Angry Robot Opens the Door

Posted on October 29, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

Do you have a manuscript for a science fiction novel ready to submit?

If so, you should know that respected small press Angry Robot has opened the door to un-agented and unsolicited manuscripts until the end of the year.  Angry Robot publishes books from an impressive list of up-and-coming (maybe already there?) authors including Aliette de Bodard, Lavie Tadhar, and Matthew Hughes.  If you think your completed manuscript has what it takes—and even if you’re not sure—get it into the electronic post.  If it’s not under consideration somewhere, it has no chance to be published (unless you’re self-publishing, of course).

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What Idiot Hunts Vampires at Dusk?

Posted on October 27, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

I don’t watch much television, but I’ve watched a couple of shows over the past few days (they will remain nameless to protect the guilty) whose incredibly lazy writing drove me nuts.  All of its characters did stupid things to force them into conflicts.  These weren’t stupid things that people might actually, on occasion do; these were idiot decisions like the vampire hunter in a B-rate horror movie who decides to hunt down Dracula alone as the sun is setting.    It’s lazy writing, and I have a quickly-diminishing tolerance for it.

Conflict is critical to the modern, western story (it’s not always as central in some non-western fiction).  Let me correct that: realistic conflict is central to the modern, western story.  Conflict should come organically from the characters—it doesn’t matter if the character is a superhero or an everyday Joe—and it should not be something forced down onto them by a lazy writer who simply needs something to happen.  If the conflict doesn’t result from the realistic actions, beliefs, or foibles of the character, then that conflict likely will not resonate with the reader, who will see right through its contrived nature.  At best, such contrived conflict will elicit groans or annoyed shouts, but may well cause the reader to put down the story (or turn off the television, which may not be a bad thing).

A lot of times, realistic conflict isn’t as easy as it sounds.  Sometimes I don’t know my characters well enough when I start a story to realize the conflict I want won’t work.  I’ve had stories, such as “The Schrödinger War,” sit around for over a year because I couldn’t match the right conflict with the correct character.  It used to take me a while to see this problem in a story.  Now it’s one of the first things I look for when a story isn’t working.  Then it’s of matter of changing the conflict to fit the character, or changing the character to fit the conflict.  Simple, right?  Maybe not, but it has to be easier than hunting vampires at dusk.

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Expecting $$$ for a Story is not Improper

Posted on October 21, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

A recent article in The Guardian about a debate sparked by an author who declined to write an introduction for free caught my attention.  Philip Hensher, an acclaimed British author, was called “priggish and ungracious” by a Cambridge professor for refusing to write an introduction to forthcoming guide to his German literature for free.  Hensher countered that he writes for a living and wondered why it was “improper” to expect payment for his work.

This raises an interesting issue for writers.  I know many professional writers who will not submit to publications that don’t pay pro-rates, let alone publications that pay nothing.  They argue that as professionals, we must expect to get paid for our work, and if we don’t expect to get paid for our work, then we won’t, or at least it will make it harder to do so.  As an author I agree for the most part—I don’t submit my work to non-paying markets for two reasons:

(1) I spent hours writing a story, and I want to eventually make a living writing fiction, so I want my efforts rewarded monetarily.  My work has value to me and to any publication that uses it.  I don’t call a plumber to my house and expect him to do free work, so why should I get nothing for my work if a magazine wants to publish it and presumably make some profit off it?

(2) I find the amount exposure, which is often the argument for not receiving pay, is directly proportional to the amount of payment provided.  “For the Love” markets tend to have very low readership, so what is actually gained by the author for giving away his or her rights to a story?

Where I differ from some pros is I will publish in semi-pro markets.  At this point in my career, I don’t have a problem with that, and I’m not alone in this thinking.  Writers like Ken Liu also publish in semi-pro as well as all of the major pro-rate publications.  I like to have things out there, and I’m proud of my work or I wouldn’t submit it, and sometimes a story just isn’t right for a pro-rate market.  That doesn’t mean semi-pro publications are where I start when I submit stories.  I always prefer to have my work in a pro-rate magazine compared to a semi-pro.

What Mr. Hensher’s story does reveal is an interesting dichotomy between different writers.  I expect the Cambridge professor who was ticked-off by Mr. Hensher’s demand for payment, never gets paid for his writing.  Academics are expected to write and publish, but the is no expectation for payment—in fact, academics often have to pay to have their work published and often give away all of their rights when they do publish!  For academics, writing is usually considered a small part of a larger job for which they are paid.  Things are significantly different for a freelance or fiction author, and I don’t fault Mr. Hensher for asking to be paid.  I find nothing improper about it, and applaud him for standing up for the profession.

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“Forget the Rain” Accepted at Kasma SF

Posted on October 16, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

It’s been a while since I’ve sold a story, so I was elated yesterday when I got news that Kasma SF Magazine had accepted “Forget the Rain.”  This is the second time I’ve sold a story to Kasma—one of my first stories, “The Transmigration of Herakles Duncan,” appeared in their inaugural issue—and it’s always nice to make a repeat sale to a market.

Kasma is a small online publication that has gradually built an impressive resume, publishing stories from some top names in the field, including Ken Liu and Robert J. Sawyer.  “Forget the Rain” should appear early in 2014.

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Coming Home to Autumn

Posted on October 13, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

I spent last week on the road attending a science conference in Madison, Wisconsin as part of my day job.  Madison is a beautiful city with huge stone edifices for building and a green ethic that is visible on every street corner—recycle bins right next to every trash can and I swear three-quarters of all the cabs I saw were hybrids.

I enjoyed my trip and returned home on Friday to autumn.  When I left home, the trees were still green, but when I was out and about yesterday, I noticed all the autumn colors lining the road—gold and crimson, rust and apricot, all mixed with multiple shades of green and brown and muted in a damp light pushing its way through thick clouds.   It’s been over twenty years since I’ve lived in a place that experienced anything close to a real winter, so it surprised me.  A pleasant surprise, certainly, but a surprise none-the-less.

In another sign that winter is coming, I spent yesterday harvesting and cleaning up the garden.  We harvested nine beautiful acorn squash before removing the plant.  The beans were also finished and the tomatoes nearly so.  The winter plants—broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and kale—were mostly doing well, and we’ll soon have to put up the hoops to protect the spinach, carrots and lettuce.  We don’t really know what we’re doing, but we’re learning as we go, and hopefully we’ll get a few vegetables come December or January.

I’m looking forward to my first winter in a longtime.  I’ve got the fireplace ready and plenty of hot chocolate stashed in the cupboard.  The short days should be good for writing because I won’t have the distraction of things to do outside.  My novel edits are coming along, slowly.  I’m nearing the one-third point, and I’m happy with the results so far.  As the days get short, I hope I can pick up the pace.

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Interzone Enters the Electronic Age

Posted on October 5, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

Most markets these days accept electronic submissions, either via email or an online submission service such as Submittable.  A few of the established markets, however, do not.  Of the “big three” in speculative fiction, Fantasy and Science Fiction still accepts only postal submission, and it was only a few years ago that Asimov’s and Analog opened to electronic submissions.  Up until a few days ago, the established British market, Interzone, only accepted postal submissions, too, but they have now moved into the electronic age.  Last week, Interzone announced it will now accept submissions through Submittable.

Accepting electronic submissions is significant.  The majority of writers I know don’t bother to submit stories to markets that accept only postal submissions.  It’s a hassle, time-consuming, and expensive.  This is especially true for foreign authors, who must find a way to obtain postage to affix to the self-addressed stamped envelope that must be enclose in order to receive a response (which odds are will be a rejection letter).

I have submitted to Interzone only once, and it was expensive and required a special trip to the post office to mail my manuscript—not to mention it seemed wasteful in terms of paper, which was going to wind up discarded (hopefully it was recycled).  Fortunately I did not need to include a SASE because the editor would respond to foreign authors by email, but I still needed to send a hardcopy of my story.  Now that they accept electronic submission, I will likely submit more stories to Interzone, and maybe one of these days I’ll sell one to this prominent British market.

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Where Did the Week Go?

Posted on October 2, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

Gads!  Time sure can fly when I’m not looking.  I see it’s been over a weeks since I last posted here.  I’ve found myself short on time this past week.  I had to make a presentation at the day job to people from all over the world.  Yes, you read that right.  With our modern technological wonders, I was able to give a real-time presentation to people ranging from the east coast of America westward to Malaysia.  And all from the cozy comfort of my home office.  So that ate up a lot of my time, but I’ve also been making good progress on my novel revisions.

I passed the 17,000-word mark today with some tough editing.  I basically threw out an entire chapter and re-wrote it to up the tension in the scene.  I had to cut a part I really liked in the process.  That made it hard—I was waffling about it for much of the morning—but then I got my head straight and made the cut that needed to be made.  It’s a stronger chapter now because it leaves my character in a more desperate situation than the original version.  As many of you know, I’m a big fan of “tightening the screws” on my characters.  Tension might not be fun in real life, but it makes for good stories.

I’ll try to check in before another week passes, but I can’t make any promises.  Also on my plate: a trip next week to Madison, Wisconsin where I need to make another presentation, this time in person at a large international conference—and I still haven’t put my talk together yet.  Eeeek.  I better get back to work now.

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“Thief of Futures” Goes International

Posted on September 23, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

Over the years, I’ve submitted off-and-on to foreign publications (in this case, by foreign I mean non-English) to see if they’d be interested in translating and publishing some of my stories.  I’ve never put more than a passing effort into it because foreign markets generally don’t pay and responses can be very slow, if at all.  There’s also that “unknown” of dealing with a market where communication might be difficult.

I’ve never had much success.  Usually I’ve never heard back from the market, but the ones who did respond were always very pleasant, and sent me personal responses (as opposed to forms), which is nice.

That changed yesterday when Nova Fantasia accepted my story “Thief of Futures,” which originally appeared in Lightspeed Magazine.  Nova Fantasia is an online Galacian science fiction publication based in northwestern Spain.  I don’t know much about them, but they appear to be similar to sites like io9 in that they cover science fiction in all media…just in Galacian.  Their website is very slick looking.  They were also a publication recommended by Douglas Smith.  If you’re not familiar with Mr. Smith, he’s compiled and maintains a list of foreign speculative fiction publications, and he’s considered the “go to” source for information on foreign publishing.

Nova Fantasia will translate my story into Galacian and publish it on their website (they said it will take a while because of the story’s length, but didn’t give me a timeframe).  I hope they’ll do a good job; I have no choice but to trust them, however, because I don’t speak Galacian and I don’t know anyone who does.  I’m comfortable with that.  According to Wikipedia, Galacian is spoken by about 3 million people, most of who I assume would be new readers for me.  New readers are always good thing.

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At Work in the Novel House

Posted on September 18, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

I’ve been pounding away on novel revisions for a few weeks, while at the same time still trying to get a couple of short stories out the door.  The novel revisions are coming along slowly, but progress is being made.  I passed the 10K mark on the revisions over the weekend, and that equates to about 1/9th of the way there.  That doesn’t sound like a lot of progress, but I’m pretty happy with the edits.  I’m hoping I’ll be able to pick up the pace as I get farther in.

After my initial read through, I’m a little surprise how many edits I’m making to the novel.  I haven’t made any major overhauls, but lots of little edits—paragraphs cut or entirely rewritten, adding some small “scaffolding” to support later events, and lots and lots of clarifying, improving of flow, and strengthening of word choice.

As for the short stories, I am disappointed none have gotten out the door in the last month, and so I’ve fallen off my short-story-a-month pace.  I know, I’m whining when I probably shouldn’t be.  Maybe I’ll set the novel revisions aside for a day or two and polish off those short stories so they’re not hanging around mocking me.  But I don’t want to break the novel-editing groove…oh, the dilemma.

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Will the Indie Bestseller Please Stand Up

Posted on September 14, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

A fellow writer pointed me to an interesting article by Smashwords founder, Mark Coker, examining trends in indie/self-publishing.  The author looks at survey data from Smashwords sales.  For those not familiar with Smashwords, it’s the largest (or one of the largest) ebook distributors in the world, and the survey included books totally over $12 million in sales and 120,000 titles.  Data were aggregated across retailers including Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and to a more limited extent, Amazon.

In his article, Mr. Coker uses this survey data to characterize features of books that might promote sales.  Some of what he talks about is a bit silly and likely isn’t that important considering how little variability there is in the actual data (e.g., title length), but other points, such as book length and pricing, make compelling cases.  Mr. Coker ends his article with a perceptive assessment of traditional vs. indie publishing.  If anyone is interested in indie publishing, I think the article is worth your fifteen minutes.

So what does the indie “bestseller” look like?  According to the Smashwords data, it’s a book longer than 100,000 words, with a four to five word title, priced at US$3.99.

I don’t particularly buy into the book and title length conclusions because I think a good book with the right marketing engine behind it will sell well, and not seeing the actual data Mr. Coker is using makes it difficult to tell how variable this information is.  Average values can be misleading when they aren’t presented with some measure of variability (for example, these two sets of title lengths have the same average number of words [5 words]: 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6 and 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9).  That said, I can understand how book length would affect sales, as many buyers may perceive a longer book as more value for the money.  I can recall shopping for books when I was younger and money was tight and selecting the longest book from a stack of three or four because I knew it would take me longer to read it and thus make my dollar “go farther.”  So that makes sense, all other things being equal, but if there was a new book by one of my favorite authors, length no longer came into the equation.

Where this length information may come in useful is when considering how to best market a longer work.  I’ve heard authors talk about cutting a 120,000-word book into two or three smaller books and selling them as a series because series tend to sell better than stand alone books.  According to the Smashwords data, that may not be the optimal plan.  I think this strategy has several competing factors–series selling better vs. shorter works to name two–at play that make it difficult to tell what is the best approach for a given story.  Hmmm…maybe the water isn’t much clearer yet.

The pricing information Mr. Coker discusses is more compelling, however.  The data show that US$3.99 is the optimal price for a book because it has the highest yield for the author.  Yield is the total money earned through sales and takes into account the number of sales and the price charged.  Cheaper books may sell more (and they do), but they earn less, so a US$0.99 book must sell four times many books as a US$3.99 book to earn the same yield (actually it would be more because a US$0.99 book usually has a lower royalty than a US$3.99, so even more cheap books need to be sold).  If the sales bump gained  by the lower price isn’t enough, the author is leaving money on the table.  According to the data, the sweet spot is US$3.99, which appears low enough to appeal to consumers, but high enough to maximize yield.

I know many indie authors who use this sale-yield dynamic to their advantage by pricing the first book in a series as either free or US$0.99 to promote “sales,” and then pricing the rest of the books higher to promote yield.  It’s a clever and apparently effective way to hook a reader and then make a living off them.

Mr. Coker closes out his article with a rational analysis of his findings and a warning not to read too much into them.  Ultimately, he says that “[d]ata-driven decision-making can give you an edge, but the edge is worthless if you don’t start with the foundation of a super-fabulous book.”  It’s not exactly the way I would have said it, but words to live by.

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