publishing

Not a rant

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In the “This is freaking annoying” category, the increasingly out of touch Wall Street Journal tries to cover The Death of the Slush Pile. Never mind that the author trots out the same old chestnuts about bestsellers being rejected and Pultizer-winners being plucked from the slush, she adds a dose of “Wasn’t the internet supposed to fix this?” and “Connections still matter!” then goes straight to confusing book publishing slush with film/TV script slush. Grrr.

Here’s an instructive experiment: try sending an unsolicited filmscript query to a Hollywood film agency. One that represents writers.

It’s a waste of time and trees. If you want to be in movies or TV, you ought to be making connections. You ought to be making friends who are trying to break in, too. Help them with their projects. They help you with yours. Meet people. Don’t be crazy. Get an entry-level job or gig.

Publishing isn’t like that. You can write a letter from anywhere and mail it in. A certain percentage of agents will reject you, and the same is true of publishers. Probably, it’ll be a large percentage. That’s not something to worry about; you just need to find the right person to put your book in front of readers.

But this is an article that wraps up by calculating the odds of selling a story to a magazine by comparing the number of stories published with the number of stories submitted, so it’s pretty clear this is a ignorant mish-mash.

Nice place you have here. Buy my book.

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I’d planned to drop a link to this article into a “Randomness” entry for later posting, but actually I want to talk about it.

Click through and check it out, please: Stephen Elliott did an unusual sort of book tour to promote The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder: he did readings in people’s homes. They were all complete strangers to him, but they agreed to pick him up at the airport and host a party for 20 people, minimun, in which he’d read from and talk about his book. At the end of the party, he slept on their couch.

It sounds like it worked out very well for him, mostly–so well, in fact, that he got himself an article in the New York Times (which I imagine will sell more books than the tour did). Personally, I think it’s a great idea for a non-fiction writer. I don’t think it would work for me.

For one thing, I don’t really like to talk about my book, especially with people who haven’t read it. For another, I’m uncomfortable visiting my friends at their homes. Traveling from one stranger’s house to another, unable to leave, sleeping on their couch… ::shudders:: It would be misery.

His lending library idea is simpler and more doable for me, but less interesting, too.

The reason I bring this up is that my wife attended a slightly unusual book tour event last night: She went to a “Words & Wine” event for Sir Ken Robinson, author of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. For $25, she got a copy of the book (signed, ‘natch), a little wine and hors d’oeuvres, a front row seat while the author was interviewed, and a chance to talk to him later. Annoyingly, the interviewer seemed to think the book was about finding yourself or finding happiness, when the author and the audience kept turning it back to its actual subject: education reform.

Still, she had a great time. She also spoke with the woman who ran it, who told her they don’t do sf/f. They tried it once, but the crowd didn’t match the elegant/affluent tone. And that’s fine by me; my wife loves me and liked to promote my work to the people she meets, but she’s a socializer. I’m not. I find the idea of mingling in a hotel reception room with a bunch of strangers much less uncomfortable than doing in a home, but I’d still rather kick back at home with a book.

Me, I’m still doing email interviews. Just yesterday I had a request for another one. ::shrugs:: It’s not exactly revolutionary, but I’m not exactly brimming over with new ideas for meeting new people.

“Lurking with intent”

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I’m on page 123. Check that against the timestamp from my previous post to see how slow I am.

In my defense (you knew I’d make excuses, yeah?) I happened to hit one of the delicate parts of the book. Certain scenes with elevated action–very powerful emotions, very intense magic, monsters, whatever–require extremely careful handling or they turn maudlin or ridiculous.

I’m not finished for the day, though. I’m going to take my computer across the street to the diner and work through lunch, then it’ll be time to work at the library.

There *is* something I’d meant to mention in my previous post that I completely forgot: One nice thing about the Game of Cages cover art (I’m not shameless enough to link to it again, don’t worry) is that you can see the guy, and he isn’t standing at the shadowy entrance to an alley or something.

For a lot of years, urban fantasy with male protagonists have been these “lurking with intent” covers, where the protagonist looks like a guy you’d circle the block to avoid. Does he have nothing better to do than stand around in the dark? Get that guy a job or a hobby or something.

Anyway, it’s nice to see Ray standing in the light, with no hint of skulking about him.

Now: food! And more revisions.

My editor writes a post

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Betsy Mitchell, editor-in-chief at Del Rey, tallies up the reasons she rejected novels last year. It’s pretty interesting if you’re a writer-type. Be sure to read the comments, too; Betsy addresses several questions specifically.

I just got home

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… and found the cover art for Game of Cages waiting in my inbox.

!!!

I don’t have permission to share it yet, so I will have to share my excitement instead.

:-D

Quote of the day

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This is a long one, from an interview with Terry Rossio, one of the highest-paid screenwriters working today, and the man who runs the Wordplay site, which is full of writerly advice. I learned a lot on the Wordplay message boards, and in the columns, and I learned a lot from this interview (even though I’m supposed to be MAN BITES WORLD.

Anyway, this is about screenwriting, naturally, not writing books, but I think it’s pertinent:

JRM (interviewer): How did you break in, and how did you come to be where you are now?

Terry Rossio: I’m going to try to not give the usual boilerplate answers in this interview, and that means not going along with false presumptions, no matter how seemingly benign. The question about breaking in seems perfectly legit, but really it’s not. A writer must create compelling work, and then try to sell it. Once sold, the writer has to do the same thing again. It’s really not true that the writer ‘breaks in’—that’s an artifact of the belief that the person is being judged, not the work, and also of the belief that there is an inside and an outside, which I don’t think exists. There are too many screenwriters out there with only a single credit for there to be an inside, and too many writers on the outside making sales, to too many markets which are either new, changing, or undefined.

In truth buyers are just not that organized, your buyer is not my buyer, or in some cases, you can become your own buyer. Courtney Hunt was nominated for an Academy Award this year for best screenplay for Frozen River, and she’s never sold a screenplay. Is she on the inside or the outside? In truth, anyone, at any time, can come up with South Park or Superman or Sandman, and that’s all that matters.

And I can’t resist adding this one:

Screenwriters are the Charlie Browns of Hollywood, and everyone else holds the football.

I recommend reading the whole interview. Yeah, it’s a little long, but the stuff on constructing a story is wonderful

Another interview with me

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Actually, this will probably be the last one, and it’s text rather than an audio file. It’s at Write On Online, and it was done by Debra Eckerling.

It’s a writing site, so there’s writing advice on there, for those who are interested in that sort of thing.

God, it’s been a weird day for me. Is it weird for you? I’m doing the preliminary work on Next Project and polishing Man Bites World, and I canceled our cable TV. It’s been a decent enough day, but I feel all disjointed.

Huh. I just realized that it’s 9:45. I woke at 4:20 this morning after an horrifying nightmare, and I forgot to eat. I’m going to make a bit of food, and then we’re going out. Keep the internet interesting while I’m gone, please.

Some catching up

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This will be a quick rundown, because it’s late and I want to sleep, but I also want to cover some things:

Yesterday, I got two flu shots, seasonal and H1N1. That evening I was coughing and by bedtime I was feverish and shivering. The fever broke around 4:30, and I went back to sleep. Right now I feel mostly okay, but damn, why didn’t I go to bed earlier.

My son had his eighth birthday party today. It went well.

I mailed Man Bites World to my agent. Only 15 minutes in line at the post office! I promised it to her by Giftmas, and she’ll have it. I just wish I’d had time to polish the prose more.

Tomorrow, I’m going to celebrate the mailing by spending a sizable portion of the day reading.

But, while so many of you poor folks were out killing brain cells watching AVATAR, I stayed home with the family to watch HOGFATHER. It’s a flawed show but it’s wonderful, and the end always puts tears in my eyes. My wife absolutely loves it. Go Christmas!

And now I collapse.

Randomness for 12/16

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1) Library book overdue by 99 and a half years.

2) Humans vs. Zombies, the live game. Photos of the event. (Humans won! Yay humans!)

3) Connecting fructose and childhood diabetes.

4) And, for a different sort of unhealthy ingestion: Blood drinking 101

5) A wooden castle–built from 396,000 popsicle sticks.

6) Lawsuit seeks to remove atheist from public office. It seems North Carolina’s state constitution bars atheists from holding public office. It’s an unenforceable law, thanks to a decades-old Supreme Court decision, but it’s the basis of a suit seeking to have Cecil Bothwell removed from a city council seat.

7) In contrast to my Author’s Big Mistake post from earlier today, a hilarious book review with a very smart author response.

in which being a jerk is fun

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Okay, I wasn’t that much of a jerk on the regular human scale, but on my personal scale, I have been unusually jerkish.

First, I laughed at this Author’s Big Mistake. You can, too! It’s refreshing to laugh at stupidity, and it makes me glad I never, ever respond in any way to reviews (except for the linky).

Aside from the laughs, I acquired useful information: I hadn’t realized that Harriet Klausner occasionally posts as many as 90 book reviews a day. Now, I think less of her, assuming she is only one person.

And, just now, our manager just went around the office handing out Christmas cards. I made sure to open mine slowly, so I’d be the last one in my area to see the gift card, then exclaimed “Hey, a [actual $ value x 3] gift card!”

All heads immediately swiveled toward me, and no one was smiling. Heh.

Finally, a co-worker asked my advice about picking a stocking stuffer for her grown son, and I actually suggested my own book. Shameless! Admittedly, we did talk about a lot of other options first, but once I reminded her the option existed, she didn’t feel the need to ask me for additional ideas… which is benefit enough even if she doesn’t buy him a book.