End-of-July Round Up

Friday round-up time, with Laura from Combreviations:

I've got a short one for you today, friends and foes, made up of only my favorites. I drew your attention to the Huxley/Orwell smack down yesterday, and I think that society is doomed—doomed, I tell you! Did you ever think we would live in an age where 1984 was the better of two evils? The evil-est of evils, I would say, is probably this not-so-great Gatsby video game. Gatsby was never lame, darlings. And when I read this article about the other evil of pastel book covers, all I could think of was a Mommy Dearest style, "No more pink covers!"

For those of you who don't lose your appetite over pink covers, you should check out this rundown of food magazines, and Mark Twain on southern food. Delicious. You can use these book recommendation services while you snack. Or decide if you prefer nameless protagonists or comic books based on real people.

That's all I've got today, reader types—but by way of apology, I've included Jane Austen fight club below, which you may have seen, but is just as enjoyable round two:



As always, see you next week here, or all week at Combreviations, where you can check out sweet videos about octopedes.

Ed: Speaking of video games, enjoy the below! — E

Prithee, Inform Me: Your WIP

It recently occurred to me, mes auteurs, that you are amazingly patient people. You work on your novels for months or years, then query agents for months or years, and then wait months after that for a deal with a publishing house, only to wait a year (or more!) for your book to be released to the hungry hungry public. And, of course, you read this blog day in and day out, which means you have a strong stomach (the publishing industry is a scary place) and a high tolerance for cheerful nonsense. So: thanks!

But I digress. Today, bros and she-bros, I invite you to tell me and other loyal readers like yourselves about your current work(s)-in-progress. What genre do you write? How long have you been writing? What's your protagonist (dare I say... brotagonist) like? How far along are you in your manuscript? The questions, like your patience, is endless.

Without any further ado: to the comments!

The eRights Fight

The time: the early 1990s.
The place: publishing.

About fifteen to twenty years ago, publishers began specifying the acquisition of electronic rights in their contracts. While I don't think anyone necessarily foresaw the impact e-books would have on the market and the speed with which they'd come to comprise a substantial percentage of sales, I do believe publishers were forward-thinking and wanted to keep as many avenues of revenue open as possible.

Before this switch, most contracts simply granted the publisher the right to publish "in all formats" (though this was not always true, e.g. in cases where audio rights were withheld and sold elsewhere). Ambiguous language like this is at the heart of the e-rights debacle currently consuming the industry, the most notable example being the battle between Random House and the Wylie Agency.

Wylie's questionable deal with Amazon aside, the argument looks something like this.

Wylie's Point of View

The Wylie Agency's contracts show no specific record of electronic rights sales for a number of backlist titles by Very Famous Authors. Since more recent contracts specifically mention the acquisition of electronic rights, Wylie concludes that those rights (legally speaking) were not included under the "all formats" umbrella of earlier contracts (believed only to cover formats that existed at the time the contracts were signed). The Wylie Agency, being very smart, recognizes that these rights are valuable, and so they sell them to make boatloads of extra cash for themselves and their Very Famous Authors (or rather, their Very Famous Authors' estates).

Random House's Point of View

Some of Wylie's Very Famous Authors have written bestselling books that Random House has published. Random House bought the rights to publish some of these books "in all formats," so Random House concludes that they (again, legally speaking) have the right to publish these books in an electronic (wait for it!) format.

More importantly, however: Random House's Tireless and Very Talented Editors worked on the manuscripts for these books, sometimes altering/improving them dramatically. Since Random House had substantial creative input on these manuscripts, they don't think it's fair for the Wylie Agency to turn around and sell them in e-format to Amazon. (They also don't like the exclusive deal with Amazon, but that's another post for another day.)

This is a bit of an oversimplification, but I think you get the gist of it. What do you think, mes auteurs?

Prithee, Inform Me: Day Jobs

All this talk of professional writing has got me wondering, mes auteurs: how many of you have a "day job" that pays the bills, and how many of you are already (o joy!) writing professionally?

Thus: a poll!



(If you've got a tricky in-between answer, feel free to clarify in the comments.)

Okay, So You're In It For The Money

Last week I discovered (via the endlessly witty and delightful Rejectionist) John Scalzi's "utterly useless" (read: super useful) advice on writing professionally.

So, yes: caveats.

It is absolutely possible, as John states, to make money (even a lot of money) writing professionally. Also, note that I have never said you can't make money writing (even though it sort of looks like I did, and I should have been more clear). What I should have said was: you're probably not going to make a lot of money writing fiction.

John makes his money writing a variety of articles on everything from entertainment to personal finance, and building such a repertoire—in addition to the requisite (and now probably figurative) Rolodex of contacts and clients—takes a lot of time and effort. John mentions his starting salary as a journalist was very low, and sadly, things haven't changed much in the business since then.

At one time you could make a lot of money writing for television, and to some extent that's still true, but with the preponderance of unscripted "reality" TV shows out there, it looks like there are far fewer well-paying jobs in Hollywood than there were ten or twenty years ago. You could try screenplays, but it's a tough market made tougher by the recession and California's relentless budget crises.

I think your best bets are article writing (à la John), technical writing (writing manuals and... well, technical things), translation (are you fluent in a foreign language?), or copywriting/copyediting (requires a lot of experience and contacts to get good rates). Fiction, memoir, and poetry command lower rates (in descending order), and most people who stick exclusively to creative writing are lucky to make more than a few thousand dollars a year doing it. Also remember that, as a full-time writer, you are self-employed, meaning you're subject to self-employment tax and will have to pay for your own health insurance, retirement planning, &c.

Questions/praise/vitriol? To the comments!

E-Round Up

Ladies and gents, Laura from Combreviations is here to round up the week:

Hello reader types, and welcome to your week. And what a weird week! Yesterday Eric talked about the Wylie/Amazon e-book deal, and Random House is super mad. Amazon is adding this to its e-book crown, along with the announcement that they've been selling more e-books than hard copies (although it's not quite clear what that means). Even Stieg Larsson is getting in on the action, selling more than a million e-books. Too bad he's dead and can't enjoy the royalties. But will the e-books become sentient and enslave us? Some say yes.

In this topsy-turvy world, anything can happen. Harlequin's non-fiction is doing very well, thank you very much. The Great Gatsby is now a video game. And hey, Hemmingway is a style icon—want to buy his shoes?

If his shoes aren't quite your style, you can always get these perfumes inspired by books. Or this book inspired by the Situation's abs (also conveniently named the Situation). What is up with celebrity memoirs anyway? Is the book about the Real Housewives really necessary? Do we need a Karl Rove book club? And now we're not even getting the non-celebrity husband version of Eat, Pray, Love. Oh well. You can always read Emily Gould's memoir recommendations, and hope your favorite memoir couples never break up.

Well that's it for me, reader types. Pine for me until next week, and try to stay out of prison—although there's some good prison lit out there, if you're interested. And in some places there's a reading alternative to prison. And books could even help you plot a prison murder... anyway. Until next week here, or all week at Combreviations.

O Dear: Odyssey Editions

In an interesting move, Andrew Wylie has made a deal with the d... uh, Amazon to exclusively publish 20 of his titles as part of a new e-venture dubbed Odyssey Editions. Needless to say, the publishing world will not be pleased.

There's probably very little love lost on Andrew Wylie in the industry as it is. The man's a genius and tremendously well-respected, but he's unafraid to play hardball and his brashness is legendary (he apparently would have graduated summa cum laude from Harvard had he not belittled his own advisor in his thesis). Insiders are predisposed to regard Wylie's decisions warily (or sometimes with a mix of paranoia and disdain), so I imagine there's going to be quite a buzz over "the Amazon Affair" over the next few days and weeks.

That said: I wholeheartedly applaud the creation of an electronically native imprint, and I do think it's the way of the future. What concerns me (and probably everyone else besides Amazon), however, is the exclusive deal that 1.) renders the title only available for sale through Amazon, and 2.) circumvents the publishing house entirely.

While proprietary editions of titles have been around for decades, it's another thing entirely to sell a title exclusively to one vendor (especially a vendor well-known for its severe and relentless downward pressure on book pricing) without even offering it elsewhere. It's decidedly Wal*Mart-esque and I don't think it bodes well for the market, regardless of how many BlackBerry or iPad or Android devices are bought and used to consume Kindle material.

Is this the way of the future? Potentially. I do think publishing houses are going to get a lot smaller and may, in fact, merge with agencies into a Wylie-type model (acquisition, editing, art, and formatting being done by one agency/house, with a small marketing, publicity, and sales staff to handle sales to vendors). But as long as physical books are still being produced, current printing, warehousing, and shipping infrastructures used and maintained by publishing houses will ensure the houses' continued existence.

Now, does my job depend on my not understanding Wylie's cut-out-the-middle-man tactics? In a sense, yes. Am I an idiot? No. Sure, there are some people in this industry so entrenched in the way things are that they'll end up losing sales and going out of business as the industry moves on without them. But those of us that embrace digital sales and are good at projecting and securing them will have a place in the industry five, ten, or even twenty years from now. And so, dear authors, will you.