It seems, lately, the news has been filled with self-publishing success stories. Awards, major contracts, fame, keys to the castle…all of this and more (except maybe the keys thing) is available to authors who eschew traditional publishing routes and strike out on their own. We admire moxie and we admire faith. What we’re finding worrisome is the lack of cautionary wisdom in these stories. It’s easy to read this:
Yes, it amuses us greatly to point to the music industry as a source of innovation. After all, how can we take seriously a beast that has worked so hard to dominate the forest, only to find out the ants are running things quite nicely? We can’t, and as always, ignore the labels and look toward the artists. For most musicians, like most authors, there is not a lot of money in making and selling products. There are a lot of consumers out there, and they are faced with a lot of choices. Getting someone to put down hard-earned cash
We were asked how algebra could possibly be relevant to authors. We thank you for asking! This is one of our favorite subjects. Most authors we know think math is icky and scary (and you won’t get an argument from us), so they trust others to make sure they’re being paid correctly (in addition to trusting, oh, friends and relatives to read agreements and say, “yeah, this makes sense”). This is a Bad Idea. You must understand what is going on. We cannot emphasize this enough. Mistakes can be made. Any author who does not take the time to understand
We’ve always been big on the idea of the collective unconscious. Sarah of the Idiosyncratic Mind (and we mean that as the sincerest of compliments) has read our mind, proving that brilliant thoughts can cross continents. She’s had a series of posts this week revolving around a set of themes dealing with men, women, writing fiction, and gender differences (lots of links at the end of our rambling thoughts). It’s not just about leaving the seat up or down. As she looks at a recent Financial Times article on female (crime fiction) authors who depict graphic violence, she starts with
There comes an ugly moment in every writer’s life: it’s when they discover that underneath the art of it all is a business. If one writes seriously, one must face this fact. Writing requires skin like impenetrable armor and nerves of skill. It also requires fair knowledge of algebra, contract law, marketing, editing, and other sundry skills. We have learned that a martial art or two will not go amiss. As much as we enjoy living in our fantasy world (and we cannot overemphasize how happy we are there), we entered the world of writing with the goal of understanding
We’re not going to suggest that our friend Susan G is an angry woman; she just takes craft very seriously. Since the day we met her — we were staring at a cup of coffee that appeared to fading into the mist, she had the energy of one who’d been up for three days straight — she has been an advocate for the downtrodden, the poor, the preyed upon. Yes, writers. If you were to listen to Susan, you would hear variations on a theme: you must work hard. There are no shortcuts. It takes time. Don’t eat that entire
What? Is it a holiday or something? It’s as if the world’s gone silent…leaving us to make up our own entertainment. Never fear — this is a challenge we have successfully faced our entire life. We have been writing so long (since we held our first crayon, shunning stick figures and amorphous blobs representing houses and dogs for the foreign-to-our peers alphabet) that we sometimes forget the basic rule: stories must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Pretty much in that order, though the first rule of writing is that there are no rules for writing. If you’ve
Have we mentioned how irritating the Los Angeles Times website is? Especially when it comes to articles in the Calendar section? The Times does not want people to read them — of that we are convinced. Setting aside the registration hurdles, there are costs associated with accessing Calendar content. Why, we cannot say — most days we barely glance at anything more than the headlines when we read the section. This is really a shame, because every now and then we find something we want to share. Normally we resist the urge — why put another human through our unique
We’ve been interested in the JibJab versus Ludlow Music (or is it the other way around) case for a couple of reasons. From the first article we read, we were quite convinced this was a simple case of fair use. Then we started wondering what Woody Guthrie would think of the whole thing. Then we really started wondering…why does this music publishing company own the copyright to Guthrie’s work. See how thoughts just keep building until there’s no room for anything new? We’ve frothed at the mouth about copyrights before, but found this intriguing because we kept coming back to
Ever had a bad writing day? A day when you couldn’t compose a sentence to save your life? Sure, it’s rare that you’re facing a firing squad and your ability to put subjects and predicates together in clever ways is your ticket to freedom. But it could happen. Stranger things have. Or so we’re lead to believe. When you’re a novelist, especially an unpublished one, there is a small luxury available to you: time. Of course, of course, you have a million and one responsibilities. But there’s a chance your brain cell strike isn’t impacting your ability to put food
