I love advice that is counterintuitive at first glance, and then makes perfect sense after you think it through.

I got an email from someone at my writer’s meet-up group pointing out a good article at solon.com, A Readers Advice to Writers, by Laura Miller, http://salon.com/books/laura_miller/2010/02/23/readers_advice_to_writers/index.html.  She points out a universal truth; writers go to writers for advice on writing.  Makes sense to me, I read On Writing, by Stephen King and was blown away by his advice and simple tools he recommends.  Great I thought, I’ve got enough information to be dangerous, so here I go.  I kept typing away and a few months later I finished my first book. 

In most other professions this makes sense also.  A doctor goes to medical school to learn from other doctors, a lawyer go to law school and is taught by other lawyers, so writers should learn from other writers, right?  But then I gave it some more thought, and like most things in life that led to the moment of—maybe everything I thought was too simplistic and, (as lawyers start every answer with), it depends.

I think a writer, like most professions are helped by a good foundation, but only get truly great with experience.  Experience means writing and listening to readers and editors.  And let’s face it; editors are just hyper vigilant readers.  Stephen King even mentioned this in On Writing, he wrote that if you want to be a good writer you need to read all the time.  I’m assuming his advice is not so you can steal from the writer, but so you can see through the reader’s eyes.  Let’s face it, if writers like your work, but readers don’t you will have a very short career. 

As a reader, I never thought about the author’s ability to write great prose.  All I wanted is a great read.  This is not to say that writer to writer interaction, help and advice is not important.  I listen to Mighty Mur, Scott Sigler and have corresponded with a couple of authors I like, Robert Buttner being the most helpful.  All these writers are a great motivation and all have provided me with great tidbits of information.  However, readers are the ones that I’m trying to connect with and ultimately will stamp anything I do with a, Success or Needs Improvement. 

Lonnie

My note to the Sci-Fi writers of America

In ref: to an Io9 article about the row between Publisher and Amazon, http://io9.com/5465734/sci+fi-writers-of-america-reject-amazon-over-macmillan-row

Look to the music industry for what authors need to do, (yes I said it).  Writers are worried about keeping their .15 cents per book because that's what they know.  Musicians were worried about keeping their dime per $15 dollar album instead of looking at the future.  Today a musician can sell their own music for dollars instead of cents and more importantly have the ability go straight to the public without the corporate gate keepers deciding what the people need.  The large artists are still with the music labels as will the Steven Kings and John Scalzis of the world will stay with the large publishers.  As for the rest of us?

Authors have struggled for a hundred plus years to get a publishing company to like them enough to publish to the public for them and have had to agree on any terms just to get published.  Starting June 30th, authors will now be able to publish on the kindle and keep 70%, (dollars not pennies).  The Apple Ipad will have the same terms and all ereaders in the future will have to offer this option.  Yes their pie will be smaller, but 99% of authors have day jobs.  How many great works have not been seen by the public because the author gave up on the publishing process?

Yes the quality will be atrocious until authors learn about the value of a great editor, but in the long run we will have 10 time the content.  The money will flow to the content creator and not to a corporation.  Just as important, authors will not have to wait 2 to 3 year for their book to "fit" into the publishing companies time line.

Lonnie

Amazon's new author/publisher split

Check out this article at Engaget, "Amazon to start paying 70 percent royalties on Kindle books that play by its rules" http://bit.ly/76NqOw .

I decided a little while ago that I'm going to publish my fantasy book as an EBook through Amazon.  I believe this is the future of publishing and the big NYC houses are going to turn into a service industry.  They will link up authors and editors and still provide the large run print versions.  But their days as serving as the gate keeper are coming to an end.

What Amazon is proposing will become the standard and the other eBook publishers will follow suit.  B&N will have to match this service and I expect an announcement will be made within a month.  The 800 pound gorilla will be Google though.  In ten years they will be the default clearing house for written content delivered to the public and the format will be device agnostic.  Open standard publishing format and the lion's share of the profit going to the author is the future. 

The two major downsides that I see ahead are piracy and crap overload.  Once we have the open standard, most likely epup, piracy will become a major concern.  Much like what we saw with MP3s, there will be an initial run to steal everything by a few people.  I don’t believe this will be a significant long term problem as those that steal would not have bought the books anyway.  Right now you can read a book for free at the library and authors still make a living. 

The second issue of crap overload is the more significant problem.  The publishing industry for all its faults does a pretty good job of serving as a quality aggregator or gate keeper.  The wheat and chaff get sorted out and books get edited for quality by highly trained professionals.  With true desktop publishing, raw unedited material will flood the eBook market.  Even high quality writers need good editing to produce readable stories.  Readers will have to come up with their own aggregation method.

There are many more issues and opportunities with electronic publishing, but I’ll save those for other times.

1 chapter done

Chapter one edits done. At this rate it will be another 20 years. Time to carve out some time.

Still editing the first chapter

Holy cow editing is the worst thing I’ve had to do as a writer. It’s hard, tedious and painful. I’m hoping it'll get better as I get deeper into the story and presumably got better as a writer. If not, I’ll just have to do the opposite of what Mark Twain advised, “Write drunk, edit sober.”

After I finish the first chapter, I think I’m going to follow the second read through advice. Which is, read the whole thing through after it’s been written then edit the third time through. I’ll let you know which way works for me better.