Lilith Saintcrow

Crossposted to the Deadline Dames.

First, an announcement. Readers AleBB and Amanda N., please email me and tell me which mug/shirt you want. I have your addresses, but not the exact prizes you want.

Also, if you check out the latest (March ‘10) Romantic Times, I’m in there with Nalini Singh, Anne Rice, and Debbie Macomber (not to mention some fellow Dames, I think). We’re all talking about angels and demons, and having a great time. Plus, there are some Dame books recommended in that article!’

Now. It’s Friday. I’m supposed to do a Friday post. But what I really want to do is get back to the book that’s been bugging me. It’s a bright sunny windy day, and the itching under my skin can only be a work of fiction dying to get out. So, it’s going to be a Friday Four! I’m going to answer four common questions I get asked when I tell people I write for a living.

Seriously. These are the things I get asked/said to me most often when I tell people what I do. Enjoy!

1. Huh. Is there any money in that?

I’m very lucky that I can support myself by writing, and I do it by being pretty careful what I spend money on. (I’m helped by the fact that my priorities do not seem to be the average person’s set of priorities.) When you’re only paid twice a year and expected to live on chunks of your advances for months at a time, you have to budget pretty carefully. Also, you need to build up a safety cushion for those times when the royalty or advance payments dry up. It happens.

So yeah, there’s money…but only because I’m careful.

2. So how long does it take you to write a book?

It depends on the type of book. There’s the brute work of typing 60-100K words (and quite possibly twice that amount if there are multiple drafts, endings, and revisions). There’s the research involved, which can add hours and hours (even if it is Internet-based, which I don’t recommend…but that’s another blog post). There’s the time between revisions/drafts to let it sit and cool down. Then there’s the emotional energy and time one invests into a book.

For example, the Watcher books were relatively painless to write. They were fun and I had the structure down after the second one, so it was a matter of relaxing into the structure. I could probably write one of those every couple months, if I wasn’t doing anything else. Contrast that with the Jill Kismet books, which take a lot out of me. I need a year for each Kismet book, period. This is partly because I have other projects going at the same time, but it’s mostly because Jill’s world is a very dark place and the emotional toll of entering that world and suffering with her, as well as feeling her triumphs, is very large.

Oddly, short stories sometimes take me longer than novels, because the word count is so limited–I have to have everything just right before I draw my sword and make my cut.

So, that’s actually a very complex question. There are books that took me three years to write, books that took me a month and a half of intense effort, books that sort of dumped themselves out of my head whole. Writing a book is an incredibly complex process, with all sorts of factors affecting it. So I usually say, “From a month to three years, it depends on the book.”

3. I always wanted to write a book. How do you get published?

Persistence. Sheer dumb brute persistence. And luck, but the harder you work, the more likely you are to be lucky.

There are many ways to climb the mountain to publication^[1], as well as many ways to climb the mountain of a sustainable writing career. The bedrock all these ways rest on is not quitting and learning.

You do not have a guarantee of getting published. All you can do is maximize your chances. Plenty of people do not bother to maximize their chances and so, just clog up the pipes with slush. But I can tell you this much: if you quit, it’s CERTAIN that you will never get published. If you don’t keep producing work and submitting, of course you’ll never get there. It’s a question of whether or not this matters enough to you.

The other half of the answer is learning. I never open a finished book of mine without wincing at things I could have done better and feeling the urge to correct/revise. Never. Part of that is simply my work ethic; the other part is that I an consistently and constantly trying to learn more about language, grammar, what makes stories work, what makes writing work. I rarely read for pleasure anymore; instead, I’m “looking under the hood” and seeing how the story is put together while another part of me is searching for typos. It’s become a reflex by now.

If you aren’t wincing and thinking you could do better when you open up a story/document you wrote six months ago, it’s time to focus on some more learning. I sincerely believe this is not a finite process.

4. I’ve got this great idea for a book. Why don’t you write it and we’ll split it 50-50?

Writers sometimes joke about this, but it isn’t really a joke. People actually say this to me. The only thing that saves the top of my head from blowing off while steam shoots off my ears and I reach for something sharp is the fact that most people don’t have the faintest idea how much work it is to write a book. They know that they walk into a bookstore and see the finished product and it takes them ten minutes to buy it if the line’s super-long around Christmas.

They do not see the months or years it took to write that book, the different drafts, the revisions and proofing process, the waiting for publication schedules to line up…I could go on. It’s like people thinking a television commercial only takes thirty seconds to film because that’s how long the finished product ends up being.

I used to try to explain this to people, but two sentences into the explanation people’s eyes would glaze over. People largely don’t care to hear about how their conveniences or consumable entertainment actually comes into being. Listening to that is too much like work, and I suspect it drains some of the “magic” from the mental image people have of writers.

So now I just settle for taking a deep breath, reminding myself that dismemberment is frowned upon in most social situations, and say, “Sorry. I’ve got my own books to write.”

The funny thing about this is most people just nod and move on with the conversation. There is, however, a slight but definite proportion of people who are actually offended when I say that. I suspect they are some of the same people you read about here. I actually had one man say to me, “What, my ideas aren’t good enough for you?”^[2]

*snorts* So here’s what I wish I could say: “It’s not that your ideas aren’t good enough. It’s that I’d rather spend my time on the line of my ideas that’s stretching out the door and around the block. Other ideas are free to wait in line, and I’ll get the money for the actual effort put into writing them, thank you very much. Next!”

Ideas are a dime a dozen. What makes a book special is the time, care, and effort the writer puts into expressing the idea and its consequences, the effort spent revising until it’s as good as it can be, the effort the publisher puts into it from their end, and the ongoing engagement the writer cultivates with the readers. Five seconds of “hey I have an idea!” isn’t worth much when stacked against those months or years of backbreaking effort.

Anyway. So there you have it, the four most-common questions I’m asked when I tell people I write for a living. Someday, just to shake things up, I’m going to tell someone that I shave gorillas for a living.

They’ll probably say, “Huh. Is there any money in that?”

^[1] Note that when I say “publication” I mean traditional publishing with all its quality control. I do not mean self or vanity publishing.
^[2]At that point I realized I was dealing with irrationality, and took refuge in absurdity. “Yes. My cake is burning, thank you.” And I walked away.

First the news, then the fail. Aren’t you excited?

I am pleased and proud to announce that Orbit Books will be bringing out all five Dante Valentine books in an omnibus, with an all-new cover, in March 2011. I’ve seen some roughs of the cover, which unfortunately I can’t share, but they are splendid. I am incredibly happy to be able to announce this. I have other good news, but I have to wait to share it. Which just about kills me.

And now, onto the fail!

Some of you may have heard about a second Amazonfail over the weekend. Basically, on Friday afternoon-evening, Amazon announced that it was disabling the buy buttons from all MacMillan books. (Later, unannounced, they pulled sample chapters of MacM books from the Kindle.) MacMillan is a huge publisher, and plenty of SF/F authors were affected, including one or two of the Deadline Dames, Tobias Buckell and John Scalzi.

The reason? MacMillan wanted to go to “dynamic pricing”. Which meant that when an ebook first came out, it would be priced higher ($12.99-$15.99) and the price would decrease (to $5.99) over time, analogous to a book coming out in hardcover, then cheaper in trade paperback, then even cheaper in mass market, and finally the cheapest of all in remainder. Amazon threw a gigantic tantrum over this, wanting to sell ebooks for $9.99, world without end, amen.

MacMillan released a statement, Amazon dragged their feet and finally on Sunday released (on the Kindle forum on their website, of all places) a self-serving piece of tripe meant to portray themselves as the underdog looking out for consumers instead of a corporation caught trying to strongarm market share.

There are a couple of things I want to say about this debacle. But first, the links!

* The original breaking story in NYT and VentureBeat.
* MacMillan’s statement.
* Amazon’s statement.
* Laura Anne Gilman’s take on Amazon’s statement.
* Tobias Buckell’s very good breakdown of ebook pricing. Even if you read NOTHING else on the debacle, read this–because it addresses one of the nastiest misconceptions of the whole thing–namely, that ebooks are free to manufacture.
* John Scalzi on how Amazon humped the bunk and on ebook pricing.

The things I want to say:

1. This is not new behavior. Amazon has a habit of delisting or trying to strongarm publishers on Friday evenings. Remember when they wanted to eff over small publishers? Remember when they went through and delisted and deranked LBGT titles? Once is chance, twice coincidence, three times means it’s a policy, a pattern. I am no longer willing to give Amazon the benefit of any doubt.

2. Ebooks are not free to produce, dammit. As Tobias Buckell points out, ebooks are not cheaper for publishers to produce than paper books. That’s because publishers are providing quality control. Self-published ebooks are not free to produce either; the cost is borne by the buyer more directly without quality control; vanity press ebooks are paid for by the author. THIS SHIT IS NOT FREE. The biggest misconception I’ve seen in this debate is “ebooks are free, MacMillan is trying to gouge the reader!” NO, GODDAMMIT. Ebooks need to be edited and converted into ebook format, as well as marketed and invested in to be made available. Don’t bring up the music industry, because a book is not a pop song. Don’t bring up Baen or Cory Doctorow either, they make their money in other ways. I wish I could tell all the sanctimonious bastards badmouthing MacM to “QUIT USING THIS AS A RED HERRING. Go read Buckell’s explanation again.” If there’s anything that makes my blood pressure spike in this whole thing, this is it.

3. Amazon is not the little guy here. Amazon is not looking out for reader interest. Amazon got caught being an asshole.

4. I do not agree with Buckell and Scalzi about DRM. In my mind, DRM is the only faint and fading protection authors have against book pirates, and throwing out DRM instead of concentrating on how to build it better and more efficient and so it doesn’t enrage the consumer is throwing Baby out with bathwater. This is not a popular view, but it is mine and I will not have the comments section be dragged down into telling me how I’m WRONG and BAD for having it. You’ve been warned.

5. I still have Amazon links on my site, as a courtesy to my readers. If you want to buy my books through Amazon (always assuming they don’t delist me for some goddamn reason or another), who am I to complain? But I do list Barnes & Noble, Borders, Indiebound, Powell’s, and (upcoming links) Book Depository first. If it so moves you to buy through them, or through anyone else, first, then more power to you.

That about covers it. Play nice in comments, feel free to post links to other rundowns of the whole thing. I’m exhausted and still nursing a cold, so off I go to drink some tea and get some revisions done. And let my blood pressure come down. Otherwise I might bust a gasket, and who will write these books then?

It’s funny–the further along I go, the more the Universe steps in to help out. I could also view it as my thinking changing so I can take better advantage of opportunities. Potayto, potahto. Like I told the Princess when she asked me if the gods are real: whether they’re psychological constructs or actual beings, the net effect is the same–and you need to be just as careful about what you believe.

Anyway. The Selkie sent me this great link about Louisa May Alcott this morning; the American Masters episode is on tonight. (I will probably not watch it; our telly is DVD-only.) Of all Alcott’s work, I liked A Long Fatal Love Chase best; Little Women irritated me beyond bearing but I persevered because it was a Classic. I did like Jo the best out of all the March sisters, true. It was impossible not to, really. I wanted to slap Meg and send Beth to a hospital. And Amy? I’d slap her twice.

The thing that strikes me in this article about Alcott is that she decided what she was going to do, and she wrote what would sell because she wanted the money. This is treated as a revelation, because in our society artists (and women artists in particular) are not supposed to be in it for the filthy lucre. Money is at bottom, implicitly supposed to be the preserve of men. (As Ann Crittenden points out, when Motherhood started becoming sacred was when mothers started getting really economically screwed.) It’s news that Alcott was a hack, yet the fact that Poe, Dumas, and Dickens were hacks lacks a certain power of titillation.

Reading the Alcott piece, and listening to the interview, I was struck with a single vivid scene: Louisa May, like Scarlett O’Hara, swearing she or her folk would never be hungry again. Louisa May wrote to sell because her family was hungry, and instead of bemoaning it and dying gracefully she decided to do something about it.

Nobility is hard to come by when you’re starving. We have these myths of the Noble Poor, and that’s what they are–myths. I’ve been poor, and there’s nothing noble about it. It’s terrifying and dirty and ugly. When people are frightened and hungry, nobility is the exception. You can’t count on it.

Louisa May Alcott “resolved to take fate by the throat and shake a living out of her.” (Amen to that.) There was none of this “I’ve been rejected so I’m going to give up and bemoan that Editors don’t want my Precious Prose.” Instead it was, “I’m going to find out what they want, and I’m going to give it to them the best way I know how, and they are going to pay me for it. And if it takes me getting rejected fifty times, why then, I’ll get rejected fifty times. Or a hundred. Or a thousand. But they’re not going to lick me.”

Oh, Louisa. Over a hundred years ago you decided this, and you’re still an inspiration. You go, girl.

As for me, dear Reader, I’m gonna go take Fate by the throat and shake some more. Care to join me?

I’m going to be in the wilds of revision for a while. (Like, maybe 30K words of revision. *cries*)

But tonight I am at Powell’s in Beaverton, for their SF/F Bookclub. (Details on my events page.) I am told this is a public event and that I could announce it. If you drop by, please be quiet and respectful of the book club, and I will stay briefly after the club discussion ends if you’d like me to sign something or chat a bit.

Anyway, I’m popping in today to spread the word about something else. The vanity press scam PublishAmerica is on Twitter. If you can, please spread the word about this company that claims to be a traditional publisher. Retweet, blog, link, whatever you can. I don’t often ask this sort of thing, but I think this is incredibly important. People come here a lot for writing/publishing advice, I would be remiss in my duty if I didn’t encourage you to tell anyone you know who wants to get published about this.

I have absolutely nothing against vanity presses. Really. I think they’re tremendously useful sometimes, especially for pet projects, family histories, and other niche self-publishing. I myself used Lulu.com for the Anna Beguine books, for a number of reasons. I knew what I was doing and what I was getting into, and what I was paying for.

That’s the thing about vanity presses–you are paying for a service, and the company needs to be honest about their fees or it’s just another bait and switch. The trouble comes when a vanity press starts impersonating a traditional publisher.

Traditional publishing follows Yog’s Law–the money flows TOWARD THE WRITER. In vanity press or self-publishing, you’re shelling out for a service. There is a huge difference.

PublishAmerica is gruesome because they try to present themselves as a trad publisher. As Atlanta Nights showed, however, there is no quality control or editorial work done there. Instead, the company soaks authors for the price of self-publishing and does things like promise to set up book signings, which never materialize. The point of a traditional publisher is to get third-party customers to pay for the company’s overhead; the point of a vanity press is that the authors pay for overhead, salary, etc. This is a huge distinction.

A slight aside here: you all know I volunteer at an indie bookshop. When PublishAmerica or their poor victims call, we just say no. We don’t even listen. We can’t. We can’t carry the books–they’re full of typos and badly produced, since there’s no editing or quality control. We also can’t be pressured into running signings, because we eat the cost of the books ordered through the distributors. Since vanity press or POD books usually have a long lag time between order and delivery, it ends up being a bitch of a hassle to get them unless someone else (not us!) plunks the cash down up front. Not only that, but those types of books end up being nonreturnable. A lot of bookstores hear “PublishAmerica” and just turn right off.

Don’t just take my word for it, though. Look at what other writers, editors, and agents say. Check out Writer Beware’s two thumbs down list–PA’s there. Check out what Preditors & Editors has to say. (PublishAmerica threatened to sue them. Classy, no?)

Like I said, I don’t have anything against vanity presses. I don’t have anything against self-publishing. What I object to is a vanity press trying to pass itself off as a traditional publisher in order to snooker newbie writers. Getting published is hard work. It is not easier when Bad People take advantage of the desire of writers to be published to make a quick buck, promising things they cannot and will not deliver. PublishAmerica is not around to provide a service–they’re around to separate you from your money. I can’t be any clearer than that.

If you want to self-publish, I really recommend Lulu.com. I haven’t had a bad experience with them yet, and they were upfront about fees and marketing packages. I’ll take a vanity press that is honest and upfront with me over a dishonest one any day of the week.

So please, spread the word. If you know anyone who is considering PA, or if you’re considering them yourself, please be warned.

Be careful out there.

I’m on the last push of revisions today, so this will be short. No, I’m not disappointed in the revisions. It’s something else.

I’ve found out that a fan I know (by name, even) has been uploading my work to a file-stealing site. (It’s not file-”sharing”. It’s file-STEALING, dammit.) It’s disappointing and hurtful to see a fan who claims to love my work uploading it to sites where people can steal it. It’s going to be awful hard to pay the rent if people continue stealing this way. Already this weekend I spent a lot of time (that I could have been using to write those books) on demanding that these sites take my copyrighted work down. It was sobering, disappointing, and hurtful to see this fan’s very unique “handle” used again on a file-stealing site, as the person who uploaded my work to be stolen.

I work very hard to make these stories. The publishers work very hard to bring them to people. When they’re stolen and torrented it makes it harder for both me and the publisher, but mostly me. The publisher, after all, is a huge company with profits. I’m a mom with kids to feed and a non-infinite bank account. Congress isn’t going to be financing a million-dollar bonus for me personally anytime soon, you know.

Comments are disabled on this post^[1] because I don’t want to hear a bunch of people defending file-stealing, and because I don’t want to hear a rant against DRM and how it makes it harder for “honest” people. Look, some people are assholes, and that’s why we have police, DRM, anti-theft devices, etc., etc. If human nature were different, we wouldn’t need these things. DRM isn’t perfect, true. But it’s what we’ve got right now to try and deter people from being assholes. Sure it gets cracked almost as soon as it’s created. But there’s no other choice right at this moment to try and protect artists, because some people–even people who claim to be “fans”–are going to be assholes and steal things.

It’s sad and disappointing. But it’s the way it is.

I’ve got to get some revisions done. See you guys in a bit.

[1] ETA: Comments are also locked because I will not abide speculation as to identity. Compounding the situation by holding up this person’s identity is not what I’m interested in. So do not ask, I will not answer, and comments remain closed. Thank you. And to those of you who have expressed support, thank you as well. I appreciate it more than I can say.