All subscribers to this 2012/2013 challenge will end as of this month. And I am working madly to get caught up by the first week or so of July. I’m gaining on it. (grin) There should be, as I stated in the challenge, one hundred books, or close, when I’m done.

So these eight books are shipping out to subscribers now. These are the February books. With luck by the end of the week I’ll have March eight books, followed shortly by April and then May books. The final batch for June will head out in the first or second week of July or so.

And yes, all of these are in paper at $4.99 and electronic at $2.99 at your favorite online retailer such as Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Sony, Smashwords, and so on.

And yes, I am doing all the work on these.

February books shipping now:

Some of the March books shipping this coming weekend:

David Farland did a balanced post on the question of when to be an indie writer or when to sell to traditional publishing. And as usual, I agree with much of what Dave said, although I could quibble on the thrillers. But I don’t feel he went far enough by a long ways. And he didn’t take into account modern publishing contracts for beginning writers. So read his post first and then read on here.

http://www.davidfarland.net/writing_tips/?a=228

Dave broke apart the idea that some genres are better than others for indie publishing. He’s right, sort of. But the other genres are not bad for it either. I want to make that clear. He sort of left the opinion that indie publishing in some genres is bad. Some genres just have more electronic sales than others is all.

And if you are at the level of David Farland or any of the other writers he mentioned (all friends of mine as well), you have clout to negotiate a novel contract to get out of some of the horrid stuff publishers are putting in smaller-book contracts.

But most writers these days don’t have that kind of clout. I don’t.

And almost no new writer does. So it comes down to a choice of 1) Saying no to a contract with horrid terms or 2) taking a contract and losing all rights to your book forever for $5,000.00 or less. Without clout, you can’t negotiate anything of value.

Just to be clear…

Your clout is basically measured by the desire of the publisher for the project (or you as an author).

If the publisher really wants the project and you have other choices, (either indie or other publishers who want you or the project) you have the “clout” or ability to get terms in contracts changed.

The problem is that for most writers, the myth of being published by a traditional publisher is very strong, and agents are so bad, that a new writer with a first offer will sign just about any contract, giving the publisher basically all rights forever to their work. And worse, the new writer often signs a contract that restricts what they can write going into the future.

I don’t know about Dave, but Kris and I have seen a couple dozen of these horrid, lower-level contracts from our writing friends and students in just the last year or so. And no chance in hell would I have signed a one of them.

So who really understands the choice a writer must make with a contract?

Agents? Not a chance. Agents work for publishers these days (or worse yet, have become publishers themselves) and most agents have no legal training to even understand a modern contract and what it means.

Your Editor? Not a chance. See above.

Your local attorney? Not a chance. A local attorney wouldn’t even understand half of your publishing contract.

Your family or writer’s group? They are the worst, actually. They will push you to sign with all the congratulations, not understanding that you are signing away all your rights to your book and possibly future books. So you will be pressured to sign because you announced the sale before you saw the contract.

Will you have a clear understanding on your own? No. The myths are powerful. Far more than you ever realize until faced with the decision to sign or not sign. The pressure to think you “can live with it” is intense. So without real help, you will sign.

Your only hope for real help in understanding the contract you are offered is a national publishing IP attorney. And then the chances are the myths will overwhelm you anyway. You will think that hiring an attorney is too expensive or even if you did get one, you have no clout to change the terms of the contract. But at least a good publishing IP attorney will help you understand what you are giving away.

Yeah, it really is that ugly.

Young writers going into traditional publishing these days at low levels are screwed, plain and simple. It flat doesn’t matter which genre.

And that’s not even talking about what will happen on the second or third book when the first book doesn’t sell to expectations. That’s another level of ugly.

So in 2013, what is the system around the above “ugliness” if you want to have a book traditionally published?

Do both indie and traditional.

But not like David suggested in his column. I am suggesting you do both for every book in every genre.

Let me say this again. Do both with every book and right from the start.

Read the fine print in David’s column and notice that when one of his friends put up a book indie, traditional publishers came begging.

When a traditional publisher comes to you, hat in hand, begging for your book, you have the clout to get a good contract, good terms, and a good advance.

When you go begging to a publisher, hat in hand, they control because you have no clout and they don’t much care.  In 2013, that means you will be screwed. You may not know it for years, but you will be.

When you send a manuscript to an editor or an agent in hopes they will take you on, just imagine yourself standing there at the door, cup in hand, begging. And there is a very old cliche. “Beggars can’t be choosers.” You take what you are given or don’t take it. Ugly.

So my suggestion now, here in 2013, is to stop submitting unpublished novel manuscripts in any form to traditional publishers or agents.

Period.

Stop begging, folks. Stop knocking at their doors with your tin cup in hand hoping for someone to notice you.

Gain some pride.

Stop. Simply stop.

(I can hear it now…But…? But…? But…?)

What do I do?

You really want your novel to be published in traditional publishing??? You really think they can push more books for you into stores? You want to use them to increase your indie sales on your other books.

Fine, I’ll go with that. So what do you do?

Stop begging them to help you and gain control of your own career first.

No one respects a beggar, but business people do respect other business people.

So do the following…

1) Keep writing and continuing to learn how to write better stories.  Chances are your first or second or third written novel won’t be of any interest to anyone but a few family members and scattered readers. You must first learn how to tell a story at a professional level.

(Yeah, yeah, you worked hard on that first novel, rewrote it a dozen times, it has to be gold. Right? More than likely not. Move on and write the next book after indie publishing the first book. Keep working on learning how to tell a story.)

2) Learn how to indie publish your work. That means these days getting it both into electronic markets around the world and paper markets around the world. There are six billion blogs and articles on this, and I wrote some of them. How to get started is up under the “Think Like a Publisher” tab above.

3) Learn how to recognize or create good, professional covers. Learn how to write professional blurbs for your books. Make sure your books are proofed. And so on.

Yeah, there are learning curves. Get over it and get learning.

4) Keep writing, keep learning, and keep getting more work indie published.

So what about traditional publishing? When can I do that?

You are basically submitting your work for editors to see the moment you indie publish it.

If they are not coming to you, then you don’t have anything they want just yet. (You would have gotten rejected for years in the old system. Making a few bucks every month now is much, much better than those rejections.)

But you are a writer in a hurry. Fine. (I never met one that isn’t in a hurry for some reason.)

So here is what you do to make sure editors know your books exist right now:

1) Make 110% sure that your book is professional-looking. That your blurb and back-cover blurbs are top rate. That your interior layout looks professional.

2) Write a professional cover letter. In the letter you don’t beg, you inform them of the fact that your book is available and that it might fit their line.

3) Send the cover letter, a paper copy of your book, and a #10 SASE for an answer to an editor who edits a line of books similar to what you have published.

4) Keep writing more books.

If they contact you with an offer, take your sales numbers for a year on the book and multiply that by ten years. That should be the minimum advance you would accept. And them remember you don’t need them because your book is already out and selling.

Saying no should be easy under these circumstances. They must bring to the table something that will help you and your publishing business. And they must be willing to negotiate on contract terms.

Will traditional publishers do this? Yes. It’s happening all the time now.

Can they bring value to your publishing work? Sometimes, yes. But it will depend on the project.

Summary:

Stop sending unsolicited novel manuscripts to book editors or agents. That is so last century.

Indie publish your work first, when it is finished.

Traditional book editors will see your book if it is something they find interesting. If you want an editor or a dozen editors to know about it quickly, send them a copy of the finished paper book. (If you want, put a code to a free electronic copy of the book in the cover letter, but still send the paper copy as well.)

Don’t expect responses, but do send the SASE. The goal of sending the books is to let editors know you are there. If there was anything remotely close in your book that might fit their line, they will watch for future books from you online, through your web site and other sources.

Then, when you have  a product (a book) a traditional editor thinks will make them some money and fit their line of books, you have some clout to negotiate a decent contract and some income to understand what the book would make for you if you didn’t sell it to a traditional publisher.

In other words, as I have been talking about for a long time here: You will have choices.

So stop going to agents and editors with your little tin cup in one hand and your unpublished manuscript in the other, begging them toss you a pittance while they rob you blind.

Gain some self-respect.

Take your career into your own hands and come into this new world.

That way, when a traditional publisher wants your work, you will be ready and can be a business partner in the project instead of a beggar at the door looking for crumbs.

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Copyright © 2013 Dean Wesley Smith

Cover art copyright Philcold/Dreamstime
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I went through all of these stages in one way or another to get to this point, every darned one of them it seems.

Warning, this post might make you angry depending on where you are at in the process. Just saying…

http://kriswrites.com/2013/06/12/the-business-rusch-the-stages-of-an-indie-writer/

Yes, I have written many other thrillers over the years, but this one was sort of the start of it all.

For those of you who believe in the myths, this is a book I can honestly say it took me years to get to this point. And I do mean years. I started this book in 2005.  I’m damned happy to see it finally coming out.

I’ll have more about it later during the summer and fall as the publication date gets closer, but since I now have an Advanced Reading Copy in my hands, it has become real and I wanted to show off the cover (not one I did…)

And yes, this is the book that a few of you watched happen one long summer back in 2005 or 2006. (grin)

Also, I am very pleased with a story I wrote for Fiction River: How to Save the World. That book will be available in about a week. John Helfers edited and I wrote him a story called “Neighborhoods” that looks at a possible future solution to all the gun violence in the cities.

But alas, as I warned, that bit of fun will have to be postponed. I still have deadlines for two stories that can’t be part of that process because they need to be published first in the anthologies I’m writing them for. Also, I’m pushing hard to get last year’s challenge met and the books out to all the very patient subscribers.

So looks like I’m going to have to push the “Writing So You Can See” back until sometime in July or early August. As soon as a week or so opens up, I’ll shout and give the idea a run. Stay tuned.

As I said a week or so back, I’m going to be madly scrambling to catch up with the challenge from last July. Before I announce a weird and strange and head-shaking new challenge for the next year or so. (grin)

So these books are shipping out to subscribers now. And in a week another eight. That will be January and February books. With luck in another week I’ll have March eight books, followed shortly by April and then May books. The final batch will head out in the first week of July or so.

And yes, all of these are in paper at $4.99 and electronic at $2.99 and all are short stories.

And yes, I am doing all the work on these.

January books shipping now:

Four of the February books shipping in a week:

A month ago, Kris and I announced we were shutting down Ella Distribution, an attempt on our part to build a distributor to indie bookstores for indie published books. We shut it down for a number of sound business reasons (that we both have talked about) just six months after we started it, and after we had poured a lot of money into it. Some commenters here were surprised that we announced the shut down in such a calm way. After all, it was a failure, right?

Well, yes and no. The business did not continue, which was a bummer, but wow did we learn a ton. And money spent for learning is never a waste in my opinion.

And I have talked a lot about how from 1974 until 1982, I was buried in the myths, afraid of failing so I rewrote everything, I hated and got angry at rejections, and I was turning my writing into something I hated.

Then I finally ran across Heinlein’s Rules. And those simple rules gave me permission to go back to the real person I was inside, not the fearful person, not the person afraid of failing, but instead the person who loved to take chances, and didn’t care much about failure. Those simple rules gave me the permission to focus only on learning by writing.

So as a way of helping readers of this blog understand the type of person I am, why I can take the risks, ignore the bad reviews and rejections, and fight through the down times, I want to tell you a short, but personal story that few know. I think it is illustrative of how the ability to just not fear failure is part of my nature, a nature that has allowed me to keep taking chances with writing and publishing.

And how that ability, my very nature, colors everything I write here.

The story begins in the early 1970s, after I had returned to college from playing professional golf , I was earning most of my school tuition and living expenses from playing on blackjack teams going into Vegas and Reno. (Yes, I tended bar a few nights a week and drove school bus in the mornings, but that wasn’t enough by a long ways to get through architecture and law school. And yet I came out debt free. Go figure. (grin))

One August, after finishing summer classes in architecture, the blackjack team planned to meet in Vegas. I caught a ride from the University of Idaho to Boise with a wonderful woman that would later become my first wife.  She dropped me at my mother’s house and the next day I flew out of Boise for Las Vegas. If memory served, the team played four full days before hitting our winnings goal in Vegas.

I had the hotel in Vegas put my suitcase (with some cash hidden in it) in a box and ship it back to school for me, then I wired the rest of my winnings, enough for a number of semesters of school tuition and living, back to myself at the University.

Then I caught a ride with another blackjack team member to Palm Springs to visit my dad and some old friends. All I had was a small backpack and about $200 dollars. I looked like a college student, although my hair was not much longer than I kept it during my golfing days. (I was still working part-time as a golf professional in the summer on some courses near the University.)

I then caught a ride with a friend over to LA to visit other friends, then up to San Francisco to see and stay with some friends there. Finally, after about nine days since leaving Boise, I decided to hitchhike the rest of the way back to Boise. It was summer, after all, and I had done it before.

By the time I had caught a couple rides to Reno, it was late in the evening. And getting out of Reno going east seemed to be difficult. I caught one ride with a jerk who dropped me out in the desert in the dark. Again, all I had was a light coat and a change of clothes in the backpack and a couple copies of new Richard Brautigan books I had found in San Francisco.

I was expecting a long, cold night sitting by the freeway, but luckily a wonderful farmer saw me and gave me a lift back into the lights of Reno. I grabbed a quick dinner, then realized I only had, after dinner, $22.00 and change left to get back to Boise, where I had left some money at my  mother’s house.

I didn’t have enough for a hotel room in any hotel I wanted to stay in.

So I went back out to the freeway, stuck my thumb out, and caught a ride with three great guys heading for Lovelock, Nevada, in an old Volkswagon van.  When they dropped me in Lovelock, (south of Winnemucca) it was about two in the morning.  I went into the only open hotel and casino on the main street of town and asked how much a room was. I really, really wanted a shower and some sleep. But rooms cost $45.00 and I couldn’t talk the guy down into giving me one for $20 for just a few hours.

So I wondered over into the small casino, bought myself a candy bar and a soda with the change I had, leaving me with $22.00. Then I stood against a pole and watched the only blackjack table going. A single-deck game with a sloppy dealer who didn’t shuffle well and only one drunk customer playing dollar chips sitting in the last chair.

The pit boss came over and talked to me after a bit. Friendly guy, so we talked about me headed back to school and that I had gotten road weary and needed a break. (I never told him I was hitchhiking. I let him think I was driving.) I seem to remember he had a kid going to college in Reno. It was that kind of conversation and he didn’t seem to mind me standing there. He was facing a long, boring night, and I was a distraction.

All the while we were talking, I was watching the table and the cards. And when the deck turned in the player’s favor after a bad shuffle and the drunk taking some of the bad cards off the top of the new shuffle, I shrugged at the pit boss, said I might as well spend something, before heading back out onto the road. I got out my last twenty bucks and sat down.

At that point the deck had gone to a dreamed-of level where I had about a 60% advantage on the house, which meant, in reality, I would win 6 out of 10 hands under normal conditions, played over a million hands. The dealer changed my last twenty into chips and I put five bucks on the line.

I lost the first hand, put out another five. The deck was even better now. (That means it was filled to the brim with face cards and aces.)

I won the next five or six hands in a row, doubling up on some of my bets and all the time laughing with the pit boss and talking about his kid. He had no clue I was counting the deck. When I had exactly seventy bucks and the dealer went to shuffle again, I pulled my winnings. “Oh second thought, I’m too tired to go any farther. I think I’ll get a room and get a few hours sleep before heading on.”

The pit boss laughed and told me that was a good and smart idea, gave me a chit that cut ten bucks off my room. I tipped him five, paid for the room, slept until eight, had a great breakfast and hit the road again, making it to my mom’s house outside of Boise by dark. And with more money then when I had left Reno.

I could have just as easily have lost $15 of that twenty, spent a cold night on the street, bought a light breakfast with the remaining money. That was the risk I took. But I had a skill and I understood the chances and the risks and I was willing to take the chance and the risk for the reward of a hotel room and a shower.

And once I finally applied that same attitude to my writing in 1982, after really understanding Heinlein’s Rules, I have had little or no problems. Sure, my career has crashed a couple of times, but I’ve also had fantastic years, one year alone I published fourteen novels. Sure, I’ve had books tank and bad reviews, but I’ve also had wonderful reviews and have sold over eight million copies of my books to wonderful readers. Sure, I’ve been rejected more times than I care to think about or count, but I’ve sold more stuff than I can almost count as well.

I’ve worked in publishing full time for over twenty-five years now.

When you step back and look at everything, the risk with this writing business is little, the choices are many, and the fun is great. I will write some great stories and some stinkers, I’m sure, as time goes on. But what does that matter? The readers will let me know one way or another. For me, now, what is important is having fun with the writing.

Failure, success, it’s all learning. All of it. And I welcome both, to be honest.

And why do you think I remember that incident way back in the early 1970s? Because even though I was risking a cold night on the street, I was having fun with the risk.

Just as I have fun every time I type in a new title and start a new story that I have no idea where it is going or if it will work.

I always do the best I can and failure is always an option. The key is to train yourself with your writing to just not care.

Enjoy the hand, enjoy the play.

In her essay “Escape from Stockholm: An Epic Publishing Saga” she really lays it out like it is. Read ALL THREE PARTS. Worth it.

Folks, I have zero issue with any writer going into traditional publishing or doing indie publishing. It’s all about choice and that’s what I have been saying here for two years now. We have the freedom and the choice. And that’s what Judy is saying as well. Just be informed as to your choice. Worth the read, no matter which world you are writing in.

http://mizkit.com/escaping-stockholm-part-1/

http://kjablog.com/?p=4116

That’s right, you read that right… He decided to fight some contract terms. He had to fight to get them to take out of his contract that he be required to turn in a print manuscript with a carbon copy and that he be required to deliver an electronic file on a computer floppy diskette.

That’s right, he had to fight to get those out of a modern contract.

If I hadn’t seen this on a recent contract myself, I would be laughing. I’m just amazed he was able to win such a major battle for authors.

You folks see why so many of us who have dealt with traditional publishers for decades are so happy about doing indie publishing?