I have been wondering about the mentality that leads a person to want to publish another person’s work, but that bypasses the pangs of guilt that should accompany not paying for it. No-advance anthologies proliferate, and in the end most of them end up being no-pay anthologies where the postage to send out royalties costs more than the checks cut to the authors.
Yes, it’s fun to be involved in publishing. Having your own “e-zine,” or semi-pro magazine, or even fanzine can be a wonderful experience (or an awful one) depending on what you invest in it. Yes, it’s a gratifying sensation to bring the work of a talented author to light and share it with the world. Yes, pretty books are nice, fancy web coding can make a wonderful presentation, and cool, themed anthologies are “fun.”
Still, there are things you should take into consideration before you decide you want to be involved in any of the above. If I knew a friend who was a mechanic, and I needed my starter fixed, I would not ask him to fix my car and then not pay him. If I had a friend who grew vegetables, and I opened a new market, I wouldn’t ask him to give me the vegetables on the off chance I could someday pay him for them. Am I getting through? No one should be expected to write for free. If the work is good enough to be published, and read, it is good enough to be compensated. If an accountant wants to be a publisher, but doesn’t have enough cash on hand both to publish the book he wants to do and to pay the authors something up front for the trouble of writing for him, he should do some more accounting, save some money, and publish the book when he DOES have enough money. Otherwise, he should not publish at all.
When I published THE TOME – even though all the money came from my own pocket and the stupid thing never turned a profit, I paid at least a pittance from day one. I worked up to 1 cent a word, and one of the reasons I quit publishing the magazine was that I couldn’t find a way to make it profitable enough that I could pay professional authors a reasonable rate to include their work.
I think it’s fine if a bunch of friends get together and publish their work in the hope of selling it and making money. I think it’s fine if a bunch of friends put up a web site and share their fiction with everyone. I even believe it’s fine (though not the best way to make money at it) if an author wants to publish his or her own novel, or a collection of short stories, and try to peddle it to the world. I’d
caution against calling any of these things a sale, though.
Those examples, of course, are not the same as a person announcing an anthology as a “market” and taking the work of others without compensation. If you believe your anthology will sell and bring in a profit, put your money where your mouth is and pay your authors fairly up front. If you don’t think you’ll make enough to cover costs and pay for the stories, DON’T PUBLISH.
Authors should keep in mind that they have almost literally no way to know if a “royalties only” anthology sells a few, or a lot of copies. This is true of all markets, of course – there are ways to check with distributors and bookstores to see how many copies of something have been moved, but on a smaller scale, where one person or a couple of people handle all the books themselves, the accounting, distribution, and the payments, how do you keep track of what’s going on with YOUR
work? Yes, it’s still your work, and you are still owed for it. My thought is if that “publisher” wasn’t serious enough to find a way to compensate you for the work up front, they either are doing it on a lark and have no idea what is involved, or they intend to hedge their bets…make as much as they can off the book and pay when they have to. They are, of course, only making money off of someone else’s work.
If you want to publish something, be willing to make it worth the author’s time to work with you. If you have to wait longer to put your book out, so be it. If you are an author dying to be published, don’t get sucked into these markets. They don’t pay – the average, according to a survey I saw taken not too long ago, seems to be about .55 total royalties on a story in a market where only royalties were offered. They do NOT provide “exposure”. They aren’t bought, they are seldom read, and when they are the exposure you generally get is in a poorly designed, poorly edited book full of marginally written fiction. It isn’t worth it.
If your work is good enough to be published, it is good enough to be paid for. Don’t sell yourself short, and don’t take easy roads to publication while convincing yourself that they are the same thing as professional sales. They aren’t now and never will be.
On a side note, as a reader, I would not buy a self-published book, or a book where I knew that the stories were not paid for. The reason is simple. I have limited funds for my reading pleasure, and limited bookshelf space. When I buy a book I expect it to be well written, packaged cleanly, and edited at a reasonably professional level. In other words, I want my money’s worth. I wouldn’t buy a cake from some guy who figured it out on his own at home if I could buy a cake from a bakery for the same price and be assured of the quality.
Enough said…I just wanted to put a few more paragraphs on this subject onto the net where someone might find them, just in case they missed the similar paragraphs in other places with the same warning. Be proud of your work; be careful and particular where it appears. Don’t sell yourself short.
David Niall Wilson
14 Comments, Comment or Ping
Mari Adkins
Very good essay. Thank you.
Aug 1st, 2005
terry
So, you’re saying, “it pays to be particular”.
What then of the proliferation of Review sites out there that do not compensate reviewers with anything more than the book that they review? Are those of us out there spreading the word for writers also selling ourselves short by not looking for ‘paying markets’ to promote your work in?
I take pride in my reviews and work hard to make them as good as they can be because, just like the person who wrote the book, my words represent to the world who I am and how I think and feel.
Publishers happily send out books for review and I’m betting that most of those reviews are done for no more than the the privledge of getting a ‘free book’.
Do you folks think I should be holding out for someone who will pay me cold hard cash to promote your books or am I getting just renumeration through the books I recieve?
I keep looking for that ‘right fit’ in a venue that will pay me at least something for my time and effort but should I be holding out for the money at all costs, as you suggest those with stories to tell do?
If not what makes my work any less valuable than the guy who has a short story he’d like to see ‘in print’?
Aug 1st, 2005
Paul Dracon
The funny thing about this is that I pretty much agree with everything in this post– which makes me somewhat of a hypocrite, since I’ve committed the self-publishing sin myself (short story collection).
I’ve always felt the same way about non-paying markets, which is why I’ve only submitted to one or two of them over the past God only knows how many years.
A writer SHOULD be paid to write, even if he writes short fiction (which is tragically underappreciated these days).
And as a reader, would I pay for a self-published book?
Probably not. Unless I was already familiar with the author.
Aug 1st, 2005
alaneye
I asked a similar question of the established authors over at the Shocklines boards last week. I was basically asking if getting published in a non-paying market was worth a damn. The overwhelming advice was to start at the top and work down, with a small allowance for markets that don’t pay (or pay in contributer’s copies) but are respected and should get you some exposure.
Alan
Aug 1st, 2005
David Niall Wilson
Terry,
No work should be sold short. I do book reviews for Cemetery Dance, and I get paid for them just as I would for a story. On the other hand, I occassionally do reviews for http://www.chizine.com as well, and I get squat for that other than the free book.
In the end, something like book reviewing is a slightly different animal. I would say you can hone the skill of DOING book reviews by doing them for the free books with the hope of one day getting the nod to do them for money in a larger venue. I started doing them because I figured it was a way to either supplement my books, or to get paid for reading them - and since I would read the books ANYWAY…
But to answer your question, if you consider that book reviewing is something you’d like to do professionally, I wouldn’t continue to do them for free without putting out some feelers to paying markets. We all appreciate reviews because feedback on your writing in ANY form is so hard to come by…
And yes, we are all — at times - going to work for less than we should. There are always a few markets that you say “what the heck,” or some stories you really believe in that have made their circuit of the big markets, and that you don’t want to hold until they either find a home, or you come to hate them…
It’s an overall priciple…don’t sell yourself short…
DNW
Aug 1st, 2005
Elizabeth Massie
Excellent article, Dave. Writing is a craft, a lot of work, a labor of love, and for some, a career. Some people don’t see the compilation of words as a genuine product of time, effort, and talent. Words, smurds, everybody uses them, they’re free for the taking. It’s not like writers are building bridges, or designing computers, or making something else genuinely, tangibly usuable. And heck, anyone can write. So even though money can be made publishing a magazine, do the contributors really need to be paid? Right?
Wrong.
Now, all in all, I don’t think people who want to publish stories without paying authors are that cold and clueless. But from the author’s POV, sometimes it has that unfortunate smell.
Beth
PS I’m looking forward to the arrival of my pig book!
Aug 1st, 2005
David Niall Wilson
Publishers also don’t seem to understand we have bills to pay, sometimes. The amount of time you wait to hear on stories, even solicited stories, or on book proposals, or any number of other projects, makes one wonder at times…
“Sorry, no longer an author at this address…died of starvation.”
DNW
Aug 1st, 2005
Steve Vernon
Amen David!
I have been down that road, and have learned from my lessons. I only wish everyone else could skip that whole middle step of thinking that royalty-only, exposure-only, or contributor-copy-only anthologies and magazines will get you anywhere close to being ahead of the game.
Nice essay, man.
Aug 1st, 2005
Mark Rainey
Hear, hear, Dave. Unfortunately, small publishers who don’t have corporate backing, or at least considerable independent resources up front, are rarely going to manage to pay authors respectable amounts for their work. A publisher who starts out without a solid business plan, who’s doing it as a hobby, or has the wild hope that his product is somehow going to make a stellar climb to the top, will virtually never manage to support his own endeavor, much less pay authors. There are exceptions, of course, but they’re terribly rare. I think the relative ease of producing books and magazines with current technology has led many hobbyists to confuse themselves with business people. I’ve heard a few laments from such folks that pro writers won’t support them because of some perceived snobbery — not because writers actually look to their craft as a source of real, usable income.
Aug 1st, 2005
terry
I would say you can hone the skill of DOING book reviews by doing them for the free books with the hope of one day getting the nod to do them for money in a larger venue.
Precisely the thing I am doing at the moment. It ‘feels’ like the right thing for me at this point, so I’m glad to see you consider it an appropriate ’stepping stone’.
How though does one catch the eye of the larger venues?
Aug 1st, 2005
David Niall Wilson
Heh..I caught their eye by bugging the crap out of them…but that’s a tried-and-true DNW publishing technique that works in MANY aresas of publishing…
DNW
Aug 1st, 2005
terry
I guess I should consider assertiveness training…
Aug 1st, 2005
Janet Berliner
Good choice of topic, Dave. –Janet
Aug 1st, 2005
Audrey Shaffer
And once again I’m sending my writer’s group a link to this blog. Maybe if we all beat them over the head a few more times, they will understand that self-publishing isn’t the same as selling your book. And that “exposure” really means you are being exposed to nasty weather without any protection.
Thanks for the great essay!
Aug 3rd, 2005
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