How To Write Magical Words: A Writer's Companion

by Unknown

  Second, the answer to our quiz was b) $7,500.00. That’s the average first advance for a new writer. $7,500.00. Minus 15%, for a total of $6,375.00, divided into three payments of $2,125.00 each. So all those earnings we just assumed were actually higher than they ought to have been, though the good news is that your book might earn out faster than we assumed.

  And third, all my assumptions in this essay have been fairly generous. The sell-through, the timeline, even the contract terms (royalty percentages for example). Very generous. There’s a good chance that the average beginning writer won’t do as well.

  I write because I love it. I write because I have characters and stories in my head that are constantly clamoring to be given voice. I make a good deal more money now than I did as a beginner, but I still only barely make what any normal person would call "a living." If you are writing because you have to, because the very idea of NOT writing makes you want to cry, because you love it so much that it’s all you can imagine yourself doing, then by all means write. But don’t give up your day job. Not yet. And if you aspire to be a writer because you think it might be an easy or quick way to make a buck . . . well, I feel another fit of laughter coming on . . .

  §§§

  J. T. Glover

  One question: would you ever consider returning any of your advance to aid in promotion of the book? I’ve read that James Ellroy’s big break came when he offered to return half of the $30,000 advance he got for The Black Dahlia if the publisher would match him dollar-for-dollar in increased promotion. They would, he did, and the book was a smash hit. I know that’s a different genre, and Ellroy was not at the very start of his career when this happened, but I’m wondering about the general principle.

  David B. Coe

  To answer your question, no, I would never consider such a thing, for several reasons. First off, I do a great deal of self-promotion on my own dime, and part of a publisher’s responsibility is to do promotion on its end. There’s a reason why royalties only amount to a small percentage of each book’s sale price—that other money is supposed to pay for production, editing, and, yes, publicity. I shouldn’t have to pay more for something that the publisher is supposed to be doing and paying for anyway. No author should, in my opinion. In a way, the amount of an advance is a way the publisher indicates its commitment to the book in question. If I get a $5,000 advance on a book, the publisher is making a statement about how hard it intends to push the book, in order to make back that money. By the same token, a $30,000 advance also demonstrates a level of commitment. I would be undermining that by giving back some of that money. I’d be saying in essence, I don’t believe that the faith you’ve shown in me with this advance is justified. I just don’t think it’s a good idea.

  Daniel R Davis

  So has anyone posted the differences between getting published traditionally and self-publishing? A friend of mine thinks that self-publishing is a cop-out and doesn’t make you an author, just a hack, which I don’t agree with.

  David B. Coe

  Thanks for the question, Daniel. As with so many things in publishing, the answer to your question depends largely on what you want to get out of writing. If you’re a hobbyist and would love to see your book in print and don’t really envision writing as a career choice, self-publishing can be a great way to go. On the other hand, if you want to be a professional writer and hope someday to be published by one of the big NY publishing houses, self-publishing can actually hurt you more than it helps. Fair or not, there is still a stigma attached to self-pub, and many houses won’t touch a book that has previously been self-pubbed. Some won’t even touch an author who’s gone that route with a previous book. There are a few authors who have self-pubbed and gone on to have successful careers with big publishers, but they are few in number and very much the exceptions to the rule.

  Royalties

  C.E. Murphy

  . . . also known as Why It’s Hard To Make A Living As A Writer.

  Let’s look at royalties.

  I’m lucky. I’m making money—pretty decent money—on my books, above and beyond what my publishers gave me as an advance. That money is still considered royalty money. Basically, the publisher gives you, say, $10K for a book up front, and then you don’t see any more money on that book until they’ve gotten back their $10K that they’ve paid you. Only after that do you start getting paid what we generically refer to as "royalties" as opposed to "advance money".

  If I weren’t earning royalties above and beyond my initial advance checks, you could take away . . . pauses to count . . . um . . . two-thirds of what I’ve made in the last twelve months. That would leave me with around $13K, which would rather violently remove me from the "living wage" scenario I’m currently man-aging to stay within.

  Realistically, what’s keeping me in that "living wage" arena is that I have, in my nascent career, sold four series (The Walker Papers, Negotiator Trilogy, Inheritors’ Cycle, and The Strongbox Chronicles). Between advance checks and royalty checks, I’m making a living as a writer. But I’ve published ten (soon to be eleven) books in the last three years to do it.

  Most people aren’t going to have two concurrent series at the beginning of their careers, much less four. (I say most people. I suspect a number of you know some of the same people I do—Charles Stross or Elizabeth Bear leap to mind, and they, like me, rather blow the lid off the idea that nobody does this. But most people don’t.) So if you strip away the three series I sold after the Walker Papers, what I’m left with as income for the last twelve months is the $19 or so K from royalties.

  It’s a living wage, but just barely—and you’ve also got to take out 15% for the agent, and if you’re in the States, withhold 25% (33% if you’re nervous, which I typically am) for federal taxes and social security. As a writer, you get double-stung: you have to pay both employee and employer social security, so between those things, you’re looking pretty safely at cutting forty or forty-five percent of your income out before you can even start thinking about spending it. (And I haven’t even touched the topic of health insurance.)

  By this time you’re thinking, "Yeah, but ALL THAT MONEY! ALL AT ONCE! I CAN GO NUTS!" and believe you me, that’s what a person starts to think when she gets a several-thousand-dollar-check deposited in the bank.

  And then she thinks, "I have no freaking clue when I’m going to get paid again," and all of a sudden that big lump of money doesn’t look tempting, it looks cruel. Because if you’re trying to live on a writer’s income, you flat-out can’t afford to go batshit crazy when you get a big check.

  This is just not an easy business to make a living in. I’ve been insanely fortunate, and have been making one, but it’s not just a matter of selling as many books as I have. It’s being able to control the money once you get it, and keeping in mind that yeah, in fact, $big chunk o’ change is great, but it’s very possibly the only payment you’ll see for six months. It takes nerves of steel to live with it. Hell, it takes nerves of steel to be married or partnered to somebody who gets paid this way, even if the partner has a steady job. I regularly think about finding some kind of day job, simply because it would be so very much less stressful all around if I were pulling in any kind of regular paycheck. Even if it’s tiny, the regularity would be a huge relief. So yeah, when people ask writers, "When are you going to quit your day job?" most times the answer is going to be, realistically, "Never."

  §§§

  David B. Coe

  Making a living from royalties and advances is incredibly tough. Foreign sales help. For those who don’t know, when a book is translated into a foreign language that usually means that the author (or the publisher) has sold what are called foreign language subsidiary rights to a publisher in a particular country. The translations are done in-house by the publisher, so for the author this is found money. We don’t have to do any extra work for it. The amounts can range from tiny ($800 in some smaller countries) to several thousand dollars per volume for a series.

>   Foreign sales make up a good chunk of my yearly income, so that at this point I earn enough to feel that I’m contributing to the family finances. But if my wife didn’t have a good job with benefits (retirement, health care) I couldn’t afford to write full-time.

  Wow, That Must Have Cost A Lot!

  Misty Massey

  Becoming a published writer isn’t complicated. The writer writes a brilliant manuscript. He sends it to a literary agent he has researched carefully, following all the guidelines that agent requires. The agent loves the manuscript, and starts shopping it to all the editors she knows. One of those editors sees the brilliance in the manuscript and makes an offer. See? Published!

  Okay, settle down all of you. I didn’t say it was easy—I said it wasn’t complicated. There’s a difference. Most of the time publishers and agents make their guidelines easy to find and simple to follow. The difficulty comes when writers decide the rules just do not apply to them. Susie handwrites her manuscript on pink scented paper, even though it clearly says "typed, double-spaced on white paper." Jarod sends his 980 page novel to an editor who prefers lengths of 110K to 120K words. Maria mails a paper copy to an agent who only takes emailed submissions. Hubert sends the entire manuscript when the agent only asked for three chapters. I attended a writing conference years ago, during which an agent was meeting with each writer individually for a manuscript critique. We’d been instructed to send the first thirty pages of our manuscript ahead of time. The first evening, a woman was railing to the group about the epidemic of agents stealing people’s work by doing these critiques. She, however, had worked out a way to foil the agent. She’d sent in thirty random, nonconsecutive pages from her book.

  If you’re sure I have no idea what I’m talking about, and that the rules truly do NOT apply to you, great. There are people who’re just dying to make money off of your dreams and desires. They dress themselves up as publishers, create websites that assure you your writing is fantastic and it’s just that good-old-boy mentality in New York that’s keeping you down, and for only $1,295, they will make sure your book sees the light of day. Pink paper? Handwritten manuscript? It’s all good. They’ll accept whatever you send as long as a check is attached.

  Money should always flow TOWARD the writer, never away. Paying someone to print your book is merely that: printing. It’s not publishing. The worst part is so many people have gone this route that it’s almost expected. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at a signing or speaking engagement and heard someone exclaim, "Gosh, you must have paid a lot to get this done!" There’s nothing wrong with paying someone to print your book, if that’s all you want. Say you’ve written a family memoir that only forty or fifty of your relatives will want. Pay the company and receive a nice product. But if you’ve written a fantasy blockbuster that you hope will put you in the same company with George R.R. Martin or Stephen King, paying someone to print it won’t get you far. Distributors don’t usually carry those books, and bookstores don’t want to stock books they can’t return. You’ll be stuck selling your books from your garage. Not to mention the stigma such books acquire. They’re almost never properly edited. The covers are usually created with Photoshop, so they look amateurish. They’re priced ridiculously high because the print run is low and the company doesn’t expect to sell many copies (except to you.)

  What’s that? You say Christopher Paolini did it? Well, not exactly. What he did accomplish took an extraordinary amount of hard work combined with a stroke of pure luck, not to mention a lot of his parents’ money.

  If you want to base your book’s success on luck, I wish you well. If you want to pay for a book so you can put it on your shelf and show it off to visitors, knock yourself out. Write the check and enjoy your shiny book. But if you want to tell stories to lots of people, sell books from coast to coast and maybe build a career, then do it right. Write a brilliant story. Rewrite it. Make it the best you can make it, and accept criticism when it comes your way. Follow the rules. And don’t pay money for it.

  It’s not complicated.

  §§§

  Faith Hunter

  Oh Misty, I want to copy this and hand-carry it to conferences. Pass it out. Make people read it. Not that they will think it applies to them.

  One of the worst do it my way things I ever heard was the writer who sent out cards to everyone in NYC publishing. Once every week they all got this card that said something like *It’s coming . . . THE DARK. In Six Weeks.* Then the next week, something similar . . . *In five Weeks.* Then *In four Weeks.* And you know what? They were all curious. It actually started them all talking. They wondered, Could this be a well-written book? The next block buster? There was actually a buzz.

  Until week one came and . . . no THE DARK.

  A week later they all got a round of cards that said, "Sorry. A Small Delay. THE DARK has hit a small snag. It will be ready in a few weeks."

  That writer shot himself in the foot. If THE DARK (or whatever the title was) ever came out, I never heard about it. Had it been a wonderfully written, professional manuscript, with great characters and an easy to follow storyline, he would have found an agent and publisher. Just because of his moxie.

  For most of us, becoming a commercially published writer is just plain old hard work. Time. Sweat. Tears. Learning the market. Learn-ing how to write. Hearing the word "No." A lot.

  P.S. No, don’t try this stunt yourself. It entered the realm of urban publishing fact, and it wouldn’t work now. Not at all.

  Who Pays Whom: Part 1, Agents and Editors

  C.E. Murphy

  This essay comes thanks to one of our readers, who had questions after my last essay. I may get a little strident here, so I want you all to know I’m not yelling at anybody, I’m just yelling because this is incredibly important. :-)

  The essence of the question is this: "For the benefit of newbies, who pays whom?"

  Frankly, if I never write about anything else, this alone would be worth the time. It’s that important.

  Money flows toward the author.

  It is not "usually" ill-advised to pay an agent up front. It is always ill-advised to pay an agent up front. The agent works for you. The agent does not get paid until you get paid.

  The editor is paid by the publishing house. The editor is the one paying you. There is no legitimate publishing scheme in which you give the editor or the agent any money. Ever. Period. End of sentence, end of discussion.

  Okay. I’m going to start with agents, then work my way to editors. I’ll talk about print-on-demand and vanity press later.

  So: agents.

  It is my personal belief that getting an agent is a vital career move. I got my agent after getting an offer from a publishing house that accepted unsolicited submissions. I could almost certainly have continued to sell books without an agent (mostly by making personal contacts), but I felt, and still feel, that having an agent, someone between myself and the editor, is really important. Also, your agent will get you more money. Mine got me nearly twice what the publishing house initially offered—which more than covers her 15%. Fifteen percent is the industry standard for literary agents.

  Typically this is how they (and you) get paid:

  Publishing House buys your book. Agent hammers out the advance, the contract details, you read it all and sign it and send it back. Publishing House sends a check to the agency. The agency sends you a check for the amount of the advance, minus their 15%.

  That’s it. That’s how they get paid. That’s how you get paid. There are no other hoops to jump through, although occasionally there may be photocopying or printout fees (which technically my agency is allowed to take out of my advance, and never has).

  There is no scenario what-so-ever in which you pay your editor. They’re employed by a giant conglomerate publishing house and they write you the check. (I know I said that before. I may say it another six times.)

  Now: an editorial service is something else.

  An editorial s
ervice is someone you do pay to go over your work. It’s like a first reader or a beta reader hopped up on speed. Ideally it’s someone who has either worked as an editor or agent or who is a successful novelist themselves. I personally know two authors running editorial services whose services I would recommend: Laura Anne Gilman, a former editor at Berkley, Dutton, and New American Library, who is now a full-time author of fantasy and romance novels, and Judith Tarr, a fantasy novelist who is frankly one of the most amazing writers I’ve ever read, who offers mentoring services which can include editorial-level critique.

  Neither of these women, nor any other editorial service, will get you published.

  What they will give you is a professional-level critique, which may be extremely useful. It may also be emotionally devastating (because, well, critiques usually are, even when they’re handed out as nicely as possible). It is not the secret password, though. There’s no such thing. All they—and others like them—are offering is a service, an attempt to help you make your book better. They’re not publishers themselves. I’m willing to mention these two because I know and trust them, but as a general statement I would urge new writers to be inherently suspicious of editorial services.