Filed under: Books, publishing, web reviews, writing tips, book trailer, bookfomercial, How Not to Write a Novel
08/03/2010 • 8:42 PM 0
Freelancing doesn’t mean free. Get paid!
Too many writers are working for free, or nearly free.
First, let’s talk about lit journals. My Chapters doesn’t even carry any of them anymore. They have tiny readership. You could dedicate yourself to putting your work up on your own website and you could have more readers in a day than many lit journals have in a year. You could argue that wouldn’t be easy (but anything that’s worth doing isn’t easy.) In the end, you’d have more exposure through your own site (assuming your work is any good) and your readers would be your readers.
Many lit journals pay in subscription copies AKA bird cage liners. You’re supposed to be so bowled over by the fact that you’re published in a tiny journal that you don’t mind a payment of zero. Prestige is illusory and or fleeting. Publication in a journal that so few people read can make you feel great. It doesn’t make the achievement important to your career. Writing credits are nice, but they aren’t the most important component of a query letter. Like the AMC commercial says, “Story matters here.”)*
Or they’ll say you have to “pay your dues.” No. You don’t. You have to work on your skill, but getting rejected by literary mags doesn’t improve your skill. Writing and editing do that. You learn nothing from rejection letters other than the fact that you’ve been rejected.
Once upon a time, writers could actually make some decent money out of writing for magazines. Kurt Vonnegut did. Stephen King bought beer with his stories in Screw. Back then, writers saw any magazine that would publish (and pay) for fiction as a gateway to the big leagues: writing longer works, like the Great American Novel. Then the world changed and no one was reading Screw for the stories, anymore.
Journals aren’t a gateway to publication in a larger venue anymore. If an agent is trolling the lit journals for talent, you have to wonder why when they should have a stack of queries on their desks to sift through. Agents don’t need lit journals to act as screeners for new talent, so neither do you.
Next target: freelancing does not mean free. When someone asks you to write for free, they’re devaluing your work (and worse, mine!) You can be sure everyone else in the process will be paid. They’ll pay for their computers, the electric company, the printer and everything else. Why not you, who is providing the content? (You know? The reason anyone picks up the publication? You write the stuff in the hole between the ads!)
When you write for someone, it’s a responsibility. Certain requirements must be met. For instance, you can’t libel anyone or plagiarise someone else’s work. You may not be guilty, but that doesn’t necessarily mean no one will complain (or sue.) In other words, writing entails risk, usually just to your ego at the hands of someone writing a letter to the editor to complain about your take on reality. Don’t assume a risk you won’t even be compensated for minimally!
Charging for your work means you value your work and know that others should do so, as well. Failing to charge means they won’t take you seriously. Someone might say they are letting you “try out.” How will that work? You sweat out a piece for them, charge nothing and they’ll maybe pay you next time? How well do you think you’ll be compensated when you’ve already set your base price at zero?
You get the idea. But I hear someone crying out, “What about the exceptions? Am I an exception?” Yes, there are exceptions. If you’ve never written anything and need a clip file, okay. Choose something small and gain some experience. Don’t wallow in that pit too long.
What about gifting? Scott Siglar built his current success on giving away his books on the internet as podcasts. He was smart about it, though. He not only built a fan base, he gave out his fiction a little at a time. A lot of readers became fans of his fiction and proceeded to buy the book because they just couldn’t wait for next week’s installment. (Seth Godin talks a lot about gifting and being smart about it. Read his stuff before you try that path so you can be smart about it, too.)
Insisting on getting paid doesn’t mean you aren’t flexible. Here’s a story from the trenches that happened to me recently. A client wanted me to ghost an advertorial piece (3,000 words) for a magazine. He hopes to get a lot of people signing up for his courses and the magazine will give him a free full-page advertising page in return for the article. This isn’t an uncommon arrangement. He asked if I would write it for him. I gave him a consult so I knew the parameters of the job. I thought about it and named my price. $850 + HST.
That wasn’t the budget the client had in mind, so he had some sticker shock.
I understand that sometimes a fee can seem like it comes out of the blue, but I gave him my reasons:
1. Ghosting always costs more. His name would be on it. I’d be the invisible guy who did the work. No publication credit bumps up the scale.
2. As with the credit, he’d also retain the rights in perpetuity. He could use my work however he wanted for the rest of his life. (Ad excerpts, emailing, flyers, brochures, web copy etc.,…
3. Part of pricing is to identify what the work is to accomplish. In other words, what’s the client’s ROI (Return on Investment)? I command high fees for a speech for an association because my work will drive up membership numbers for said association. Likewise in this case, it wouldn’t take very many people signing up for the clients’ courses to pay my fee (which is starting to sound paltry, isn’t it?)
4. I checked. The ad page the client is getting in exchange for the 3,000 word story sells for $600. If one page of advertising (where the copy is sparse), shouldn’t my multi-page rate reflect that fact?
So the client balked at the full fee. What to do?
I negotiated. I said, no problem. I’ll cut my fee in half if he writes it and all I have to do is edit it. That will take less of my time, so that’s fair to me and okay with the client.
FUNNY ADDENDUM: The client found that writing the 3,000 word magazine piece is not easy. I talked to him on the phone and sent him a rough outline to structure his thoughts. I’m making sure that the editing job won’t end up taking up too much time that way. This client is a good guy who respects my work. He let me know that he’s going to try to plow ahead, but if I have to take over, he’ll get me my full fee, after all. Either way it shakes out, I will feel good about the project because I gave away a little, but got a lot. And so will the client.
If you get your cheque and think, “That’s it?!” or you’re grumbling about the time lost while you work, it’s definitely time to take up animal husbandry…or raise your rates. I hope you aren’t raising your rates up from zero!
*BONUS: If they have to pay you in bird cage liners, they are undercapitalized. Most of these journals don’t pay until publication. If they’re that underfunded, there’s an excellent chance they won’t even be around by the time they get to publishing your story. It’s happened before. Lots.
Filed under: agents, publishing, Rant, writing tips, freelancing, getting paid
07/21/2010 • 1:21 PM 0
Publishing: this is how hard it is
Les Edgerton’s latest post gives you a glimpse of how common query rejection is in the real world. And it’s not necessarily you. It’s them. Write it. Submit. Resubmit until it’s accepted. Don’t drive yourself nuts worrying about things you can’t control.
Filed under: agents, publishing, Rejection, publishing, rejection
07/20/2010 • 12:37 PM 0
The Future of Book Publishing
Movements fuel our passions. You need to hook your writing up to both movements and your passions so your tribe can find you. The environment? Social justice? Economics? Charities or medical research? Whatever you care about, the next stage of publishing will become more socially aware and community-conscious to succeed. These are the things I’ve been talking about with my clients.
Now Seth Godin articulates the big picture for book publishing’s future better than I could. I’m listening to it again. And again. Whether you’re a writer, publisher, editor or publicist, you need to hear this.
Filed under: publishing, future of publishing, seth godin
07/17/2010 • 1:56 PM 1
Why You Need an Editor
I recently attended a publishing conference where someone spoke at length about how bookstore staff identify self-published books by ISBN quirks. I can tell you with certainty, when there is prejudice against self-published books, it’s not because anybody’s eyeing the ISBN. It’s because many—okay, I’ll say it—most self-published books look unprofessional. (And by unprofessional, I mean they look like crap.)
The common complaint about self-published books and ebooks is that they are poorly edited. Characters change names. Spelling and grammar go awry. Narrative threads get lost permanently. Every manuscript has its problems. These problems bother readers. Errors take the reader out of the story and hurt your professional credibility.
But hiring your own editor is not just mandatory for self-published authors burning to get their ebook out. When the economy went crazy, publishing houses fired much of their editing staff. For instance, I worked for a publisher with several lines of defence: acquiring editors, line editors, copy editors, and three walls of proofreaders. Now? Publishers still have acquiring editors, but they’ve cut back on the rest of the staff drastically. Yes, traditional houses still have editors, but they have far fewer of them. How much time and attention do you think your book will really get? There’s a math question easily solved.
Every publishing outlet, from newspapers to books, has less defence against typos and errors in execution. You see it every day. That’s why more authors—both traditional and non, ebook and pbook, published and non—are hiring editors to help with the heavy lifting. Editors make any book or manuscript better.
Whether yours is a manuscript or any finished book, it needs editing or no one will take you seriously. Consider hiring an editor for your project. A freelance editor’s work will enhance your chances of becoming published and reduce errors in the final product. Once your manuscript is out there to be submitted (or once the book is on the shelves) you can’t pull those errors out.
Your Aunt Betsy will delight in pointing out your every error. And she’ll be pretty damn smug about it.
Filed under: Editors, publishing, self-publishing, writing tips, editing, hiring an editor
07/17/2010 • 1:00 PM 0
Who Should Self-Publish?
I recently had a discussion with a client who looked down on self-publishing. He saw it as an exercise in vanity. That was true for a long time, but not anymore. In fact, Google has made instant ebooks a reality, and not just for frustrated writers who can’t get published through traditional publishing houses. If you can get an agent and an editor with a traditional house, the common wisdom is that from now until the clock runs out in about five years, that’s still the best way to go for most projects.*
However, self-publishing is right for a lot of people. There is one group for whom it is essential. If you’re a professional speaker, you need to be talking at the front of the room and sell your books at the back of the room. If you leverage the marketing platform you already have, you keep more of the profit and cut out a middle man. Also, the middle man has committees and hoops for you and your brilliant idea to jump through. The client was shocked to find the book project could take one to two years to make it to publication (if it were accepted immediately.) Even if a project is identified as a winner, each publisher has budgetary restraints that can hold up publication. They can’t publish every book they’ve identified as saleable in one year.
The client wants to speak professionally, but still wants to go the traditional route. Fortunately, he has a solid contact with a publishing house. Had he not, I would have pushed harder for him to self-publish. As it is, I’ll be helping him put together a killer book proposal so he’ll have a book to sell as he works the room and works his magic.
If you already have a platform (or stage) from which to sell, DIY is the best way to go. Publishers are offering authors less and less. They offer tinier advances than ever, unambitious promotion, and less editing than ever. Traditional publishers have diminished themselves to distribution networks. Once the distribution becomes less relevent, what credibility they add will be largely be forgotten as well.
The publishing people I know all say, “We have to learn from the mistakes the music industry made.” That’s true. But that’s where that conversation ends. Either they don’t know what mistakes the music industry made, or the analogy doesn’t bear up across the two industries.
*Self-publishing is also the ideal route for a memoir that’s meant for a small audience (e.g. your family) or for some projects that are distinctly regional if you have a platform.
YOUR NEXT QUESTION:
How do I build a platform?
A BRIEF ANSWER (AND MORE LINKS)
Filed under: publishing, self-publishing, Speeches, platforms, publishing, self-publishing
07/16/2010 • 12:44 PM 0
Book Events in Non-Traditional Venues
If you have a book to promote–or plan to have a book to promote–you need to read this article from Huffington Post on holding book events in non-traditional venues.
Filed under: Publicity & Promotion, publishing, book promotion, book signings
07/14/2010 • 9:01 AM 0
How I Became a Famous Novelist
Not me. The book. The book is How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely. It is the novel you MUST buy–and yes I know capital letters in a post are obnoxious and mean I’m screaming at you. But it’s that funny and that pointed. It’s that good. You need to own it and suck it down.
Publishers, overly earnest and sentimental writers (published and non), Hollyweird, MFA programs, lit journals, bestsellerdumb! It’s all here and you will laugh and then you’ll think. There’s enough truth behind the jokes to make you feel like you’re not sure you should laugh, like the author is making you giggle so you’ll let down your guard as he slips a shiv between your ribs and gives it a half twist.
There is a lot of great criticism of the way things are in this novel–so much in fact that when you finally close the book at four in the morning you’ll be puzzled at how much is satire. There is a slight pullback and redemption after all the hijinks, and I’m not sure I believe the transcendence. Maybe the author really means what he says for most of the book. His criticisms of publishing are hard to fault. If it’s a test of reader cynicism, I failed.
Please do read it and you’ll see what I mean. PLEASE!
Filed under: book reviews, publishing, Writers, book review, How I Became a Famous Novelist
07/02/2010 • 9:09 AM 0
Three Tips on How Writers Build Platforms
You need a platform, preferably a big one. You need a website that’s all about the magic that is you and what you have to sell. (Hint: that’s the same thing. You sell yourself first and all your products are secondary. If they don’t like you, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling.)
1. Be nice. (And if you can’t be that, go work on that. It is possible to succeed without being a decent human being, but I’m not going to be the prick that encourages that sort of nonsense.)
2. Your Facebook page is not the center of your empire. Social Media is a moving landscape. Facebook might not be there five years from now. You scoff, but people who poured their hearts in their Friendster and MySpace pages are scowling about it now. Your website is the center of your empire-to-be.
3. Have Oprah owe you her life, be a world-famous expert on the next hot thing, be a reformed-junkie celebrity or be born to famous abusive parents. If you can’t manage these things, you’ll have to grow your following the old-fashioned way: provide value and help people with their problems.
There’s plenty more to say on this subject. Read it in Christina Katz’s Get Known Before the Book Deal and read How to Become a Famous Author Before You’re Dead by Ariel Gore.
Filed under: Books, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, web reviews, Writers, Books for Writers, How Writers Build Platforms, Writers and marketing, Writers and promotion
C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m 
