I finally got back to short story writing again yesterday, July 26th, after a week off teaching and another week off doing many, many other things. I’m going to have to stop taking these weeks off if I’m going to make this challenge. No doubt about that. On the weight and running challenge, I am gaining speed. Down 21 pounds and I have done 7 1/2 miles on the road the last few days. Feeling better on that at least.
I came up with the title for this the normal way I have been doing it, smashing two parts of two other titles together. You can see that clearly in the title. And the moment I did that, I knew it was a jukebox story.
Lately I’ve been writing jukebox origin stories, working through how the jukebox came to be a time-travel device. And the story I did a while back staring Marshal Duster Kendal and his wife Bonnie was part of the origin world, even though I didn’t call it that.
I started around eleven last night and finished the 3,000 words around 3 in the morning, did a cover that not only fits the story, but actually helps readers understand something in the story, which I thought lucky.
This afternoon I came back and got the book up on the three publishing sites, Kindle, B&N, and Smashwords, then after dinner I wrote this and got these things up.
In comments on the last Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing update about Book as Event, I talked about how some books, some stories, some ideas, just need to be left alone for a time for the subconscious to work out. Well, when I started writing jukebox stories back in 1982, I had no idea where the jukebox came from.
And I kept telling myself and readers that at some point I would figure it out.
Flash forward almost thirty years and I finally figured it out in a story I wrote this spring that will be in a DAW anthology. And I have now written two other stories in this origin area of the jukebox counting this one. I assume there are more jukebox origin stories coming.
But thirty years to let an idea stew? Now that’s kind of silly. Just glad I lived long enough.
TOTAL HOURS SPENT (Including writing, cover, publishing it on three sites electronically, and putting it up here and writing this post) 6 hours.
Actually started July 26th. Published July 27th. Posted here around nine in the evening July 27th.
Word Count: About 3,000 words.
(Note: You no longer have to jump to another web site to read the story. The entire story is here, just hit “continue reading” and it will appear.)
I think Stephen King said that he never writes an idea down when he first gets them. He says, if they are good enough, they will come back when they are ready.
I think there’s something in that. Glad to hear you got your origin story in the end. Must be very satisfying.
Much better to let the stories simmer on the back burner while you do other things. That way they become rich and full — and you still didn’t waste time interfering and poking at them.
It reminds me of morel mushrooms.
A spore lands on the earth and the mycellium grows slowly through the ground. If that secret, underground growth is disturbed, no mushrooms. It just stops. If it grows until it’s ready — usually when it bumps into another mycellium — out pops a mushroom, which you can harvest.
Not everything is a mushroom. A lot of things take tending and fussing, and some of them are good things. But you can only get a mushroom by leaving it alone.
I’ve already got notebooks and text files chock-full of great ideas for stories, characters, and plots — probably more than I’ll ever be able to write…
But I’m not yet ready to accept that, so I’ll need to write faster. Nobody’s ever written too many words.
I’m very much interested in the self-publishing thing. I do it too. I just want to put this out there.
I believe at one time you posted that you value your time at $50 per hour. This story took you six hours to write, format, and post. That’s a $300 investment.
You recently said you’re averaging 10 sales a month per story, and making $2.
Let’s add to that you putting that story into a $2.99 collection with four other stories and averaging another 10 sales. That collection makes about $20 per month, but this story only contributes one-fifth of that, or $4.
Then fold that story into a 10 story collection at $4.99 netting $3.50 per sale at 10 sales a month, or $35. That story is earning another $3.50 per month.
We’re at $9.50 per month, or $114 per year, though there’s some lag time before the story is included into collections. The first year is probably less than that $114.
I also think we can fairly fudge a bit and assume the time spent to make the five story and collection and 10 story collection needs to be folded in — remember even a single hour per collection is $50 — and say it takes you about three years or maybe longer to break even on a short story.
Is that good? I have no idea. What do you think? Are you happy with that return on your time?
Mark, assuming your numbers are right, yes, I am stunned happy with that return. Remember, in my old world, if I got lucky to sell the story to an anthology I would get about 6 cents per word, or about $240.00 for the story and then the story would sit dead in my file until after I died. I know you don’t believe things will go forward and keep growing with electronic publishing because of all your negative comments about that here, but I do. So if it takes me 3 years to earn my hourly rate of $50 per hour back, and then in another three years I earned $100 an hour for that story, and by the end of ten years I would have earned about $150.00 per hour for writing and putting up that short story.
Yup, I love that.
And that’s assuming the story stays on the bottom. I did my math on that a while back. I think my numbers were different than yours, but close enough for this discussion.
Nice Jukebox story, Dean.
The great thing about a timeline-changeable story universe is that you can retcon the backtory whenever you want.
All I ever do is try to look at the rosy future and imagine the opposite. I think every discussion needs that.
If you can make an immediate $50 per hour for writing and not have to wait three years for the break even point, I’d say go with that. You can bank that profit and earn interest for those three years.
Perhaps in the long run you might make more, but how can you count on the long run? Things are changing so fast.
Maybe another way of couching this if you could write a story in six hours and sell away the rights for the next ten years for $300, would you? You could write five of those stories every week and pocket $300 per story, and that would be $78,000 a year.
My point is that all this rosy optimistic speculation about how much short fiction can earn seems…rosy and optimistic.
I enjoy your blog and I mean no offense, but it seems it bit rah rah at times.
And Mark, you are the most negative person who comments, so I guess it’s even. (grin)
How in the world would I make $300 per story right away? Not even in the pulp era was that possible. But you question, would I? NOT A CHANCE. I would never sell away any rights for the next ten years, not even on a novel deal.
I can’t figure out what’s happening in publishing tomorrow, let alone in ten years, and that’s why I suggested everyone take in and control everything about their career they can control. Giving anyone a percentage for a long time or forever in exchange for work now is just silly and bad business, and anyone signing a contract that they can’t get back in a few years is just silly as well. My wife on her blog is doing a couple posts about what to sign and not sign in contracts at the moment. One key element is the return of rights as quickly as possible. Critical.
But would I sell a story to a collection or to a magazine for a few hundred buck and let them hold the story for a year before it returns? Of course. I do that all the time, actually. I’ve already sold a number of stories this year to traditional publishers and I will have those stories back in my control and indie published one year after publication by the traditional publisher.
Mark, one thing you are forgetting on the math. (I will use my real math, how my stories are actually selling.) I sell about ten copies per story average per month. 40 cents x 10 copies is $4.00 per month per story. I sell five story collections for $2.99 and make $2.00 and sell about 10 average, so that’s $20.00 divided by 5 stories = $4.00 per month. Forget ten story collections for the moment. That’s $8.00 per story per month. By the end of the year I have made $96.00 on that story.
$96.00 divided by 6 hours = $16.00 per hour for writing that short story. Sure, it takes me three years to get up to $50.00 per hour for those six hours, but I still made $16.00 per hour rate in one year and that ain’t nothing to sneeze at.
As for a prediction: Electronic publishing will hit solidly 25% of all books sold next year. Right now it’s running around 15%. By 2015 most experts thing electronic books will hit 50%. So if I am planning on my sales staying level even though my market is jumping from 15% to 50% of all books sold, I think I am being pretty conservative.
Mark,
The problem is you’re focusing on the wrong things. It’s like people who look at the stock market and only look at a day’s numbers or at individual stocks. And they decide they’d better not invest because an hourly wage is a sure thing.
And they might be right about themselves, because if you try to value the market by what it’s doing today, or by one spiffy stock, you will lose. That’s just gambling — no offense to Poker Boy — and it’s the kind of stupid gambing which will take your money away.
But they will always be wrong in terms of how they could have done with their money. Even if you invested in the market the day before the 1929 crash, it would still have been a good long term investment, for instance. The reason people lost so much was 1) they had bought on margin, and 2) they panicked and sold low after buying high. Because, after all, a little money in the hand is worth more, right?
Putting your money to work for you long term will always be a better choice.
Dean’s approach to writing is simply skipping the middle man and putting his time to work for him over the long term. The magic bakery is always open, and he can leverage that work in future ways that he doesn’t even imagine now.
But if you assume those future ways won’t happen, if you took the wage up front, then you miss opportunities. And opportunities happen all the time — and come along even thicker during bad times.
Camille, spot on the money. Spot on.
Publishing is always a long-term deal. Always. Things (up until these two years) has always moved slow and aimed at the future in publishing. I started focusing solidly back in 1982, sold a first novel five years later, got it published a year later, and went freelance into the business shortly after that. Pretty much a ten year approach. That’s how I think of this new world as well. Holding for two years is nothing in publishing. In the last thirty years I’ve had a couple of two-year hold times. No one on the outside noticed.
So I am holding now on traditional publishing, pulling back and working on being a writing like crazy and indie publishing and going to watch what happens. Kris and I still have “skin in the game” in traditional publishing, so we are very, very interested to see if we can ride that part through. (In fact, I still have over 50 still-in-print novels in traditional publishing, a couple not yet published, so I have a ton of skin in this game. (grin))
Hi, Dean. First, I just discovered your website tonight and I’m hooked. And I’d love to read one of your challenge stories, but I can’t find the link for this one. The note at the end of the post said “You no longer have to jump to another web site to read the story. The entire story is here, just hit “continue reading” and it will appear.” But I must be a little slow because I don’t see any “continue reading” link – help!
Thanks for all the advice and solid information and encouragement.