Sorry I didn’t get the new post in the New World of Publishing up. It will be next week now, since I’m going to be out of town this weekend. And yes, it’s going to be cool where I am going. (grin)

I want to thank everyone for the great advice on dealing with heat when as sensitive to it as I am. I learned more on how to deal with heat because of this event than I have in the last thirty-five years. And now I’m old enough to remember as well. (I hope…)  Thanks!  And special thanks to Randy for the Kool-Breeze scarf. I’m buying more of those things. Nifty.

I have spent most of this week on two major tasks: Sorting massive numbers of vintage medical books in a storage unit and spending as many hours as my brain could stand on tutorials to learn PhotoShop and InDesign and other Adobe Suite products. Lynda.com is a fantastic site, well worth the $25.00 per month while I learn these programs for this new computer.

Back in the Pulphouse days of 1987-1994, we designed and laid out everything on a MacPlus with extra 20K hard drives and PageMaker. These new programs are just flat amazing. Powerful and detailed does not begin to describe them. Great fun, but three hours of listening to a tutorial and working the program at the same time on a second screen can turn a brain to complete mush. I know, I know, they are not needed for this modern world of publishing. There are easier programs. I know, since in the New Tech workshop next month we are teaching writers how to do covers in about an hour. Just call this desired to learn powerful programs a hobby for the moment before I fire back into writing the next book.

And thanks for all the nice comments on the fiction. I really wasn’t fishing for comments or reviews, just didn’t think anyone had been reading them. If I had just checked my numbers once-in-a-while for hits to this site, I would have known that was not the case. Getting hits here is not why I do this stuff, so I never think to check it.  Thanks for all the nice comments. Much appreciated. And as you can tell, the fiction on Thursday is back.

And next week I’ll start announcing when WMG Publishing gets up some new stories of mine, and also when I have pub dates for the big thriller next spring. Sort of a regular weekly post since I have so much short fiction in my backlist to get up and out for readers to find again. I might even dig up one of my earliest stories called “The Sexual Voyage of the Starship Shirley” and get it back in print. That was published way back in the old days of OUI Magazine. A really strange look at science fiction conventions. As Scott Carter said in his post, this is a wonderful time to be a writer.

Back soon.

First off, I want to apologize to the fine folks at Writers of the Future and the friends in LA we were scheduled to see. I had been really looking forward to the trip and seeing and talking with a lot of old friends, and meeting some new writers. But I am not writing this from LA where I should be at the moment, I’m back at home.

We started on the trip just fine on Monday, made it the eight plus hours of driving to Red Bluff, CA, and stayed there the first night. Coming from the cool Oregon Coast to the hot temperatures of the valley that first afternoon was a shock, but I didn’t think much about it. Then the next morning at 10 in Northern California it was one hundred degrees and I started to remember what real heat was like and the problems I have with it. Even though our car was air conditioned, just going in and out of the heat for packing the car, going to breakfast, coming out, and stopping thirty minutes down the freeway I was having trouble.

By the time we stopped another thirty minutes down the freeway, I was pretty much gone. It was 105 and I have extreme problems with heat. I was drinking fluids, but still getting sick. Kris called a local area doc, got some help, and then after talking with the doctor turned around and got us home, somehow. That part is a blur to me.

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

Okay, now a story about how at sixty years of age I have gotten to the place in my life that even brief contract with temperatures above ninety degrees knocks me down.

The First Time: Back when I was a golf pro, I lived in Palm Springs, California. I was the head professional of a nice course there and because in 1974 Palm Springs was beyond boring for a mid-twenties single man, I worked two nights a week at a restaurant called The Cask and Cleaver as a waiter, just for the social life.

One fine June day, the staff and friends of the Cask and Cleaver challenged the staff of El Torito Restaurant to a touch football game. (My girlfriend worked part-time at El Torito when she wasn’t managing the Penny’s Department store. Yeah, Palm Springs for young people in 1974 was deadly dull.)

We started at 7 in the morning and played until 10. Memory serves it was over a hundred degrees by 10 AM, but we were all young and used to it. No issue. I went back to my place, took a shower and then headed for my golf course. When I got there my father called and asked if I wanted to join him for a quick 18 holes of golf. A new (very private) course had opened and was letting local pros on for the day to take a look. (My father was also a golf professional in Palm Springs at the time.) I said sure, made sure my assistant professional had the course covered and headed to play golf. It took four of us until about three to finish and the temperature was close to 120.

Back to my golf course I went and when I arrived I noticed that the kid hadn’t picked up the range balls. Usually in the summer we had the range closed and the balls picked up by eleven in the morning because leaving golf balls sit in 120 degree sun was never a good idea. So with no one else around to do it, I jumped in the makeshift cart with the ball picker and headed down on the range. The cart had no roof.

That was the last thing I remember until I woke up in the hospital with tubes sticking out of me and machines all around me and doctors very happy to see me awake.

Luckily for me both the bar and restaurant of my golf course looked out over the driving range. From what the few members in the restaurant and the bartender said happened, I just drove the cart off into the desert where it got stuck in the sand. They thought it was funny until I fell out of the cart face first into the sand and didn’t move.

Severe Heat Stroke.

That was the first time. It became a funny story of my stupidity like some of my other stories that have the phrase in it “then I almost died.” Over the years, as I got older, I noticed that every so often, after working out in high heat, and not drinking enough fluids, I would get sick or dizzy or have some of the other symptoms.

On one of Kris and my very first trips together, I ended up with another bad case of heat stroke and threw up and lay in a trailer for a day while she had to socialize with my friends that she had never met. On another time Kris and I with a couple of friends flew into the Idaho Primitive Area for a backpacking trip. I had forgotten the lessons again and by the end of the first day of hiking in 100 degree heat with a heavy backpack and not drinking enough fluids, I was down sick. That time I had to be airlifted out of the primitive area. Not kidding.

Three years ago, while in the best shape I had been in for a decade, I went with Kris to run an easy 5-K on the beach. For a change the wind wasn’t blowing off the ocean and it got up to about 75, the hottest day of the year here. I had too many clothes on (expecting it to be cold on the beach like usual) and three hours later the doctors in the hospital had me hooked up to a bunch of different machines because they thought I was having a heart attack. It wasn’t until Kris remembered my heat problem and told them to give me fluids and salt that I came out of that one. (Heat stroke can often imitate a heat attack.)

A number of years back I went to a family wedding held in the courtyard of a hotel on a 115 degree day in Boise, Idaho. Yup, you guessed it, I sat in the sun (Kris wasn’t there to make me stay out of the sun or not go) and I was down yet again.

So, over the years, my body, through repeated episodes of my stupidity, has had heat stroke episode after heat stroke episode, usually with the upshot of me ending up in a hospital. And that repeated stupidity has had the expected result of making me very sensitive to heat above 90, or getting too overheated in work or exercise without extreme fluid intake.

Did I have another heat stroke episode on the way to Writers of the Future? Not quite. What I was in was what the doctors call advanced heat exhaustion, which is the lead-up to another heat stroke episode, and with many of the same symptoms.  I was headed for another hospital visit when both Kris and I realized what was happening. (Mostly Kris.) I was already pretty sick and dizzy with heat exhaustion, and that was with only two hours total of exposure to the high heat, plus what I had the day before. And LA on Wednesday was having heat warnings.

For those familiar with heat exhaustion and heat stroke, the older you get, the more you have had it in the past, the more you are open to it.  Also I have high blood pressure, controlled, but still a factor. I now have doctor’s orders to just stay out of 90 degree and above heat. As the doctor said yesterday, one of these times it’s just going to kill me. (Yeah, that got my attention.)

What is interesting is that Kris and I planned this trip with some of this in mind. We decided to not fly because of fear that being stuck in a hot, crowded plane on the runway would really hurt me. And we wanted our own car there instead of being driven around as offered because we wanted to be able to leave if I started having troubles with the heat. So we had thought of this problem. I was a little worried about the high heat under the television lights at the ceremony, but figured I would deal with that later.

What we didn’t have figured was how fantastically touchy I am with high heat these days. I spent almost $1,600 to make sure our car’s air conditioning was working well for this trip, (replaced the entire system actually, because here on the coast we never use it and it had gone south) yet I forgot about getting to the car from hotels, restaurants, and so on, usually across hot pavement.

I live on the Oregon Coast for a reason. Winter gets down to around 40, summer days, like today, are around 55-60 degrees.

As of today, Thursday, I am doing slightly better, but even writing this with a cool ocean breeze blowing over me is tiring me out. Time for another nap. Thanks everyone for all the good wishes on Kris’s blog and Twitter. Much appreciated.

So, again I am very sorry to the wonderful people at Writers of the Future for not making the ceremony and to all the great friends we would have had a wonderful time with. We hope to see you sometime in the fall or winter or spring.

I think summers I’m just staying right here.

The myth is simple: All your money must first go to an agent before you can have it.

Oh, wow, is this myth buried deep in this business, so deep that no writer thinks of questioning it, often even after having an agent take money from them.

I’m going to do what I often do in these chapters, and that’s build the history first of why this myth came about and why it is so strong, then build a solution. So hang on for the ride and try to hold the anger down until you have read all the way to the end.

SOME IMPORTANT HISTORY

In the beginning, meaning way back when agents started into publishing from the theater and movie industry, agents lived in New York City and writers sometimes didn’t. The writers who did live in New York would never think of having their agent paid first, and most didn’t need an agent and didn’t use one. But those writers outside of New York had their agent drop off manuscripts in editor’s offices and pick up the check, then the agent would mail part of the check to the client and keep the 10% fee. The agents knew the editors personally and it was a very small business.

All that was fine, a practice that started when agents picked up checks. Some writers questioned it and some didn’t right up into the late 1960s when publishers started bringing in the large computers to do payroll and keep track of checks. In the early 1970’s a few publishers starting noting that for some of the larger agencies they had to cut more than one check. They figured it would just be easier to write the agent one check and let the agent divide it between all of his clients.

(This no longer applies today with modern computers and internet banking.)

And thus in the early 1970s, about the point I was coming into the business, the practice became solid. But also remember in that time period, the standard belief was that you and your agent were “married” and trust me, you knew your agent. You had spent a lot of time with your agent and you were friends. So this system worked right up until the early 1990’s.

By that point the writers were hiring agents out of books, on a quick meeting at a writer’s conference, or simply because some person with a business card said they were an agent and the young writer got all excited. Scams and theft of writer’s money became almost the norm at this point and continues to this day.

And writers don’t know about most of it or care. 95% of all writers don’t even ask for rejections, or sign their own overseas contracts, or even see them, or bother to check royalty statements enough to even notice that for some odd reason the numbers don’t match up. Or the statements stopped coming. Agents know this about writers. Trust me. And the scam ones take advantage of it in every way they can.

Then things got even worse if that was possible. In the mid-to-late 1990’s writers started signing contracts with publishers that had inserted in it (by the agent without writer permission) an agency clause forcing the publisher to pay the agent first on all matters concerning the contracts. Did one writer’s group object? Of course not. And even though completely unenforceable, these agency clauses now try to hold the rights past the termination of the contract. And writers believe them.

And we all signed them, me included.

Now remember some facts:

1) Agents are not regulated or schooled or trained. Anyone can become an agent.

2) Writers are hiring strangers posing as agents to handle sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars of their money without even a simple background check.

3) Most writers don’t bother to check the paperwork their agent sends them on any money payout.

4) Agents get all the paperwork FIRST before the writer on the money and thus don’t have to pass it along. Some writers are stupid enough to go so far as even give an agent power of attorney to sign documents. (That’s so far past stupid I gasp at the scale of ignorance.)

That’s the situation as it stands now.

Examples of How This Turns Ugly

Example: Writer has a nice selling book in North America, didn’t sell overseas rights. Agent phones one day and says “Sold German rights for 5,000 E.U..”

Actually the offer was 7,000, but somewhere along the way you were only told 5,000. Agents keep the rest plus 20% of the 5,000. How can this happen? More ways than you ever want to think about. And it happens all the time.

Example: Writers makes nice sale to Germany, royalties to be paid twice a year. No statements ever make it to the writer. Writer has no way of knowing if there was any more payments in Germany or not. And go ahead, demand those statements from your agent and see how far you get. And the excuses and “reasons” the agent doesn’t have them. Go ahead, I dare you.

Example: A book in the States is earning out and running royalties starting on the third statement, but you only saw the first two statements and don’t know it had checks attached to the third one because the agent kept the money and didn’t bother to tell you. And you don’t think to check because most writers are very, very bad at business and filing and don’t track the payments or book sales. Not all, just most writers. And if you have told the agent you want all the paperwork, and then demanded it, they won’t try this one on you.

I could go on, but the scams are far, far too numerous to list, often done by agents with top reputations and top clients.

For example, did you know a major agency with top clients holds everyone’s money as standard practice for seven days? Now, for those of you who understand accounting, this is called “the float” and this major agency as policy holds sometimes millions in this float account for a week, collecting the interest. Not much at the moment, but when interest was 10% it was a ton of money they earned off their client’s money. Again, a scam and major bestsellers let them get away with this. Not kidding.

SO WHAT IS THE ROOT CAUSE OF ALL THESE PROBLEMS?

Answer: Your agent gets all the paperwork and all statements and all money before you see it.

That’s the problem. Plain and simple.

THE SIMPLE SOLUTION

From this moment on, with every contract, you do the following simple steps.

YOU replace the agency clause in your contract with a clause that does two things. The new clause needs to state clearly:

1) All payments will be split 15% to agent of record and 85% to you, listing the address of both.

2) All paperwork and royalty statements will be sent to both you and your agent, or if the publisher balks at the extra expense, the paperwork is sent to you and you forward a copy to your agent.

Problem solved.

A simple and easy solution. You sign your own contract, you simply talk with the editor and insert that clause instead of the agency clause. Do that with all overseas contracts as well. (The contracts must be in your own language, so don’t let an agent tell you otherwise. If the agent pushes that you must do it their way, that is a sure sign of a scam going on. Contracts under international copyright agreements are always in the language of the author. Get them and read them carefully.)

If your agent objects to this overall or say they can’t do it that way, you have someone who is invested in scamming you and taking your money so fire them instantly. And I do mean instantly. You are giving them their 15% directly from the publisher in the contract. They don’t need your money as well, do they? They have NO valid reason to handle your money.

(And agents, if you really are reputable, there’s no reason to continue this practice. You start changing it. If agents as a group start changing this, it will soon become clear which agents are the scams and which agents are solid and honest. But until agents start changing this for all of their clients, it will be up to the writers.)

Will any writer do this?

No. (Or very few.) Too simple. And all writers are too afraid of their agents, and thus the agents who have no regulations or training but all the writer’s money will keep scamming the writers. It is a sad fact of life.

And right now I can hear hundreds of writers with agents thinking, “Luckily my agent isn’t doing that to me.”

HOW DO YOU KNOW??????

You have given them all the paperwork that comes with your money from publishers and all the money FIRST. Do you really know what a royalty statement looks like exactly from Bantam? How simple is it for an agent to make up a false one? Duh..

And so many, many other ways of doing it.

The fact is that YOU DON’T KNOW as long as you are letting perfect strangers touch your money first and all the paperwork with that money. And you can’t know.

Wake up, writers!

This is one Sacred Cow of Publishing that needs to be killed about a million times and then buried as a deep, ugly part of the past of this business.

But sadly, it’s not going to happen. Why? Because agents want to keep the money they are skimming and scamming and writers are too afraid of agents to object.

With luck, this new publishing industry that is going to emerge in the next ten years won’t include many agents, and writers can start coming to their collective senses.

Until then, we writers should change our names to “marks” because that’s what con artists call those they take money from. And we are the best marks ever invented. We willingly in a contract agree to send the con artist all of our money and the paperwork with it.

Luckily Bernie Madoff didn’t know about this. He would have been the best agent ever and he’d still be working and out of jail.

————————————————

Copyright 2010 Dean Wesley Smith
————————————————–
Because of the new world and technology, my magic bakery got a lot more valuable lately. This is now part of my inventory in my bakery. (Confused on that, read the Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing post about making money with writing.) I’m giving you this small slice as a sample. I’m giving you a taste, but not selling any of the pie.

If you feel this helped you in any way, toss a tip into the tip jar on the way out of the Magic Bakery.

And I would like to thank all the fine folks who have donated. Once this book is done, I will send you a copy. The donations and the comments both after the posts and privately are really keeping me going on this. Thanks!

If you can’t afford to donate, please feel free to pass this chapter along to others who might get some help from it. Every week or so I will be adding a new chapter on the myths and sacred cows of publishing. Stay tuned. Upcoming are chapters on bestsellers, losing control of your writing, having it made, speed equals making money, more on agents, and so much more. This business has a lot of myths. An entire book full.

Thanks, Dean

Off and on for years I’ve been hearing from newer writers that editors were evil, that they didn’t want to send their manuscripts to editors to be butchered, that they wanted an agent to help protect their work. As a former editor, I mostly just ignored this because it was so absurd.

But now comes along electronic publishing where writers can go directly to readers with their work and suddenly this “evil editor” myth is coming in strong as an excuse to not mail anything to New York or any major publication. And I said excuse, because there is no reality in this myth at all. None.

Period.

The truth: 99% of major publishing editors are very, very nice people. They love books, they love helping create books, they are good at corporation politics, they don’t get paid enough, they work seven days a week, and the only editing they do with an author is to fix mistakes and help the author make the book they wanted to write more of what the author wanted. Editors are the most underrated, underpaid workers in all of publishing.

So, where to even begin on this myth that editors are evil? Maybe at the beginning, the origin of the myth and why it has been growing.

ORIGIN OF A MYTH

In school we all heard about those famous editors of the past who helped major writers like Fitzgerald and Hemingway get their work into shape. So right out of the block we are all afraid of editors for not only that reason, but a hundred other reasons. They have the key to publication in their hands. They seem powerful and all-knowing from a distance. They don’t seem human to new writers, they seem like gods. All perception problems that lead to the following reasons for the myth of “evil editor.”

1) FEAR.

Writers have this fear of rejection which makes no logical sense at all. Editors can’t hurt you, won’t come to your home with a gun, and won’t write rejection letters like Snoopy got in the Peanuts cartoons. The worse editors do is not respond, the second worse is that they send a form rejection along. From there it’s all up.

But baseless fear controls all young writers, so instead of taking a chance that their work might get rejected, which it will because we all get rejected, they make up things like “I don’t want anyone butchering my sacred words or my sacred story.” Thus the young writers don’t have to confront their own fear of rejection. Easier to not mail something with an excuse than it is to take a chance and mail it.

Also, fear of publication does this a great deal as well, even though that sounds odd. Many, many writers are deathly afraid of having someone like their work because they know how easy and fun it was to write. The new writer didn’t struggle over it enough like they were taught was important in college. So therefore the story must be bad and if an editor bought it the writer would be exposed for a fraud. So it’s easier to make up an evil editor excuse and not mail the story.

2) EDITOR AS HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER

For some reason a lot of new writers think that an editor’s job is to train them to write, and to mark up their manuscripts in red pens like their high school teacher did. They don’t want that, so instead they start thinking of editors as evil.

Does in reality your manuscript get marked up? Yup, copy edits and slight editing that you have the ability to say no to every change, unlike high school. Go back to many other chapters in this book to remind yourself that writers are in control of their own work. There will be marks on your manuscript for your approval. 99% of the marks are either moving to a house style or catching a mistake you missed. Sometimes you get a bad copy edit, but not enough to cause this myth. The evil editor myth comes from writers hating their English teacher and thinking that editors are the same. They are not.

3) THE INCREASE IN BOOK DOCTORS

Book doctors, whom you can hire, are for the most part a scam. (There are a couple with hearts in the right place who really want to help writers, but very few.) There is one New York agent right now telling new writers who come to him to hire his wife for a ton of money as a book doctor. Scam. Book doctors do exist, but they are hired by New York publishers to help get an already bought book into shape with the agreement of the author. These are normally nonfiction books. Most of the real professional book doctors are former editors with major houses. You don’t know who they are and you couldn’t afford them.

The problem comes in with the fact that new writers only see the scams. And these scam book doctors call themselves EDITORS. And some of them are horrid. (I can’t begin to tell you how many times I have heard a new writer say “Oh, I hired an editor to help me and fix my book.” Shudder….)

So this myth has built from those horrid book doctors who do mark up manuscripts like an English teacher because that is all they know how to do. They wouldn’t understand a good story if it bit them, so they have to pay attention to only the words.

Stay away from those types at all costs!!!! They are not editors. Editors work for major publishers. You can’t hire them.

4) AGENTS PRETENDING TO BE EDITORS

The slush-reading agent who wants writers to rewrite before mailing a book is more than likely the biggest source of the increase in this myth in the last ten years. We’ve talked about horror stories of some writers rewriting a dozen times for an agent. Now trust me, thinking of your agent as your editor is a quick way to death of career and will certainly drive this myth that editors are evil. Editors who work for major publishers are great people. Some agents, on the other hand, are truly evil and scam artists. Never confuse the two for any reason.

WHAT DO EDITORS REALLY DO?

For those of you who have never seen the inside of a major editor’s office in New York, let me give you a quick tour.

Editors and senior editors’ offices are often small, not more than about four paces deep and two or three paces wide. Shelves on both sides and a desk and one chair. Assistant editors and associate editors often sit outside in the hall at a desk or in a nearby cubicle. Executive editors have larger offices, but not much, and publishers have larger offices. Books and art are stacked everywhere in the halls and offices, along with piles and piles and piles of paper, mostly manuscripts in one stage or another.

What is a senior editor’s job? Simply put, to produce every month a list of books. Senior editors are at least in charge of one imprint list. The list can be from three to six books per month. So each editor has between 36 and 72 books a year, plus a number of others on other lists that they also buy for. The editor is usually buying two years out, so double that number, and then don’t forget the books already published that are in some stage of promotion. A normal editor can handle 200 plus book titles a year when you add it all up, depending on the house and company and imprint.

An editor’s day is filled with dealing with the art department, with the sales department, with the managing editor, with cover copy, meetings with the publisher, answering mail and email, massive numbers of phone calls, and so much more. Editors seldom, if ever, have time to read in their office. They read at home or on the subway going home or to work. They read on weekends.

In other words, if your image of an editor was what you have seen from Hollywood, with the big offices, the clean desks, the one manuscript sitting on top of the desk waiting to be read, you are sadly lost in a bad myth. Editors’ offices and the area around them are beehives of activity among piles and piles of paper and books and art.

The editors I know who have lasted for years thrive in this corporate craziness. And they do it for the love of taking a book that they have found and helping it get to thousands of readers that they hope will love it as well.

Editors don’t get paid enough. They sit in far, far too many hours of meetings. But when one of their writers show up in town, they do get to use the corporate credit card for lunch, often the only time they can afford to go to a new or nice restaurant.

Editors love and hate working with writers at the same time. They love working with the writers who act professionally and are clear on the process of helping a book become a better book in the writer’s vision. They hate working with writers who haven’t bothered to learn any business, who are lost in egos, or who think that the editor works for them.

It’s working with that type of clueless writer that makes editors sometimes rather work with an agent. At least the agent will usually be professional and understand how the business works. But if you are a clear-thinking writer who knows the realities of the publishing business, the editors would much rather work with you directly than through a third party. Less chance of screw-ups that way.

Editors do their best to protect writers, sometimes too much so. They are deathly afraid of giving a writer bad news for some reason I have yet to figure out.

WHO DO EDITORS WORK FOR?

The publisher of course. Their job, their paycheck, depends on making sure the books sell, that the publisher gets what the publisher needs in profits for the imprint. When faced with buying a book they love, the editor must then turn to a profit-and-loss statement, boiling down the book into numbers of projected sales that both the publisher and sales force have to agree with.

But that said, the editor is also working for the writer.

Editor love the book or they wouldn’t be trying to buy it. They are going to have to spend up to two years on the book in a thousand details and meetings about the book. The editor, while working for the publisher, is your champion inside the publishing house. The editor on a day-to-day level will push and promote and work for you and your book.

So editors are in a tough spot. They get paid by, and report to, the publisher. But they are the champion of the writer who is on the other side of the contract.

When this works the best, which is about 95% of the time, is when the writer and the publisher and the editor are all working together for one purpose and one goal and everyone understands they are working together.

A publishing contract isn’t a line in the sand between two warring parties. A contract is an agreement of partnership to work together.

So editors work for publishers, sure. But they are also your representative in the thousands of details that it takes to get a book published and promoted through the traditional system. They are your champion. But you need to understand their job to help them help you even more.

THINGS DO GO WRONG AT TIMES

The problem is that writers believe they don’t have to learn the publishing business, so therefore really can’t help much in the publishing process and are always surprised when something goes wrong. And trust me, if you have more than ten books published, at some point something will go wrong in some stage of the process. Too many hundreds of steps for it not to happen.

And when you really learn the business and how it works, you will be surprised that even more things don’t go wrong.

At Pulphouse we called certain books “books from hell.” Why? Because it seemed that if something could go wrong, it would go wrong on that book. Nothing to do with the author or the book, just the karma of mistakes and problems happening that seem to pile on one book. About one in twenty books turned into a book from hell.

So something goes wrong and the editor knows you are an uninformed, myth-bound writer. The editor is afraid to tell you. If you have an agent, the editor might tell the agent, but chances are neither of them will tell you and if you discover the problem later, you’ll be angry. Why won’t the agent or editor tell you? Because you don’t understand publishing and will be angry. So for the editor and agent, it’s just better to hope you don’t find out.

Writers who do know publishing and business are usually told at once when there is a problem and can often help with a solution, because again, everyone is on the same side. But your editor has to know you are aware of how publishing works and want to be a part of the process when appropriate. I can’t tell you how many times over the years I helped editors write sales copy and promotion material for my book because they knew I understood what they needed.

But it’s the uninformed writers who get angry and yell and give editors the “evil editor” label when something goes wrong. And then wonder why editors are afraid to tell writers things in general. The last thing an editor needs is to be yelled at by the person they are trying to help. “No good deed goes unpunished.” Editors feel very, very slighted when they have put their jobs on the line for a writer and then the writer out of ignorance yells at them.

IF YOU REALLY BELIEVE THIS MYTH

If you are one of the writers who thinks this myth is true, go get personal help. That’s the only solution I have on this one. The belief is coming from fear of rejection, fear of success, or complete lack of knowledge of a business you claim you want to work in. For any of those reasons, you need help and education, and just self-publishing your own work won’t solve your problem. Thinking of editors as evil is just a symptom of a much worse problem that will eventually bite you no matter how your work gets published.

Well, that was blunt.

If you look back over all the chapters I’ve done in this book, I always say that editors are the best, the hardest working, the lowest paid part of this business. I tell writers to not listen to how to be a writer from editors, since that’s not their business. But I defend editors completely.

Have I had some bad editors over the years in the fifty plus editors I have worked with? One. And he was a great guy, just not my style of editor. Are there editors I hate in publishing who I haven’t worked with? Yes, one. But that’s because he and I are on different sides of a major belief system. I’m sure he doesn’t much like me either, but not because I’m a stupid writer. He doesn’t like me because I challenge him outside of editing in other issues. Yet I have never told anyone to stay away from him as an editor.

I have been around hundreds and hundreds of editors over the years, worked in book publishing with almost fifty of them on books and countless short fiction editors. I am their greatest supporter and I have never heard of an editor hurting a writer intentionally. Ever. Mistakes happen in publishing. Some are head-shaking stupid, and one editor who worked with Kris on a book was so stupid, he made huge mistakes, got fired and is an agent now. But to this day I doubt anything he did was purposeful.

There are no evil editors. Editing seems to attract the kind of person who loves reading, loves books, and loves helping good books get into print for readers to find. It is a really tough job. If you think editors are evil for some reason or another, go find help. It might be the best thing you do for yourself personally.

And if you won’t find help, I would suggest you keep your opinion on this one to yourself. Spouting such a stupid myth just makes you look like an idiot. There are no evil editors, just ignorant writers.

Well, that was blunt again.

————————————————

Copyright 2010 Dean Wesley Smith
————————————————–
Because of the new world and technology, my magic bakery got a lot more valuable lately. This is now part of my inventory in my bakery. (Confused on that, read the Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing post about making money with writing.) I’m giving you this small slice as a sample. I’m giving you a taste, but not selling any of the pie.

If you feel this helped you in any way, toss a tip into the tip jar on the way out of the Magic Bakery.

And I would like to thank all the fine folks who have donated. Once this book is done, I will send you a copy. The donations and the comments both after the posts and privately are really keeping me going on this. Thanks!

If you can’t afford to donate, please feel free to pass this chapter along to others who might get some help from it. Every week or so I will be adding a new chapter on the myths and sacred cows of publishing. Stay tuned. Upcoming are chapters on bestsellers, losing control of your writing, having it made, speed equals making money, more on agents, and so much more. This business has a lot of myths. An entire book full.

Thanks, Dean

Tom Dupree, a great book editor and nice guy, did a post about Kindle and iPad from a book reader’s experience. Worth the read right here.

Speaking of editors, new Sacred Cows chapter coming tonight or tomorrow on the myth that editors are evil. A myth so silly I can’t believe I have to write about it, but one I am hearing more of lately. Stay tuned, me and the cow are going to make some hay on this one. (Was that the worst metaphor you have ever heard or what?)

I thought for this chapter I’d talk about myths in general, why they are so strong, why they are often designed to stop writers. And give a study plan to help past some of them.

So far I have done 26 chapters in this book for a total word count of around 80,000 words, with each chapter focused on one area. It’s been great fun, even with the angry letters. And numbers of people have told me that I have helped them again find the fun and joy in writing. That’s fantastic. Thanks!

I really had no agenda when I started this series eleven months ago. I was just angry at the stupidity of the myths and how young professionals coming into this business had no second opinion or logical business voice. So that’s what I tried to be, a second opinion, even in my angry chapters.

To start off, let me give you a summary of what has already been done in this book. Suggestions for future chapters are welcome please. The finished ones are listed in the order I wrote them in.

Just click on the links to go right to the chapter if you would like to read them again. And make sure you read all the comments. Great discussions in the comments.

In fact, I want to take this moment once again to thank everyone for the great comments and Laura Resnick for her fantastic perspective and clear comments. If you haven’t read some of the topics and discussions below, feel free to comment on them after this post. Or after the post itself.

KILLING THE SACRED COWS OF PUBLISHING

(The chapters so far as of July 27, 2010)

—Speed.

—Rewriting

—Agents Sell Books

—Workshops

—Self-Promotion

—Book as Event

—Writing is Hard

—No Money in Writing Fiction

—Agents Know Markets

—Agent Agreements

—Agents Care About Writers First

—Agents Can Give Career Advice

—You Don’t Need to Keep Learning

—Agents and Your Money

—Your Agent Sells Your Book Overseas

—Follow the Rules to Get Published

—Writers Don’t Need to Practice

—Researching Fiction

—Asking Your Agent Permission

—Rejections

—Only 300 Writers Make a Living

—Talent is a Myth

—Agent and Contracts

—Only One Way

—The Agent 15% Myth

—Agents need to Take Care of Writers

Okay, that’s a bunch of reading. Now on to the topic at hand.

THE POWER OF THE MYTH

Over this last year I have gotten my share of angry letters from new writers telling me how I don’t understand them. I talked about that a few chapters back. And among other angry letters, I got one attack publicly from an editor too afraid to show her face. If a person isn’t willing to stand openly behind their opinions, they sure aren’t worth much in my view. Both the opinion and the person. I have very little respect for fear and cowardice as you can tell.

So why did the chapters of this book stir up so much discussion? Let me see if I can name a few surface reasons.

1) I am going against what just about everyone else is saying. What you hear at writer’s conventions, and from both editors and agents is often exactly opposite of what I am saying. But if this was the only reason, I would be ignored, not attacked.

2) My opinions are based in real business thinking. Combine that with the first reason and my chapters start that faint “feeling of worry” in writer’s minds that maybe, just maybe, I might be right in some places. How dare I question belief systems, but that nagging worry that I might be right makes them mad.

I’ve started or worked in many businesses and been trained in both architecture and law. I even owned my own publishing company for seven years. I love business and the publishing business. So many things I kept hearing as I came in made no sense to me. Now thirty years later they make even less sense. So all the chapters above are based in one way or another in logical business sense. Thus I am telling people that stupidity exists in the business they want to work in. That also makes people angry in defense.

3) Writers as a group want someone to take care of them. We feel we are powerless alone and thus when we come in we must be taken care of. But every one of my chapters in this project push the fact that writers must take responsibility for their own careers.

That’s scary, especially to the generation that came up in the 1980s and 1990s who were trained that they deserved everything they wanted. The “Entitlement Generation” as some have called it. My generation raised that generation, so it’s my generation’s fault I’m afraid. Of course now with this big crash, that “Entitlement Generation” is learning that maybe, just maybe, they aren’t entitled to everything they want and have to work harder than they wanted to get the basics.

We have a long ways to go as a culture to get out of this entitlement mindset. And when I tell a writer they really shouldn’t allow anyone to take care of them, but to learn their business and do it themselves, they get angry at me. It is just not how they were raised.

4) Anger comes from money discussions. In the generation of some of the biggest money scams in history, writers get angry at me when I tell them two things: First, never let anyone touch your money before you do. Second, you can make a living writing fiction. Both seem so logical when looked at common sense business practice and the facts of the money in this business, yet all the chapters I did on those topics got me the most angry letters.

THE REAL REASON THE MYTHS ARE SO POWERFUL

Besides the four major areas above, there is one very large human nature element that causes the myths of publishing to get to even sane people: We all want order.

And we are all trained to expect it. Every one of us, from moment one.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch has a wonderful analogy of how writers should act when writing. She says we need to revert back to our two-year-old selves. No rules, just pure joy and exploring. But when we were two, our parents kept putting rules on us. Don’t scream in restaurants, don’t run naked down the street, that sort of common sense thing.

Then we hit school and we were all put in rows, told where to go, when to show up, and what was required to move forward. And for twelve years of school and then on into college we were always told what to do that would move us forward.

Take these classes, get this degree, move on.

Very orderly. Mostly lock-step, sadly.

Then comes fiction writing. There is no school for fiction writers. Creative writing programs in universities are designed to crank out creative writing teachers. Not actual fiction writers. Yet all of us who want to be fiction writers need rules. We need someone to tell us the path to walk, where to sit, when to show up, and how to act. Maybe even what to wear.

But fiction writing does none of that.

Publishing is an international business that writers supply with product. It’s big business and it’s complex. And there is no set path to walk to get into it.

Is it any wonder a set of myths have built up around this business? For our entire lives we were trained to follow rules, then find ourselves in a business with no rules. And we think there should be, darn it.

Questions that challenge the RULES (MYTHS) of Publishing.

So, in the order of the chapters I wrote that are listed above, let me give you a few of the main questions asked in each chapter by people wanting rules and the thinking behind it.

Speed: “What do you mean that writing fast may be the best way to produce better product?” I always heard that writing slow was better.

Rewrite: “What do you mean I don’t have to rewrite unless I want to?” I always heard that rewriting was required, at least five drafts like I did in school.

Agents Sell Books. “What do you mean agents DON’T sell books?” Guidelines all say I can’t mail my own book to an editor.

Workshops: “What do you mean workshops can’t help me fix my story?” A dozen opinions of smarter people should always be better than just my own. RIGHT?

Self Promotion: “What do you mean that my ten book signings won’t help my New York publisher and might actually hurt my book?” I’ve always heard that you have to self-promote. That it is required.

And so on and so on through all 26 chapters so far. We all look for rules coming into this business because that’s the way we were trained.

Breaking that training is fantastically hard.

A Course of Study

So you want someone to tell you what to study? I can’t do that, because I don’t know each of you or your writing. Sorry. And if I tried, I’d be wrong. But I can give you a course of study on how to work against the myths every day and set up your own path into this business. Think of yourself as your own guidance counselor in college. Here is a suggested course of study.

1) Study regular business. Then any time any person in publishing suggests you go against a regular business principle, question it hard. For example: In regular business, anywhere, do you allow someone else outside of your boss to handle your paycheck? Or have a business where an accountant signs all your checks and you never see the money? Of course not! But that’s what you are doing with agents, folks. See all the agent chapters above.

2) Study how your own brain works. You know, the science of the brain. Understand how the creative brain functions, how critical brain functions, and then where your write from. Understand that your own voice will be invisible to you in your writing because it is the same as the voice in your head. Learn how your brain works because that’s where all this creative writing comes from. If you don’t understand how the brain works, you sure won’t understand why rewriting can be very damaging to your art.

3) Always go to writers to learn who are farther down the road than you are on a similar road you want to walk. Editors and agents can’t teach you how to be a writer. Ignore 99% of everything they say when it comes to how to write and how to manage your own business. And then ignore a lot of what writers ahead of you say as well, unless it makes sense TO YOU. Learn to listen to that little voice in the back of your head and question everything. But focus on continuing to learn from writers, both from books and writers’ workshops and conferences. Both craft and business.

4) Study the real lives of successful writers and their working methods. Ignore the hype like Hemingway telling writers they had to write standing up. But for example go find out how long it actually took Hemingway to write some of his classics, how long Dickens took to write some of his, and how long it takes many of our bestsellers to write their books today. Their public face will be one thing, but with some study, you can get behind the public story and to the truth. Every successful writer tells the truth about their methods once in a while.

5) Learn the true publishing business. Understand profit-and-loss statements, how editors actually buy a book today, what agents actually do in the system, what escalators are, what a good contract reversion clause is, and so on and so on. Yes, it’s a great deal to learn, but very possible if you learn it one detail at a time. Start now, with a hunger. It’s where you want to make your living, remember, and if you know more than others, you’ll know how to make more money than others.

6) Try everything once. At least. How do you know that your work isn’t selling because you keep rewriting it if you don’t try mailing out a first draft story or two? Call this course of study a lab class. Write fast, write slow, write a genre you don’t like. Try everything. Challenge yourself in every way you can think of. You might be startled to learn along the way what really works for you. Practice, practice, practice.

7) Stay up on current publishing and electronic changes. Even though a lot of writers and others are claiming the sky is falling and books as we know them are at the end, ignore that and just keep writing and learning. Your opportunity for a career might not be invented yet, or might be staring you in the face. This course could be called “current events.”

Okay, there you go, folks. A path, a course of study, seven simple areas, that will make you even more independent than you are now. I’ll bet your college counselor didn’t even boil it down that simply for you.

With knowledge comes understanding. Learn business, how your brain works, how publishing works, try it all, and stay current.

Okay, now that you have a course of study, here’s what’s ahead in this series so far. Again, I welcome suggestions.

I have shorter chapters on these upcoming myths:

—Bestsellers Can’t Write

—Writing Art

—Writing Media and Work for Hire or Romance is Actually Easy.

—Bestsellers Can Be Made Artificially by a Publisher

—Once you sell you have it made

—Rejections and What They Really Mean

—The Perfect Book.

—Publisher as Gatekeeper.

And, of course, more agent and money chapters to make people angry. Those are always fun and the agent myths just seem to be everywhere these days.

————————————————

Copyright 2010 Dean Wesley Smith
————————————————–
Because of the new world and technology, my magic bakery got a lot more valuable lately. This is now part of my inventory in my bakery. (Confused on that, read the Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing post about making money with writing.) I’m giving you this small slice as a sample. I’m giving you a taste, but not selling any of the pie.

If you feel this helped you in any way, toss a tip into the tip jar on the way out of the Magic Bakery.

And I would like to thank all the fine folks who have donated. Once this book is done, I will send you a copy. The donations and the comments both after the posts and privately are really keeping me going on this. Thanks!

If you can’t afford to donate, please feel free to pass this chapter along to others who might get some help from it. Every week or so I will be adding a new chapter on the myths and sacred cows of publishing. Stay tuned. Upcoming are chapters on bestsellers, losing control of your writing, having it made, speed equals making money, more on agents, and so much more. This business has a lot of myths. An entire book full.

Thanks, Dean

Since the week of workshops and deadlines has me wrapped up more than I expected, not quite done with the next Sacred Cows.

Yesterday, Kris and I were getting a laugh from a great song by new artist Sara Bareilles called “King of Anything.” You can find it at iTunes right here. At least listen to the chorus. And listen to it with agents in mind. I’m fairly certain, not 100%, but fairly certain she was writing the song about a bad relationship. But wow does it fit a bad agent relationship PERFECTLY.

On another topic:

Two nights ago about 14 professional writers got together in a room and we had a five hour discussion on ebooks. Even though I was the leader of the discussion, I learned a bunch and came away buzzing yet again. I won’t begin to talk about all the stuff here. But just let me say it’s a great time to be a professional fiction writer. Sure, things are changing faster than many can keep up with, but that’s exciting and with many of the changes, the mess that the agent system has become slowly loses its grasp on the business.

Someone asked me if I see agents surviving the changes. I said “Sure, some of them. The ones that have a good business model, who don’t read slush, who give added value to their clients in sales and contacts, who understand their clients and don’t try to control them or take care of them or tell them what to write.”

But my belief is that the agent model that so many of my posts have focused on will be gone. The publishers will have taken back over the slush piles in one form or another, and new forms of agents will emerge.

Also a new form of scam agent will emerge, so caution folks. Get control of your money and except for education, money flows to the writer. Again, never let anyone touch your money first.

Will book publishing in paper form be around in twenty years? Of course. In fact, there will be more books being published in paper. But the publishers will have changed. A large number of small presses will be flourishing, combing electronic and paper publishing. Larger publishers will be following the same model, combining paper and electronic publishing. Mass market paperbacks will be a thing of the past in twenty years, trade paperbacks will be standard, with hardbacks still being premium books.

But major New York publishers have a pretty hard turning or tipping point coming with all their contracts, labor unions, high overhead, the return system, and warehouses and shipping costs. When books go to 25% electronic in sales, the weight of the costs of each paper book will drive the price point too high and force even more of an change. Some publishers already see this coming and are doing their best to move, but the union contracts, high overhead, and returns systems pretty much has the big publishers caught in a nasty trap.

This all is going to take time to work through the system and in this day of instant fear and communication, we’ll see a lot of “the sky is falling” stuff. But nothing is falling, it’s changing. And the changes are fantastic for writers.

Stay on top of it is my suggestion. Ignore doom and gloom and just watch and move with the system. Learn the business, expect no one to take care of you, and keep having fun.

Now yet another topic:

I just got a very sad phone call from a friend who lost a cat today. Made me very sad, since we have lost five cats and gave another away in the last year. Two went from just old age, great old ladies names Willow and The Goddess. We put down another from sickness named Ezri. She was a powerful cat. When we had the full compound up here, we were always rescuing cats. Ezri was the last non rescue cat we had. The three we have left inside are all rescues.

But we also had two outdoor cats up until a week or so ago. Yellow Kitty and Rufus. Yellow Kitty was a wild male I managed to pet after two years and Rufus was a neighbor’s cat who left them for us. Both slept on our front porch in shelters and would have nothing to do with coming inside. Of course feeding cats outside brings raccoons and I was close friends with two and their yearly kittens. This year mom had four kittens. The raccoons and cats were buddies and even would eat from the same bowl.

Then one day the hilltop was silent. Both cats and all raccoons were gone. Something had taken them all. No signs of any of them. No signs of life at all.

So this last year we have lost five cats. We’re down to the three inside. In this big house, often hours will go by and I don’t see a cat. I can’t imagine being without cats around, but wow it is tough when we lose them. And my friend this morning was very sad, as he should be.

So if you have cats, give them a hug, enjoy their company while they let you, because they will move on faster than you want them to.

Just starting a workshop tonight and have already ran into a couple of the writers attending around town this morning. It’s going to be great fun. Kris (aka Kris Nelscott, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Kris Rusch) and I are teaching a workshop on the structure of all the different types of mystery stories, from Cozy to Thriller and everything in the middle. A fun weekend with a bunch of fun writers talking writing. Doesn’t get better.

And then next weekend is a workshop on blurbs and pitches. First time we’ve done that one, so it could be really, really interesting and stressful.(grin)

However, the workshop that is the reason for this post is one in September called Character Voice. It’s an intense week of writing and study on character voice and all the ways it is created. We did this workshop earlier this spring and everyone attending made fantastic progress and say it changed their writing forever.

When your stories are bland and readers can’t tell your characters apart, you need to work on character voice. And it can be taught.

The publishing industry and reader demand is going to character voice as the most important aspect of writing. You want to see if I’m correct, just browse the books in any young adult section. They are all heavy character voice, and those readers will grow up to be adult readers wanting the same thing.

Editors are constantly saying they are looking for voice. Author voice you can’t see and only ruin with too much rewriting. It’s your personal voice. But character voice you can learn, alter from character to character. Good character voice thickens everything about your stories and makes them impossible to put down. It is possible to make your characters come alive and be memorable. There are some techniques that can be learned and practiced. And that’s what the week in September is about. Focused practice and learning how to do character voice.

We have three spots left in September 18-25 workshop. It will be limited to 12 since this is such a focused writing workshop. Kris and I just can’t read and give personal attention to more than that at this level of craft work.

If interested, e-mail me and put workshop in the subject line to avoid the spam filters.

I can’t begin to tell you how much that workshop, that week, will change your writing for the better.  But be prepared to work harder on your writing than you ever have before for one week. Those who attended in the spring said it was the most intense workshop we have given outside of the master class.

And for the workshops in 2011, the list is above under the workshops tab.

Cheers

Dean

The idea that writers need to be “taken care of” has become such a common phrase among agents, it has moved to being flat insulting for most of us out here.

I talked about this a little bit in another chapter, but lately I’ve been hearing this “justification” for frightening bad behavior on the part of agents. It just makes me angry, to be honest with you.

So for the second week in a row I’m writing a chapter of this book while angry and insulted. Stand back. If nothing else, this might be entertaining, as a number of people called my last chapter.

As I usually do in these chapters, let me start from some basics. And I’m going to number them to make sure I am very clear on my position.

Basic #1: Publishing is an international corporate business.

It is a business no matter how much you don’t want it to be, especially if you would like to have any decent number of readers for your work. Even writers who publish their own work are quickly learning just how much of a business this is.

And noticed I used the word “corporate.” Anyone who has worked in a large corporation understands the politics and the money-based drive that every employee deals with in corporations. Publishing is no different.

Basic #2: There are no secrets. It’s Just Business and Must Be Learned.

But as in any major profession, learning takes time. Mistakes are made. That is a natural part of the process. And it takes time to learn to write a professional level story.

As I have said over and over and over, when you want to be a local attorney, it takes seven years of school before you can even think of hanging out a shingle or going to work for a law firm. In a little local community. So why would you think that you need less learning, less training, less practice and time when working in an INTERNATIONAL business?

You need to learn the business you want to work in. It really is that simple.

(For a great free weekly business class, check out my wife, Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Freelancer’s Guide.)

Basic #3: Writers are always in a hurry.

Spend all that time and effort on your first novel and you want it published NOW. That’s like saying “I just spent all my time and energy getting through my first year of college, I passed English 101 and History 101 and I want to be an attorney NOW.” Doesn’t work that way and it’s just as silly thinking in writing.

First books are called first books because they are the first book a writer published, not wrote. My first book was book number four written, and I didn’t sell five or six.

Now I bet a bunch of people are saying “But I’m different.” No, you’re not. Write your million words of crap, as Mystery Grandmaster John D. McDonald said, and you might get to your first publishable word. And in the process, learn the business. You can learn to write and learn the business at the same time. Honest you can.

Am I sounding discouraging? I suppose. I am saying it takes work, it takes time, it takes a focus on learning. If that is discouraging to you, you don’t belong in this profession. Find a profession that the learning sounds like fun, the enjoyment is in the work, the desire to learn it all sounds like a wonderful time. That’s a profession for you.

But if writing sounds like fun, is enjoyable for you, and you have a vast desire to learn everything in both craft and business, then you are in the right spot.

Basic #4: Writers Control This Business.

I know that will just seem wrong for those of you lost in the myths, but the truth of the matter is that without books, without product supplied by writers, no publisher would remain in business. There wouldn’t be a business. This business exists for the sole reason to move writers’ stories to readers. That simple.

The top writers control what publishers do, stock prices of publishers rise and fall on book releases. I know of some writers who have taken their editors with them from one house to the next when they moved. And they weren’t even bestsellers

Writers make the most money, writers control.

Where the Myth of Needing to Taken Care Of Comes From.

In short, the myth comes from writers who are in a hurry and lazy and think they are “artists.” That’s right, we writers (as a group) caused this myth, as we do with most of the myths.

The big international business of writing looks “scary” and unknown, a long, dark road we are afraid to walk. Imagine a women in a bad horror movie in high heals going into a cobweb-covered mansion. That’s what it feels like to all of us, thus we do what is human nature, we try to find someone who claims they will take us through the darkness and dangerous animals and guys with large axes and chainsaws safely to the other side. We willingly and without thought hand these “guide” people all our money, our very livelihood, our art, our self-respect, and then close our eyes and hope.

Just like in the bad movies, it seldom works. Just ask any of Bernie Madoff’s clients how well handing over all your money works.

But sadly, in publishing, it’s normal to do just what I am describing. Except the people we hand all our money to are often young agents. Very, very young, and not regulated in any way. Many of them are four or five years out of an Ivy League school, and their only claim to knowing anything is that they live with a few others in New York City and know other agents and have lunches with a few editors.

Now granted, some agents have been around for a long time, know the business, can get a book in at higher levels. But they are not writers. They do not understand at any deep level what you do as a writer. Or how you survive. So you start expecting them to take care of everything and guess what? Mistakes happen, only they are not your mistakes.

And then all the horror stories we have been talking about in all the comments after previous agent chapters happen.

The bottom line is that all the agent horror stories happen because WRITERS WANT TO BE TAKEN CARE OF.

Somehow along the way I lost this attitude, more than likely during my publishing days with Pulphouse. Or even more likely, I never had it from the start. It just seems odd to me that anyone SHOULD take care of me. I’ve been on my own, making my own way in the world since I turned eighteen. No one took care of me, and I sure didn’t expect anyone to do so. In any business or venture over all the decades.

My first agent never said she would take care of me. Not once. I sold my own books, called her and told her who would be calling and what I wanted and she did what I asked. I was in charge. I hired her for her agency and help on chasing money and nothing more.

So now comes the 2010 publishing world. We have reached a day in this business where young agents are reading slush and losing money, where the publishing business is going through one of its normal tightening phases, where new technology is slamming into publishing like an iceberg ramming into the Titanic. Exciting times, actually, for writers, with new opportunities opening up almost every day.

But one of the upshots of this new world is that these baby agents and some young editors are out spouting off about how they need to take care of their writers. And they are spouting this garbage in public.

They started off doing this, I’m sure, to try to sell themselves to writers. But then they started to believe their own hype, they started to actually believe that they knew better than writers what writers needed.

And over the last ten years, this has become, to my view, an ugly trend that I have even heard directed at me.

Some young agent who wasn’t born yet when I sold my first short story told me last year that if I went with her as a client, she would take care of me. Of course, she would have to read and approve everything I wrote before she sent it out.

She was SERIOUS!!!

The attitude of needing to take care of writers had become so ingrained in her mind that the system just worked that way for everyone. She didn’t know any other way. She somehow thought in her deepest ego that she was giving me something I wanted to hear.

I managed not to laugh in her face, or insult her, but to be honest, that has bothered me ever since and I have mentioned it a few times lately. I should have taken her to task, maybe snapped her out of it a little bit. But I was nice, stunned, to be honest.

She believed that she should take care of a seasoned professional and even worse, she believed that I needed to be taken care of by her.

In other words, she thought I was too stupid to make it on my own.

Oh, yeah, let’s forget the last twenty years or more where I did just fine taking care of myself and making nice money writing fiction. She believed I was too stupid to make it on my own.

Yes, I was insulted.

Let me make this clear, very clear about this myth.

Every time an agent or an editor says that they will “take care of you,” they are saying to you:

“You are too stupid to make it on your own.”

Insulted? Yeah, you should be. But what stuns me even more is that writers just nod and say, “Yup, I’m dumb-dumb and must be bottle fed…change my diapers please while you are at it.”

Writers let agents get away with this insulting behavior. Until this post, I’ve never heard anyone question this at all.

Well, as I said last chapter, it’s time for writers to wake up and question everything.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

1) Understand you are learning the business and that the learning never stops.

I’m still learning this business every day, year after year. I find learning exciting and I love that I will never stop learning in this business, both on the writing craft side and on the business side. Sure, it’s scary at times. That’s part of the fun.

2) Don’t be afraid of making mistakes.

No way to not make mistakes, but for heaven’s sake, make your own mistakes, and from those mistakes come learning and understanding. In publishing, nothing is fatal. Worse thing that happens is you change your pen name and move on.

3) Learn from those who are down the road you want to walk.

Other writers have walked ahead of you down the scary, fog-covered road to making a living at fiction writing. Learn from them, take lessons from them, take what works for you and toss the rest. Agents and editors are not writers. If you listen to their words as if they are gospel, you are doomed, just as surely as thinking you can learn how to create original fiction by sitting in a college creative writing class. Not going to happen.

4) In no fashion allow anyone to take care of you.

This doesn’t mean you can’t hire help, but for heaven’s sake, know what your help is doing and you approve everything. And never let them have your money before you see it. That stupidity has to be stopped quickly in this business.

5) Make it a rule to take care of yourself.

Sure, you might not know how to do something, so GO LEARN IT. Stop thinking that someone else will take care of it for you and learn what you need to know to get your work in front of editors, to understand what you are signing in a contract, to know how the business works. It will take time, but learn one thing a week or a day and eventually you’ll have it.

And the moment you catch yourself thinking that someone needs to take care of that for you, stop and do it yourself. Make that a way of life. Make it a rule in your writing life and business.

QUESTION EVERYTHING!

Writers, it is way past time we started questioning these myths. All of them that I have been talking about for twenty-five chapters now.

DEAN’S RULES OF BUSINESS IN WRITING

#1… You must learn and understand the business you want to work in.

#2… Learn from other writers on the same road, not editors or agents.

#3…It is fine to hire help, but never hand over responsibility.

#4…Never let anyone touch your money.

#5…In all decisions you are responsible for your own career.

You follow those five rules and you will be surprised at how many problems you avoid and how far those rules will take you.

Just remember, when some young agent says that they will take care of you, understand what they are thinking about you:

“Oh, I can take this writer’s money. They are a patsy.”

Or

“This writer is too stupid to do it on their own.”

Get insulted, and if enough of us stop taking these insults and start questioning everything and taking responsibility for our own careers, maybe we can start the slow change it’s going to take to back out of this current mess.

I’m a dreamer I know, but that’s also my job description.

And I know what I’m doing. And if you just believed in yourself, you would too.

————————————————

Copyright 2010 Dean Wesley Smith
————————————————–
Because of the new world and technology, my magic bakery got a lot more valuable lately. This is now part of my inventory in my bakery. (Confused on that, read the Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing post about making money with writing.) I’m giving you this small slice as a sample. I’m giving you a taste, but not selling any of the pie.

If you feel this helped you in any way, toss a tip into the tip jar on the way out of the Magic Bakery.

And I would like to thank all the fine folks who have donated. Once this book is done, I will send you a copy. The donations and the comments both after the posts and privately are really keeping me going on this. Thanks!

If you can’t afford to donate, please feel free to pass this chapter along to others who might get some help from it. Every week or so I will be adding a new chapter on the myths and sacred cows of publishing. Stay tuned. Upcoming are chapters on bestsellers, losing control of your writing, having it made, speed equals making money, more on agents, and so much more. This business has a lot of myths. An entire book full.

Thanks, Dean

Schedule for workshops: Fall 2010 and Spring 2011

I got a couple of requests for a simple workshop schedule. Here it is. For more information about each workshop, either go down two posts or click on the Workshop tab above.

All workshops are held in Lincoln City on the Oregon Coast, two hours from Portland, Oregon. These workshops range over different skill levels and a few have limitations, so please read the full descriptions following carefully and feel free to ask questions. We have tried to schedule some workshops close together to save on travel costs. All rooms are reserved for you automatically when you sign up, so no need to worry about that either. You just pay for your room when you arrive. I will not take money ahead on the rooms.

Feel free to pass this along to anyone you feel might be interested.

———————— 2010 WORKSHOP SCHEDULE —————————

-———- September 2010————

CHARACTER VOICES WORKSHOP. Sept.18-25, 2010 (Starts 7 PM on the 18th, ends late 25th). Cost $600. Limited to 14. Room Rate $50.00 (5 Spots left)

Taught by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

——— October 2010————-

NOVEL WORKSHOP. Oct 10-13, 2010 (Starts at 7 PM on the 10th). Cost $200. Limited to 12. Room Rate $40.00

Taught by Dean Wesley Smith with feedback from Kristine Kathryn Rusch

—
NEW TECHNOLOGY. Oct. 14–16, 2010 (Starts 7 PM on 14th, ends noon 16th). Cost $300. Room Rate $40.00

(Taught by a number of people, going into the ways writers can use Kindle, eBooks, POD and anything new by then to make money and sell more copies of their stories.) Open to all levels. This workshop will change your writing, I promise you.

—
MARKETING WORKSHOP. Oct 16-23, 2010 (Starts 7 PM on the 16th, ends late 23th). Cost $600. Limited to 14. Room Rate $40.00 (4 Spots Left)

Taught by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith

—————————————-

2011 WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

——–FEBRUARY 2011———

Novel Workshop Feb 21-24, 2011. Fee $250.00

Taught by Dean Wesley Smith with feedback from Kristine Kathryn Rusch

—-

Denise Little Short Story Workshop Feb 24-27, 2011. Fee $500.00

Taught by Denise Little and Dean Wesley Smith.

—–MARCH 2011——-

Kris and Dean Show. (Publishing Overview) March 12-13, 2011. Fee $250.00

Overview of Publishing…open to all comers at any level…pass the word to your beginning writer friends. This workshop will give you an understanding of publishing, how to break into it, how to start selling your fiction, and so much more.

—-

Marketing Workshop. March 26-April 3rd, 2011. Fee $650.00.

Taught by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Limited to 12, so deposits required.

——APRIL 2011——

Character Voice Workshop. April 16-24, 2011. $650.00.

Taught by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Limited to 12 so deposits required.

—— MAY 2011——

How to Be Your Own Literary Agent: May 13-15, 2011. $350.00.

Contracts, negotiations, the whole ball including when and how to seek help. This is an expansion of the copyright and contracts workshop held last year. Revision clauses and so much more critical things you need to know even if you have an agent. (Needs marketing workshop first)

—

Novel Workshop. May 16-19, 2011. $250.

(same as above)

—

Secrets of Making a Living with Your Fiction. May 20-22, 2011. $350.00.

Taught by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch

—— JUNE 2011——-

Short Story Workshop. June 18-26, 2011. $650.00.

Taught by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch

—————–

Sign-ups now being taken for all workshops.

Questions or more information or to sign up, just e-mail me at dean@deanwesleysmith and put workshops or writer in your subject line.

-