After I put up my list of publishing definitions last week, I got a comment that made the gears in my brain start spinning.

Part of it was because they (innocently, I believe) mentioned the idea that publishing is some sort of competition. Which it isn’t. Anyone who’s earnestly pushing that idea, that I’m somehow competing against other writers, is saying a lot more about themselves than they are about any aspect of publishing. Seriously.

And right after that someone on my twitter feed mentioned they’d given up on the idea they’d ever be a published novelist. Which was kind of heartbreaking, to hear someone’s given up on a dream. But it’s also tough to counter because… well, “published” isn’t always the neat, clean goal some folks think it is.

Anyway, I went to answer the first comment, started thinking about the second, and that’s how we ended up with a bonus post. These aren’t tips or tricks but more guideposts. If I’ve finished my manuscript and I want to be published, there are certain decisions and admissions that need to be made. I may be way off—and I’m open to hearing other thoughts–but I think if I want to succeed in publishing, there’s three things I need to be very honest about.

That’s the big thing here. I need to be completely, brutally honest with myself.

First is being honest about my manuscript. Is it the absolute best it can be? Have I really put in the work? Did I do multiple drafts? Line edits? Get feedback? Did I listen to the feedback? I’ve mentioned once or thrice that “good enough” isn’t going to be an easy sell, for me to an agent or for an agent to an editor.

Again, we’re not talking about what it can be with help from that professional editor. We don’t care about how cool the adaptation’s going to look on the big screen. How is this manuscript? Seriously.

Second is being honest about how many people my manuscript is really going to appeal to. We all love the idea of the runaway bestseller with millions of copies in print and  dozens of  translations. But the simple truth is that’s very rare. Maybe one book a year does that. Maybe. And simple math tells us… it’s probably not going to be our book. I mean, hell… my own grandmother never read any of my books. They just weren’t her thing.

So I need to really consider this. How many people are realistically going to want to read my book? Will it only appeal to die-hard splatterpunk fans? Would most mystery readers enjoy it, or only cozy readers? Yeah, it’s a fantastic sci-fi epic, but how big is the market for sci-fi epics right now?

Having a realistic understanding of how much my book will sell makes it a lot easier to sell my book. It also gives me a good sense of what path I want to be on. A book with broad appeal has a better chance with a big traditional publisher, while a more niche book may do well at a small press, and a very niche book could make me a lot of money self-published.

Third, maybe the toughest, is being honest about what I really want out of this. Why do I want to be published? Am I hoping to make storytelling a career? Do I just crave the validation that somebody thought I was worth publishing? Do I want a six-figure advance? Am I just hoping to get invited to better parties the next time I’m at a con? Am I seeing this as a stepping stone to Hollywoodor comics or something else? Is this just all about getting chosen for you-know-who’s book club?

There’s a lot of book clubs out there after this past year. There’s probably one we’d all like to get chosen for.

It may feel like there’s a lot of overlap and room for multiple choices in that mess of questions, but again… what am I reallyhoping to get out of this? What’s the thing that pops to mind when I hear “published author” applied to me? Do I want the money? The recognition? Something to put on my shelves? Hopefully it’s clear that what I’m hoping to get should affect how I go about trying to get it. And maybe, if I’m being honest, I might even realize my primary goal in writing a book is a bit… unrealistic?

Again… be honest.

And once I’ve been honest about these three things, I should be able to see some overlap. Places where pushing at this one means pulling on that one. And when I’m done, it might give me a better sense of where I am. And what I may need to do to get where I want to be. I’m not saying these things can guarantee anyone a publishing contract, but I think it’s worth noting that most of the successful writers I know consider this stuff.

Anyway, just a few quick thoughts. Your mileage may vary, as the kids say.

Next time… Cloverfield.

No, wait, what am I saying. This weekend is Valentine’s Day. And book club! Thursday we’ll talk about love. Cloverfield can wait until next week.

I had a conversation with an acquaintance of mine just after the New Year. They’d been offered a contract for their manuscript but were getting some iffy vibes from the  publisher. I talked with them about it for a bit and pointed out, yeah, there were a few good reasons for those iffy vibes.

What surprised me is that this acquaintance is a smart person, and I’ve talked with them a few times about writing and publishing. But combining the excitement of getting accepted with some potentially confusing terminology and, well… I can see where it’d be easy to get caught up in things. And maybe a little confused.

So I figured, hey, let’s take a minute or three and just talk publishing terms. These are things you may have heard or seen tossed about, but nobody ever explained them in any sort of depth. And they’re good things to understand if I want writing to be some level of career. Especially a full-time one.

Also, before anyone rushes to make angry points below, this is about definitions, not “which one is better.” If you want to have that argument, I’m sure there’s someone else out there who’d be pleased to go at it with you, no matter what view you take.

Let’s start with the basics. Traditional publishing is when somebody offers me money for certain rights to my story, often for a set period of time. By rights we generally mean the print rights, ebook right, and nowadays audiobook rights are very common, too. Anything more than that may be getting a bit sketchy (why does a book publisher need movie rights?). Again, publisher’s getting certain rights, and the author’s getting money for those rights—that’s textbook traditional publishing right there.

Because they’re getting these rights, the publisher’s taking on all the responsibilities. They’re going to take care of editing, copyediting, layouts, cover art, the actual production and distribution, marketing, publicity, and so on. A good publisher is probably going to involve me in all this, but it is theirs at this point (they paid for it) and it’s ultimately all up to them. We could talk for hours about different people’s experiences—good and bad—past that, but I think for now that’s a good basic way to look at it.

Let’s talk about that payment. This is something I think some people get confused about a lot, and there are some folks who take advantage of that confusion. For the purposes of this discussion, all the money I make off a traditional publishing deal is going to be in the form of royalties. They’re a percentage of the money the book makes. Usually not a very large percentage, true, but as I just mentioned, I have no responsibility here. Someone else is doing all the work and paying for everything. So don’t be shocked or angry when you hear that percentage is usually going to be a single-digit number.

Some quick math. Let’s say I’m getting a 5% royalty rate. My book sells for $20. The publisher sells 5000 copies to bookstores and other retailers across the country. That’s 5000 x $20 = $100,000, and my cut of that would be $5000. Make sense?

”But hang on,” says Wakko, “I thought they bought the rights. Where’s that money? Where’s my advance?”

Now… here’s where it might get a bit confusing.

If you’ve ever worked for a small company, you may have been able to ask your boss for an advance on your paycheck. Give me a hundred bucks now, take it out of my check then. When we talk about an advance in publishing, it’s the same thing. The publisher’s giving me some of my royalties before the book’s actually sold any copies. It’s kind of a show of faith—they think the book will sell XXX copies, so they’re giving me X right up front.

To build off the above example, let’s say the publisher gave me an $8000 dollar advance. When that first wave of royalties come around, I’d get nothing—but only because they already gave it to me. I got that $5000 in the advance (plus another $3000). When the book’s made me that full $8000, we say it’s earned out its advance, and from this point on the royalty checks will go straight to me.

Also, no matter what you may have heard… publishers don’t demand the advance back if my book doesn’t earn out. Seriously, it’s a non issue. If we dug into the very, very rare cases where this happened, we’d find something else had happened to make the publisher ask for their money back. The contract had been broken somehow or something had happened to make publishing the book a business/ethics problem. So it’s not so much asking for the advance back as it is canceling the whole deal.

One other thing worth keeping in mind. I’ve seen a few publishers be a bit… let’s politely say disingenuous by suggesting not giving advances is better for me, the author, because I’ll start getting royalties immediately! But here’s the thing to remember—advances are royalties. They’re royalties I’m getting before the book earns any money. How could anything be more immediate than that? If I gave you the choice of eating cake now or waiting until we decide to bake a cake… what’s the quickest way for you to get cake?

Wow, said a lot more there than I planned to. Anyway, moving on…

The next thing you’ve probably heard of is self-publishing. Sometimes this gets referred to as independent/ indie publishing, but I’ve got to admit that always feels like a bit of sleight of hand to me. Usually when people talk about indie publishing, they’re talking about smaller publishing houses that aren’t connected to the Big Five (I think it’s still the Big Five for a few more weeks, yes?). So when people lean into this… I mean, they’re technically correct, but it feels like they’re just trying to avoid saying they’re self-published.

As the name implies, self-publishing means I’m doing everything myself. I’m writing the book, but I’m also editing and copyediting the text. And I’m in charge of layouts, cover design, cover art, distribution, marketing, publicity, all of it. Because, well, I’m the publisher. This also means I’m sinking more time and money into the publishing side, since I either need to learn how to do all these things or pay somebody to do them. Also means no advances because, y’know, who’d pay them? But it does mean a more sizable chunk of the profits, and successful self-pubbers can make some serious cash. If they’re successful.

Now, this brings me to a slightly newer term (relatively speaking). Over the past few years you may have heard of hybrid authors. This is when an author has some books that are traditionally published and other books that are self-published. Doing both things = hybrid. Get it?

The idea of a hybrid author was pretty much unheard of for ages. You were solidly one or the other and that was it. But times have changed, openings and opportunities have appeared, and lots of authors do this now. Some do it with new material. Some (like me) do it with older works that have reverted back to them. Yes, I too am one of these hybrids we’re speaking of.

Please note this doesn’t change anything I’ve mentioned above. The hybrid author tag is cool, but that’s all it is—a cool label. I’m still traditionally publishing just as it’s described above, and I’m also self publishing just as it’s described above.

Okay, two more things I want to mention…

First is a vanity press. You may have heard this one before. A vanity press isn’t so much a publisher as a printer that overpromises. Or, y’know, a scam that takes advantage of aspiring authors. They offer “publication,” but the author pays for the editing, copyediting, layout, cover design, cover art. distribution, marketing… hey, this list sounds familiar, doesn’t it? It’s all that stuff I’d have to pay for if I was self-publishing. But by going through a vanity press I get to… share the money with them? So, I pay for everything and they still take a cut of the profits. Sometimes as their percentage of the royalties, sometimes as payment for actually producing the book… which, again, I’m paying for. So sure, you can have a hardcover edition—they’re only $11.23 apiece and we need you to make a minimum order of 500 copies.

Here’s a much better deal. Self-publish your book and just send me a cut of the profits. I mean, if you’re going to give money to somebody for no reason, why not? I promise to spend it all on rum and toy robots. See? Don’t you feel better about that already?

Anyway…

One giveaway is that vanity presses will take pretty much any manuscript they get. Sci-fi romance? Accepted. Historical fantasy? Accepted. Deranged conspiracy theories written in crayon on a placemat? So accepted! They’re not making any actual investment, so there’s no risk for them. If my book fails, it fails. Nothing to them. They already got paid. Again… by me.

Now, I thought those last two were worth mentioning because my acquaintance up above told me they’d recently heard the term hybrid publisher, which was new to me. And after they explained the contract to me, I did a little more digging and educated myself a bit. Which is tough, though, since hybrid publishing doesn’t really have any set yardsticks. And this is where it gets a bit tricky…

One thing most accounts agree on is that hybrid publishers charge the author. Depending on which press I’m looking at, they might charge for editing, copyediting, layout, cover design, cover art, distribution, marketing, and HEY! This is that same list of publishing requirements. Again. So again, I have to ask why am I paying someone else to do this if I’m not getting all the profits? If I’m paying, I’m the publisher, right?

Now, a defense I saw of a few hybrid presses is that they’re different from a vanity press in that they don’t take everyone. They curate their list just like a traditional publisher would. And I think that’s cool and generally good business, but… well, I mean, if you think about it, vanity presses don’t accept a lot of people. My dad’s never been accepted by a vanity press. Neither has my niece. A vanity press only takes advantage of the people it accepts, so if my main defense is that I don’t accept everyone… I mean, isn’t that like saying there are lots of people the Golden State Killer didn’t murder?

To be clear, I’m not saying that all hybrid publishers are a scam. I can’t because, as I mentioned, there’s no yardsticks. They all have different practices and guidelines. But I get very leery any time a publisher starts asking for money. Because the minute I’m paying for things or I’m doing a large share of the work, that sounds a lot like self publishing to me. And if I’m self publishing… why is someone else getting a cut?

Unless of course, it’s me. And you’re sending me money for rum and toy robots. 

So anyway… there’s some terms for you. Some of you may have known a lot of this already, but if you’re somebody who didn’t I hope this might help a bit next time you’re making decisions. Or just considering things.

Next time… I think we really need to talk about Cloverfield. Specifically, about this journal I was keeping while the monster attacked the city.

Until then, go write.

This is something I’ve talked about several times here on the ol’ ranty writing blog, but I realized I haven’t talked specifically about it in, well, many years. Too many years, really. Definitely not since I’ve tried to lean away from the more ranty, accusatory tone I tended to write in back at the start of this.

Look, reading all those movie scripts made me pull out a lot of hair.

I talked a month or so back about the idea of a contract between author and reader. There’s one other aspect to that contract, a sub clause, and I think it’s one of those “so obvious we don’t think about it” sort of things. To be blunt, nobody’s picking up one of my books to hear from me. Or to see me.

I mean, sure, they like a lot of the characters and worlds I’ve created. Some folks probably (hopefully!) like my style enough that they’re willing to try something new from me. But they still don’t want to see me. They want the story, and they definitely don’t want me getting between them and it.

Now, this doesn’t mean I’m going to follow you home from the bookstore and stick my hand between you and the page or sing nonsense in your ear. It’s just that nobody wants me distracting them from the fact they’re reading my story. They just want to sink into that world and get lost.

Yeah, of course, on one level you know I crafted each of those sentences and paragraphs, chose where all

the breaks

should go, but we have this quiet understanding that I won’t be leaning over your shoulder asking “Did you like that? Did you see what I did there? Wasn’t that clever?” You just want to immerse yourself and forget about the world for a little bit. Or at least get to look at it from a neater angle.

That was jarring, wasn’t it? That weird paragraph break? It was only two lines, but it broke the flow for a second, and you stopped hearing my voice and started hearing your own instead. Probably saying something like “was that a mistake? Is he doing beat poetry? Was he trying to do something funny there?”

And this is the worst thing that can happen to a writer. I don’t want you thinking about me. I want you to be thinking about Hector and Natalie and the people they’re running away from. If you’re noticing me, thinking about what I’m doing… it means I’ve done something wrong.

Think of it this way. It’s the difference between the tough guy in a story who commits unimaginable acts of excessive violence to look tough… and the tough guy who doesn’t need to commit those acts. The one we understand is more impressive without seeing a blatant demonstration. Being able to restrain myself is usually more impressive than how excessive I can be. Less of us is more of the story.

So here’s four easy ways I can keep my literary head down.

Vocabulary— When I started out, I know I desperately wanted to show I had a better vocabulary than the average person. Because that’s a hallmark of a good writer, yes? I didn’t want to use common, pedestrian words, the words just anyone would use. I was a skilled anecdotist, after all, not some mere amanuensis.

And let’s be honest—I wasn’t alone. This is a phase a lot of us go through as we’re starting out. We latch onto (or more often, look up) obscure and flowery words for our literary masterpiece, as if we’re going to get a quarter every time the reader has to look something up. And if the reader doesn’t enjoy going to the Miriam-Webster site every three paragraphs? Well that sounds like their problem, doesn’t it? Not my fault you’ve got such a limited vocabulary.

Truth is, any word I choose just to get attention—to prove I don’t need to use a common word—is the wrong word. Any word that makes my reader stop reading and start analyzing from context is the wrong word. I can try to justify my word choice any way I like, but nobody’s picking up my book hoping for a vocabulary lesson. When a reader can’t figure out what’s being said for the fourth or fifth time and just decides to toss my manuscript in the big pile on the left… there’s only one person to blame.

(It’s not them, in case you had any lingering thoughts on the matter)

Structure— Just like obscure vocabulary, convoluted structure’s another common sign of writer ego. One of the most common forms of this is insisting on grammatical perfection. This usually mean a lot of rigid, formal text and very stiff dialogue. It’s when I get so insistent on proving I know the correct way to structure a sentence my words end up sounding forced and artificial. Also worth noting the flipside of this which is insisting I don’t need to follow any grammar or spelling conventions. Punctuation? Capitalization? Those are tired tropes for losers.

The second most common sign is needless complication. I can admit I used to write—or try to write—sprawling, impenetrable prose. Sentences that went on and on. Descriptions that never ended. It took someone two pages to step through a doorway because we had to know what kind of socks and underwear they were wearing and what flavor toothpaste they preferred. If they were mentioned in the text, I had to remind you of these facts and how they were posed at the exact moment they spoke. Believe me, if something could be explained or described in less than ten words, I’d find a way to do it in at least fifty.

And while I never got quite that bad, there are also some writers who choose arcane story structures or points of view or tenses. Just because they can. Things will go from non-linear first person musings to omniscient third person flashbacks to second person song lyrics and then to a telepathic gestalt mind that only speaks in one of those single, three page sentences I was just talking about. There’s nothing wrong with any of these things, in a general sense, but so often they’re not there to serve the story. It’s just an attempt to look cool and do cool things. If I want to do something like this, I should be able to explain why I’m doing it. And the explanation needs to better than “y’know… reasons,” or I’m just going to leave my readers confused and frustrated as they get knocked out of my story again and again.

Said—Sad admission, kind of going with the vocabulary point up above. For many, many years I didn’t use said. Said was, in my opinion, the lowest common denominator of dialogue descriptors. It’s the kind of word used by writers who weren’t going places, writers not destined for greatness, like I clearly was. Not only that, I’d try to never us the same descriptor on a page twice. So in my early work my characters would respond, retort, exclaim, demand, muse, mutter, sneer, snap, shout, snarl, grumble, growl, whimper, whisper, hiss, yelp, yell, exclaim, or ejaculate. 

Oh, grow up. It was a common dialogue descriptor for years. Really.

Of course, once I finally got to sit down and talk with a professional editor and show him a few pages, this was the very first thing he commented on. Truth is, nobody notices said on the page. It’s an invisible word. Yeah, of course there’s going to be times when my characters are hissing or shouting or gasping. But I should save those words for then so their impact hasn’t been used up and weakened. The vast majority of the  time… stick to said.

Names—If used in moderation, names are also invisible. If you think about it, they’re just a shorthand note for the mental image of my character or MacGuffin or whatever. And they help us keep things straight if I’ve got a bunch of people all talking together.

It’s worth mentioning many fledgling sci-fi or fantasy writers feel the need to rename a lot of things. Or everything. Characters have all-new, correct-for-this-world names and so do their pets. And their gods. And their elements. And their system of weights and measures, their money, their units of time…  It’s great worldbuilding, but I’d guess 83% of the time this is just wasted words.  My elaborate sci-fi empire won’t collapse if I call mind-to-mind communication telepathy, but it might if I keep calling it intralobeech, which, as we all know, is short for “intralobe speech.”

Which, as we all know, is telepathy.

Always remember that moderation is key. Even a simple name like Bob can stack up and get distracting really quick. Which is why the ancient ones created…

Pronouns–when those proper names start to stack up, we switch to pronouns.  Just like names are shorthand for story elements, pronouns are shorthand for those names. When nouns start to clutter up my writing, they’re there to leap in and shoulder the weight.  It’s how Hector becomes he, that mysterious island becomes there, and a Hudson Hornet becomes it.

The catch here is I need to make sure my pronouns are clear. No questions exceptionally clear, ‘cause the moment someone gets confused about which her I’m referring to, they’re going to stop reading my story and start studying the page. We’ve all had to do that, right? Feel our way though a paragraph so we’re clear who she is. Or work backwards through the dialogue, trying to figure out who’s speaking which lines. I’m always super-careful with pronouns, because I don’t want that happening to anyone in my books.

Again—pronouns good. Pronoun confusion—bad. And it’s a writing rule you can apply to real life.

So there they are.  Four simple ways to keep our collective heads down so readers don’t see us standing there. Staring at them. Waiting to be noticed.

Y’see, Timmy, every time I make my reader hesitate or pause just for a second, I’m breaking the flow of the story. I’m encouraging them to skim at best, put the book down at worst. My reader should forget they’re paging through the latest Peter Clines novel, hopefully forget they’re reading altogether. And the easiest way to make that happen is for them not to see the writing.

It’s tempting to wave our arms and shout and try to get the reader to admit they can see us, but all this does is ruin things for everyone. It’s like Sherlock Holmes showing how he came to his amazing deductions or a magician explaining their greatest illusion. That moment is when the whole thing falls apart.

As writers, we need to go unnoticed. We want our characters to be seen and our dialogue to be heard, yeah. We want our action and passion and suspense to leave people breathless, absolutely.

But we’re just distractions.

Next time… hmmmmm. Not sure. I’m open to requests or suggestions if anyone has any. If not, I might tell you about a conversation I recently had with someone about getting published.

Until then… don’t let me see you writing.

Oh, hey everyone. What’s new with you? Anything cool going on?

I’ve had this idea on the backburner for… well, a few years now, but now that I’ve got a handle on it, I’d like to talk to you about one of the most important creative-arts films of the 1980s.

You read the title, so I’m pretty sure you can guess where I’m going with this.

Quick sum up, for those of you who’ve never seen Flashdance. Alex is an eighteen-year-old welder who dreams of being a professional dancer and makes side money as a… what would we call it? Exotic dancer? A non-nude provocative dancer. She’s got a friend who wants to be a professional ice skater and another one who wants to be a comedian. Alex also has a boyfriend who’s twice her age and also her boss at the steel mill, and there’s a lot to unpack there.

Actually, there’s so much to unpack in that relationship  it’s what a lot of reviews will focus on. That and, weirdly enough, how unrealistic it is someone could be a professional welder at eighteen in a union town. Probably the same people who complain about how lightsabers work and about how the military sets look in zombie movies.

Getting off topic. Sorry. Anyway…

In my opinion, those issues distract from the actual story, which—if you think about it—is a much more ‘90s story about a trio of young, aspiring performers all looking to break into their chosen fields. We’ve seen a few versions of that, yes? If we look at Flashdance in that light, what’s the story about?

Well, we have our trio of aspiring artistic friends. Alex gets a chance to audition for an exclusive dance conservatory and gets nervous and leaves without auditioning. Her friend enters an ice skating competition and fails (kinda horribly). Her other friend gets a chance to do his comedy routine at an open night mic and bombs (also horribly), but then he decides to move to LA where there are more comedy clubs to try performing at. Meanwhile, Alex’s boyfriend gets her another chance to audition for the conservatory and… she comes up with another excuse to not audition.

Seeing the pattern here? One of these things is not like the other. In this trio of aspiring artists, the other two are failing, but it’s only because they’re actually trying. Alex is the one who won’t take any risks. She’d rather stay in her safe, small pond where she’s a superstar rather than find out she’s not good enough to go higher. That’s her story—working up the courage to try. Because until she does that, nothing else changes. She stays where she is.

This happens to a lot of us in the arts. We get nervous about if we’re good enough and talk ourselves out of doing more. We can’t get rejected—we can’t fail—if we never put ourselves out there, right? Heck, there are even some folks who’ll twist failure into some sort of victory. “Yeah, I got rejected, but that just proves my writing’s too good for the homogenized publishing industry!”

As I’ve mentioned before, though, rejection’s just part of the process. Failure is how we learn and sharpen our craft. And we can’t fail if we never try to do more, to push ourselves higher. So if I’ve never failed… maybe it means I’ve just been playing it safe and not doing enough. Maybe it means, on some level, I stopped.

Y’see, Timmy, we need to push ourselves. We need to keep at it. Even when we get rejected. Even when someone says our chosen genre sucks. Even when they say our writing sucks. Like any art, the only way to improve is to keep doing it. To keep challenging ourselves again and again and again.

Ray Bradbury once said the only way you fail is if you stop writing. Which is the short form of this. So yes, I could’ve called this “the lesson of Bradbury,” but half of you wouldn’t’ve paid attention.

Next time, I’d like to talk about why you rarely see a good writer.

Until then, go write.