Okay, folks, normally Norman Spinrad and I don’t tend to see things the same. For my tastes, he complains a little too much, and I’m sure he doesn’t like me for varied reasons personal to him. But his current blog post is a very clear take on what many writers have been talking about with traditional publishing. Norman is calling it a death spiral, ordering to net, whatever.
He is spot on the money, and in his comments, he also addresses why he won’t just change names as many writers do and keep going. Pride, of course, a long career of course, but also overseas publishers in his current home country of France.
Note, he’s 70 and not writing under pen names, I’m 60 and writing under a bunch of pen names and doing just fine, not counting moving quickly to electronic publishing. We are two very, very different long-term professional writers. Keep that in mind.
Older experienced writers going into New York have it much, much harder after being around for a time, something we are talking about in comments on the last cows post. That’s a hard concept for many to realize and a topic of an upcoming Sacred Cows chapter. Norman talks some about this from the publishing side. Worth the read right here.
Very interesting read, Dean. This is something I’ve wondered about for a long time. A lot of writers talk abou the Death Spiral. Is this just something you have to deal with as a writer? It seems that you’re saying you can have a career inspite of this, while a lot of writers blame it for ending careers.
Andrew Wheeler actually said in one of his blog posts that this isn’t much of a problem for writers these days (granted this post is three years old):
http://antickmusings.blogspot.com/2001/01/ordering-to-net.html
So what gives? I want the straight dope
Steve,
Problem of ordering to net is still very much here, but writers have accepted it, those that know about it, and know how to work around it by changing names, that sort of thing.
What everyone seems to forget is that all computer numbers in publishing are tied to an exact name. If a name gets bad numbers, you can start completely fresh with a new name. Yeah, I know, ego… Women have a lot less issue with this than men.
And, of course, you can always just keep writing and find other ways to publish your stuff these days. Right now I have books out, sold, or under submission under six different names. In four major genres. And I’m having a blast with WMG Publishing getting my short fiction up electronically. And some of my older books. Great fun these days if your attitude is that of a writer, not an ego-centered author.
As I have told many, many people over the years: I’m a writer. Who gives a crap what name I publish it under.
(Yeah, yeah, yeah, branding, self-promotion, blah, blah, blah….I am a writer. I write for a living. The rest of the crap takes care of itself. My mystery novels that none of you know about are doing just fine and so are the thrillers, all without much of my help at all. Wow, go figure…)
I was a little freaked to discover he’s been dealing with cancer. Very dreadful news for him. But thanks for pointing back to his latest entry, as I know he’s bemoaned the course of SF publishing in particular on his blog before. I shall check out his latest comments.
I read this post yesterday but didn’t read the comments, which is where I see why Norman won’t start again under a new name. That’s definitely a dilemma. Unless he continued to publish under his own name overseas and write other books under a pen name to submit to U.S. markets? (Which option he seems foreclosed on anyway.)
What a mess to be in.
It would seem diversity really is the way to go.
Leslie, yes, diversity is the solution. Write across genres, under more than one name, use e-pub when right to use, spread out your income streams so that when this happens, you can just float to another place.
Norman is very, very old school and he has a point about his name. And he makes great points I wanted more writers to see here. But I still hate the fact that he complains so much and gives few solutions. But besides that, he is very, very smart and clear on what has happened to him and that’s worth knowing and understanding. And more than likely, if I had his belief system and career, I would be complaining just as much.
I’m still learning about the publishing business, so I may make mistakes here, ask stupid questions, come to inaccurate conclusions. I don’t have a specific opinion, just an urge to understand.
Mr. Spinrad talks about the “Death Spiral” of sales numbers. Order 10,000, sell 80%. Next time order 8,000, sell 80%. Next time order 6,400, sell 80%. Eventually diminishing sales mean the author’s work is not viable in the business plan.
From a business standpoint, if a brand (the author) is having diminishing sales (and assuming that all other factors have remained the same for each product – marketing/promotion, quality, etc.), then doesn’t it make sense for the publisher to cut them loose? Alternately, does the publisher make an effort to understand why there are diminishing sales and work to combat those forces?
I would think that if you sold 8,000 copies of the first book, you’d have 8,000 people interested in buying your second book. Even if some of them didn’t buy, you’d think there would be a few new readers to replace the old readers. I mean, when I find a book I really like, I tend to watch for new books by that author, and I’m automatically favorably disposed towards that next book. If the synopsis sounds good, I’ll buy the next book. If the 2nd book pleases me, I’ll be likely to pick up the 3rd book just on the power of the author’s name.
But, I guess that doesn’t happen in the broad market. Am I a weird reader?
So, is anybody doing market research to find out why there are sales death spirals? Is it because subsequent books don’t meet readers’ expectations? Is it because the publisher isn’t doing something that needs to be done? What’s REALLY going on?
Nothing that happens in an economy or industry happens in a void, for no discernable reason. Are death spirals new things, and can thus be chalked up to a shaky economy? Or have they been prevalent throughout the industry for decades, in which case you’d think somebody would take the time to understand them because they clearly aren’t good for business. If you want a successful business, it just makes sense to figure out what’s causing problems that hurt the business.
Looking forward to ideas, theories, answers, etc. on this. Interesting topic.
Shawn, let me see if I can answer a few of these questions. Does it make sense that the publisher cut the author loose? Yes, and they do all the time. That’s the problem. Say you were signed up for a four book series, paid advance and everything. But by book #3 in your series, the ordering to net has taken you a ways down and the publisher just cancels book four. Cheaper for them to eat the advance paid to you than publish the book into low numbers. Nature of the beast in modern publishing with computers.
Does the publisher combat these forces and understand them? Yes. But this is a product of what is called “market penetration.” To sell two books, you must have three or four on the shelves to be found by customers. If you don’t have copies out there, customers won’t find them. So in this system of returns and market penetration thinking, the ordering to net is just the way of the system. Has been now for almost ten years.
Your question about if 8,000 people buy the book, they should want the next one doesn’t work in real life I’m afraid. They might buy the next one a year later if they see it on the shelves, but remember the time lag on these books. Without looking at a journal, tell me the book you were reading one year ago last night. You will remember the author if you see the next book on the stands, but otherwise, the thought of another book is long gone from most readers. And you might not be in a position to see or hear about the next book a year after the first one without decent market penetration onto the shelves.
What is really going on is computer ordering and the returns system. Nothing more. Everyone inside of publishing, including editors, understand this and can’t stop it as long as the current system is in place. Which is why authors are cheering about this coming upheaval in this system over the next five years. This has to change, not because this is stupid, which it is, but because of forces hitting form the side, such as Kindle and other methods of distribution to readers.
Hope this helped.
That’s exactly what Holly Lisle said in her selling to the net posts back in ’06. She was vilified for it at the time; it’s nice to see more people acknowledging over the last couple of years that yes, that’s exactly how it works. It’s still depressing, though, and still makes me happy I’m over on the e-press side.
Angie
Angie, the epub side of things is going to help writers, and Norman has books up that way as well.
The key is to not get stuck in one side or the other, but to use both to push a career.
I have been teaching young pros for years to get past the ego of their own name because in modern publishing chances are you won’t end up with your own name due to this death spiral. It’s normal and frustrating, and worse yet, fans blame the authors for not having a new book out in a series when a series has gone down this hole. And unless something amazing happens and a series really, really grows, the death spiral will take you down no matter what. That 20% cut that Norman used as an example takes a lot of special ordering by new customers to overcome. Seldom happens these days.
@ Angie, good stuff. I was going to post Holly’s comments on the same subject, but you beat me to it.
@ Shawn:
“From a business standpoint, if a brand (the author) is having diminishing sales (and assuming that all other factors have remained the same for each product – marketing/promotion, quality, etc.), then doesn’t it make sense for the publisher to cut them loose? Alternately, does the publisher make an effort to understand why there are diminishing sales and work to combat those forces?”
As I understand it, the quality of the book/marketing/etc. mean absolutely nothing when related to ordering to the net. That’s a computer telling the buyers how many copies of the next book to order. Computer says Writer A sold 8000 copies, so order 8000 copies of his/her next book. Regardless of whether the author has grown as writer, has a great platform, or whatever else.
What happens is that a publisher looks at those numbers without looking at any of the other factors, and yes, it’s clear that writer has diminishing returns on their sales, possibly through no fault of the writer. Just the computer ordering numbers killing their career for them.
Shawn, your questions are logical.
Which proves you own opening statement–you don’t know publishing! (g)
Very interesting blog by Norman.
I’m not surprised by this business model at all. It’s the one the Walmart’s and Costco’s have been using for everything they sell for years and the big box retail giants have a lot of sway over the business of consumer goods, and not just publishing.
I agree 100% e-pub is a viable way around this spiral. I also think that as the consumers use more and more on-line retailers rather than the brick and motar retailers publishing will actually see an even more dramatic shift than what we’ve seen thus far.
I also agree 100% branding yourself under more than one name is a way to explode your income as this shift to more and more e-pub spreads across the consumer markets.
For example, little ‘ol me uses the net for buying books, movies etc and if I want something specific I use the web to find it. The consumer these days feels very much in the drivers seat and traditional publishing has been slow to catch up. But there are pockets that indicate change is in the wind.
Thanks, Dean, your explanation helps somewhat.
Cool, Dean that’s what I figured. I personally don’t get why people would care about using pen names. When I first started looking seriously at writing I wanted to write in different genres under different names. I’d read a writing book by Dean Koontz years ago where he talked about selling in the different genres and thought that it sounded like a blast. And I think it still does. So, again, cool. Full speed ahead.
What I don’t get — probably because it really doesn’t make any sense — is why with the returns system do stores even bother with ordering to net? If you can return for full credit what doesn’t sell, go ahead and order as many or more as last time.
(Actually, I suspect that the reasoning is that even with returns, extras aren’t totally without cost — there’s opportunity cost if the shelf space could have been used for something that sells better, and labor cost involved in handling dead merchandise. But that’s small compared to the cost of having to eat the inventory like most retail businesses.)
“I personally don’t get why people would care about using pen names. ”
Well, I’m not a fan of pen names.
I think that changing names is certainly better than not being able to have a career or sell books anymore because one’s own name has become such a negative red flag in the current publishing/ordering system. If I face a choice between using a pseudonym or not selling books, I’d use a pseudonym–and be glad there was a choice available other than, “Find a new profession.”
But using a new name is very much Starting Over, which is not a situation I’d court. I view it as a last resort. No one has ever heard of the new name. Your readers are unaware that it’s you and won’t look for it. Typically, when you change names, the impression of readers is that the old name belings to someone who ceased writing or died. And there’s no point in saying, “People can look it up on the internet.” They don’t. And that’s a key challenge of building audience in the first place; most people who loved your last book will never actually look up when your next one is coming out. They’ll buy it if they happen to see it. Hence the enormous publisher support needed to reach bestsellerdom; you need a big machine making SURE that readers happen to see your book. In tandem with that machine, it also helps a great deal at EVERY level of the market if readers KNOW YOUR NAME–if they’ve seen it on book covers before, if they’ve heard their friends mention it, if they’ve read and enjoyed previous works by that name, etc.
Your name is your brand, your ID, your signature on the bookstands. A number of factors put Nora Roberts, Stephen King, Diana Gabaldon, and Barbara Kingsolver into the #1 slot on the hc NYT list, but one of these factors was building =name recognition= with ever-growing numbers of readers, year after year. And this is not just true of major bestsellers. It’s also how midlist writers develop into genre leaders, and how genre leaders develop into breakout writers, and how breakout writers develop into bestsellers.
Whatever the career stage you’re in, your market goal is to get more and more readers looking for your name, so more and more of them will buy your new releases -and- start buying your backlist. This is how you move up from scraping out your computer expenses with an unrecognized name and only a random-chance audience at $5K/book as a brand new writer, to making a modest living at $25K/book as a better-known writer, to buying a home and putting away savings at $50K/book, to living in a seaside villa on the Riviera, waited on hand and foot by dancing boys at $1 mill/book. (I skipped ahead a few levels to my favorite one.)
I also believe that voice is a HUGELY important factor in building audience. Writers with a strong, distinctive voice have a better chance IMO of building an audience and a loyal following than writers whose work “sounds” like any-old-book. And your name is how readers identify that this is a book by a voice they’ve enjoyed and want to keep following. Change that name, and they usually don’t find you again.
This is why I don’t believe in using a different name for different styles of work within one genre. When I decided to add comedic urban fantasy to my fantasy oeuvre, which had previously consisted of guts-and-glory epic fantasy, I was initially swayed by the beliefs of a lot of writers (as well as one of my former agents) that you should signal to readers that a book or series is different by using a different name, because you’ll just alienate them if they pick up (for example) a comedic urban fantasy novel =expecting= it to be a guts-and-glory epic fantasy–and, in alienating readers, you’ll hurt your career, because then they WON’T buy your next epic fantasy, now that you’ve annoyed them (or possibly because they’ll mistakenly assume that your next epic fantasy is -actually- a comedic urban fantasy).
However, the publisher REALLY wanted me to use the name name for the comedic urban fantasy because I was already known in fantasy under that name. They had made their offer to an established fantasy author, they didn’t want to start building me as an unknown; they wanted th leg up that they felt my name provided.
I was undecided about this for a whle, sought a lot of advice, studied the market–and came to the conclusion that it was indeed better to use my real name, and that in the above assumptions, some key factors are overlooked. The big one is that in changing names, you effectively eliminate most of the audience who loves your voice and would like to try anything you write. (Again, only a very small portion of readers research a writer on the internet. Most just look for a name or title in their book shopping, and if they don’t see it, that’s that.) Since I believe that my voice is consistent across all my work–that no matter what sort of genre, subgenre, or tone I write in, anyone familiar with my work can tell within a page or so that -I- am the author of the material, because of my voice–I consider this factor very important.
Another key factor: Readers aren’t drooling idiots. They’re capable of looking at the packaging and reading the cover copy and -recognizing- that an Esther Diamond novel (my urban fantasy series) is different than my sword-and-sorcery novels and also not the same thing as my nonfiction material. Indeed, writing very different subgenres or types of fictions, etc., under the name same is much LESS of an issue in series fiction than in single-title fiction, because it turns out (I’ve seen it in the market, and I’ve experienced it myself) readers are VERY well capable of recognizing, after having tried one, that they don’t like an author’s (let’s say) Queen Victoria history mysteries and don’t buy those, but they love her Angelina Jolie vampire slayer series and buy all of those. Whereas, in single-title fiction, it’s a little harder for readers to figure out, book to book, if they want to buy a book when they’re looking at an author whose tone or type of book varies wildly with any regularity.
Which is not to say it can’t work. Writing both international spy thrillers and straight historical novels has not, for example, confused Ken Follet’s readers into alienation. Then again, Follet followed a “conventional wisdom” guideline which I think it pretty crucial in that respect: He got very well established with one thing (spy novels) before branching out into another.
I have, as it happens, used multiple names in my career. I started my career under the pseudonym Laura Leone. When I got my first-ever offer, it was from Harlequin/Silhouette. In that era (it’s a policy which has since been discontiued), Hq was trying to effectively monopolize audience build by insisting that all new writers publish there under a pseudonym, one which (here’s the part that came under legal scrutiny and was eventually ceased) the author COULD NOT USE elsewhere. This has the effect of completely eliminating all possibility for the crucial audience build needed for success, as described above, at ANY OTHER HOUSE. If a writer left Hq to write for another house, she had to do so under a different name, a TOTALLY UNKNOWN name. Hq’s strategy ensured that LEAVING them (to get better money and terms elsewhere, as well as more artistic freedom) was a huge, daunting, and very difficult business decision for a writer bound by that contractual clause. Thus, several writers who developed huge audiences while writing for Hq wound up getting into lawsuits with Hq to gain unrestricted use of their own pen names when they started writing elsewhere. Both they and their new houses wanted to advantage of their well-known professional names, names that readers recognized and were looking for at the bookstore.
As I started this post by saying, given a choice between changing names or not having a career, I’d rather have a career. So I used a pseudonym as a Silhouette writer: Laura Leone. As it happens, the notorious Hq pseudonym clause was coming under legal scrutiny by the time my relationship with Hq ended a dozen books later, and when I applied to Hq for unrestricted use of my pseudonym, I got it immediately. Since it was the name I was already known under in romance, I used it for my subsequent romance novels written at other houses.
When I first started writing sf/f (8 books into my romance career), I was just writing some short stories for fun and didn’t, back then, envision sf/f as a Career Direction for myself. It was more like a betwee-books palate cleanser for me. So I didn’t think about my choice of name at all, other than knowing I couldn’t use my professional name (Leone), because my Hq contracts prohibited it. So I just used my real name (Resnick) in sf/f, while continuing to use what I considered my professional name (Leone) in romance. I kept the same first name because I already found it confusing, in my professional interactions, to be constantly introduced with an addressed by two different surnames (yes, in my romance-writing years, people often called me “Miss Leone,” or they introduced me as “Laura Leone” or as “Laura Leone slash Resnick”–though, thank god, no one ever CALLED me, “Miss Leone slash Resnick”). Lots of romance writers have amusing anecdotes about getting to a conference hotel, discovering they have no room or they’re not registered with the con, etc… until they realize that some helpful volunteer registered them under their PSEUDONYM instead of their legal name. And so on.
Just as I used “Leone” in romance after I left Hq because it was the name under which my voice was known in romance, and I didn’t want to start all over from scratch building an audience for my voice… Sf/f turned out to be a lot more for me than an occasional palate cleanser. I got so many short story commissions that I eventually wound up as a Campbell Award winner and thus sf/f editors started asking when I was going to try an sf/f novel. Since my romance career was tanking at the same time, and since I was getting a lot of ideas for fantasy and really enjoyed writing it, it seemed like the right time to make a career shift, and I became much more active in sf/f… where the logical choice, again, was to use the name I was already known under in the genre, Resnick, rather than going back to “go” without collecting $200 and starting all over with a name for which I had NOT built any recognition.
I was asked last year on a panel about pseudonyms if I would have chosen a name OTHER than my real one in sf/f, if I had known (way back when I sold/wrote a couple of short stories just to have some fun between the romance novels that comprised my full-time career) how things would work out. Answer: Yes, absolutely. If I had known I’d wind up making a career in sf/f, I would have used a different name–
Because my father, Mike Resnick, is an active sf/f writer (he’s sf, I’m f; but sf/f is all lumped together into one genre, for the most part), and having the exact same last name as another writer in your own own genre is a nuisance. Ask anyone who’s ever been in that situation. (I remember a friend of mine in romance, whose name, like Resnick, was not so common that you’d normally expect this to happen, CLIMBED THE WALLS on the day another writer started being published in the exact same genre/subgenre with the exact same last name.) And, indeed, for quite a while, there was some mistaken confusion in the marketplace that “Laura Resnick” was Mike Resnick’s pseudonym when he wrote f instead of sf. (sigh) So, yeah, I definitely would have picked a different name.
Meanwhile, I’m ambivalent about whether having different names in romance and sf/f (something I had no choice about at the time) was a good idea. In fact, I think the answer has changed over time. Back when I released my first fantasy novel, a guts-and-glory epic sword-and-sorcery tale, there are virtually no crossover between that kind of fiction and the fiction whence I came, Silhouette romances; and, indeed, male readers hesitated to try my S&S fantasy upon reading in promo materials that I had been a romance writer–they assumed that meant that my sword-slining fantasies would be thinly disguised romance novels. (I know this becase some male readers wrote to me, after reading my work, to say they were glad they’d taken the chance.) So I’m pretty skeptical there would have been much advantage to me in having one name across two genres.
Now, OTOH, I write an urban fantasy series that does indeed have crossover readership with the romance audience, so it’s unfortunate that readers who wonder whatever happened to Laura Leone don’t know this series is by the same writer.
In any case, I would not choose to use a different name when writing anything else in fantasy (and I also write nonfiction under the same name–Laura Resnick). And if I branched out in a different genre entirely, in addition to my fantasy fiction, such as mystery or historical novels, etc… I’d be inclined to keep using the same name. If I went back to writing romance, I’m not really sure what I’d do. But I’d be inclined to use one or the other of my two professional names for that, Leone–if editors think anyone still remembers her 7+ years after her last release–or Resnick, rather than starting over from scratch under a new name and losing any name-recognition advantage for my voice whatsoever.
There’s NO instance in which I’d rather not sell a book or self-publish INSTEAD of agree to start over with a new name, if that were perceived as necessary. Otherwise, though, these are the reasons I’m not in favor of name-changing. Every time you change your name, IMO, you’re starting over, in market terms, as a brand new unknown whose books NO ONE is looking for.
Agree, Laura. A new name is starting over, and thus is part of the wonderfulness of the ability to do so.
And as you said, writing under a pen name is a ton better than finding a new job, even if it does mean starting over.
My situation is vastly different than a lot of writers. I haven’t been hurt by numbers, I’ve been hurt by my choices and my love of certain areas of writing. I love media and been lucky enough to write a lot of Star Trek books, original Men in Black novels, a bunch of Spider-Man and X-Men, and numbers of movie novelizations and tie-in work with games. All fantastic fun, but now all attached to the Dean Wesley Smith name. And that name is becoming even more known now as a ghost writer.
So I write a mystery or a thriller, which is where my focus has been in the last six or seven years. Imagine the reviews… “Star Trek writer Dean Wesley Smith writing as…..” That sentence would start every review and would trash the books. If I happened to write something a reviewer liked, they would be acting in surprise because the myth is that media writers can’t write. And so on and so on. Starting over with a new mystery name was the only viable option because of my choices, which I do not regret for a moment.
But what many miss is that just because I start over, and am writing under other names, this name is far, far from dead. And I haven’t done a media book in seven years now. Alan Dean Foster was known for media for a time, now known more for his own books. (He wrote the original Star Wars book as a ghost for Lucas.) So just because I write under a number of other names, sure doesn’t mean this name, my original real name, is dead. Nope. In fact, the pen names of those other books allows me the freedom with this name to do the Sacred Cows book. I really do love this business.
Also realize that pen names allow you to write faster in an industry that can’t handle fast at the moment. (Electronic publishing is changing that yet again.) Kris is Kristine Kathryn Rusch in science fiction and fantasy and all her short stories for the most part. One or two books next year under that name. She is Kristine Grayson in romance with three books next year under that name. In mystery hardboiled she is Kris Nelscott, with a possible new book next year under that name as well.
Having pen names doesn’t mean you have to start over, and Kris’s three major names help all her names. They form feedback loops among readers and one good book under one name pushes other books for readers. Again, I love this business.
Oh, something important I left out above–the RISKS to one’s name.
When I sold DISAPPEARING NIGHTLY, the first book in the comedic urban fantasy Esther Diamond series, I had good sales figures under “Laura Resnick” as an epic fantasy writer. Which was presumably part of the reason, along with name recognition, that the publisher, Luna Books (Hq’s attempt to launch into fantasy), wanted.
Although well-intentioned, Luna gave DN disastrous packaging (HOW disastrous? at a recent show-and-tell con panel on book covers, audience members were STUNNED, upon being shown the DN cover, to learn it was urban fantasy; their guesses had ranged from “a 1970s show biz memoir” to “a financial thriller about a hooker”), they gave it no marketing, promo, or support; and they dumped it on the stands in December, which is the worst month of year to release paperback midlist fiction aimed at women.
The results were predictable: Sales tanked and destroyed my sales history as Laura Resnick. (Then Luna, acting in a wholly stereotypical manner as a publisher, responded to having wrecked my sales record my canceling my contract. My fourth agent also responded to my career crisis in a stereotypical manner for an agent, and thus I was soon agentless as well as now dragging around a newly-gutted sales history like a ball and chain.)
And that is a danger in any new or different venture. If it goes badly, years of hard work, name building, and sales history are destroyed in a flash.
OTOH… that’s also a danger included NOT doing a new or different sort of book. That is to say, your current/regular publisher can just as easily wreck your sales history on your next novel for them in the same tone/subgenre as your previous five novels for them. It’s not as if the writer is necesarily more safe in a stable situation than in a new one. Publishers are all quite capable of totally screwing up at any stage of your career, in any capacity or venue. Welcome to the roulette wheel that is publishing!
As it happens, the subject of name change never came up, despite what had happened. Evidently, at all three houses where I’ve been under contract since those events (including DAW Books, which acquired the next three books in this disastrously launched urban fantasy series, and is working on building the numbers of it), it’s been perceived that there’s enough mileage in my name that One Bad Release didn’t damage it enough that we’d be better off starting over with a totally unknown name instead of sticking with mine. I should keep using it. (Though I assume that A Second Bad Release any time soon might well kill it.) Which I was very glad about, since–for all the reasons cited in my previous post–I’d much rather continue using my established professional name.
But there’s never a one size fits all answer for this. You have to look at every situation and decide what makes sense for THAT situaton.
(And, in fact, over the course of my career, I’ve used about four other names that no one knows, on a one-off basis at different times. One was an erotica novel, one was a set of several historical-romance work-for-hire novellas for a magazine market, one was some romantic work-for-hire shorts for a mag market, etc. They were projects I did strictly for the money, I don’t list them on my website or publicly acknowledge then, or regard them as part of my career. They were situations where I used my skills–writing–to earn some money, much the way I might use my typing skills to earn money in office-temping. Sometimes, one just has to pay bills.)
I’d imagine that if someone REALLY wants their real name in the book, the About The Author section is the place to say you’re using a pen name. And you can list your other pen names and genres as well. A reader might like your work enough to look some of those up.
It’s another area where there is no One Right Answer or Way To Do It, but a question of what works best for each writer in each circumstance, and another area in which it’s necessary to make informed individual decisions rather than following a handy rule.
DARN.
Dean (or Laura) has it been your experience that the ups and downs of your name(s) for novel work are more or less set apart from the ups and downs of your name(s) for short work? Seems to me that even if my name tanked at the novel level, I could probably still sell short work under it, since the short markets — unless I am wrong — don’t have any way of knowing if an author’s story in a given issue helps or hurts circulation.
Brad, short fiction stands alone and doesn’t depend on numbers, but on your perceived value to selling the magazine and the quality of the story, mostly the quality of the story hitting the editor’s tastes and the market the magazine is aiming at.
But you can really help a dead name by selling a lot of short fiction under that name.
And of course, if you are fast enough these days, you can make a nice living writing only short fiction, the first time that has been a reality for fifty years, since the distribution collapse of 1958. Great fun. My first love, actually.
A side note: Pulphouse never published a novel, only short fiction collections, and other aspects of short fiction. And we did fine for 6 of the 7 years we existed.
Dean, I know you’ve mentioned before that writers can now make a nice living writing short fiction. But a lot of other pros say that this isn’t so. My suspicion is that there are a few reasons they say this:
1) They focus to narrowly in their submission, i.e. ‘The Big Three’ and only genre markets. I’ve noticed that this is true even in other genres. A lot of people will tell you that there are only two markets for mystery/crime stories but a lot of the mainstream magazines out there feature at least one crime story an issue. I tend to look through as many magazines as possible when I go to the library looking for possible markets. Though I will say for reading pleasure, I tend to prefer anthologies when it comes to short fiction.
2) I think most pros do very little short fiction once they’ve moved on to novels.
3) This is probably just another myth that’s being repeated. Also, the development might just be so new that they’re not aware of it.
I’d really like to see your take on this, Dean. Also, as a side question, how in the world do you stay so informed? I have to say I think the level of craft understanding (genre structure/convention), plus business knowledge, plus keeping current with the market have to be what have kept you and Kris in the game for so long. I know you mentioned a course of study in the last post (which I copied to my computer for future reference) but how do you keep up so well with the field, when so many other writers seem to be, well, clueless?
Steve, your second question first. I stay informed for two reasons. #1, it’s my business and what I make my living from and I don’t trust anyone else to do the work for me. #2, I love information. I was headed securely down the luddite road two years ago then made a very hard choice to not go that direction, and now I’m the person who some people ask about electronic and web sites. I still don’t know much coding, but getting better by the week at that. And Kris and I are headed full speed into the electronic world with our fiction. We have over 60 different short stories and collections up on Kindle, Smashwords (which means Apple/B&N/Sony) and Scribd and today, if things go correctly, Kris’s first novel, The White Mists of Power will be going up. It’s going to take most of a year to get all of our backlist available electronically as well as the novels, novellas, and collections in trade paper format from WMG Publishing. To be honest, it’s great fun.
As to HOW I stay informed? I constantly search out information online, in magazines, in books, and most importantly from other writers at workshops and on private e-mail lists. If you come to a couple of workshops, you get invited on the private e-mail list that has about 100 writers on it that are selling and sharing information. It’s one of the perks of coming to our workshops. It used to be only for master class grads, but now it’s for anyone who has made it here at least twice. Lists with INFORMED writers on it. If I were young and coming into this business, I would be eating up the comments here from Laura, Pati, Brad, and so many other pros who stop by here and comment. And I would be eating up Kris’s blog on Freelancing and soon to be something new. That’s how I learn. I just keep WANTING to learn. It’s my business and my business is changing constantly.
Why do most pros think you can’t make a living writing short fiction? #1 reason. That was true for 50 years and has only changed in the last couple years. I used to say that as well myself up to about two years ago.
#2 reason. You have to be fairly fast. As Denise Little and I say regularly in the workshop we do every year in February, if it takes a professional writer longer than a day to write a short story, it’s not economically feasible to write the story. #3, as said, most pros tend to move to novels and not do much short fiction after that. Leaves room for new writers to come in, but as Laura said so well, it’s easier slightly to sell a short story when you have a name than when not.
As for me, I’m moving back to short fiction a great deal these days since it’s my first love. I sure don’t always follow that guideline of a day for a story all the time, except for what I call my one-off stories (Twilight Zone like stories) similar to the one I have up this week for free or the one I have in the new Twilight Zone anthology. That’s what I call a one-off story, a simple idea done directly. 3,000 to 5,000 words, takes me about five hours at most to write. The more complex short fiction, the ones that are more than one idea and are longer usually take me more than a day to write, unless I push hard on one day. I just did a novella for an anthology and that took me four days to write.
As for markets, let me say this: If you run out of markets for a short story that pay above 3 cents a word, you are bad at finding markets, and you are limiting your own marketing by fear. Did you send that last sf story to the New Yorker? Why not? They regularly publish sf. And so on. With electronic markets springing up daily, you just have to stay informed. You can’t run out of markets these days because you can only send a story to one market at a time and by the time you got through a list of twenty, there would be ten new markets started. There are thousands of short fiction markets, and with the advent of the new technology, short fiction is now the best form to read on a phone. Quick, short, waiting room material. Perfect for our short attention span world.
And after it is published in a regular magazine, imagine how long it can keep earning you money electronically now? This is a wonderful new world we live in for writers. I get more excited about it by the day and more willing to write more, and for me, that’s saying something.
Brad,
A sense in which what I wrote about names (above) is played out in short fiction is that -name recognition- is an asset there, just as it is in novels.
When a story by Connie Willis crosses a short fiction editor’s desk, it’s going to get a fast read, because of her name recognition, compared to a story by Sarah The Mad, which will wait its turn in slush. (We’re using that name in celebration of my NOISY LUNATIC next-door neighbor immeasurably improving my quality of life by MOVING OUT yesterday.)
Connie’s name recognition also means that if the editor likes the story, he’ll buy it; whereas Sarah The Mad’s lack of name recognition means he’ll have to LOVE her story to buy it. This is because Connie’s name-recognition brings value-added to publishing the story in that mag in most instances; Sarah The Mad’s name does not.
Connie will have sales value to the mag and will be listed in big letters on the front of the issue, because it brings commercial value to the mag; people who don’t subscribe may well buy this issue because she’s in it–and every random buyer is a potential new subscriber. No one will buy the mag because Sarah The Mad has a story in it. (Sarah The Mad’s value is that, if her story is really good, then readers who like it will say to themselves and, the editor hopes, to friends, “Reading this mag is a great way to discover excellent new writers!”)
Connie Willis also brings profile and prestige to the mag, which Sarah The Mad does not. Dedicated readers may really like the fact that this mag discovers excellent new talent, and the editor may be known and respected for that (among established pros, too, who LIKE to see strong new writers emerge, because it’s healthy for the whole field); but the regular appearance of writers with name-recognition in that mag, like Connie Willis, is why -most- readers will buy, why it will be taken seriously as a market by most established pros (i.e. because established pros write for it), why it will have a better chance of fiscal survival. An sf/f mag with names like Joe Haldeman, Connie Willis, and Nancy Kress every month is likely to have more readers, better circulation, and more advertising revenue than a mag every month whose line-up consists entirely of unknown names.
However, what’s interesting here is that it’s entirely possible to build up name-recognition and high profile in the short fiction market WITHOUT having a correspondly big face in the novel market. There are writers whose names have a lot of value in the shortfic market who don’t have novel careers, or whose novel careers are struggling, modest, or average. Tremendous success as a novelist can help a short fiction career, in the sense that the bigger your novel audience, the more of your book readers ther are who might spike circulation of a mag when you appear in it–and mag editors are aware of that (and, like anyone else, a mag has bills to pay, so a spike in circulation is welcomed). But seeing your book sales spiral and your book contracts canceled–probably won’t have an effect on your short fiction career, EVEN UNDER THE SAME NAME. Short fiction publishing is structured so differently, and the audience is so different (it’s much smaller than the novel market, but fiercely dedicated) that it’s just a very different market and run quite separately.
So, going in either direction here, success on novels or short fiction can be an asset to you in the other (thought it won’t -necessarily- be an asset), but problems or failure in one market doesn’t affect your fate in the other. And having name recognition in each market is more of an asset to a writer than NOT having it.
Folks, I agree with everything Laura said so well about short fiction. Spot on the money. Thanks, Laura.
BTW, for those of you itnerested in short fiction, MindMeld at sfsignal.com did a 3-part Q&A last fall which a number of short fiction editors about the process and decisions that go into editing a short fiction anthology. Pretty interesting. This is a long to the first part. The next two parts of the series follow it.
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2009/09/mind-meld-behind-the-sceneshow-the-hottest-short-fiction-anthologies-are-created-part-1/
Steve, actually, I have a lot of REALLY smart writer friends whose advice I actively seek or whose opinions I pay attention to.
I think the real issue is not that there are lots of smart writers and lots of good information, but rather that on the public internet, the ratio of good info to bad info is much less favorable than it is in private.
One reason being that there are also, alas, many willfully ignorant and embarrassingly rude people on the internet; and most people with good information are very busy professionals who don’t want to waste any of their valuable time interacting with people like that.
Another reason that there is more good information in private is that successful, busy professionals like their privacy. I and my friends are VERY frank with each other about advances and income, for example, so I have a strong sense of what’s happening with money in publishing; but while we discuss it in frank detail with people we trust, none of us are interested in sharing such info in public at large.
Similarly, my editor and I are very frank with each other in our discussions about publishing, about the house, and about my career; but I only share those details in private with trusted fellow professionals. In public, the only aspects of such a discussion I repeat are the same ones that I’m confident my editor (or I) would comfortably state in front of an audience of 300 people at a convention this weekend.
And so on.
So I guess “knowing people” is one of the solutions to staying informed. Another is reading a lot of professional sources. I read NINK and the SFWA Bulletin, which are the respective journals of Novelists, Inc. and of SFWA. Other orgs also have mags or news journals, such as the Authors Guild and RWA, for example. In more general venues, I read a lot of articles about the biz from venues that I consider credible and professional sources of information, such as Publishers Weekly, Galley Cat’s Media Bistro, the NYT, Salon.com, and I read several blogs, such as Michael Shatzkin, Richard Curtis, and Writer Beware.
I also participate in several e-lists of professional-only writers. One is a group of mostly-romance writers whom I’ve been exchanging info with for (OMG) almost 20 years now. Another is the Ninc e-list, where every member has sold at least two novels to professional markets (in order to join Ninc). Another is a mostly-sf/f e-list. The combined professional and experience of all these lists could probably fill a massive e-vault.
I also talk with writers and editors at conventions. And, whether in person, online, or by phone, most writers who at least know each other by reputation, if not personally, are very good resources. People who only know me slightly contact me all the time, if they’ve want answers or input about something I reputedly know well (just today, I got an email question from a writer I know only by reputation, not personally, who’s having trouble with a publisher I’ve worked with, asking me if this sort of problem is typical there; indeed it is); and I do the same. My own experience–and I think this is the experience of many others, too–is that, by and large, writers tends to be very generous professionals with each other.
Finally, there’s experience. The more you write, the more you understand about writing. The more you do business in this industry, the more you understand about doing business in this industry. My firm, emphatic views on any number of things today are different than they were 20 years ago, when I was a new writer with only a couple of books published and a few more under contract, because I am so much more experienced now, in both my craft and my business, and experience is the single greatest education that exists–in any endeavor!
Yup, forgot to add in experience, as Laura said. Running my own publishing company for seven years and having to sit on the other side of the desk from writers taught me a great deal. Kris and I used to have signs over our office doors at Pulphouse that said “We are in this for the writing.” Then one day I slammed the phone down in disgust and heard the words, “Damned stupid writers!” come out of my mouth. I knew at that moment I had crossed over and was no longer a writer, but a publisher. (grin) Those seven years at Pulphouse, the three years at VB Tech Magazine, the ten years doing the anthology for Pocket Books, the six years watching Kris edit F&SF taught me a lot about business from both sides of the desk.
Kris and I are rare. She’s the only person in history to win a Hugo for her fiction and for best professional editor. I’ve been nominated five times for the Hugo for editing, plus for my writing and Nebula and Stoker nominations for my writing and I won the World Fantasy Award for being a publisher. We have played both sides of the fence and been making our living for a long time as writers, which is why we can teach professional level workshops and do these blogs. But if that was all we had, we would be long left behind now. We constantly love to learn, and as Laura said, we get the learning from everywhere.
Another key is knowing when something is complete bull….. The bull detector can be learned by simply applying all good business practices to publishing. If it’s not a good general business practice, no amount of publishing standard practice is going to make it good in publishing.
I’m going to say this once more. Letting someone else have your paycheck before you see it is stupid business. If nothing else about agents needs to stop, that does. And I’m going to do a chapter of the book in a week about that one point and how it got started and why it continued and became a practice that is not needed anymore. Stay tuned.
Oh, and I forgot books. And research. When I wanted to learn more about contracts, I read a book on publishing contracts. I also read Raymond Feist’s series of articles in the SFWA BULLETIN on contracts, written during the five years he spent as chairman of SFWA’s Contracts Committee. I also read literary lawyer F. Robert’s Stein’s year-long series of RWR articles (RWR is the mag of RWA) analyzing boilerplate contracts from most major houses. I also volunteered to write an article or two about contracts for NINK, which process would require me to interview experts. I helped implement the “Ask A Lawyer” column in NINK, which began appearing in 2008, and since I had questions (and was happy to find a way to get them answered for free), I provided about first half dozen questions for the column to address.
When I wanted to learn more about copyright and plagiarism, I read a book and numerous articles on these subjects. The reason I wanted to learn more was because there were, at the time, a couple of prominent coypright infringement scandals, and I was confused by the contradictions and chaos in the industry gossip surrounding these cases.
TIP: Don’t try to get your grounding in a subject via chat and gossip, LEAST of all on the internet. Start with professional, credible sources, such as books and published articles, then follow-up with experts and professionals. Posting a question about the craft or biz on a chatboard comprised of other aspiring writers is a lot like asking a diner how to prepare the dish he’s eating; the vast majority of the time, you’ll be much better off reading the printed recipe and then getting extra tips from the chef who cooks that dish daily for diners.
“Then one day I slammed the phone down in disgust and heard the words, “Damned stupid writers!” come out of my mouth. I knew at that moment I had crossed over and was no longer a writer, but a publisher. (grin)”
Indeed. I got that way by being at the helm of a national (well, actually, international–but mostly North American) professional writers organization for two years.
I dealt with quite a few FANTASTIC people on projects in that capacity, and I developed TOWERING respect for a number of my colleagues.
But, honestly, I also had a lot of days when the words, “God, I hate writers,” slipped out of my mouth. (wg)
Wow, Dean, little did I know when I asked you about the Spinrad article on Facebook that such a wealth of conversation would ensue! I went out of town almost immediately after, so am just now catching up.
Thanks.
One thing that this conversation about names brings up is thoughts about marketing, which includes blurbs and quotes: as a non-fiction writer my good name and reputation is my currency. I have had writers become shocked when, rather than automatically say “why yes, i will give you a blurb for your book!” I say “I will look at it and let you know.”
If my name appears on just any book, it loses value. If my name appears on books I actually would recommend, people continue to trust the value my name has accrued as “a brand” to use marketing terminology.
Another case of “not all advertising/publicity is good advertising/publicity.” Just getting my name out there is not the most important thing. There has to be something to back it up.
T. Thorn, I agree completely. I seldom give blurbs, in fact almost never. I’ve done exactly three introductions to books of writers I love their work and what they were doing and have said no to dozens and dozens. Kris is the same way. When you see our name on something, we are major supporters of that work.
Along the lines of pseudonyms, I originally had the ego Dean mentions. I wanted my own name on everything I’ll do.
But I’ve since come around, mostly from reading what he and others have written about it. I now have three major reasons for actually wanting to use a pseudonym:
1. “Jeremy J. Jones,” while being a wonderful source of alliteration, kind of sucks as an author name, in my opinion. I’ve never really liked the way that flows. Also, there are two profession snowboarders named Jeremy Jones, and countless other well-known professionals. And I am slowly gathering friends on Facebook with the name “Jeremy J. Jones,” just because I think it’s funny (I have two of them now). So it’s kind of a run-of-the-mill name. That said, I’ll still write some things under my own name, and that’s where I’m beginning.
2. If I fail completely with one name, I can start over with another name, as mentioned above. I can also prevent confusion in the market by writing across genres in the same way, and I can produce in more than one market annually, when I get to writing that much. These are huge benefits.
3. My favorite reason, however, is because I like to invent characters and write about them. I like to pretend, and a pseudonym is the ultimate pretending for a writer. I can be some other name and have a ball with that. Of course, you don’t lie in your bio, but you still get to pretend to have another name.
Another great reason came to mind as I was writing this, but it now escapes me. Drat.
The irony of name-recognition viz blurbs is that the more name-recognition a writer has, the more they get asked to do blurbs and, realistically, the less time they have to give them.
If you look at the touring/speaking schedule of a hardcover NYT bestseller compared to a midlist writer, the bestseller’s work-related travel/appearance schedule will be at least six times as busy as the midlister’s. (Ex. In 2010, my travel/appearance schedule for the year has comprised three North American conventions and one local talk. By contrast, for example, #1 hc NYT bestseller Diana Gabaldon is making about 20 appearances on two continents in just the next 3 months.) Meanwhile, such a writer has at least as pressing a writing schedule as the rest of us.
Bestsellers also do a lot more business when they’re at home than most midlisters, because their books are in so many more countries, formats, and venues, and they get so many more business queries. (Ex. If you’re a hc NYT bestseller, you’re hearing regularly from audio companies, film/TV companies, gaming companies, graphic novel companies, etc.) They also get about 50 times the fan mail that a midlister gets–and since writers appreciate readers, they often try to respond at least once to much of it. (Bestsellers, incidentally are also much more likely than midlisters to become the subject of stalking; and women bestsellers are more often stalking targets than men.)
About 20 years ago, even before the internet made everything easier and more abundant, a friend of mine who was a hc NYT bestseller was steadily getting of 3-8 requests PER WEEK to blurb books. A number of bestsellers wind up having a blanket policy of just saying “no” to all requests, because the sheer quantity of requests becomes so overwhelming. They get accused of being “ungrateful,” but actually, by the time they reach that decision, they’ve usually already given out far more quotes than they ever received on their way up, and they’re receiving so mant requests that reading all the MSs and galleys thrust under their noses would become their full-time job and they’d have to cease writing–or ever again doing their own research reading or (hullo!) pleasure reading.
Which brings us back to something we’ve discussed before, which is that every level of the writing profession has its own set of problems. You’re never problem free, you’re always just swapping out old problems for new ones. For bestsellers, additional time management challeneges and a million different people wanting a piece of them (and being resentful when they don’t get it) are among the new problems they swap out for the old midlist problems of thins like competing hard to get publisher support, trying to build name recognition, and struggling fiscally.
Steve Lewis wrote: “Dean, I know you’ve mentioned before that writers can now make a nice living writing short fiction. But a lot of other pros say that this isn’t so.”
Sounds like it could be another Sacred Cow post!
Well, the question is really whether WHATEVER name(s) the writer uses has name-recognition, not whether it’s the writer’s real name or pseudonym.
Nora Roberts, for example, is not that writer’s real name. (Nor is JD Robb.)