Archive for the ‘SF Business’ Category

Case Study: The Five Worlds Website

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

…the Academy was founded to detail the story of how Fremont’s Children directed the out­come of the Making War. This is the incred­i­ble and unlikely story of how a brother and a sis­ter, and other young heroes, cre­ated the bal­anced forces that drive us today. Although this is a tale of our past, it is still a story in the mak­ing. We uncover new bits of infor­ma­tion reg­u­larly. We invite you to drop in from time to time to see it.

Brenda Cooper, co-​​author of Harlequin’s Moon with Larry Niven, con­tacted me a cou­ple of months back, inter­ested in how I might help pub­li­cize the release of the third book in her series, The Wings of Creation. I jumped at the chance to get involved.

nwlogo.png

The first thing I did was tackle the books. In this series, Brenda has built a strong cast of young char­ac­ters and an inter­est­ing set­ting that is both rec­og­niz­able and alien at the same time. They’re good “all ages” sci­ence fic­tion, and I really enjoyed them.

From read­ing the books, I sug­gested devel­op­ing a web­site for the series as if the site was the dig­i­tal pres­ence of an actual insti­tu­tion in the world. The web­site would pro­vide sam­ples of the books for read­ing, and an ency­clo­pe­dia of information–a kind of reader’s guide, if you will.

The Academy of New World Historians is the orga­ni­za­tion respon­si­ble for assem­bling the his­tor­i­cal texts that make up Brenda’s series. Each book opens with excerpts of inter­views con­ducted by these his­to­ri­ans. The goal of the web­site is to share their pub­li­ca­tions with the rest of the Five Worlds.

The site is built on a WordPress frame­work, using a cus­tom theme. It’s fairly straight­for­ward in design and con­struc­tion to reflect a cul­ture that val­ues sim­plic­ity and usabil­ity in inter­faces. The design uses some jQuery effects here and there for some pizazz–I was really inter­ested in try­ing out the “expanded nav­i­ga­tion” method that I’ve imple­mented on the home page. You can hover over the sec­tion titles and see addi­tional infor­ma­tion for the sec­tion, such as links to spe­cific topics.

Overall, Brenda has been a joy to work with. I hope you will all check out the site and her books. They’re good stuff, and I would rec­om­mend them even if Brenda were not a client.

To Rewrite or Not to Rewrite? That is the Flowchart.

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I recently received a rewrite request for a story I had sub­mit­ted.  Over my time as a writer, I’ve received rewrite requests that I’ve accepted, and rewrite requests I have turned down–for a lot of dif­fer­ent rea­sons.  I real­ized that my think­ing that goes into the deci­sion of whether or not to do so is some­what com­plex, and I got to won­der­ing if it was some­thing that a flow­chart could describe.  After a lit­tle bit of play­ing around this morn­ing, I have cre­ated just such a flowchart.

rewriteflowchart

Click on the thumb­nail image to view the full size chart.  Did I miss any steps that you would have con­sid­ered?  Do you think I am insane for draw­ing up a flow­chart for some­thing like this?  Share your thoughts in the comments.


BREAKING: F&SF’s Gordon Van Gelder Does Not Want to Drink The Blood of Your Children

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Last week, we had a lovely mini-​​controversy over the poorly announced inten­tions of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction to launch a work­shop for newer writ­ers run by Gardner Dozois.

The details that we were able to gather were:

  • The work­shop will be online.
  • The work­shop will be lim­ited at first to around 100 writers.
  • Gardner will be able to choose up to 3 sto­ries a year from the work­shop sub­mis­sions to appear in F&SF.

The details that we do not know:

  • When will the work­shop launch?
  • How much will it cost?
  • How much face-​​time will you get with the work­shop admin with 99 other students?

The issues that  weren’t clear to some:

  • Whether or not Gordon would pay for the sto­ries that come from the work­shop like any other story
  • Whether the cost of join­ing the work­shop would in fact include the price of the soul of your first-​​born child?
  • Whether this is a vio­la­tion of Yog’s Law, in which money flows from the writer to the pub­lisher? (“money flows to the writer”)

The con­tro­versy to me was exactly the same as Amazon’s screw-​​up a few weeks back regard­ing the data­base and adult/​gay con­tent being removed from list­ings.  It boiled down to this:  poor infor­ma­tion con­trol and release.  It was a PR fubar.

Perhaps I assumed the bes in that work­shop­pers selected for the pub­li­ca­tion would be paid just like any new writer, that Gordon was not plan­ning to sell my unborn chil­dren into slav­ery to the Mi Go  and that Yog’s Law was per­haps sim­ply bent, but not in a way that was unprece­dented.  Ultimately, I shouldn’t have to assume, nor should any­one else.  Once again, the issue is that, in the absence of real infor­ma­tion, the inter­net will invent a con­tro­versy.  WhateverFails are spon­ta­neously gen­er­at­ing every­where on the web because a rumor has got­ten out of hand and real infor­ma­tion has not stepped into to fill the void.

What could F&SF Done Differently?

Gordon and his staff prob­a­bly should have acted quickly to cor­rect any mis­in­for­ma­tion being spread (and to their credit, they did so, but I don’t think they did it com­pre­hen­sively enough).  He should have issued a full press release in the first place, out­lin­ing every detail of the project, from cost, to dura­tion to “here’s the web­sites, go sign up.”  The first any­one should have heard of this project should have been when every detail was sorted out and  ready to go.  If you are vague on any aspect, it just gives peo­ple an oppor­tu­nity to see bog­garts where there prob­a­bly aren’t any.

Information about this seemed to leak via hearsay on one blog, and the con­tro­versy built rapidly in this infovoid.  Damage con­trol would have been to imme­di­ately release all infor­ma­tion.  Unfortunately, I think not every aspect of the project as nailed down, so it seemed that they were rushed to release what they knew so far, which wasn’t and as far as I know, still isn’t every­thing.  I put my name on the list of inter­ested par­ties and I look for­ward to learn­ing more.

In gen­eral, I think F&SF needs to con­trol its online pub­lic rela­tions bet­ter (I imag­ine Gordon might think ‘great, yet another new job I don’t need and didn’t sign up for.’  Sorry, man. ).  The prob­lem is, and jus­ti­fi­ably so, they see relat­ing with the pub­lic online to be an antag­o­nis­tic thing.  n this posts, I am care­ful not to say ‘Gordon should do…” which is way too easy with F&SF.  I’m try­ing to say “the orga­ni­za­tion should do…”  Because I know F&SF has a team of peo­ple, pri­mar­ily dri­ven by Gordon.  Being the only editor-​​owned mag­a­zine of the Big Three in the field, its easy to place the blame or put a face to any per­ceived prob­lem with the ‘zine.  Gordon, for bet­ter and for worse, is F&SF in the pub­lic eye.  You can’t nec­es­sar­ily do that with the Dell Magazines. Their edi­tors gen­er­ally aren’t mak­ing the busi­ness deci­sions.  So the crit­i­cisms of F&SF often come across as too personal.

That’s unfor­tu­nate.  F&SF is a good mag­a­zine and Gordon is a great edi­tor.  The orga­ni­za­tion needs to reset their inter­ac­tions with the online world entirely, and design­ing a good PR plan would be a nice place to start, in my opin­ion.  I have some ideas of how to go about that which I will go into in more detail at a later date.

What Could We the Public Done Differently?

We should be bet­ter at real­iz­ing when we have par­tial infor­ma­tion and we should be less eager to jump to con­clu­sions based on that par­tial infor­ma­tion.  Perhaps our first instinct should not be to write a blog post or to start a com­ment thread on a forum.  Perhaps, when we have sus­pi­cions or are con­sid­er­ing cast­ing asper­sions, we should con­tact the par­ties involved over email or phone and ask our ques­tions.  If we don’t get sat­is­fy­ing answers, then maybe that is the time to scream from the rooftops.  Also, apply some com­mon sense.  What in Gordon or Gardner’s long career would ever make you think they weren’t going to pay writ­ers?  Yes, it’s impor­tant to make sure you get paid as a writer–but these guys are NOT the enemy. I have dis­agreed with Gordon on mat­ters elec­tronic in the past, but I know that he is a con­sum­mate professional.

This lat­est con­tro­versy is made up of mis­takes on both sides.  The bur­den of pro­vid­ing clear, accu­rate, and com­plete infor­ma­tion rests with the publisher/​project run­ners.  The bur­den of the rest of us is to not jump to assump­tions with­out ask­ing ques­tions first when we receive only par­tial information.

This Week’s Editoral Advice: Do Not Reply to Rejection Letters

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This is still hap­pen­ing from time to time with my work for Escape Pod. I had kind of thought by now that argu­ing with an edi­tor over their com­ments in a rejec­tion let­ter was com­monly con­sid­ered a bad idea to be avoided at all costs, but I’m still get­ting these at Escape Pod. Let me put it to you all straight.

Nothing makes me more dis­in­clined to pur­chase your work than you argu­ing with me about me not buy­ing a story.

There are a lot of minor mis­takes you can make as a slush writer. I over­look most of them. For instance, we get sent things as attach­ments when our guide­lines call for them to be in the body of an email. I might men­tion it briefly to the sub­mit­ter, but I don’t hold it against them much. There are so many dif­fer­ing e-​​submissions sys­tems that I can under­stand why this hap­pens. No big deal.

But when you decide to quib­ble with an edi­tor over the points of his or her rejec­tion let­ter, you’re cross­ing a pro­fes­sional line. You are enti­tled to your opin­ion. It’s a good thing if you have enough faith in your story that you will con­tinue to send it out, because one editor’s opin­ion doesn’t amount to much, which is why I say my edi­to­r­ial com­ments are not intended as writ­ing advice.

The main thing it will lead to is an edi­tor not pro­vid­ing you any detailed feed­back at all. We will sim­ply write form rejec­tions for your work from then on out. Because noth­ing is more annoy­ing to me, at least, than some­one decid­ing to bicker over a rejec­tion. It’s not going to change our minds. It’s only going to make you look worse. So we’ll stop giv­ing you points to quib­ble with. This is not good for you. We don’t want to do this.

It is a no-​​win sit­u­a­tion for the writer.

So just don’t do it. Stick to cre­at­ing your edi­tor voodoo dolls and slag­ging us off to your cats. Take out your frus­tra­tions another way, even if the edi­tor is dead wrong. It doesn’t matter.

And another thing– I would rather not see replies, even short thank yous, at all. It clut­ters up my inbox, which I work very hard to keep orga­nized, and your con­tin­u­ing sub­mis­sions with us is thanks enough. Tack what you want to say on to the cover let­ter of your next sub­mis­sion. I would pre­fer that.

Also, Machine Gun Submissions

Oh, and finally, one last thing– it does you no good to send me story after story after story when I’m read­ing them quickly, when you get rejected every time. You should cool it and wait a bit between sub­mis­sions. Probably want to wait and let me for­get about how I rejected 3 sto­ries in an hour. Because I do notice, and I know other edi­tors do too, espe­cially with e-​​submissions at ‘zines with rel­a­tively fast turn­around times. Nick Mamatas even had a sub­mis­sions limit. I’m con­sid­er­ing imple­ment­ing one if this keeps up. At the very least, you’ll stop get­ting such rapid replies.

Don’t Damage Your Brand as a Marketing Twhore

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Twitter is fast becom­ing a pim­ple on the back­side of my social net­work­ing life. It’s always been an odd thing, under attack by spam­mers of the tra­di­tional sort as well as non­tra­di­tional. I block social media experts, SEO experts, and porn stars on a daily basis. They don’t care what I have to say, they just want to sell me stuff. Twitter’s a great way to share things, but straight-​​up prod­uct pitch­ing has been really get­ting on my nerves.

But in the past month, I’ve noticed an even more unset­tling trend on Twitter. I am not going to be polite about how I describe this. I’m call­ing this twhor­ing. A lot of other activ­ity on twit­ter has been assigned this term, but this is a bet­ter sub­ject for that descriptor.

What is Twhoring and Twimping?

Twhoring is hap­pily advertising/​spamming prod­uct names as hash tags to your entire fol­low­ers list for the off-​​chance that you might win some piece of tech. Twhoring ranks lower than actu­ally adver­tis­ing or pros­ti­tu­tion because adver­tis­ers and pros­ti­tutes actu­ally get paid for what they do. Twhores tweet away with a slim chance of get­ting any­thing for their pub­lic­ity efforts.

The same sort of peo­ple who will com­plain about ads on a web­site or on a TV show seem to lose their senses when pre­sented with an easy oppor­tu­nity to “win” a Apple prod­uct. You might think you’re clever and start tag­ging the hash­tag to every one of your tweets. This is what the twimps like Boxyspace and Moonballz want you to do. Strut their stuff, spread their brand­ing far and wide. Maybe if you’re lucky they’ll give you a snack cake. A Twinkie perhaps?

It doesn’t help that I loathe both com­pa­nies involved in twimp­ing out their prod­ucts with twhores. “Build your own web­site” com­pa­nies gen­er­ally offer shoddy prod­ucts and com­pete with pro­fes­sional designer/​developers such as myself. No drag and drop sys­tem is going to build you a bet­ter web­site than some­one who has done it for years. And if it does, then you’re prob­a­bly a designer your­self and you didn’t need their soft­ware any­way. But that’s beside the point.

You may think that tag­ging your posts once and a while doesn’t do any harm, but when every­one on Twitter is doing it, it becomes old real quick. There for a while this week, I’d say 30% of the tweets I saw had MoonBallz attached to it. It’s like a twitterly-​​transmitted dis­ease. It spreads rapidly, and it makes you ooze mar­ket­ing pus.

Disinfect your­self, my friends. Stop being a twhore and start hold­ing out for some­thing of real value, at the very least. This isn’t a con­test you’re par­tic­i­pat­ing in, it’s a unnat­ural viral mar­ket­ing cam­paign that makes the par­tic­i­pants look gullible.

Too many peo­ple I respect have fallen prey to this. You are giv­ing it away, folks. Value your brand. It’s worth more than a laptop.

An Editor’s Perspective on Rejection

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Since I’ve taken on the gig of man­ag­ing edi­tor at Escape Pod, I’ve been relearn­ing a lot of things about being an edi­tor that I had for­got­ten in the time since clos­ing th Fortean Bureau. I’ve been think­ing a lot about rejec­tion let­ters, and rejec­tion in gen­eral, but not from my usual per­spec­tive as a writer, but now as an edi­tor. It’s inform­ing the way I think about rejec­tions as a writer as well.

It’s Not Personal

Rejection let­ters aren’t per­sonal. I find it very hard not to take them per­son­ally because by god, I wrote the story, I poured my self onto the page, and so it hurts to see that rejec­tion come in most of the time. My sto­ries are like the mind-​​prosthesies I never really asked for. And they trans­mit pain like any real limb. Er, so to speak.

Doling out rejec­tions, many to fine writ­ers whose work I love in a gen­eral sense, it’s really hit home. The rejec­tion is always for the story at hand, and it’s not about you. Great writ­ers get rejected. You will too.

I walk a very fine line in try­ing to avoid offense with my rejec­tion let­ters. How much detail does a Hugo-​​nominated writer need when you bounce his or her story? Do they need a rea­son other than, just didn’t sync up with my inven­tory needs at this time? I don’t want to be in the busi­ness of hand­ing out writ­ing advice in my rejec­tion let­ters. I tend to err on the side of less, rather than more, infor­ma­tion. Which brings me to my next point.

My Rejection is not Writing Advice

Most of the time, my rejec­tion let­ter says the same sim­ple line: “didn’t grab me.” I stole this one from F&SF, because it’s suc­cinct and a polite way of putting the truth. When I write this, it means that I did not fin­ish your story because I got bored with it. Sorry, but that’s the truth. And that’s why I don’t write what I lit­er­ally mean in the rejec­tion let­ter, because I am not a cal­lous mon­ster. When I do pro­vide feed­back as to why I am not buy­ing a story, it’s just based on my per­sonal expe­ri­ence of read­ing the story. Every edi­tor brings their own pecu­liar biases and inter­ests to the table. There are some ideas that always grab me more than oth­ers. Biological SF will win out over aster­oid min­ing every time, until you write that aster­oid min­ing story that proves me wrong.

New writ­ers should most def­i­nitely not be look­ing for writ­ing advice in their rejec­tion let­ters. Other writ­ers, and a cri­tique group, are the best way to gain this insight. It’s not the (short fic­tion) editor’s job, espe­cially not today, to cul­ti­vate the writer’s tal­ent. We sup­port your tal­ent, but we don’t have the time to fer­til­ize it. You need to turn to other sources for advice.

I can under­stand the impulse to seek feed­back from edi­tors. Writing is a soli­tary game, and it’s hard to find meth­ods with which to mea­sure your progress. How do you know if you’re get­ting close?

Again, time to be blunt. You’ll know you’re get­ting close because the edi­tor will tell you. When your rejec­tion let­ter asks for more of your work, that’s not just being polite. That’s because we think you have the chops and we’re just look­ing for the right story. When rejec­tion let­ters turn from “didn’t grab” to “didn’t work for me, for the fol­low­ing rea­sons” that’s a step up.

Trust me, the pain is only begin­ning when you’ve made those first cou­ple of sales. You’ll want more, and if light­ing has struck a lit­tle early, it can be painful to go quite a while afterwards.

At the same time, if you go from encour­ag­ing rejec­tions to a non-​​encouraging one, it doesn’t mean you’ve back­slid. It prob­a­bly just means the edi­tor has got­ten a bit too busy to give you spe­cial attention.

I Liked It, but I Didn’t Love It

I get to buy 52-​​ish sto­ries a year, and I prob­a­bly select those from ten times that many at least. This means I am not only look­ing for good sto­ries, but I’m look­ing for sto­ries that leave an impact on me. I reject a decent num­ber of good sto­ries, because I can’t use up all my slots buy­ing just good sto­ries. They have to be good, plus some. That spark is the most elu­sive thing you’ll seek as you develop as a writer.

I per­son­ally haven’t bro­ken past this phase. My rejec­tions are very often in the “this is a good story, but I didn’t like it enough to buy it” vari­ety. I sell oca­sion­ally, but this is my career wall at the moment. I think I’m close to under­stand­ing why, but I may never know, and I may never take the step for­ward. Especially if I don’t write more than I have been these past few years.

Doesn’t Fit My Needs at This Time

This is very sim­il­iar to the “like it, didn’t love it” rejec­tion let­ter. Under dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances, I might have, prob­a­bly would have, bought this story. But maybe it’s a bit dark in tone, and I’ve been buy­ing way too many of those lately. Maybe at the moment, I need more light-​​hearted pieces. Maybe I bought an aster­oid min­ing story shortly before you sub­mit­ted yours, and they’re too sim­i­lar in sub­ject matter.

This is the “shit hap­pens” rejec­tion let­ter. I find they’re the hard­est and eas­i­est to take at the same time. They’re frus­trat­ing, but at least you can put these to the capri­cious­ness of fate, rather than your own per­sonal skills. It helps.

So that’s a lit­tle bit of the think­ing I’ve been explor­ing regard­ing rejec­tion as I work to select sto­ries for Escape Pod. It’s def­i­nitely given me a bet­ter per­spec­tive on my own rejec­tions. If it were pos­si­ble, I would rec­om­mend every seri­ous writer find a way to read slush some day. Not only do you learn to spot the most com­mon mis­takes, you start to get a lit­tle empa­thy for that poor soul on the other side of the transom.

On Writing Motivation

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Quaero_​verum asks:

You’ve prob­a­bly already writ­ten about 1,000 posts on it already, but moti­va­tion is my sore spot at the moment. As in, “sit thy butt down and just write!”

Also, when I do write, I sit and stare at the blank white screen for a lonnnng time. I am find­ing it hard to even churn out “free-​​writes”.…

My advice to you is sim­ple. Don’t force it. If you’re going through a period of low moti­va­tion, you may need to recharge your cre­ative bat­ter­ies. This is some­thing that I’ve had to learn the hard way.

Creative energy is a very poorly under­stood topic in my expe­ri­ence. Some man­age it very well and are able to be con­sis­tently, highly pro­duc­tive. See Jay Lake write a novel in a hand­ful of weeks. Others strug­gle for a decade. The prod­uct isn’t nec­es­sar­ily bet­ter in either case.

It’s very impor­tant to give your self oppor­tu­nity to write. But if you don’t write, it’s not nec­es­sar­ily because you’re lazy. Your energy could be low. You might not have any­thing to say right now. Maybe you’d rather draw, or take a pho­to­graph to express what you’re feel­ing. Who knows. The impor­tant thing is not to beat your­self up.

Lastly, I’d like you to go watch this pre­sen­ta­tion by Amy Tan from the TED Talks recently. She talks about how we per­cieve cre­ativ­ity, and she makes some very inter­est­ing points.

Watch the Amy Tan talk here.

Do any of you have any fur­ther advice on the sub­ject? I’m really curi­ous to hear what oth­ers think about cre­ative energy. It’s a topic that I’m only just start­ing to develop some the­o­ries about, espe­cially as it per­tains to my own work.

Reader Questions: How Do I Decide How Much Work to (Self) Publish Online?

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Let’s kick off reader ques­tion answer week with a real doozy. CDThomas asks:

I don’t have a web­site or blog. And I don’t know if I want one.

I under­stand if I’d cre­ate a blog for nat­ter­ing on, but most of that itch gets scratched by Twitter. I’m not much of an essay writer, because I think I find oth­ers who say what I’m think­ing bet­ter than I would.

That leaves self-​​promotion, pos­si­bly, of my fic­tion (plays, poems, short sto­ries). If I don’t want to go the full Doctorow and Creative-​​Commons license every­thing, then how do I decide how much of my work to pub­lish online?

I’m not going to be the type of writer who obses­sively searches for online theft, but I need to find a way of talk­ing about what I’m doing before I’m pub­lished reg­u­larly by mag­a­zines, online or oth­er­wise — learn­ing how to be part of a writ­ing SF/​F/​H com­mu­nity, I guess, but with­out my ques­tions get­ting lost on web boards.

First of all, I don’t think every writer needs a web­site or a blog. Anyone who says they do is prob­a­bly sell­ing some­thing (to para­phrase The Princess Bride). Now, I sell web design ser­vices, but I would never try to sell a writer on a blog/​website if they didn’t have any inter­est in main­tain­ing or updat­ing it. It sounds like you know what you like, and that’s Twitter. That’s great! You can do a lot to build a rep­u­ta­tion and an audi­ence with just that ser­vice. I tend to rec­om­mend a more com­pre­hen­sive strat­egy. I think of it as being like fish­ing. You can fish all day in one spot if you want, and you’ll catch fish. You’ll catch fish if you change up your lure and move around too. Now, read­ers aren’t fish, but poten­tial readers/​fans can be found in a lot of dif­fer­ent places. Unlike fish­ing, you can be in mul­ti­ple places at one time. So it’s more like hav­ing a cou­ple of poles in the water.

Okay, that metaphor is stretched to the break­ing point. Moving on.

I used to blog rarely, think­ing basi­cally that I didn’t have any­thing unique to say. But I don’t think that’s true of any­one, espe­cially any­one who writes. Why do we write if we’re not com­pelled do to do so by a need to share some­thing we feel is unique? Everyone has some­thing unique to say. Maybe not on every topic or issue, but every­one has within them, in my opin­ion, the poten­tial to write a great and grip­ping blog. Sometimes this involves liv­ing a very pub­lic life, shar­ing your deep­est embar­rass­ments. Sometimes, it means shar­ing the lit­tle bit of knowl­edge about writ­ing you’ve gar­nered. But if you’re sure, no big deal. You don’t need to have one. Nobody’s going to order you to have one.

Now, how do you decide what fic­tion to release online if you don’t want to go the full Creative Commons route and release absolutely every­thing? My opin­ion is, unless you’re really, really cer­tain of it, don’t release it online unless it’s been pub­lished some­where. I’ve writ­ten pos­si­bly a hun­dred short sto­ries. But only about a dozen are avail­able for any­one to read out­side of my close friends and fam­ily, and only one of those was self-​​published online.

It’s hard to build authen­tic­ity as a self-​​publisher. It’s not impos­si­ble, but the thing is, there is a lot of stuff to read online. People are look­ing for rea­sons to key in on things to read, and just throw­ing your writ­ing out there all on its own can be a very hard way of build­ing authen­tic­ity. I’m not say­ing it’s impos­si­ble, but I per­son­ally wouldn’t want to go that route.

Now, say you’ve sold a cou­ple of sto­ries. You might want to release some of them online, but let’s back­track and remem­ber that we don’t have a web­site. How do we release fic­tion online and get it out there to be read if we don’t have a web­site? Well, you can throw up a quick free web­site with a ser­vice like Blogger or LiveJournal. Or you can sell your fic­tion as down­loads with Fictionwise. Or you could upload it to Scribd and take your chances. There are a lot of ways to put your work out there with­out hav­ing a web­site, but you take your chances with each one of them. It’s really, really hard to get peo­ple to pay atten­tion to you online.

I find that it’s best to try online reprint sales first.  Might as well get some money from it, right?  That’s more respectabil­ity than just pub­lish­ing it online your­self.  Most sites will archive it for a long time.  The pod­casts like Escape Pod, Drabblecast, and Starship Sofa  are another great way to get your fic­tion online in basi­cally a per­ma­nent fash­ion.  The main dif­fer­ence here is that some­one else is lend­ing cred­i­bil­ity to your work by select­ing it for their pub­li­ca­tion, as opposed to you putting it up on your per­sonal web­site.  If one place lik­ing a story gives cred, imag­ine that two places means even more cred.  Same prin­ci­ple behind the Year’s Best antholo­gies, I think.

As to how much of your work should you get online?  That’s up to you and I can’t give you a sat­is­fac­tory answer.  I per­son­ally try to get every sin­gle story online via the ways I’ve listed above.  If I can’t sell some­thing as a reprint or pod­cast, I’ll for­mat it nicely on my web­site and throw it up myself.  Especially if I want to do a cool illus­tra­tion to go along with it.  Once you’ve made all the money you can from a story, why not put it out there for free?  Stories are dis­pos­able most of the time.  If you write a story so great that you can resell it dozens of times, then, well, some­one will post it online for you whether you want them to or not.  Try Googling the title of a clas­sic SF short story, and you’re likely to find a boot­leg copy online on some poorly policed .edu site as much as any­thing else.  Might as well be the per­son to be in con­trol of it, right?

The last aspect of the ques­tion above deals with how to become a part of the com­mu­nity and take part in a con­ver­sa­tion with­out being lost amongst the noise. This is very easy. I’ll break it out in bul­let points.

  • Pick four or five blogs or forums and haunt them. Check them every day if you can.
  • Provide help­ful answers to ques­tions. Key word here is help­ful. Don’t be neg­a­tive or crit­i­cal unless it’s asked for. Talk about your­self and your work only if it relates directly to the topic at hand. Be pos­i­tive. Try to find a unique per­spec­tive on the posts you com­ment on.
  • Do that over and over again. You’ll get a rep­u­ta­tion quickly.

There are other ways, but I think this is the eas­i­est way. It involves putting in a lot of time, but being a part of a com­mu­nity isn’t easy. I have a really hard time keep­ing up with all the writer blogs and forums I would like to read in an ideal world. I try to stay on top of a few spe­cific ones as best I can. I’m not very good about my sec­ond point of advice, so bear that in mind, but I think if I could do things over again, that’s how I would approach it.

I hope some of these answers prove help­ful. If any­one else has any advice for CDThomas, please share it in the comments.

Revising Short Fiction is for Suckers

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’ve heard a lot of dif­fer­ent opin­ions on the sub­ject of revi­sion over the years. The one that has stuck with me was the opin­ion of, I think it was Heinlein. This author wrote one draft, dropped it in the mail, and never looked back. I don’t know what his rea­sons for this were, but I know what a mod­ern writer’s rea­sons would be, espe­cially when it comes to short fiction.

It’s all about time man­age­ment and cost/​benefit analy­sis. Because sto­ries are pur­chased not based on the time it took to write them but how many words they con­tain, the actual hourly wage you make varies depend­ing on how much time you spend on a story. And the more time you spend, the less money you’re making.

For exam­ple, I gen­er­ally write first drafts at a speed of 1000–2000 words an hour. At a mod­er­ately decent payrate of 5 cents a word, that puts me at $50 an hour, if I were to sell my first draft. That’s a very nice hourly wage. Each draft you do, and each hour you spend rework­ing your draft, is reduc­ing your poten­tial hourly income. Spend as much time revis­ing as you did writ­ing the story, and now you’ve cut your hourly in half. Spend three times as long revis­ing the story as you did writ­ing it and now we’re talk­ing work­ing at McDonalds wages. I guess it’s bet­ter than dig­ging ditches.

However, I per­son­ally am not a writer who can churn out a sell­able first draft. I find the story in revi­sion, much like Pixar does. Partly this is because I often start writ­ing a story before the idea has fully fer­mented. Partly this is because I write so fast when I am on the first draft that I miss good oppor­tu­ni­ties. It’s only in sub­se­quent drafts that I can tweak the machin­ery of story into a form that actu­ally runs.

When I first started out writ­ing, I was with Heinlein all the way. One draft, and be done with it. And I sold a cou­ple. I also never sold dozens. When you think about it, was that really mak­ing me any more money as a writer? Almost cer­tainly not. It’s prob­a­bly a wash, if I sat down to fig­ure it out.

These days, I not only redraft and redraft, I also sit on sto­ries for months or years. Yesterday, I broke out a story that I wrote almost 2 years ago and began revis­ing. It’s prob­a­bly now on draft 5 or 6. And it’s most likely still not there.

These days, I’m much more con­cerned with mak­ing money from my writ­ing than I was before. That’s because I have no reg­u­lar source of income. So I’m look­ing at the Heinlein way again. It’s wish­ful think­ing though. I’m not a first draft writer, and that’s okay. Even if my hourly wage works out to be some­thing akin to min­i­mum wage, it’s still bet­ter work than just about any job that actu­ally pays min­i­mum wage. Unless that job has health insurance.

What’s your approach to revis­ing? What’s the longest you’ve ever tin­kered with a piece before send­ing it out?

New Client Site: JAPitts​.net

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

J.A. Pitts is an upcom­ing author with Tor Books. The first book in Pitts’ series will hit book­shelves in sum­mer of 2010. Black Blade Blues is an urban fan­tasy about a black­smith in Portland who smiths by day and moon­lights as a prop mas­ter in the inde­pen­dent movie scene by night. Pretty soon, the black­smith finds out that a sword she owns may be a very impor­tant sword of myth and leg­end. Then all hell breaks loose. Also, dragons.

The idea with this design was to evoke the feel of the book, which has the black­smithing ele­ments, as well as a Norse mythol­ogy ele­ment. The scarred wood is rem­i­nis­cent of a well-​​used work­bench, and the mast­head includes the sword and a blacksmith’s ham­mer, mak­ing the con­nec­tion very implicit.

If you are inter­ested in dis­cussing free­lance work with me, con­tact me through the Clockpunk Studios site. Or drop me an email. I’m always look­ing for more projects.