying me, until I had a sitdown with my editors, Eloise and Liesa. For the meeting I had to rough out a new non-crappy ending. That’s right, I had to outline it. Did I enjoy doing it? No. Was it better than rewriting the ending uselessly another hundred times? Yes.

    So for me outlines are an occasionally necessary evil. The book I’m writing at the moment seems to be swinging along fine without one, but if I get stuck I may just find myself sketching out the rest of the book in order to figure out what’s going to fly and what isn’t. I imagine it beats writing and rewriting the ending a gazillion times.

    I may also find myself outlining my next novel, because it has a very tricky, scary structure and outlining might be the only way to figure it out satisfactorily. But I’ll start writing it first to see if I can wing it and only if that fails will I resort to a yukky outline.

    But all of this is just me. I know lots of writers who swear by outlines. And others who won’t even use them to the begrudging extent that I do.

    It’s like everything else—if it works for you then do it, and if it don’t, don’t.

    1. A partial is the suggestion of a book. In my case that suggestion included an outline of all three books and the first three chapters of the first book in the trilogy and assorted other bits and pieces. [↩]
    2. Wasn’t being lazy. I got two degrees in that times as well, you know! [↩]

    Good work ain’t always published

    14 November, 2006

    There’s a lot of grief out there from unpublished writers dealing with rejection. Go read the comment thread of any agent’s or editor’s blog and you’ll see what I’m talking about. No matter what the topic, at some point a writer will vent about all the unfair rejection they’ve been getting. Like I’ve said before if you want to be a published writer you have to cope with hearing “no” over and over and over.

    Many of the questions to those industry blogs boil down to wanting the keys to the kingdom of publishing. As Diana Peterfreund eloquently points out, there aren’t any. Many agents and editors will tell you that you just have to write well which is (mostly) true, but also not very helpful.

    Anyone in the industry can tell you the vast majority of submissions are awful. I’ve seen some of those slush piles myself and, well, wow. I honestly hadn’t realised it was possible to write that badly. Even in crayon. So, yes, writing well will lift you above the rest. But it’s also true that there are other factors involved. Sometimes brilliant writing isn’t enough.

    One of the finest writers I know has never been published. But the reason why ain’t hard to find: she’s never submitted anything. She’s been working on the same novel for more than ten years. I’ve read the first forty pages. They’re incredible. Hardly a word out of place. It’s so beautiful and perfect it made me want to cry.

    I can’t tell you how rare that is. I read drafts by published writer friends all the time (they do the same for me). As with my drafts, there’s always something to criticise. Always. My only criticism of that non-published writer friend is that she’s a crazy perfectionist and should finish the damn book already! It’s so good publishers will snap it up.

    But I could be wrong. I’ve read another unpublished book that I also think is wonderful. It’s been rejected by every major NYC publishing house, not to mention quite a few of the small ones. The rejections have included much praise of the novel’s beautiful writing and requests to see anything else the writer might have. The reason for rejection? That the novel isn’t commercial enough, they don’t know how to market it, the structure is flawed, the lack of a romance is frustrating, it’s not for that particular house and etc.

    There are any number of published writers with books they can’t sell. Mostly because those books aren’t good enough, but sometimes because there’s not a publisher out there who can figure out how to sell it, despite how good it is.

    One of the hardest things for the unpublished writer to grasp is that publishing is a business. A publisher is not going to buy a book unless they think it can

      a) make them money, or

      b) garner them lots of prestige.1

    An agent is not going to take you on unless they think you can fulfill a) or b) plus they have to really love your work as well. Publishers may publish books they don’t love if they think they’ll make money. But I’ve never met an agent who took on a client whose work they were lukewarm about. No matter how commercial.

    Making any money at all as a novelist is hard. Making a living at it is even harder. It’s not one of those jobs where if you put in the hard work you will be rewarded. There are no scheduled annual pay rises. You can’t apply for promotion. You just have to write the very best books you can and even then it may not be enough.

    And even if you do sell a novel there’s no guarantee that you’ll sell a second. Or a third. Nothing about publishing is guaranteed.

    Just as well that that we writers (published or not) are rewarded with those days when the writing just goes and goes and we’re vibrating with the happiness of it. Here’s hoping all you NaNoWriMo folks are buzzing with just that kind of writing experience. There’s nothing better!

    1. There are other reasons but I’m keeping it simple. [↩]

    Writer’s looks

    20 September, 2006

    For some reason the question of writers’ good looks (or lack thereof) comes up over and over again. Far more often, for instance, than the question of whether a writer’s class or connections are assets. How come?

    While a writer’s good looks might be used for marketing, it has very little to do with which books get published. I know lots of drop-dead gorgeous folks whose novels have been rejected all over the shop. And lots of plain ones who are published.1 Very few submissions come with attached author’s photo.

    The rule in marketing a book is that they use what will give a book or an author an edge. Sometimes an author’s looks are considered an edge. (Anyone ever seen the full page author photo on the back of Perfect Storm?) And yet I’ve seen plenty of books by absolutely gorgeous writers that don’t even have an author photo. Holly Black is stunning. I don’t think any of her books have her photo on them.

    Sure looks makes a difference. But lots of things make a difference to a writer’s career—knowing about publishing before you sell your first book, living in NYC, having a good agent. More important than any of them is being a talented and determined writer.

    I’ve seen less-than-gorgeous writers promoted to the skies and have huge best-selling novels. I’ve seen pulchritudinous writers get the same treatment and have their books die. In the end it really is about whether a book connects or not. If not enough people like your book it’s sunk no matter what you look like.

    Good looks don’t make any more of a difference in publishing (and prolly a bit less, actually) than they do in the rest of the world. There are lots of important things to angst about as you try to sell your first book, or promote it after publication, or continue an existing career, but how your looks are or aren’t affecting your career is not one of them. Forget about it already!

    1. Of course “ugly” and “beautiful” are not exactly universally agreed upon. My idea of who’s good looking and who’s not may differ from yours more than somewhat. I will never get the appeal of Leonardo diCaprio or Gwyneth Paltrow, for example. [↩]

    Dingbat heaven

    15 September, 2006

    One of the many glorious things about working with the Razorbill team at Penguin is that they got Chris Grassi to design special dingbats just for the Magic or Madness trilogy. Cute little suns for the Sydney parts:

    and snowflakes

    for the New York City sections.

    Don’t they make you happy? They make me happy!

    And I love that you can tell where the action takes place just by looking at the dingbats. Little sun? Summery Sydney. Snowflake? Wintry New York.

    And that is why I write books, so I can have cool dingbats. And so I can spend a morning preparing a list for Chris Grassi of which chapters in Magic’s Child have which dingbats.

    Sometimes I love my job so much I could explode in a puff of iridescent, nacreous, jasmine-fragrant rainbows.

    Publishing is not a zero-sum game

    8 September, 2006

    Okay, fellow writers, I know you know this, but bugger it, I’ll say it again:

    Publishing is not a competitive sport. If another writer is unbelievably successful that does not take away your chance of success. If it has any effect on you at all it’s a positive one. Super sccessful writers create more readers. J. K. Rowling has single-handedly made young adult publishing more profitable and better paying. Every YA writer should fall down on their knees in gratitude. (I have my own J. K. Rowling shrine that I worship at every day. Bless, J. K., bless!)

    If we’re defining success as making loads of dosh, then most writers are not super successful, or even mildly successful. I’m certainly not. The majority of published writers cannot make a living from their writing. Does that mean their writing is not as good as those who can? No, it does not. I know fabulous writers who are still unpublished (and, yes, Jeannie, I mean you). Writing good books (however you define “good”) and making money from books are two different things. Sometimes they co-incide—sometimes not.

    There are lots of ways to measure success as a writer: good reviews, respect of your peers, winning prizes, or best of all—knowing that you’ve written a book that you’re really proud of. The last one is best of all because all the others will do your head in. What happens if you stop getting good reviews or winning prizes? Does that mean you’re no longer a good writer? That path leads to madness.

    In my genre lots of books I don’t like sell better than mine, and lots I adore sell worse. Neither state of things has anything to do with how my books sell. If you start thinking that other books published are stealing sales from your books, and that other writers are “the competition”, you will become bitter and twisted. I’m hear to tell you that bitter & twisted clashes with every single thing you’ve got in your wardrobe.

    Trust me on this.

    Thus endeth the rant.

    No Control

    14 August, 2006

    A recent post on Miss Snark reveals the horrible truth that often writers have no control over what their books are called. That’s right, folks, your publisher can change the title to something they deem more commercial.

    There was much debate over the title of the first book in my trilogy. I’d always imagined Magic or Madness as the series title with the actual books being called Reason and the Two Cities, Reason and Margarita, and Reason defeats the Evil Monster Marauding Zombies from Hell. Marketing intervened and the series title became the title of the first book, leaving me and my editors to come up with new titles for books two and three and thus the whole working title thing of Magic! Magic! Magic! Oi! Oi! Oi!.

    In addition to not having final say about the title. Writers also usually have no control over the following:

    • The cover
    • The jacket copy
    • What font it’s typeset in
    • Whether there’s an author photo or not
    • When the book is published
    • What format the book is published in (that’s right, Scott did not decide that the third book of his paperback trilogy, Uglies, should be printed in hardcover)
    • Whether there’s a signing in your town or not (when I do a signing it’s usually because a bookshop has requested that I do one or because my publicist at Penguin has arranged one or because I’ve set it up myself—though I’m getting too jaded to do that anymore)
    • The cost of the book
    • Whether it’s available in your country
    • Whether it’s available as an audio book

    Am I missing any? Feel free to add more in the comments.

    What writers (mostly) have control over is the words within the covers of the book. (You know, excepting the copyright page etc.) That’s pretty much it.

    P.S. I was so cheered up by the good news comments that I’d like to invite you to all to keep sharing your good news. I’m contemplating renaming my blog the Pollyanna blog. Or the Gladblog. The glad game rocks!

    P.P.S. Congratulations to all of you for your good days and publishing triumphs and award nominations and absence of cancer and every other thing. So wonderful!

    P.P.P.S. And do keep us all posted on the outcomes of all that good news. Orangedragonfly, that means you have to let us know when your husband gets home. (If you’re allowed to, I mean.)

    P.P.P.P.S. Sadly Ellen Kushner jumped the gun in the good news comments: Magic’s Child is not yet finished. But as soon as it is I’ll be announcing it right here. (That is when I recover from the over-the-top celebrations!). In the meantime, good luck with your books. May they all be reprinted often and wind up on bestseller lists! May your days be beautiful, your health excellent, and your loved ones close by! (That’s right, I am Pollyanna the Glad Girl. Just got my hair bleached blonde yesterday.)

    P.P.P.P.P.S If none of this makes any sense it’s because I’m working too hard and as an Australian I find that I’m deeply allergic to it.

    P.P.P.P.P.P.S. Don’t forget to add more stuff writers have no control over to the comments.

    P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. I go sleep now . . .

    Many people make book

    8 June, 2006

    Today Scott and me went into the Penguin offices to meet some of the people who sell, market and publicise our books. We ate yummy cheese, humus, tabouli, dolmades, grapes and strawberries, drank good (Aussie) wine and talked publishing.

    We writers mostly work on our lonesome but we’re actually part of a team. A really big team. I have a lot of contact with my editors, Eloise Flood and Liesa Abrams, and some with the rest of the Razorbill team (especially Andy Ball and Margaret Wright), but much less with the other people who work on my books. Frankly, I’m not always sure what the folks in the other departments do. So it’s fabulous to meet the people from online marketing and discover that they’re starting to work on author podcasts. Would the two of us be interested in doing one? Would we be interested? Is the Australian men’s cricket team going to destroy England in the next Ashes? Yes, they are, and yes we’d love to do a podcast.

    I was fascinated to hear just how much work goes into wrangling authors for big events like BEA (Book Expo America) and the big ALA (American Library Association) conferences. Wow, are we authors a pain! Collectively, I mean. Imagine trying to get many different authors to various different places in the space of eight or so hours. Not fun, eh? And even before we get to an event they’ve logged hours and hours making sure we’re available, organising us to get there, and setting up our schedules. A publicist’s (for BEA) and marketer’s (for ALA) work is never done.

    We learned that at the last ALA meeeting they had put a two minute limit on kids giving testimonials about three particular authors cause they were so enthusiastic they’d have gone on for hours otherwise. One was Stephanie Meyer (author of Twilight and New Moon), the other one was someone really famous I’m ashamed to say I’ve forgotten, and the third one was—wait for it—Scott!! How cool is that?

    It was also lovely to have people from non-editorial departments asking when they’ll get to see the third Magic or Madness book because they’d enjoyed the first two so much they were dying to read the final book in the trilogy. They work on many, many, many books every year, reading all them is impossible, so it’s a real compliment when they make an effort to read yours.

    To recap: me author part of big team of editors, sellers, marketers, publicisers and others. (Though I’m still not entirely clear on the diff between selling and marketing. Anna explains how it works at Tor, but I get the feeling it works a bit differently at Penguin. One day I’ll understand, one day. . .)

    My hero

    4 June, 2006

    Scott just hit his tenth anniversary as a freelance writer. Congratulations, Mr Hardest-Working-Writer-I-Know.

    He shares some cool statistics. Here’s two:

    • in that time he’s published well over one million words (gulp!),
    • and it took him eight years—that’s right—eight years (!) before he was earning enough from writing under his own name to support himself.

    Eight years is a loooong time and yet most writers don’t ever earn enough to (comfortably) quit their day job. Scott has done very good indeed. I’m so proud.

    And now Italy!

    26 May, 2006

    Even while I’m away at a convention good news arrives: Magic or Madness and Magic Lessons just sold to Mondadori, the biggest publisher in Italy. Woo hoo!

    I’m especially excited because I met the editor, Fiammetta Giorgi, in Bologna and she was not only elegant, cool and fun, but also had great taste. We talked for ages about our favourite young adult writers such as Holly Black and Diana Wynne Jones. And now I’m going to be part of her Dark Magic series. Yay!

    Mondadori also publishes Scott, so we’re now published by the same company in the US of A (Razorbill/Penguin), Australia (Penguin), France (Editions du Panama), Brazil (Editora Record) and now Italy. How cool is that?

    Magic or Madness has now sold in eight different countries and Magic Lessons in six.

    Con artists

    14 May, 2006

    You know how in Hollywood movies con artists are usually sexy, or interesting, or secretly kind of good guys, or all of those things (think The Grifters, Paper Moon, The Sting etc. etc.) and most of the people they scam are greedy bad people anyways, so it doesn’t really matter? When I watch those movies I’m completely sucked in, and on their side, and want them to win.

    In real life, not so much. Cause, you see, scam agents and publishers are also con artists. They prey on people who are ignorant of the publishing industry and desperately want to have their work published and read. I was once ignorant of publishing and desperate to become a real author with a real published book. If I’d come across one of these scams back then I bet I would’ve fallen for it. Many otherwise smart people have.

    Falling for a con isn’t about how smart you are. It’s about how much you know. It’s many years now since I’ve known enough about publishing to be immune to the kinds of scams that are regularly exposed by Writers Beware and Predators & Editors.

    But on many things I’m easy to fool. If someone tells me something my instinct (like most people’s) is to believe it. I’m endlessly tricked by my friends and relatives—curse them. And April’s Fool’s Day? Gah. For starters, I’m a freelancer, so I never notice what day it is, besides most April Fool’s day gags consist of telling people something that could be plausible. What’s so dumb in believing them? There’s so many implausible things in the world that are true. You know, like Tom Cruise being a sex symbol, and people actually believing that American Beauty and The English Patient are good movies, and that Bring It On and Resident Evil 2 are bad. Excuse me?

    I’ve almost been conned in NYC, but fortunately I was with a more knowledgeable person who recognised a scam (whatever it was—I still don’t know) coming.

    I even understand the impulse to trick people—there’s an element of the trickster in every fiction writer. I’m just saying it ain’t that hard, nor if you’re doing it to trick money out of folks is it glamorous, noble, sexy or any of the other things that Hollywood likes to make it seem. You don’t even have to be especially smart to do it. That particular scam consists of the scammer advertising for unpublished writers and then when they send their writing the scammer says it’s fabulous and for a fee will represent the writer. Easy. All the scammer needs is for the unpub’d writer to be ignorant of the fact that good agents don’t charge fees and especially not in the multiples of a thousand.

    Of course, it’s not just Hollywood that glamorises scammers. There are lots of really excellent crime books out there from the point of view of grifters. I just read Lawrence Block’s The Girl With the Long Green Heart (thanks, Naomi) and I really enjoyed it. But something happened as I read it, I started thinking about things from the griftee’s point of view. Even though—as is usual with these stories—he was a thoroughly nasty piece of work because he was greedy and thought he was gaming those who were gaming him. At which point it’s hard to see which way’s up ethically speaking. Who’re worse the people who make a living gaming people illigetimately? Or real estate speculators etc who game people legally? The grifters point at the griftees and say it wouldn’t happen to them if they weren’t so greedy. But isn’t greed for money one of the key motiviating factors of the grifter?

    My head hurts.

    There are lots of movies and books I enjoy whose ethics are beyond questionable. Gross Point Blank anyone? In which the hero is a guilt-free paid killer. And yet the audience is expected to be barracking for him to wind up with the girl. Which I always do even though I’m sure that were it real life and not a perverse fairy tale the first time his girl annoys him he’d off her without thinking twice.

    And my point would be?

    Dunno. Oh, hang on, yes I do. My point is that fiction ain’t life and that Writer’s Beware and Predator’s & Editors are doing stellar work and I salute them.

    Plagiarism

    10 May, 2006

    I adore Meg Cabot, not only is she a fine writer who’s as witty and brilliant as Dorothy Parker, but she also has a heart as big as the ocean, and is wiser than any owl you care to name. I only read her books for the first time last year. I confess that I’d thought she wouldn’t be much chop because I was underwhelmed by the Princess Diaries movie. How stupid was I?

    Anyway, on Lili‘s advice, I read her two All-American Girl books and loved them! Very smart, wryly funny, and subversive. My three favourite things. Then I discovered her blog and became even more obsessed. Meg Cabot is a genius. Case in point is a recent post that has been linked to all over the place because it is such a sensible response to some of the insanity that has been written about the recent plagiarism case.

    All you need to know is that Meg Cabot is one of the writers that the author of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life has been accused of stealing from.

    Here’s my favourite bit:

      After I got over being mad at Carol—and her parents, and the art show committee, and the art teacher, and all the other Carol types and THEIR parents and promoters that I’ve encountered since—all I felt (and still feel, to this day) was sad.

      Not just because I’d lost a friend (which, of course, I had. When I got back to Bloomington, even though I felt super, duper sorry for Carol, on account of her being such a lost soul, I found I just couldn’t be friends with her anymore).

      No, I felt sad because none of those people—but most importantly, Carol–were ever going to understand that the coolest part of creating something–like a picture, or a story, or a song–isn’t how fast you do it, or how young you are when you created it, or how many art shows it’s put into, or how much money someone eventually pays for it.

      Because the truth is, if you’re patient, all of that–the art shows, and the money, and everything else–will come along eventually. Those things aren’t really what’s important.

      What’s important is that when you create something original (i.e. NOT TRACED), it’s something YOU made, that speaks from YOUR heart, and no one else’s. Even if it’s just a dumb drawing of a princess, it’s YOUR dumb drawing of a princess, NOT ANYONE ELSE’S.

      And there’s something totally great about that—way better than art shows. Even better than money.

      And what makes me sad is that that’s something Carol and everyone like her will never, ever understand.

    How classy is that?

    A couple of my writer friends (one in Australia and one in the US) have been deeply freaked by the plagiarism scandal because the writer’s defence is that she has a photographic memory and both of them have photographic memories. I don’t think either of them has a thing to worry about simply because

      1) they’re both really good writers who work at their craft
      2) they’re aware of the issue

    Number one is key. As Meg Cabot says the way you get good at drawing princesses is by drawing lots and lots of princesses. Unsurprisingly that’s the way you get good at anything. You do it over and over and over again. When you’re a beginning writer your influences are right there on the surface; as you mature they sink deeper down and become harder to identify.

    Any writer who is working at their craft is not going to wind up plagiarising. Only a small percentage of any good published book remains the same as the first draft. Any unconscious borrowings by those photographic memories will have been reworked so much that very little resemblance remains in the final product. She’ll be right. Honest.

    In my experience the folks who are most worried about committing a writing and/or publishing sin are the ones least likely to do so. Whenever there’s a discussion about the need to discourage bad writers a whole slew of really good ones get discouraged.

    The plagiarisers of this world, like the princess drawing tracers, are going to continue blithely on their path creating nothing new and so getting none of the rewards of creativity. My two friends may needlessly worry about plagiarism, but you know what? They create something new and delicious almost every day. I’m with Meg Cabot on who we should be feeling sorry for.

    Very quick

    21 April, 2006

    Anna Genoese explains P&Ls. I am eternally grateful to her. I have never understood these before. They were just this mysterious thing my editors would groan about. Anna Genoese is a goddess.

    Thanks for all comments in previous post. You are all goddesses. My problem has been solved by reading Anna’s post: the thought of P&Ls has killed smelly monkey brain creativity and now I can focuss on task at hand.

    Shana: cricket helmets are heavy!

    Friday week is Oz speak for the Friday after next Friday. I.e. rewrites due next Friday not today.

    Has anyone seen Daughters out in the wild yet?

    Yay Jason Gillespie. Double century. Strewth.

    Write now.