deannaknippling.com

Note: Forgive me, I have checked and rechecked my math, but I made so many errors the first time through that I can’t be sure I’ve caught them all. Sheesh.

All right.  This is another tense topic for me, because I suspect I’ve been doing something that makes me happy in the short term but is not going to lead me any closer to my goals:  selling stories for too little.

I think a lot of writers are doing this.  We go, “Oh, well, I have to get the readers before I get the money, and selling things for low amounts of money will get me more readers.”  And it is a seductive thought, because then you can get the validation:  lots of readers = lots of validation.  Lots of readers who are willing to pay nothing = still lots of validation!  Validation doesn’t seem to change with the amount of money the readers are paying, for me, AT ALL.  However, whenever I sell a paper book for which I, as the publisher, have paid a few bucks for, and people pay like $10 for, I feel like I’m cheating or scamming people.  I’m making like 75% profit!  (Well, because I’m buying it for author rates, to which bookstore and distributor discounts do not apply.  The profit is a lot less, like a dollar, on books that go through the distributor.)

Except, of course, I’m not really cheating people; I had to write the thing.  It didn’t just magically appear.  I am not doing this as a hobby; I want to make a living at it.  So if I repeatedly undercharge I’m just digging myself a hole.  The goal here is to get enough work selling that I can pay for my time at minimum, dammit.  And I don’t want to wait 60 years to pay for that time, either.  I want them paid for in five years or less, selling at humbly reasonable rates.  Why five years?  One, it sounded reasonable in considering how long it takes to pay off a traditional advance, and two, I want the stories to more than pay for my time, eventually.  Even writers need a rainy-day fund.  Five years sounded good on that, too.

I’m using the most of the same bases of guesstimation as last week:

Number of words/hour on average first draft: 1000.
Words edited per hour for cleanup (NOT including client changes/revisions/copyedits/etc.): 2500.
Time taken to write/edit 10K:  10 hours writing + 4 hours cleanup = 14 hours (if everything goes smoothly, and not including submission time, and not including research/brainstorming time).
Time for copyediting/proofreading: 15 minutes minimum on a short story.
Time to build cover: about 1 hour on short stories.
Time to format: 1 hour short stories (ebook).

And I’m assuming that you do it all yourself AND do it reasonably well AND do it quickly AND do no promotions…or at least treat time spent promoting as an investment that may or may not pay off.  Also that you have not sold or will not sell your story elsewhere (which is foolish; you should go for it).

For self-employed people, you have to take the hourly wages x 2 to get about the same take-home pay, due to taxes and hours spent doing non-production tasks, like managing your business.  Working for the man means you get paid to answer emails from your employer.  Working for yourself means you don’t.

Minimum wage in Colorado: $7.36/hr.  Self employed: $14.82  Skill level:  can’t spell, cardboard characters, unbelievable plot, could be outsourced to a monkey.

Average wage of HS graduate*: $25,000 women/$32,900 men ($50K women/$65.8K men–$25/hr women, $32.90/hr men).  Skill level: can spell but can’t handle grammar, has read a few of the greats in HS English, has one or two decent strengths, has no idea why things work or don’t.

Average wage of college graduate: $40,100 women/$51,000 men ($80.1K women/$101K men–$40.10/hr women, $51/hr men).  Skill level: spelling/grammar proficient, can think analytically about a text and is aware of genre requirements, is decent at all areas of writing with a few real strengths, is starting to recognize personal style and audience.

Indie sales cuts (based on Amazon rates, because I make more sales on Amazon than anywhere else, and they tend to be slightly lower than anywhere else, and when in doubt, I try to lowball):
$.35 for a $.99 story.
$.70 for a $1.99 story.
$2.09 for a $2.99 story.
$2.79 for a $3.99 story.
$3.49 for a $4.99 story.
$4.19 for a $5.99 story.
$4.89 for a $6.99 story.
$5.59 for a $7.99 story.
$6.29 for a $8.99 story.
$6.99 for a $9.99 story.

I won’t go above that, because I refuse to buy ebooks over $9.99. However, I don’t buy textbooks or other generally higher-priced books as ebooks, so I don’t want to say that a book that would normally go for $50 as a print book shouldn’t go for more than $9.99 as an ebook. I buy fiction; I mostly write fiction; I’m talking fiction.

Note: we still haven’t hit the skill level (or pay grade) of a professional writer yet.

I’m going to guesstimate my average short story length as 4K.  This is short story week, because the combined post was so long I didn’t want to read it.

Short story (4K):

Time to write: 4 hours; time to edit: 1.6 hours; copy/proof .25 minutes; cover 1 hour; formatting 1 hour. Total: 7.85 hours.
Minimum wage: $116.37
HS graduate: $196.25 women/$258.27 men
College graduate: $314.76 women/$400.35 men.
I’m using 2 copies/month (beginner sales) and 5 copies/month (average sales) as my numbers. Five is the number that Dean Wesley Smith gives as a good average. (Not for him; he’s doing 7, I think. For his students.)

To make minimum wage on a $.99 short story, I need to sell 333 copies; to make HS graduate level, I need to sell 738 copies; to make college graduate level, I need to sell 1143 copies.
$1.99 = 167; 369;572.
$2.99 = 56; 94; 151.

Let’s say I sell about 2 copies/month. that will take me:
$.99, 13.9 years to make minimum wage, 30.8 years to make HS grad level, and 48 years to make college grad level money.  Sheesh.
$1.99 = 7 years; 15.4 years; 24 years.
$2.99 = 2.3 years; 3.9 years; 6.3 years.  Still over 5 years.

Let’s say I sell 5 copies/month.
$.99 = 5.6 years; 12.3 years; 19.1 years.
$1.99 = 2.8 years; 6.2 years; 9.5 years.
$2.99 = .9 years; 1.57 years; 2.52 years.

So: If I sell my stories at $.99 cents each and sell five copies a month, It’s still going to take me three times as long to make about the same money as I would selling 2 copies a month at $2.99 each.  However, I have convinced myself that I would never buy a short story for $2.99, so…I doubt I’ll get many takers at $2.99. I am going to have to work myself up to trying it sometime to see. If it’s given that getting that 70% royalty at $2.99 is the sweet spot, and that I wouldn’t buy a short story for more than $.99, what’s the answer?

Here are the numbers on selling $2.99 bundles of five short stories AND the same, freestanding short stories:
2 copies/month on short stories AND on bundles:
–$4.18 on bundles (2 copies total)
–$.35 on each story sale (2 copies for each of five stories, 10 total), or $3.50 total
–Grand total $7.68/month
–Hours on stories: 39.25
–Additional hours for bundle (with new cover): 1.5 editing (yes, I redo it), 1 hour cover, 1.5 hours formatting–4 hours additional.
–Total hours: 43.25
–Need to make: $640.97 minimum wage/$1422.93 HS level/$2205.75 college level.
–Pay for time at: 7 years/15.4 years/24 years (vs. 13.9 years/30.8 years/48 years)
5 copies/month on short stories AND on bundles:
–$10.45 on bundles (5 copies total)
–$.35 on each short story sale (5 copies for each of five stories, 25 total), or $8.75 total.
–Grand total $19.20/month.
–Pay for time at 2.8 years/6.2 years/9.5 years (vs. 5.6 years/12.3 years/19.1 years)

Here are the numbers on a 10-story collection: the short story collection (something of a length that I can turn into a book).
–10 short stories, $.99 each when purchased separately.
–1 ebook of 10 stories for $4.99 each (I’m not pricing them at this point at the moment, but I’m going to say that two $2.99 bundles of stories is a bargain at $4.99).
–1 POD of 10 stories for $9.99 each ($3.20 profit when Creatspace sold through Amazon)
2 copies/month on short stories AND ebook collection AND POD:
–$6.98 on collections (2 copies total)
–$6.40 on PODs sold via Amazon.com (2 copies total on a $9.99 POD with $3.20 profit each)
–$.35 on each short story sale (2 copies each of 10 stories, 20 total), or $7.00
–Grand total $20.38/month
–Hours: 70.85 for short stories alone, 11 hours for ebook, additional 4 hours for POD (1 hour wrap-cover formatting [back and spine], 3 formatting interior POD), total 85.85
–$1272.30min/$2824.47HS/$4378.35college
–Pay for time at 5.2 years/11.5 years/18 years.
5 copies/month on short stories AND ebook collection AND POD:
–$17.45 on collections (5 copies total)
–$16 on PODs sold via Amazon.com
–$.35 on each short story sale (5 copies of 10 stories, 50 total), or $17.50
–Grand total $50.95
–Pay for time at 2.1 years/4.6 years/7.2 years.

Conclusion: The only way I can afford to sell short stories for $.99 each is to either sell short stories at $.99 with 2 5-story bundles or with a 10-story collection and a POD. The only way to make a short story pay off at college level in under five years (on average) is to sell ~2.5 copies a month at $2.99 each or to write significantly shorter stories.  They probably aren’t worth the time, except I love writing them.

If you’re interested, the handout I passed out at the January Write Brain is over at the Pikes Peak Writers Blog.  It’s “Roadmap to Indie Publishing,” and can help you grasp what kinds of things you need to consider for indie publishing, from a practical standpoint, like where to get info on setting up a business, where to epublish at, and where to find free software to do what you need to do.

I woke up this morning and felt like an utter and complete idiot…about nothing and everything. “Hello, my name is DeAnna, and today I feel like a loser.”  ”Hi, loser.”  ***Dave explained what I was really doing wrong, though: “I think it was the cursed tiki idol you took from that cave. Maybe you just need to put it back.”  Look, I will, okay?  Just as soon as I finish this blog post…

—

Chapter 2, Part 1:

One of the things I hear come up over and over with beginning writers is, “Is my manuscript ready to publish?”  It’s a tough call, and that’s one reason that a lot of people would rather have someone else publish their work: it implies that the work has been judged worthy and the writer validated.  But that begs the question…how does the publisher or editor know?

I think the method that most people who pick manuscripts use is, “Did I like it?” This isn’t the best method for a writer trying to judge their own work:  we tend to swing between ecstatic and despondent or even suicidal when trying to judge our own work, when really, our work deserves neither extreme of emotion.  Another problem is that while publishers can hone their taste, they can’t really predict what will sell beyond looking at comparable books.  If publishers were good at this kind of thing, then they would know exactly which new authors would break in, and which wouldn’t, and they’d hire the right writer to write exactly that book.  This is not to say that publishers are stupid, just that the problem is too complex.

A third problem is that indie books can be fundamentally different than traditionally published books, and we haven’t even scratched the surface of what that means yet.   I have read all kinds of indie books that I would have no idea of what to do with them in a Barnes and Noble store.  What shelf would it go on?  Would it even have a shelf?  I’ve read indie books that break all kinds of rules: memoirs with fantastical elements to them (and without uplifting endings), kids’ books where the kids don’t get punished for disobeying their non-evil parents, spiritual books about post-apocalyptic worlds that feature more f-bombs than a Dennis Leary comedy routine.  How do you even judge that kind of book?

For indie writers, there are two ways to tell if the first draft of your manuscript is ready:  the logical way and the practical way. You may have to pick up a few techniques from each way in order to satisfy yourself; they’re both valuable, and, really, you have to do both in order to get the manuscript out the door.

The logical way: You analyze your manuscript using a checklist or other techniques to determine whether it’s ready.

The practical way: You’re paralyzed by fear, so it doesn’t matter how logically ready or unready the manuscript is–you just have to hurdle the fear and send out the manuscript.

What I have seen happen over and over again, in my manuscripts and in talking to others, is that we really want to think of ourselves as logical, but once you pare away everything on the “logical” checklists, you start finding all kinds of excuses to not send out the manuscript, and it becomes evident that no, you weren’t being logical–you were terrified and using “logic” to prevent yourself from having to send out the manuscript, either to self-publish it or to send it to a market.  Or even to send it to your critique group.  (Yes, the idea of sending something to a critique group can be terrifying; no need to be ashamed of it.)

Personally, the further along I get in my quest to make a living at what I love, the more I see that acknowledging the fear–which is made up of all kinds of sub-fears–is one of the first things that separates people who will get work out and people who won’t.  I was talking to a group of writers about getting negative comments on a blog post, and what I really wanted to say to respond to the criticism was, “Stop looking at me.”  I didn’t really care what they were saying; I didn’t care whether it was complimentary or critical.  I was just tired of having to know that people were…paying attention, which is exactly what a writer should want.  The fear doesn’t have to be rational or reasonable or logical.  You just have to acknowledge it.

On the other hand, there are the people who seem utterly confident in themselves and their work, even though it’s crap.  I think folks like that are just starting out or have been in a rut for some time, and don’t know enough to know what they don’t know.  Those people obviously should use a logical way to assess their manuscript’s readiness–however, it’s almost impossible, when you’re that person, to tell when you are that person, because of the way our minds work.  Competent people tend to doubt themselves and incompetent people tend not to, statistically.  So really, a checklist is no bad thing, either way.

However, now that I have you convinced (more or less) that these methods are the best ways to approach the problem, let me mention that there’s a third way that’s better than either a checklist or shoving something out the door unquestioned, and you probably won’t want to hear it.

The third way is writing a synopsis.

Okay, question–did you just shut down and say, “Forget it.  Give me the @#$%^& checklist”?

That’s fear.

Yes, I’m going to give you a checklist.  However, I’m also going to recommend that you write a synopsis–actually, several different forms of summing up your manuscript, of which a synopsis is one.  Is it necessary?  Yes.  Because, in the end, if you don’t understand why anyone should read your story, then your story is probably not worth reading.  Oh, your writing may be good.  You may have removed all your adjectives and made your dialogue realistic.  You might have compelling conflict, wacky characters, and uplifting sentiments…and no story.

Nonfiction writers have a good grasp on this.  They have to write up all kinds of summaries and outlines in order to convince a publisher that what they have will sell–and don’t think for a second that what nonfiction writers do doesn’t tell a story, because it does.  Biographies tell the story of a life, and so do memoirs and histories.  Cookbooks tell the story of a meal.  (Why do you think the dessert section usually comes last?)  Instruction manuals tell the story of going from not-knowing something to knowing something, and even providing the story of how to find out more (in the bibliography or recommended reading section).  And so on.  Humans learn through stories.  If-then is a story.  So is why-because.  So is how-like this.

Fiction writers sometimes like to think that all they have to do is write the story.  But story sometimes gets buried under words.

Some fiction writers only have to write the story.  These writers tend to fall in two main camps:  the ones who won’t sell, and the ones who have written so many different summaries and synopses and log lines and blurbs that they breathe them.  If you find yourself not writing the quality of plots you want, then write synopses and blurbs and log lines and more, because it will give you a better grasp of story, stripped of almost any other consideration.

So here’s my advice:

1. Set yourself a deadline, beyond which the story goes out, ready or not.  You might even send a draft to a friend that they will send out for you–barring any changes they receive before the deadline.
2. Write a synopsis in order to look at the big picture.  If necessary, write the synopsis the way you wish you had written the book. (You can even write the synopsis before you write the book.)
3. Go through the checklist to look at the granular details.
4. Hustle.  That deadline is coming.

Next time: How to Write a Synopsis (Hint: Torture Can Work Wonders for You, Too!)

I went to a lovely 12th-night party this weekend at some friends’ house where we exchanged Christmas gifts, and the person who drew me (Dave Newman!) gifted me with a bunch of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland-themed books, one of which is Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy: Curiouser and Curiouser. The first essay was a feminist interpretation of the Alice books.

I was reading it, and the writer praised the character Alice but didn’t seem to grasp that she wasn’t a person, but a character written by a male writer.

Personally, I think  Alice isn’t a feminist book so much as an Alice book, a book meant to show a particular girl how to make it through life–how to think logically, how to question common knowledge, how to navigate lies and hypocrisy, and how to have fun doing it.  I ran into the idea that the Alice books were there to instruct after rereading The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson.  I started thinking, “If I were to write an illustrated primer like that, what are some of the traits it would have?” And I kept running back into the Alice books: the world is the adult world, as a kid might see it at the time–threatening, yet she (brattily) navigates it.

If you were going to write some kind of work instructing a particular kid in some of the things that they need for survival (perhaps that you suspect they aren’t getting from their immediate family), how would you do it?  I try not to think like that too much; I don’t want to come across as preachy.  And try as I might, I seem to keep coming back to themes in my work for kids: bullies don’t get to say who you are, sometimes grownups can’t be relied upon, people will try to get you to do what they want you to do, not what’s right for you.  But mostly when I sit down to write, I want to show kids doing stuff.

And as far as the idea that Charles Dodgson was reliving his past to some extent in the Alice books, well, why not?  Don’t we all have things that we learned in childhood (or mis-learned) that we want to pass on?

When you write a story, how much should you sell it for?  Whatever the market will bear, right?  It’s a capitalistic society, so we can make a ton of money!  Huzzah!

Well, it turns out that a lot of writers (including me) will sell a story for whatever the market will give us, not what it’s worth by any reasonable standard of the work we put into it.  Take a look at standard royalty rates: anywhere from 7-12.5% gross, right?

Why is it that low?  Because as writers, we all know that what publishers do is at least seven times more important than what we do:  without publishers, there would be no product!  And we all know that most of us won’t make the publisher any money–we won’t earn out our advances.  Poor, poor publishers, doing all this for…well, what turns out to be nice profits in 2010, and will probably be better in 2011.  They’re so noble, giving us the chance to get published–not!

I’m not saying that it’s a bad idea to try to get published rather than doing it yourself.  That’s a decision you have to make yourself; there’s a lot of cachet in getting published, and it does build a resume that will help with other freelance work.  So I can’t say that I won’t be tempted by a low advance and crappy rates; I have been before, and I will be again.  However, know that when you’re considering a publisher, even a big publisher, you may not be getting paid minimum wage to write.

My guesstimated numbers:

Number of words/hour on average first draft: 1000.
Words edited per hour for cleanup (NOT including client changes/revisions/copyedits/etc.): 2500.
Time taken to write/edit 10K:  10 hours writing + 4 hours cleanup = 14 hours (if everything goes smoothly, and not including submission time, and not including research/brainstorming time).

For self-employed people, you have to take the hourly wages x 2 to get about the same take-home pay, due to taxes and hours spent doing non-production tasks, like managing your business.  Working for the man means you get paid to answer emails from your employer.  Working for yourself means you don’t.

Minimum wage in Colorado: $7.36/hr.  Self employed: $14.82  Skill level:  can’t spell, cardboard characters, unbelievable plot, could be outsourced to a monkey.

Average wage of HS graduate*: $25,000 women/$32,900 men ($50K women/$65.8K men–$25/hr women, $32.90/hr men).  Skill level: can spell but can’t handle grammar, has read a few of the greats in HS English, has one or two decent strengths, has no idea why things work or don’t.

Average wage of college graduate: $40,100 women/$51,000 men ($80.1K women/$101K men–$40.10/hr women, $51/hr men).  Skill level: spelling/grammar proficient, can think analytically about a text and is aware of genre requirements, is decent at all areas of writing with a few real strengths, is starting to recognize personal style and audience.

Note: we still haven’t hit the skill level (or pay grade) of a professional writer yet.

I’m going to guesstimate my average book length as about 85K, and my average story length as 4K.

Short story (4K):

Time to write: 4 hours; time to edit: 1.6 hours.  Total: 5.6 hours.
Minimum wage: $82.42 (just over 2 cents/word)
HS graduate: $140 women (3.5c/w)/$184.24 men (4.6c/w).
College graduate: $224.56 women (5.6c/w)/$285.60 men (7.1c/w).
Note:  still not to pro writer skill level yet.

Conclusion: assuming that writers are fast and work cheap, and the editors ask for no changes or help with promotions, semi-pro rates should be 7.1 cents/word.

Pro rates should be more than that; the fact that pro rates are generally defined at 5c/word implies that pro writers are more skilled than a monkey but are only writing at the same level as a high-school graduate.

Novel (85K):
Time to write: 85 hours; time to edit: 34.  Total: 119.
Minimum wage: $1751.68
HS graduate: $2975/$3915.10
College graduate: $4771.90/$6069
Again, not to pro writer level yet.

Conclusion: assuming that writers are fast and work cheap, and the editors ask for no changes or help with promotions, an advance at a smaller publishing house should be $6K.  Advances at large publishing houses should be proportionately larger.  Advances for books requiring research should be proportionately larger.

But wait! The publishers are taking all the risk, right? No.

The writers are taking the risk that the publisher will ask for edits (and they will); they are taking the risk that the publisher will ask us to do promotions (and they will).  If the publisher is taking all the risks, the writer should be paid hourly for those tasks–at $101/hour, for smaller publishing houses and more for larger houses.

If that work is worth nothing, then writers with platforms (or track records) are not worth more than writers without platforms or track records, and that is clearly not the case.  The writers are also taking the risk that the publisher will screw up somehow on the book.  The writer is investing in the publisher as well: if the publisher isn’t making money for the writer, why?  Is the publisher incompetent?  The publisher thought the book was good enough to make them money, or they wouldn’t have bought it.  Or shouldn’t have bought it.

How important is the writer to a book?

Is the writer more or less important than the publisher when it comes to a project?

Let’s (generously) say that the publisher and writer each contribute about half the value of a book, that what they do is equally important to the success of a book.  Then why aren’t writers making 50% net, with net being “retail minus the physical cost of the book, if any, and bookseller discount”?

Because the publishers will pay us whatever we will put up with; that’s capitalism for you.  They can make a ton of money!  Huzzah!

I mean, I can’t blame them:  wouldn’t you?

*Numbers taken from U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2011). The Condition of Education 2011 (NCES 2011–033),Indicator 17.  Latest data for 2009.

The Editing for Indie Writers series continues…

Chapter 1: Roadmap from First Draft to Final Product

So you have a manuscript that you want to indie publish, and you have no idea where to start.  You’ve heard all kinds of things about how terrible indie writers are at editing, from how book bloggers refuse to read indie books (because they’re so bad), to how bestseller lists refuse to include ebooks, or only include certain ebooks (because they’re so bad), to how, if indie writers could actually write, they’d get real publishing contracts, but they don’t (because they’re so bad).

Now, grant me a few things here:

1. Indie writers aren’t professional editors, on the whole.
2. Indie writers come from all levels of writers, from the beginner to the seasoned pro who chooses to work for themselves.
3. Most indie writers don’t have a lot of experience in the self-publishing world.

So a lot of indie writers, at all levels of experience, are starting in a new field: self-publishing.  This means they are taking on not just the role of publisher, but all of the sub-roles under that–or hiring out.  On top of that, there are a lot of writers doing this who have no or little experience in the publishing industry, and have no ideas what these roles are, let alone what’s required to do them well.  Does this mean the stories are bad?  No.  But it does mean that the stories may not be presented professionally, even by professional writers.  (Even the big publishers struggle to get ebooks right–it’s new to everyone.)

I’m not going to deal with covers or other art, marketing, promotions, sales, or formatting (except where it’s relevant for editing).  And I won’t teach you grammar; please refer to your style guide of choice (I will talk about selecting one later).  What I’m going to do is give you a map to follow so that you know:

• What to look for when you’re editing.
• How to identify where you have more to learn and some places to start learning it.
• When to stop editing.
• Whether to hire someone or not–and whether you’re getting your money’s worth.

I will assume that you have a completed first draft of your manuscript.  However, that brings up a question: how do you know if you have a completed first draft?

The essence of a complete draft is that it tells a complete story.

Not a complete draft:

• Does not have an identifiable beginning, middle, and end that describe a problem (beginning), enumerate the steps taken to try to solve the problem (middle), and definitetively solve the problem, for better or worse (end).  That is, if you can’t describe your plot as, “So-and-so tries to do X, which ends in success (or failure),” then you do not have a complete draft.
• Has spots where you noted, “Come back and write this later” or similar.
• Has spots where you changed your mind about something midway through the book and haven’t fixed in the beginning yet.
• Has elements that you make excuses for when describing the book to other people, e.g., “The main character’s in construction, only I think he should really be in sales, but I haven’t changed that yet.”
• Has elements that need more research, e.g., details in a historical novel that you threw in because you were in a white heat to get the words down but are not sure of.  (You might choose to keep these, but at least know the facts!)

A complete draft:

• Has elements you’re not sure about.
• Has typos.
• Isn’t set in stone.

I would never advise sending a completed first draft to anyone as-is, whether it’s to your friends, your early readers, to an agent or editor, or to put it up on your blog or other public area; I just said that a completed first draft has typos, didn’t I?

Here are the phases of a writing project, from an editing point of view:

• Uncompleted draft.
• Completed first draft.
• Cleaned-up first draft.  (This is the draft you send to first readers; it’s complete and has typos removed.)
• Revision(s).  (This is where you incorporate feedback or changes.)
• Final draft.  (This is the draft where you are satisfied with the story itself, and where you can send it to friends, agents, or editors, in the appropriate format.)
• (Agents or editors may ask for additional revisions; this may be called “developmental editing.”)
• Copy editing.  (This is the editing pass(es) that checks for consistency, completeness, style, logic, grammar, punctuation, etc., and can include several back-and-forths with the writer.)
• Formatting.  (This is the pass where the book is laid out, or the manuscript is put in the correct format for submission; it may be done earlier but must be done by this point.)
• Proofreading.  (This is the pass where the book is checked for style, logic, grammar, punctuation, and formatting.  Some people do this after the proofs are produced; I try to do it both before and after.)
• Galleys/proofs.  (Initial copies of the book are produced and may be sent out as Advanced Reader Copies).
• Another proofreading pass.
• Final product.

This is essentially the same process, no matter how you choose to proceed with making your work available publicly:

• To share work with first readers (usually other writers or people who know something about the writing process), provide them at least a cleaned-up first draft.
• To share work with agents, editors, and friends, provide them with at least a final draft (in an appropriate format, such as standard manuscript format).
• To share work informally on your blog, provide at least a final draft (unless you specify that it’s an earlier draft, as in this work, which is a cleaned-up first draft–but never provide less than a cleaned-up draft of the material you are publishing, even if you password protect it).
• To share work via a publisher other than yourself, work with the publisher to ensure that a true final product is provided.
• To share work via self-publishing, never provide less than a true final product.

Whether or not you hire an editor, you should be familiar with these phases and how to do them, at least in theory.  Many people claim to be editors; however, they may not be very good, or they may do more or less than they need to do in order to get your book in shape.    For example, you might think you’re hiring someone to do every editing phase, but the person you’re hiring might think you’re only asking for proofreading–or you might be hiring a proofreader who thinks you’re hiring someone to do developmental editing.

If you are hiring an editor, you may want to provide them with checklists showing exactly what you expect them to do–then, when you get the edits back, use the same checklist to make sure that they did what you paid them for.

Note: Preorder at Amazon, B&N, or most bookstores.  Available February 28, 2012.

Disclaimer:  I begged Julie for an advance copy, which she sent to me.  It’s pumpkin orange.

Okay, think of the books that you quote.  Not books of literature, but the ones where you grab nearby passers-by and say, “Wait, wait, listen to this!” and then read something sly and witty and look at them expectantly.  Now, because these people are most likely thinking about a) getting away from you or b) sex, they’re usually not impressed.  However, once in a rare while, you run into someone who CAN QUOTE THE NEXT LINE.  It’s like heaven.

This is that kind of book.

“Peeling the cookie open, I licked my lips in anticipation of its sugary goodness and informative, if not valuable summation of my future.  The cookie read:

THE DELIVERY KID LICKED YOUR EGG ROLL.

HAVE A NICE DAY!

Damn! Foiled again by a teen with more metal in his head than Snow White had sugar midgets.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho…

Off to scrub delivery kid spit out of my mouth I go.”

I’ll do up to “Have a Nice Day,” and you’ll do the rest.  Heaven.

Urban fantasy murder mystery written by a chick with a degree in forensic psychology and who has worked as a private investigator, and who possesses a wicked eye that tends to favor a bit of villainy now and then.  How could you go wrong?

Signs…or habits?  Sometimes when I talk to new writers, they say certain things that make me think, “this person isn’t getting published anytime soon.” Sad to say, but you can usually pick this up within a few minutes of conversation.  So here’s my personal top-ten list of things that wannabe writers say that are red flags:

10.  You never finish what you start, or you don’t submit what you do finish.

90% of the people who want to be writers don’t finish anything.  90% of the people who finish never submit it.  (Sorry, anecdotal statisics…but it sounds about right.)  So what if it’s crap?  You’re still ahead of 99% of the wannabes out there.

9.  You let rejections bother you, and you think a rejection with some kind of criticism in it is the worst.

Last year I had 12 accepances and 160+ rejections.  Getting a lot of rejections is a good thing.  And by the way, getting  a personal rejection is a sign that you were worth more than a form rejection.  Worth MORE.

8.  All things considered, reading books is not your favorite form of entertainment.  (Adjust this to suit your medium!)

If you’re trying to be a creative profession in a field that you don’t love, WHY?!?  And how do you expect to know your audience…if you’re not part of it?

7.  You only write when you’re in a happy place, with no interruptions or distractions.

Every successful writer overcomes challenges.  Stephen Hawking has written several books while basically unable to move.  What’s your problem?  Lack of priorities, that’s what.

6.  You don’t let anyone read your work until it’s perfect.

No work is ever perfect.  None.   If you never let people read your work until it’s perfect, you never submit it.

5.  You “only write for yourself.”

Have fun masturbating.

4.  You try to make everyone in your critique group/writing class happy.

Have fun destroying your work:  no book is meant for every audience, and yet you’re trying to make all possible audiences happy.  The only way to do that is to destroy that parts that make it good…for your actual audience.

3.  You’ve been revising for more than a year.

You’ve been second-guessing yourself for more than a year.  That’s your editor’s job, Gomez.

2.  You’ve been working on your first draft for more than 12 months per 50,000 words.

This works out to 136 words a day, or about 6 tweets on Twitter.

1.  You can comfortably say, “So I have this idea for a book…” or “I have lots of ideas for books.”

You know what happens when a writer hears this?  The red flag for bullshit gets thrown, and you start looking for ways to escape the conversation, because dollars to donuts, the next thing is going to be, “Want to write it for me?”

AUUUUUUGGGHH!  Run! Run!  IEEEEE!11!!

WRITERS DON’T HAVE IDEAS.  WRITERS WRITE.

If you find yourself doing these things, never fear!  Once you quit doing them and start writing, it all turns around

So you’d like to edit your own ebooks and POD books?  Great!  Please follow me to the torture chamber!  Just kidding…mostly.

Most writers don’t like to edit.  And they have no idea how to edit, so the idea of editing causes them fits.

“But wait,” you say, “I like to edit.”

More than likely if you’re a writer, you like to revise: you like to go into your stories and change dialogue and description.  You like to reorder chapters.  You like to question whether your ending is effective.  Your first sentence has been through more variations than a room full of monkeys with typewriters can produce.  You like to dress up your story like it’s a doll, changing outfits back and forth:  ”Does this backstory make my butt look fat?” ” ‘Said’ is the Little Black Dress of dialogue tags, don’t you think?”  ”First-person POV or third-person POV?  First-person POV or third-person POV?”  This is not editing.  This is revising, and you’d better have it done before an editor steps in, because we don’t put up with that kind of crap.

That’s right: crap.

The mind of an editor is a harsh, harsh place, where dithering is not allowed, sarcasm is the language of choice, and breaking the rules is viewed with a suspicious eye.  The worst editors take the rules and make them holy commandments; the best editors gleefully collaborate with rule breaking, pointing out places where you haven’t broken a rule that you generally like to break.  It’s all a matter of style:  if you have it, a good editor is your friend and co-conspirator.  If you don’t have it, the editor will make you toe the line.

But what happens when you’re your own editor?

Some people can’t do it.  They can’t spell worth a damn, think grammar is stupid, and they say things like, “You knew what I meant” when having their wording criticized.  Creativity rules over clarity–and clarity is the basis of communication.

However, if you find yourself wincing at errors in published works, feel that words (and the orders of words) mean things, and worry about whether or not you’re being clear, then you’re probably a good candidate to edit your own ebooks.

–On the other (third?) hand, if you’re the kind of person who corrects grammar in the middle of informal conversation, then this book is probably not for you.  Being a good editor involves filtering the rules through context, and if you can’t filter your need to correct people through the context of informal conversation being informal, then editing fiction or non-fiction with any kind of creativity is not for you.  Good writers break rules all the time, because they have a purpose in doing so–and if you can’t grasp that communication is more important than following the rules, then you don’t need to be in the editing business, even for yourself.

So if editing is not revising, what is editing?

Editing is like being the very best kind of butler.  Once the writer has made all the relevant fashion choices, it’s the butler’s job to make sure that the person heading out the door is as presentable as possible.  Tag at the back of the ripped t-shirt? Tucked in.  Mohawk:  consistently spiked.  Gaudy faux fur?  Not crusted with pancake batter from breakfast.  The butler may, on rare occasions, suggest appropriate (that is, consistent) outfit choices, such as the stacked, neon-green heels if the master has stated that he is looking for footwear, but whatever the master picks is always “Very good, Sir.”

What the butler thinks is probably quite different.

Note: When the butler starts to dictate your fashion choices?  Time for a new butler.  Editors are supposed to point out logical inconsistencies and weaknesses.  They are not supposed to make your book fit their tastes.  Sorry, Jeeves.

I get my ideas from my story muscle.  Grrrah!

Almost everyone has one.  They start really forming when you get object permanence: during a baby’s first games of peek-a-boo.  Maybe earlier.  But definitely by then.  The toy was gone!  What happened to it? This is a story.

• Beginning: there was a toy, and it went away.
• Middle: I looked for it.
• End: There it is!

But the story muscle really starts to rear its ugly head during the terrible twos era.  Why?

• I wanted the toy.
• I tried to take it; then I tried to manipulate my parents into giving it to me (try/fail cycles).
• I grieved over the loss of opportunity, and was punished.

Toddlers live in a very Kafka-esque world at times, I think.

You see different phases of it throughout development, but it all goes back to trying to make sense of the world.  Why is this happening to me?  What will happen in the future if I do this?  What should I do?  How can I best be happy? What is the best way for my group to live, so that I, and by extension they, can best be happy?

Our breadth of storytelling widens as we get wiser: we like to gather stories about people who are like us, but who are not us.  People who are like us, but who can do things we could never do.  And sometimes even people who are not like us and are the more fascinating for it.

We do all of this subconsciously, most of the time.  I mean, who sits down and says, “What is the best explanation for why weather happens, that will make the most people happy?”  Not “what’s the best weather to make people happy” but “how can I best explain the phenomena that is ‘weather’ that will allow the maximum amount of happiness?” At times it’s “Zeus did it”; at times it’s “you’re being punished for your sins”; at times it’s “weather is geography in motion”; at times it’s “we don’t know…want to help us find out?”  And so on.  The answer largely depends on what your audience is willing to accept at the time.

Now, writers.

Do writers have stronger story muscles than most people?  No.  I mean, think about some people and how firmly they cling to the stories in their lives.  ”It’s not my fault.” “You have to do it like this.” “There’s only black and white.  Gray is a lie.”  These are the people with strong story muscles: reality has been defeated, change is not allowed, and if something happens out of their control, they never see it coming, because it’s not part of the story.

Writers, they tend to live in the gray, as far as I can tell.  We all have some non-negotiables of belief, but most of us enjoy watching other people to find out what they’re like and what they’ll do–rather than deciding we already know.  I would say our story muscles are dexterous rather than strong.  One of the thing we eventually learn is that if you write essentially the same story over and over, it gets boring.  We have multiple stories (and multiple POVs, from our characters) in our heads, multiple templates to lay over the world.  Again, there are some non-negotiables, but they vary from person to person: one person’s fiction is inevitably influenced by their ideas on spirituality; another one’s fiction, on their ideas on justice or love or whatever.  I think these non-negotiables tend to center around genres.

To a romance writer, the non-negotiable may be, “Love is important” or “People are happier when they’re in a satisfying relationship.”

To a science fiction writer, the non-negotiable may be, “If you don’t know, try to find out” or “When possible, PUSH THE BIG RED BUTTON!!!11!!”

The non-negotiables seem to change over time, in people, in whole genres, even in society at large, which is kind of neat, actually.

Readers develop a similar flexibility–which is why I think writers must read books and keep reading them–and why people who are heavily invested in the strength of a particular story try to control the books that people read: they see flexibility as a lack of strength, which, really, it isn’t, but it can undermine stories with a lot of plot holes in them.  The stories that we absolutely love at ten or twelve are the stories that sometimes disappoint us, as adults.  As we get older, Barney is a really annoying guy in a synthetic dinosaur suit.  But some stories get richer as you question them: Santa is a story you can enjoy as an adult, even though you know there’s no fat guy at the North Pole.

I know that my favorite characters never existed; I know that the worlds they live in aren’t real.  And yet they are rich stories for me, that influence how I see the world, and how I act.  I mean, imagine what the world would be like without your favorite book: a sad place.