From: karina
I’ve been holding off on emailing you about my experience with your short story collection. I sent you a question earlier, but maybe it’s still waiting in line for its turn or maybe it got lost in cyber-or-spam space.
My first read was totally self-indulgent: “Touching Fire” happened on a ferry to Vancouver Island, “Song of Bullfrogs, Cry of Geese” at a coffeshop in Tofino, watching the little boats make their way back from a Native reserve island where my wife spent a week camping, “Yaguara” on a log by the beach. Thank you. I enjoyed the collection immensely.
My rereading was done trying to figure out, “Why the hell doesn’t Nicola publish more short stories?” I want a 500-page short-story collection!
You mentioned on your blog that you “write stories occasionally, but not that often, because I know I’m a much better novelist than short form writer.” I thought your short stories were quite accomplished. Self-contained and tight, yet expansive and powerful. So I’m now wondering if perhaps it is that you enjoy the process of writing a longer piece much more than you do with shorter ones… Or is it that publishers tend to push writers toward novel-length narratives? I was thinking of Nancy Kress and Orson Scott Card, among others, who had to “expand” their shorter pieces to accommodate the demands of a publisher. In writing circles, I often hear, “Perhaps you could turn that story into a novel.” The suggestion makes me cringe. So… yeah. That’s me: short-story junkie.
All this rambling leads to the ultimate question (because now I’ve formulated too many), “Is there another story collection coming up?” Or will I have to reread With Her Body three more times?
I won’t be publishing a short story collection anytime soon. Or an essay collection. Or my memoir in an affordable trade edition. Let me tell you why.
Publishing is broken.
I make my money from writing and selling novels. When I sell a novel to a publisher, the editor, and the editor’s marketing and sales bosses, look at my previous sales figures. They do not compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. They look only at how many I sold of my last book. So if I publish a full length short story collection with a small but respectable publisher and it sells only 3,000 paperback copies, no publisher will then give me a six-figure advance for my new novel. Given how it takes me to write a novel, if I don’t get a six-figure advance, I will starve.
It was okay for me to publish a 3-story chapbook in a chapbook series from a small, speciality genre press, because those figures don’t count. It was okay for me to publish my art-press memoir-in-a-box, because those figures don’t count, either. But I can’t publish a book-length book book, because those figures do.
I don’t want to starve. Those books will remain unpublished.
Do you see options for online publishing for such stories?
I was afraid that would be the case :'(We’ll have to put together an initiative called, SOSSS (Save Our Short Stories or Something). *sigh* And I’ll have to read < HREF="http://www.payseurandschmidt.com/catalog_andnow_1.html" REL="nofollow">And Now We Are Going to Have a Party<> really slowly, then. BTW, your memoir is quite the visual, auditory and tactile experience (there’s that going for non-trade publishing).
Very unfortunate, but exactly true. A few years ago, Two Cranes Press (which I run with my wife) published a chapbook-type mini-collection by Daniel Wallace (author of Big Fish) because his NY publisher didn’t want to produce a book of his short fiction (as collections almost always sell less than novels). We had a good time putting it together, and the book sold out of copies in just a few months (our print run was only 350 copies).When the topic of going back to press came up, his agent very strongly discouraged me from doing so, because any more success from the book might attract attention from his NY publisher, who would want to know the sales figures. With our tiny print runs, this could have had a devastating effect on future advances for his novels, just as you say. So it became a limited edition instead.Have you considered releasing ANWAGTHAP as a Creative Commons-licensed free download? That way, more readers would have access to it, and the ones who still would like the multi-sensory experience that is the box set can still shell out the $75 for it.
I have in fact been thinking about the new Apple App Store, and Fictionwise. I have some vague notions of putting the stories up individually and in a bundle, ditto essays, and then maybe figuring out the best way to redesign the memoir for a tiny screen. Maybe sell the five ‘books’ individually for $1.99 each, and give the music away for free. Or something. I’m not sure yet.I tell you, though, I wish someone would just fucking fix publishing. Sigh.
Without a six figure advance you’ll starve? Really? Let me know where to have the groceries delivered. I cannot have one of my most favorite authors starve to death on my watch. Depending on my mood, I could probably ship some beer in too.
Yes, really. There was a five year gap between <>Stay<> and <>Always<>. Take a six-figure advance, reduce by fifteen percent (agent commission), then reduce that by at least forty percent (income tax and social security) and then divide by five. Even if I got a quarter of a million dollars advance, the per annum result would be pathetic (about $25k). Of course, I don’t intend this book to take five years. There again, that wasn’t my intent with <>Always<>, either.
And to that add the fact that the payout doesn’t come in a big lump sum up front. It’s a little in the beginning, and most of the money when the book is accepted and published. The cash flow of writers <>sucks<> unless you write a new book every year; <>and<> each book does as well as or better than the last so that the sales figures don’t go down and the bookstores don’t order fewer than last time and your publisher doesn’t drop you from the list; <>and<> you don’t ever want to wander off your little part of the pea patch (as in, going from science fiction to thriller to historical fiction) so you don’t take the risk of losing some of your readership and having to build it again and again and again.And most writers don’t get the six-figure advance. Most writers get sweet fuck-all.Sorry if that seems a little grumpy. But people assume that one big advance and boom, set for life. That’s not at all how it works.
The artistic/entertainment industry is either going down the tubes or going through a revolution. Across the board, the music industry, film, television…what we once knew and took for granted is no longer. Old systems are failing and nobody is getting rich.Writers have always gotten screwed, hence the recent strike in LA. I’d like to think, Nicola that your are getting paid because of the beauty of your writing, but, the reality, as Kelley explains, and the bottom line for the huge publishing houses, is selling. Harsher still is the fact that as long as you are making them lots and lots of money, they love you, but the minute that dips …well.I suspect it is like trying to write with a mamba at your feet.
Kelley, oof, yep, getting chopped into bits. Forgot about that. Though it does have one thing going for it–less in taxes when you get it in smaller chunks.anonymous, it’s easier to write when I don’t think about money at all. When I’m working on Hild, generally, I don’t, but then I think about a collection, or getting my memoir out there, and the world sort of heaves under my feet. Time to go back to the la-la-la school of thought, i.e. none.
As humor rarely comes through blogs as well as it does in my head I just want to say I was just kidding. I don’t have first hand knowledge of what it takes to even earn a six-figure advance. My hat is off to the folks that do. And I would consider myself a literary success should I be able to gross 10K a year — which is a tiny sum compared to what I currently make annually. I have spent a good deal of time lately thinking if I could live with the uncertainty. It is a big step. I know an advance isn’t like the lottery, cashing in and resting on laurels. Sorry if I ruffled feathers. In future, I will be more obvoius with my humor or simply keep it to myself.
Gentry, hey, no problem. Humour always welcome here…though I can recommend the use of some indicator like *grin* or :) or –>joke for future use, especially when our household is in thin-skinned mode (see today's post).I find it's always best to treat comments as serious, unless otherwise indicated. It seems easier for someone to sigh and say, I was joking, than to stamp their foot and say, Take me seriously! Y'know?As for the groceries and beer, oh, yep, we love freebies :)
No problem, Gentry, thanks for clarifying. I am not usually humor-impaired, but I am <>grumpy<> right now about the state of publishing (pounding on table, pound pound pound). The advance system really is part of the broken-ness of it all, in my opinion. A lot of writers lately are bemoaning a (slow) move towards a low-advance/higher royalty system (although I think it would be a much more sensible arrangement for everyone). The reason some writers resist it is that they couldn’t make a living wage on their sales alone, even at a higher royalty. Which tells you that many writers are being overpaid in their advances, never selling enough books to earn out. So should they be getting all that money up front if their sales don’t justify it? Well, no. But they <>wants<> to be writers, precious, they do, and they believe that the only way to be a real writer is that someone should give them a guaranteed living wage before anyone even knows if they can shift the freight or not.Me, I think the way to be a real writer is to really write and be really read by real readers. Call me a radical…And so the die-hards cling to the old ways even though it hurts all of us greatly in the longer term. The final irony is that many of them don’t get big advances now — they just want the hope hanging out there of that six-figures, and they haven’t done the math so they don’t understand the overall frailty of the model. And in the meantime, even many of the most successful writers in SF are working like bandits to freelance in other areas (teaching, contract writing, etc.) to keep themselves afloat.Okay, anyway, /rant off/. Again, Gentry, not directed at you. Just one of my buttons right now.And for what it’s worth, I think the “safest” way to be a writer in today’s industry is to make your money somewhere/somehow else. If you’re willing to unhook your self-image as a writer from paying the rent, it’s very freeing. So many people take the plunge, discover too late that the economic model is not their friend, and quit completely thinking they can never make it. When what they ought to be saying is Okay, what does a real writer do? A real writer writes well enough to be published, a real writer touches other humans with her words and puts stories into their hearts and minds, stories that resonate, that linger, that endure.Which is not to say that one cannot make a living as a writer. It’s just that there can be other paths to the goal.
Nicola, I’ve bought short stories and novels from Fictionwise before, including yours (I also own hard copies, but I like to be able to travel with them stored in my clunky eReader). I didn’t know Apple is also selling eBooks now. I’ll have to check that out. I’ve downloaded stuff from < HREF="http://www.amazon.com/amazon-shorts-digital-shorts/b?ie=UTF8&node=13993911" REL="nofollow">Amazon Shorts<>, though I’m not sure the 49 cents-a-piece is an option for already-established authors.Kelley, I’m optimistic about the low-advance/higher royalty system, though “writer” acquaintances frown at me when I voice my enthusiasm. Which only reveals how afraid they are that their books will not sell. Why should authors that do manage to connect with an audience pay the bills of those who don’t?Let’s hope that the shift fostered by the internet and new media points the publishing industry towards a more sustainable and fair model.
I’ve no idea if Apple is selling fiction–but Fictionwise are selling books and stories that can be read on iPhones.