Category Archives: Publishing

Discussions about the business of publishing.

TCB, No Flash

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WRITING 02Last week I signed the official contracts for the first American edition of Yamada Monogatari: To Break the Demon Gate. The title will be shorter in the UK limited edition, since for them it’s a single book, but to Prime it’s the second book in a series. Assuming the stars align and nothing blows up, I should see the contracts for the third book—Yamada Monogatari: The War God’s Son sometime next month. I say “should” advisedly, because nothing IS signed yet and the stars might not align and something may very well blow up. I will point out here that I am not being pessimistic at all, merely realistic. Books may be imagination and dreams given corporeal form (and is that a neat trick or what?) but publishing is a business, and when it comes to business, being realistic is the order of the day.

I could be wrong, and often am—but I think it was Mike Resnick who first said “Writing is art until the piece is finished. Then it’s a business.” Selling a piece—short story, poem, novel, whatever—is just the first step in that business. It’s a tricky first step for a lot of people, which in part explains why so many go to self-publishing from the start. That works for some people, and there’s no denying it. Good for them. For most, however, it just means that it’s not the editors who are rejecting them now, but rather the readers who get to do it later. I can’t imagine that delayed anguish feels any better than the more immediate sort. And it lasts longer. Regardless, for the traditional route, it’s the initial acceptance that brings the stardust and trumpets. Contract time, on the other paw, is proper and necessary but one thing it isn’t is exciting. It almost feels like homework, or doing taxes. Read each clause, be sure you understand it. You do that whether or not you have an agent, because no one—no one—is looking out for you the same way you yourself are, or darn well better be. It’s your career, if you want to have one.

Important, yes, even crucial, but anti-climactic too. I always feel just a little bit depressed after I sign a contract. Maybe it’s the feeling that “It all comes down to this?” That feeling starts to pass by the time the check arrives. But when I see my book in my hands? That’s the excitement part again, and then the book is off to the readers for final judgment. And what it’s really all about.

Nice Surprises and Not Surprises

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Taylor312e-caseIn general I’m not a big fan of surprises, as they’re more likely to be nasty than nice in my experience. But every now and then…. On Saturday I was doing some of the finishing work on our hall bath (long story, and even longer process). Carol had gotten out of the house rather than strangle a contractor, and when she returned that afternoon she had a surprise for me.

That’s it in the picture. A Taylor 312e Grand Concert. I did have a decent acoustic but I’d realized the size wasn’t a good fit for me and I was looking with lustful eyes at a used Martin Custom and a Taylor Mini GS, but the Martin had sold and it was out of my price range anyway. The Taylors I’d tried had a bright, chiming tone that appealed to me as much or more than the warmer Martins. I had some writing money coming so I was thinking of the Mini GS, but then my darling wife beat me to the punch with this beauty, which is a few steps further up the line and cost over twice what the Mini GS would have. I had to ask her why, and she just said, paraphrase, “You settle too often. You deserve a good guitar.” Not really, not yet. I don’t deserve her, either. Life isn’t fair, and as often as not that’s a good thing.

In the category of Not a Surprise, To Break the Demon Gate has been pushed back to May. Of course, I only know this because of the Forthcoming  Books section of Locus Magazine. What? You don’t think they tell the writers these things, do you? Silly people.

Also in the NAS (not a surprise, or at least not to me) category, I’ve sold another—and at the moment, only—Yamada story to Beneath Ceaseless Skies. The only odd thing about that was this story had already sold to Weird Tales for their fairy-tale issue a couple of years ago, then became unsold. This doesn’t happen very often, and usually because the venue in question has died (lost one, for example, when Realms of Fantasy ended). Not this time, and in a circumstance I hope never repeats. Regardless, I’m glad I found a new home for it. It’ll probably be published this year, but maybe not until fall.

I need to write a movie review of a very odd Japanese fantasy flick. Maybe next time. If my fingers ever recover from practicing barre chords.

Everything Happens All at Once Slowly

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Snow-Jan-2014To Break the Demon Gate proceeds to manifest. One thing most everyone agrees on as to the nature of the traditional publishing paradigm is that everything happens at a pace somewhere between “Don’t Hold Your Breath” and “It’ll Possibly Happen in Your Lifetime.” The exception, of course, is when it comes time to check a copyedit or sign off on a proof. That always had to happen yesterday, or possibly the day before.

I don’t know exactly where we are in the process. So far as I know, we’re still on track for the PS Publishing edition to come out next month. It’ll be close, but still that’s the plan. The cover art is done and approved. The text has been copyedited and proofed. I’ve supplied bio, cover copy, and (gag) author picture. There may or may not be a signed edition. Right now I just don’t know. That was the original plan, but time may argue against it. Since the Prime Books reprint is already set for December, any more delays are not to anyone’s advantage. Still, publishing is like that.

I’ve always been a big believer in traditional publishing, and I still am. I sell a lot more books and get a lot more readers when I go through regular channels rather than when I go it alone. That said, it’s good to have options. I try to be selective about what I do on my own, mostly the kind of stuff that I enjoy but isn’t terribly commercial. I keep my expectations low and I’m rarely disappointed, but It does, however, have the advantage of not driving me loopy.

Waiting tends to do that.

There and Back Again

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Bkack Kath's Daughter-2So no blog posts for last week. Some of you may have noticed, and for those who did, I figured I owed an explanation. For those who didn’t notice, you can safely ignore this entire first paragraph and skip to the next. Saves time. The blog was interrupted by the real world last week, in that I had to take a trip to a site in another state to help close it down. Sad work, that, and also very physically demanding. By the time I got back to my hotel room each day I was too wiped out to do anything constructive. I only managed to get in my guitar practice once, and that barely so. The one time I got finished a little early, it was off to a Teavana® and Godiva® stores, respectively, to make sure I didn’t return home empty-handed on Valentine’s Day. I also stopped at Guitar Center to look at acoustics out of my price range. I’m only a little ashamed of that.

After that, it was home to a different sort of worry. I received an email from PS Publishing telling me it was cover copy, bio, and picture time for To Break the Demon Gate. Cover copy and bio time isn’t a big thing. I can usually find something to say about a book after I’ve written it. It’s when they want such things before it’s written that I usually have trouble. No, the thing that gets me every time is when publishers want a picture. And I think why? Don’t you want to sell books? All by way of saying that I am not the most photogenic person I know. Cameras haven’t liked me since the first time I went to college. I don’t know why. I can’t recall anything I’ve ever done to them, but there it is. The last decent picture of me was taken around 1977, when I had long hair and looked slightly stoned even though I almost never was. Since then it has been all downhill. I keep hoping publishers will forget about wanting a picture. They never do. So it goes.

Yes, that it is a high class sort of worry. It doesn’t rank anywhere near “I don’t know where I’m going to sleep tonight” or “Am I going to eat tomorrow?” but it still manages to be a concern. I should be a better person than that, but I’m just shallow that way. Feet of clay, soul of washi. I am, like everyone else, still a work in progress. Maybe one day I’ll do better.

This is a Conversation, Not a Speech

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Rusalka by Ruth Sanderson

Notice the lovely painting to the left, “Rusalka,” by the amazing artist, Ruth Sanderson. I was reminded of it by a FB post by the writer Theodora Goss, said post being about a different matter altogether (we can discuss serendipity on another day). But I recognized the painting she’d referenced immediately. Partly because I’m fond of Sanderson’s work, but mostly because that very painting was the original illustration for “The Swan Troika,” (Realms of Fantasy, February 2011) my final story in that much missed magazine (Seriously. Show me a current fantasy magazine with the same ecumenical spirit toward the genre that ROF had).  If you’ll look in the left background, the guy in the funny-looking sleigh is Pyotr on his way to his fateful meeting with the rusalka in question.

Ahem. Yes, I’m getting off of the subject. Of which there is one, implied in the blog title. Ursula Le Guin once said something to the effect that a story is just marks on wood pulp (or pixels on a screen) until someone reads it. That reading is an act of creation itself and the story isn’t complete until it’s read. I have no argument with that. We want people to read our work, complete it, create their own inner vision to echo the one in our own heads. It won’t be the same vision, but that’s kind of the point. There aren’t just two sides to every story, there are as many sides as there are readers for that story, and the more the merrier.

Sometimes, though, it goes even beyond that. “Rusalka” exists because I wrote a story and the editors at ROF commissioned an illustration of it. You cannot fathom how pleased I was when I saw its original appearance in ROF. After all, I’m no artist. I could never have created my vision of that scene the way Sanderson did. Instead, she showed me hers. I was and am thrilled.

I will now contrast that with an incident from a writer’s group I was involved with. The Heavenly Fox had just been published and another writer in the group really liked it. So much so, that he announced that he was going to write a Springshadow story of his own, at which point I was forced to stand on his head until the impulse passed. Okay, not literally. But you get the idea. I was not thrilled. A little flattered, sure. But not thrilled.

So why the difference? Well, one is an act of re-creation. The other was copyright infringement. As in any conversation, you know when one party has crossed the line. Granted, it’s a fine line. Or rather a tightrope that we all walk when it comes to what happens to a story once it’s out in the world. In a sense, to send a story out into the world is to cede control of it. Legally it may belong to you, but practically? Things will happen that you didn’t count on. My own opinion goes beyond legalities though. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t care who has the right to continue the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. So far as I’m concerned, that series ended when Douglas Adams died. Sure, I know that’s unrealistic. Knowing that doesn’t change the way I feel.

Yes, reading is a creative act in itself, and stories were designed to be read. That’s kind of the point of them, but another thing they are is a conversation between the writer and reader. It’s an act of communication that, in the right context, creates something grander than the sum of its parts, witness that painting. Experience that a few times and you won’t wonder why we get cranky when someone tries to turn the conversation into a monologue.