Sarah A. Hoyt is a long-term professional who also publishes books under a number of different names. She can often have five or six books out in a year and has also edited. She came to an early master class we did here, actually the very first one we did back in 1999 or so along with Mike Moscoe (Mike Shepard), Rebecca Lickiss, Terry Hayman, and Phaedra Wheldon. Sarah was doing fine at the time, but felt she wanted to jump farther ahead. Not sure if we helped her because she was already on her way and her writing was (and still is) fantastic, but she seems to remember the rewriting discussions.

And now, in a great blog post, she does a great job of describing the different forms of tackling a manuscript in rewrite and the problems she sees with each form of rewriting.  Note that she agrees with me that it is hard and takes skill to rewrite, but note she also says she has done rewriting. Again, every writer is different.  Take a look at what she has to say at MadGeniusClub. Worth your time to read, trust me. Then come back if you have questions and we can talk.

First off, if you want to hear one of my stories in a fantastic audio play, Seeing Ear Theater has reissued my story “In the Shade of the Slowboat Man” which was adapted by Kris (Kristine Kathryn Rusch) and done wonderfully. It’s at SFFaudio and I have no idea what it costs to download the MP3 file, but it’s there. Worth the listen in my opinion. Got to scroll down a number of books. Lots of great stuff there adapted from top writer’s stories.

Professional writer Scott William Carter did a fantastic blog called The Ten Reasons Why This is the Best Time to be a Writer. I could not have said it better if I had worked at it and did a hundred rewrites.  Fantastic post, worth the read.

Professional writer J. Steven York did a great blog post about what writers really need in this modern new world of publishing. Anyone interested in ever putting up your back list or original stories in epub format might want to read this.

Go read it right here.  Worth the time, trust me.

Okay, for the second time in this book, I’m going to dive into the rewriting myth.  But please, before you go any farther, please go read the first chapter on rewriting. Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Rewriting.

This chapter will follow that chapter in the book, so what I am saying here will build on that. Please go read it first.

Okay, this chapter came about because of an exchange in the comments on the last chapter about not worrying about writing what is hot, just write your own stuff. It suddenly became clear to me that when Heinlein and others, including me, tell writers to not rewrite, there is an assumption that without rewriting, the manuscript is sloppy and full of errors.

Or flipped over, new writers and many professional writers and I’m sure most non-writers think that to make a clean manuscript, it must be rewritten a number of times.

This is, of course, just silly because no writer is the same. All of us work differently. (I’m going to be saying that a great deal in this chapter.)

If a so-called professional writer turns in a sloppy manuscript full of errors, they are not being professional. But that does not mean they must rewrite beyond a fix-typos draft. Let me try to explain how that works.

First some background about the very, very general types of professional selling writers.

1) Rewriters. This type of professional writer usually does a fast first draft, usually thin, then goes back in second and third and more drafts layering in more and more and more story and detail and everything. This type of writer is called an adder-inner and the drafts are done with creative voice in control, not critical voice. This is a learned skill and from my observation almost always fails with new writers because they don’t know what they are fixing.

2) Three-drafters. This type of writer fires hard all the way through the manuscript, putting everything they can think of at the moment. Then in a second run-through, they take out what is repeated, often shift chapters around like a puzzle. Then a first reader reads it and they fix problems and mail. This method only works for professionals also because that second draft must be done in creative mind-set as well, and that’s flat hard to do. These folks are often called taker-outers.

3) Cyclers. This is often a one draft writer, but the draft is cycled through a number of times. I fit right here. I start and go for a ways until I bog down, then cycle back and run at the place I stopped, often tweaking and fixing as I go until I get up to speed and keep typing new until I bog down again. When I get to the end I have a first reader read it, fix the mistakes they catch, and mail. This method is a little easier for newer writers because they naturally stay in creative voice more often. The difficulty they have with this method is not touching it after they are done. Trust in your own craft and voice comes from a lot of years of writing and success.

4) Pure One-Drafters. This is where Harlan Ellison and others working on manual typewriters fit. This type of writer is a master of storytelling and craft and sentence structure and everything else. They make few mistakes because when they type, they are clear on what they want to put down. Computers have killed this type of writer for the most part, and replaced it with the Cycler types like me.

SO WHAT IS REWRITING?

What have I been talking about anyway when I say follow Heinlein’s Rules, including #3? What is the definition of rewriting in fiction, because it sure seems that the examples above are mostly of professionals rewriting in one form or another. Well, sort of.

Notice a couple of details in my above examples:

1) I am talking about professional writers.

2) All are working solidly in creative voice.

Creative voice is the white-hot heat you feel when creating. Sometimes, granted, it burns like an ember and it doesn’t feel so hot, other times it is a rushing fire of words. But the words always come out of the creative side of your brain. That is the key, learning how to stay completely, no matter what method you use, in the creative side of your brain.

Long-term professional writers like me can turn the creative voice on instantly. I call it a “switch on my butt.” When I sit down in front of my writing computer (different from my e-mail computer) I automatically just drop into creative mindset. It takes time to train that switch, but after millions and millions of words, it becomes automatic.

The critical side of your brain is where you English teacher lives, where that awful book by Strunk and White lives, where your workshop and all their voices lives. The critical side of your brain wants you to write safe stuff, wants it to not offend anyone or go outside of any rule. The critical side of your head thinks your own voice is dull and will always work to take it out.

No professional writer I have ever met writes quality fiction out of their critical side. No matter how many drafts they do. All drafts are done in creative voice except for the last draft of fixing mistakes found by a first reader.

Stages of Writers:

Stage One: A beginning writer is only concerned about proper grammar and pretty words and wouldn’t understand storytelling if it bit them. They think perfect grammar and spelling makes good writing and are just confused when their attempts at stories get rejected. This writer will polish and polish and polish to make sure every sentence is perfect with no regard at all for story.

In Stage One if a story is written in white hot creative voice, the writer instantly gets worried about it because it seemed “too easy” and it was written “too fast” so it must be garbage and therefore the writer polishes all the good stuff out of it to make it “perfect” sentence-by-sentence writing.

(Yeah, I know, that hit home. We all did it in the beginning. I was no exception.)

Stage Two: A second stage writer is still concerned more with sentences than with story, but slowly the idea that character development must come in, that pacing might be important, that storytelling is what sells stories starts to dawn on this stage of writer. But the focus is still on polishing those words to a shining examples of “perfect” writing.

More stories in this stage are written in creative voice than in stage one, but the writer has yet to learn to trust that voice, so they polish all the good stuff out in critical voice. Also the writer still doesn’t understand enough about story to not take out the good stuff. Rewriting is a learned skill and at this level a writer doesn’t know how to do it. And in this stage any attempt at rewriting comes out of the critical side.

Stage Three: This is where most early professionals live, selling professionals with under a dozen novels published. Here the writer has made the jump from not worrying so much about sentences, but more about storytelling and character and setting and emotion and pacing so much more. This jump is made somewhere around a million words, different for every pro, but it takes some sort of awakening to make this jump.

By this point most stories are written in creative voice, and the writer is learning what method works for them. At this point the different styles of professional writers start to separate out as each writer finds what works and sells.

Also at this stage the focus on story and other pacing and such by the writer causes rewrites to remain mostly in creative voice. However, when a newer professional in this area, such as the ones we teach here in workshops, get worried, they drop back to stage two critical polish and hurt their own stories. They have the skills, but they don’t yet trust them under pressure and drop into critical voice rewrite, which always dulls down a story.

Critical voice rewriting, called “polishing” by beginning writers, always kills or dulls a story.

Stage Four: This stage includes me and Laura and Kris and other pros who drop by here. This stage is full of the longer-term professionals. We know how to write stories that sell. We know how to rewrite in creative voice if we need to or want to. We are focused only on story.

I takes almost no attention for writers in this stage to produce clean manuscripts because we have our methods down and we have worked for decades learning how to create clean manuscripts. I cycle, Laura does many drafts working story into shape and cleaning, my wife Kristine Kathryn Rusch is an taker-outer, powering first draft and then putting things together and cleaning. We all do “fix-mistake” drafts, even the pure “one draft” writers. I saw one of Harlan’s manuscripts that actually had three corrections in ten pages. He read it, found three mistakes and corrected them. He had done a basic “fix-mistake” draft.

So, when Heinlein was talking to new writers in his article and came up with the five business rules of writing, he wasn’t talking to long-term established professionals of his day. Those writers already were set and knew what they were doing. He was talking to stage one and stage two writers.

Heinlein’s Rules

1) Write

2) Finish what you write.

3) Never rewrite unless to editorial demand.

4) Mail what you write to someone who can buy it.

5) Keep it in the mail until someone buys it.

Five very simple, yet very tough business rules of writing. They work.

But #3 is where everyone in this myth-heavy world has the most problems.

To a Stage One and Stage Two writer, who has no skills at rewriting, my way of looking at Heinlein’s Rule #3 is this:

In the early stages you are better off just trusting your natural instincts, your natural voice, write on the creative side, and then just let it go to an editor. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Sure, make it as clean as you can with a first reader catching mistakes. I had Nina Kiriki Hoffman catching my mistakes early on, and then Kris over the last twenty-five years.

But trust your voice. Stage One and Stage Two writers and many in Stage Three don’t know how to rewrite a manuscript and stay in creative voice. To those writers, rewrite means a hard, critical eye on the manuscript to “fix” it. Worst thing you can do.

Some reasons why rewriting in critical voice is so bad.

1) Your voice is dull to your ears and your eye. But it is there when you write from the creative side. It is what makes your story unique. But then in critical voice rewrite, your conscious brain takes out all the dullness to make the story better, and thus takes out your voice. In reality, what you are doing by taking what you think is dull out is making your story same and very dull.

2) When you write creatively, you know story because you have read millions of words of story. So you automatically write in story. But then when you switch to critical brain, you drop down to the word and sentence level. You ignore story and start fixing things that take the story, the pacing, the character out of your story.

3) Fiction is not written in perfect Oxford English. When writing creative side, your brain knows this. But when you switch to critical side, your English teacher pops in and puts fiction into perfect English and thus makes it dull and stilted.

4) When in the early stages of learning how to create story, you don’t understand story or character or setting or anything on a conscious level.

In one workshop last year someone asked a question about how to get setting into an example we were looking at. I turned to the board and wrote “Opinion.” All setting is opinion. Can’t be anything else, because all story is told through the eyes of a character, therefore all setting must be opinion. Seemed obvious to me, but it floored a large number of the younger professionals in the room.

When you are early in the learning, you don’t know story or setting or character or character voice or how most everything works. You might understand you need it, but you don’t know how to put it in purposefully from the critical side of your brain.

However, your creative side knows how to layer it in. The key is that you have to learn how to trust it. Of course, no new writer does. The rewriting myth is too strong.

5) A writer is the worst judge of their own work. This is the biggest killer and the biggest argument for not rewriting anything (besides fixing mistakes a first reader finds).

Why can’t a writer see their own work? Because the story is in the writer’s head. It’s clear to the writer because the writer put those little black code marks on the page to tell a reader the story. But to a reader those little black code marks might mean something very different. However, when the writer picks up the page covered in black marks the writer sees the full blown story in his mind.

It takes a lot of writing and feedback to understand how certain words, certain ways of putting words on a page, certain patterns in the black code marks effect readers. A top writer knows how to code these black marks on a page so that a retired woman in Florida reads the EXACT same story as a dock worker in Chicago or a teenager in LA. If the writer did his job correctly, they all read the same story and have the same reaction to the story.

You can not do that kind of work out of critical voice. It has to come from the subconscious and then after years of practice.

But remember, as a writer, when you look at your own writing, the story just appears back in your head. You have no way of knowing if those marks actually convey the story you want to thousands or millions of people. You are the worst judge of your own work.

6) A writer’s experience in writing a story has nothing at all to do with the quality of the final product.

This kills most first and second stage writers, and hurts third level pros as well. The best way to see this is sit down and as fast as you can write a story, not looking back until you get to the end. Then print it out and have a first reader find the typos and such without giving feedback on the story, fix those mistakes and then get ready to mail it. At that moment your experience of writing the story will overwhelm you. The myths will flood in and you will be convinced that because you wrote the story fast and didn’t rewrite it, it will be crap.

On the flip side, you are in a section of a story or book and you struggle like crazy over it and it feels like writing it was like going to the dentist. You found yourself avoiding it and standing in front of the sink doing dishes to avoid writing the scene. When it is done, you are convinced it is crap.

But alas, it might be in both cases, or it might not be in both cases. Your experience writing the words have nothing to do with the final quality of the writing. As Neil Gaiman said, “It should matter, but it doesn’t.” If you start letting the experience of the writing influence you on what you do with your fiction, you are doomed.

No two writers work the same.

Laura Resnick and I are both long-term stage-four professionals. We know how to do this stuff and we know our own methods. Laura knows how to rewrite in a number of drafts holding creativity at the same time. I know how to cycle and finish in one draft. We both produce clean manuscripts. And we both do “fix-mistake” final drafts.

If you talk to a hundred other long term professional fiction writers, you will find there is no one “right way” of doing anything. We are all different.

Where Laura and I have a difference is in what to tell newer writers, the writers who don’t know how to rewrite. That’s just opinion and both of us are valid. Not the same opinion, but both come from our experiences.

So, that said, here is my take (my opinion) on what I think new writers should do to advance their craft and find their own way.

1) Do not rewrite at all past a fix draft. If a new writer doesn’t rewrite will they produce a sellable story after a “fix-mistake” draft? Maybe, but not likely.  Will a new writer produce a sellable story with five rewrites? Never. For the reasons I stated above. They don’t know how to rewrite in creative voice, don’t know story, and will take what little is original out of the story. So I suggest that in the early years new writers follow Heinlein’s suggestion and not rewrite. It’s why he wrote them down and why they have worked for many writers over the years.

2) I am NOT saying turn in a flawed manuscript. Fix the typos a trusted first reader finds. But let the story you wrote in a creative white heat stand. It will show your real voice, your real talent, and then after you get a bunch of words and experience and learning under your belt, you will find which method works best for you in the long run.

3) This trusting the voice will take extreme courage and very few writers can do it. From 1975 until 1982 I bought into all these myths solidly. I thought writing slow was writing well, I thought rewriting a dozen times had to be done. Of course I was a stage two writer and had no idea what I was doing. Then I started reading how long term professionals did it. Not what they said in public, but how they actually did it. And besides a clean-up fix-typos draft, I stopped rewriting and I started selling within one year. I learned to trust my own creative voice because my critical voice didn’t know crap about writing anything that would sell.

So check in with yourself. If you are not selling and you are rewriting, try sending out your stories with only the typos fixed. It will take a vast amount of courage. To do that you will have to overcome decades of English teachers and myths.

In the early years of writing trust Heinlein and his five simple rules of writing. He knew what he was talking about.

Besides, you can always start rewriting later if you really want.

When you know what you are doing.

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Copyright 2010 Dean Wesley Smith
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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

This myth kills careers, this myth stops thousands and thousands of book sales, this myth destroys careers.

And it’s just stupid, even though the myth seems to have a logical base in publishing.

Out of the mouth of top professionals this myth spouts all the time in one form or another, and usually with the best of intentions. And it has for as long as I have been in this business.

But lately, with the advent of the slush-reading lower-level agents, this myth has taken on deadly consequences for many writers. Why? Because they believe it.

So as I do in these chapters, let me take a look at the origin of this myth first.

Actually, the origin is simple. It came about because editors and agents and publishers want to make an easy sale.

Yes, editors sell books as well. They sell a book they love to their publisher, they sell the book to a sales force, and they ultimately are responsible for selling a book to readers. Books that are different, that don’t fit in what has been done before, are very, very difficult sales for editors and publishers and always have been.

And it has been proven that if a reader likes a certain type of book, they will look for that type of book.

Now remember, publishers need so many books per month in this churn of book lists, so they have to find books to buy, and when they can find an easy-sell book, it makes their job easier.

And it’s human nature to want to have your job be easier.

Of course, easy-sell books are usually pretty flat. (Not always, but usually.) They are often following a trend. The books tend to do little if anything new, which is why they are easy sells. Another book bought by a more gutsy editor has already paved the way. Easy-sell books are also easy to promote. “If you liked ‘X Book’ you’re going to love ‘X Book Same.’” Easy sell.

Now understand, I wrote a ton of easy-sell books. Media books such as Star Trek have a pretty set audience a publisher can depend on. So when Pocket Books came to me to write some Star Trek novels, they knew exactly what the book would sell and so did I. Easy, no thought on the publisher’s part. What was a hard-sell book(s) was Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. It took John Ordover years of fighting to get that series going and the fact that Pocket Books kept it going for ten years was not because of sales, but reasons of relationships with readers and Paramount.

Interestingly enough, over the history of publishing, the really monster books, the ones that people talk about and remember for decades, were not easy-sell books. Often they would have fifty or more rejections before finding an editor willing to work for the book and a publisher took a chance. Then when the book became a hit it was called new and fresh and readers loved it.

And then that fresh idea, fresh book would spawn (like a bad horror movie) thousands of “easy sell” books. But no one has made much of a long career writing only easy-sell books, because the target just keeps moving. One day one topic is hot, the next day the next topic is hot. As a writer, if you try to chase that “hot topic easy sell” thinking, you are lost in short order.

But then comes editors and agents sitting on panels at writer’s conferences telling new writers what they are looking for, what’s selling, what isn’t selling. In all honest truth, as an editor, I didn’t know what I wanted to buy until I read it.

And as an editor for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds for ten years, I constantly told writers I hated the character “Q” from Next Generation. But I always ended up buying a “Q” story because some writer wrote one so well, with such a fun twist, that I couldn’t not buy it.

Attempting to write what is hot isn’t a new trend. It has been around since the beginning of this business. And the myth that you need to write what is hot, what is selling is as deadly today as it was fifty years ago.

So why is this myth so deadly?

The answer to that question is back in the writer’s office. Each writer is different. Every chapter in this book I have been pounding that simple fact home.

Every writer is different.

And what makes your books interesting to readers is YOU. I have also warned about taking the YOU out of your work over and over in these chapters as well. You can’t see or hear your voice because to you it sounds dull because you hear it all the time.

And your ideas might seem dull because guess why? They are yours. They are as unique as you are, as how you write the ideas down.

But then you go trying to imitate some other writer, try to write what is “hot” because some editor or agent told you that is what is selling. So what do you do? You take the YOU out of your work and it becomes mundane and just like everything else and won’t sell.

A SIMPLE RULE: In fiction, sameness and dullness do not sell.

Yet when a new writer hears an editor or agent tell them what they are “looking for” in books, the young writer goes home and attempts to imitate the book the editor said they are looking for. They create nothing unique, nothing new, nothing of themselves. They write the same boring old crap that has already been done to death.

So How Do You Solve This Problem?

Simple: Kick all the editor and agent voices out of your writing office and write what makes you passionate or angry or excited. Or as Stephen King has said, “Write what scares hell out of you.”

Some basic guidelines on how to do this:

1) Never talk about your story with anyone ahead of time. Their ideas, unless you are very experienced, will twist the story into partially their story.

2) For heaven’s sake, never, ever let anyone read a work-in-progress. Totally stupid on so many levels I can’t even begin to address. If you want to collaborate, make sure you have a collaboration agreement, otherwise, keep your work to yourself until finished.

3) Never think of markets or selling when writing. Enjoy the process of writing and creating story. When the story is finished, then have someone read it and tell you what you wrote and then market it.

4) Follow Heinlein’s Rules, especially #3 about never rewriting. In other words, fix mistakes and then mail it and trust your own voice, your own work. Never rewrite to anyone’s suggestions, especially a workshop. (And never use the word “polish” in front of me. When you take a unique piece of work and polish it, you make it look like all the others.)

5) When an editor says they are looking for a certain type of book, ignore it. They are just trying to be helpful to all the new writers looking for shortcuts to getting published. There are no shortcuts. When agents say what they think will sell to editors, just laugh. They have less of a clue what will sell than anyone in the business bar none.

6) Get passionate and protective of what you write. It’s your voice, your work, for heaven’s sake, grow a backbone and stand up for it. Sure, in the first million words you are going to need all sorts of help with craft and storytelling issues. Go learn that and take it in and study and practice and get feedback. But don’t rewrite it beyond fixing typos and mistakes. When you write a story or novel, trust yourself and mail it. Protect it from all who want you to write what they think you should have written.

So, in summary, I am telling you flatly and bluntly to ignore any advice from any person about what is selling, what is hot, what you should write.

Write your own stories.

And if you do write your own stories and believe in them and mail them to editors, you may be the next big thing and then thousands and thousands of writers will be trying to imitate you.

And they will fail, because there is only one of you.

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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

Before I hit the “away from this computer” road, a new post from another writer who has learned about agents. This person is very smart, a fine writer, and is learning quickly. The link is the first of three posts about her three agents, all before she turned 19.

Got to go read this one, folks.

http://hannahmosk.blogspot.com/2010/08/agent-story-part-1.html?spref=tw

Michael A. Stackpole just posted a fantastic blog about the nine provisions that he thinks must be in a digital rights sales contract.

And let me say this: I 100% AGREE.

With every word.

And all nine provisions.

As soon as I get done with a deadline I’m pounding on, I’ll post more about this area that is growing for writers, and how to figure what to sell. And more importantly, for how much.

But for the moment, go read Mike’s nine provisions and his comments around them and then we can talk.

Don’t delay. Read it. 9 Must-Have Clauses for Digital Rights Contracts.

And for heaven’s sake, just as you do here, read the comments after his post. They are very good as well.

(Why are you still here? Go read that article. Print it out, put it with your contracts files. It may save you a ton of problems in the future.)

Great job, Mike! Thanks!

Yesterday  I got a nice note from Joshua Bilmes about these chapters.

As I have said before, I knew some top agents were reading these chapters and I hoped that a few of them would take the lead in some changes that need to happen. I did not know Joshua was one of the agents stopping by.

Now, understand, I am not saying everyone should run to Joshua here, so please don’t take his courage to speak out on these topics as a sign you can all flood him with submissions. I’m sure Joshua has a full list and finds new clients in his own fashion.

But I can say this: In all my years of being in publishing, I haven’t heard a cross word about Joshua, and I know he’s one of the old style top agents working who really believes in taking care of his clients. And I have always enjoyed Joshua’s company personally over the last two decades.

Okay, that said, now go read the post on Joshua’s blog about these chapters, then come back. Read it first before going any farther.

http://brilligblogger.blogspot.com/2010/08/why.html

Okay, let me talk about a few of Joshua’s comments one at a time, again thanking him for the nice comments about these chapters and also his fairness and thought. I will try to do the same and only allow the same in the comments section. No horror stories in this discussion, just discussion, all right, gang?

Now, granted, in some of these Cows posts I felt a little angry about some story or some event that happened to a friend, and also Laura and I would be pretty harsh in the comments at times talking about agents in general and forgetting to exclude the good ones. But let me be clear right here, there are top, honest agents like Joshua, who are great people and do some writers great jobs. Not all top agents are good for everyone, and not all top agents are honest. But a large number of agents are like Joshua, a top agent who is honest and hardworking.

And also, remember, both Laura and I have said over and over that the agent model is a fine model if you understand what you are walking into and handle it as a boss and with saneness of business practice. And we have been clear that every writer is different. We just want writers to take control of their own careers. So keep that in mind, even though at times when looking back over these agent chapters, there may seem to be slanted anti-agent. They are not, just anti-stupid-practice.

Now to some of Joshua’s great points.

1) Joshua said: “One of the posts talks about the “hundreds and hundreds” of scam literary agents. Which would be almost all of them.”

Well, no, not really. At one point a year-or-so ago I tried to do a rough count of the number of agents I could just find names for from all the agents inside William Morris all the way down to the single agent agencies and I stopped counting when I hit 500. And I didn’t begin to find them all. (And come to think about it, I forgot to look in the back of the Writer’s Digest magazine, the place where many scams hang out.)

At one writer’s conference I attended, there were 32 agents on the guest list. So I have a hard time believing that one-sixth of all agents were at that one conference that weekend. Not likely. I would wager that RWA has a tally of just romance agents that number in the hundreds and hundreds. So I stand by my statement that there could be a couple hundred scam agents out there. Easily. There are a huge number of writers.

2) Joshua said: “But perhaps as important, the posts often have enough of a kernel of real truth which is good and valuable and important for people to know, that I don’t think anyone should just dismiss what Dean has to say out of hand.”

Thanks, that is very much appreciated coming from a top agent such as Joshua. And he pointed out a number of places he agree with basic concepts of what I was talking about. Again appreciated. And also he said nice comments about the workshops and Kris and Pulphouse. I’m just glad some people remember Pulphouse. (grin)

3) Joshua said: “And for all the good points Dean makes, his underlying dislike of literary agents blinds him to the fact that the community of arts and letters and culture is as a whole a better place for writers where more writers make more money than they would otherwise.”

I agree with the second part about how writing is a wonderful place and the culture is a wonderful place. I agree completely.

I just disagree that I have an underlying dislike of agents. I actually don’t (even though at times I’m sure it sounded that way with me trying too hard to shout out a point). I have had three top agents in my career, all did me a great job. I had zero issue.

However, having that good experience has given me the ability to sit back without emotion and watch the practices of agents in dealing with hundreds of other writers around me, including my wife and many young professionals who have come through our workshops. And it is that observation that got me going on the practices of the bad agents. And the new breed of agents coming in who think they are the boss and control writers.

Laura Resnick on the other hand has had only few good experiences with agents, so we made a great tag team at times. And I’m sure we sounded strident at times, but honestly, we both hope to just inform writers so that they can make decisions, whatever that decision may be.

Now, granted, for me, there are some practices about the agents in general I have come to hate, such as the practice of handling all the money and paperwork before the writer sees it. If that one practice alone was somehow changed, (which I understand it will never be and the reasons why) most scam agents would vanish. And that would help even more the community of the arts that I love so much, and clearly, Joshua does as well.

So my strident attitude about a few practices made it seem like I dislike agents in general. I don’t, not in the slightest, at least the top ones, the honest ones such as Joshua. I loathe with a passion anyone who will take advantage of a young writer’s dreams to make money. And the lower scum agents and book doctors do just that. And a few of those scum have well-know agencies that draw in and cater to the young writers.

4) Joshua said: “Would the world be better if we all did our own appliance repairs, hemming, and taxes? Of course not. And the world wouldn’t be better for writers without literary agents. Most authors I know just aren’t, at heart, Dean Wesley Smith.”

Oh, trust me, I would never want anyone to have my career. I think Kris just shuddered at the idea that there would be more than one of me. She has enough trouble with just me. (grin)

And trust me, I do understand that most writers need a ton of help. It is why we teach the workshops Joshua mentioned. And thus why I have never said that agents should be shut out of the process. I have told writers to do one of three things: Get help from an agent, a literary lawyer, or do it yourself. Very few writers, as Joshua said, will have the ability to do it themselves, especially early on in a career.

I do worry about the agent model in the coming changes in publishing, but that’s another topic.

5) Joshua said: “They (many writers) don’t have his skill and talent and passion for adding so much of the agent skill set to their own repertoire. They want to write and let somebody else handle the negotiations and the paperwork and keep track of the markets here and abroad and the many other tasks that fall to competent literary agents, and in the totality of things authors are better for having a good agent do the agenting, while they do the writing. Dean is strongly DIY on this topic, thus he writes with a negative undercurrent so fierce that it drowns what could be a more constructive message.”

Well, frighteningly enough, I’m going to agree with this point. To a degree. I have been forcefully advocating a belief system that states “The writer must learn the business they are going to work in.” So yes, I have pushed the Do It Yourself mentality maybe too far at times. Granted.

But sadly, those of us who have been around for twenty years and more are the writers who learned the business, and over the years I’ve watched hundreds of writers, many of them my friends, drop away because they didn’t want to learn it. I’m not saying that writers need to be me, or Laura, or Nora Roberts, or James Patterson, or any of the other writers who know this business. You can have a fine ten-book (or so) career with someone taking care of you. Happens all the time. But if you plan on a long career, you have better start learning everything you can, including the agent’s job, from day one. You don’t have to do the agent’s job, just know what they are doing so you can understand and be in control of your own work. That is my belief system, I freely admit.

Joshua is famous for taking top care of his writers in thousands of ways. It’s what makes him such a top agent, actually, because does exactly as he describes.

But my rebuttal has two points to it.

#1) How do writers, who don’t want to learn, who just want to write and not learn the business where their money is coming from, find a top agent like Joshua and how do they tell apart an agent like Joshua and a scam agent in the Bernie Madoff mode without learning? Seems that luck for them has to play a huge part, and I believe in being prepared because luck favors the prepared.

#2) What happens to all the clients who are being taken care of by an agent when the agent gets hurt or retires or leaves and those writers are left with no real understanding of the business and no one to take care of them? I have seen that happen far too many times already to writers, even before this current business climate of publishing. And what normally happens is that the writer’s careers are done.

So on this one point I’m going to have to take issue. I believe that if I go to an auto mechanic, sure I don’t expect to know what they are doing down to the detail. But if I own and run the garage the auto mechanic works in, I damned well better know what my employee is doing. That’s just common business sense. And that’s my belief system. Writers own the work and hire the agent.

What Joshua is describing is someone who wants to have a business, but knows nothing about it and has no time or desire to learn it, so hires others to run and make decisions about the business. Sure, writing is an art, but when the art is done and created, the writer needs to become a business person.

Anyone who expects to make hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions over a career, and not learn and understand the business they are in is just asking for problems (in my opinion).

So I’m not letting writers off the hook on that one. If your goal is to be the top in your field, then I disagree with Joshua. A writer should expect to have to do the learning. And fine, hire good help, but learn the business and have no expectation that you will be taken care of your entire life.

I just thank heavens my doctor doesn’t think that way. (grin) Or the guy who owns the garage where I take my car.

Again, I want to thank Joshua Bilmes for the great comments and for giving another side of this. And I agree, I think it would be wonderful as time allows to have great discussions about some of these points. I hope Joshua and I can do that. I would love to keep learning from him.

Thanks, Joshua!

(Again, folks, comments are welcome, but keep them civil and no agent horror stories in this one. Discussion time now.)

What in the world do I mean books were produce? Well, they have been. And before you go shouting at me because I just insulted your golden book and said it was a banana, let me try to explain what I mean.

For a long time, since about the time of the First World War, the release of a book has been treated as an event. The book would have a set release date, and all the push and promotion would be aimed at selling as many copies as possible in the first week or few weeks of the release date. (Bestseller lists are built on velocity of sales, meaning how many books sell in one week, not how many books have sold overall.)

For a number of decades up until the 1960s, with a moderate number of books being produced, this never really caused many problems. Authors’ backlists stayed in print and readers could find new copies of books to buy long after their release date.

Then about thirty plus years ago this started to change until finally the book as event reached seriously large status with the release of the last three Harry Potter books.

In the last twenty years, publishers with computer tracking and stores with computer tracking took the importance of book as event a little too far. Books that were what are called “Word of Mouth” books, or slow builds, never really stood a chance in this thinking. If you didn’t find a book in the first week or the first month, look in a used bookstore or lately in a used store online to find it. Because no regular store would still have it.

And author backlists were a thing of the past unless you were a brand name bestseller.

YOUR BOOK IS PRODUCE IN TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING

Now, understand, in a grocery store, produce is put out to be sold quickly and then is replaced before it spoils.

Over the last twenty plus years publishers and bookstores put out books and then yanked them quickly as if a book would spoil in a week or two. They treated books exactly the same as produce. And guess what, just as with produce in a grocery story, if a book didn’t sell, it was tossed away, destroyed.

This practice has become so bad that often a book will be deemed out of print within a month of the release date because it didn’t have the orders the sales force was expecting. Or it didn’t have the number of projected sales in the first week or so. Of course, it won’t officially go out of print until all the warehouse stock is gone, but it will have a do-not-reprint order on the book from almost week one.

But the one thing modern publishers and big bookstore have forgotten:

Books don’t spoil.

So why exactly did this mentality come about? Shelf space and a huge number of books being produced, that’s why. To meet their bottom lines and pay the huge overhead of New York, publishers have to churn out a lot of books. And for decades the number of books being published has gone up.

And that shelf space in stores has become a premium, paid for by publishers with a lot of extra money being paid if a store will just put the book near the front door for a few days. Or on the shelf end cap. All common and all focused on the idea that a book has a very, very short life.

But books don’t spoil.

And readers don’t read under pressure.

—Often a reader will find an author’s book in a used store years and years after it was first published and then want more of that author’s work.

—Often a book or a series will have a slow build. It takes time for word-of-mouth on a series or a book to be spread, which used to be the top way a book would build to a bestseller list before twenty years ago. But with publishers thinking of books as produce, by the time a word-of-mouth build can happen, the readers can’t find the book. It’s out of print if it didn’t sell well. And it certainly isn’t taking up any shelf space in a bookstore, so even if it is in print, a reader has to special order it.

For example, Bantam Books put my wife’s 4th book of her popular Fey series out of print almost instantly, yet continued to publish #5-7 over the next three years. And of course, readers blamed Kris for not being able to find the 4th book in the series. Stupid on Bantam’s part, since the series was growing, but the company killed it. No logical reason other than thinking that books were produce and #4 didn’t hit some unknown number somewhere in some computer.

(Note: Great news. Kris again controls the rights to all seven of the Fey books and WMG Publishing will be reissuing them in both electronic format and trade paper editions right up to the day that Kris releases the new 8th book of the Fey, the first book in the Places of Power series next summer. Thats right, all seven of the Fey books and a new one will all be available at the same time. That has all of us Fey fans excited. Watch her site for details.)

What Has Changed in this New World of Publishing?

For New York traditional publishing, nothing at all has changed. Nothing.

Let me say that again. Nothing. The way I described books being treated two years ago is how a book is treated today and there isn’t a thing an author can do to change that if you sell your book to New York traditional publishing.

But then from seemingly out of the blue comes this wonderful new world of electronic publishing and easy and cheap print-on-demand publishing that anyone can now access. But that alone would not have been enough to make any real changes. Writers have been able to publish their own books for decades.

The big change is with the readers and the electronics available to the readers. With Kindles and iPads and the other epub book devices and smart phones, readers in this new world are quickly becoming used to getting a book NOW!

If a reader hears of a new author they want to read, or finish a book they liked by an author, they go to their computer or their Kindle or their iPad or their smart phone and look to see what the author has available. And if it happens to be a book in the same series they liked, they buy it instantly for their Kindle or iPad or Sony Reader or order they order it at once over Amazon.com and other places in the paper format to be delivered in a day or so.

Readers who never ever thought of books as produce are now being allowed to find authors and books easier with this new world of electronic communication and reading. And that’s what has changed.

Wow, as you might imagine, this is this messing with the minds of the fine and fairly smart folks in traditional publishing. When you have had all your focus, your entire business model built on selling produce, changing to selling something that doesn’t ever spoil is difficult to imagine at best.

Changing any large business model is difficult. Changing it fast is almost impossible.

And right now the changes are happening so fast, it’s hard for just about anyone to keep up. But the problem is that the changes are NOT happening inside of publishing. They are happening outside of publishing, in the distribution and electronics world. And there lies the problem. It’s the readers who have suddenly forced this change.

I call large publishers huge cruise ships, cutting through the sea at top speed. They have only had to make minor course corrections for almost one hundred years now. Suddenly there are all kinds of problems ahead and big ships at full speed do not change course quickly. This thinking of books as produce is the main reason they cannot change quickly.

Everything they do, their deadlines, their sales force, their printing schedules, their promotion, their warehousing, everything is set to having a book hit suddenly and then vanish, to be replaced by another and another and another.

This is called the “churn” in the publishing business.

It’s this “churn” of one book after another that makes a publisher money in the margin. It is how every single aspect of their companies are set up. Their business model is set on the churn.

Now comes electronic publishing and reading into this mix and churn doesn’t work. Books don’t spoil. But traditional publishers can’t imagine a business model without the churn, so for the longest time, traditional publishers have fought to do one of two things.

1) Keep the books they are publishing out of electronic versions to preserve the value of their more expensive hardbacks.

2) Delay or price very high the electronic books to also not compete against their hardbacks.

In essence, they have been treating electronic books just like their paper produce books. And that thinking is just flat wrong, which is why so many smart people are saying that traditional publishing is in trouble.

Books don’t spoil.

Over the last six months, traditional publishing is losing both fights. Readers are just flat demanding the books either be reasonably priced or they are not going to buy them.

So that rebellion by readers causes another set of problems inside traditional publishing. The readers won’t buy expensive electronic books, so the feedback loop in traditional publishing is that electronic books don’t sell well.

And the authors who see the minor royalties from electronic books on their statements coming through from their publisher or from silly places like Fictionwise say that electronic books aren’t worth the fight. And thus authors who are steeped in the traditional publishing route think all this electronic publishing is just all hype and are ignoring it.

To those inside traditional publishing, the data (the sacred sales number) just isn’t there yet because they still think that every book is produce, thus it must be priced high to return the correct investment over the correct time.

But take out the time factor (the produce factor) and the accounting becomes different, very different. Instead of saying a book must make back its entire investment in two months, imagine accounting that says a book can earn money for twenty years, growing in sales every year.

A completely different business model.

So if you wonder why you don’t see quicker movement on all this from New York and why New York published electronic books are often priced over $9.99, now you know. There is a nasty feedback loop working for them at the moment.

And so to a degree, I believe that traditional New York publishing is going to have a very bumpy road in the next few years and that many of the large ships of publishing aren’t even trying to turn yet. Oh, oh… They all won’t hit icebergs and go down as some are saying, but there is going to be a lot of damage as the old produce model is replaced slowly.

Books don’t spoil.

So what’s happening outside of traditional publishing?

Basically, a huge wave is happening. Many, many authors are figuring this new model out. Many, many small publishers are figuring this out, publishers who can turn their ships quickly. Many small publishers are springing into life to fill this void with a new business model and help writers.

I have almost 150 SOLD short stories and my wife has a bunch more than that. What has happened to these stories in the past? They were treated like produce, of course. They were published in a certain issue of a magazine or an anthology and then the book or magazine issue became a relic sitting on a dusty shelf. The story, which was not produce, was basically for all intents and purposes, gone, inside a product thought of as produce.

Notice, I just brought back from the dead a number of my stories here on my web site and electronically through the new start-up company WMG Publishing. Kris is doing the same. Stories not seen outside of a used bookstore in decades are now coming to a brand new group of readers.

Is this good for authors? Oh, my, what a stupid question I just asked, huh? This is a gold mine for authors. Readers can now find my work, not just the new stuff that’s out this week, but all my work. By this time next year I hope to have every story I still think is worthwhile up and available. Stories that have not earned me a penny in twenty years are now earning regular money.

And I am finding new readers.

I will also republish a bunch of my novels. And Kris is doing the same. As I said earlier, not only can all the fans of the Fey books get them this fall and winter in both electronic and trade paper editions, but it is now worthwhile for Kris, after over a decade, to finally write the next three Fey novels, the Places of Power series. Without this new world of reader-driven publishing, no New York traditional produce publisher would touch the series because to them it had already spoiled and been tossed away.

But then, traditional New York publishers have been ignoring how readers really read and find book and new authors and new series for decades now. To readers, books were never produce. They were always something to be found and discovered and read when the time was right for the reader.

Electronic publishing and the new model for smaller publishers is finally treating books like readers want them to be treated. Readers need to be able to find any book they want at any time of the day or night.

Books are not produce to be tossed away because they didn’t sell quickly enough. And finally the New World of Publishing allows that to happen.

And as an old time writer, I haven’t been this excited in thirty years about writing new stuff. It’s a great time to be a writer. Finally our work will no longer be treated as produce and any reader who wants to find a story will be able to find it. Even twenty or thirty years from now.

And eventually, after a lot of turmoil, New York traditional publishing will be forced to change its business model and realize one simple fact:

Books don’t spoil.

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Copyright 2010 Dean Wesley Smith
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Because of the new world and technology, my magic bakery full of my writing got a lot more valuable lately and this article is now part of the inventory of that bakery.

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

Even if you can’t afford to donate, please feel free to pass this along to others who might get some help from it.

Thanks, Dean