Novelist Explains the Book Business

Veteran novelist Catherine Ryan Hyde, author of Pay It Forward and 15 other books wrote two great articles on the book publishing business on DailyFinance.

In the first, The (Paltry) Economics of Being a Novelist, she describes the monetary underpinnings of the novelist's business. She talks about things like advances, royalty checks (apparently authors get only two a year), the shelf life of a novel, and other such things. The inevitable conclusion is, of course, don't do it for the money.

In the second, The (Unlikely) Economics of Your Book Becoming a Movie, she described how novelists (theoretically) profit from their books. She tells about her experience from when Pay It Forward was adapted to film. No surprises here either: if your name isn't J.K. Rowling or Stephen King, there's mostly no money and definitely no creative control.

Great articles for anyone ever entertaining the thought of being a novelist and wondering about the process, the business side of things, the journey, etc.

Scribd -- a friendlier self e-book publisher for authors

I seriously don't know much about self publishing. All I know is that it's definitely getting more attention.

Today I read on NYT about Scribd, an Internet start-up that introduced today a way for anyone to upload a document to the Web and charge for it. Already Scribd is the most popular document-sharing site, the Times say, as it takes a YouTube-like approach to text.

But now there's a store too, which allows authors or publishers to set their own price for their work and keep 80% of the revenue, which apparently is a much higher percentage than higher services (I really don't know, does anyone know how much Lulu.com charges for example?)

Other features include security measures, or unprotected PDFs, which gives them the ability to be read on any device (not just the Kindle).

The Times writes:

So far, no major publishing houses have signed on to the store, though the company says it is talking to them. The independent publishers Lonely Planet, O’Reilly Media and Berrett-Koehler will add their entire catalogs.

The Scribd store will also give unpublished authors, or authors who are in a hurry, a well-trafficked Web forum on which to post their books, charge for them and see immediate results.

There have been some success stories of self publishing, although not many. Regardless, I definitely it's exciting there's another service for writers in the Internet age.

Anyone with some self-publishing experience can give a better insight into the new service?

Editors demistified

For those writers out there submitting stories, those interested in submitting and just for general knowledge, I found this: 5 Lies Writers Believe About Editors from Jeremiah Tolbert, an editor at Escape Pod:

LIE #1: Editors give every story fair consideration. OR: Editors reject stories without reading them at all.

LIE #2: Editors never reject a good story.

LIE #3: Editors don’t foster new writers like they did in the old days, and don’t care about new talent.

LIE #4: Editors are people too.

LIE #5: Editors (and critics) are failed writers.

Via Futurismic

About word counts (oh, and ze blog)

I know I've deviated lately from the main topic of this blog -- writing. At least, that's what the topic used to be once upon a time, about two years ago, when it was still an active blog.

Then the war happened and I was outed and I had a hard time returning to blogging. Seems lately, though, I've been back blogging a little after all. Only I don't feel like blogging just about writing all the time. So I won't. My blog, my say.

But this post is about writing.

I participated in NaNoWriMo this year. I knew I'd likely fail, but I knew it would give me an extra incentive to write anyways. So I joined, and yes, I "failed" but I don't count it as failing. I wrote over 12,000 words during November. I think that's not too shabby at all.

You know I'm also an editor at BloggingStocks, right? So I have a running word count on the system there. To date, I wrote 991,557 words over two years and half. That's nearly ten standard size novels. In two and half years. If you do the math, that's just over 1,000 words a day. Every day.

Since no one is expecting anyone to write 10 novels in two and half years -- that's about seven and half novels too many -- then do the new math and you get that by writing only 274 words a day you get 100,000 words a year. A novel.

Point: Anyone discounting any amount of words written is doing injustice to herself. Anyone thinking a goal of just 200 words a day would get him nowhere is dead wrong. It adds up. Don't argue with the math!

Or, in the words of one Insane Writer: Writing: It’s All About the Numbers.

I know I get discouraged sometimes when all I can manage is a measly 150 words, so I guess I'm writing this more for myself following my undisputed, gynormous failure in NaNo...

Categories: writing, process, blogging