Everything Must Go?

Something me and my writer mate Rafe McGregor often used to debate was the question of whether a writer should ever give their work away for free.  At the time, and perhaps partly due to a bad early experience, I was very much against it: even an imperfect story still amounts to hours, perhaps tens of hours work, and I didn't see how an editor could expect to receive the fruit of all that labour for nothing.  Rafe was more philosophical about the whole thing.  It can often be a huge slog getting a story hooked up with a paying market, and then the amount in question is unlikely to be life-changing.  Why sit on a story for yet more months, or attempt yet another polish, when said story could be out there being read?

We debated it back and forth and, buoyed by a few good sales, I decided on a hard-line stance - I'd sell work for semi-pro rates, (that is, at least a cent a word), or not at all.  Writing, like any business, requires a certain amount of financial investment - stamps, postage, paper and ink, and additional contributor copies don't come free - and even with those good sales, I was barely making a profit.  So why should publishers get away with the argument that they couldn't pay me because they wouldn't be able to break even if they did?  Nope, editors could pay or they could not publish my work.

Editors chose the latter.  There followed the worst dry spell I've had for sales since the day I started submitting.  And as the months edged by, inevitably, I began to question my position.  Might it not be better to get something, anything out, then to go the rest of my life without ever seeing my name in print again?

Needless to say (since it's obvious from some of the things I've had out recently) I changed my mind.  I realised that payment can come in more forms than just the financial, especially when the difference is only one of a few dollars.  I'm not, after all, writing to get rich at this stage.  If I was I'd be an idiot.  I'm writing to build a career, to train myself to be a better writer, to understand the industry, to bring myself to the attention of editors, and if I can possibly make a little pocket change on the back of that then that's great.  But I want to get my work read.  I don't want to kill a story that I'm sure people will enjoy because it's out of line with current fashions.  I want to enjoy what I'm doing, and part of that enjoyment comes from having work published. 

Moving into 2010, I suspect another rethink is on the way.  I'm pleased with how the Kings of the Realm anthology turned out, for example, but having to buy my own contributor copy from the US left such a dint in my wallet that I'll think seriously before submitting to a non-paying antho again.  Also, I've shifted the vast majority of my back catalogue over the last few months, and am writing less and less short stories as my focus shifts more to novels. 

So, for the record, here are a few alternate forms of payment I've accepted or would have considered over the last few months:

- Having someone podcast my story. 
- Having someone illustrate my story, particularly when that story's a comic script.
- Having my story appear in a well put together magazine or collection full of work by writers whose work I enjoy.
- Having my story edited by someone who really knows what they're doing.
- Having my story reprinted so it can find more readers.

All of these things can, and have been, as or more satisfying than cold hard cash.  And here seems as good a place as any to mention Stephen Theaker, who's published my stories in both Theaker's Quarterly Fiction and the British Fantasy Society's Dark Horizons, who's written convincingly on this very subject, and who I suspect I'll keep submitting to simply because he's a pleasure to work with and I always enjoy the magazines he puts out. 

Finally, a note as to what I'd strictly avoid. I've come to think that there's very little to be gained from any magazine that takes my work and sticks it on their website without paying me.  There are some great paying webzines out there, and I've been fortunate enough to work with some of the better ones, but I find it hard to believe that readers will flock away from venues like Flash Fiction Online and Chiaroscuro to ones where the editors have so little faith in the work they're presenting that they refuse to pay even token amounts for it.  The same goes for non-paying electronic anthologies.  I don't doubt that many of the people behind these have the best of intentions, or that they genuinely mean it when they promise to bring writers exposure, but experience has led me to think that those promises are nevertheless pretty hollow. 

Anyway, if anyone has further thoughts on this question, or an approach that radically differs from mine, then I'd be interested to hear about it...

Kings of the Realm Unleashed

To end the weekend on a more positive note than yesterday's post, Kings of the Realm : A Dragon Anthology - which includes my The Other Ten Thousand - is now available to buy from CreateSpace and Amazon US.

I've seen an electronic copy of this one, and I'm glad to say that it's a very professionally put-together tome, impressively so given how new Lame Goat Press is to the publishing scene. I've only had time to skim a few of the stories and poems therein, but what struck me pretty quickly was the variety - thankfully, there's a lot more here than just Anne McCaffrey-esque high fantasy. Congrats and thanks to Christopher Jacobsmeyer for his work in bringing it together and of course for taking The Other Ten Thousand. I'll likely post again once my dead tree copy arrives from Amazon, but in the meantime, it's a safe bet that if you like stories about dragons then you'll get plenty out of Kings of the Realm.

Easier to Pretend in Escape Velocity

Was there ever a time when I resented editors suggesting rewrites? Yeah, I guess there was, and it probably wasn't even that long ago. Still, it's hard to remember the mindset, though I know it's pretty common amongst learning writers. "Who's this editor to tell me what my story should be like," and "what's the point of making changes when I got it right the first time?", and "yeah, that paragraph's a bit weirdly phrased but it's exactly how I meant it to be."

All of which, if we're honest, adds up to "It was enough work writing the bloody thing, you can't seriously expect me to rewrite it?"

A little older, possibly a touch wiser, and I can see that that's not how the world - let alone the publishing industry - works. I want my stories to be as good as possible, right? And editors, unless they're basically psychotic, want my story to work as well as it can before they're going to consider publishing it. It all seems pretty much like common sense.

But I think the reason for that is that the more I've written, the more my perception of what a story is has changed. Once upon a time, I believed that once I wrote THE END that was basically the thing done. These days, I would be hesitant to use the word 'finished' to describe anything I write. As long as I can make it a little bit better, it's still a work in progress. For that reason, both of the reprints I recently had picked up for anthologies (Fear of a Blue Goo Planet in Zombonauts, The Other Ten Thousand in Kings of the Realm) are subtly different from the originals. I saw that there was room for tweakage, and so I tweaked. If they ever get reprinted again, I'll probably tweak some more.

Explanation for ramble? My It's Easier to Pretend in the Dark has been picked up by science-fiction magazine Escape Velocity. I sent it in to co-editor Geoff Nelder knowing in my heart of hearts that it wasn't quite as good as it could be but not knowing how to fix it, and Geoff, bless him, asked for some changes and in so doing pointed me towards some other things that needed sorting out. As such, the version that's been accepted is a hell of a lot better than the one I first sent out. That's got to be a good thing, right?

The Other, Other Ten Thousand

Next bit of early October news (we're up to the start of the week now!):

The Other Ten Thousand, a flash fantasy piece originally published in issue 9 of OG's Speculative Fiction, has been picked up by Christopher Jacobsmeyer for his next Lame Goat Press anthology, to be known as Kings of the Realm: A Dragon Anthology.

The title says about as much about it as I could hope to, so I'll just add that it won't be out any time soon - in fact, it hasn't even closed to submissions yet, so if you have any tales of giant reptiles doing interesting things then you might want to consider sending Mr Jacobsmeyer's way. The projected publication date is the first half of next year, and as ever I'll post further news as it comes in.