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This is a segment of a larger piece, the working title of which has been “Ambient Misinformation about Publishing and Writing, and the Cultivation of the Reader Mind: A Rant I Didn’t Get to Deliver at Noreascon.” It has occurred to me that I could write about this one for a very long time without exhausting the subject.
Certain words and phrases are like little genetic markers for scammers. Here’s a non-exhaustive list, non-exhaustively explained:
1. “Giving new writers a chance.” Also: “Helping new writers.”
While agents and publishers frequently do just this thing, they don’t talk about it in those terms. For them, it’s always a specific new book, a specific new author. Making judgements about which book and which writer they’re going to work with is the heart of their job. When you hear someone talking in an indiscriminately general fashion about giving a chance to new writers, there’s something wrong.
Same goes for “helping new writers.” There might be legitimate projects aimed at helping new writers as a class, but the business they’re in isn’t agenting or publishing.
2. “Traditional publishing.”
This term came in with PublishAmerica. It’s their little way of suggesting that they’re a conventional publishing house, which they aren’t. Publishing houses refer to what they do as “publishing.”
3. “Professionally edited manuscript.” Also, “No publisher will look twice at a manuscript that hasn’t been professionally edited.” Also, any of the numerous variations thereon.
The part about publishers automatically rejecting manuscripts that haven’t been professionally edited is a flat-out lie. Anyone who tells you that is either a scammer, a complete ignoramus, or a naif who’s been keeping bad company.
Publishing houses care about the text. They don’t care whether you paid someone else to go over it.
This lie has been spread by scam agents who bunco-steer their clients into the hands of unscrupulous (and often unskilled) “book doctors,” most of whom do a perfunctory surface-level edit, charge the client dearly for it, and pay a kickback to the agent. The client and manuscript are then sent back to the agent, ready for the next round of fleecing.
There are some genuine freelance professional editors out there. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I don’t know any who take referrals from agents.
4. The terrible odds that you’ll get published.
Hearing about this from someone who supposedly works in publishing should make you wary. People who really work in publishing know that the chances of any single manuscript’s being published, expressed as the proportion it represents of the total slush pile, is a completely meaningless figure. The majority of the manuscripts in the slush pile have zero chance of getting published. The rest have a greater-than-zero chance. The good ones have a very good chance indeed.
This and other dubious “facts” about the unlikelihood of your being published are spread by vanity/subsidy/misc. scammy operations. They want you to despair of your own chances of getting published, and go with them instead.
The other source of this dubious wisdom is writers who’ve repeatedly had their submissions rejected. While they are speaking from experience, you have to remember that their experience consists of submitting stories and books that nobody wants to buy. Your own manuscript might not share that fate. The only way you can find out is by submitting it and seeing what happens.
5. Hopes and dreams.
One seldom hears real agents, editors, or publishers talk about the author’s hopes and dreams. What they talk about are the author’s books.
Scammers are forever going on about hopes and dreams because all aspiring writers have them, they’ll take it to mean the scammer truly understands them (as opposed to understanding this common characteristic of aspiring writers), and it spares the scammers from having to say anything specific about manuscript submissions they haven’t actually read.
Funny that this should come up here -- I've been reading too many post-PublishAmerica authors again (indirectly because of discussions about book contracts). I find it a touch on the depressing side.
I'd love to hear all the things you didn't get to say at Noreascon; even if it's initially preaching to the choir, it's a great resource to point people to when one is not certain if they're clinging ferociously to stupidity or merely uninformed.
... 1. “Giving new writers a chance.” Also: “Helping new writers.”
Unfortunately, I have seen this phrase used in the context of "paying forward". Specifically by Mike Resnick in the context of his Alternate Whatever anthologies, whose quality become less distinguished as the series went on.
... 5. Hopes and dreams.
Dead on target. The first time this smoke got blown in my face was by a friend who was trying to sell Amway product.
... 1. “Giving new writers a chance.” Also: “Helping new writers.”
Unfortunately, I have seen this phrase used in the context of "paying forward". Specifically by Mike Resnick in the context of his Alternate Whatever anthologies, whose quality become less distinguished as the series went on.
I think it could be argued that Mike Resnick isn't an agent, and he isn't a publisher; he was editing, and he if he felt that nurturing new authors was some part of that, not a single anthology he turned in was entirely new authors, and he wasn't actually responsible for how it was published; he was responsible for assembling the stories and turning them in to the publisher.
Or: I interpreted the "agent and publisher" to be pretty much agents or publishers, and the comment about "being in the business of publishing" to refer to these two things.
(Sorry about the double post -- can someone kill one of them? I'm not sure why it turned up twice.)
The other source of this dubious wisdom is writers who’ve repeatedly had their submissions rejected. While they are speaking from experience, you have to remember that their experience consists of submitting stories and books that nobody wants to buy.
I love this. I'm going to hang this on my mental office wall next to your Permission to Write Badly.
(My real office wall has no slogans on it. They're distracting. It's the one in my head that gets covered with this stuff.)
A couple of corollaries:
(1) "Actively looking for new authors." Of course they are. It's just that "real" publishers and agents don't have to say so—they've got far more submissions than they can handle. Phrases like this one are a come-on for the scamsters. The one exception might be the agent who has left a previous agency to form his/her own—and even then, he/she won't say anything like this!
(2) "POD publishing." POD is a printing technology, not a publishing method. It does have some effect on the various price points and affordability of a book published using POD technology—but everything else (cover, layout, etc.) is identical.
(5) "Hopes and dreams." Actually, that's what the con artists want, because "hopes and dreams" lead to irrational decisions—the bread and butter of every con scheme since day one.
Neat... I do like these. There is so much crap out there geared to take advantage of writers/artists. I know there is crap to take advantage of everyone, really, but I'm more aware of the ones that target writers.
Michelle, rbs, I wouldn't dream of second-guessing Mike Resnick.
Charlie, thanks for "actively looking for new authors," and the use of "hopes and dreams" as the spoor of irrational decision-making processes. Could you expand on the one about "POD publishing"?
"Giving New Writers a Chance." The thing that gripes me about this particular phrase is the vaguely heroic overtone. "Look, I and I alone (with or without my superhero cape) am Giving New Wiiters a Chance!" It's rather like positioning oneself as the savior of the downtrodden, the hero of the suffering little people. And it positions the people who might legitimately buy a book or story as Big Meanies Who Don't Give New Writers a Chance. I suppose it's just a way of cutting the weak ones out of the herd and leading them to the slaughter.
"POD publisher" is the predecessor to Publi5hAm3ri(a's current "traditional publishing" tactic, but from the opposite direction. Instead of claiming "likeness" with commercial publication (BTW, that's the closest to a legally defensible term one is going to find), "POD publisher" was used —and still is used, just surf to iUniv3r53's, Au+horHou5e's, and xLibri5's respective websites!—to distinguish these New Age vanity presses from vanity presses.
Wait a minute. I think I just defined the problem. Virtually every publisher using the "POD publisher" moniker is a vanity press. Let's see:
The only real distinction is quantitative—it doesn't take quite as much moola to get s/u/c/k/e/r/p/u/n/c/h/e/d/ published at a "POD publisher" as it does with a "traditional" vanity press like Dorrance and Vantage. That does not change their qualitative nature at all.
I have now officially overused my quota of quotated terms for the month.
...While they are speaking from experience, you have to remember that their experience consists of submitting stories and books that nobody wants to buy.
I'm not sure why, but for some reason this just really made my morning. *laugh* I feel like I shouldn't laugh, but it just struck me as very funny. :)
-Catie
Oh good. Since you're talking about scams and myths (again), I wondered what y'all would make of this "properties management" company, being started by the former President of Marvel Comics.
It's sort of an agency, but not. And a lot like the internal property-acquisitions department of a large movie studio, but not. If they were in traditional publishing, I'd call them a book packager, but they're not. Are there any other examples of this kind of thing, extant?
It's amazing, though, that even when you point people at posts like the above or any of the other sites like Writer Beware, how many people still "fall" for the scams because of basic insecurity. They might even be 99% convinced it's a scam, but they're so desperate to think it might improve their chances of getting published that they'll still fork over the money just on the off chance it's not.
I figure that the best way to spend money to improve my chances of getting published is on good old-fashioned postage (-:
Suzanne said: It's amazing, though, that even when you point people at posts like the above or any of the other sites like Writer Beware, how many people still "fall" for the scams because of basic insecurity.
The ones that stun me are the ones who discount all that information out of sheer arrogance.
Teresa: Oh good. Another meaty publishing post I can share with the writing boards.
Tracina: I suspect it's not arrogance that blinds those poor writers but desperation.
Tracina: I suspect it's not arrogance that blinds those poor writers but desperation.
Otoh, desperation in the literate can sound an awful lot like arrogance <wry g>.
Otoh, desperation in the literate can sound an awful lot like arrogance
Michelle: Well, yes. Having been on the receiving end of some rather energetic pro-PA lectures, I have to agree. *pained g*
Tracina, Suzanne - of course, part of the reason they fall, be it arrogant or desperate, is because they themselves are doing the same things being done to them:
"Hopes and Dreams", of course, is directly linked to the Turkey City lexicon entry for "pushbutton words":
'Words used to evoke a cheap emotional response without engaging the intellect or the critical faculties....'
I'm betting it's the writers who overuse such words who fall quickest for it when others do.
"While they are speaking from experience, you have to remember that their experience consists of submitting stories and books that nobody wants to buy."
While this caused a laugh here, too, it is worth noting that the all too oft-rejected is *also* the hapless hopeful they're trying to convince -- they often dwell within the same skin.
Beth: I suspect it's not arrogance that blinds those poor writers but desperation.
I was thinking of one person in particular when I wrote about arrogance, and your ability to see that person as a desperate writer rather than a hellspawn humbles me. You have a much larger and more generous heart than I do.
Of course, it's even worse when a newbie writer emails you with a question about how could you not recommend my publisher or agent without even identifying who that publisher or agent is. Then the next email from them takes one of two forms. They've either been to another site where they discovered more of the awful truth about their publisher or agent and just want to be certain if you really have documentation or they're still in disbelief and demand proof. Most give the publisher or agent name by the second email.
It's not easy proving to someone that the person who said he could fulfill their aspirations is not in it to help them at all. The real scammers seem to know that about human behavior and use it for all it's worth.
Hmmm, excuse me for this digression. I'd never noticed before that the last phrase could be used in the possessive form and still be correct as "use it for all its worth".
Anyway, that behavior or need seems to be one of the few things that I've noticed in just about every victim taken by a scammer.
It's not easy proving to someone that the person who said he could fulfill their aspirations is not in it to help them at all.
This, er, has application outside publishing. For instance, it explains a lot about continued support for certain political parties....
So you're saying they're the CMOT Dibblers of book publishing, then?
Hey, I'm going to second Holly's post above and see if anyone has any thoughts on what Bill Jemas (former Marvel comics honcho) is doing with that company. It sounds like a total scam, but I wonder what others think.
Any thoughts?
A tangent on “Professionally edited manuscript”:
It would probably be indiscreet to name names or give other identifiers, but there is one publisher who stands out from the herd as a case where writers would be well advised to have their manuscripts professionally edited before submission -- or indeed after acceptance.
In my office's recently concluded period of reading vast numbers of published children's books, again and again one or other of our small group would exclaim that a novel was brilliant but had easily correctible flaws in the structure, obvious errors of fact, or recurrent infelicities -- all the kind of thing that a good editor would have addressed. And without fail, such an exclamation would be followed by the revelation that the book was published by the same company.
Hey, Jonathan, are their initials CB? ED? GF? IH? KJ? ML? ON? RQ? TS? VU? XW? ZY? Okay, I give up. ;)
Speaking of Highly Questionable Things and Marvel:
We read on the ST Literary Agency webpage:
ST Literary Agency Breaking News
In 2003-4 we were selected to submit new authors to Marvel Comics... interesting and fun opportunity. (Note: This opportunity is closed now).
Anyone know what that was all about?
I'm now reading over the website for a local "personalized publishing" company looking for those phrases.
So you're saying they're the CMOT Dibblers of book publishing, then?
You owe me a new, dry keyboard. I'm just saying.
Kayjay, that's slick. Did you read where they even have their own brick-and-mortar bookstore?
Yikes, just yikes. Someone at a local writer's group recommended a particular company to me and I foolishly contacted them via email. they sent me their package of information, then followed up a couple of weeks later with a sales call.
I said outright, "you're a vanity press. Money should flow toward the writer."
He tried to argue about it and I countered. Then he got all
p i s s e d off about it, and started yelling at me. How professional. I told him he'd better not call again or I'd all the Federal no-call lilst program and have THEM jump on his arse.
how unpleasant. And so 'personal and up front." Sigh. Writing is a business like anything else. You try and write good stories you need to tell and then to sell. And hope someone buys them. That's the bottom line. The publishers are in a business too, and should not be griped/yelled at because they didn't buy some witer's 'purple fairy gone wrong' story (I'm just pulling this out of my arse because I'm just a writer). They have to be responsible for their bottom line too.
"In my office's recently concluded period of reading vast numbers of published children's books, again and again one or other of our small group would exclaim that a novel was brilliant but had easily correctible flaws in the structure, obvious errors of fact, or recurrent infelicities -- all the kind of thing that a good editor would have addressed. And without fail, such an exclamation would be followed by the revelation that the book was published by the same company."
I have no idea which publisher this refers to, but I can't help noticing that part of the alleged profile is that novels in question were repeatedly "brilliant." If this is actually so consistently the case, they're ahead of the game despite their defects in execution.
Mad, Dorothy Deering insisted to the end (and may still be insisting, for all I know) that her truthless and rapacious Deering Agency was only trying to help new authors whom no one else would work with. She may even have talked herself into believing it. Certainly she's on record as having thought, right up until her sentencing, that the judge would recognize that she wasn't just some common criminal, and forbear to throw the book at her. I've seen more than one hardened professional scammer react with surprise and hurt indignation when someone called them a crook. Didn't we understand that they were selfless public benefactors?
IMO, the corollary of their belief that they're engaged in unending acts of charity is that they lose whatever respect they may initially have had for the authors.
Holly, the Marvel thing looks like a cross between a packager and a marketing consultant, independently reinvented by someone not familiar with either of those occupations. Bear in mind that real agents are a great rarity in the comics industry. I think this guy is trying to fill part or all of the empty agent-niche.
Beth, I'll believe it's desperation, but how do you come by your acquaintance with it? You've been writing at a professional level for some time now.
Dave, if you'll send those poor souls to my CafePress site, I'll sell them a nice instructive t-shirt or mug that says "The fact that you're on their side doesn't mean that they're on your side." And Sylvia, I first came up with that one while arguing with the adherents of what I suspect is the very same political party you have in mind.
James, it could have meant that they knew someone who'd gotten hired at Marvel. Then again, they may just have realized how Chaotic Marvel was, and figured it was extremely unlikely that anyone there would get it together to contradct them..
I just fell asleep
as I typed this reply
here on the sofa.
Time for bed.
I already sent this on to PNH and TNH and my family and other publishing friends. It's the latest scam, or something.
Although it’s not April 1, I can’t help but wonder if the following isn’t a joke. This is about Kirkus, the bane of so many authors, noted for their killer reviews. (My first book, PIRATES IN PETTICOATS, nonfiction about women pirates, was panned with "more swish than swash," clearly a line they’d had in waiting for years. And this well before Johnny Depp.)
From Publisher’s Lunch:
Kirkus for Hire
"Kirkus Reviews is putting their 71 years worth of ‘credibility, integrity, and pedigree’ up for sale to "self-published, e-published and POD authors. Any publisher seeking greater exposure for a title can gain awareness through our network of influential readers and buyers."
"Under a new program called Kirkus Discoveries, authors and publishers are invited to ‘commission a review,’ for $350. Those reviews will be displayed at KirkusDiscoveries.com. . ."
It also goes on to mention a "second pay-for-promo program called ‘Kirkus Reports.’ . . . ‘"a pay service, at $95/title, with opportunities for bulk rates.’"
Jane
Patrick: Absolutely. Their commissioning editor does a fabulous job, but there seems to be a policy of letting the books go through with minimal attention once they've been bought. That's what makes the phenomenon remarkable. Mediocre books poorly presented wouldn't -- indeed don't -- raise an eyebrow.
Dave: I'm not trying to tease (really!). I'd be surprised if anyone else here had the kind of immersion experience that has brought this tendency to light. I'm not trying to blacken the publishing house's name, but if I were to talk to an author considering submitting to them I'd definitely advise them to assume the book will go to press pretty much as submitted. Of course that's probably not a bad assumption to make in any case.
4. The terrible odds that you’ll get published.
To inrease those odds:
revise the work
get feedfack from a trusted source and act on it
revise the work again
read the work through
revise the work again
Only send it out when you're sure it's ready.
> it is worth noting that the all too oft-rejected is *also* the hapless hopeful they're trying to convince
I wonder how many of the people they grab have actually been rejected before, and how many are just clueless newbies who haven't even tried submitting to a real publisher.
> Under a new program called Kirkus Discoveries, authors and publishers are invited to ‘commission a review,’
A new SM trend? Pay and get your book trashed.
Michelle, sorry - I just read The Truth recently and it leapt to mind.
ET - that's a great scam too, because historically it's always been easy to find people who will trash your writing for free, often at great length, but they didn't expect *you* to provide anything except one free copy...
If I'm reading Kirkus Reviews' site correctly, neither Kirkus Reports nor Kirkus Discoveries will go in their hard-copy Kirkus Reviews magazine.
Sorry -- my last post said something about comment spam. It was my browser remembering what I had forgotten and then didn't check!
Tracina: Oh that hellspawn. Some days I have no generosity toward him, some days I pity him. Depends on how much sleep I've had.
Teresa: Thank you. I do go through periods of self-doubt; however, the comment comes from reading a number of message boards where writers cry out in anguished tones how they'll never be published. It wrings my heart, and the most I can do is try to steer them away from the scamsters.
Jane you're kidding about the Kirkus thing, right? RIGHT? Not that we can afford to subscribe to it, but pay for placement in a review journal? Did they indicate that it would be in a special section?
Kirkus Discoveries will go on a web page. Kirkus Reports will go in an HTML e-mail to those who request it.
Kirkus Reviews, themselves, the hard-copy magazine, apparently won't carry either style of pay-to-play plan "reviews."
A friend of mine's supposed to be publishing a book at the moment with PublishAmerica. I don't know anything about the contract, but he did get a friend who's an entertainment lawyer to check it, and money (albeit very small amounts initially) is flowing towards him. It will apparently have an ISBN and so forth.
I thought it sounded like most things were covered; are PA really that bad? Any web sources which collate everything together?
"One seldom hears real agents, editors, or publishers talk about the author’s hopes and dreams. What they talk about are the author’s books."
This is sort of a corollary to the old adage about how to tell whether a group of writers are newbies or professionals: When newbies get together, they talk about writing. When pros get together, they talk about money.
Only send it out when you're sure it's ready.
I'm not sure I agree with this, simply because I know too many writers who battle perfectionism as a character flaw and as an excuse. "I had a big-name editor for a Clarion instructor/met one at a con, and as soon as I get this novel just exactly right, I'll send it to that editor," I've heard from more than one acquaintance (and even a few friends). How far have you gotten with it? "Well, I'm on my twentieth revision of Chapter One -- I don't seem to be able to get it just right -- but the minute it's perfect, I'll start revising the next two chapters. And then I can write the draft of the rest of the book!" ...Oh. How, um, nice.
I'm all in favor of multiple sets of revisions, some with feedback and some with just internal personal progress. But it's very easy to never, ever be sure that a book is ready, especially since healthy professionals always keep growing professionally. Colour of Magic was nice, but I think Thief of Time leaves it in the dust. Jhereg is lovely but only the beginning. The Warrior's Apprentice rocked my world, but Paladin of Souls just keeps rocking it. Etc. If you're doing it right, you will keep learning. I think that learning when to move on to the next thing, when to decide that a book has gone as far as it can go right now, is a very valuable skill.
Maybe I'm just cranky and frustrated with good book ideas and compelling characters that never get past page 50 because they're not absolutely perfect, but I think asking early writers to wait for absolute certainty is not such a great idea.
Paul: and money (albeit very small amounts initially) is flowing towards him.
Unless he somehow convinced PA to pay for copyrighting (which I very much doubt; their contract has the author do this), then even with the $1 "advance," he's still $29 down from the start. That's not money flowing toward the author.
Tracina - copyright's automatic when you write something, isn't it? (Displaying my ignorance here, probably.)
That's certainly the way it works for software, anyway. Software I can do, writing not so much. :)
I've sent him a mail to read this thread, anyway.
For those who really want to know the whole story of Dorothy Deering—actually, for those who want to know the story of one of the longest-running frauds in US law enforcement history—the Southern Illinois University Press published Jim Fisher's (yes, that Jim Fisher) book on her in May. You can find it at Powell's: Ten Percent of Nothing: The Story of the Literary Agent From Hell.
(Disclosure: I represent Jim Fisher, including defense against claims of libel by a certain Pittsburgh-based vanity press/scam agent.)
Paul: I find it really, really hard to believe that a competent creator's side entertainment lawyer would approve of PA's contract—presuming, that is, that the lawyer is located somewhere other than Tennessee, where they have some funny ideas on contracts thanks to the baneful influence of the music industry in Nashville. These are not trivial problems. As I've mentioned to our lovely hostess before, there are seventeen distinct problems in the "E" version (the most-current) of PA's contract, and I can name the three form books used to cobble it together. (It's not just geekness; it's part of my job.)
Paul: Copyright is automatic, yes, but registering your copyright, which gives you more protection in case of a lawsuit, costs $30. Real publishers do that for the author.
Gnoted. Thanks both. :) You learn something every day, particularly by reading Making Light.
Paul, check this out:
http://payn.freelinuxhost.com/
It's a Publish America pro and con.
You should know that an author cut and paste the first 30 pages of his manuscript into a file about ten times, until the manuscript was about 300 pages.
He submitted this to PA and was accepted. The same thirty pages over and over again.
Having a book published by PA is slush by association.
To extend bellatrys's comment about CMOT Dibbler...what do you think is in the sausages? (with extra bonus YCDTOT reference)
Funny someone should mention Kirkus... A few months ago I received an e-mail from someone representing a new reviewing journal. They wanted to start an online site with a bang by giving out prizes to small publishers. I was asked to review and rate some travel books. My degree is in library science, and at each stage of my career I've been in charge of selecting books for almost every area of scholarship, including a couple of years of selecting travel books for a large public library, so I said yes. I did my damndest to read and really review the books they sent me. It wasn't until later than I discovered that they were a VANITY "REVIEWING JOURNAL", i.e. publishers and authors paid for reviews. Well, color me chastened and embarrassed. I had already submitted my reviews , so I let it lay, with a double-underscored-bold-italic memo to self never to get involved again with these folks.
Funny thing is, the books ranged from interesting-though-not-well-edited to really, really good. SOme of them came from legit small presses (which is one of the reasons why I assumed these folks were legit), and would certainly rate at least a mention in Library Journal or Choice.
4. The terrible odds that you’ll get published...The other source of this dubious wisdom is writers who’ve repeatedly had their submissions rejected.
And then there are those who, having no intention of pursuing writing as a profession anyway (nothing wrong with that), bandy this tired old line about out of pure carelessness (lots wrong with that).
Hang around the NaNoWriMo forums and you'll find plenty folks who take the "50,000 words in 30 days" challenge not in order to generate a rough draft that will one day, after the serious work of a good solid revision period, end up in the hands of agents and publishers but just to show themselves they can do it. So a lot of them commemorate the occasion by self-publishing with LuLu.com, just to have a single copy of their book on their own shelves to show off to friends and family. "Look! I did that!"
Which is all well and good ... until folks of this description thoughtlessly add, "Besides, it's not like there's any chance I could get this published traditionally even if I were serious about it..." And I want to start screeching Shut up shut up shut up and stop poisoning the waters, godsdammit!
Bruce Arthurs: This is sort of a corollary to the old adage about how to tell whether a group of writers are newbies or professionals: When newbies get together, they talk about writing. When pros get together, they talk about money.
Maybe I'm a romantic, but I find that a little sad. I hope that when I'm an old pro and I get togther with other old pros we'll all still be excited enough about writing to actually talk about writing. I'm going into this as a professional, sure, but money's not the interesting part. If you get enough of it, it pays the bills, sure, but it's not what I want to blather about when I'm socializin'.
That's a collorary of "Amateurs talk about tactics; professionals talk about logistics."
This is sort of a corollary to the old adage about how to tell whether a group of writers are newbies or professionals: When newbies get together, they talk about writing. When pros get together, they talk about money.
It may be an old adage, but that doesn't make it true.
You know, I've been a professional writer for over twenty years.
Mostly, in my experience, when professional writers get together they talk about each other, or about people they know, or books they've read, or cool things they've run into while researching other things, or food, or the weather, or the gardening, or Making Light, or movies they've seen.
On the whole they don't talk about the mechanics of writing, because they've been doing it long enough that the questions people ask at the start are more or less answered, at least to their satisfaction. But they talk about what they've enjoyed...
And while I can remember many conversations about Problems with Agents or Problems with Publishers, over the years, I don't remember any conversations about money. (Apart from Steve Brust, over the weekend, saying that he'd like more of it. But he was also talking about the mechanics of writing at the time, so I think those two cancel each other out.)
This is sort of a corollary to the old adage about how to tell whether a group of writers are newbies or professionals: When newbies get together, they talk about writing. When pros get together, they talk about mony.
The quote I actually heard was "wannabes or professionals" and "talk about art" which has ... different connotations.
At any rate, it's a clever enough, but in terms of accuracy? It's kind of like ... not. People who are interested in money talk about money. People who are interested in writing talk about writing. People who have heard this too often and are afraid they will look like a wannabe often just don't talk much.
I can think of several oft published writers, with multiple novels, all in print & at high mid-list numbers, who will, in any given corner of any given room where other like-minded professional writers gather, talk about process. I love those discussions.
I can go either way -- but oddly enough I only talk about the business to people who don't know it so well.
I've been following this thread with interest. I am writing my first book, and I love writing it. At the moment, I write only because I love to do so. But secretly, I do hope to get it published one day.
When I try to look at my book objectively, I believe it's good enough to publish. But I've heard that spiel so many times:
"It's impossible to get published even if your book is good, all you'll get is a pile of form rejection letters etc..."
I do a lot of pottery. If I throw a pot, I instantly know how good or bad it is, and how to improve the next time. With my writing, I find it very difficult - how do I know whether I'm able to truly judge my own writing objectively?
Discovering Making Light has given me hope - I now realise that if my book is good enough, there's a good chance I can get it published.
For now, I intend to just enjoy the writing process. I figure the rest is icing.
Hopefully, icing I get to taste one day (ever the optimist :)
I can name plenty of well-established professional writers who not only talk about writing a lot, but do so in public and interestingly.
Pat Wrede, Pamela Dean, and Jo Walton jump immediately to mind. There are more.
A catch-all chime in post from me, as usual:
That's a collorary of "Amateurs talk about tactics; professionals talk about logistics."
So who gets to talk about strategy?
I thought it sounded like most things were covered; are PA really that bad? Any web sources which collate everything together?
Well, he could go over to www.fmwriters.com and type PublishAmerica into the search page. The topic comes up every few months.
It would probably be indiscreet to name names or give other identifiers, but there is one publisher who stands out from the herd as a case where writers would be well advised to have their manuscripts professionally edited before submission -- or indeed after acceptance.
Don't know which publisher this is either but I'm guessing it's probably cost-cutting/under-staffing/bottom line issues. To stay afloat, you need to make a good enough product - good enough to be bought, that is. Try to strive for a prefect product, you go over-budget and it becomes too expensive. Too lousy, nobody buys. Competition pushes up the standard of what "too lousy" is. Fortunately, with books, the writer can (and should, imo, since his name goes on it) do a lot about the quality of the product.
Only send it out when you're sure it's ready.
I'm not sure I agree with this, simply because I know too many writers who battle perfectionism as a character flaw and as an excuse.[...]I'm all in favor of multiple sets of revisions, some with feedback and some with just internal personal progress. [...] If you're doing it right, you will keep learning. I think that learning when to move on to the next thing, when to decide that a book has gone as far as it can go right now, is a very valuable skill. [...] but I think asking early writers to wait for absolute certainty is not such a great idea.
Coming from the other side of the business -- you certainly have a point regarding the perfectionists. Unfortunately, most writers that I hear from are NOT perfectionists;
I get all too many queries that have errors in their own names or addresses, let alone that have been proofread and revised multiple times.
If I see your first draft, and you haven't taken the time to tighten the dialogue or tidy up loose ends - or fix your its vs. it's - i'm going to say no.
If your third draft is written compellingly and tautly, then I will be much more likely to pay more attention -- whether I ask to see more of your work or turn it down anyways.
Take the time to make your work the best that YOU can make it; have your friends and family and writers' workshops read it; take their comments to heart in your next revisions - and then revise it again. it'll make a difference once it goes to an editor or agent.
mayakda: So who gets to talk about strategy?
Wargamers. :-)
The progression Yog referred to is very popular among military officers, and has four (not two) stages:
In any event, I've periodically discussed some relevant material at Scrivener's Error, including these items of particular interest:
There are some truly wonderful words of advice here. Thank you.
Over at Forward Motion, which is filled with new writers (that pretty much being why it exists), I have an ongoing problem with people suddenly deciding to self-publish. They may have had a rejection or two (but quite often they won't even go that far), and even if they've tried the big publishing houses, they wouldn't think of submitting to a reputable small press publisher. It's depressing to see, but I have learned that there are people who just will not listen to reason -- people who are not ever going to be professionals, no matter if they write well or not. The best we can do at FM is to tell the people that this is a bad idea. Some people will not be saved. Some people, in fact, will glory in not being saved.
I have always told people to start at the top when they think they're ready for publication (though they might want to try a crit group of some sort first). The process of submission takes time, just like writing a good book takes time. That seems to be the part that annoys people the most -- not just the time it takes to go through the submission process, but that it takes so long to get a rejection. Maybe it's the age we live in and the idea that we should be able to get anything we want RIGHT NOW.
Even though I am involved in the publishing side for an ebook company, I still tell people that they shouldn't start with ebooks as their first choice. You can always move down the ladder, but you can't move up once the story is accepted -- and yes, ebooks in today's market are down the ladder from print. That may change in the future, but it's the truth right now.
There are also a limited number of spots available in those big houses and a lot of wonderful writers out there. I've seen some great manuscripts (at least I think they are) that haven't quite made the cut in the print houses, but that I've loved reading.
But if your heart is set on seeing your books on the shelf at the local Borders or Barnes and Noble, then you had better aim just as high for agents and publishers.
(Oh, and NaNoWriMo -- I love NaNo just for the fun, even though I work with outlines and try to write something I will one day rewrite, edit, etc. However, I once made the mistake of asking how many people on the boards were doing serious writing rather than just for fun. I hadn't realized the word 'serious' was a terrible attack against everyone else. So I have used it as often as I could after that because I get annoyed at silly people who think that if someone isn't doing things for the same reason they are that they shouldn't be doing them at all.)
Of course writers talk about money. They also talk about writing, and they do so often and interestingly.
What they rarely talk about, in my experience, is what they're writing *right now*, other than to give a general sense of how things are going.
Because, if you're spending your time talking about the poem or the story you probably aren't spending enough time working on it.
This generalization is worth exactly as much as all other generalizations.
Of course writers talk about money. They also talk about writing, and they do so often and interestingly.
What they rarely talk about, in my experience, is what they're writing *right now*, other than to give a general sense of how things are going.
Because, if you're spending your time talking about the poem or the story you probably aren't spending enough time working on it.
This generalization is worth exactly as much as any other generalization, of course.
Sorry about that.
Technical melt-down.
Lenora:
"Hopes and Dreams", of course, is directly linked to the Turkey City lexicon entry for "pushbutton words":
'Words used to evoke a cheap emotional response without engaging the intellect or the critical faculties....'
There's a classic term for that kind of emotional button-pushing: argumentum ad hominem. Unfortunately, the term is now misused, almost universally, for distrusting people who have a record of unreliability. The latter is actually not a logical error, though habitually unreliable people would have you believe it is.
If you don't believe me, don't bother to tell me until you look it up.
Dan, did you really mean the argumentum ad hominem? Are you quite sure you don't mean the argumentum ad populum?
Unfortunately, the term is now misused, almost universally, for distrusting people who have a record of unreliability
In my understanding of logical fallacy, the modern usage for this means to attack the credibility of the person who is making the argument, rather than the argument itself. I did look for an antiquated other use for this phrase and I can find nothing; certainly the translation doesn't support the claim.
I'm not sure that argumentum ad populum works in this case either, though, since it seems to be an appeal to "the people" (As in "but everybody knows this" or even "everybody smart knows this". You could argue that this is emotional -- that either of these two approaches are logical fallacies -- but I can't see how you could use either to mean "button pushing" in the modern sense.
On the matter of "when you're sure it's ready" - there are layers and layers. I sent out queries on a book before it was ready - because at the time, it was as good as I could make it. I then made a jump in writing ability, blushed at my poor book, which was good but not that good, and rewrote. And re-sent in a few cases, the best names and best places, effectively.
And then this very last month, I made another jump, (at least so far as that manuscript is concerned). And the itch wouldn't let me go through without another edit. Which I did. I like the results more each draft, and in this case, i'm happy with them a few weeks on, when I usually stop being sure of it.
(NB - the time gap between vs.'s A and B is at least 2 years - between B and C is slightly less than a year. In both cases I did wait the month or so usually suggested before subbing to make sure I didn't screech at some hideous error that was staring me in the face. And of course, I've been working on other things meantime. Too many, in fact.)
And now the book has been out twice to the best places, in less than its best condition.
So: should I have stopped revising even though I could see the flaws? Or should I not have sent out the book so soon, even though, at the time, it was as good as I could make it and I legitimately believed it ready?
Currently I have my own answer for that, which is that no, it really isn't reasonable to lock away a finished MS for a year without subbing. I find too many excuses not to sub already. But, YMMV.
mayakda: So who gets to talk about strategy?
The people in marketing.
Jane, the idea of buying a Kirkus review is dizzying. This is definitely going to drop the value of "-- Kirkus" on a cover quote.
I liked Patrick's reaction: "No kidding? Can we buy Kirkus reviews too?"
I also liked ET's reaction. Last I heard, $350 was about what you'd pay for that -- though if I were the one doing the paying, I'd want a guarantee that the reviewer would wear leather and very, very high heels while writing it.
Neil, Steve Brust is one of my shining examples of an author who loves to talk about how to write. Running Fourth Street Fantasy Con was one of his ruses aimed at making a lot of it happen in one place. Jane Yolen does the same thing by serving brunch.
Oh, man. Conversations you could get drunk on.
Beth, Tracina, are you talking about that levitating case of Stockholm Syndrome, or is it someone else entirely?
Paul Walker, read this to figure out how the money's flowing away from the writer. Twenty-nine bucks doesn't begin to cover it.
A general observation: Talking about emotional button-pushing is all very well, but there are lots and lots of ways to do that, and sooner or later scammers use most of them. What I'm talking about in this instance are specific bits of language that are characteristic of specific publishing scams.
Charlie Petit is right on the mark with his identification of "actively looking for new authors" as one of these markers. That publishing industry is actively looking for new writers goes without saying, so we don't say it. The people who do say it are trolling for suckers.
You know how spam filters are set up to catch mail from Miriam Abacha that offers to sell you Oxycodone that will increase the size of your toner cartridge and refinance your mortgage while working at home? The method here is similar. If you find a supposed agent or publisher using any of the bits language we're describing, go ahead and keep listening -- but put on your running shoes while you're doing it.
Beth, if the rejection panel at Noreascon had gone on another half-hour, I think I'd have started crying. Their desire and desperation aren't just perceptible. It's like standing in front of a tidal wave, or an oncoming train.
Mris, the Rewrite Monster is the reason Steve Eley has a certificate giving him permission to write badly. When he came to VP, he was doing the kind of epicycle-rewrites where you move forward very, very slowly because you keep rewriting the material you've already written. Almost everyone will get better results if they write all the way through to the end, then go back to reconfigure and polish it. S'truth. One of the penances Yog hands out at VP is, "You're not allowed to go to any more workshops until you finish typing the last page of your novel. It doesn't have to be good. It just has to be typed."
A further piece of advice about this from seriously big-name editor Terry Carr, on the occasion of his having been told by Loren MacGregor that he couldn't submit his novel to Terry's Ace Specials series because it wasn't perfect yet: "Don't you reject your work," Terry said; "that's my job."
Here's another way to look at it. If you're doing multiple overlapping rewrites, it's clear that you don't know exactly what you're doing or where you're going. You can find that out by finishing the first draft. Any rewrites you do prior to that point will be done in a state of imperfect knowledge, and are probably just so much wasted work, because you can't tell whether something is perfect until you know what book it's supposed to be part of.
Also: Sometimes your own writing is simply going to look dismal to you. It's just a thing that happens, like those odd spells where all the instances of "he said" and "she said" seem unbearably obtrusive and repetitive. There's no help for it. You just have to push on through and trust that it'll all look different to you later on.
Remember: If your friends keep fishing bits of your writing out of the wastebasket and passing them around appreciatively, it's probably not because they work for the CIA. (If they do work for the CIA, you may be a good writer anyway, but you should ask Santa Claus to bring you a paper shredder for Christmas.)
Re: argumentum ad hominem
The OED says:
ad hominem, phr.A phrase applied to an argument or appeal founded on the preferences or principles of a particular person rather than on abstract truth or logical cogency.
1599 R. PARSONS Temp. Ward-Word vi. 79 This is an argument..which logicians call, ad hominem. 1633 W. AMES Fresh Suit I. x. 105 Some arguments, and answers are ad hominem, that is, they respect the thing in quæstion, not simply, but as it commeth from such a man...
That sounds more like the "argument from authority" to me, which would seem to demonstrate that I don't know what I'm talking about. Sigh.
More from Kirkus
I liked Patrick's reaction: "No kidding? Can we buy Kirkus reviews too?"
Apparently, according to PL, the answer is yes:
"We heard more from Kirkus Reviews about their new initiatives
after publication yesterday. The Discoveries program, under
which reviews can be commissioned, is targeting traditional
publishers as well as the self-published. Managing director
and editor in chief of parent VNU's US Literary Group Jerome
Kramer says the program is designed "for any title that the
publisher or author feels has been unfairly overlooked."
Kirkus currently reviews about 5,000 titles a year, which is
but a small fraction of the number of new books published
every year."
You know, sometimes I think I'm in the wrong end of this business.
Teresa remarks: "Sometimes your own writing is simply going to look dismal to you. It's just a thing that happens."
I refer everyone to the superb Eileen Gunn's superb Stable Strategies and Others, quite probably the best single-author collection of the year, in the preface to which she quotes an exchange with William Gibson:
"I forgot to tell you the secret of writing," he said.
"Okay," I said. "What is the secret of writing?"
A beat, for emphasis. Then: "You must learn to overcome your very natural and appropriate revulsion for your own work."
It was the most useful writing advice anyone has ever given me.
Regarding Kirkus, I have to agree that it probably will lower their standing.
As to that feeling that what I'm writing is awful, I'm at that point with one manuscript. All I can do is try to ignore how I feel about it.
If anyone has the series E PA contract, please feel free to email it to me.
This is slightly off-topic. However, on the vague subject of editing and reviews, I was amused when a friend pointed me at Amazon.com's page for Anne Rice's new novel.
The usual thing happens in the reviews, fans vs. critics. And then Anne herself decides to write a long, incoherent rant with no whitespace, and declares that she has a special deal where editors are not allowed to touch her work.
This explains so much.
http://tinyurl.com/6wu62
Cheers.
Josh: also noted on Open Thread 28.
Christopher: D'oh. Well, I feel stupid.
I even did a glance-through, but missed it. Oh, well...
"A beat, for emphasis. Then: "You must learn to overcome your very natural and appropriate revulsion for your own work." - William Gibson, quoted by Eileen Gunn
And people ask me why I don't hang my paintings in my house.
I mean would you want to walk past all your vile mistakes sneering down at you every morning on your way to breakfast?
PNH: Thanks for the "secret." I thought I was one of the few who becomes ill when reading something I wrote and forgot--discounting old love letters and threatening op/ed responses. I'll still wretch, but I'll know I'm not alone.
BD: Most of the professional writers whom I know are of the newspaper ilk, and they tell fascinating stories when they convene --background tales to what they write. They never talk about money unless they are well into their cups. Too depressing.
I'm just a po' lil' consumer of books, but I've gotta say that a Kirkus review on a book cover or jacket, however gushing, has pretty much no influence on me. Reviews from well-known newspapers or magazines usually do. Even if the cover has some elements that push my buttons the wrong way, a nice word from Newsday, The Dallas Morning News or the Plain Dealer is often enough to get me to skim the first couple of pages. But Kirkus... pretty much no impact one way or the other.
I don't know much about Kirkus, but to me, a Kirkus review seems a bit like a nice white paper on your software product from IDC or Gartner. The source may be authoritative and valuable in its own way, but it is probably less than totally objective - although not to the degree that their reputation would be at issue. Of course, I may be completely wrong about Kirkus, however their new product does nothing to disabuse me of my less than fully educated opinion. Maybe I'm just too much of a cynic.
And I continue to wonder how to keep dealing with my friend Candy who:
- won the PNW Writer's Assn award for Best Novel one year and couldn't get it published
- has a (minor, but respectable) award winning screenplay for a produced movie
- makes money editing freelance unpublished novels, and (I really believe) sincerely believes she's helping the folks she's editing (and some of them have actually gotten their books published after editing!).
There's a slight disconnect I'm seeing between the lament about how nobody has time to seriously edit anymore at the Big Houses because the beancounters keep them from doing so, and the belief that freelance editors are all scumbags and scam artists. I think some folks who are genuinely trying to improve mss may be sincerely using some of the "linguistic markers" mentioned here. I don't know how to reconcile all of this, and I'm not sure I'm right -- but I think there's a little more gray in this area than most of this thread indicates (particularly when so much is from those who have managed to get over the hump and get serious amounts of work published). I know I'd never have sold some of my most lucrative non-fiction without serious help from an agent who put the package together. It's a fairly small step, in some ways, to paying someone to help edit and deal with deal-breaker infelicities, particularly when it's clear that most houses don't have a lot of time to spend on folks with "great potential" (would Maxwell Perkins have kept a publishing job in this decade?).
I don't know. I want to raise the other side to the point of being a question.
Tom, I may be misreading things, but I haven't hit that point at which I get the "freelance editors are scumbags" part of the thread. I know a number of people who do freelance editing, some for major houses, some for minor houses, and in at least one case, for a published novelist who was having some difficulties and pulling hair out with -- I think, brain cells dwindling -- her seventh novel (seventh in the sense that there are six previously published ones. (I only remember the editor and the author in this case, and the fact that much of what was said was structural, rather than superficial). Come to think, though, that's the only case in which I've heard of an agent suggesting the interaction.
In the case of your friend, is she taking referrals from scam agents? Or known vanity presses?
I think that's the grey area; the if ->then part of the equation.
Wow. And suddenly Kirkus makes me think kindly of Harriet Klausner.
Tom, not to take TNH's thunder away here, but I think you've expressed a false dichotomy (that is easy enough to reach in this whole morass). The problem is something like this:
Although some freelance editors certainly can help a manuscript, meaning that they're not all con artists, there is no "requirement" to have a manuscript professionally edited before submission. Perhaps some manuscripts can and do benefit from such attention; the point is that there's no requirement. As Gordon Van Gelder remarked at ChiCon, the professionally edited manuscripts that made their way to him while he was at St. Martin's were "slightly less unpublishable" (his words) than the "standard" slush.
I view the literary con artists as the equivalent of used-car dealers. (Note: I used to practice consumer protection law, which involved suing a lot of them.) That there are a few honest ones who try to get their customers good deals does not mask the majority who are not "good." The average car buyer does not know enough to protect him/herself from a bad car or deal, so he or she is probably better off avoiding them where possible and purchasing from a dealer that sells both new and used cars (which are slightly better).
I don't think the issue is "free-lance editors are scumbags". I think the issue is "editors who work for services like PA and/or get the majority of their work via agent referrals or the like", that being only a subset of the first category. And even those aren't necessarily scumbags.
Y'see, I still wince whenever I see PA's name mentioned, because, very unfortunately, I know someone who works for them, who is apparently completely clueless as to the less savory aspects of their business. I've been tempted to point him here but I'm afraid it'll just reopen an argument I don't really want to get into with him.
Harry, your link leads to a dead page when I try to use it. Though really that's probably better; the whole topic depresses me.
Partly it's because while on the one hand I'm sympathetic to "I just want it published", on the other hand, I just can't imagine being so desperate as to pay my own money to see my work in print. And if I really, really want something to put on my bookshelf to say "Look, I wrote a book!", I own a printer. I really have no need to pay someone hundreds of dollars just so I can have a few crappy overpriced novels to try to talk my friends into buying.
Mostly, though, I think it offends my work ethic to see people take the short-cut. Yeah, fine, getting rejections, not a great feeling, although actually some of my rejections give me a happy (albeit a frustrated happy) due to the feedback. But just like I wouldn't expect to go into neurology without years of college and interning, I can't and don't expect to get into writing without rejections and learning how to better polish my writing to avoid same.
Of course, I'm still awed by Rejection Collection, too, and I don't mean in the good way, so maybe I'm just some sort of masochist who enjoys a good rejection letter.
Eh.
Charlie snuck in with his more-to-the-point clarification while I was typing. Read that; I'm just rambling.
While I'm rambling, let me point out that I wrote the above as a) a still-unpublished fiction author who b) just got another rejection yesterday. Although, frankly, it was the sort of rejection that many writers have wet dreams about...
Er. Am I oversharing?
Tina, that's weird. It was live yesterday when I copy and pasted it.
I wonder what happened.
Just wanted to chime in that Ten Percent of Nothing is well worth reading (and I have nothing to do with it), despite occasional, minor flaws in prose and structure, even if you are not interested in becoming a writer. It's a wonderfully twisted and heartbreaking tale.
Thomas, did you miss the part where I said, "There are some genuine freelance professional editors out there"? Several of them hang out here. I've been one myself, as I'm sure you'll recall.
Remember, what we're looking at are linguistic markers. The point I made had nothing to do with the competence or probity of freelance editors themselves. What I said was that anyone who tells you that no publishing house will look at a manuscript unless it's been "professionally edited" is either a scammer, or has gotten that bit of false information from a scammer and doesn't know any better than to repeat it.
I've never known a legitimate freelance editor to say that, and I'll bet your friend Candy doesn't say it either. Free yourself of the misapprehension that we're talking about editors at all. That line is a marker for a specific con game run by fake agents, who refer their clients to book doctors who do a pricey and generally superficial edit, pay a kickback to the agent, and return client and manuscript to the agent for further mulcting.
I lied. Or possibly the sleep dep has started to cause early senility. It's not PA I know someone at; it's AuthorHouse. All them start to blur together after a while, though...
Teresa:
Mris, the Rewrite Monster is the reason Steve Eley has a certificate giving him permission to write badly. When he came to VP, he was doing the kind of epicycle-rewrites where you move forward very, very slowly because you keep rewriting the material you've already written.
Amen. It took me a while to figure out how this was hurting me -- and it wasn't even the slow pace. It was the fact that by the time I got to the middle of the book, I had looked at the beginning so much I just didn't enjoy it any more. That was the killer.
I ditched that novel shortly after VP, although I may write it again someday with entirely different words, and started a much better one. For the first draft -- did I ever mention my Accelerated Yog Method? It's not the advice Jim actually gave me, but it's close, and it produced a a first draft in very quick time.
One of the penances Yog hands out at VP is, "You're not allowed to go to any more workshops until you finish typing the last page of your novel. It doesn't have to be good. It just has to be typed."
As it happens, I haven't been to any more workshops, before or after finishing the book. I haven't felt like I needed another one. What I needed, and what I got, was a well-meant and skillfully delivered kick in the ass. I figure if I need that twice, it's far better for me to learn to kick myself in the ass. (And it's a great party trick, too!)
Tina wrote:
Although, frankly, it was the sort of rejection that many writers have wet dreams about...
You were rejected by Scarlett Johannsen in pastel bodypaints while you were suspended in a giant block of Jell-O? Amazing! What market was this?
Er. Am I oversharing?
(Well, one of us is...)
Steve, after that, I'm going to have to not only vote that you're the one oversharing, but award you the Official Hemmoraging Saint Award of Making My Brain Come Out of My Nose.
Tina: Steve has that effect on people. My advice is that the next time you see him, give him a whack upside the head. He seems to like that.
Your "permission to write badly" cer
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