What Writers Are Owed

Are we as writers entitled to anything? This is a question I've been thinking about lately.

Like: you write and write and attend a top MFA program and graduate and then what? Are you owed a job? Are you owed your thesis (novel or collection or whatever) being published? Are you owed a career in full-time writing and/or teaching?

Or: you write and write and submit and submit and keep getting rejected, always rejected. You write and submit for five years, ten years, twenty years. No acceptances. Is that fair? You put all that time in, are you owed publication?

What comes to mind first and foremost is journal and publisher response times -- are we as writers even owed responses?

There is no rule book, the last time I checked. No guide that says a submission must be responded to within X amount of days, and that it should always be personal and not form.

Like everyone else, I troll Duotrope's What's New page looking at the different response times. The 300-plus day responses almost always provide a good chuckle. I've even somewhat berated a magazine here for having at least one response time be up in the 900-day mark. Quite recently, someone reported a 1,000-plus day acceptance.

Ridiculous, ridiculous, ridiculous.

Or is it?

Again, what are the rules? There are no rules. Sure, each magazine provides its own guidelines, telling writers what to expect, but they are all mostly generic, just wordage stolen from another magazine's guidelines, stolen from another magazine's guidelines, and so on.

Say you apply to twenty jobs. How many of those jobs will even respond to you telling you the position has been filled or that they received your application but are not interested? Some will, but not all. And what does that mean? Are they not worth your time? Are they not professional?

There are some journals that specifically state they do not respond to submissions. They only respond if they're interested. Personally, I find this a turn-off. I would very much like to hear some kind of answer. But realistically, so what if I don't? Obviously the story I submitted wasn't to their liking. Do I really need (deserve) a form rejection?

Sometimes it seems we as writers have very high expectations, not just for ourselves but for the publications to which we submit.

Such as the first time I started querying agents years back. I'd queried this one pretty big agent who never responded. A lot of agents never responded. Just the way of things. But I wasn't very happy about it. Thought it rather unprofessional. Was talking to writer friend who mentioned that particular pretty big agent and I said how I'd queried him and never heard anything back and how it was pretty unprofessional and blah blah blah.

So I ended up signing with a different agent, the novel didn't sell, the next novel didn't sell, I decided to part ways with this agent, leaving me agentless. I write another novel, start querying agents again, decide what the hell and query that pretty big agent who never responded to my first query years before. That pretty big agent e-mails me right back, asking for the full manuscript, and then two weeks later calls and offers me representation. And I'm happy to say I'm still represented by him.

The moral of the story? There are no rules. We as writers are not entitled to anything. To some common and professional courtesy, yes, but still, does that mean we shouldn't expect 400-plus day form rejections? Does that mean we shouldn't expect to query agents and not hear a single thing from them, not even a simple no?

Of course not. Because we're writers. This is what we do. We write, we submit, and we wait ... and wait ... and wait.

And through it all, we keep writing.

We Are Digital People, Living In A Digital World

It seems every week there's another journal or small press publisher launching, just as every week there's another journal or small press publisher folding. And with how e-books are catching on, it's no surprise that more and more e-book publishers are popping up. My question is: why?

It's pretty clear by now that "self-publishing" is becoming more acceptable, and with certain platforms -- like Kindle and Smashwords -- it's almost too simple for an author to upload their work to be read on different e-book readers. I don't pretend to be an expert on e-books, but from my limited experience, all you are doing is formatting a Word document and uploading it. Yes, it's a little more in-depth, but still, that's the basic idea.

So why, exactly, would some authors feel they need a publisher to publish their e-books? Is it because they feel there's still that awful stigma of "self-publishing"? Is it because they just aren't aware they can easily do it themselves?

Last week the New York Times did the breakdown of just how much it costs to make an e-book. Yes, we'd all love dirt cheap e-books, but the truth is a lot of time and effort is put into them, just as in print books.

No print publisher is the same. Each has a different style and look and feel. Many small press publishers are going the POD route nowadays, but some are still staying with the traditional way of printing books.

Electronic publishing, however, is a bit different. What stays the same is the actual text; how it appears on different e-book readers varies from person to person, as one is able to play around with the font and the size and whatever else.

A few weeks back I saw an author post that they were happy to have signed with a new e-book publisher, which would bring a particular previously published work out as an e-book.

I thought: Hmm, okay ...

I Googled the publisher. The website was pretty impressive, at least in terms of most crappy websites that publishers have. They seemed to have been signing a lot of authors, too, but had yet to even release a book yet. Interesting.

After talking with some online friends about this particular publisher (one person said, "It's just two guys with a PC"), I decided to do some digging of my own. This is what I e-mailed the publisher:

I'm curious to know what more XXXXXXXXX does for their authors that those authors can't do for themselves, in terms of uploading their work onto Kindle or a website like Smashwords.

This was their vague reply:

Many things that I cannot discuss because we do not talk contract terms with anyone but our authors. There is a reason why authors sign with us. :)

I thought: Well that's a bunch of bullshit, and sent back this e-mail:

Okay then. Well, seeing as how Smashwords is able to offer writers 70% royalties, if XXXXXXXXX is matching that or even coming close, I'm happy for your authors. Good luck with everything.

That seemed to have struck a nerve, because this ended up in my in-box a couple hours later (note that I have not touched it up whatsoever):

We already know/have known about smashwords for a long time. You should know that they do not get your book in to devices unless you sell a certain amount of books and meet criteria, the majority of material released through smashwords does not get on to ebook readers, or distributed through amazon, sony, barnes and noble, etc. They also do not provide covers, art, or formatting, which most authors cannot do on there own, or have the budget to pay someone to format properly in to the main formats (.epub, .mobi, .prc, .pdf) which can run hundreds of dollars. (see kindleformatting.com as a quick example, or bookmasters, a company the mainstream companies use, and which charge hundreds of dollars minimum per release just to set up.).

Now, there are a lot of things there I don't quite agree with. For starters, the nice thing about Smashwords is that it pretty much formats your e-book in almost every format (epub, mobi, pdf, etc.). Yes, they are only available then through the Smashwords website, but an author is then able to earn over 70% royalties. Places like Amazon and Sony and Barnes & Noble are starting to make it somewhat easy for authors to self-publish their own works onto their websites too (and if they haven't yet, they'd be fools not to).

True, those places do not provide cover art either. But you know what? It's not that hard to find cover art. My friend Wyatt did the cover art for my two e-books just for fun. I'm sure if I didn't have his kind generosity, I could have found an artist to come up with something for a decent amount. Plus, say if I were an established author and looking to self-publish an e-book and I approached some artists about doing a cover. How many do you think would be willing to do it for a reasonable price, if not free?

Yes, formatting can be a bitch, but I'd rather spend a couple of hours doing it on my own and keep that 70% royalty then to have someone else do it and only earn ... well, we don't know how much the authors earn, obviously, though you'd think the publisher in question would go with a standard publishing contract. Ah, but we'll never know for sure, not unless we become one of this publisher's super lucky authors, right?

Anyway, read into their lengthy response any way you want, but to me this publisher is basically saying some authors are too stupid and lazy to do it all themselves. Then again, maybe there is a good reason why authors sign with them. Maybe this publisher is the greatest publisher in the world. Maybe James Cameron still isn't crying his eyes out for losing to his ex-wife.

Whatever the case, writers do what they want to do. If they want to sign with an e-book publisher, good for them. If they want to try to do it themselves, good for them.

What should one take away from my little investigative reporting? Quite simply that with e-books on the rise, one should be more conscious of the different types of options out there. Remember, what works for one writer doesn't mean it will work for another.

Now, if you haven't done so yet, go do yourself a favor and watch The Hurt Locker.

Storytelling: To Be Read, Not Heard?

I had fun reading and posting that excerpt of The Silver Ring last Friday, and I started thinking about some other stories I'd published that I could possibly read, and immediately I realized there are two stories that I couldn't read at all, no matter how much I'd want to: “The Amazing Adventures of © and ®” and “The Killer Inside ©". Those stories cannot be read aloud for obvious reasons, but does that mean they are lacking? Storytelling, from what we're taught in school, began as a form of oral tradition. It started with Homer telling the story of Odysseus so very long ago, and through the centuries it began to change where the stories were written down. That is not to say stories aren't meant to be read aloud anymore, but a good percentage of stories and poems nowadays simply can't. Many of these would be labeled "experimental" and deal with some kind of significant change in the text. Such as poetry, or even stories, that is formatted oddly, like some kind of special shape. For some reason the author feels the work has to be written and published in that specific way.

I remember one submission I'd received for the anthology, the author complained in his cover letter (note: never complain in your cover letter) how long it took for him to format his story in the e-mail because he couldn't send a Word attachment; for some reason his "story" was twenty-five words crisscrossed as an X. It was less a hint fiction piece and more a poetry piece (at least to my eyes), and it reinforced the fact that I just don't get the reason for that type of experimental work. It sometimes seems pretentious of the author or poet, moving words around the page like that, as if by doing so gives the work more authenticity than a traditional poem or story. These poems and stories are meant to be seen, not heard, but does that ultimately mean they lack anything? Or is this simply the way literature has evolved, to cut ties with oral tradition and become a form strictly confined to text?

Keep in mind that while I occasionally enjoy playing around with nontraditional texts, I'm a traditionalist at heart. Maybe this is something I just don't "get". So would anybody be willing to please illuminate me?

How I Spent My Snow Day

Before we begin, you know how I said I didn't think it was possible to unsubscribe to comments once you subscribed? Well, I was wrong. You can unsubscribe very easily, apparently. When you receive an e-mail, there's a link you can click on to manage your subscriptions. However, on the site itself, if you're subscribed to a certain post, there will be a link that says something along the lines of Manage Your Subscriptions, but if you click on that it won't work. So you can only unsubscribe from the e-mails you receive, not from the website. Get it? Got it? Good.

Now, as many of you know there was something of a blizzard here on the east coast last week. Almost all businesses were closed. I got to stay home from work. Which should have been nice and relaxing, but I decided to do some writing. Only it wasn't writing, per se, but the other side of writing, if you get my drift.

Anyway, last year I posted a sf thriller novella called The Silver Ring online. It was something I'd originally written in high school and set aside to collect virtual dust until last year I pulled it back out and reworked it a bit. It's a fun little story that I revised specifically for online reading (30 very short fast-paced chapters) and I've been experimenting with it off and on ever since.

A few months back I downloaded the Aldiko ebook reader onto my cell phone. I absolutely love it. It's linked up with Feedbooks and Smashwords to download books instantly onto your phone, or you can download books (the epub format) elsewhere and then import them via a USB cable. When I first downloaded the reader, I scoured through both sites looking for books to download. The books ranged from classics to bestsellers to self-published crap. As you may know, Cory Doctorow is a huge advocate of giving away e-books for free, and so of course I downloaded three of his books. I also have downloaded issues 2 and 3 of Electric Literature. Those downloads were not free. Each cost me $4.95 from Smashwords. But I really like the journal and I think the cost is more than reasonable.

Some costs, however, are not.

The books uploaded onto Feedbooks are completely free to download. Readers go to that site knowing that whatever is there they can download without any problems. Smashwords, on the other hand, is a mixed bag. Some books are free to download. Others are not.

What's nice about Smashwords is that for each book they show you the approximate word count. It's fascinating to see just how much some writers charge for certain works. Like this e-book, which is roughly 38,000 words and costs $4.99. Then you have this e-book, which is roughly 150,000 words and costs $15.00. Or you have this e-book, which is roughly 1,700 words and costs $0.99.

It goes on and on.

The big debate right now is just how much e-books should cost. Personally, I think e-books should cost as much as they need to cost. Yes, I think they should be cheaper than the print version of a book, but just how cheap? At what point does the publisher (and author) start losing money?

I have no problem with paying for e-books, but when I do, I look at them just like I would a regular book I would find at the bookstore. Meaning, I really have to be impressed with the description to purchase it, or if I have to be a fan of that author's work, or something. I'm not just going to buy it to buy it.

And let's be honest here -- most of the authors putting their stuff on Smashwords (not to mention the Kindle Store) are not authors who have a huge following. Yes, yes, Joe Konrath is making thousands of dollars a month on his e-books, but he's Joe Konrath. You can't compare apples with oranges.

For the rest of us though -- the under published, if you like -- what is our option if we want to post something on a place like Smashwords?

We can make our books free to readers who are more likely then to download them, or we can charge some kind of fee and hope and pray that some readers who have probably never heard of us before will take pity and purchase our book.

Sure, money is nice and everything, but having people -- a lot of people -- download and read my stuff is even nicer.

The final phase of The Silver Ring experiment went into effect last week during the blizzard. I spent hours on the computer formatting the manuscript to upload onto Feedbooks. I'd decided I liked Feedbooks best, because with the epub format they actually manage to separate chapters. And besides, people who go to the site know that whatever is there is free, and they are readers, gosh darn it.

Unfortunately, after hours of staring at the computer screen, my little novella didn't seem to want to upload properly. It would upload and I could publish it, but then it would disappear after a half hour or so. I tried contacting Feedbook's support and got no real help. Then I said to myself Screw it and tried my hand at Smashwords. This worked much better and the novella was uploaded in no time at all.

As right now gaining readers is more important to me than gaining a few bucks in my PayPal account, I made The Silver Ring available at Smashwords for free. I purposely did not tell anybody about it. I did not mention it on Twitter or Facebook. I obviously didn't mention it here on this blog. I wanted to give it a week and see what would happen.

As of this moment (1:00 AM eastern time on Wednesday) The Silver Ring has been downloaded on Smashwords 177 times. That may seem like a somewhat impressive number, but remember that just because a book is downloaded does not mean that it's read. However, according to my nifty Smashwords dashboard, the novella has been linked in 5 member libraries, which is basically five people who have added a hyperlink in their library profiles to my novella. Not a big deal, perhaps, but it's still something.

Over the course of a week (six days, really, as I didn't completely upload the novella until early Thursday morning), I received a few Google Alerts about the novella. One was for this site, listing the novella as a free read. Another was for this ebook sample. Then on Monday I received an e-mail from someone who runs this website asking if I would be interested in allowing them to post a PDF of the novella to their site so their readers could download it for free.

As I made the novella free to a number of formats (that's the great thing about Smashwords, the book becomes available in pretty much every format) I decided to tweak the version I have in the Kindle Store. If I could, I would make it free to download, but as an author you can't. The lowest you can price it is at 99 cents. So I figure if people are going to pay for something that I'm pretty much giving away for free elsewhere, I should reward them with something a little extra. So I added a bonus short story to the Kindle edition. Not much, but it's something. Remember, it's not like I'm looking to make a lot of money here, and I could just delete it from the Kindle Store, but it's nice having the book linked at Amazon as it's, well, Amazon. Plus, I changed the product description around to this (not to mention made it so the file was not DRM enabled):

A young man finds a mysterious silver ring that holds extraordinary powers -- a ring that the darkest evil in the universe wants for its very own.

This Kindle edition contains a bonus short story.

(Download the novella for free at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/9764)

Anyway, I've talked enough for this post. If you're interested in downloadingThe Silver Ring onto your ebook reader, please do. It's completely free, after all, so what do you have to lose?

The Distinction Between Love, Like, Indifference, And Hate

Thinking back on last week's post about the Sheep Effect, and wondering about these people who absolutely love or hate everything, I started wondering what exactly the distinction is between love and hate. Obviously it's different for everyone. Two people can say they love (or hate) the same thing, but that level of love (or hate) can vary. Does it even need to be explained? Maybe not, but here's how I explain what I mean when I say I liked, loved, or hated something. When I say I liked a book or story or movie or whatever, it means just what it sounds like it means: I liked it. I enjoyed it for what it was. It didn't disappoint me and it didn't overly thrill me. I was content. If it's a book, I'll give it three stars on Goodreads.

When I say I really liked a book (four stars on Goodreads), it means I really liked the book. It's something that I would recommend to others. Something I might, who knows, maybe even read again (which is saying a lot, because life's too short to read the same books over and over when there's just so many out there).

When I say I loved a book (five stars on Goodreads), it means that I absolutely loved it. Something about the book floored me so much that I can't stop talking about it. Basically, it's a book that I wish I'd written and you can bet your sweet bottom that I recommend it to everyone.

And, of course, there is indifference and hate (two stars and one star on Goodreads, respectively), and those should go without saying. In fact, most of these books I don't even bother to finish reading, or if I do, I skim the rest of the book hoping to gain some kind of hidden knowledge within its pages. Almost every time, there is none.

But of course that's just me. I am a tough critic. In fact, out of the 451 books I have rated on Goodreads, my average rating is a 3.04 (that's out of five). For the most part what I read I like. If I start something and know instantly I won't like it, I won't waste my time.

When I get a friend request on Goodreads, I always click on the button that compares this potential new friend's books with mine. It's always interesting to see the difference in ratings on the books that we've read. Again, every person is different. There is no right or wrong way to judge a book, ya know?

Speaking of which, nobody should be judged for what they like or dislike. That goes without saying but I figure I might as well say it anyway. I might not like to read James Patterson, but that doesn't give me any right to look down on the guy purchasing five James Patterson novels at the bookstore. At least he's reading, which is more than I can say for a lot of people in the world. It's ridiculous when people criticize others for reading such-and-such a book (You want to read the latest Sweet Valley High? Go for it). Nobody should be ashamed for reading what they do (unless it's western robotic erotica; now that's just nasty).

A few weeks back I was talking to someone about what they had been reading recently and they were hesitant at first, not wanting to tell me, until finally prefacing it with a "I know this is going to sound weird" and then said they'd been digging a lot of YA lately. I didn't even blink. I told this person there's absolutely nothing wrong with YA, that some of the best writing out there is in fact YA. (Which is it.)

So what about you? What does it mean when you love, like, are indifferent about, or just downright hate a book?

(Note that I recently installed a new plugin that subscribes readers to comments. This was something I'd always thought was lacking on this site, along with threaded comments, which I'm also working on getting. This is a relatively new plugin, from what I understand, and at the moment I don't think there's anyway to unsubscribe yourself from any particular post once you have checked that box by the comments section. So just keep that in mind.)