Published

Are you or do you know anyone who has had a book published, or publishes magazine fiction? What are your estimations of the pitfalls and downside of the business?

Other urls found in this thread:

davidcollard.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/the-retired-spaceman/
youtu.be/2e2MWi1zXQ8
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

I am J.K. Rowling

>What are your estimations of the pitfalls and downside of the business?

For publishing? Well, 80% of the publishing industry is staffed by women since most men burn out and quit.

If women don't like your shit, you aren't getting published. That's really all there is to it.

This may be true...I notice that adult fiction now pretty much imitates YA fiction in the militant choice of female characters

I knew a woman who had written a couple of detective novels with a female lead. She said her publisher really started laying heat on her to make her character a lesbian. She wasn't into the idea, and she felt that the temperature changed.

I'd be just as interested in people writing who are NOT published, but have tried, got rejected, what their take is.

i know a fantasy author and two romance writers, a couple of editors, an agent.

Businesswise, the average advance is $6k which you may or may not earn out (make up in sales). If you're trying to sell the first book you've ever written, it probably happen unless you're older or have a MFA.

It is still possible to become a writing rockstar but you'll be lucky to become a mid-list author.

i've published fiction in a magazine that you can find at barnes and noble. it was cool to have some validation, but honestly not much changed as far as my day to day life. a few people mentioned on twitter that they enjoyed it. it's cool to have a copy of the magazine in my house. but just getting published doesn't necessarily mean you have any more "clout" or whatever.

i've resubmitted work to the same publication afterwards and still got rejected. the story that got picked up wasn't what i think is the best thing i've written.

i've been rejected about ~200 times now i'd figure. couple of novels and a bunch of short stories. most of the rejections are form rejections, although many agents don't bother sending a rejection letter at all.

it sucks. i feel like a large part of consistent success is being marketable as an author. to that end i'll probably start a blog soon or get into journalism as this seems to be the best way to "break in" to the fiction world. it'll also give people a way to read my stuff without having to go through the protective barrier of an agent/editor

publishing is only going to get harder, by the way. essentially there are zero barriers to entry now that everyone has the internet and access to decent education.

>Anti-Nazi
>On a website made for Nazis

Nice to know a sale doesn't actually open the gate. Jayzus.

This is depressing.

Facts hurt.

Don't have a book published, have a few written that I might get published one day, but I dunno.

I get published in lit magazines, but it doesn't pay. Most mags are just about getting the prestige, if they do pay it's generally next to nothing.

For me rejection just makes me up my game more, get better, find new and interesting projects to try. Any writer who actually makes it into a living will probably tell you the same. You'll be rejected A FUCKING LOT even if you become a paid writer.

I have an aunt that worked as an editor and I can confirm this to be true.

Odds are, the first filter your work must go through is most likely female.

I've had a few things published in magazines. I got paid for it but not very much.

My biggest piece of advice is not to try making a living by selling published fiction (I do it as a hobby). Because the field is so saturated, you'll be completely at the mercy of publishers and editors and you'll probably end up being a hack.

The other one is marketing. I don't think you can become a successful author anymore without aggressively promoting yourself, especially on social media. That's true even of traditionally published writers but even more so of self-published authors. I personally find this both distasteful and tedious, and don't do it -- see comment above about turning into a hack. A lot of shit is talked about how much time some authors spend posting on e.g. Twitter or arguing on blogs but it's absolutely part of the game now.

>Because the field is so saturated,

Another published author here. I agree the field is saturated, my only caveat is that it's filled with total shit. It's not hard to get good fiction published, as it's kind of rare to find. In any case, no you don't get paid much for short stories, but it does help to build a resume if you ever move on to try to sell a book and attempt to make some real money.

The Internet seems to promise more exposure, but much of it is white noise. Look at the racks of readerless posts on Medium.
It bleeds over to print media--what's left of it.

On that note, is there any good SF poetry? I liked this davidcollard.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/the-retired-spaceman/

I've also heard of Aniara, although it's in Swedish and I don't know whether the translation is any good.

that sale came after a few years of nothing but rejections and then a few "sales" to nonpaying publications. either i'm a case of a blind squirrel who somehow found a nut or getting published is incredibly difficult

>It's not hard to get good fiction published
i'm not sure if this is true. even marlon james got rejected like 70 times for his first novel, right? how many better authors never saw the light of day because of first readers? we'll never know.

I was published in Weird Fiction Review #6. I'll never tell you which story is mine because it was really awful and I'm ashamed of it. Still, it was neat to be published alongside the likes of Laird Barron, who's a big shot in the weird fiction community. And I got to interact with ST Joshi, a personal hero of mine.

I couldn't tell you much about the industry because this is my only publishing credit to date. I've been rejected upwards of 100 times from various magazines and online journals. Most of what I write, I don't dare to submit because my morale is so low.

Centipede Press paid me $120 for my contribution.

>even marlon james got rejected like 70 times for his first novel, right

Yeah, that's easy, relatively.

I've had two novels and more short stories than I cant count rejected. Like said, trying to publish a novel is pointless unless it's marketable. Publishing houses no longer take unsolicited submissions, which means you have to find an agent first, and finding an agent is a nightmare. Most agents who are worth a damn aren't taking unsolicited submissions, which leaves a bunch of fresh college grads who have no clout or any experience working with writers.

Also, agents reject anything that isn't easy to categorize (i.e. YA, romance, genre, whatever) out of hand. So if you've written something you think is interesting, but it doesn't fit the mold of trending fantasy or thriller or YA novels, you can forget about it.

Most of getting published is networking, unfortunately. All the interesting contemporary authors I read have been published through unconventional routes, i.e. bumping into agents and making acquaintances with clout in the industry.

Unfortunately for curmudgeonly people who frequent lit, this sort of thing is completely alien.

It seems most publishers are insider circlejerks. The entire industry is about denial of access, and increasingly people who get published are the children of older authors or movie people--as if this were a dynastic affair.

I dunno about the nepotism, but the industry is definitely incestuous in that most people who 'break in' are already friends or acquaintances with insiders.

Seriously? That's fantastic. At least when pitching my story, (well read) women loved the shit and most of my key characters are female too. Now I only need to decide what to spend my J.K.Rowling money on before I continue writing my YA trilogy.

That's simply a sound business decision. No matter how shit the new photography book from Beckhams kid is, it will sell well. Why wouldn't they publish it?

>Also, agents reject anything that isn't easy to categorize
How do you sell a book that you can't place in a bookstore because the writer is a special genrefluid snowflake?

It's less about genre conventions and more that agents are looking for hyper specific formulae. An agent will advertise they're looking for submissions that are similar to Looking for Alaska or Name of the Sword or whatever.

What's the best thing to do with a finished first book then?

Post feet

Well, I never went far enough as to query so at that point it might be different but reading the wishlists of different agents (I went through every fucker on MSWS), I rarely saw any who are overly anal about formulas beyond the obvious. Of course there are some who look for something very specific like LGBT bi racial lawyer drama but with the amount of agents it's not too hard to skip these.

>An agent will advertise they're looking for submissions that are similar to Looking for Alaska or Name of the Sword or whatever.
That's a different thing altogether. Obviously they are looking for something similar to already popular things but it's not like you have to slavishly emulate the stuff.

Did the guys who rejected you specifically complain about it?

Edit it a lot. Get feedback. Edit some more. Then look for an agent.

Do agents seriously DO anything? They always just seemed like scalpers to me.

you'll have far less luck submitting to the publishing houses directly than to agents. agents know which houses are looking for what kinds of mss and will handle the business end.

if you manage to sell to a publisher directly, you'll still need to get an agent to do all the legal/business stuff.

it's kind of like representing yourself in court. you could but you're not going to know what you're doing unless you do a ton of research.

Also the really big publishing houses don't want to deal with authors directly. So for anyone with ambitions to have a serious impact, it's either agent or the even harder road of 24/7 self promotion and establishing a fanbase.

I think you misunderstand literature. This IS the artform for Special Snowflakes. The Book Business of Stephen King pageturners is the cancer that is killing the culture.

Great, we can look forward to another phony story about bullshit women characters reassuring themselves about the things women like to hear.

I've been writing fiction as a hobby for over 20 years.

I've written around 30 novels, 200 short stories, and 20 feature length screenplays.

I submitted to probably about 15,000 agents and markets in those 20 years.

Not a single acceptance, until last year when I finally landed an agent, sold 5 novels as part of a book contract, sold 2 spec scripts to major film studios, and 14 short stories to various magazines, all within a few months of each other.

It's crazy.

I don't know what it is, but it's like everything I've written is suddenly gold, even stuff I wrote 20 years ago, and I don't even get rejected anymore. I guess the market finally aligned with my taste.

The timing is pretty amazing. Just over a year ago, I'd totally given up on writing, and everything, even abandoning my day job career, and moved to Japan to start a new life. I even changed my name to a local one. I had one last novel that I'd just finished before my flight, so I submitted that to an agent back in America, and she went nuts for it! She instantly accepted it, just based on my query. The rest came in a wave. I'm pretty much wealthy enough to quit my day job now.

I guess the moral is, just keep up the hard work. Keep submitting. Hone your craft. It's all about quality! Success will find you under the strangest of circumstances.

My gf is negotiating her first book deal. Downside is you make close to 0 dollars especially on your first novel. After that, if you are somewhat succesfull, you can actually get some funding or bookdeals.

Is self-publishing an option? Especially if you are from a non-english speaking country but you want to write in english?

I'm not sure anyone would take me seriously.

Or should you just send a bunch of e-mails to agents from UK or USA?

I don't get this. Is this true? Is this pasta? If so, what is it trying to convey?

Have any of you ever sent in work to literary journals, or to the ads you find at the back of writing magazines? I went through one for the first time recently and was surprised how many there were, and how specific some could be. Some wanted short stories, some novels, one called for a 120,000+ word scifi epic by an unknown author. Crazy stuff.

How'd it go when you sent your work in?

>Have any of you ever sent in work to literary journals

Yeah.

>or to the ads you find at the back of writing magazines?

I don't read writing magazines so I dunno.

> surprised how many there were

Yeah, there's a lot of them out there still.

>How'd it go when you sent your work in?

Good, I get published fairly regularly. It's not that hard really. Most of the magazines are forced to publish total shit on a regular basis, because good fiction is still just as rare as it ever is. So if you're a good author, which I fancy myself, you don't have much trouble getting published. If you're a bad author it's pretty encouraging as well, so there's really no excuses.

I still haven't made a dime doing it, but that's a whole different topic.

I don't think I could name even one fiction magazine.

so?

using the grinder (free magazine searching tool) i just found about 1500 of them. There's a lot more than listed on there too.

As /r9k/ begins to pollute other boards so does its typical brand of roleplaying.

>haven't made a dime

But even the low-end publications offer a token 20 bucks as a badge of honor. Where do you submit to?

It's either tasty pasta, or some horrid, "Don't give up," mantra you're suppose to ruminate on.

Well for one, no most low end publications don't pay, and even a lot of med and high end ones don't pay either.

One I'm submitting to now offers 1 cent a word, so I stand to make maybe 20 bucks. That's almost as insulting as nothing, but I could say I'm a paid author then.

The job of agents and publishers is to make money, and always was that way. If your special snowflake art can make some, they are in. The majority of the books you consider muh literature all had commercial appeal too.

If you don't care about that, you can always publish the shit yourself for free.

That's depressing. Cause I'm a guy and writing. Welp, time to go back to manual labor for a living, I guess.

Yes they do.

>Cause I'm a guy and writing

So? You've spoken to women before, right? You've had sex with women, right?

It's not very hard to figure out what they want.

>about bullshit women characters reassuring themselves about the things women like to hear
Like Anna Karenina. Oh wait, it was Leos best work and hailed by the people this board keeps circlejerking about.

If you have trouble to empathize with characters because they don't have a penis, you're a shitty writer who wouldn't make it outside of a niche either way.

Thanks for this. I'll look through it.

It's more along the lines of I don't want to write banal things for women about women.

Funny the first thing you two do is start calling him a virgin and dropping insults.

you really don't get women if you think that's what they want, but whatever.

In what way did I indicate in my post that I care about what they want or want to provide literature for them?

Well looks like you got it figured out then, good luck in what's sure to be a juggernaut of a career.

Yes, that's the problem I was pointing out. How very astute of you.

Nor do women want to read it, unless it's some romance shit where a whale gets hit on by a 6" doctor with a six pack.

If someone struggles with empathy, they aren't going to do too well in a medium that relies on it. It's not an insult but a fact.

>implying empathy is the problem here
Let me guess... you're a woman?

So....it's now somehow women's fault that you guys aren't published? Am I getting that right?

I've published short stories in Virginia Quarrterlt, Missouri review, and a few other minor lit journals / magazines.

The money basically just subsidized my teaching salary , and I'm hoping soon I'll be able to string together a few really good ones and find someone to publish them as a book

>woman on 4chains
>on Veeky Forums
Be realistic, nigga.

And yes, obviously empathy is a problem if you find writing something that would appeal to women as problematic.

Maybe I just don't want to cater to women? Did that possibility escape you? That's not a crime, though you and your kind would try to make it such.

>Maybe I just don't want to cater to women?

if you can't cater to women, you probably can't cater to other people in general...which is sort of a requirement to have people read your work. Every piece you write is going to have to cater to SOMEBODY.

I also don't buy the 28 year old fat virgin theory that the only way to make it in publishing is to kiss women's ass all day and write romance novels or something. I get published fairly regularly, and I've never once made an overt attempt to appeal to women specifically.

In any case, you'll find just writing a piece of work good enough to appeal to people in general is enough to appeal to women.

and nothing of value was lost

>All these mad women ITT.
Damn son. Dude just wants to write some bro-stories. Chill out. It ain't always about you.

Doesn't he want to sell them? If you have no commercial ambitions, obviously there is no reason to give a shit about appealing to people beyond yourself.

If you have no commercial ambitions, why bother writing at all? The entire point is to get others to read them, in some way.

If you're content at clacking away bullshit that only you like, then that's fine too, but don't start complaining that the business is impossible to get into and xxx are to blame for your failure.

>all these triggered females because some dude doesn't want to write for chicks

Let's not pretend that not wanting to pander to a certain audience is the same thing as not having 'commercial ambitions' or being a shitty writer or a misogynist or some other shortfalling. I detect a hack trying to justify his hackery.

You do need to focus on some audience and generally be aware of the most likely reader for your work.

Pandering as in actively focusing to please a very specific group actually limits your commercial performance for obvious reasons. If anything, excluding characters and themes that might be of any interest for woman is pandering to certain men, and a great way to lower the size of your potential market.

>I detect a hack trying to justify his hackery.

yeah basically. Of course if someone is a hack that implies they've actually succeeded but by some trickery.

In this case it's just lonely shut-ins who scoff at the idea of actually writing fiction for an audience, and then are somehow surprised that nobody wants to read their garbage.

The question you should always be asking yourself when you're writing is, "What's interesting about this? Why will people want to read this?" with every word basically. Basically just always keeping in mind that you need to appeal to your readers, and remembering nobody is forced to read your stuff, they can skip over it if they want to.

This is, of course, just general writing for success 101, and a far cry from pandering to a specific audience and throwing elements that will appeal to only them.

No, hacks do not succeed by trickery. They're neither clever nor original enough for that. What they do is please the lowest common denominator. They take the lightest load through the safest ruts.
Congrats on your...success.

>tfw too artistic to please people like the hacks that Joyce, Shakespeare and Tolstoy were

Not hacks.
You're just trying to sound clever.
Let's say more...Dean Koontz.

All of them aimed to please their audience, otherwise they wouldn't sell as well. Why aren't they hacks? What about Hugo and Dickens? How about Nabokov, who easy outdid 50shades, Twilight and Hunger Games in sales?

>Dean Koontz
Just looked him up, and well, he does the same just with a clearer focus. His books probably have a smaller merit beyond entertainment due the genre but wasn't your main point something else entirely?

No, I don't believe you've gotten my point at all. I think you've tried to reframe it so that you appear to have an attack. There was never any assertion against commercial success. Success in sales does not...really, if you're going to play coy, there's no point in talking to you.

>American guy works for 20 years with 15,000 rejections and 0 publications
>changes his name to an Asian one
>instant acceptance, agent, book deal, and fortune

Figure it out.

Those are vanity press scams.

Former freelance editor and friend to a number of established and up-and-coming writers here:
Magazine publishing can help build up a brand and get recognition and a few bucks here and there, it also allows you to build up a portfolio of sorts too. How useful that will be will vary on genre and your other skills which you'll need to get your foot in the door of publication though...

Dealing with editors and publishers is increasingly a pain I'm told, even for well-known authors; we're not in Maxwell Perkins times, we're in the age of shitty little SJW type interns and other jumped-up muppets with delusions of grandeur. And accountants, let's not forget those bastard spawn of Satan who can only think of the bottom line.

Is your nickname James Havoc?

Spoke to a fellow who was traditionally published, though he's Newfie and wrote non-fiction which is heavily sought-after by the Newfoundland Government for the purpose of tourism and culture. Pretty sure they actually provide funding to traditional publishers in St.John's (Newfoundland's Capital) to seek out non-fiction. He also told me that he got no advance even though I hear with big-time publishers a $5000 advance is a very common minimum so publishing on the island is a very different matter than publishing elsewhere. He's thinking of trying out some fiction, which I encouraged.

I write fiction, he read a bit of my stuff, and said it's better than some traditionally published books he's read. He's also a retired English teacher apparently so I took his praise to heart, meant a lot, and heavily inspired me during a difficult time in my life.

I'm suspicious of any story with a moral in it.

>Why wouldn't they publish it?

Integrity?

>Integrity?
you don't know much about publishing, do you?

I notice nobody here even really addresses the matter of 'online publication. '
I rather like that.

OP asked for published works, and when the word 'self' is not applied, then it typically refers to strictly traditional publishing. But since you bring it up, self-publishing is capable of being quite a lucrative venture. Feel free to drop some of the usual memes if you like, they've been debunked nearly as many times as the gender wage gap. Quite a few people make $5000-15,000 per month via self-publishing, and there are even some who stick strictly to self-publishing, forsaking traditional publishing. I can understand why, the royalty rates are infinitely better.

>$5k to $15k/month
citation needed

The moral was obviously a joke.

Do tell...

I've gotten a few short stories published and hope to have more published soon. I haven't been paid for any of it yet because I haven't managed to get in with that sort of venue. I've noticed lately I've been receiving a lot of encouraging rejections; that is to say, people are telling me that they're impressed by my writing even as they don't wind up publishing what I send them.

Maybe I just need to tailor my submissions more carefully. At the same time, it feels like I'm hammering at a wall, and I'm hitting it so hard it's cracking, but it hasn't broken yet. I wish it would.

Derek Murphy made over $30,000 between January-June 2017
His most profitable month was April in which he made over $8000. Not only is $15k/month possible, but he believes even $50k/month is possible. Kindle has a HUGE market, and the royalty rates can be as much as 70%, which means a $9.99 ebook purchase can earn the writer about $7 on that one purchase alone. 10 purchases is $70 USD (around $9.10 Australian or $8.75 Canadian, roughly). Derek Murphy has had years and years and years of experience in the publication industry, from editing, to cover design, blurbs, pretty much everything but writing. He took his decade+ of expertise and started writing his own books, self-publishing them, and unsurprisingly started gaining huge success quick.
youtu.be/2e2MWi1zXQ8

My most profitable month, as it turns out, was April 2017 too. On April 27-28th I made about $22 from those two days alone and reached #14,681 author rank for Kindle books on April 27th, my most profitable day, which was around $14-15. So authors who maintain a position higher than 14,681 make over $15 a day which is $450 a month, or $5400 per year. That's the height I've seen thus far, and I haven't even been writing for a year. My covers are free (and kind of shitty), my blurbs are likely not that good, and as I write more I'm definitely improving so my earlier books are probably not as good as what I'm writing now. So yeah, things for me are nowhere near ideal and I have had no experience in any form of publishing before I got started with my first book last October. Another thing is, I write what I want to write, Derek Murphy writes specifically what sells, he taps into the market and does a lot of advertising that costs little but makes him much more money. I don't have the money to do advertising.

With such incredible royalties available, and the huge amount of customers that the Kindle market has (tens of millions of dollars worth in Kindle Unlimited subscribers alone, plus the CEO of Amazon (pretty sure he also owns Kindle) might be becoming more rich than Bill Gates soon), it's no wonder that people can make thousands of dollars a month if they do everything right.

With traditional publishing, it typically takes around 6 months or more to hear back from the publishing company, and it's well known that the VAST majority of books are rejected. Most big-name publishing companies won't even consider a book unless it's being pushed by an agent, and a writer does not just 'hire' an agent. An agent has to see merit in the writing, and must CHOOSE to represent the writer. Their income is a small cut of the royalty profits, about 10% I hear. Meanwhile after an agent is found, after the months go by, if the stars align and you get taken by a traditional publishing company the best you can probably hope for in starting out is maybe 8% royalty per book sale. Someone like Stephen King who has a thoroughly established name and is highly popular, he can probably get 15% royalty, but there are no known cases that either I or Brandon Sanderson (successful self-published author) can verify in which a traditionally published author gets more than 15% royalty.

With self-publishing, your book can become available in paperback and Kindle within roughly 2-3 days after uploading it. You set the price. For eBooks, you can make up to 70% royalty which is HUGE! For paperback, one of my books are $9.99 for paperback and of that I make $2.58 which is of course over 25%. Another one is $8.99 and I make $2.84, which is over 30% royalty. If I were to ratchet the price up to $14.99 on that second book I would make $6.44 per sale which is 42.9% royalty.

So as you can see, there is potentially more money to be made in self-publishing than in traditional publishing. All that is needed are the sales. About 60% of all online book sales are from Amazon/Kindle so they easily hold the lion's share of online book/ebook purchases, and more and more people these days are shopping online instead of going to actual shops which is why so many stores and even whole malls are closing down. Amazon/Kindle will continue to expand and make more money. What the self-published author needs to do is get exposure. Check out books on Amazon, some of them have thousands of ratings, and generally speaking you got about a rating for every 50 downloads/sales. So if 1000 ratings represent 5000 sales, let's say the book is set to $4.99 for the ebook. That's about $3.50 royalty. That's $17,500 for 5000 sales. Amazon is accessable not just in the US, but the UK, Canada, just about all of mainland Europe, Australia, even Japan and India. Even if we exclude India (2nd highest population on Earth) that's over 400 million people in just Canada/US/UK/Australia.

Mainland Europe is somewhere around 700 million people, so that's over a billion people for North America, Europe, and Oceania. Add India and Japan, that's another 1.45 billion, which is over 2 billion total people with access to Amazon. I've had downloads in US, UK, Canada, Australia, Italy, Germany, India, Japan, oh yeah and I had forgotten Brazil. Over 200 million people there so now we're past 1.5 billion, so we're talking about roughly 20% of the entire human population with access to Amazon/Kindle, with self-publishing authors getting up to 70% royalty for ebooks or up to over 40% royalty for paperback, both of which FAR exceed anything that traditional publishers can reasonably provide. There are 'stories' of a traditionally published author getting something like 18-21% royalty on their books, but nothing that's verifiable, so yeah, even 30-40% exceeds anything that even Stephen King could expect with traditional publishing.