Comments on: Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Can’t Make Money in Fiction

By: Nova

Nova — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 09:22:31 +0000

Thank you sooooooooooooo, much for this article!
I am going crazy over here, trying to get my first novel published. I’m reading all these blogs by these agents and sometimes publishing people with these superior attitudes. They are basically saying “you are going to give us BLOOD and we are going to give you the BUS FARE to get over here”. And you’d better act like you would die for that bus fare too!

Magic pie! You are so right! If I ever become a big shot author you better believe I owe you a hug and a dinner too!

By: dwsmith

dwsmith — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:52:26 +0000

Thanks, Bill, for the kind comments. I hope the young man sees the possible ways to come at fiction in this modern world. It’s a great time right now to be coming into writing. And you should be complimented on helping someone forward. Keep up the great work.

By: Bill in Detroit

Bill in Detroit — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:31:35 +0000

I have been teaching composition to a young man still in HS. It is obvious that he sees writing as somewhat akin to being caught with a Playgirl magazine in his room.

I have sent him a link to your website. What he does with it is up to him … but it should be immediately obvious that writing is a respectable way for a macho sort of guy to earn a substantial living and drive, if he wishes, a macho kind of car.

It may never get him a house on a hill overlooking the Pacific, but it should get him out of the slums of Detroit.

Thanks for crunching the numbers for us. It looks like you have done an honest job and that’s all any honest man needs to see.

– Bill

By: lizardyoga

lizardyoga — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 07:12:43 +0000

thanks so much for this – it’s really encouraging and deconstructs the situation in a much more helpful way than I’ve seen before. I’m in Britain, not the States but I imagine it’s substantially similar. Your article gave me hope – particularly the bit about cutting up the pie! I recently wrote an article about Home Ed for one magazine, re-jigged it for another, then rewrote it as fiction for another.
Thanks!

By: Zoe Winters

Zoe Winters — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 06:45:00 +0000

I find this all very intriguing. And the few myths that I’ve held onto up until now, I find your posts liberating me from those. I can’t imagine someone being angry over something which will make them a more free human being.

At any rate, I this particular chapter/article really hits home for me because I’m an indie author. I’m writing and producing things under a few different names on my own, and if/when some of them are successful enough I would look into selling subsidiary rights. I can see a lot of potential in the ebook revolution and print-on-demand. Will I get “rich?” Hell if I know. But I do believe there is a strong potential for me to make money following the magic bakery principle which I’ve been calling “multiple profit centers.”

Some of it is fiction, some of it is nonfiction, some of it is monetized websites. Just a whole bunch of different things.

I have three releases coming out in March and I’m very excited about the challenge and all the places I intend to go.

By: Are Non-Genre Authors Slow? Part I « Shadows in Mind

Are Non-Genre Authors Slow? Part I « Shadows in Mind — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:12:27 +0000

[...] 13, 2010 by Ann In Dean Wesley Smith’s recent blog post, “Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Can’t Make Money in Fiction“, he explained how a fiction writer can develop a portfolio–or create an inventory of [...]

By: dwsmith

dwsmith — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:37:09 +0000

Brad, a lot of the time, they find you. But there are a few tricks to this that all writers need to think about, but seldom do. First off, time. Time is your friend with this stuff. Contracts have limited times and you need to pay attention to that time frame in all contracts you sign, and with novels, really, really pay attention to reversion clauses. Those are critical to writers of novels.

Reselling stuff happens over time. I sold the Jukebox story back in the early 1990’s, it got picked up for a couple reprint anthologies over the next year or two, then went silent. Then it got picked up for a magazine called Jukebox Collector, which never published fiction, but liked the story and wanted to include it. Then it got running a Hollywood option, then got put into another collection, and will end up in a collection of jukebox stories and also up on this site and in Kindle and on Scribd and other places, making sales and getting out there so more people can see it and offer to buy a right or two.

And that’s how it works. And by the way, the story you sold to Writers of the Future will get you money. Then it will get you free plane tickets and rooms and a very expensive workshop. You don’t think the plane tickets and free food and free workshop don’t have a value that is directly attributed to that story. I met Kris because of my story in Writers of the Future. I got to sit in a chair in the United Nations because of that one short story. So keep in mind next year when you are enjoying all the great stuff at Writers of the Future, it all came from your writing one short story and mailing it.

By the way, because of another writing project, Kris and I got two free trips to Hollywood and about a week of free rooms at an expensive hotel there. And another writing project allowed me wonder around the lot at Paramount Studios on another free trip. And free trips to New York on another short story. You write and put it out there and it happens. Time.

Oh, and you can send stories to overseas markets after sold here, or before for that matter. But that’s up to you. Just like mailing to markets here.

Cheers
Dean

By: Brad R. Torgersen

Brad R. Torgersen — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 23:51:42 +0000

OK Dean, stupid newbie author question: how in the heck do you get people interested in picking up a story that’s already been published elsewhere? Is it simply word-of-mouth? Your story gets talked about, so someone writes or calls and says they want it? Or do you actively market the thing?

Larry Niven once said that anything worth selling once, is worth selling again, and again, and again. You’re preaching much of the same doctrine.

But I’m looking at my Writers of the Future story and I am sorta scratching my head about how — when the anthology comes out next year — I would go about re-selling that same story to other venues or anthologies? Do they find me, or do I find them?

By: dwsmith

dwsmith — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:48:57 +0000

Only one way you can empty the basket completely, or as I like to think of it, have the entire pie leave the bakery. That’s selling “All Rights” in one fashion or another. Never do that unless you are hired to write in someone else’s universe, like Star Trek. Then you have no other choice because you don’t own the pie in the first place and are only hired to write a slice of the pie for the pie owner.

But never sell all rights to anything original you wrote. Ever. You just don’t know, as the author, what will be big and what won’t be. Authors are the worst judges of their own work, no matter how much they will claim otherwise. You may think it’s crap, but keep the money coming in from the crap as well as the stuff you think is quality work.

By the way, I’ve made a ton more than $10,000 on one short story. A bunch more on numbers of stories. I think my leader is the story that’s in Writers of the Future Volume #1 and Best of Writers of the Future. But it’s running a close nose ahead of a time traveling jukebox story I wrote called Jukebox Gifts. Both are a distance past $25,000 each in income. Kris has a number of stories in that range as well, maybe higher.

Cheers, Dean

By: Brad R. Torgersen

Brad R. Torgersen — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:05:19 +0000

I read recently where William Sanders — a self-declared “retiree” from fiction writing — went to the mailbox and discovered a royalty check for something he’d sold and which had subsequently been re-printed ages ago. In his words, “A nice little three-digit check.” Also in his words, “I have to admit that’s one item for the plus side [of being a writer]: even after you quit doing it, you can still go on getting paid for it.”

I’ve been filling my wife in on how this all works, and she’s intruiged. Until now she’s been insisting that I switch my focus over to screenplays, because she sees stuff like AVATAR on the movie screen and thinks screenwriting is where the big money will be.

I told her that all I have to do is have some books on the shelves that get optioned, and suddenly we’ll be getting money for free, just on the off chance that someone in Hollyweird actually wants to move forward with a project. The movie doesn’t even need to get made, and we’ll get paid thousands as long as the option is held. If multiple books are being optioned, that’s many thousands, potentially.

That raised her eyebrows a little.

I was e-mailing some co-creative friends of mine who work on a homespun SF space opera audio serial called Searcher & Stallion, and I was telling them how I thought S&S could potentially be a ‘franchise’ cash cow, because there is potential for all kinds of licensing, assuming the product gets in front of the right people and attracts enough interest.

The more I explore the Copyright Pie, the more it literally seems like a loaves ‘n fishes kind of thing: no matter how much the basket gets passed, if you manage the licensing properly, the basket will never be empty.

$10,000 on a single story… That just excites me endlessly.