As we ramp into 2011, I figured that besides all the goal-setting talk, it might be a good time to give a few warnings as well. And maybe set a clear work goal as well.
Electronic publishing is the hot topic and traditional publishing is struggling to change to the new world. Indie publishing is becoming the term, and indie writers are vocal and all over the web. Us old-timers who are paying attention to the changes are rushing to get up our lost backlist and reverted novels at the same time as traditional publishers are moving quickly to get all their inventory into electronic form.
And everywhere I look there are electronic-book readers for sale. 2011 will be looked back on as the big switch in publishing, as electronic publishing left twenty years of promise and hype and became a reality and a major percentage in publishing. And by 2012 the traditional publishers who haven’t made the shift will be in cash flow issues.
Brick and mortar bookstores are also moving quickly to the new world, trying to find ways to be included in the electronic revolution. Those that can’t make the switch will have to change their business models or perish. We’ll see a lot of both in 2011 and 2012.
As for writers, we’re in a new, wonderful golden age. Content is king and everyone is needing more and more content fed by more and more readers going electronic and wanting more and more books and stories.
Sure, at the moment some traditional publishers of print books are tightening and putting themselves into death spirals of cutting inventory and editors and other workers instead of pushing into new ways of increasing sales and titles, just as Borders Bookstore is in a death spiral of cutting inventory and stores and expecting income to go up. Nope, never works that way. But so many new publishers and imprints are starting up it’s difficult at times to even try to note them, let alone keep track. And agents are becoming desperate as their business model starts to break down under their self-created problems and the electronic publishing change.
On another side, suddenly short fiction has made a fantastic comeback as the new market for stand-alone short fiction is just off the charts due to the desire for shorter work to read on phones and electronic devices. And in longer work, the relaxing of genre guidelines and the relaxing of length requirements that electronic publishing has allowed makes it possible for writers to find an audience for their work even if some New York publisher doesn’t think it’s close enough to a vampire/romance/fantasy set in an English boarding school with Da Vinci Code feel.
But, with all this new freedom and new ideas and new delivery systems to readers comes problems for many writers. The changes (as in the past) will cause thousands of writers to just vanish from the business. So I’m going to try to detail out some trouble areas and the reasons behind these problems in hopes that I am blunt enough to help one or two writers stay out of the quicksand of lost dreams.
Underlying Large Problem
Fiction writers, as a class, are fantastically lazy. Not all of us, but 99% of all fiction writers who want to be professionals have bought into so many myths about writing, the bottom-line result is that the writers become lazy writers. And lazy writers, when faced with something new, turn to shortcuts. And therein lies many problems.
First off, why do I say fiction writers are lazy? Oh, let me think…
—What other international profession leads you to believe that if you work one hour per day you can be successful?
—What other art in any form leads you to believe that your first practice session or sessions should make you rich?
—What other international occupation celebrates slowness and writing so dense and convoluted that can’t be read by the average reader?
I can’t begin to tell you how many times I see online and on Twitter and Facebook how tired a writer was after working hard for two hours and managing to get three whole pages done. Sorry, just makes me snort in laughter every darned time. (Sure, I know, all writers are different, but being lazy sure is different from me, that I must admit.)
Back in the pulp era and through into the 1960′s, working writers were known for their ability to write long and hard and produce vast amounts of product. Guess what, that’s coming back with all these changes. The prolific writer will, for the most part, again be the rich and acclaimed writers of our time. (You know, Stephen King, Nora Roberts, James Patterson and so on.) Product is needed even more now and growing by the month and the more that 99% of the writers buy into the working-hard-one-hour-a-day myth, the more product will be needed from the writers with a real work ethic.
But sadly, very few writers will be able to jump past the built-up myth structure, so as more and more product is needed, and systems change, there will be, of course, people to help out the lazy writers. People who want to take a cut of the sales for doing little or nothing.
Second Major Problem Area
Writers are famously backward, with many writers even taking pride in using manual typewriters or writing longhand while at the same time bragging about these traits on Twitter. These writers will be quickly left behind for a number of reasons. First, these types are ripe for the scams, for people to step in and “help them” with all this “technology” that seems so scary or doesn’t “fit” their writing style. Of course, the writer will think it beneath them to bother to even understand what the “help” is doing, so will get taken. We see this thousands and thousands of times with agents right now. This problem will only get worse in this new world of electronic publishing. And I’m not even going to get into the scams of contracts and selling electronic rights, at least not in this post.
And in this same area are the writers who feel it would be “too hard” to learn how to put up their own story or novel on Kindle. Oh, my, they would have to learn a program like PowerPoint to do a cover, and read some instructions on how to format their Word file from their normal manuscript look. It will be “too hard” and take up “too much time.” So these writers will also turn to the first person who offered to help them, without any sense of good or bad or even what they are paying for. This is a combination of the “too lazy” problem and the “fear of technology” problem.
THE SCAMS
First off, I’ll try to outline a few scams I am seeing start to develop in just the short year or so that this transition has been in progress. Then I’ll talk about some ways to look for quality help with your electronic publishing.
Scam #1: I’ll put it up for a percentage of the sales.
This one flat scares me to death for writers because of the problems involved. NEVER, EVER DO THIS. Just the math shows how stupid this idea is.
Let’s take a novel as an example. It takes about two hours to prepare a clean manuscript (already proofed) from Word to correctly formatted Word. Then it takes another two hours of time to do a decent cover, especially if the person is good at a more advanced program such as PhotoShop. And then about an hour to load the book up to the major sites for electronic publication. 5 Hours total.
I have heard rates from 5% of sales to 15% of sales (because that’s what an agent gets). Say the book isn’t a big hit, but sells regularly. Say across all the sites it sells ten copies per month total, and you have listened to the writers without self-respect who put up their books too cheaply, so you have your book up at $2.99. You are making $2.00 per sale or $20.00 per month across all sites. Doesn’t seem like much, but after a year you have made $240 and after ten years at that low number of sales you have $2,400. Say you agreed to 10% of sales to the person who spent the 5 hours. So over ten years you have paid someone $240 for getting the book up. Great, not bad, about $25.00 per hour at that point, except stop and think for a second HOW you paid that person.
Did you pay them a check for $2.00 per month? For ten years? Or did you let them handle all the money and just pay you? Either way is just stupid.
So what happens if your book does better??? Isn’t a bestseller by any means, but sells about 100 copies per month. Suddenly for those five hours work, you have paid the person $2,400 in ten years.
And worse yet, for both examples, you will continue to pay them, since electronic books don’t go out of print. And your heirs will continue to pay the person’s heirs for 70 years past your death. All for 5 hours of work.
And heaven forbid you make upwards of a thousand a month on that book or more. Suddenly that five hours becomes worth hundreds of thousands in very short order.
Either way, this scam breaks down quickly and can only cost you a lot of pain and more than likely lawsuits if your book takes off.
Scam #2: The Agent Scam
This is a side-track of the currant myth that agents take care of you. This one the agent offers to take care of everything for you and just send you a percentage. I can’t begin to even go into the ethical issues for the agent on this, since the agent is becoming a publisher. But since agents have no rules, I suppose they can scam who they want to scam. Let me say clearly that you just take all the problems with Scam #1 and then add in that the agent gets all the money and paperwork first, and takes a cut over-and-above the normal percentages. Writers trapped in this scam are already complaining that they never see much out of their electronic rights, so they don’t see what the big deal is. Of course they don’t. By the time any money, even from an honest agent, makes it to them, so many hands have been in the pie, there are only crumbs left.
This scam has been in existence for about ten years now already. And more agents are piling onto the bandwagon each week it seems. Writer after writer lately have been saying to me proudly that they are getting their work up online because their agent did it for them. I just shudder. Hopefully not too obviously.
Scam #3: The Cloud or Group Sites.
Again, these are aimed at just making it easier for the lazy writer. Sometimes these sites have the front of helping their writers cross-promote, but that is just a front in most instances for someone to make money. For example, I just got a letter today about how I should look at this new model where some group site will allow writers to put up stories and be voted on, then the good ones are put up as stand-alone books by the “professional staff” and the writer gets a percentage of the sales. Of course, the writer must jump through a thousand hoops and also the “professional staff” get to see all the paperwork and money before sending on the writer’s “fair share.” And this place claimed their royalty rates were higher than what traditional publishers give writers. Oh, my…
Note: A couple writer-run cross-promotion sites that are in existence are fine and don’t fit in this scam because the writers do all their own work first before launching anything onto the promotion site. And they keep all their own money. So those sites are fine. BookView Cafe is an example of how writers can band together correctly.
Scam #4: Pretend Publisher Scam.
This one has been around a while now in electronic publishing. They have a writer submit work to them, then “accept it” and do all the formatting and put it up on all the sites and give the writer a small percentage of a small percentage of a small percentage. Again, the writers trapped in this, or with work in one of the early models of this, are constantly complaining they get very little money for their sales. Again, nothing left of the pie by the time it hits the writer’s hands.
Note: Smashwords does not fit in this model. They take a very tiny percentage and have often negotiated with the end electronic stores such deals as the writer can get a better deal going through Smashwords than directly to the online store. And besides, Smashwords is a store and the writer has to do all the work. Smashwords is a model that works in this new world. But at the moment it’s just about the only major one. Caution on the others.
WHAT WORKS
Become a Publisher.
It really is that simple, and yet that hard. Writers, for the first time in fifty years, need to take control of their work again. Sure, send work to traditional publishers, but all of us have books that haven’t sold, or books that have been reverted, or short stories that have sold and reverted after a few months. Or new stuff we want to publish ourselves before sending it to a traditional publisher. All fine. If you don’t fall into any of the scams above.
You have to do the work yourself. You have to be the publisher.
What does that mean? It means being in control. Learn how to do a cover, learn how to format your work, then put the work up on Amazon, Pubit (B&N) and Smashwords. Then go to one of the three POD publishers and learn what they need and do the work.
Is there a learning curve? Yes. Is there frustration and problems at times? Yes. But you take control and it is great fun.
But….
But…..
But……..
But what happens if you are color blind and have no sense of cover design. (First off, start learning it and open your eyes in bookstores.) But you want to get your stuff up. What can you do without getting into a scam?
The Answer: Be a Publisher.
When a traditional New York publisher needs a cover, what do they do? Duh, they hire one done. And not for a percentage of the profits. They hire it for a flat-use fee. Do the same.
What happens if you can’t follow instructions well enough to fill in a few blank spaces and put something up on Kindle. (First off, let me ask what you are doing in 2011 anyway?) But you want to get your work up, what do you do? Hire it done. And not by the same person who did your cover. Traditional publishers hire people who put things up online, you become a publisher and do the same. Pay them for the five hours. You know, like a hundred bucks or something. You pay out a few of those and trust me, you’ll spend the half hour to learn how to put something up on Amazon yourself.
When I say become a publisher, I mean THINK LIKE A PUBLISHER. Take your lazy-writer hat off, the one that won’t allow you to work more than an hour day and put on the publisher hat, the one that will allow you to work long hours if you need to. Then hire what you can’t do and learn what you can.
There are many businesses springing up that are “Menu-Based” help. For example, you can go to a place and hire someone at a set rate, stated on the menu, to proof a book. Or to design a cover for another set rate. Or launch it for another set price.
Traditional publishers have freelance artists doing covers. They have freelance proofreaders. They don’t give them a percentage or your book. They just hire them for the project for a set amount.
Be a Publisher.
I’m afraid that at the moment, with this new Indie-Publishing world we are stepping into, there are no shortcuts. And part of the learning for writers in this new world is learning how to think like a publisher. (In the long-run for the industry, this can do nothing but good.)
And if you think someone will suddenly appear and take all the work off your hands, it’s a scam. Period. There are no shortcuts in this writing business or in being a publisher. Hiring quality help is fine on a project-by-project basis. But anything else that seems too-good-to-be-true more than likely really is.
Time to take control, writers, of your own work and your own fate. Make 2011 the year of learning to take control. Set that as a goal for the new year. It’s in your control. It’s not a dream, it’s a goal.
Learn how to be a publisher. Learn how to take control of your agent. Learn how to take control of your own work.
It’s a new golden age for writers. But only for those writers who take control of their work and their career. For the lazy writers, this will be a year of torture and puzzlement as they wonder why they were left behind and can’t make a living with their fiction.
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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 also, this helps me keep control over my work.
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
One of the biggest Myths that I had to overcome was “I can’t be a publisher, publishers have offices!”
Like most myths, it didn’t make much sense and was got rid of when I recalled something my uncle, inveterate entrepreneur, had once told me. “Have the office you need and can afford, and if you can’t afford what you need, why are you in this business?”
Offices are there for (1) Space: to give the business some space to do business and (2) Confidence: to attempt to persuade the customer that the business won’t just scamper away with their money. (3) Ego: is dumb.
Investment banks have a lot of expensive looking furniture in the lobby to give the illusion that they’re not going anywhere fast (or if they do they have all this neat stuff I, client, can take). Sure, it’s not true, but it works.
More benign example, the Big Publisher needs a lot of Space for staff. Their product is competence at being the middle-man, so they need a professional-looking office to inspire Confidence in distributors and writers.
What do I, small epublisher, need with Space? I do most of my epublishing on the same platform as I do my writing, so I just need an internet connection. I could run my Business side (as it is now) from a coffee shop. I could also hold meetings there, I suppose, or on the Internet.
My product is my writing, so I don’t need to inspire Confidence in myself to keep myself as a client and my distributors (mostly) don’t care so long as the writing is in the proper format. I can focus my energies on building Confidence in my potential customers. In short, my ePublisher “office” is (1 & 2) Great Writing, (3) Good Cover Art and Formatting, (4) Professional Web Presence.
But watch out: When I can afford Ego, we’ll see what happens. I’m envisioning an office in a zeppelin…
Hey, David, dead on. And publisher’s offices have the same trick for showing something that doesn’t exist. Sure, you go up the elevator in the big building and come out into this plush, expansive reception area with big couches and a receptionist dressed up and smiling. You ask for your editor and after a while your editor comes out and takes you off to a nice restaurant. Why? Because they want to keep up the myth of editor and publishing offices. Mostly their offices are small or a cubicle, and you only get a small window if you are a senior editor. The offices have one desk, one chair, and manuscripts stacked everywhere, and the receptionist desk outside the editor office (called the assistant editor) is worse. The perception is fancy, the reality is small and cramped. But you are right, they need the big building because even cramped, they have that many editors and sales staff and support staff handling hundreds of books for each editor.
This is incredibly good advice, Dean. Thanks a lot.
I’m a translator and also not-quite-yet a writer (my stories have been seen by a few editors, but none, so far, have sold). All your advice is extremely good – I have, for instance, followed the rule about only sending to one editor at a time, and they have taken their sweet time getting back to me. One didn’t ever answer, didn’t even answer her phone, and I made the mistake of formally retracting the ms. Wouldn’t have done that if I had read your site first.
Thanks for all the articles and advice on writing and self publishing. Reading your blog and a few others like J D Sawyer, I got the nerve to epublish my first work. The advice that you and others give will keep many new writers from making big mistakes publishing their work. I wouldn’t have even realized smashwords existed without you guys. Thanks again.
I’d like to suggest that Our Gracious Host’s list of major problems is well stated, but frustratingly incomplete. Those two major problems are two of the three that are most within a writer’s control; they are, however, dwarfed by a fourth major problem that is not within a writer’s control, but must nonetheless be acknowledged (and railed against at length!).
Third Major Problem Area (within writer control)
There is no objective, replicable, and/or verifiable standard for "success." This can be as simple as a timing issue: Is a successful writing career based upon repeated short-term sales successes (does anyone actually read Danielle Steele’s backlist?), a bestseller or two that turns into a recognized, constantly-selling classic (Harper Lee), or a vastly influential work that many have heard of, few have actually read, and nonetheless continues to earn for the author (Thomas Pynchon)? Our Gracious Host’s comments — and rightly so — focus on a writer taking responsibility for certain pure-business aspects of changes in publishing. That, however, presumes that the writer has already defined what “success” will be; and my point is that “success” for many writers is about finding what’s there, not what one hopes is there (rather like Columbus).
Fourth Major Problem Area (not within writer control)
Publishing — all thirteen distinct versions of it — is founded on a culture of secrecy. It’s hard enough for an author to get accurate sales figures on his/her own works that have already been published; just try getting comparative figures related to another author! Worse, that’s just one aspect; many times, the “non-financial” terms in a publishing contract cause far, far more difficulty for authors than does the royalty rate or the advance. Just consider overreaching noncompetition clauses that seek to prevent an author from publishing under his/her own name with another publisher until six months after publication of the last book in a trilogy, two of which have not yet been outlined (let alone written)…
The publishing industry, through its culture of secrecy, magnifies the problems with scams because there’s no verifiable source to compare that “great offer” from Flybynight Literary to (and Mrs Grundy’s rules against split infinitives and hanging prepositions are bad grammar). One of the reasons that new cars have excrutiatingly detailed price stickers on them is that legislators got fed up with the complaints they were getting when people found out after making a major purchase (the second- or third-biggest purchase most ever make) that they’d been deceived by the seller. The stickers do not prevent all deception in auto sales, by any means; but they do a lot to limit certain kinds of objective, verifiable deception… and make it a lot more possible to learn about automobile sales practices to avoid many other things (such as racially motivated variable pricing of extended warranties).
* * *
I respectfully suggest that Our Gracious Host’s prescription is incomplete without at least acknowledging these two problems. Even though Problem Four isn’t in the author’s control, acknowledgement of it helps tremendously in dealing with Problems One through Three. And, as any student of military history would tell you, entering a battle without a defined objective is the surest way to needless casualties and defeat (Problem Three).
C.E., I couldn’t agree more. I did a passing mention very slightly of your fourth problem, and the massive numbers of issues with electronic rights and traditional publishing, an area that hasn’t even begun to clear out or settle yet in any way.
And I think more importantly here to the writers reading this blog is your third area, how to define success for each writer. I’ve actually been struggling with how to talk about that and figured it as a major topic, so left it out of this one. In many ways, many of my posts have been talking about helping writers find what is there. So a direct blog post about success should be coming as soon as I wrestle what I want to say about it to the ground a little. (grin) Thanks for the great points. Both right on the money in my opinion.
Dean,
This is excellent practical advice. I find it tough to find time to write, let alone publish, with a fulltime teaching job, extra private lessons, a wife who works fulltime too, and lots of kids – but I couldn’t imagine doing it any other way. Why would I want to give up full creative control? It’s a dream come true. It is a struggle to find the time to do everything, but once I took the plunge and gave it a try I was amazed how easy it all was. It just took some determination and research to learn to format stories, set up a website and blog, and so on. The thing that took the most time was doing the layout for my print short story collection – but I did it alone, starting from complete ignorance, step by step overcoming the obstacles. It’s fun, and there are plenty of how-to resources online to help. Just today (Christmas day) I designed several covers with Powerpoint for online publication of individual stories from the collection.
One thing I did leave to others, though, was the cover for the short story collection when I decided to make it a print book on Createspace. I wanted something unique and gripping and didn’t trust myself to do it. Fortunately one of my sisters and her husband are freelance graphic designers and they came up with a gorgeous original cover.
Speaking of covers, I want to recommend a great source for public domain photos: Uncle Sam. US government agencies (NASA for example), as a matter of policy it seems, keep most of their photos in the public domain. Usually all they want is a tip-of-the-hat courtesy credit.
Your blog posts have changed my writing life, Dean. Thanks a lot and keep it up.
Great post, Dean. Spot on, all of it. I can’t tell you how excited I am about the future. When I was out at lunch the other day, Kris said something like, “I don’t even know if it’s possible for most fiction writers to make a living right now without doing it all,” meaning, selling to big traditional publishers and becoming publishers ourselves. And you know what I said back? “This is the end of excuses.” I never had a lot of sympathy for writers who wallowed in all the excuses, but now I have zero.
Book’s not selling to NY? Publish it yourself. Still not selling? Write a better book. Design a better cover. Craft a better blurb. Learn. Work all the angles. There’s no excuses any more. If you were one of those poor sops who blamed those “nasty gatekeepers” from keeping your work from the millions of eager readers just dying to read your masterpiece, well, you know what, now’s your chance. Put it out there and see what happens. It’s up to you. It’s all on you – on what you can learn, on how hard you work, etc.
For me personally, I finally see a clear path to where I want to go. I always figured I would go full-time with writing eventually, but now I know exactly what I need to do to get there. Is there a lot of work involved? You bet. But now it’s all on me, as it should be.
Exactly, Scott, the days of excuses are gone. Sadly, nothing we can do about all the writers who will be washed out of the business with these changes because they just can’t adapt. In my 30 years of hanging around this business, I’ve seen two major times already when I watched so many writers fall away and give up. But this major change going on right now will really wipe out a vast group and only those who stop making excuses and jump in and do both sides of the equation will make it long-term. So thanks, Scott. I agree completely.
Good stuff, again, though I admit to still writing in longhand. So do quite a few top pros I know. I think my writing is better because of it.
I also use a manual typewriter fairly often. But I have a printer that lets me drop in a stack of typewritten pages, and they pop up in my fully up to date MS Word as a nearly ready to go manuscript.
The trick is to not allow how you write first drafts to put distance between you and technology. I write many of my first drafts in longhand, and others on a manual typewriter, but I also have the latest and greatest software technology out there, and know how to use it.
This is what bugs me. I know all sorts of writers who have the necessary software, but never take the time to learn how to use it properly, and many others who do all their writing using software that simply isn’t adequate for the new age of publishing.
I believe in writing first drafts using whatever method and technology, or lack thereof, that works best for the individual writer, but once that first draft is written, it’s time to jump to the cutting edge.
I always have the latest MS Office on my computer, along with InDesign, Dreamweaver, and PhotoShop. I take the time to learn each program inside out.
Such software is far from cheap, but you should never have to pay full price, either. And whatever you pay for it, it’s a steal.
James, exactly!! Thank you for clearing up my sort of one-sided rant on that. And making it clear that some writers can use methods that are working for them while at the same time not being afraid of the electronic and new world. I just hear over and over so many of the others, and honestly, I was borderline the same way two years ago until I snapped myself out of it and got moving forward. So thanks, James, for adding in a much needed dimension of the writer who uses older ways to create because they work, yet has no fear of the new stuff as well. Thanks!!
Hi Dean,
I’ve followed your blog posts for a few months now and have seen it mentioned that you should act as your own publisher before.
I think it’s a good idea as I will eventually self-pub some of my own stories. The question I have is, how does creating this new company affect taxes? Is it possible for me to be taxed twice, once for the company and once as the writer? Or will I only have to pay taxes as one single entity?
Thanks for any insight you can provide on this.
–A.R. Williams
A.R., honestly, I’m not a tax lawyer, so can’t give advice. But I can tell you in a very careful manner that a publishing company can just be another business on your personal tax return, another simple Schedule C. Or, even easier, just include it as part of your writing business. Just because you give something a name doesn’t mean it has to have a financial identity. You can put your own SS number and have all checks and money come to your name personally, even though you have a name on your publishing company. That’s the easiest and cleanest. Just call it part of your writing.
However, if you decide to give your publishing company legal status, which is mostly unneeded, you need to do all sorts of things, depending on what level of legal status you want to give it. If you are going to have checks made out to the company, you need to do your states Doing Business As regulations. Or you can incorporate, which needs an accountant and lawyer involved. My suggestion, just keep it simple and just another part of your already existing writing business. Nothing else needed.
One of the things I’ve noticed is that, predictable as sunrise, scam artists and sleazy operations have been getting into e-publishing. And it takes exactly the same things to avoid these people/operations that it takes to avoid the ones who’ve been around traditional publishing for decades: Enough business sense and research to recognize them for what they are–and thus have nothing to do with them. The fact that so many writers and aspiring writers don’t have (or don’t exercise) business sense and do NOT do their research is precisely what makes these scams so profitable.
People fall for scams because they don’t do their research and they don’t apply business sense. But they ALSO fall for scams and just plain bad business deals because successful scammers and successful salespeople are good at what they do, and thus they are convincing and persuasive when making their pitches to wring thousands of dollars out of you, or to secure a large percentage of YOUR earnings from you.
OTOH, I certainly think there are a variety of viable, fair business models besides self-publishing for getting one’s work into e-book format and distribution venues. The question is: Have you done enough research and do you have good enough business sense for your assessment of this or that deal or business model to be trustworthy? (If not, then we’ve reached a point in technology and distribution where you are almost certainly better off self-publishing electronically, since however incompetent or naive you may be, you can at least be sure you won’t deliberately cheat yourself.) The other question is: What’s right for YOU?
I have one friend who had “x” number of backlist books to which she owned e-rights, all in the same genre. She also had a strong relationship with an e-book and POD publisher that wanted this backlist and presented her with a proposal for publishing these titles. She’s been in the business for about 15 years and has the tools, information, and advisors (her agency, which did not get involved but which did answer her questions; and other writers who’ve been in the biz a long time) to give her additional informed feedback about the deal. Moreover, she is INCREDIBLY busy with her under-contract frontlist (delivering three books a year–which is a killing pace for most writers, including her)–and decided that best use of her time at her desk was to keep writing as fast as she can, rather than learning how to self-publish electronically. So she make a deal with this e-publisher, wherein she is indeed giving up a percentage of earnings in exchange for their doing everything (copy editing, formatting, packaging, uploading to different venues, marketing, etc.); and the first three backlist books she released via this company shot to the top of their sales lists and are earning well for her.
Another friend made a choice to publish some of her titles via a small e-publisher whose owner she knows personally, and to self-publish some of her other backlist. Again, for her, these were choices that made sense.
In my case, though, my backlist is a mishmash of a few fantasy titles, a few romance titles, a couple of nonfiction titles. There’s no -one- arrangement that I feel would suit all of these, and in any scenario, I’d probably be best off doing at least -some- of these titles myself… So I decided to self-published all my backlist titles myself, feeling that the time-investment I have to make anyhow of learning to self-publish electronically will be best rewarded, in the end, by keeping the largest possible percentage of earnings for ALL my titles. (OTOH, I can see the point now of the first-friend mentioned above; I’m so busy with frontlist, contracted obligations that I’m currently far, far behind on my projected schedule to self-publish my backlist. Getting better at time management is, needless to say, on my New Years Resolutions list (wg)!)
Laura, your point about doing research and understanding what you are doing before doing it is spot on. Scammers do the pitch that a writer is better served to get a little of the money than no money at all. Of course, in most instances, that’s not the case. So your point about doing research is spot on.
And your point about making new writing the priority is also spot on the money. It has to come first. What’s interesting about my challenge is that there would have been zero reason for me to do it IF NOT FOR ELECTRONIC SELF-PUBLISHING. I have created a challenge that drives new writing BECAUSE OF self-publishing that has opened up. I didn’t talk about that much, but I have been hearing from writers more and more about this, so much so I’m working on a new post about how to use self-publishing to drive the creation of more fiction that never would have existed without this new technology. That’s the great upside. So I agree completely that this new technology has to drive more fiction and writing front-list is more important than getting up older backlist.
Sounds like your friend was clear about what she was getting into, but I have no idea and wouldn’t unless I saw the contract. At first blush, it makes me shudder, but I will admit that some agreements are fine. She’s just treating her backlist as a resale. Fine. But so many problems with electronic and POD resales that haven’t been worked out yet. The biggest, of course, is reversion and contract cancellation clauses.
One thing about this new technology is that writers need to understand that we are in the early days. Even though electronic publishing has been around for 20 years now, we are still right now in the early ramp-up days and change days. Taking time in getting backlist up is fine. Doing one new thing every month or so between writing fresh novels is fine. 2011 is the transition year. Transition to what exactly is the big question. (grin)
Thanks again, Laura. Great advice as always.
RE business status, income stream, etc… I recently talked to my bank about this. (In fact, almost by accident, I’ve talked to them twice about it lately, in two different states.) The upshot is, if you’re a freelancer, you are a small business in terms of how the bank defines it, and you can set up a DBA (“Doing Business As”) small-business account without incorporating or anything like that.
Thanks, Dean.
I appreciate the info
AR, as Dean said, it’s easy enough to form a personal company operating directly under your personal name. In that case, you need to keep close track of financial records and keep receipts still, but perhaps not quite as closely as you do if the company is supposedly a supposedly separate entity if, for example, you form an LLC or incorporate.
However, to echo what Dean says, you should treat your writing as a business. This means no co-mingling funds. Your business and your person are separate entities and ty’re treated like that. Your business earns a certain amount of money and has certain expenses. You keep these separate from your personal finances. Your business pays you a certain amount – remember to set aside enough to pay for taxes, medical insurance for the business’s employees, state and local licensing fees, a tax accountant to go over your separate books at year’s end and consolidate your return, etc., etc.
If you treat your writing as a business right from the start you’ll have fewer problems of small businesses down the road.
It might seem that it makes sense to incorporate yourself right away – and there are major advantages to incorporating, but there are major business-related and personal finance issues that need to be addressed when you do this (not to mention the incorporation fee and the state and federal reporting requirements) so, as often as not, before you start making the big bucks, it’s good to start as a self-owned business that only treats itself as a corporation – and acts like it financially and fiscally.
Hope that makes sense.
Brad –
Thanks for the shout out!
A.R. –
To echo what Dean said, and though it varies by state, if you’re operating as a sole proprietorship the taxes are generally just the standard self-employment taxes. If you start producing things for other authors as a service company, or creating other lines of products with complex bookkeeping, generally you’re still fine as a sole proprietor, though there comes a time when you might want to think of incorporation.
Most authors never will — I have this front and center on my plate right now because my writing business dovetails with my studio in a few ways that might make a structural shift advantageous, so I’m currently weighing the tradeoffs involved in incorporation.
James –
When talking of adequate software, I can’t help but chuckle a little bit. Not because you’re not right — you are — but because what constitutes “adequate” can vary wildly from author to author.
For example, I do all my Kindle format tweaking in a text editor. If I could type HTML as fast as I type, I’d do the bulk of my writing in one, simply because it stays out of my way. Then again, I’ve been doing HTML pretty much since it was invented, and I’ve been preferring text editors over word processors for some tasks since the 80s.
Thus, as with Dean’s Power Point method for covers (which makes my internal graphic designer turn all kinds of shades of green), I propose that the software that gets the job done and stays out of your way–no matter how expensive, or how cheap and chintzy–is the software you want to use.
Dean –
There is one way to deal with hiring out if you’re in a cash-poor position, which I’ve ported over from the independent film world where it’s a common way to provide for paying off non-creative technical staff on self-financed pictures. In this scheme, the subcontractor is paid a percentage over time, but only until their fee plus a bit of interest is earned out, at which point the payments stop.
For example, I’m currently working with a freelance editor for continuity issues over a five-book series. I got a good rate on the service, but at cash it’s cost-prohibitive, so the editor is getting 10% of the book proceeds (paid quarterly) until the cash fee is paid off, and then 2% for a further 2 quarters as interest. Not as good as paying in cash, but the deal’s on paper and the time horizon and cost horizon is limited, and the service is one that, on this particular project, is quite valuable.
–Dan
Dan, sounds like some good advice, if you are careful, all is written down, and the writer gets the money first. And most importantly, there is an ending point. That’s the key, the huge key. Thanks, Dean
Dean –
Oh, most assuredly. To anyone who finds this arrangment appealing, hers’s some more details to keep in mind:
1) The editor is a subcontractor, always. Not a publisher. As such, s/he is paid out of YOUR pocket, after you get the money (usually within 30 or 60 days of your receipt of payment from Amazon, Smashwords, etc. as defined by your contract).
2) With such arrangements, I always include a standard audit clause which gives the subcontractor the right to check my math at his own expense. If a discrepancy of more than xxx amount (usually a % of money owed between 10 and 25%), then I bear the cost of the audit. Otherwise, it’s on the subcontractor.
3) This should go without saying, but the subcontractor does not get a copyright stake in the work. Their work is either technical (if an editor or designer) or flat-fee for-hire (if a cover artist). Neither gives them a stake in your work, and your contract should not give *any* pretext for the subcontractor to claim they thought they were working for a piece of your magic bakery.
4) Before the subcontractor does the first scintilla of work for you, you get signatures on a mutually agreeable contract, which covers the full extent of the job without omissions. This goes a long way to preventing the kinds of misunderstandings that create court battles.
And, as I said, if you can do it, it’s generally better to pay cash. That doesn’t, however, obviate the need for a good contract.
-Dan
Dean, on your point of this new world driving new writing, I see that too, certainly in my self. Over the past couple months I pulled out eight fragments (of between 1k – 3k each) I told myself to complete a couple of them for practice. It’s been my policy the last two years to never stop until I reach the end (even if I have to throw the final result away), and I wish I learned to do that sooner! These were all in the range of five or six years old, and I assumed I had stopped work on them because I some story problem or other, that I might now have the experience to deal with. As I worked through the stories, I realized this is not why I’d quit on them. Mostly I’d quite because the story became unmarketable, (or at least under-marketable), by slipping between genres, by looking like they were going the be too long. Well now all eight are done, and that’s eight stories I once talked myself of attempting because of the market, plus one more in the same vein. Most, I will still send out the conventional markets first (at least until I run out of reprint inventory to put up), but this freedom to publish independently gives me another way to keep pushing the envelope. We’ll see!
Responding sort of obliquely to AR’s concern above —
Be very, very careful in choosing your advisors on setting up a business entity in anything related to publishing (as an author, as an editor, as a publisher, as some combination, or for any other role). Most CPAs do not have any idea of what they’re getting you into for anything other than taxation… and while tax issues are important, you’re setting yourself up for disaster if you allow tax issues to control everything else; or even anything else. Conversely, most lawyers know less than diddly-squat about actually running a business, let alone about running a business that provides an ever-changing mix of goods and services.
And those books on self-incorporation, LLCs, etc. that you can find in libraries and bookstores? They’re right out for anything that is related to intellectual property… the very nature of publishing. They are uniformly misleading (to a greater or lesser extent). They also uniformly underestimate the tax issues, but that’s for another time.
One side note: For anyone going into publishing — any aspect of publishing — forget about Small Business Administration assistance, because it’s not available for the publishing/media industries. (If there were to be a default on a loan, or any other breach, that might leave the federal government in control of a publishing-related/media-related operation… and that’s illegal under about six other statutes and dubious under the First Amendment.) Don’t even go to the SBA to ask seemingly obvious administrative and how-to questions!
Again, C.E., I agree. Kris and I got very lucky when we were setting up our corporations and found an accountant who worked only in the arts and creative arts and with writers and artists and musicians. Since I had been through law school, I knew some of what I needed, but I still hired an attorney and the accountant. And the structure we set up worked great for a decade. So listen to what C.E. says and be careful. But in the same breath, find the good help if you are going more complex than just wrapping your income into a schedule C or doing a DBA with a schedule C. Beyond that, get the RIGHT good help.
Speaking of year of transition, and to return to my favorite old saw… In recent weeks, I’ve talked with:
A multi-published professional I know has a literary agent who is so unresponsive (not reading the material, not responding to emails, not returning phone calls–and we’re talking about this going on for MONTHS, not days or weeks), the writer has (as of our last discussion) decided to fire the agent and work without one, especially since this isn’t the first agent who hasn’t worked out.
Another writer I know has lately sold three books for very good advances to a major house after being unable (all together now) to get agents even to RESPOND TO or ACKNOWLEDGE her queries to them. The writer, btw, made these sales to a major house whose official policy is “no unagented submissions.” (What has Dean said over and over here about “no unagented submissions” policies? Go re-read the Sacred Cows posts if you don’t remember.)
Another multi-published writer I spoke with recently has run through a couple of agents, has decided it’s not a good business model, and is submitting unagented.
An unagented writer I know with a hot new release was approached by an agent recently who declared this novel was precisely the sort of book the agent was interested in representing. The writer informed the agent, “Er, I queried you and you DECLINED to represent it” (shortly before the writer went on to sell it to a major house -without- an agent).
These are all conversations I’ve had in the final month of 2010. And all conversations NO ONE was having at this time three years ago, when I was generally regarded as something between a freakish anomaly and a fool for working without an agent. So I feel like we’re seeing the start of the tide turning on the agent-author busines model, too. (At last!) No, I don’t mean agents wil disappear from the industry; but I do think a PERCENTAGE of them will disappear from the industry. No, I don’t think most writers will cease working with agents; but I do think a PERCENTAGE of them in 2011 will question–and even quit–the agent-author business model; and that’s NEW. That’s a CHANGE from decades of the virtually universal “you MUST have an agent” mindset in this field.
Additionally, some brand new or formerly unfamiliar phrases I’ve heard a lot in the past year from EDITORS and people in PUBLISHING HOUSES, as well as from an increasing number of published professional writers, include: “these idiots agents;” “these new and baby agents who don’t know the business;” and “this author’s incompetent agent;” “these agents who don’t know what they’re doing;” etc.
Publishing has always been VERY competitive and had VERY narrow profit margins. But I think it’s become even MORE so in the past couple of years… and people at both ends (editors as well as writers) are noticing the obvious fat that needs to be trimmed, i.e. people who are lazy and/or incompetent and/or difficult to deal with, and who in exchange for contributing virtually nothing to the process are living on 15% of the writer’s income, at a time when the economy and the state of the industry makes 15% of a writer’s a advance a lot bigger bite for the -writer- than it was a decade ago. I don’t mean ALL agent (some agents do an excellent job); I mean the percentage who are indeed costing writers far more than they’re worth, and who are meanwhile really annoying editors and publishers (and NOT because they protect their clients’ interests so well, but rather because they’re sloppy, incompetent, hard to find, difficult to deal with, or don’t know what they’re doing).
And certainly the huge changes we’re seeing and will continue to see in 2011 will have an effect on this, too. I think that self-publishing means there will be more writers like me, in the sense that I sold 9 books before I ever paid an agency commission… so I was always well aware of that 15% I paid on various occasions thereafter… and always well aware of how very, very seldom I was getting service that was remotely worth what I was paying for it. A state of mind which perhaps made me more willing than others to question and finally quit the business model, at a point where that was still considered somewhere between risky and flat-out idiotic. Since the e-publishing ship has already sailed without agents, it will be increasingly hard for them to grad a share of that revenue stream from clients or prospective clients, or to get involved in that business. There’s just too much widespread evidence that succeeding in electronic self-publishing DOES NOT REQUIRE a literary agent. Even if some agents can fool some writers into thinking they’re necessary for this, most writers (and even most aspiring writers) will know better from here forward.
And the more writers become accustomed to handling their own business and keeping 100% of their income, the more likely they will be (I optmistically assert) to say: “Define what you will DO to merit =15%= of MY income that I can’t do WITHOUT you while keeping that money for myself.” Some agents will have good answers and will live up to those answers. But it will become increasingly hard for those who DON’T to remain in the business.
Laura, let me simply say I agree once again. I also have noticed more and more and more writers starting to change their tune, starting to pay attention and ask that very question of what will they get for the 15%? And I also find that just slightly encouraging. There are some fantastic agents out there, but wow has the overall agent/writer model been screwed up lately. I have no issue with agents, as long as they respond, make their costs worthwhile, and know what they are doing in terms of helping me with the business, contracts, and contacts in publishing. But sadly, there are few agents left who know more about this business than I do. And who know more about copyright and contracts than I do. It’s my job, my life, my income, so why should I hire someone with less knowledge to just run errands for 15%. I can hire someone at $15.00 to run errands just fine if I need that.
So I agree, Laura, I also have been hearing more and more professionals seemingly starting to wake up. I like that.
Good advice as usual, including the comments.
I would add that the reason to do an LLC or incorporate is usually more for protecting your personal assets if sued. Theoretically, if an LLC or Inc. gets sued, they can only go after the assets of the company, but not your personal assets. Sometimes you can get tax breaks doing that, but the expenses to get and maintain a corporation will offset those unless they get into some big numbers.
The other issue is that there are provisions for personal suits within corporations if there is some personal liability involved, say along the lines of a financial adviser embellishing client funds. That investor could get sued anyway, even if he has a corp.
And since the author’s name is usually on the book, if someone sued the corp. for plagiarism or slander, I would be the author would still be personally liable as well as the corp.
So I would agree with Dean, keep it simple as a sole proprietor. Until you’re bringing in a big chunk of change, the tax breaks aren’t going to offset the additional expenses, and will simply give you more bookkeeping/administrative work to either do yourself or farm out, which is time you could be spending writing and earning.
BTW, Dean, I put up my first short story on Smashwords last week, and plan on using my day off Monday to get another couple of them up. I did my cover using Inkscape, a vector graphic program, since I don’t have Power Point. I think the results came out very well.
Great discussion as usual, including the comments.
I’d add only one thing about laziness, and I’ll admit that I stood up to deliver it.
The thing is, people do stupid things when they right, like forgetting to breathe properly while they’re writing (this is why I stood up).
Doesn’t it sound silly? Did to me too, until I started practicing a breath meditation. But taking myself as an example, I find I unconsciously hold my breath while I’m concentrating on working out some difficult passage. Do that for three pages, and yes, I’m exhausted, literally.
Kris Rusch wrote about this (http://kriswrites.com/2009/04/09/freelancers-survival-guide-workspace/), but the thing I’m (re)learning is that ergonomics starts with one’s own body. It may be slow at first, but learning to sit up straight and remembering to breathe regularly actually does make a big difference.
Silly but true. It’s also not as easy as it sounds. I’ve had the laptop support to work standing up for seven months now, and I still had to consciously remember to grab it and put it on the table to write this. And I have to remind myself regularly to sit up straight and breathe properly while I’m writing sitting down. It takes regular practice to write hard without causing long-term damage.
Remember that sitting in a chair for eight hours a day typing is a profoundly unnatural act (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_19/b4177071221162.htm). Like other truly unnatural acts, it takes training and thought, as well as supportive exercises, to perform it with a minimum of bodily harm. For anyone (such as myself) who has problems with it, I’d suggest working smarter before attempting to work harder. It’s hard to work for eight hours while slouching, body held still, and breathing convulsively three times per minute. Stupid, too.
heteromeles, I couldn’t agree more. It’s critical to set up good practices while writing, good posture, good breathing, and regular breaks every hour. That’s critical. But once those become normal, and they will in very short order, then it’s the work ethic that takes over, and the amount of time that can be carved out of each day.
I have a friend who has a wonderful family with young kids, a wonderful wife, and a really tough job that swallows his days. He needs to keep the job for the family and health and living, he needs to spend time in the evening with his young kids. So every day for years he got up at 4 AM, worked for three hours, then went off to his regular job and spent evenings with his family. He did this for years, every day, against all frustration and rejections. I was so, so impressed at his work ethic I tried to help anytime he asked. Finally he sold a very, very large three book deal and is lead title hardback out of a major company this year. He’s still working the same work ethic, kept his day job. But the frustration is less. That’s a work ethic I admire. That’s what I was talking about. Not one lazy bone in my friend’s body. He had a dream, set goals, and every day worked for the goals. He wrote many, many books in those early morning hours and suffered more rejections than I can count over the years, but his work ethic and his hungry desire to keep learning has gotten him to a success point and the attainment of his dream.
R.L. Copple:
I’m afraid you’ve just made my point for me, in stating that “the reason to do an LLC or incorporate is usually more for protecting your personal assets if sued. Theoretically, if an LLC or Inc. gets sued, they can only go after the assets of the company, but not your personal assets.”
I wish. Having such a uniform rule would make it all nice and easy, wouldn’t it? However, there are several exceptions to the purported “uniform rule” that — in publishing — tend to swallow the rule, belch loudly, then continue nibbling at the principal’s (owner’s — in this instance, author’s) vital organs. In no particular order:
* If Arthur Author does his work for Scribbler Inc/LLC as work for hire, that work can never be terminated under § 203 of the Copyright Act. Sure, that’s a few years down the road… but just how many technological and economic changes can you envision between now and 2045, or 2065, that might make it worthwhile for you and/or your heirs to reclaim your books?
* The probability that Arthur Author and Scribbler Inc/LLC have commingled assets approaches one asymptotically as Scribbler Inc/LLC’s net income over the preceding three years drops below US$250k. In turn, that means that Scribbler Inc/LLC will be treated as Arthur’s “alter ego” — that is, that the corporate veil will be pierced and Arthur’s personal assets will be just as exposed as they were before.
* Relatedly, there’s the endemic undercapitalization problem for startups, which all by itself will encourage courts to ignore limitations on liability — especially for the personalty torts (defamation, invasion of privacy, false-light publicity) and intellectual property violations.
* Then there are tax and asset-management questions related to the different definitions of “capital gain” and “dividend” for natural persons and corporate entities. CPAs will earn their fees doing this for you… but an awful lot of CPAs screw up seemingly simple things like properly characterizing “royalties” from a publisher, or “residuals” from H’wood…
* Most important of all, the increasingly popular LLC form is, under many state laws, entirely inappropriate for an intellectual property holding entity… and, unlike corporate forms, there are so many variations on LLC rules that many states do not respect the LLC rules of the LLC’s home state, but impose their own. For example, if Scribbler LLC — hypothetically a Florida LLC, because Arthur has decided that yesterday’s weather in Philadelphia means he needs to live in Boca — were to be sued for libel a couple of states over in Louisiana, Louisiana’s refusal to recognize foreign single-member partnerships (which is what LLCs like Scribbler “really” are, although even that’s a vast oversimplification) would turn it into a personal lawsuit faster than I can place an order for crawfish etouffée at the Commander’s Palace. Worse, this is a changing target — it’s based on a 2008 matter, but there are rumblings that the Louisiana legislature is considering changing its statute… My point here is that LLCs are not the all-the-advantages-of-both flow-through (partnership) accounting and corporate limited liability, particularly for IP holding entities, that promoters proclaim.
* Let’s not even begin to get into annual reporting requirements.
* Or the question of naming, trademark rights, unfair competition, consumer confusion, etc. arising from similar names… especially in different states.
* Or what happens if Scribbler gets hauled into court in, say, Singapore (because a Singapore resident bought a copy of Arthur’s latest thoughtful political-thriller novel online), and Arthur’s novel criticizes the sultan and purportedly insults Islam…
In short, it’s not as simple as the books, or the promoters, make it out to be.
Dan,
I agree about the software. If you know how to use it, and it does the job, it’s fine. But I talk to so many writers who think Wordpad, or MS Works, or some little freeware “writing” program is all they need, that it’s frightening. Especially when they don’t really know how to use even these.
This was fine when writing meant typing a story and snail mailing it, with nothing else needed except perhaps a land line phone. But in today’s publishing world, it just doesn’t cut it.
Still, I admit to being one of those “Ohhhh, shiny” people. It drives my wife crazy, but I have to stay a step and a half ahead of what’s sensible. I just can’t resist the latest and the greatest, even to the point of sometimes using beta software that probably isn’t quite ready for prime time.
But I’ve also had some great experiences, and made some money I wouldn’t have made otherwise, by jumping into such things as Google Docs and Office Live early on.
Dean mentioned that writers tend to be lazy, and he’s dead on, but I’ve found too many writers also skimp. There are things none of us can afford to buy or do, but there are also things none of us can afford -not- to buy or do, be it shelling out for an adequate computer and software, investing in a workshop, taking a business class at a local college, etc. Sometimes we just have to find the money, even if it means not doing something we want to do so we can do something we need to do, or, as I do now and then, working a part time job reading slush for a month or two. . .a job that kills roughly one hundred brain cells per minute.
As for taxes, one good source for great tax help that often gets overlooked is the IRS itself. Not their booklets and web articles, but actually calling them with questions. I’ve found them remarkably helpful.
I also record every business call of any type, be it a call from an editor, to my talks with the IRS or an accountant. The legality of recording phone calls varies from state to state, but in my state any phone call may be recorded as long as ONE party involved in the call knows it’s being recorded. Likewise, I also save every e-mail.
I’ve been audited twice, and detailed records really help make an audit easy.
Last note. There are states and cities where a writer, any writer, is supposed to register as a small business, is supposed to get a business permit, and is expected to pay the same local taxes as any other small business. I suspect many writers do not know this, and many who do know never register, but it’s still wise to look into it.
“On another side, suddenly short fiction has made a fantastic comeback as the new market for stand-alone short fiction is just off the charts due to the desire for shorter work to read on phones and electronic devices. ”
Can you describe this market? Are you talking about places to submit stories, or are you referring to self-publishing them?
I’m curious because the prevailing wisdom among a lot of indie writers is that novels sell better than shorts by a significant margin, and this is with the novels being priced higher than the shorts.
Dean, I have friends like that, too, and I admire them very much. (I didn’t make similar sacrifices when I started writing, since I was young, single, childless, and working at a job that was undemanding.)
I have two friends that started writing (and eventually selling) while working full-time as ER nurses and raising kids; both are now much-published midlist writers, and one recently made Library Journal’s Year’s Best list. I have another friend who started writing (and eventually sold) while raising three kids and working full-time as a high school teacher; she, too, has by now sold over 30 books and received many awards. I have another friend who started writing while raising one child and working as a math professor; I remember her saying she did it by giving up, 6 nights per week, one hour with her family and one hour of sleep, i.e. two hours per night. So she wrote 12 hours a week, every week, back then. (These days, she’s a hardcover New York Times bestseller.) I know someone else whose combination of family responsibilities and writing income means she can’t quit her day job, so she still writes most days from 4am-7am, before it’s time to get the family up and prepare for her day job. Another friend of mine, with three kids, wrote three big novels while working a demanding day job… and then wound up maintaining that day job for years into her lucrative writing career, because she was in a very specialized field and there wasn’t really anyone else who could finish the major day-job project she had started before become a writer with six-figure book contracts; so the upshot was that, for several years, she was often writing in the middle of the night to get her pages done without neglecting her day job project or missing time with her family. And so on.
People who are destined to succeed bring exceptional commitment to their writing–which is no surprise, after all, since (one of the things most often underestimated by aspiring writers) this is a HIGHLY competitive profession.
Oh, and P.S. Diana Gabaldon (hardcover #1 NYT bestseller and international bestseller) has written often about how she got started. You can find an essay on this in her OUTLANDISH COMPANION, and possibly also on her website. She had three young children, a full-time day job as an associate professor, and also worked nights at home as a freelancer, editing and writing (mostly computer articles, also some comics). Because of her family’s financial situation (her husband was an entrepreneur starting up a new business), she felt she couldn’t give up even her freelance night work, let alone her day job. But she was 35, had always wanted to write novels, and felt that if she didn’t get started now, she never would.
Since she was already stretched to the limit by her workload combined with mothering 3 young kids, she didn’t tell her husband she was going to start writing a novel. She figured, out of concern that she might keel over dead from exhaustion, he’d sensibly try to talk her into postponing that endeavor for a few years, until her load was less demanding; and if she listened to him… she’s never start writing. And so she began writing OUTLANDER–which, of course, is still in print 20 years after she first sold it, and the first book in her massively successful, bestseller historical series.
(Her husband found out she was writing in secret when he one day logged onto her computer, saw hundreds of files with another man’s name on them (her book’s hero), and asked if, er, there was something she wanted to tell him… (g))
Dean – what’s your opinion of this and Bob Mayer? Some people in a group I belong to are touting his courses on Selling Your Book.
http://www.whodareswinspublishing.com/For_Authors.html
Toni, whatever works for whatever a writer wants to do. In other words, I don’t give specific opinions about different types of start-up. I said clearly what I believe is a way to do things, which is piece-meal if you need help, but try not to need help. And I warned about what to watch out for. Past that, no opinion on anything specific. Sorry.
Thanks Dean. I can read between the lines!!
I had no intention of participating but when an influential national writers’ group, and a rather single-focused one at that, pushes something way out of its usual orbit one has to wonder. Can it be the dinosaur awakes!
Thanks for your take on the revolution in publishing today. Foolishly, I scorned an e-book opportunity with a pretty good publisher just eight months ago. “It’ll never work”, sez I.
Like the song says – who’s sorry now.
Happy New Year to you & yours.
Toni, I have zero issue if a writer can buy parts that are needed. Say like a cover only. For a set menu price. No issue with that at all. Where I have fantastic issues is the open-ended percentage and the agents getting into the publishing side.
Sitting Way Too Long is the most annoying facet of modern life. I need to do the Kevin J. Anderson thing and just hike around dictating all my writing into an audio recorder. Once I find a good transcriptionist (if that’s what that’s even called…) I’ll probably start doing that. The other upshot is that it can’t but help my verbal syncopation. Working in silence is depressing.
As for now, at least I have a sturdy office chair on wheels and a wood floor to roll around on. That counts as exercise, if I don’t eat much. I really need a bigger computer screen, though…I don’t want to become a Fat Fatty AND Ruin My Eyesight too.
Dean and Laura,
Thanks so much for those inspiring stories about writers struggling with day jobs and kids. I would love to hear more. That’s my constant battle too and hearing how others have persevered despite huge obstacles makes me want to keep going too. It’s not easy when you set a goal – say, so many words a day or so many hours a week of writing – and then one son gets sick and has to be constantly tended, or another son has trouble at school and has to be personally tutored, or another son needs extra lessons across town at a time when the buses don’t run – well, you get the idea. Hearing that other parents have come up against the same or worse doesn’t lessen the load but it somehow makes it easier to carry. And having less time during the school year (I teach English as a second language here in Greece) makes me want to spend the holidays not reveling but writing and editing and formatting and so on, as I am doing every spare moment this holiday season.
It was early last summer that I found this blog and Kris’s blog, and I want to thank every one of you who contribute. You give me the fellowship I am not able to get in person here in a far country, as well as invaluable advice.
John, I’m sure there will be more stories along the way. What’s interesting as a uniform thought process is that all new writers think that old professionals never went through what they are going through with jobs and family and stress. I’m not sure, but no doubt for a time I thought the same thing, until I started actually learning about how older professionals made it and what they did.
What was uniform among all the professionals I met and studied wasn’t the kids or lack of kids or the jobs or degrees or anything like that. What was uniform was the drive and the desire to sometimes give up things for the chance to advance the writing and learn more about writing and the business.
The last master class, and I do mean the last, there were two people there who were about to lose their homes, had kids, were out of jobs, and yet put their writing first for those two weeks against all odds. Two others had health issues that they knew the stress of the master class wouldn’t help, but they came anyway and fought on, falling down when they got home. About half of the people there were very, very financially stressed getting to the master class. One lost a job when arriving back to work because of being gone for two weeks. And so on. It’s a drive, an ability to find a way.
When Algis Budrys called me to go to the WOTF workshop (I’ve talked about before), I had no money, I had two jobs, and when I asked for the two weeks off that I would need starting the next day, both jobs said they couldn’t have me gone that long, but then when it was clear I would quit if I had to, they both backed down and kept my jobs for me. I didn’t care. The writing and the chance to learn came first. I was separated from my second wife and had no strings, so that helped. But I had no money and hadn’t written much in the previous year because of the house fire one year before. Most writers would have shrugged and said “Oh, well, I hope there’s a next time.” Of course, there never was and I ended up meeting Kris there.
The uniform trait among all long-term writers is the ability to put writing second, a very close second behind family.
Put writing second? Crap, that might explain why my cat hasn’t moved in three days and my husband went out for milk on Christmas Eve and apparently hasn’t found his way home… Oh well, need to finish this novel, then I’ll file the police report *grin*
But seriously, yeah, it’s tough sometimes and I don’t have kids to worry about. I’ve found that treating the writing like a business (albeit a fun one) has really worked for developing the butt in chair mentality and definitely increased my productivity and (hopefully) skill. Having a supportive spouse who understands that writing isn’t an overnight success kind of gig is helpful, too.
I admire people who do the dayjob and kids thing while writing. Those that do that and still finish books and get their work out there are truly dedicated.
I understand you, John. I live and teach and have a family in Ukraine and find the same thing you do here.
The problem with where to focus efforts is a big one for me. Some of the writers Konrath has highlighted all say that promotion is like a second job almost to them. For me it would be like a fourth or fifth job with all I have to do. When I have an hour that I can do something in, I find I’d much rather spend it getting a thousand words written on a novel or working on a short story than in promotion. Maybe that keeps the brakes on.
There is also the problem with writing across genres that someone mentioned in another post. Konrath says its limiting but Dean here doesn’t seem to be hurt by it. But this is a thread jacker so I’ll wait for some more relevant post.
Cheers.
Hmmmm, Scott, I think you just hit on a major myth that I have missed in the Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing. Writing Across Genres is a Bad Thing. Wow, I had forgotten about that old saw since I have been laughing at it for so long. Thanks.
A Sacred Cows post on it coming soon.
Thank you for this awesome article Dean, this put you on my radar.
I am new to writing and am preparing my first book for self-publication.
This list gave me EVERYTHING I wanted to know.
cheers
C.E. Petit,
I think we’re making each other’s points. My point was that due to the fact that I would imagine there are few times when an LLC or Inc. makes sense for an author, it is much simpler to stay sole proprietor. Because, as you state, and I mentioned, the publisher/author relationship with a book product with the author’s name on it probably makes any asset protection minimal. So, there’s not much reason to do that short of some major tax breaks on earning a significant amount of income.
But I appreciate the more detailed description of the point I was making, why incorporating probably is rarely a good idea for an author publishing his own work. The main reason to do so is pretty much toast in that situation.
R.L. and C.E., I agree with you both. Incorporation is never a good idea, in any of the forms, for a writer looking for protection. Just won’t work in 99.9% of the cases, as you both have been saying. However, from the writing side, there are other corporation structures that work to save money IF you are making enough. And that’s a big IF. The line tends to be around six figures constantly every year or above. Then the corporate structure can save you money, but realize in the trade-off, you are putting your work under a corporation and thus lose some copyright factors. Minor, but there as well.
While I’m horribly impressed with the folks who struggled against seemingly insurmountable odds to write, I have to point out that there are other people – no less dedicated – who haven’t followed that model. Writers who postponed their fiction careers until after their children had left the nest. Writers who didn’t even know they wanted to write until after a major life event such as a major illness or loss of a loved one, or a divorce, or a layoff, or retirement. Writers who are taking skills they’ve learned in other endeavors and turning them into material for stories, or as a base for learning the business of being a professional fiction writer.
As is often said on this blog, there is no “one right way” to be a writer. And I would hate for someone who didn’t write their first book(s) in the wee hours before going to the day job or on napkin during 15-min breaks during their shift at the diner to think they were coming to the game too late to even bother, or that they weren’t “real” writers (and, yes, I’ve actually heard those sentiments expressed about “late arrivals”).
Writers write. And finish what they write. And send it out until it sells. And keep writing in the meantime.
There’s in Heinlein’s rules about when you have to start or what you “must” work around. Just start writing, keep writing, keep submitting, keep learning.
And when life situations happen, deal with them in your own way – which may or may not include writing through them. If you’re a writer, the blank page will drag you back.
Trust me on this one. I’ve got the t-shirt
Oh, I completely agree, Leigh. One of my favorite writers, Julie Hyzy, didn’t start until after her kids were up a ways, and even then it was tough. And I know of a couple of writers who have been preparing and taking classes and working on their skills and writing as much as possible as they neared retirement from jobs so that their retirement income would put a cushion under them. And both of them are fully professional and have been brilliant in their planning.
No one way of doing it. But the key is to not use not having time as an excuse. Starting can be a planned event or a life factor, but we all had to start, to “get serious” as writers tend to call that point. I had been writing and attempting to write from 1974. But I didn’t get serious and give it the focus until a planned start on January 1st, 1982, while I had three jobs. I knew that if I kept going the way I had been going I might sell a few more things, but would never make my goal of being a full-time writer. I had to give it the focus and change the dug-in patterns of the myths. Somehow, I managed that. Looking back, I honestly am not sure how I did it at times. I just did it.
Leigh, and you are right on another factor. Some writers just don’t come to writing until later in life. In our workshops here the average age is between 40 and 50. We very, very seldom get very young people. It takes a level of strength and maturity to tackle an international profession such as writing. Very good point, Leigh. Thanks.
Leigh, I’ve talked about a life situation I had back in 1985. My house burnt down and I lost almost everything I had written before that point. Everything. I just sort of walked away from writing at that point, couldn’t see a reason to get back to it. I had written a story per week for three years and two novels and lost it all. What was the point? But as the year went on, I slowly eased back to writing and ended up going to the Taos workshop to meet Kris one year after the house burnt down. But even then I would spend weeks not writing, just sort of giving myself time to recover. It took me years to completely recover from that fire. A life event that sometimes you just stop writing to recover from. So again, I agree with what you are saying.
oops.
There’s NOTHING in Heinlein’s rules about when you have to start or what you “must” work around.
Dean wrote: “What’s interesting as a uniform thought process is that all new writers think that old professionals never went through what they are going through with jobs and family and stress.”
Which is in the same herd as the common assumption among aspiring writers that published professionals (or among new writers that established pros) don’t understand what it’s like for them, because Everything Was So Different when -we- were aspiring writers trying to break in (or new writers with a first contract/release), so we just don’t know what they’re up against or what it’s like for them.
John Walters wrote: “Thanks so much for those inspiring stories about writers struggling with day jobs and kids. I would love to hear more. That’s my constant battle too and hearing how others have persevered despite huge obstacles makes me want to keep going too.”
Here’s a link to a good-advice essay about this, written by my friend Stephen Leigh aka S.L. Farrell, who’s sold 20+ sf/f novels over the years while also working a day job, raising two kids, and having a life:
http://www.farrellworlds.com/writelife.html
That link is available via my Writer’s Resource Page. There’s also a link there to Diana Gabaldon essays (who started writing novels while raising three kids, working a full-time day job, and also working freelance by night). There are also a gazillion links there to essays by other professional novelists (ex. Jennifer Crusie, Dan Simmons, Lawrence Watt Evans, Karen Harbaugh, John Scalzi, Joe Nassise, Rebecca Brandewyne, Jenna Petersen, Vonda McIntyre, Tara K Harper, Richard Dooling), at least some of whom probably address the suject, too, since it’s a very common challenge not only for aspiring writers, but also for professional writers (many of whose fiscal responsibilities, when contrasted to their writing incomes, mean they need to maintain their day jobs).
My Writer’s Resource Page is at:
http://sff.net/people/laresnick/About%20Writing/Writers%20Resource.htm#Websites
John wrote: “I teach English as a second language here in Greece”
Hey, John, small world! I started writing while teaching English as a second language at the University of Palermo in Sicily! I wrote and submitted my first two published novels (both of which were romances targeted at–and subsequently published by–Silhouette Books) while working there, and also wrote a third novel there which did not ever sell (though I later used the basic story idea as the basis of my 9th published novel).
However, my teaching duties were very light, and it was easy for me to find time to write. Which is why “how to carve writing time out of my day” isn’t a subject I talk/write on. There are many people much better qualified than I to address that–all those writer who did or do write while raising kids, maintaining a marriage, holding down a demanding day job, etc.
Leigh, I agree, there is no “right” answer. But I do think that there’s a big difference between quietly/privately having writing aspirations but deciding this isn’t the right time to pursue them, and noisly/publicly having writing aspirations but “not having the time” to write that brilliant groundbreaking novel. I meet a LOT of people with the latter “complaint;” and there are enough people who wanted to start writing NOW, and who did so despite the other demands in their life, that I just consider the “I want to write but don’t have the time” complaint hot air–this is someone who WON’T start writing when they have the time, though there are indeed people who schedule their ambitions (whether writing, returning to school, changing professions, taking up a hobby, moving abroad, etc.) for a more feasible time in their life and who do indeed follow through.
I also think there’s a line in the sand that should never be crossed. Or, to quote my father: “It’s noble to starve for your art, but it’s chickenshit to make your spouse and children starve for your art.” Writing is no excuse for anyone to abandon fundamental fiscal responsibilities, such as paying one’s bills. And if one has fiscal responsibilities to anyone besides oneself, such as a spouse or children, then one needs to take that into account when making life-altering fiscal decisions (such as whether to quit the day job in favor of pursuing writing ambitions).
One of the key advantages of writing is that it’s something which, if need be, you can do almost anywhere on almost any schedule. You can do it on your lunch hour at work, on your commute (if you’ve a place to sit), at home by night or before dawn, on weekends, while the baby is sleeping, in airplanes, etc. It can be done in chunks of 30 minutes or 12 hours. You don’t need to schedule or coordinate with anyone else (unless you’re collaborating), you don’t need rehearsal space, you don’t have to go on the road to do it, you don’t need a special space for it (many people begin writing in bed, in their kitchens, in their workplace cafeteria, in their laundry room, in a local coffee shop or library, etc.). So, PARTICULARLY when it’s an aspiration–i.e. it’s not even PAYING you (or not paying you anything resembling a full-time income)–there’s asbolutely no reason to quit a paying full-time day job to do it.
And YET… I’ve met some people over the years who, over the objections of their horrified spouse and despite the fiscal needs of their children, have indeed quit their paying day jobs to pursue their writing aspirations, convinced that “having enough time” was what stood between them and producing written material which they could sell professionally. Egad. (I even years ago spoke with one woman who had somehow talked her doubtful spouse into taking out a second mortgage on their family home to cover the loss of living expenses when she quit her dayjob to spend a year just writing. No, she never sold a book–not then, and not later.)
So I know, from having met people like this, that the “I’m not writing because I don’t have the time” myth can wind up convincing rather unwise people to do crazy things–such as abandoning their fiscal responsibilities ot their children and damaging (or destroying) their marriages.
Just as the myth can justify people who are convinced that, deep inside, they’re very special people who’ve got the Great American Novel dying to pour forth from their muse-blessed fingers, if only they “had the time” to write it, and they want to MAKE SURE that you ande everyone else they meet =KNOW= this about them: I’m not JUST a lawyer, doctor, engineer, analyst, teacher, broker, contractor, hit man, stripper; I am -also- a brilliant artiste… who just (minor detail here) hasn’t yet had time to fulfill my potential and be recognized.
Meanwhile, I also think the myths about writers being people with endless empty days of leisure time stretching ahead of them can be veyr discouraging to serious aspiring writers with heavy demands on their time and energy, because they think they’re the FIRST ever to try to write a book in 30 minute increments on a commuter train, or whatever. How reassuring, surely, to find out, no, actually, LOTS of successful writers got started that way–and, indeed, lots of professional writers -still- write contracted novels while having day jobs, kids, etc. “Yes, it’s possible, so don’t get discouraged; others have figured it out, so you can, too.”
In fact, when professionals with comfortable salaries and benefits say to me, “But what I REALLY want to do is write…”
Well, if I don’t really know them, I nod, smile, and move on. But when it’s someone I know or am acquainted with (and so there’s a risk that I might keep hearing for years about how they “really want to write”), I will usually offer to send them some information, and I send them links to:
- My Writer’s Resource Page
- The Stephen Leigh article about writing while having a family and a life
- Links to or a photocopy of Diana Gabaldon’s essay about how she started writing while having 3 small kids, a full-time day job, and a night-time freelancing job
- Links to a number of Kris Rusch’ Freelancers Guide blog, specifically about the things most salaried/employed people don’t realize about freelancing (from the fiscal issues to the question of self-discpline, commiment, and sole resposibility)
And do you know what? So far, on every single occasion I’ve done that… the person in question has never again raised the subject with me of “really wanting to write.”
Yes, sometimes I provide those same links to serious aspiring writers (such as a couple of people from this blog who’ve wound up emailing me privately), i.e. someone who’s already writing and trying to break in, and I get a reponse like, “Thanks! This is useful information!”
But people who aren’t writing but who “really want to write”? So far, not ONE has found those links “helpful” or ever again raised the subject again of their writing aspirations.
I don’t recount this maliciously or with disgust. I think there are a LOT of people who (even in cases where they know a writer like me personally, and so hear first-hand anecdotes of what this profession is actually like) are very swayed by the myth of the writer’s lifestyle (heavily perpetuated by films and TV portraysl of writers) as people who sit down for five minutes one day and produce a critically acclaimed bestseller whose revenues will suport them in style for the rest of their lives (as well as earning them compliments and recognition as someone special–and who doesn’t want that, after all?).
(Case in point, I watched some episodes of CALIFORNICATION recently. David Duchovny plays a writer who’s produced two novels in his career, the second of which was a critically acclaimed bestseller which landed a film deal. Five years after its release, he hasn’t written or sold anything else. But he lives in an expensive L.A. condo, drives a Porsche, feeds a voracious cocaine habit, pays for his daughter to go to private school, and apparently has NO MONEY WORRIES AT ALL. Similarly, SEX IN THE CITY’S Carrie Bradshaw maintained a top-drawer clubbing, partying lifestyle in Manhattan with a designer wardrobe, and hundreds of pairs of shoes which each cost roughly what I pay for a computer. She did all this on the basis of writing about 1,000 words per week for a local tabloid column, and she, too, seemed to have NO MONEY WORRIES AT ALL.)
Whenever someone says they aren’t writing as much as they’d like because they don’t have time, I always ask, “and what are you doing to rearrange your life so that you DO have time?”
And it’s true, some are working on that. Some have put thrown their energy into becoming financially solvent, a la “Your Money Or Your Life.” Some are just thinking about maybe doing something… someday. Most just waiting for things to change. I mean, they’ll go on and on about how nothing works. Nothing about what they think might work.
Sometimes I think these people have a very strong creative calling which they have developed to a fine art: they devote everything to making excuses. They seem to revel in it. They love for you to tell them what worked for you so they can tell you exactly how it will never work for them. And they never use any of the discussion as a jumping off point to find new solutions.
I’d also like to add that, as a person who has been pestered by people who want to “solve” problems I have – which I don’t consider to be problems – I do understand the “shoot every idea they’ve got down” technique… but in that case, I am not instigating or encouraging the conversation. The whole point is to get them to shut up and go away. However, the behavior I’m talking about are people who initiate the bitching and seem to want to keep it going as long as possible.
Camille
I don’t know… I was one of those people who felt like I never had time to write when I was working a full time (full time being 50-70 hours a week) job. I still got writing done, but very little. Of course, I was trapped in the rewriting myth then, too.
I jumped into the deep end head first. While I feel my writing has improved tenfold and that my career as a writer finally has a chance, I’m not sure I’d recommend this method to anyone. I’m lucky in that I have a frugal, good with money nature and a supportive husband who has (for now) a decent job that pays our rent and keeps us both insured. He’s promised me 10 years to get my writing career off the ground (barring financial disaster, if he lost his job, I’d be out at the temp agencies and pounding the pavement for a job tomorrow). I’m ever thankful that I have the time to write without having to sacrifice more than some creature comforts (I miss the DINK income sometimes, but I can live without going out to eat or buying videogames new all the time if it means pursuing a job I actually want).
I think it comes down to what you want and the best way for you to go about getting it. A writing career isn’t built in a week or even a year, so there’s no real need to rush and do it all RIGHT NOW. I’m just a RIGHT NOW sort, so for me it made sense to jump in and go at this full throttle. But the nice thing about writing is that you aren’t ever too old to start. No editor cares (or even knows) if the story in front of them was written by someone who is 18 or 70.
(and at this rate I might be 70 before I get some of my writing career dreams accomplished)
OK, I’ll agree that there are plenty of people who use “lack of time” as an excuse – like most people, I know plenty of them, and have, I’m sure, been one myself on more than one occasion. It just bugged me that the discussion seemed to be heading in the “if you really wanted to be a writer, you’d make the necessary sacrifices for your art; otherwise you’re just a poser” direction.
Laura – love your dad’s “line in the sand” . Reminds me of something a friend (a single mom with young kids) said by way of explaining why she seldom wrote fiction any more: “I can write for three cents a word, or $$ per hour, and I just can’t write fast enough to feed my kids and keep a roof over their heads at three cents a word.” She still wrote fiction on occasion, but for the most part it got pushed to the back burner for many years because of her life situation. And I know several people in similar circumstances.
I guess all I was trying to say is that not everyone who says they don’t have time to pursue this career is making an excuse.
But yeah, there are also a lot who are.
One thing I’ve learned about life situations is that they’re not created equal. I’ve bounced back from some very quickly, while others (that didn’t seem all that traumatic at the time) have taken much longer. I’ve used my writing as part of my recovery, pounding the keys in a white-hot heat, and I’ve stared at the blank screen for weeks with no clue what to do. At one point I didn’t even know if I still possessed the ability to string words along to form sentences that anyone would want to read. (Fortunately, by then I had a community of friends – including Kris and Dean – who were supportive, encouraging, and not afraid to poke me with a sharp stick until I stopped wallowing, sat down at the keyboard, and just started typing!)
I was 45 when I started working on writing fiction. Now I’m 50. I’ve come into this late, for sure. But I want to get to the point of writing full-time, and am working toward that goal.
During the past five years, I’ve held a full-time plus job for all but a few months one year where I mostly did some contract bookkeeping work. Since Feb. 2008, I’m the financial officer of a city in TX. I also have a family, and church commitments. And my wife appreciates plenty of attention, which I’m glad to give her.
Which means one will often find me working late on writing projects, often after everyone else has gone to bed. I’ve stayed up into the wee hours of the morning on many an occasion, but almost always work past midnight, getting to bed sometime between 1 and 2 in the morning.
I’ve been doing this for five years, and in that time I’ve written eight novels. And this week I dove into my first full self-published anthology of my short stories and flash fictions I’ve written in the past five years. It doesn’t contain all of them I’ve written, but most of the ones that have been published in mags and a couple that haven’t but I felt were worthy stories, and one that will come out next month (with editor’s permission of course), and they totaled 23 stories amounting to just under 60K words. (Check my blog for info if interested to see it)
That’s on top of being an editor at an online mag for much of that time (managing editor for over a year), and participate in as much writing related groups as I think would benefit my growth as a writer.
My hope is that when I retire in another 15 to 20 years, this will be rolling along to provide a good retirement income.
So I don’t think there are any easy answers for most of us. And I know from what people have said, it doesn’t get any easier when you’re a full-time writer. There’s always something to be doing.
Leigh, I don’t think you quite got what we’re saying (or at least not what I’m saying):
I’m not saying that if you have times when you can’t write you’re just a poseur. I’m saying that if you don’t have time to write, and all you do is complain about it, there’s something wrong with this picture.
If you don’t have time to write because you’re living in a concentration camp, um, not having time to write is the least of your worries. If your wonderful pro-writing day job just turned into a seriously hostile work environment in which you feel under some threat (as happened to me), not having time to write does not require an excuse. If you’re going through a divorce or other major family crisis, writing is likely not going to be on your mind for a while.
However….
If you’re in any of those situations, you should be focused on getting out of those situations. If your life is not so bad as that, but it’s still full of stuff that is more important than writing… well, what do you want? Either you should be working on changing your life, or you don’t want to write that badly. But, imho, you don’t get to bitch about it if you aren’t working on fixing it.
I got a letter the other day that hit right on this topic of wanting to be a writer but not willing to work for it. A person wrote me and asked if Kris and I would ever do any online classes. (We get this question a great deal, which I always find funny, honestly.) This person said they just didn’t have the ability to get all the way from the midwest to Oregon. (Note, most of our writers attending our workshops come from the east coast or Texas or Canada. A person coming only from the midwest to any of our workshops wouldn’t even get an honorable mention as the living the farthest away. In fact, we have had number of fine writers come in from Europe.)
So, I responded to this person that Kris and were already doing a form of online class in her blog with the Freelancer’s Guide and her new blog. And I am doing two different series with great help here as well, all free for anyone who wants to stop by and read. And a number of very sharp writers were doing online help such as Laura. And I asked the person if he had been reading either of our blogs. Nope, of course not. Did he know about any of the other major workshops in the country? Nope, just stumbled on ours. (Lucky me.)
So this writer was someone who wanted to spoon fed an online course but yet couldn’t be bothered to read these blogs. And couldn’t be bothered to find the money to go to a class that might jump them ahead.
Sigh…. You folks wonder why long-term professionals are jaded and why Kris and I insist on having writers come to the edge of the planet to learn. If you can’t make it to a workshop or conference or a convention to learn every-so-often, you really, really might want to question your own desires. Sure, you can get a bunch from these blogs, and this recession has hurt us all, but if you want to play in an international profession, you can’t just skate into it one hour a week. It takes a focus and a drive.
Camille – I got it. Thnx
Props, dittoes, and kudos to all the others who talked, in one form or another, about MAKING the time to write. I’ve got a full time job. I write on the train during my commute, and sometimes during lunch, as well as weekends. I’ve got one professional sale and two flash fiction sales, but I’ve got 20 stories in the mail (or e-mail) to various magazines now. I can’t control what will sell, but I can control the number of opportunities I make for myself.
I’ve learned my lessons. I have taken a tablet and a pencil when I take my dog to the vet’s, and can write several paragraphs there.
If anyone would like to be TRULY humbled, then please read Louis L’Amour’s EDUCATION OF A WANDERING MAN. He reprinted handwritten lists of books he’d read and stories he had submitted. His reading input and writing output was huge. Why is it humbling? Because he did all of these things while he was working in lumber mills, mines, and ranches while wandering the country during the Great Depression!
I had to smile and nod at Laura Resnick’s description of the writer as imagined in popular culture. My “favorite” was a sitcom called “The Single Guy” a dog that lasted two seasons because it was put between “Friends” and “Seinfeld” during their heyday. The main character was a guy who lived by himself in a nice New York apartment. He’s working on his FIRST novel (and he’s never seen at his computer, unless he is just about to be interrupted by a neighbor that doesn’t knock.) How could he afford the NYC apartment? Because he sold a … (wait for it) … COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES.
(Could even Stephen King live in NYC on the revenue from his short story collections?)
The writer in popular imagination is just meant to be someone who has a lot of free time, so he/she can do whatever the plot demands. Ironic that this myth of the writer as basically a loafer who gets it all done “offscreen” is perpetuated by the people who WROTE the scripts. They know better!