This myth has a lot of ugly heads, but I’m going to do my best to wrap them all into one chapter here. And I’m sure I’m going to miss one or two heads at least. But I hope to get the main ones.
So what is this myth exactly? Simply put, writers believe that when one event or another happens, they will have it made. They usually have no idea what “having it made” means exactly, but that’s beside the point for most everyone. And some part of this myth hits all of us at one point or another, and many published writers still carry it in some ways. So I’m going to start with this myth in the early days of writing and work to longer-term writers.
The First Sale Myth
If I Could Just Make That First Sale, I Would Have it Made.
Honestly, you start to realize this is wrong the moment you get the first check for the story or novel. But this myth has so much more to it than just money. You think that suddenly you have it made after a couple of sales, that you don’t need to do as much learning, that your writing is now completely professional level. I have seen this happen with a number of writers who attended workshops here. Once they had a sale or two, they didn’t need to come back for other areas of learning, even though most of the writers who attend here are professional writers who have made numbers of sales and gotten past this myth at this level. I always want to say something to the writer when I hear this, but Kris always just puts a gentle hand on my arm and tells me to let each writer find their own path.
The true danger of this first head of this myth is that the writer suddenly just shuts down learning. Why? My guess is fear that more learning will cause the writer to break something that seems to be working at the moment. Of course it doesn’t work that way. But that’s the best I can figure. I hate to think it’s just the writer ego taking control, but more than likely it is.
The Rejection Myth
Once I make those first few sales the rejections will stop.
Luckily I never fell into this since I had gotten so many rejections so quickly after my poetry sales. But so many writers I have known believed this one for a time. The truth is that rejection is a part of this business. No writer can write something that will fit every book line or every magazine. Just doesn’t work that way. Maybe Stephen King doesn’t get rejected much anymore, but I know that Kris at Pulphouse rejected many stories from different New York Times bestselling writers because they just didn’t fit what we were doing.
Understand that I am a bestselling writer with about one hundred novels in print. And I got a form rejection from Pocket Books, a company I used to edit for and a company I had sold over thirty novels to. I understood that the beginning editor right out of Vassar had no idea who I was. I was publishing books there when she was in grade school. I didn’t take it personally. But I did send the manuscript back to a more senior editor I had worked with before. It wasn’t right for her line either, but I got a nice letter.
I got a form rejection on another novel just last month. It never ends, folks.
This myth is dangerous at times because of the emotional toll it takes on the writer. The expectation is that the writer won’t get rejected, then here comes a rejection, more than likely of a project the writer spent a lot of time and heart on. Emotions will range all over the place, from anger to depression, but often this will cause the writer to slowly stop writing and is one of the reasons some writers quit writing after a number of sales. The realization that rejection never ends is just too much for some poor writer egos to handle.
I’ve Made Sales So I Don’t Have to Work as Hard Myth
Make Sales and Now You Only Have to Do a Few Pages Per Day.
The thinking on this one comes from everywhere. Agents and editors tell writers to slow down all the time, the university system tells writers writing slow creates top fiction (ignoring the reality of the writers they study), and fear takes over writers’ minds so they slow down to make sure the next story is better. It’s an ugly dead-end cycle that kills more writer careers in the early years than can be counted.
So the sales are made and the writer slows down. For some reason, writers think they don’t have to practice, to start off with. Second, for some reason, a normal work ethic has been made into a bad thing in writing. Nora Roberts, Stephen King, James Patterson and so many other major writers all have normal work ethics. They work between six and ten hours per day. Yet this reality does not seem to get down to the early professionals who think that writing one hour a day is hard work. And then wonder why they don’t make a living or more sales.
I think this myth feeds on writers’ fears more than any other. The thinking is that if a writer really works hard on their writing, they actually might write more, and that might not be as good as the first stuff that sold. Some writers (I fought this one) have a deep fear of success and this myth is guaranteed to keep success from happening. Whatever the root cause of this, if you have bought into the one hour a day is enough to work as a professional writer, imagine your doctor only working one hour a day at learning how to treat you. Or your lawyer spending only one hour a day to learn how to defend you in court. If you want to be a professional at an international profession, start realizing you have to work harder than everyone else. If that scares you, go dig ditches or wait tables because you are not cut out to be an internationally-selling writer.
The Continued Sales Myth
I Have Sold Three Novels. My Fourth Novel Will Sell.
Uhhhh, not necessarily. In fact the chances are against you. Ugly truth. The factors involved with selling a 4th novel are these: 1) Your sales numbers must be great, on an upward slant. 2) Your editor must have remained in place and not moved to a new house with a better job. 3) Your publishing company must have remained focused on that type of book and area of publishing for the years it took to publish your first three books. And a dozen other factors.
As I have pounded over and over, writers are people who write, so if you are a real writer who can’t sell the 4th book, you move to a new series, a new name, a new publisher and just keep going. Not really a big deal to a writer. Annoying, sure, and stressful, but to writers not career ending. But to authors, who find being published the most important aspect of their life, who spend all their time focusing on how to promote their last book, this problem will kill their career.
Here comes that writer ego again. The writer will say that the publisher or the agent screwed them and blame anyone but themselves or how publishing works. They will think there is no point in writing another novel, and thus won’t. They would never think of changing their name and starting with a new series because their baby was the first book or series. And so on and so on.
Sadly, most writing careers end in this way. And sadly, this part of the myth combines with the first part of not being willing to keep learning. If the writer, from the beginning, had kept learning their craft and business, it wouldn’t have stopped the publisher dropping them for one reason or another, but it would allow the writer to understand what had happened and keep writing more.
The “I Got An Agent” Myth
If I Could Just Get An Agent My Book Would Sell and I Would Have It Made.
For newer writers, this myth bothers me more than any other. Agents in the mythology of publishing have been built up over the last twenty years to being these magical gods able to take care of writers and their careers and make their books sell at once to top publishers. If you still believe this myth, holy smokes are you in deep trouble. Go back and read all the Sacred Cows posts with Agent in the title. And all the comments. The Sacred Cow tab at the top of this page will get you to all of them.
The problem with this myth is that it stops most writing careers cold, especially writers with unique voices. If the writer believes this myth, they will never offer their book to an editor. I know of many, many writers who have been writing for years and never once, not once, offered their books to anyone who could actually buy and publish them. They have been sending only to agents, and even when they get an agent, the young agent will often have them spend years rewriting the same idea over and over trying to turn it into the next Da Vinci/Harry Potter/Vampire clone. And that can get discouraging to say the least. And kill original stories and original voices.
And at the few conventions I go to now, when a young writer comes up to me all excited about “getting an agent” I ask them who they sold their book to? If they say it hasn’t sold, then I ask them bluntly why they need an agent. Luckily not many beginning writers say that to me anymore. (grin)
If you find yourself in this trap, start mailing your books to editors. (Yeah, I know, I know, the guidelines. If you worry about rules as a writer, you are doomed anyway, might as well just stay in the agent trap.)
My Agent Will Take Care of Me Myth
I Have An Agent. I Don’t Need to Learn Business. I Have It Made.
This myth again has been covered many times in all the agent chapters in this book. Again, go to the top of the page and reread all the chapters with agent in the title, plus all the comments.
This myth flat kills a writer’s careers, and heaven-only-knows how much money is stolen from writers by agents. Now most agents are very solid and reputable, but there is no organization that watches over agents and anyone with a business card can become an agent in ten minutes.
But yet over and over I have heard writers say, “I got into writing because I hate business.” Being a writer is a business. If you hate business, you hate writing. You can’t pull the two apart no matter how much your English professor told you that you could.
A couple basic factors to realize about agents if you want one to take care of you: 1) Agents are employees of writers. You are the boss. 2) Agents don’t care about any one writer, only what publishers think of them. 3) Agents have cash flow issues as well and can borrow your money at will if they need it because you don’t even know it’s there.
But even with all that, writers are excited to let agents take care of them, run their careers, handle all their money, tell them what to sign, and so on and so on…
If you are a writer who wants to last more than three to ten books in this business, you must learn the business and take control of it yourself. If you are still letting your agent handle all your money and all the paperwork that goes with that money before you see it, you are playing a very deadly game. Most of the money will come through just fine, but you won’t know about the money that doesn’t.
Some writers even take this myth so far as to give an agent, a total stranger, power of attorney to sign their contracts. Head-shakingly stupid.
This is a dangerous myth at all levels. And I see no overall solution on the horizon. Each writer must learn to take care of their own business and learn quickly.
I Got a Bestseller So I Have it Made Myth
My Book Hit a Bestseller List So I Have it Made
Nope. I’ve been on dozens of bestseller lists around the world over the years. Sure, the money is nice, but it doesn’t last, and past that, as a writer, all that being a bestseller does is allow you to have a new first name. For example, I am Bestselling Writer Dean Wesley Smith. Some writers even put the name of the place that they were a bestseller. For example, I could put USA Today Bestselling Writer Dean Wesley Smith. Now that’s just silly and granted it might makes a little difference in sales, sure, but past that it doesn’t help much.
When you hit one of the top lists with your own book, the money can get pretty nice. (This one also fits with the “I Got a Huge Advance, I Have it Made.”) But remember, in the current world of publishing, the produce model still functions. That means the sales hit quick and then the book is done, tossed out of the system like so much bad lettuce. So the money hits quick and then is also done. And then you have to repeat the process with your next book. And so on. Writers who believe that they have it made because they hit a bestseller list are called one thing: Broke. And combine that sudden influx of money with a writer who thinks they need to have someone take care of them, such as an agent, and the bankruptcy comes even faster.
Publishing Will Remain the Same Myth
I Started Selling Five Years Ago So What I Was Doing Then Should Work Fine Now.
This is a more advanced writer myth. And I hear it a great deal from the writers who haven’t had more than one or two major crashes in their careers. All of us who have been around for more than twenty years know this is silly. Publishing changes constantly, and often the changes clear out an entire group of writers, just leaving them behind or pushing them aside. The changes going on right now are even faster than normal and major. And those of us who understand at a deep level that publishing constantly changes are moving in lots of directions to stay with or ahead of the changes.
But so many writers I know are not moving at all right now, just focusing on what worked five years ago. That way is career death I’m afraid. I had one writer say to me last month, “You said…” I asked when I had taught the writer that fact. The writer said in a workshop seven years ago. I said I was right then, but for today’s world that no longer applies. The writer just couldn’t grasp that a major business like publishing could change so fast.
But alas, it does change fast, very fast. Kris and I started teaching a marketing workshop just over 18 months ago. The marketing workshop we will teach this spring is so, so different from the one we taught 18 months ago. Sure, some elements, some basics, some craft, some history is the same, but what to do with those basics, how to use the history and the craft is so very, very different, it might seem like two different professions. That’s how fast publishing is changing right now.
Some Extras That Are Not As Common But Just as Deadly
— I Got a Great Review So I Have it Made
This one kills writers with huge egos. And the moment a bad review comes in, which they will, the writer is dead. If you believe the good ones, you have to believe the bad ones as well. And that way lies madness. Just don’t read them. Have a friend read them for pull quotes for your future books.
—I Optioned My Book to Hollywood So I Have it Made
I watched one writer get an option, quit his day job and start living on credit cards because he was convinced his book was going to be a movie at any moment. He never wrote again. The only time you count money from Hollywood is AFTER THE CHECK HAS CLEARED. Until then it is a joke. Ignore it.
—My Editor Takes Great Care of Me So I Have it Made.
Yup, right up to the moment the editor gets downsized or moves to a new publisher for a new job. Your contract is with the publisher and your new editor might hate your currant book. It’s called being orphaned and if you ever put too much trust in one editor, you are doomed if they leave.
—I Won a Major Award, I Have it Made
Wow, I wish this one was the truth. I’ve won my share and been nominated for a ton more. And Kris has major awards all over her office gathering dust. If this was true, we would have a lot more money than we have. Darn it anyhow.
Summary
Publishing is full of major and minor myths. The myths that surround the thinking of “I Have It Made” are very deadly to long-term careers. All of us find ourselves dealing with one or more of these myths at times. The key is to notice you are in one and clear it out quickly.
The most deadly signs you are in a “I Have It Made” myth are:
— You don’t think you have much to learn anymore. You have stopped going to listen to those farther down the road than you are at conventions and conferences.
— You feel you should be taken care of by your agent or editor. And the thought of not having them take care of you makes you angry. You don’t want to deal with your own money.
— You think you are too good to be rejected.
—You only write one hour a day even though you don’t work a day job.
— You have broken into writing and are selling, you don’t have to keep up with the publishing industry changes. And right now you are not exploring putting your backlist up electronically because someone else should do that for you.
And the biggest sign of all that you are deep in this myth is when you hear yourself say the sentence: “I don’t need to because…”
I fought through a few of these myths myself over the years. And I’m sure I have traces of others I don’t want to face still hanging around this office. But if I can get through them, so can you. Trust me, to have a long-term writing career, you have to.
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Copyright 2010 Dean Wesley Smith
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Okay, I admit it, I had issues at first with putting in a tip jar in the Magic Bakery. It was one of the “I have it made, why do I need to support my writing with tips.” A minor myth, sure, but still one that took me a few days and some talk with Kris to get past.
And speaking of the Magic Bakery, this chapter 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.
If you can’t afford to donate, please feel free to pass this chapter along to others who might get some help from it.
And I would like to thank all the fine folks who have donated over this last year. 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!
Thanks, Dean
So you’ve made it when your obituary says “professional writer,” right?
Or is the zen saying right: “After 1000 novels, still a beginner?”
Great post as usual!
heteromeles, actually, on that topic, I got really angry when I walked up to a book dealer at a convention in my first year of selling and asked him if he would like me to sign my story in the Clarion Awards. He frowned at me and said, “Why would I want some neo defacing my books?”
I was mad at him for years, he’s now a friend. But for years he also said that he didn’t consider a writer a real writer with staying power until they had ten novels published and more in the pipeline. I hated that, but now after watching so many hundreds of writers just vanish after one or two or five novels, I understand what he was talking about.
But I’m not as mean as my friend. I think anyone who writes and sells is a professional writer. And these posts are geared to help professional writers become long-term writers.
This was the one that killed me. Had a big hit first out of the box, so I figured that was forever and stopped really trying. Twenty years later, I’m wondering where my money, success, and Wikipedia entry have gone. True, I never got rich, but I thought I had it made.
I’d say this is the single largest paradigm adjustment for me: realizing that there is no such thing as having “arrived” and that writing is a perpetual uphill climb. A few years back I desperately daydreamed that there would be a “made it” place on the continuum, from which all else would become easy. Or at least easier. Nope. Having talked to numerous long-time pros now — not just Dean or Kris, but lots of others to boot — the landscape of things is much clearer. And it never seems to go downhill. You can turn around and walk back down — give up. But if you want to be a long-term pro, you have to lace up the boots and just keep going up the grade.
Brad, very glad to hear you say that. Glad you realize it. Means I might be reading your great stories for a few more years.
The check stub for the very first money I earned as a writer (a few hundred dollars, dated 5 Sept. 89 for a non-fiction project) still hangs on my bulletin board. When I got the check, I was so blown away by it that I held onto it for as long as my budget allowed, because I (a) thought it was a total fluke and no one would ever pay *me* for writing again, and (b) couldn’t believe I had actually earned that much money just from a few hours’ effort, *just writing*. Those were the initial myths I had to get over.
I’ve written a lot since then (mostly ghosted work), and been paid for it (which still comes as a shock sometimes!). I’ve also run into every single one of your myths in one form or another (excellent summary, by the way), and had to wrestle each of them to the ground in order to go on and build — and periodically rebuild — a career as a professional writer.
And I’ve noticed that it’s when I get complacent, when I relax and try to rest on my laurels or fall into the trap of thinking I already know everything I need to know about this profession, that I’ve Got It Made and can just coast along on Easy Street, that’s when the work slows down and the flow of money dries up. And then I have to kick myself back into gear and put in the effort that maintaining this profession demands.
We don’t have anyone regulating us or demanding “professional writer certification” or annual continuing education and review of our credentials, but it’s been my observation that if writers aren’t always learning something — whether it’s about the craft or the business — the flow of creative energy dries up (or reverses altogether) and the work goes stagnant.
Thanks for this.
Lauryn, thanks, great comment.
Back when Kris and I and Nina Hoffman and Kevin J. Anderson and a bunch of others were all coming in, I managed to sell a novel slightly ahead of the rest. Kevin sent me a card I still have. On the front it’s a mouse pushing in four panels an elephant to the top of a tall hill. You open the card and inside it showed the mouse beside the elephant, sweating like crazy, and at the bottom of the hill it showed a herd of elephants. The caption said, “Great job. Now do it again.”
Not sure how Kevin at that point was so smart, but it was something I took to heart and never thought I had it made, not once, because there was always that herd of elephants at the bottom of that hill waiting for me.
“I walked up to a book dealer at a convention in my first year of selling and asked him if he would like me to sign my story in the Clarion Awards. He frowned at me and said, “Why would I want some neo defacing my books?””
When my third book was released, a paperbacl romance under my pseudonym Laura Leone, I gave into the urgings of promo-conscious writers, walked into a WaldenBooks (which were numerous in the late 1980s), found several copies of my book, and offered to sign them. I had even brought my own “Autographed By Author” gold stickers, which another writer had given me. The store staff regarded me with open suspicion and summoned the manager. He regarded me with open suspicion and said he’d have to contact the district manager for approval, and that would take a few days. By now, everyone in the store was staring at me with suspicion. Among the store manager’s questions: (1) Why did I WANT to “deface” these books, and (2) How could they possibly know I was actually the author (the books were written under a pseudonym, and I had no ID that proved I was indeed Laura Leone).
It was YEARS before I again walked into a bookstore and offered to sign stock. The next time, in fact, was when my fourtheenth novel came out, which was my first hardcover and the first book with my real name on it (IN LEGEND BORN, my first fantasy novel). I went to the local indy bookstore in my neighborhood, a college-town neighborhood and a store with a fairly loyal fantasy audience. I walked in, introduced myself to the indy store owner, and offered to sign their stock–which was, as I had ascertained before asking, just two copies of the book.
The bookseller said baldly, “No, that might affect our ability to return those two books for full credit.”
I have NEVER AGAIN offered to sign books. I wait to be asked. (In dealers rooms at cons, if they see your name tag when you’re browsing, they sometimes ask if you’ll sign stock. If you participate in in signings at cons or booksellers (which I rarely do, because it always turns out ot be a waste of time), sometimes you’re asked to sign the leftover stock. That’s when I sign books.) I know other writers who still walk into stores and offer to sign stock, but my experiences put me off! (g)
I will have made it once I’ve reached Stephen King’s level of success.
But then there’s J.K. Rowling.
Drat.
So to boil it down, work hard, don’t ever take future success for granted, and be flexible and open to change.
RE bestsellers not having it made… This is one I learned via years of being in the biz and seeing bestsellers come and go. There are any number of writers who were making annual six-figure incomes and regular appearances on the NYT list when I started out whose sales eventually collapsed when the market changed and who had to reinvent themselves to keep selling books. It worked for some of them, who broke into midlist fiction (sometimes under their known names, sometimes under new ones) and not for others (who, in some cases, haven’t sold a book in years, and their former bestselling novels are long since out of print). There are also any number of writers who were making SEVEN-figure incomes who got squeezed out of the market and stopped writing, or whose sales dropped off to a point where they had to reinvent themselves. This is in part due to the way the market is constantly changing and reader attention is constantly shifting; and in part due to how INCREDIBLY, vigorously competitive the top end of the market is.
Moreover, as I think we’ve previously discussed here, bestsellerdom simply doesn’t pay as well as it used to, because print runs and sales have dropped dramatically. Yes, people in the top-10 of the NYT hardcover bestseller list are still mostly making six-figure and sometimes seven-figure advances; but I know a number of people on the paperback NYT lists… and their sales and advances these days would have, a decade ago, been considered no more than “respectable midlist” sales and advances. So “bestsellerdom” these days, in particular, doesn’t mean fame and fortune. And even back when it meant a lot more money, it certainly NEVER meant “now you’ve made it.” What it mostly means is, “Use this opportunity to save for a rainy day.” Because this is PUBLISHING, for goodness sake, so rain is always just around the corner.
Laura, I think Kris in one of her next articles about writers on her web site is going to talk about the bestseller flattening topic. Writing money used to be like a very sharp-peaked mountain, with huge sums at the top. Now it’s more like a weathered mountain, with gentle rounded slopes at the top. The lower numbers have spread out, there is a lot more middle numbers, and the high numbers are not so high. All in the last five to ten years.
I’m a financial planner, so I have money discussions with folks all the time and your point about people getting bestsellers hit on something I tell people all the time.
Folks will save up $1 million and say they want to retire (in this discussion, they hit the big list and the book makes them a million bucks). Now they want to pack it in and ride out the rest of their lives on the money in the bank (or the bestseller int he bank!)
I always say something like this:
Me : IF you had your house paid for, could you live on 50k/year.
Them : Sure!
Me : How old are you?
Them : 40!
Me: Ok, at 50k per year spending and a million bucks int he bank, what are you going to do wen your money runs out at age 60 and you have been out of the workforce for 20 years?
I imagine it’s the same thing with bestsellers – you figure you have it made and never put effort forth, so you try to sit on the bestseller ‘status’ and ride it out to comfort – except that the money is gone, you haven’t grown as a writer and you are left scrambling to produce something else…
I guess if I ever ‘make it’ I’d rather be the 2-3 books a year guy who can repeat that success every year until I’m 60 and retire 5 years early
Chances are I’ll be working until I’m 300, but hey at least I’ll be happy!!!
Thanks, Joemontana, that’s perfect and well said.
It’s interesting but as a writer, it never occurs to me that I would retire. I’m doing a job that people with day jobs do in their spare time. So I hope to go out face down on my keyboard still working on a new story at the age of one hundred plus.
However, Kris and I have fantastic insurance and always have for all the “other issues” that life can throw at you.
RE sales not meaning you’ve got it made… I was stunned, earlier in my career, when aspiring writers and new writers would admit to feeling angry or resentful or upset after attending events or reading articles where I talked about my career experiences. (People may still feel that way, but due to the length and breadth of my experiences by now, such people mostly just seem shell-shocked with mute horror after hearing me give a talk. (g)) They were appalled to hear this stuff from me and would’ve been happier not knowing it. I never understood that. I mean, the first time you’re dropped by a publisher or have a contract cancelled or get dumped by an agent, etc… wouldn’t you rather know it’s not JUST =YOU=? That, in fact, it’s simply part of the business, and the sort of thing that virtually every longterm career writer has experienced and overcome (usually multiple times)?
The first book I ever wrote or submitted got an offer from a major house (soon after having been rejected by a dozen agents). But then my enthusiastic editor–who’d predicted I’d have a long and busy career there, and who asked to see everything else I was working on–resigned (and left the biz, as young editors often do) immediately after the book went into production. My next editor, a woman comically misnamed “Joy,” told me I was unwanted work that had been dumped on her desk without anyone asking if she minded, she had no time for me, and I shouldn’t expect to sell anymore books to that house. Joy and I remained in this stalemate, with her refusing even to LOOK at my option book, or anything else of mine, and telling me I should just assume my career at that house was now over.
This is the sort of thing that can happen when you’re orphaned (your editor leaves); and being orphaned is such a common phenomenon that there’s a whole chapter about it in my book REJECTION, ROMANCE, AND ROYALTIES.
I solved the problem by going to Joy’s superior and–VERY courteously–asking for reassignment. I got it, and my next editor was excellent, and I remained at that house for 10 more books. However, I was not a natural fit for that market (category romance), and I was lso a new, raw, young writer learning my craft (and thus sometimes producing some really bad stuff; as well as producing some reasonably decent stuff that was just off-target for that market). The upshot is that, during the five years I wrote for them, Silhouette rejected over half of my proposals (a proposal for them was typically 50-75 pages), only three of which I ever sold elsewhere. One TWO different occasions, Silhouette rejected FOUR proposals IN A ROW, during which times I, obviously, went many months without a contract or advance payment.
Finally, after 11 books for them, Silhouette decided my sales weren’t satisfactory and, although I had won several RT awards (best new writer in my genre; best book of the year in my subgenre; etc.) and was well-reviewed and my editors liked me and liked my writing… they dumped me. Told me it hadn’t worked out and I should stop submitting there, they just wouldn’t buy from me again, due to weak sales.
That same year, the house where I had sold two of the bokos Silhouette had rejected… folded. Very shortly after signing me for my second book there (which book was never completed or released, since it only collected rejections at other houses after that).
The following year, I sold a book to Kensington that Silhouette had rejected. The acquiring editor loved the book, loved my writing, liked me, talked to me about building my career up to lead title there, allocating promo money to me, etc. However, the publisher instituted a “buying freeze” shortly after I sent in my option book, which sat around for months on the desk of the editor who wanted to buy it, but who wasn’t allowed to buy -anything- for the time being. (I had meanwhile starting writing epic fantasy for another house, so I very busy elsewhere and just waited to see what would happened here.) What finally happened was… the editor was laid off, my option book was returned to me, the imprint was shut down, and my book was dumped on the stands like a dirty secret.
I could go on, since I have lots MORE stories like this, but you get the idea. Although things like this happen more in some careers (my hand goes up!) than in others, it’s rare to meet any writer who’s been in the biz for twenty years who has not had at least SOME experiences like this. The KEY difference between the long haul career writer and the writer who disappeared after 1 book, 2 books, 3 books, or 6 years… is that writers who are still working yera after year keep writing and submitting, writing and submitting, writing and submitting, rather than just sitting around griping about how one editor or one agent or one publisher “ruined” our careers.
Laura, yup, I agree completely. Thanks. Starting about five years ago, for the first time, Kris and I both had career crashes at the same time. Usually over the years one was up while the other was down. But two years ago, as we were both climbing out of the crash, we went to Worldcon (Science Fiction World Convention) in Denver. I had decided I would do a survey of our writer friends who came in about the same time we did and were still around as to how many major crashes in their career they had over the years. And I defined major crash as feeling as if you would never sell another book and that it was over. I talked with almost a dozen professionals that you would know, writers who had been in the business as long as we had. The average answer was four. One had five, another three, but almost everyone instantly, without even having to stop and think about it, said four. (Crashes are not something you soon forget.) Wow, did that make me feel better since I was coming out of my fourth crash as well, and so was Kris.
And what’s interesting is that from the outside, with most of my friends, I would have sworn their career had been an easy climb, slowly over the years just getting better. (We don’t talk about the down times either it seems.) So thanks, Laura.
And trust me folks, when the events that Laura described happen to you, you feel as if things are over. They aren’t if you are a writer as Laura is, a writer who just keeps pounding and putting work out there. But wow do those times feel ugly, which is why so many don’t make it through them.
Dean wrote: “I defined major crash as feeling as if you would never sell another book and that it was over.”
I’ve had at least four.
My most recent one was 3-4 years ago. A publisher cancelled a multi-book deal and dumped me, and I soon thereafter lost my (fourth) agent. (Technically, I fired the agent; but that’s a lot like saying, “I filed for divorce after discovering my spouse had moved out.”) I queried some agents, but no one would touch me. And I was well aware of my status as an unagented midlister dragging around a canceled deal and bad sales figures in a spiraling market. I wondered daily for several months if that point in my life would be where I would look back in later years, as a FORMER novelist, and say, “Right there. Right then. That’s where my writing career entered its death spiral.”
The following year, I sold 4 books, all to major houses, and mostly for increased advances. But, hoo boy, YES, for about 5 months there, it felt like my career was over. And not for the first time, certainly. (And this business being what it is… probably not for the last time, either.)
Career writers are NOT writers who never experience these things; we’re the writers who, having experienced these things (often for the third or fourth or fifth time) keep writing and submitting, writing and submitting, writing and submitting.
Ahhh, Laura, right on the average for all of us who have been around for twenty years or so. (grin) Kris likes the mantra of it doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down, only how many times you stand up.
But I can tell you one thing, that survey at Worldcon and discovering that so many writers who I thought had smooth careers had four or so major crashes was fantastically freeing and uplifting for both of us. And interestingly enough, they always thought Kris and I had had smooth careers and were surprised we had had crashes as well. From the outside it all looks so simple I guess. (grin)
And yup, I also am at 4. My last also about four years ago. And this year I am on schedule to make more money than I have made in a decade or more, and next year is shaping up to be even better. Go figure.
Great post, Dean. I still remember how totally stunned with surprise I was the first time I heard many of these and realized how very true they are. As if once (…) happened, the floodgates were now open. When of course they aren’t, and selling new stuff is still work.
Regarding reading reviews, ignoring them altogether seems like the best advice.
Safest for the sanity.
But the line about “if you believe the good, you have to believe the bad”, I don’t think that’s true. Meaning, some of the good might be accurate or not. And some of the bad might be accurate or not. And if a writer (a very ADVANCED writer) can learn something from it, then ok. So I don’t think *any* of it *has to* be believed.
Deborah, my point exactly. Don’t believe any review. And if you have trouble with believing reviews, just remember the old truth (which makes a lot of writers angry, but so be it): Reviewers are, for the most part, failed writers. Especially the reviewers who take books apart for sport and trash writers. A lot of successful writers, me and Kris included, do recommended reading lists and such. We never “review” or trash another author. We just tell people we liked a book, nothing more.
And if you don’t believe me, look at the reviewers in Locus and name the last novel from any of them. I rest my case. Successful writers, for the most part, don’t have time to be reviewers. Or run writer’s organizations, but that’s another topic. (grin)
You know, at the moment I feel like I’ve arrived. Obviously I haven’t, but here’s why: I was chatting with my local indie bookstore (very few of those left) and they said they’d be willing to take a self-published book from a local author on consignment. They also recommended another bookstore in the area that did the same thing.
Monetarily, this means almost nothing, but I feel like I’ve arrived in utopia. There’s still bookstores around who are willing to take a reasonable risk on a newbie. More power to them!
Laura wrote: “and their sales and advances these days would have, a decade ago, been considered no more than “respectable midlist” sales and advances.”
That’s interesting, and I think I’ve heard you guys mention that fact before.
Your statement today made me wonder about the reasons. Off-hand, I’d say the rising costs of doing business, coupled with changes in the market, and the phenomenal payouts to the latest batch of superstars, all conspiring to reduce payouts to everyone else.
I suppose there could be an influx of new material with all the newer presses and the ease of writing these days, technologically speaking. Granted, that means a helluva lot more slush, but it also ostensibly means more publishable stories as well.
But I’m just thinking and completely guessing. I’d love to hear others’ impressions.
Dean, thanks, that’s the second big compliment I’ve gotten from you on your blog this year. Yup, I figure, I spent so much time working up to entry level, it would be a waste to not stick with it and keep pushing the rock up the hill. I like having gotten this far, I want to see how much farther I can go! How much more I can do, what I can sell, and to whom, and how readers will respond, etc. Your article in the last WOTF is correct. Writing = greatest job ever invented. I’m not sure anything I’ve ever done which has paid me has proven as satisfying.
Got that right, Brad. And you did a good post about it on your blog, with a number of points. The biggest problem I had with that post was the education part of it. (go back and read what you said) You said you were going to slow that down and I just shuddered. The truth of it is that once you start selling, you speed up your education, you bring education up the priority list to near the top, you go to MORE things, listen to more writers farther down the road than you are, hit more conferences and workshops like the ones we do here while we are doing them.
For my early years in writing, and Nina’s and Kris’s and Kevin’s and so many other writers I know, as we started selling a few short stories, we doubled how much we went out to learn. Maybe more than that. We slept five or more to a room, we ate in convention suites because we couldn’t afford the restaurant, we shared gas, we drove all night to save hotel costs, but we did it. So that one point in your fine article made me worry a lot. It’s the “have it made” thinking creeping in. And that kills so many fine writers. You must increase the input of education as you start to sell, the learning, the hunger for knowledge. And then the more you learn, the more you realize how much more you have to learn. And then it ramps up from there.
I am too new to have had a crash, of course, and am steadfastly approaching this with the innocence and confidence of inexperience! (grin) But I’ll…keep those words in mind for down the road…
Now, here’s a wild thought… With the ability to publish your whole backlist (and even self-publish new books if you want), do things feel more, well, stable for you folks? I mean, even if you hit a bad patch in traditional publishing, you’ve got the epub/POD backup now. Right? I’m not saying that a crash can’t happen, even happen badly. But it seems like there should be more cushion under the new system to help get one through it.
Kevin, that’s true, the POD and electronic publishing will help smooth out this for writers smart enough to do it themselves and not give that over to someone to “take care of.” It won’t stop the crashes, but it will put a floor under them that’s higher than before.
Also, the biggest area for both fans and writers are the dropped series. In publishing for the last thirty years, if your series got dropped, you couldn’t move to a new publisher. It was dead and often fans were just left hanging. Now in this new world, even if a series is dropped, the writer can continue it and move forward and keep their fans happy. Kris has THREE series like this right now coming back. The Fey series was dropped after seven books. With three left to go, three critical books to help finish explaining the entire world. Now she’s planning on writing those new three and the old seven are returning to print starting this spring. In fact, the cover for the first book of the Fey is fantastic! Something the original series never had. She is also continuing on with the Retrieval Artist series, writing both new short fiction and new novels, and she is continuing on with the Smokey Dalton series under the Nelscott name. Also her Kristine Greyson funny fantasy novels have some new books in that world, both from New York publishers as they continue on with the series, but others on her own as well.
So now having a series dropped isn’t such a bad thing as it used to be, and that used to be one of the worst things that could happen.
Dear wrote: “Kris likes the mantra of it doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down, only how many times you stand up.”
Excellent mantra.
And: “From the outside it all looks so simple I guess. (grin)”
I’ve always been aware of career crashes, one reason being that I grew up around writers, another reason being that contrary to way many aspiring writers erroneously THINK my father helped/helps my career (for 20 years, I’ve seen hangers-on claim he sells my books for me, that he writes my work for me, that he edits my work before I send it to editors, that he tells me what to write, that the name “Resnick” was a magic wand that got me out of slushpiles and opened doors for me, that my dad gives me his story notes to write books he doesn’t have time to write, that editors buy my books as a FAVOR to him, that I AM my father, posing under a female pseudonym to market my “lesser” work, that I MARRIED my father, that I stole him from his first wife (er, my mother, who is still his wife), etc.)… Where was I? Oh, right. One of the ways my father -actually- helped me was that when I would go through these career crashes, he’d take me out for coffee and spend an hour or two regaling me with anecdotes of writers who went through crashes like mine, or worse, kept writing and submitting, and wound up on their feet again.
I’ve also been long aware of these things because I’ve been a columnist in publishing trades for years (NINK on-and-off since 2000; also several years in the SFWA BULLETIN), and I’ve always written openly about my experiences (after they were solved; not while I was in the middle of them). As a result, many people confide their experiences to me, current as well as resolved. For that same reason, though–people confiding in me–I’m well aware of how few people realize what a regular aspect of the profession career problems and career crashes (and getting dumped by agents, by publishers, getting orphaned in-house, etc.) even when it happens to THEM. How many people feel ALL ALONE with such incidents, as if it’s never happened to anyone ELSE (let alone happened to lots of writers lots of times). And that’s one of the major reasons I write about these things–writers deserve to know they’re NOT alone when it happens to them. I also think it’s good to get all on the table and in plain view all the true-grit and sometimes very creative solutions that writers have come up with over the years, in hopes that it will help other writers, too. (Ex. I know of several instances where writers solved extremely expensive problems with unreasonable, badly-behaved publishers by offering to write a “replacement book” rather than give back the money (which they couldn’t afford to give back)–maybe it was an original fiction book delivered in place of the book sold elsewhere after the publisher declared it “unacceptable;” maybe it was a media tie-in novel written after the publisher tried to cancel an original fiction contract on the basis of having switched its program over the media tie-ins after signing the writer to a lucrative deal. And so on.)
Exactly, Laura, we all think we are alone in the crashes, the orphan problem, the bad agent, and so much more. Yet when looked at from the outside, for example, if you are orphaned by an editor, guess what, a good sixty to a hundred other writers are having the exact same problem at that moment. If an agent goes south, more than likely you are not the only client having issues with that agent. If a publisher changes their line suddenly, or the wall drops and all spy thrillers are worthless, or your entire genre vanishes overnight (like horror or gothic to name just two), there are many other writers having the same exact issue. Yet we feel alone.
And your point about writing replacement books is so correct. To an “author” who thinks every book is golden, doing that can kill a career, but to a “writer” who writes, doing a replacement book to get out of a contract is just a matter of time spent and moving on. Another reason to be a person who writes, not a person who has written.
Jeremy,
After author Lynn Viehl made the mmpb NYT list for the first time (in 2009, I think), she fulfilled a vow she had once made to share the nitty gritty about it. She did so a while back, and then she followed up again on the next royalty statement, posting the statements and a frank discussion on her blog. From this you can see what actual numbers and sums are involved these days, compared to, say, ten years ago (or twenty years ago) when much bigger numbers were involved. (I can remember when there was no way a book would get on the NHT mmpb with a print run lower than at -least- 200,000.)
Here’s a link to Lynn’s second post about it, which also provides a link to her original post:
http://www.genreality.net/more-on-the-reality-of-a-times-bestseller
Dean wrote: “Successful writers, for the most part, don’t have time to be reviewers. Or run writer’s organizations, but that’s another topic. (grin)”
I think that depends on one’s time-management and compartmentalization skills. I have several personal friends with busy writing careers who remained prolific and productive while running NINC or RWA, so I know that some people can do it.
I, OTOH, regard being president of NINC as one of the five worst mistakes of my career, setting me back fiscally and professionally by at least 18 months (NINC was a 2-year commitment). However, I am not very good at time management, and I am TERRIBLE with personality-related stress. As much of an impediment to my own writing work as I found the NINC workload (which was very heavy and time-consuming), I’d say I lost an equal amount of time and focus due to the stress I experienced over dealing with difficult (or, at least difficult for -me-) personalities.
I was also not nearly good enough at compartmentalizing. To manage both an active writing career -and- a position at the head of a big writing org well, you need (I would say) to be someone who can focus on your book for “x” hours each day, to the exclusion of the org and its distractions, even though you know, while you’re typing away on your MS, that messages are piling up in your in-box, a volatile quarrel about your new policy initiative is occurring online, 8-12-15 of your organizational projects with deadlines are incomplete and need attention, checks need to be signed, budgets and reports need to be reviewed, budgets and reports need to be written, volunteers need to be checked on or encouraged or goosed, the treasury is running low, the webmaster has technical problems, a big project is going way over budget, the central coordinator has logistical problems, one of your Board members is telling the others that you’re doing a terrible job, another of your Board members has a huge problem that needs your immediate attention, the lawyer wants you to make a decision about something, you’re being accused of violating the Bylaws, and a disgruntled member is sending you hate mail about how you’re destroying (and s/he’s cc’ing this attack to 20-30 or perhaps 400 other people, or perhaps to an editor the org deals with, etc.).
I, alas, turned out to be someone NEVER capable of compartmentalizing all that to focus on my fiction MS. (In factm even just writing those fond reminisciences of my time in office is making me REALLY TENSE again!) The result being that, like I said, being at the helm of NINC for almost two years put me about 18 months behind, professionally and fiscally.
However, like I said, I have personal friends who managed running orgs and maintaining business writing careers, and did both things well–and who enjoyed their volunteer service and found it rewarding.
Toward the end of my two-year term, I was approached by another org and asked to consider running for pres there. As I said at the time, serving as pres of THIS org had been a HUGE mistake for my career, and there was no way I would ever do something like this again, absolutely not, no way, nuh-uh, NEVER.
But a friend of mine who held the same position, and who maintained her career well throughout… is currently serving on the board of another writing org. So for her, it’s a reasonable choice, and one which she enjoys. So it really depends on the writer, IMO, and the writer’s ability to manage these various factors.
But it is certainly true that there are plenty of writers and aspiring writers whose writing producivitity goes down the drain when they take on big volunter jobs in writing orgs. In my case… lesson LEARNED!
Laura, thanks for the comments about being president of an organization. As you said, some can do it. But in our master class, in the game we play running writers through ten years of careers, when they decide to be a president of an organization, we stop their writing for a year and show how that hurts cash flow and other things. Basically trying to teach the lesson that you learned and many, many writers have learned. A few can do it, somehow, and not lose writing time, true, but most can’t.
And in my case, running a writers org was (I say with the benefit of hindsight) an incredibly stupid decision, because I ALREADY KNEW I was someone not very good at time management, not a people person, not good at managing personality-induced stress and conflict, etc.
And those are all things that, if you think it through with even a fraction of common sense, someone obviously NEEDS to be good at in order to manage a large volunteer organization while also maintaining full-time writing commitments (or the other stuff of life that people have–families, day job, etc.).
As it happens, I did a good job as org pres (or at least, I think I did, and I got a lot of positive feedback that confirmed that many other people thought so, too), so there were a number of ways in which I was well-suited to the post. However, I was very ILL-suited to it in the ways that matter to my OWN life. My professional life certainly; and also my personal life–as the fiscal and professional stress mounted, and as I got more and more weary of dealing with personality issues in my capacity as leader of a volunteer org… I became personally miserable, and I became an unmitigated BITCH in my private life. Ask anyone who knows me well just how unpleasant I was to be around for much of 2007 and 2008!
Kevin asked: “With the ability to publish your whole backlist (and even self-publish new books if you want), do things feel more, well, stable for you folks?”
I think Dean’s response puts it excellently. High quotable! (g): Self-publishing electronically and POD doesn’t eliminate career crashes, but it does mean the floor isn’t such a long way down anymore.
And I also agree with him completely that a really big area (possibly the biggest) in which the self-publishing revolution changes things for pros is in terms of SERIES. Once a series is canceled due to low numbers, it’s traditionally been VERY, VERY difficult to find a way to resurrect it. It can occasionally happen (I’ve done it, so have a few other writers), but it seldom does, since that relies on a complicated confluence of circumstances which don’t arise often. New technology makes it feasible for the first time for a writer with a canceled series to PROFITABLY write the next book and self-publish it.
And the key with a series is that the still-existing problem of self-publishing (now that you’ve built it, how DO you get them to come?) is essentially solved before you begin, because there -is- ALREADY an audience for a series that’s been canceled; it’s just not an audience big enough to sustain the costs of a traditional publishing model. But it may well be (indeed, PROBABLY IS) an audience large enough to make the next book in the series profitable enough for the author to write and self-publish via new/recent technology and distribution methods.
On that basis, I know a number of writers experimenting with finishing–or extending–their series themselves, via self-publishing.
This doesn’t mean that all writers with series will switch to self-publishing after a few books. It doesn’t even mean that all writers with canceled series will finish them via self-publishing routes. (There are a variety of reasons a writer might not want to.) But it certainly means no one ever again need see their unfinished trilogy or series die against their will! Which is GREAT.
I’d like to say thank you to Laura for all of her wonderful comments to this post and all the others. I learn so much from you, as an additional side benefit from what I learn from Dean’s original posts. So thank you so much!
And I’m making myself a poster that reads “Keep writing and submitting.”
Oh dear, I think I might have given the wrong message with what I wrote at my blog.
Having done 4 professional workshops since June of 2009 — make it 5 professional workshops counting Kevin Anderson’s ‘Superstars’ workshop in January of next year — I’d wanted to spend as much time as I could in 2011 applying rubber to the road.
Ergo, taking everything I’d learned through these workshops and really making 2011 a truly professional year: writing no less than 6 days a week, approx. 2,000 words per day. I’ve figured out how I can do it, in terms of structuring my routine, but I’ve also had to have some long talks with my business manager (aka: spouse) and because of the fact I was gone so much in 2010 — for Army, for civilian job, for workshops — and because we’re trying to make 2011 a writing-profitable year, it didn’t seem like I’d be doing much in the education department in 2011. At least not the kind you have to travel and pay lots of bucks for.
Having said that, things can change. Additional sales means additional money, and I might be able to talk the business manager (aka: spouse) into cutting me loose for another trip to Lincoln City. The Denise Little workshop looks very tempting, but I am just not sure I’ll have the funds. I also am not sure I want to repeat anything I’ve done before, in terms of content — even though the Denise Little workshop is extraordinarily fun.
I certainly didn’t intend to make it seem like I believed I’d “arrived” in the learning department. More like, I’ve had a very busy burst of break-in sales and pro-level workshopping, and now I want to use the next 12 months to establish a lifetime pattern for myself and prove to myself I can do pro-level production.
If a surplus springs up, I may add another workshop to the 2011 itinerary. That’s what happened in late 2009 so that I could attend in 2010. So if it happens again, I am definitely game.
For 2012, 2013… I am eyeing possibly Taos Toolbox or some of the other two-week workshops. These are very tough for me because that’s a long time to be away from home not earning anything, so they might not ever be feasible for me while I am working the day job, and owe the Army my time to boot.
So, it’s a question of pragmatics, not necessarily me thinking I’ve got all the knowledge I need. As with everything else I’ve ever scratched beyond the surface with, the more I know, the more I know how much I don’t know, so I am quite sure I will be doing additional workshopping, finding additional ways to learn, seeking new forms and modes of education, and so forth.
In a lot of ways I feel like Luke in the early part of his Dagobah training. I can pick up the rocks with The Force, but I can’t quite control them — nor stop them from occasionally falling on my foot. (grin) Clearly, there is more to this Force thing than glowing light sabers and waving your hand at the stormtroopers on the way into town.
That’s good, Brad, because it sure came across as a “I have it made so I don’t need to learn” comment. Glad it wasn’t.
Jeremy, the primary factor in reduced sales and print runs is that there are many more sedentary activities competing for reading time than there were 10 years ago, and MANY more than there were 20 years ago. Indeed, many activities that DIDN’T EXIST, or scarcely existed, or existed sporadically or expensively, now eat up a major portion of time/focus that a percentage of poeple used to devote to reading.
Online time is a big one. 20 years ago, only the most fervent and well funded geeks spent time on the internet, which was in its infancy. Now, most people who constitute the consumer market for books spend a HUGE portion of their time on the internet–their leisure time (as well as their work time). In addition to 300 cable channels, people now have DVDs, streaming videos, on-demand TV, and all of this is MUCH cheaper than 40 cable channels was 15-20 years ago, so many more people have such luxuries than before. Computer games, digital games, WEE (sp?), X-Box, etc. are all extremely popular and far more prevalent and affordable than such things were 10 years ago (let alone 20 years ago). Many people who used to bring a book on the plane or the commuter train now bring a portable DVD player or iPod/video. 10-20 years ago, kids packed books and puzzles for long car trips; now they watch videos on screens built into mini-vans. And so on.
So competition for reading time is a major factor.
A proliferation of titles is another cause. If the numbers of titles published each year grows faster than the consumer market for books grows (i.e. the number of readers)… supply outruns demand. If only 100 fantasy novels were published every year, most fantasy novels would get big print runs because the market would be so undersupplied that everyone who reads fantasy would buy a large percentage of the fantasy novels published each year. By contrast, if 2000 fantasy novels are published each year for the -exact same- consumer market… then most of the books will have very low print runs, because most fantasy readers will only buy a tiny percentage of the books being published each year in the oversupplied market.
But publishers are in competition with each other, not cooperation. So the dozens of publishers supplying any given portion of the reader market don’t ever all get together and say, “Hey, let’s all mutually agree to work together to find the sweet spot, in terms of supplying this market with exactly the right overall quantity of titles so that all our releases make the best possible money.” Instead, they’re all competing to make their own programs as profitable as possible, and they’re doing so in a very competitive environment. Meanwhile, changes in technology in the past twenty years have made it possible for many, many more people and companies, including thousands of small ones, to get into publishing. (At the 1997 NINC conference, our keynote speaker was the head of St. Martin’s Press, who retired that year. Small press was perceived as a thing of the past by most people in commercial publishing at the time. He said, on the contrary, small presses were starting up in droves, were making a comeback, and would be a major force in publishing within a decade. And he was absolutely right.)
On the flip side… this is all good for the reader. The publishing market is so huge and varied now (and shopping rifhly-supplied venues very far from your actual place of residence is so easy now), that anyone who complains they can’t find a good book to read simply isn’t looking. (In much the way that anyone complaining there’s nothing to watch simply hasn’t discovered Netflix, Hulu.com, on-demand TV, streaming video, Tivo, etc.)
Goodness, no. (smile)
Thanks Laura, that’s the very type of response I was looking for, and that of course all makes sense.
You wrote” “WEE (sp?).” It’s Wii, I believe (I don’t have one and didn’t bother checking it online). Not that it necessarily matters.
You also wrote: “On the flip side… this is all good for the reader.”
I’d say all those changes — all the new small presses — are also good for the writer. Not the AUTHOR. (Please note I am not implying you are one of the latter; in review, it kind of sounds like I’m saying that.)
Sure, the advances have decreased. But for the writer, one who writes prolifically, that makes less of a difference. Basically the profit per project has decreased, but project production has increased through additional outlets. If someone writes like Dean or Kris — in the summer I subscribed to six months of Asimov’s for the first time (I’ll be renewing it), and I think Kris was on four of the covers; definitely three at the least — then the ability is there to increase throughput and therefore actually increase revenues despite the decrease in per project payouts.
And then when we add in POD and self-publishing, I’d say it puts it over the top. And that is backed up by Dean’s comment somewhere recently (might have been these comments) that this has been his best year in about ten, and 2011 looks to be even better.
So we come back to Heinlein’s rules, and the rest takes care of itself.
Jeremy, I agree with Laura, of course, that all this is fantastic for the reader. And I agree also with you that this is great for the writer, but not all writers. And that’s where it’s going to get ugly over the next few years at times. And where knowledge and knowing what kind of writer you want to be comes into play.
With every major shift in publishing major groups of writers are just swept aside and left on the beach. I’ve watched it happen so many times I just hardly notice anymore. I watched it with the gothic genre just vanishing one day, the spy thrillers vanishing, historical books switching, sagas vanishing, the horror genre basically dropping to only small press. And the distribution collapse of the late 1990s tore out thousands of writers from the system as well. (Let’s not even talk about the currant stupidity of publishers outsourcing slush and the growth of the rewriting agent. That’s killing and stopping thousands of careers.)
So with all that, these changes will kill some writers. Actually, many, many writers, including the “authors” as you said. But not necessary all “authors.” In fact, this new world allows “authors” to find more ways to keep themselves busy with self-promotion, blog tours, and all that other crap that authors think are important. (Writers think writing the next book is important, just to be clear.) The writers this will kill are the ones with more fear issues than most of us. Those writers will let someone else do the work on getting their books into print. They won’t bother to learn the new skills to even upload a novel to Kindle. They will pay huge percentages to have someone else do it. And thus make no money at it, and thus not be helped by the changes, and thus complain a lot about the changes. And from their perspective they will be right, as Laura pointed out.
Kris right now is starting down through a series of articles on her blog about writers, the first bunch is how this new world will flatten out the top of the bestsellers, and how advances will lower as Laura said.
But folks, a HUGE REMINDER right here. If writers only made their living on advances, there would be few of us making a living. We make our money on all the other slices of our magic bakery pies. There is a ton more to selling a book than just an advance from one publisher. Some years Kris and my income from actual advances is less than 1/10th of what we actually make on our writing. And I see that number shrinking in this new world. I would be surprised that in five years our writing income was more than 1/25th advances. Maybe closer to 1/100th. Sure, advances are shrinking, but the options to make more money from writing, sell more pieces of the magic pie, are increasing fantastically. And those of us who know how to keep those other parts increasing are the ones who will make it.
Ah, this makes me sigh. As I look forward to the publication next month of the second novel in my fantasy series, which has now been orphaned TWICE, I am wondering if the third book (proposal on editor #3′s desk) is dead in the water.
I’m bracing for that to be the case, but not weeping, because if the publisher doesn’t buy it I’ll self-publish. My fans (few as they may be) will have another book to read, and I will get to continue writing a series that is very important to me personally. I love the world I’m writing in. If self-publishing weren’t a viable option now, my heart would be breaking.
Laura, you were an EXCELLENT president of Ninc. So sorry that it interfered with your career.
I was lucky because very early one someone told me that getting published is easy, staying published is HARD, and teh first sale isn’t where the work ends, it’s where it begins.
I believed it.
And if you only knew how many times I’ve been yelled at because I said a writer needs to know the business every bit as well as an agent or an editor!
The comeback is always something like, “I have an agent, and she knows all about the business, so I can just concentrate on my writing and leave the business up to her.”
Not good.
James, yup, when someone comes back to me with the statement “My agent will take care of me.” I just shudder and nod and walk away. That writer is doomed and there’s not a darned thing I can do to help them.
Or as I like to think to myself of that writer, “Well, you are TSTL.”
(TSTL is a romance term that means Too Stupid To Live.)
Pati wrote: “Laura, you were an EXCELLENT president of Ninc. So sorry that it interfered with your career.”
Thanks, Pati.
And good luck with your series, whether you place it with another house again or move into self-publishing with it. Or some combination of both. Your experiences with this series are such an obvious example of the problems in professional publishing: The series is good enough that you’ve already sold it TWICE; and yet, having committed to it, two houses then fumbled the ball and dropped it. On that basis, it’s a Very Good Thing that there IS a profitable alternative for writers via new technology.
Meanwhile, when I placed my series for the second time, I discovered (as probably you did to) that a KEY factor in being able to do this is… being willing to TRY to do this. I did it without an agent after being unable to find an agent willing to try. For similar reasons, I think the jury’s out on whether a series can be placed a third time… primarily because I’m not aware of any examples of someone TRYING (and -certainly- not any examples of an -agent- trying).
You know, Laura, I’ve never heard of anyone ever trying to place a series for the third time either. It must have happened at one point or another, but I also have never heard of it. Good luck, Pati. Keep firing.
And keep in mind that self-publishing the series doesn’t mean you can’t still try for New York with the series and the published books. One no longer cuts off the other.
Cheers
Dean
These lessons are good for anyone in any profession to learn, especially in today’s economy. Something inside me tells me that even if I were to make a billion dollars from writing, I still wouldn’t have arrived. Life is about setting goals, stretching our talents, engaging our minds and souls–you know, all that good stuff that is so hard. I wish there were an easier way. In fact, yesterday I gave up writing for good. This morning I’m back at it.
Lois, yeah, know the feeling. I quit writing regularly, until I don’t. Longest time away was about ten months when I went and earned some money playing professional poker. But even then I would find myself thinking about stories and how that could be a good story. I don’t know of too many professional writers who haven’t quit or thought of quitting along the way, some of us many times. The key is we don’t, or not for very long.
For some of us writing is just an addiction, one we don’t really want to kick. (grin)
Fall down 7 times, get up 8.
-Japanese proverb
Great post, Dean.
I think one of the deadliest parts of “I’ve got it made” or “I’ve arrived” syndrome is that people, often having made it *that far*, then stop doing whatever *got* them there, never mind improving one’s skills, adding skillsets and knowledge, and seeking out more experienced people to learn from. This is across the board, across all fields.
Businesses do this all the time and get outrun by their competitors while they’re napping and complacent in their dominance. IBM thought they sure had a forever business until Microsoft came along, and now Microsoft is looking over their shoulders at Google and Facebook and Twitter…and as Laura has said, the competition is fierce in writing.
I’ve tried to quit writing and the itch always brings me back. There’s just no escaping it!
I’ll have it made when I have a career crash.
Laura and Dean, thanks – but I should clarify. This series has been orphaned twice at the same house. Once when my (fabulous) editor was fired when the recession hit, and again when my second editor (whom I never even met, alas) decided to return to grad school.
Both those editors were very responsive. The third editor – not so much. No surprise – I represent additional workload and the editor has no investment of effort in the first two books. One of the reasons I’m suspecting this series is through at that house.
Unless, (she adds sweetly), everyone reading this blog orders copies of book 2 for themselves and all their friends and relatives.
Lois wrote: “In fact, yesterday I gave up writing for good. This morning I’m back at it.”
And Dean wrote: “For some of us writing is just an addiction, one we don’t really want to kick. (grin)”
That all reminded me of my past smoking addiction (nearly seven years quit now, and now past half the length of time I actually smoked, which was thirteen years).
Some people used to tell me to quit smoking, and I would tell them I quit every day, and then start up again in the morning.
I’ve said for a long time that anyone can be addicted to anything, and to kick that addiction, the most important ingredient is to actually want to kick it.
For that matter, to become addicted to something, one has to want to become addicted to it. (Granted, some things are FAR easier than others to become addicted to.)
A friend of mine spent many years addicted to various things that were destructive to his health. About five years ago, at 40 years old or so, he first became addicted to a full time job and a regular paycheck. (He really needed that, his non-regular paychecks were killing him.)
He said one day to me, “This is really funny, and I never realized it before. You guys probably all already know this. I basically have to get up, go in there, do what they tell me, and they give me a guaranteed minimum check every two weeks! I don’t know why I never understood that before.”
Writing is one of those things that can become a very good addiction but is hard for some people to become addicted to. And once you’re hooked, you have to WANT to stop, or it keeps altering your behavior to get you to do it more and more.
Pati, I was in a similar situation many years ago. In my case, I was a brand new writer, a complete unknown, I didn’t know anyone, and no one knew me. Shortly after my first-ever book went into production, my editor left the company (and left publishing). I was reassigned to an editor comically misnamed “Joy” who told me without prevarication that I was just extra work that had been dumped onto her desk without anyone asking if she minded, but she DID mind, she was busy with her own authors, and I should realize that I was unlikely ever again to sell a book to that house now that she was my editor.
Well. Can’t get any clearer than THAT, can we?
Joy never returned my phone calls or letters (this was pre-email), and if I caught her at her desk when I phoned, she would just snappishly stonewall me: No, she hadn’t read my option proposal, hadn’t I underestood her when she told me she was BUSY; no, she had no plans to read my option proposal; I should (here we go again) recognize that I probably just wouldn’t sell to this house again.
Talk about being orphaned!
We stayed in that stalemate for over 5 months. I was unagented, I’d never even had a book released (and “Joy” wouldn’t even answer my questions about when my first-ever book was scheduled for release), I was unknown and knew no one… and now my career was over before it had even begun. So I did something I almost NEVER do (seriously): I asked my dad’s advice. Then, following that advice, I wrote a very nice letter to the head of the program saying Joy was a lovely and talented editor and I liked her very much, yada yada yada… but during the five months she’d been my editor, she was so busy and overworked she’d never had time to read my option proposal [which, under the terms of my option clause, should have received an offer or rejection at least 90 days earlier], or answer my letters, or return my calls, or even answer my repeated question about the release date for my first book. So I was hereby proposing the house reassign me to an editor less overworked and in-demand than Joy, since I seemed to be one burden too many for her, and this seemed unfair to her and unproductive for me. (And I cc’d the letter to Joy so that I wouldn’t seem to be going behind her back.)
The head of the program saw my point, called me, had a very friendly chat with me, reassigned me the following week, and I sold ten more books to that house. (Joy wound up leaving the house–and publishing–about 3 weeks after I was reassigned.)
So one possibility I’d suggest, if possible, is to look around in-house, see who you’d like to work with, and request reassignment in a way that they can all live with. (Another might be to meet this non-responsive editor in person and make her like you.)
Not that reassignment always works out or solves the problem. A friend of mine having horrible problems with an editor finally requested reassignment, following my advice, and things went much, much better after that. HOWEVER, at the =very same house=, when ALSO following me advice to place a reassignment request =with the very same superviser= for a virtually identical (or even worse) problem with an editor in the =very same program= about 5 years later… Another friend of mine was turned down. And was now stuck with an editor with whom she already had a terrible, counter-productive relationship who NOW knew that she had gone and requested reassignment. So, yes, if anything, the relationship got even worse. And within a year or so, the editor told her just not to submit again, she was all done there. (But a happy ending: My friend subsequently fired her incompetent agent, hired a much better one, and in the years since then, has published about 20 books with two major houses that are building her name and numbers. So it’s the first house’s loss that their really stupid, really incompetent editor couldn’t work with this prolific, polished professional.)
HOWEVER, that latter case… my friend also had (as I just mentioend) a really incompetent agent (don’t even get me started on how useless I thought this agent was) who DID NOT WANT to request reassignment and only finally, reluctantly, flaccidly did it in a timid, heel-dragging way (which I have always suspected was presented to the house in the tone of “I don’t want to request this, and I’ve advised against making this request, and if you want to decline this request, that’s up to you”). In fact, I subsequently heard from ANOTHER ex-client of this agent and the agent usually told clients there was “no such thing” as requesting reassignment, it was never done, it would destroy your career, yada yada yada. Oh, RUBBISH. Requesting reassignment =saved= my career as a new writer, and it substantially IMPROVED the career of the first friend I mentioned above who, at my advice, requested it.
Requesting reassignment also saved my sanity on a subsequent occasion when I was placed with the pal of one of my agents, an absolutely nightmarish editor with whom I was so miserable I became physically ill (SO ill that my mother feared I had neurological damage; I didn’t–it was indeed just the stress of working with someone so incompetent, unprofessional, abusive, and chaotic). There was NO WAY I could have continued working in such conditions any longer. Despite the (wholly false, erroneous, idiotic) warnings of them then-agent that this was “never done” and I would “ruin” my career, blah blah blah by requesting reassignment away from that agent’s pal… it improved things tremendously for me.
Requesting reassignment is a big step and should only be done if the author-editor relationship is indeed untenable (as opposed to just not-rosy). But when an editor is actually IN THE WAY of your career at a house–it is a viable and excellent solution if handled correctly. And in my experience, writers are more capable of handling this than agents, since writers are seeking to protect their work, their careers, and their relationship with a house, where agents are, by contrast, all too often seeking to protect their relationship with an editor who’s completely untenable for that writer.
I completely agree once again, Laura. But see, the difference between you and asking for a reassignment and most other writers is that most other writers want someone to take care of them. You don’t. You take care of yourself.
And most other writers think there is something mythical about editors. To you and me they are just people who we work with, or don’t work with as the case might be.
To most writers agents are their bosses, to you and me they get in the way more than they help most of the time.
Laura, you and I are writers who know business. Most writers can’t be bothered to learn the very business they are trying to make their living in.
So I agree with your advice. Completely. File it away, folks, for that horrid time when it will be needed, because if you are in this business for any length of time, you will need it. I have been orphaned so many times over the years I have lost count. In fact, my favorite editor just one day left publishing and I honestly didn’t blame him. So now when I talk to him I keep asking him when he’s coming back. He just snorts, laughs, and then says he can’t afford the pay cut.
I sorta figure that once I get that eight-figure advance, I’ll have it made …
It sounds like in Laura’s case, the difference was partly that she had darned good advice from a pro.
Which, thanks to her, you, and a few others, so do we, here.
Thanks.
(And her own personal ability to step up to the plate, of course – don’t get me wrong, not knocking her at all!) =)
Kevin, I’ve heard and seen a lot of entertaining (and sometimes bizarre or twisted) stories about myself, as the daughter of a pro, over the years. (Ex. A popular one in the early years of my fantasy career [which was after I'd released more than a dozen romance novels] was that I -was- Mike Resnick, writing under a female pseudonym.)
But you’ve just cited one of the very few -actual- advantages I had by virtue of being a pro’s daughter; as a novice, I knew an experienced pro I could ask for informed, experienced advice–one who also had a large supply of anecdotes about writers who’d experienced business problems like mine and how they’d triumphed over them (or what mistakes they made that ensured they did not triumph).
It was never a mentor-student or guide-pilgrim sort of relationship, since I began my writing career in romance (a genre about which my dad knew nothing), since I began my writing career when I was living overseas and not really in touch with my family, since there was a family dynamic in the mix (or, to put it more succinctly, we irritate each other), and since I developed my own network of professional friends and advisors within a year or so or my first sale. But certainly an early advantage I enjoyed over other new writers was that I knew an experienced pro whom I could ask for business advice. And, 20+ years later, we still talk about the business quite a bit when we see each other, and I still learn things about it from my dad.
And in the case of being orphaned and reassigned to “Joy” after my first book went into production… I don’t know what I’d have done if my dad hadn’t been available to advise me to ask for reassignment. I was brand new in the biz, I’d never heard of this tactic (and my own book, REJECTION, ROMANCE, AND ROYALTIES is still the only book about the biz where I’ve ever seen this tactic discussed, explained, or advised), I had no idea it was an option–and I think I would indeed have disappeared and then spent years breaking back in if the old man hadn’t made this constructive, experienced, productive, and, in that instance, truly career-saving suggestion to me.
I should also point out that I didn’t go to my dad and ask for advice two weeks after being reassigned to Joy and realizing that I didn’t like my new editor. I went to him after five months of trying to solve my problem myself, repeatedly being stonewalled, and now confronting the realization that I had no idea how to stop this one idiot editor from completely destroying my nascent career with her sulky inertia.
Another advantage of being a pro’s daughter was that I knew what I was getting into when I started writing, so it never occurred to me to go my father to complain, whine, or seek advice because I got rejections, or couldn’t get an agent, or got orphaned in-house, or didn’t like my new editor, or was waiting too long on my option proposal. I had already known and understood the day I started writing my first book that none of that run-of-the-mill stuff was sufficient reason for me to go to a pro–my dad or anyone else–to ask for advice, feedback, moral support, input, etc. An advantage I experienced as a pro’s daughter was that I grew up seeing plainly that that was all just business as usual, not cause for whining, panic, or self-pity.
Oh, and speaking of all that, my Ninc blog this week is about that: Wht my actual advantages as a pro’s daughter were, compared to the amusing and bizarre speculations I’ve heard over the years about what my advantages were.
http://www.ninc.com/blog/index.php/archives/all-in-the-family
That post is absolutely revelatory. Good job. Every aspiring author should read it.
I hope I’ve learnt enough in the past decade to know that you never “have it made” as a writer (unless you reach JKR levels of success!). My prospective publisher* has asked for synopses of sequels that I haven’t written yet, which as a discovery writer means a whole new learning curve for me, as well as the prospect of a lot of hard work in 2011 – and just as my day-job is taking off as well! Never rains but it pours *sigh*
All I can say about the prospect of getting a first novel published is that it’s my Everest. Seven years ago I set myself that target, and even if I never manage to publish a second novel, I will always have the satisfaction of knowing I proved I could do it. That’s not to say I won’t do everything in my power to repeat that success, because I’d love to be a pro writer, but just because it’s only the beginning doesn’t mean I’m going to play down that milestone or celebrate any less! But afterward the champagne hangover has worn off, it’ll be nose back to the grindstone…
* and the top agent who’s asked for a full off the back of that interest – see, I’ve been paying attention
Publishing seems to be like going out and finding a job. This analogy hit me the second I read the second myth – “Once I make those first few sales the rejections will stop.” Well, same thing with getting a job – I’ve already worked three different jobs, I need to begin looking for my fourth soon, and I sure as hell know I won’t be instantly employed just because of my prior work experience.
Have been writing for over thirty years and I still never take anything for granted. You have emphasised that point in your article today Dean and I respect you for it. May the fear of rejection never hover over your home. Happy New Year.
I think it could be so easy for writers, especially newly published authors to fall into these traps. Even if one gets a successful agent or happens to be contracted to a major publishing house there are pitfalls and you don’t ‘have it made’. It’s a business and business means you keep doing what works. If it doesn’t work, change it. Like any other business, you will get what you put into it. It may be a slow process, and you might not always succeed. A car manufacturer doesn’t think he’s got it made after selling just one car because all people may not like that one specific kind of car. But if a lot of people do like the car, then he’s got a starting point. But he doesn’t think he’s reached the top because he’s sold a bunch of cars. He continues making cars. Same with writers.
Hi
I’d be interested in your experience of using different names and the mechanics of it – eg how do you go about it with publishers and contracts?
Kerry,
You never hide a pen name from a publisher. In manuscript format, your real name goes in the upper left hand corner with all your contact information. That’s who they send the check to.
The name under the title is your pen name and that’s the name they publish the story or novel under. Contracts are done with your real name. Very, very simple.
Cheers
Dean