1. You’re Always About 12 To 24 Months From Dying In The Abyss
I talked about this in one of my more recent posts (advice for the mid-career writer) — but looking ahead a year or two down the line, most writers will see a cliff. This cliff represents the end of your current contracts, maybe the end of a series, and at that point you should expect your career to become a giant blinky spinny question mark. A cartoon question mark that laughs (“hyuck hyuck hyuck!”) and just shrugs whenever you ask it a question. It’s like a Magic 8-Ball except it only has one answer in its cabinet and that answer is, “Gosh golly who the fuck knows, maybe you’ll be eaten by a bear, hyuck hyuck.” In fact, one wonders if a cliff is the wrong metaphor: perhaps it’s a cave. A dark cave whose dark depths may present treasure (your book sold well and the publisher wants more!) or tribulation (the publisher said you sold four copies and will now exercise a rare contract clause where they get to force you to battle other authors in a subterranean Manhattan fight club for the pleasure of the literary elite).
2. Social Media Will Not Sell Your Books
Said it before, will scream it again and again at the asylum walls until my spit-forth soaks the padding — social media will sell tens or hundreds of books, but not thousands. Social media is good for getting the word out! Social media is good for earnestly talking about your book. Social media is not a good long-term sales channel. Like, that thing where you hop on there and constantly run through a reiterative a sales pitch? Day after day? It feels gross because it doesn’t really work. If it did work, you’d be selling many copies of your book to a considerable portion of your social media audience. And you’re probably not.
3. Your Book May Not Sell For A Lot Of Uncontrollable Reasons
CONGRATULATIONS YOUR BOOK IS PUBLISHED. *trumpets and fanfare and ice cream firehoses and literary fight clubs for your delight* OH SHIT SORRY YOUR BOOK SOLD FOUR COPIES. And you’re like, wait, why? Why did it only sell four copies? Could be that your book sucks. Or your publisher didn’t care about your book. Or the one person your publisher picked to market your book is the janitor. Maybe the bookstores didn’t carry it. Maybe the print run was too short. Maybe someone forgot to send it out to trade journals. Maybe the trade journals had a backlog because it’s a busy month with a lot of books landing and sorry, yours just wasn’t the priority. Maybe your genre has been oversaturated. Maybe somebody in the CHAIN OF POWER just fucking hates you and your hair and your clothes. Maybe you’re secretly a ghost and don’t realize it and nobody can see your book. Who knows? Ha ha ha, it’s a spinning carousel of constantly defecating horses! You don’t know which one shit on you! They just did! And maybe at the end of the day it is your fault and you wrote a less-than-great book or the wrong book or…? So, control what you can control and write the next one as best as you can, and the next one even better.
4. Quality Matters Less Than You’d Hope
Wait, did I say that you should write the best book? You should. You totally should. And it proooooobably doesn’t matter. Let’s face this train head on: a book that super-sucks might do really well, and a book that is legitimately fucking amazing and everyone knows it and it wins awards and is precious to many might sell like a rock dropped into a toilet. This is far from universally true! Sometimes great books sell equal to its perceived quality. Sometimes bad books huff glue and die in a gutter. And nearly always, good and bad are totally subjective declarations because outside of core writing competency, stories are not plug-and-play dongles.
5. Luck Matters More Than You’d Like
I have asked a question of authors whose books hit big, and that question is: “How did you do it?” And more often than not, the answer is an empty smile and a slow shrug. Books are not widgets. They are not generally the result of a creator looking at the market and saying, “You know what the Butt Plug industry is missing? A Butt Plug that looks like David Bowie’s The Goblin King.” It’s not a greeting card where you suddenly identify a new holiday (“OMG it’s Dachsunds-In-Catapults Day!”) that needs a line of greeting cards, stat. Books arrive in a giant sweeping tide of releases — hundreds of books crashing every week upon a narrow audience. The ones that do well may do well because… god, who the fuck knows why? They pluck some precious chord in the audience and they buy in. Books that do really well tend to set trends rather than follow them. The good news here is, you can totally maximize your luck. Selling lots of copies of your book is like meeting Oscar Isaac. You might just randomly meet him in a CVS somewhere, sure, but you can increase your chances by going to a CVS in Los Angeles, or frequenting a dance club he likes, or by hiding in his medicine cabinet like a haunting spirit. In publishing, you can write the best book you can and publish with the best publisher you can and then they market it and give it a hopefully great cover and ideally nobody drops the ball or humps the ball before dropping it down a sewer grate, and all of these things increase the Luck Stat on your book’s character sheet.
6. You Have More Power Than You Deserve
You’re a writer. Congratulations. That means you write books and that’s really all it means. But for some reason, writers are assigned more power than this. Writing a book affords us an unexpected platform made from our own books and suddenly we’re up on top of it and people are listening. And most likely, we have not prepared jack shit to say, and so we just hilariously gabble through some swiftly-invented wiffle-waffle and next thing you know people are taking that to heart or they’re pissed off at you or they’re forming a cult to either venerate or destroy you — and yet, all the while, you’re just someone good at writing books. Recognize that being a writer affords you some small measure of power and privilege (which is on top of any you already possess) and it is a thing to protect, a thing that asks for caution, a thing that demands responsibility. (Though audience, please also realize: writers are full of shit. Brimming with it!)
7. (Amazon and Barnes & Noble Have Way More Power Than You, Though)
Ha ha ha, don’t worry, your power is still unmercifully tiny in the grand scheme of things. Two entities have way more power than you: Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Sure, this is a duh thing, but it bears reminding that each of these entities is not your friend and also not your enemy. They’re just big companies full of individual people and their actions can conspire to save your book or slit the book’s throat. And sometimes these actions are accidental, sometimes these actions are willful against publishers or genres or even against you individually as an author. B&N, for example, accepts the industry chestnut that FIRST WEEK SALES REALLY MATTER, except sometimes B&N doesn’t put your book out on shelves during that first week for untold reasons and people go to that store looking for your book and it’s in a box in the back — and then, first week sales are lower than everyone would like and when it comes time for B&N to put in an order for book two, the buyers tut-tut and say, “Well, this book didn’t sell that well in its first week,” and they don’t order as many or they don’t order any at all. Amazon, on the other hand, has theoretically infinite shelf-space, but will gladly undercut the Kindle price of your book by slashing the physical price of the book lower than the digital version and then they’ll put this little passive-aggressive note under the account that says, Price set by that stupid publisher because we would never do that because we love you very much. B&N can demand a new cover or title for your book. Amazon can completely erase your publisher from their site during disputes, which mmm, probably sucks for you, author. Are either of these companies evil? Nope. They’re doing business. And business can sometimes be hard for the little guy. (AKA: you.)
8. Selling Poorly Can Mark You
Poor sell-through on a single book, as noted, can hurt you. It might mean smaller advances or less copies ordered for shelves or less bargaining power at the table for contracts. If your new book doesn’t sell well, an actual goblin manifests in your bedroom just as you’re falling asleep, and every Tuesday night the goblin punches you right in the crotch. That’s no lie. That’s one of many hard truths about publishing. Goblins. Fucking goblins. Dang.
9. … And So Can Selling Well
Selling well is amazing! Go you! Now you can pay bills and buy cool stuff and fans carry you around on a motherfucking palanquin. It’s all cake from here. And what I mean is, it’s all one flavor of cake. I hope you like that flavor because now if you try to write something of a different flavor, nnnnyeah, it may not work. A big successful book is like a moon orbiting you — that bastard has gravity, and it will affect all your tides. It will be harder to pull away from the thing that made you successful and harder to do something more creatively satisfying. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe it feels like an ART PRISON. But it’s something to note! A good problem to have, admittedly — but it can still be a problem.
10. No One Way Is A Lottery Ticket
This is obvious and probably doesn’t bear its own entry — but I am very, very happy that the discourse in writing and publishing has pulled away (presently and hopefully permanently) from all that talk of THE ONE PROPER PUBLISHING PATH. No one method is a lottery ticket. Yes, luck matters. Yes, quality is of varying degrees of usefulness. Just the same: writing is not some ALL OR NOTHING charade — it’s not you shoving all your wishes and dreams into one bottle and then chucking it into the ocean with the hope it washes up on some precious beach. It can be a slow and steady career. Sometimes a writing career is less about the flash flood and more about the power of orchestrated erosion — wearing down stone one sluice of water at a time. No one publishing path is a lottery ticket, but every publishing path is a goblin who will crotch-punch you before bedtime. Or something? I think I lost the thread there.
11. Bigger Advance Means Bigger Money Spent On Your Book
The more money spent on your book means the more money gets spent on your book. This is both sensible and weird. Sensible because investments must be protected, and sometimes you protect an investment by adding money to it. Weird because, hey, why does Coca-Cola advertise? Do they need it? Is there anybody in the world who doesn’t know that Coke exists? But even Coca-Cola must remind the world of its presence (and if I recall, Coke’s sales are down, too). In terms of your advance, it probably means the contrary is true, too — if you got a smaller advance, well, expect that fewer dollars will be thrown toward your book doing well. Your book is possibly relegated to the THROW THAT POOP AT THE WALL AND SEE IF IT STICKS department.
12. Publishers Don’t Always Know How To Sell Your Book
Marketing a book is less like using antibiotics for an infection ten years ago, and more like using antibiotics for an infection today. What I mean is, ten years ago if you had a bacterial sickness the doctor would be like HERE TAKE THIS ZITHOMYCILLIN PILL AND TA-DA YOUR SICKNESS IS GONE, and now it’s like, TAKE THIS FLORKOMAX PILL AND IF THIS DOESN’T WORK WE’LL TRY LIKE SIX OR SEVEN MORE AND HOPE LIKE HELL THAT YOU DON’T GET SOME SORT OF FACE-EATING UBER-MRSA BECAUSE AT THIS POINT WE KINDA FUCKED UP THE WHOLE ANTIBIOTIC THING SORRY. Making a book sell is not an act where as long as you make the proper sacrifices and insert TAB A into SLOT B you are guaranteed a bestseller. It’s important to realize that publishers don’t actually know what they’re doing. This sounds like a knock against them; it isn’t. It’s to make it clear that they are not perfect gatekeeper entities curating bestsellers while willfully relegating everything else to the sewer. The best publisher tries a lot of different things based on experience and data. Even still, the best publisher has to concede that what worked for Book #1 will not automatically work for Book #2.
13. Getting That First Book Published Is Like Yay, And Then, Oh Shit
You got a book published. Woo. Huzzah. Fuck yeah. That is awesome. You are awesome. Everything is amazing. Or, rather, everything is amazing until it’s not — the book comes out and now you’re in the fucking wilderness, you poor fucker. You’d gnaw your own arm off for some data. And the data that comes in is a crude porridge, not a fine consommé. BookScan is about as accurate as you throwing shoes at cars. You hit some, you miss some. Your digital sales numbers are not necessarily accessible (and not always right) — though they’re accessible if you self-publish, of course. Amazon ranking is less reliable than scrying your sales through bird entrails. Then reviews come in. Professional reviews hurt worse sometimes. Reader reviews can be wildly variant (LOVE THIS BOOK AND WILL KILL ANYBODY WHO SAYS DIFFERENT, 3 STARS; THE BOOK SMELLS WEIRD, 0 STARS; POOPY PANTS, 5 STARS). You expect that the book will come out and now it’s all huggable kittens and a fragrant odor that never leaves your nose, but mostly it’s a lot like wandering a shopping mall not sure what to buy or how you even got here or if you’ll ever be allowed to leave. You live here now. Oh well?
14. Getting That Second And Fourth And Twelfth Book Is The Same Way
Every book is that way, not just your first. Sorry.
15. People Are Going To Hate Your Book
They just are. Not all of them, of course. Even the dog-shittiest crap-nastiest what-the-fuckiest book is going to have fans, but the reverse is also true: even the BEST BOOK EVAR OMG is going to have a percentage of people who hate it so bad they will film themselves force-feeding it to a weeping zoo animal. “I HATE HIPPOS AND I HATE THIS BOOK, EAT THE BOOK MISTER TUB-TUB, EAT THE GODDAMN BOOK.”
16. No, You Don’t Need That MFA, Or That Program, Or That Workshop
‘Twas a bit of a row last week when Neil Gaiman enthusiastically endorsed Clarion the way that I might enthusiastically endorse eating tacos — I might say, for instance, that if you want to know why life is worth living, you need to eat a taco or you are dead to me. I don’t mean that literally, of course (except I do), and so when Mister Gaiman said that real writers need Clarion, he surely didn’t mean it given that he himself did not attend Clarion and neither did Margaret Atwood and neither did I and c’mon. That said, he has the privilege of a huge audience and a big voice (see earlier comment: “You Have More Power Than You Deserve”) and many penmonkeys felt stung because of a long history of being told they’re not allowed to be quote-unquote real writers. So, let’s just get this out of the way: Clarion is an amazing program and it is also a non-essential program. So too with any other workshop or group or MFA program. Those entities are in no way bad (though MFAs in particular can be very expensive and offer too little bang for your considerable buck) and are useful to many authors. But you don’t need them. Some people might care, but most don’t. What they care about is that you wrote a book and it does not suck.
17. Critique Partners Can Save You, Or Kick You In The Throat
A good critique partner helps you understand your work better and will point you toward a better iteration of that story. A bad critique partner will tell you how they would write the book and how to send the book in an entirely different direction that is wholly not your own. Bad critique partners and groups outnumber the good ones, in my experience. Most critique partners possess no qualifications and them messing with your work can be like some rando off-the-street trying to fix your bathroom plumbing. A book is a little like pancake batter — it’s best with some lumps in it, and a lot of critique partners want to overmix the batter, which dorks up the pancakes. Don’t let some clumsy ass-hand dork up your metaphorical narrative pancakes. That may be the weirdest sentence I’ve ever written, so please update your records.
18. People Want You To Give Your Film And TV Rights Away
Film and television rights should get you good money. Key word: should. Some publishers will try to just take them from you (and note, that few publishers actually have the incentive or skill to peddle those rights to the proper channels in La-La-Land). Some people in Hollywood will also just try to take them in the hopes that you feel blessed just by having that rare chance of them making a film product from your book. You’ll get word from some screenwriter or production company that they want to license the work for a time for basically no money in the hopes of developing a script and shopping it around and… boy-howdy that sounds nice. They’re scrambling to sell it then, too, and you’re all in the same boat together and if they win, you win! Except, this is really common. Your work is going to go in a bin with dozens of other freely-given rights. And they have as much value as you assigned them, which is to say: mostly zero. Earlier I noted that publishers who spend money on a book will then spend more money and attention on that book, and the same thing goes here. If someone pays you for the film/TV rights, they are likelier to make it. In fact, the more money they give you, the better your chance — because this is an investment. Your book is not a fucking penny-stock. If someone wants to park their Hollywood car over your rights for a year, they should pay you for the privilege.
19. Publishing Is Shockingly Niche In A Lot Of Ways
Publishing is tiny. The audience is small. Bestsellers hang around the list for a long time because most readers just read one or two books a year and the same books circulate in that audience — it’s a self-replicating machine that way. Most people in publishing know each other. Many writers know one another — especially in their particular genres. It’s all very niche. This is important to know because to many, it’s quite a surprise. It’s also a good reminder not to shit where you eat, because a whole lot of people are watching you pop that squat. (I must also note that publishing is also shockingly white. Or not shockingly, since most industries are? See the current row over the Oscars. Diversity on the page matters, yes, but inclusion has to be a column and not a floor — it has to go from ground to ceiling, and it has to cascade off the page to the writers writing the books, to the editors editing them, to agents and marketers and book buyers and so on. This is a bit of an adjacent point, admittedly, but I think it’s worth calling out.)
20. The Digital Revolution Created Whole Lotta Noise
E-BOOKS ARE JESUS AND WILL SAVE PUBLISHING AND yeah but no. It’s untrue that e-books aren’t doing well. They are. They may have plateaued, and physical sales may have thankfully rebounded, but they’re doing fine. They also did not transform the industry or destroy print publishing as some predicted. They revolutionized some authorial paths, they created accessibility for some readers and they also created a great deal of noise. I say this as a hard truth just in case someone out there is still peddling this as a MAGIC UNGUENT that will heal PUBLISHING ILLS. It’s not. Digital is great. It also created the opportunity for infinite trash — which is fine, I like infinite trash because that’s basically what the whole Internet is, anyway. It’s just useful to keep expectations in check.
21. The Desolate Heart Of Book Signings (And Why You Should Do ‘Em Anyway)
Most authors, even the best, will do book signings where nobody shows. And some folks’ll say that book signings are old hat and not worth doing but I call shenanigans. Bookstores are best when they are front-facing to the book-reading community, and they can only do that with the help of authors. Bookstores allow authors to connect with readers, and further, connect with the bookstores, too. Booksellers have the magic power of HANDSELLING, which is about as wizard as it gets inside publishing — the one tried-and-true way to sell a book is by word-of-mouth, except booksellers have a cheat code where they are forever accepted into a reader’s word-of-mouth trust-circle. Make friends with bookstores. Sign stock. Buy booksellers beer.
22. Indie Bookstores Are Amazing Except When They’re Not
I love indie bookstores. Correction: I love good indie bookstores. Some of them stink. Some of are not very nice to authors. I’ve gone to bookstores and talked about setting up signings or signing stock and they look at me like I’m trying to talk to them with a mouth full of pudding. I try to explain to them that I am a “real writer” and my books are already on their shelves but they make a face at me like a wrung rag and nnyeah, no. Good writers appreciate friendly bookstores and good bookstores appreciate friendly writers. Everything else is not worth the time.
23. A Book You Can Describe In 30 Seconds Will Do Better Than One You Can’t
This might be very cynical of me, and it isn’t a true and proven thing but just a thing I’m feeling — if you cannot describe your book with merciless efficiency, then that book may not do well. Meaning, if the book isn’t an easy sell — something you can say fast, like, A GUN-TOTING PENGUIN AND A NOBEL-AWARD-WINNING PHYSICIST PROSTITUTE FIGHT NAZI SEX WORKERS ON THE MOON, then that’s a problem. I tell people about the Miriam Black books and say that it’s about a young woman who can see how you’re going to die when she touches you — it’s a short sharp hook that sticks in your cheek faster than you even realize it. (And the books have done very well for me, I think in part due to that somewhat elegant shiv-stab of a premise.)
24. Writing Exposes Your Heart, And Publishing Takes Its Bite
Writing is a craft. Storytelling is an art. Publishing is a business. What you do is a combination of those three things, and that is very confusing — it’d be like monetizing your marriage or shilling your adorable puppy like you’re some sort of cackling puppy peddler. You do this thing you love. You bleed on the page. You art hard like an artful art-er and now here’s this thing in your hand. It’s your pulp-slick heart throbbing like the neck of a frightened toad. You want the world to protect it and care for it just as you yourself have done… but then publishing grabs the organ out of your hand and takes a big honkin’ stonkin’ bite. Chomp. Then publishing grins with its blood-slick mouth and hands it back. Craft plus art plus business makes for an uncomfortable combo but that’s how it is. The advice then is to harden your heart a little. Callus that motherfucker up. It’s still your heart. It’s still your art. Do not compromise that, but also be ready for when publishing opens its clacking maw and scooches closer and closer…
25. There Is No Map
The header says it all. No map exists. None of this is science. You don’t add two reagents together to get a consistent reaction. This thing we do is weird and wonderful and horrible and soggy with luck and pickled in privilege and is very much like being lost in the woods. But take solace that at least we’re all lost together. That has to count for something.
As always: go forth and art harder, little penmonkey.
Because really, what else can you do?
* * *
Miriam Black Is Back (In Print)
Miriam Black knows how you’re going to die. This makes her daily life a living hell, especially when you can’t do anything about it, or stop trying to. She’s foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, and suicides. She merely needs to touch you—skin to skin contact—and she knows how and when your final moments will occur. Miriam has given up trying to save people; that only makes their deaths happen. But then she hitches a ride with Louis Darling and shakes his hand, and she sees in thirty days that Louis will be murdered while he calls her name. Louis will die because he met her, and Miriam will be the next victim. No matter what she does she can’t save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she’ll have to try.
“Fast, ferocious, sharp as a switchblade and fucking fantastic.” — Lauren Beukes
Indiebound | Amazon | B&N
jrosebooks says:
What a fabulous post! Thank you for sharing your wisdoms! My favorite line, “Maybe it feels like an ART PRISON.” Lol!
I’m hoping by independently publishing my works, I’ll be able to switch genre and age-groups more over multiple books.
January 25, 2016 — 12:33 PM
Michelle Mach (@BeadsAndBooks) says:
Love, love, love this post! So hilarious and so very true. I’m going to use the word “penmonkey” as my job title from now on.
January 25, 2016 — 12:45 PM
Rebeca says:
My university experience made me learn truths 16 and 17. I’m glad I went, and I do think I learned a lot in those workshops, but I think I could have learned all of the same by just reading and writing and having good critique partners for the same amount of years. I earned good grades in all workshops and I still feel like an utter newbie when it comes to writing. (Probably and sadly just waiting for a publishing contract to validate me.)
Plus, I usually found myself in the minority of genre fiction writers in said workshops. Usually more than half of the class would be composed of literary fiction writers.
It didn’t happen often, but on occasion you got classmates (and professors!) who just outright hated sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc. Some could put their dislike of the genre aside and critique fairly. Others couldn’t. And when the latter happened, it was just endless, “well why are there witches here? Why not just write about a mother and daughter?” Not to mention they’d conclude what was wrong with the story was actually a problem of the entire genre. (Ex: say a fantasy story had next to no character development. During workshop, it wasn’t just, “this story isn’t doing enough with its characters.” It’d be, “fantasy stories don’t care about characters.”)
Oh, and I gotta say, I’m kind of worried about truth 19. I have a ton of fun reviewing and discussing books with the Goodreads community, but some reviews/discussions can get. . .brutal. I’m guessing it’s all fun and games as an untouchable consumer, but as a creator, it could go down badly. Like flipping off all your co-workers.
“Don’t shit where you eat” indeed.
January 25, 2016 — 12:58 PM
Hamnerd says:
Yeah ikwym about good reads!
January 25, 2016 — 1:07 PM
mariahavix says:
This totally made me think (unfortunately of a great XKCD)
https://xkcd.com/385/
My failure as an author shouldn’t be a condemnation of my genre. Let me screw up on my own merits.
January 25, 2016 — 6:57 PM
Hamnerd says:
Thank you for these!
That has got to be a tremendous blow to ones ego to do a book signing and for nobody to show up! Has this ever happened to you, Chuck?
January 25, 2016 — 1:06 PM
terribleminds says:
Not at a bookstore, but I’ve had signing lines at cons that were, well, not lines at all but rather desolate wastelands.
January 25, 2016 — 1:35 PM
Marshall Ryan Maresca says:
There are many cons where the fact that authors are there at all, let alone signing books, is kind of a strange afterthought.
January 26, 2016 — 3:21 PM
kellbrigan says:
Notice: there is a cognate error somewhere in this post! I noticed it because it’s the same kind of error I’ve been making inn droves since I hit 45. My audiologist says she sees a lot of women “of a certain age” who develop these weird, subtle language processing issues, sew maybe it’s related two hormones oar something. On the other hand, the good Mr. W is one of those male-issue humans, so who knows what’s going on. (Men don’t get PMS because they’re crazy all the time! Ha ha.) Happy hunting.
January 25, 2016 — 1:14 PM
melorajohnson says:
As always, thanks for the words. You make me feel like I’m headed in the right direction, even though it’s been a long haul.
January 25, 2016 — 1:23 PM
Mike says:
“12 TO 24 MONTHS FROM DYING”
Well the average cubicle dweller has but 30 days of runway visibility. 12 to 24 months is pretty good.
January 25, 2016 — 1:38 PM
Tim Washburn says:
Thanks, Chuck. You’re post arrived when I needed it most. Two months out from the release of my debut thriller and I still don’t know what the fuck is happening.
January 25, 2016 — 2:01 PM
disperser says:
After this, I’m teaching myself hangman’s knots. No, not for me, but for my expectations. Trouble is, they were already so low, there’s no neck to speak of. But now . . . now they are practically embedded in the cold and unforgiving cement floor.
Seriously, anyone who has worked at any business should already know all this, but it’s good to spell it out for those who see writing as a career path. Sure, it can be . . . you can eventually sit in the head office, but it’s good to remember there’s a greater chance that after 20 years you might still be working in the mail room.
January 25, 2016 — 2:04 PM
Paul Baxter says:
That horse is looking at me and judging. “Why are you not writing?” the horse says. I cannot argue with the horse.
I tell the horse I will start writing as soon as I get out of Art Prison. It’s guarded by mimes. They’re the best guards, because you can never hear them move. You can feel their gaze, though. It burns.
January 25, 2016 — 2:31 PM
Lostcarlson says:
Oh man! you got a horse outside your door. Shit, mine’s a donkey, now how do I get a-long-little-doggie. Oh right, I got this one, CARROT.
January 25, 2016 — 3:29 PM
Paul Baxter says:
Donkeys are smart enough not to hang around the scene of the crime.
January 25, 2016 — 11:50 PM
jakazimer says:
Love that you brought up diversity. Not only is the industry very pale in color, it is also full of vaginas, and yet women are given lower advances in general and often made to use their initials when branching into a typical ‘male’ genre. See changes a coming?
January 25, 2016 — 3:47 PM
Dawn Napier says:
One can only hope.
When I started publishing I contemplated calling myself DM Napier, but then I brushed the thought aside. “If readers are going to be that shallow I don’t want their money anyway, ha ha *weeps into pillow*” Now I’m consistently criticized for a certain scene in one of my books: “I can’t believe a woman could write a scene so graphic and disturbing!” Seriously? Women can’t write disturbing shit? Two words: child birth.
January 25, 2016 — 9:59 PM
jakazimer says:
I hear, you write like a man, all the time. I understand the sentiment, but it still bugs me each time. And yes, women are far more disturbed than men ever wish to be.
January 26, 2016 — 2:28 PM
Ed says:
I think its sad that women get worse deal, after all how can you say an imagination is limited by gender? But just a thought for women out there, would you reading a love novel by a man be less romantic? Or had E.L.James been a man, would that of made 50 shades “putrid filth”?
I think despite our culture and diversity of reading habits we are still confined by the sterotypes we are brought up with that men fight, women have the babies (or in the literary case, men write violence women write about love.)
But yet another example of Chuck’s mind showing its muscle with challenging us to think about how and why we write 🙂
January 27, 2016 — 1:44 PM
Tess Lecuyer says:
I worked for Borders for years. Authors would show up and sign. I sold the nice one’s books. The mean authors got no such service. If the author brought cookies for the staff and made sure to put a sign on them saying who they were from, I also made a point of hand-selling their books and making sure they were displayed. Ignore the bookstore manager – give cookies to the booksellers, and an ARC if you have them.
January 25, 2016 — 4:09 PM
Vince Vawter says:
In total agreement with 24 of your points. Not sure about #17 on critique partners. My assessment is that even the sharpest ones have potential to do far more harm than good. When I step on a 767, I want that pilot to know more than I do about flying that plane by a factor of at least a thousand. Someone who critiques something I have 5,000 hours of my life invested in should at least hit a factor of a hundred. Okay, I’ll take 50. But if they have that, they write. They don’t critique. Your post is a classic, Chuck, if only to reach the final line. We write because we can’t stand not writing.
January 25, 2016 — 4:25 PM
Dawn Napier says:
I’ve actually gotten VERY good criticism and feedback from people who don’t know the first thing about writing. Writing a book isn’t like flying a plane. As Mr. Wendig pointed out, a lot of it is luck and guesswork. There’s no science involved, or very little, so one’s knowledge and experience are pretty useless. But what a complete novice can do is give us the perspective of a casual reader, someone who doesn’t know a damn thing about sentence structure, prepositions, grammar, or adverbs. They just want a good story, something to take their minds off of reality for a while. My husband is a great first reader. He doesn’t know ANYTHING about how to write a book. But he can tell me, “This fight scene lasts too long, and it feels like they’re just standing around half the time.”
January 25, 2016 — 10:10 PM
Marshall Ryan Maresca says:
Some of the strangest critiques I’ve gotten came from people who wanted to treat it like it was a science. Like there was an equation for THIS=PERFECT OPENING, or (CHARACTER*PLOT)/PROSE=BOOK, and anything that doesn’t fit into those equations is empirically wrong.
January 26, 2016 — 3:25 PM
Guy Riessen says:
See there’s the problem! Everyone knows it’s actually calculus because you need to also measure pacing’s delta over time
February 10, 2016 — 5:08 PM
thatcalamity says:
I disagree on this one, sorry. I feel like someone who’s *not* invested in a story that I’ve put 5k hours into is more able to see which darlings of mine need to be killed to make the whole better. Or, if there’s a gaping hole that my brain fills in, because I know how the story ‘goes’ so I assume the reader should as well, when in reality I’m not giving them enough information.
January 26, 2016 — 10:52 AM
Mariah Avix says:
I think this depends on the kind of critique and the kind of person. If I’m a user of BigFamousWebsite and I get super frustrated and can’t find the think I’m looking for and I quit using it, that is great feedback that BigFamousWebsite likely wants to know. If I say, I can fix your code for you, just give me 5 minutes and access, that’s a bad thing.
If the feedback is as a reader I don’t understand this and I’m going to quit reading? That’s great feedback. If the feedback is here is exactly the way to fix it? Eh…Can be more dangerous. I might be a coding genius and totally ethical. Or I might be super evil. Or just stupid.
January 26, 2016 — 7:13 PM
Rebecca says:
That is why I picked my critique partner very carefully. She is an excellent writer, a skillful editor, and both encouraging and brutally honest. We write in different genres but read outside of our niche, which helps give us perspective. One should put as much consideration into choosing a critique partner as one does choosing a lover – and even then, it might not work out in the long run, but at least it’s better than an ill-conceived affair.
I have beta readers, as well, but they serve an entirely different function.
January 27, 2016 — 3:09 PM
Soooz says:
Yup.
January 25, 2016 — 4:49 PM
Sheila M. Good, Author says:
Now, A GUN-TOTING PENGUIN AND A NOBEL-AWARD-WINNING PHYSICIST PROSTITUTE FIGHT NAZI SEX WORKERS ON THE MOON, is a book I’d like to read. LOL. Excellent post.
January 25, 2016 — 6:55 PM
TKP says:
Authors don’t realise just how many thousands of books are published every day – major pubs, indie pubs, vanity presses, self-publishers, digital only. I work with an indie press and it seems like there are as many authors as readers some days – we literally get thousands of submissions. Even if your book is good – it will have to compete with thousands of others.
Publishers do their best to advertise books but the sheer saturation of the market goes against them too. To say publishers don’t care about your book is naive – even publishers have to swim in torrents of competing books. I know people that got published by a large publisher, where the book bombed and was pulped, despite a decent advertising campaign. I seriously don’t think most authors realise the sheer volume of new books published.
Print runs mean little these days. More and more big presses are going to POD – it’s more economical, saves paper and stocking space, and is the future so deal with it. POD printing has come a long way – and only experts can tell anymore. A lot of writer advice pieces seem to be a few years behind on this score. Traditional print runs and warehousing of books is putting lots of smaller presses under – especially as book stores want everything on consignment – only to return them in used condition. Getting your book in bookshops doesn’t mean that much either – most new titles sell online or don’t sell. Most bookshops only stocked used or commercial press publications – so most of us will never see our books there.
More emphasis needs to be on doing quality work. Yes, I know you still might not get published – or sell if you do – but it gives you slightly more chance. Let me assure you – even the smallest of small presses gets absolutely inundated with poorly written books – and most of those are dispensed with in 20 seconds by a submissions panel. Suddenly, everyone thinks they can write – so make sure you have good ideas and write well.
January 25, 2016 — 7:50 PM
Louis Shalako says:
You’re right of course. In which case, maybe we need to find other reasons to do it. Just throwing that out to the universe.
January 25, 2016 — 9:13 PM
Leif Husselbee says:
#4 pretty much sums up Twilight and Fifty Shades
January 25, 2016 — 10:14 PM
conniecockrell says:
Hahahahahaha! Thank you so much for clearing out the thin-skinned and overly-optimistic. I salute you! I have 13 books out and more on the way. I’m not F’ing giving up. Bring it on you trolls and ideologues. I write genre fiction. Get over it. I’m gonna keep writing it in whatever the hell genre I feel like. If you’d like to get a gander I’m at http://www.conniesrandomthoughts.com. My books and their sales links are on My Books tab.
Thanks for the list Chuck. I’ll see you in author hell.
January 26, 2016 — 1:17 AM
Ann G. Luna says:
#15 is something I will always remember because I will not kill myself over haters.
January 26, 2016 — 1:35 AM
Colleen Simpson says:
These are all good points, but I choose not to have a publisher, so it was interesting to compare perspectives on the points – the view is similar:
1. I have no contracts; the cliff is always at my feet, and I refuse to look at, or consider that this writing thing might *never* work. It’s true that, no matter how good I am, I might never make enough to make a living, but my research says otherwise. With five years to go before the first ten years of trying to make a living from this gig are up, I’ll let it play out… especially as I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way.
2. True.
3. Correct.
4. True. Good or bad is often in the eye of the beholder. I produce the best product I can at the time, and try to improve all the time, but, in the end, it is the reader who makes the final call.
5. … true, dangnabbit…
6. True – writing brings the responsibility of doing the best you can, no matter what you write; writing also demands that, when you’re done, you keep moving forward.
7. Also true.
8. Not true for the indie, but selling poorly does make it hard to pay the bills.
9. Not true for the indie, but selling well makes paying the bills a whole lot easier.
10. YAY! Very true. You are not wrong for going traditional, or hybrid, or independent, just do the best you can at whatever you choose and accept the limitations, while making the most of the advantages of the publishing options you have chosen. Don’t winge about it; it is, after all, your choice. And don’t judge others for taking a different path to the one you believe in – you do not know where they have already walked.
11. Not applicable; indies do not get advances… unless they dip into their own savings
12. Also true. Kristine Kathryn Rusch repeatedly makes this point in her blog.
13. Also true for independents. Advice by those in the biz longer than me is don’t look; go write the next book – but *do* review your titles, 12-24 months out, to reassess if there is anything that can be done better if they’re selling poorly; also be aware of how your genre or prose type tends to sell as that will affect uptake.
14. True.
15. True.
16. True, but as Dean Wesley Smith points out, and as I think you have said on occasion, a writer should always take the time to learn and improve their craft.
17. True, but don’t rely on just one and don’ t feel obligated to take an opinion if your gut says otherwise.
18. Not sure for indies, unless they’re approached by a publisher.
19. Publishing is niche, our readers are not. Publishers tend to publish to what they perceive as a market; as an indie, I can publish a story that I like and know it has a chance of finding an audience, and that includes work a publisher can’t afford to take a chance on.
20. The digital revolution *did* create a lot of noise, but it brought new flexibility, too.
21. True.
22. True.
23. True.
24. True.
25. Yay! True! So glad to hear someone else saying this. The publishing landscape has changed. We not only do not have maps, but the ground shifts beneath our feet and the horizon is often shrouded – meh, at least we’re not bored.
Thank you for making me think on this 🙂
January 26, 2016 — 3:59 AM
weissblut says:
Chuck. I love you of an heterosexual friendly man-to-man love.
January 26, 2016 — 7:07 AM
Teddy says:
you wouldn’t if you saw it in person.
January 30, 2016 — 10:35 AM
Casondra Brewster says:
I’m totally expecting that my first traditionally published book is going to be this: “Your book is possibly relegated to the THROW THAT POOP AT THE WALL AND SEE IF IT STICKS department.” Underanticipate, hopefully over achieve? Or something like that. And when I find that fucking crotch-punching goblin….
#24 is pure gold there, Herr Wendig. Pure gold. I hear Goblins Love Gold. Beware.
Alright, time to write.
January 26, 2016 — 11:45 AM
deborahblake1 says:
“Because really, what else can you do?” I believe the answer to that is “Drink.”
January 26, 2016 — 1:42 PM
Marshall Ryan Maresca says:
The thing with #12 & #13 that I’ve come to terms with– and this basic realization has done wonders for my stress and frustration levels– is that NO ONE IS GOING TO BE MORE EXCITED ABOUT YOUR BOOK THAN YOU.* Once I got that in my head, it helped me find a more zen place about the promotion and review aspects of this industry.
—
*- That is, until you reach a certain new plateau in fame and fandom. Again, with what you said about higher advances and more money being thrown at it. But most of us are not there and won’t be.
January 26, 2016 — 3:33 PM
Phil Simon says:
There’s no shortage of luck in explaining success. Those looking for quick five-point checklists to ensure success will go wanting.
January 26, 2016 — 3:56 PM
Liz says:
I need all these points like a kick in the butt. Question about advances: What if there are no advances offered? Just, “we love your manuscript and we’ll publish you, but you set up your marketing budget yourself” kinda publishing houses coming my way? Should I run, like, really far?
January 26, 2016 — 4:00 PM
terribleminds says:
Run!
January 26, 2016 — 9:50 PM
Mary Jane Hathaway says:
Like really, really far.
January 27, 2016 — 7:42 AM
Aphotic Ink says:
That… sounds like they’ll format your work and then take a cut of anything you manage to sell (with your own marketing efforts (which are possibly paid for out of your own pocket, it’s not 100% clear to me))?
Run screaming.
January 27, 2016 — 9:13 PM
Liz says:
I replied from my blog but have no idea where it went so if it’s a duplicate, I apologize. And yes, they format your book, edit (though I’ve seen typos and glaring plot holes in their published books) and choose the cover, and it’s your responsibility as an author to market your cover reveal, book launch, etc. They give you a list of recommended companies they work with for PR and encourage you to work with their other authors and foster that sense of community. They launch books together (4 authors in 1 day, if you’re new) through their FB page and tweet now and then with rafflecopter giveaways, but all the marketing expenditures is yours. They keep 50-60% of royalties and the rights for 5 years. I’ve had people tell me that hardly anyone gives advances anymore so this shouldn’t be a surprise (or probably I shouldn’t be picky) but I find that very hard to believe.
January 28, 2016 — 3:07 AM
Aphotic Ink says:
Pardon all caps, I’m on the phone and can’t italicize.
You WROTE a NOVEL. It gets published for the first time ONCE. Of course you should be picky. No-one else will be picky for you. (Ok, maybe an agent, but that’s a different thing.)
Take advances off the table for the moment. (People still give them, but. And as Chuck Wendig mentioned, people value what they pay for.) Even leaving that aside:
A publisher is supposed to publish your book – to market it, to get it out there, to make it available, to let people know about it. They are not supposed to strongly recommend you pay money to their business partners so you can resell the book they have packaged. They are certainly not supposed to put the job of promoting other books that they have packaged on you.
You mentioned seeing their books. Do you think enough copies of one of their titles will sell that your royalties will make up for all the money and time you spend promoting them?
I mean, as I understand what you described, this sounds like it might be worth it to you if you basically want to self-publish, and want to give this business half your profits in exchange for them doing file formatting, a cover, and the occasional mention on social media? (If that’s what you want, okay. God knows paying a book packager can be a big up-front expense. But I don’t get the impression you want that?)
(I cannot comment on your contract, but you know you can always email Writer Beware, right?)
January 28, 2016 — 9:49 AM
Liz says:
A few of writers I know signed up with them and I purchased their books and spotted the errors and some are getting 1-star reviews because of plot holes and things that the editor should have picked up on. But in my case, I ran, screaming. I’ve always hated commitments, and if I wasn’t getting even a toy ring for my trouble, I figured I’d buy the ring myself, and I did. I self-published and I think I’m way happier, even if I have to say, “I self-published.” versus “I’m published BY xyz (who expects me to do the work so they keep their 60%).”
January 28, 2016 — 11:28 AM
Maureen C. Berry says:
This “nobody drops the ball or humps the ball before dropping it down a sewer grate,” and #12. That’s where my first MS went.
Thanks for the healthy diversion Chuck and I’m glad to see “Blackbirds” is making it to television. Congrats!
January 26, 2016 — 5:10 PM
K. Cain says:
Oh my goodness, #4. I am reading City of Bones after my niece begged me to read the series and the book is full of useless information crammed in just to up the word count. I don’t care about the street cleaners, I don’t need two paragraphs explaining why Simon says “hey” instead of “hello” (because boys just do that it says).
January 26, 2016 — 8:13 PM
S. R. Karfelt says:
Mebbe I am a ghost. Maybe I’m getting all my mistakes out of the way right off. Or possibly I’m going to graduate to poltergeist one day. Anyway way I can live with it–or, you know, not if the first is true but whatever. All I know for certain is I read all twenty-five truths nodding my penmonkey head.
January 26, 2016 — 10:27 PM
Dave Cousins says:
Thanks Chuck. Even on the darkest days of Penmonkey doubt and dismay you manage to make me smile. Respect.
January 27, 2016 — 3:45 AM
Mary Jane Hathaway says:
“Pulp-slick heart throbbing like the neck of a frightened toad”, indeed. This article is so true you could use it to map property lines.
January 27, 2016 — 7:40 AM
emilywenstrom says:
Simultaneously disheartening and motivating. Always appreciate your wisdom from the *other side* of authorial success.
January 27, 2016 — 9:07 AM
Kate Gilliam says:
Mean spirited and not helpful
January 27, 2016 — 10:07 AM
addy says:
fantastic post chuck but one question
IS MIRIUM BACK FOR TELEVISION!!!!!??????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!?????????????? I NEED THIS NOOOOWWWWW
January 27, 2016 — 10:48 AM
terribleminds says:
Nope! Not coming to TV. At least, not at present! The option lapsed and the show is done at Starz.
January 27, 2016 — 10:58 AM
addy says:
aww thats a shame. i shall wait like a meth addict while i wait for the next book.
also thank you very much for replying, i have been a big fan for a while now 😀
January 27, 2016 — 11:33 AM
jamosteller says:
Pen monkey it is. Great post.
January 27, 2016 — 9:18 PM
David Chislett says:
So nice to hear this here, on this blog! As a profesional writer for the last 20 years, I have observed a lot of these things… but so far I have not broken through into anything resembling commercial success… but I like to write about that too!
January 28, 2016 — 3:47 AM
Jen says:
Recently struggling to decide if I want to go back to school for my MFA. This post was a God-send. THANK YOUUUU.
January 28, 2016 — 11:28 AM
Katharine Ashe says:
I laughed, I cried, it was (way) better than Cats. Deadline day for me today and you just made me snort (air) more times than a body should on deadline day. Blessings upon you, child.
January 29, 2016 — 7:41 AM