Pssst! Wanna Buy a Book?

“The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell. And the funny thing is that you’re a salesman, and you don’t know that.” —Charley from Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

Let’s take a poll. How many of you started writing so that you could eventually achieve your life-long dream of pestering strangers to buy your books? Raise your hands. Anyone?

That’s what I thought.

Traditional publishers still promote their authors, although it’s expected that those authors will work equally as hard – if not harder – to sell books. And if you go the self-published route, expect to do more promotion than writing. (After all, indie writers, you have to find some way to get readers’ attention. Amazon’s magic search algorithms can only do so much.)

So what advice can I offer to help you promote your work effectively? Damned if I know. But I can tell you a few things not to do (mostly because I’ve done them).

Now You Look Like an Author!

That’s what the administrative assistant in the English Department where I teach said several years back when I returned from break sporting a mustache and goatee. One aspect of promotion is looking the part – although people’s expectations can vary as to exactly what an author should look like. And if you’re a contrary fellow like me, you hate letting other people’s perceptions make choices for you. Nevertheless, looking the part can help.

I’m forty-nine now. When I was thirty-one I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. The doctors caught it early, surgery took care of it, and I’ve been fine ever since. But for a few years after my cancer scare, I was a risk-taker. I’d beaten the Big C, so I wasn’t afraid to try anything. Around this time I started attending the World Fantasy Convention, and – reading somewhere that it was important for writers to create a memorable look for themselves – I bought some weird ties (ones with skulls on them, etc.) and decided to wear them with nice shirts, slacks, and shoes.

World Fantasy, for those of you who don’t know, is a huge gathering of writers, publishers, editors, and agents in the field of speculative fiction. No fans, just pros. Lots of business gets done at this con every year, and it’s an excellent place to network and make connections. The bar is a great place to network, as are publishers’ parties – especially the invitation-only parties. One year, I’d learned where a private party was taking place (offsite at another hotel), and I convinced some friends to crash it with me. We hopped in a cab, found the hotel, located the party suite, and entered. No one asked who we were and if we were supposed to be there. My friends were nervous, but I – being full of cocky self-confidence – felt relaxed and self-satisfied. I’d been aggressive, rolled the dice, and here I was at a real publisher’s party.

It was a small party, with lots of drinking and conversation going on. And everyone wanted to talk to me. And I mean everyone. An attractive and somewhat inebriated editor spent some time chatting me up, only to abruptly turn away when she found out I was married. (“How nice for you!” she said before turning her back on me.) Agents pulled me aside to chat, and while I already had an agent, I was happy to get to speak with them and hear their take on the current state of the publishing industry. One writer, who I’d met the previous night, spent some time telling me about his idea for a young adult novel. It was an interesting idea, but I couldn’t figure out why the writer seemed so eager, and somewhat nervous, to talk to me about it. In fact, as the party wound down, I began to wonder why everyone seemed so eager to get to know me. No one was wearing nametags, and even if I had been, no one would’ve recognized my name, not back then.

The next day the writer who told me about his YA book approached me in the hotel lobby and apologized. Not only had he been somewhat tipsy at the party, he’d forgotten that we’d been previously introduced, and because I’d been wearing a tie, he’d assumed I was a new editor who’d just started working for the publisher. He hadn’t been telling me about his book. He’d been pitching it to me.

That’s when I understood what had happened at the party. Because of the way I was dressed, all the editors thought I was an agent, and all the writers and agents thought I was an editor. No one at the party thought I was a writer. If they had, they probably wouldn’t have spoken with me at all.

At the next World Fantasy Convention, I wore turtlenecks, jeans, and tennis shoes, and everybody knew I was a writer.

Despite what we may wish, appearances matter when it comes to promotion. I’ve given up trying to wear the equivalent of costumes, though, and just dress like myself. The last event I went to, I sat on a panel about fiction writing with several other writers, three of whom were literary writers who taught in university creative writing programs, and one of whom was a script writer. They all wore nice suits of varying types. I showed up in a polo shirt, and the aforementioned jeans and tennis shoes. These days, I’ll dress up for an awards banquet, but that’s about it.

You need to think about what signals your “look” will send to readers, too. Among women writers especially, there’s some debate about whether and how much to use your sexuality as a marketing tool. Do you wear a low-cut dress or not? A lot of makeup or a little? As a male in my culture, these aren’t choices I’ve ever had to wrestle with, but I know that many women do.

The Aborted Launch

The book launch is something that new writers love to do. If you’re a first-time novelist, why wouldn’t you want to mark the release of your first book with an event? After all, it’s sure as hell an event to you! Books launches can be fun, and you can take pictures or video to post on your website or social media sites, so even if you don’t sell a ton of books, you can still get promotional value from the event.

I’ve done one book launch. One.

My first published novel was a humorous erotic mystery called Dying for It. I wrote it because the editor, Russell Davis, and I had previously collaborated on a short story featuring Xena the Warrior Princess for an anthology. Russell contacted me, said he was working as an editor for a new small-press publisher of erotica targeted to married couples, and would I like to pitch some ideas to him? I said sure, partially because the project would pay a professional-level advance, but mostly because it sounded like a fun challenge. Could I write an erotic mystery? Could I write a good one? And what the hell would a “good one” be, anyway?

When the book came out, I contacted a local bookstore known for not only hosting events for authors on major book tours, but also supporting local authors. The events coordinator was happy to have me come to her store, a time for the event was set, and several weeks later, I showed up, ready to talk about my book, do a reading from a non-erotic passage (the reading was in public, after all, and kids might be walking past), and hopefully sell and sign a few books. I knew mostly friends, family, and coworkers were going to be in the audience, so I had no illusions this was going to be a promotional event of any real magnitude, but I was looking forward to experiencing what a book launch was like, especially with a supportive audience.

But as soon as I arrived at the store, the events coordinator came up to me, obviously nervous, and told me that since I was a writing teacher, the people who showed up tonight would be more interested in getting advice on how to publish their writing than in hearing me read from my book. So that’s what I should do: talk about writing and publishing. Not talk about Dying for It, and I especially shouldn’t read from it.

I realized then what had happened. The events coordinator hadn’t actually read my book until close to the event, and perhaps she’d only skimmed it that morning. Once she knew it was a book with S-E-X in it, she panicked. That didn’t bother me. What did brother me was that she didn’t come out and tell me what the problem was. I’m a big boy. I could’ve taken it.

Anyway, I stepped up onto the stage (yes, they actually had a stage dedicated for special events) in front of a dozen or more people, almost all of whom I knew, without any idea what the hell I was going to say. I made it through the hour, but it was not a particularly comfortable experience for me – especially when at one point one of my friends called out, “When are you going to read from your book?” which caused the event coordinator, who was sitting in the back, to go pale. Since then I haven’t bothered with book launches – and especially not at that store.

So what are your take-aways from this story? Tell the goddamned people at the bookstore what your book is about, for one – and make sure they understand you. If your book has any content that might be R or X-rated, I wouldn’t read from those sections unless that’s what the audience is expecting. Most of all, be ready to roll with whatever might go wrong with the event because something will. Sometimes the best way to promote yourself to readers is to show them that not only are you human too, you can be flexible and good-humored when things go wrong.

Readings, Nothing More Than Readings

I may not do book launches per se anymore, but I still do readings, mostly at conferences. I’ve read to a few dozen people before, I’ve read to one person before, and I’ve sat in an empty room for a while before giving up and leaving. Why do I do it? It’s fun (when someone shows up, that is), and it’s an easy promotional activity since I don’t get stage fright. (Teaching for thirty years is a big help in that department.) And I get to list my readings on my merit pay application at my school every year as scholarly activities. Cha-ching!

Readings at cons can be a mixed bag. One year I did a reading next door to a performance of a Klingon opera. A very LOUD performance. One year I did a reading at nine a.m. on a Sunday at major con, after everyone had been up all night partying. As you might imagine, I didn’t exactly have a packed house that morning.

Once I gave a reading at my college. I was going to read a horror story, and a woman came in with her two preschool age children and sat in the front row. I told her that I was going to be reading a story with adult content, and she assured me that her children would be fine. I shrugged, began reading, and the woman hurried her children out of there before I was finished with the first sentence.

My advice for readings? Go into them without any expectations. They’ll hurt less that way. As with other events, have someone take pictures or video that you can use later. Even if you end up reading to an empty room, that doesn’t have to show up on the pics or the video. Have some kind of simple promotional material for people to take with them that has your website address and social media contact info on it. Bookmarks, fliers, etc. Author Mike Resnick autographs the hardcopy of his story when he’s done with a reading and gives it to someone in the audience. If you do this, make sure your address isn’t on the manuscript! Even if you’re at a con that has a dealers room, it’s not a bad idea to bring some books to sell. And if you do, get one of those cool card reader thingies you can use to take debit/credit card payments with your phone. (I need to get off my ass and get one myself.) Having business cards for people to take with them is good, and again, make sure your website address, etc. is on the card. Don’t put any contact info on your card you don’t want assorted strangers, stalkers, and creepers to have, however.

Serving as a panelist at conferences is similar to giving a reading, only you’re talking about a particular topic related to writing or a specific genre like science fiction, and you’re not the only person on the panel. Some people like to prepare for panels. I just show up and do my best to contribute to the conversation. Like readings, the size of the audience varies. Unlike readings, you need to be able to share the time with your fellow panelists and not be a jerk. Have the same promotional materials to pass out afterward as you do for readings. Don’t feel like you’ve published enough to qualify for a panel? All you really need is to be willing to share your thoughts and feelings about the topic. People are more interested in what you have to say rather than what you’ve done.

Book Fairs, Schmook Fairs

Last weekend, I attended an author festival/book fair at a library about three-and-a-half hours’ drive from where I live. Why did I go? Simple: they asked me. And I’d never done any kind of promotional events in the northern part of my state, so I figured I’d schlep on up there and see what it was like.

I didn’t have to bring my own books, which was nice. A local bookseller brought books for those attendees who weren’t self-published. (The bookseller, unsurprisingly, didn’t have to bring many books.) There were probably two dozen authors in attendance, almost all of them were self-published, and their promotional displays ranged from professionally done to – I kid you not – printouts of text taped to poster board. The library staff did their best to promote the event, but during the three hours it lasted, very few patrons came into the room where the event was being held, and those who did browsed without buying. Mostly, authors wandered around the room, talking to each other and networking.

One author told me he was planning a twenty-six to thirty-four book series, and that he wanted to find a publisher because he wanted to focus all his time on writing the books rather than trying to sell them himself.

Several writers asked me if I knew of any other good book fairs or events where they could sell their work. There were a lot of conversations like that going on around me. What could I say to them? “Um . . . my books come out from real publishers who pay me advances and then market my books, so I don’t usually do events like this because, you know, I don’t have to.”  I don’t think so.

A writer was visiting tables because she was writing an article on whether editing was important for writers, and she wanted to get quotes from all the authors there. (My answer to her question: Yes. Hell, yes.)

The bookseller, for whatever reason, didn’t have copies of one of the few professionally published writers in attendance, a literary author named Pauline Chen. Ms. Chen quite classily took this development in stride, smiled, told the bookseller that was okay, then gathered her promotional materials and left. Why should she stick around if she didn’t have any books to sell? (I suspect by that point she’d gotten a read on the room, realized that most everyone was a newbie self-pubber, and that almost no one was going to show up to the event, and she was happy to have an excuse to beat feet.)

I made a round trip of about seven hours, and I sold no books that day. (The most common comment I got from browsers was some variation of: “Horror, huh? I don’t read that stuff. Keeps me up at night.”) I didn’t really expect to sell any, to be honest. It was just an experiment, and it turned out pretty much the way I thought it would. I was surprised that there were so many self-published writers who seemed clueless about . . . well, everything to do with publishing and promoting. It’s not as if they can’t find out information about promoting books by hitting the Internet. I wasn’t surprised that the people who did show up didn’t buy books (not just from me, but from most of the other writers, too). It was a library, after all. And I wasn’t surprised that no one was interested in horror. It’s a genre for readers with more refined tastes, after all. (Taste in what, precisely, I’ll leave you to ponder.) But it did reinforce one of my beliefs about mass events like this. It may seem like the more authors in attendance, the more attractive the event will be to readers. But readers only have so much money to spread around, and they certainly don’t want to have to avoid eye contact with every desperate author there who gives them a hard-sell about his or her book. A lot of folks just stay away from such events. At a genre-focused conference, having shared signings or even mass signings can work well. Some of the attendees came to the con in order to meet writers and get books signed, after all. But the random book fair in small-town America? It might be a good place to get some practice promoting (and more importantly do some networking with other writers) when you’re starting out – and you can still get those pics and vids of yourself in action for later use. But otherwise . . . I wouldn’t recommend them.

On the Internet, No One Knows You’re a Dog

Experts – whoever the hell they are – say that for every sales message you put out into the virtual world, you should put out five non-sales messages. If you’re a relentless self-promotion machine, people quickly tune you out. There’s one gentleman on Facebook who every year posts a birthday message on my page. It goes something like this: “On your special day, why not treat yourself to some great fiction? I’ve recently published A LIST OF BOOKS ABOUT A MILE LONG. Enjoy!” I will never read this guy’s books. Never. Ever. Why don’t I just unfriend him? I’m a nice guy. Besides, he only posts a message like that on my page once a year. If he did it more often, I’d defriend and block him. And perhaps it’s occurred to me that by allowing him to make a jackass of himself on my page, I get the pleasure of watching him cut his own throat sales-wise. Then again, maybe that hasn’t occurred to me. Like I said, I’m a nice guy.

Watch out for being viewed as a spammer on message boards. When my third Leisure novel Darkness Wakes came out, I was told that if it didn’t sell well enough, they wouldn’t publish a fourth novel from me. So I decided to quit being lazy about promoting online (this was pre-Facebook) and dropped by various message boards letting folks know about my novel. I wasn’t always an established member of these communities and people pointed at me like Donald Sutherland in the 1970’s version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and screamed “Spaaaaaammer!” I then made the mistake of replying to one of those threads and explained why I was so clumsily trying to drum up sales for Darkness Wakes. This resulted in a number of people who thought they were coming to my aid posting on various sites – including Leisure’s – about how stupid Leisure was to treat one of their authors this way, that they would be morons to let me go, etc. The folks at Leisure Were Not Amused. I didn’t get to do another novel for them (which turned out to a blessing considering how their company imploded not too long afterward). Did they drop me partially because of the bad publicity I unknowingly engendered, minor though it was? Probably not. But my advice is to tread carefully and mindfully when promoting on the Interwebz.

Oh, and about blogs? It might be a good idea to write one more than once every few months. (And maybe someday I’ll actually listen to my own advice.)

Workshop Til You Drop

I was having coffee with author Ty Schwamberger the other day, and we were talking about promotional events. He mentioned he was thinking of setting up a signing at a bookstore when his next book was released. I suggested he offer a talk on publishing or maybe a workshop of some kind as well. I told him that people aren’t interested in what we have to sell to them. They want to get something other than a sales message, especially something they can use.

Teaching other people to write can be a great way to promote your own work while serving others, which as far as I’m concerned is a win-win for everyone involved. I don’t use the college classes I teach as promotional venues, however, because that would be unethical. I donate copies of my books to the college library so that any students interested in my work can check it out without having to buy it. But doing workshops at conferences and other events can be a great way to promote your writing.

Recommended Resource

There are tons of how-to-promote-your-writing books out there, but my favorite is Guerilla Marketing for Writers. It has hundreds of ideas for marketing and promotion, and best of all, they’re categorized in terms of how much effort and money they take – which makes this book perfect for all kinds of writers.

Department of Shameless Self-Promotion

My novel Supernatural: Carved in Flesh has just been released in both print and ebook formats. Follow hunters Sam and Dean Winchester as they discover the sinister truth behind the Frankenstein legend!

“What Once Was Flesh” appears in Vampires Don’t Sparkle.

“The Great Ocean of Truth” appears in Fear the Abyss.

“Thou Art God” appears in Dark Faith: Invocations.

And speaking of promotional activities, I’ll be attending the World Horror Convention/Bram Stoker Awards Weekend in New Orleans June 13-16. I’ll be doing a reading, participating in the mass autograph signing, and serving on panels. And who knows? Maybe I’ll crash a private party or two for old times’ sake.

On Agents

“If you took that money outside and burned it, how bad would it hurt you financially? Would you be okay without it?”

I was on the phone with my dad. I was twenty-five and living in Illinois at the time. I’d sent a query – an actual physical letter with a SASE and everything – to the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, seeking representation for a novel I’d completed in graduate school, an absurdist fantasy called Y3000, about a computer that was literally God and the hapless man who’d been chosen as God’s “user.” They’d written me back to let me know they’d be happy to take a look at my novel – for a reading fee of $750.

This was 1989. There was no Internet to log onto and do a Google search for “literary agent reading fees.” I’d been reading Writer’s Digest religiously for a few years, but I didn’t remember the magazine saying much about reading fees. In general, they seemed frowned upon, but I’d also been reading Locus, in which one of Scott Meredith’s agents, Russell Galen, had a regular column. That certainly seemed like a stamp of approval for the agency to me. And a number of writers I’d heard of were represented by them. So, if the agency was legit (as the kids say these days), then their reading fee must be too, right? Still, I had a nagging feeling that this might be a scam. I had no friends with any publishing experience, so Dad, as usual, was my go-to guy. Hence the call.

I thought about his advice, even imagined physically burning a pile of money. My wife at the time and I lived in a small apartment, we didn’t have car payments, and more importantly, we didn’t have kids. She was finishing the internship for her doctorate, and we wouldn’t have to start paying on her student loans for a while. (I was lucky enough not to have needed any student loans.) Yeah, I told Dad, we could afford to lose $750.

“Then go for it,” Dad said.

So I did. I printed a copy of Y3000 on my dot matrix printer, tore off the perforations and separated the sheets, packed the print-out in a box, enclosed a check for $750, and headed for the post office. And then I waited and tried not to kick myself for wasting all that money.

A few months later, I received a letter from Scott Meredith himself, telling me how much they loved Y3000 and that they wanted to represent it. He promised his agency would “get right to work selling this wonderful whirligig of a novel.”

I have since learned that Meredith’s agency took on very few writers, and that my situation was something of an anomaly. Keep that in mind.

I’d made a huge leap on my way to becoming a professional writer, and I was ecstatic. I had a phone conversation with the specific agent I was assigned, and I asked all the right questions that Writer’s Digest said you should ask: “What’s your strategy for submitting my novel?” “How much, if any, feedback will you provide on my writing?” “Do you prefer to be contacted by phone or letter?” (Email wasn’t a standard method of communication yet), etc. The agent was a nice guy, we got along well enough, and I was looking forward to working with him. So he started submitting Y3000, and I started writing my next book.

A year passed. The agent remained enthusiastic about the book, despite the rejections it had received from publishers. After the second year passed without any publishers taking the bait, the agent’s enthusiasm waned. My contract with Scott Meredith was to remain in force for two years, after which time both parties would reassess the situation. If neither terminated the contract, it would continue for another two years. I didn’t hear anything from the agent as the two-year mark passed, but I decided that perhaps the Scott Meredith Company and I should part ways – especially since they were reluctant to look at the novels I’d written since Y3000. I called the agent, and he agreed that terminating our relationship “might be for the best.” He sounded almost relieved.

To say this was a letdown is an understatement. But I continued chugging along, writing stories and novels, and occasionally thinking about searching for a new agent. But after how things had turned out with Scott Meredith, I wasn’t in any hurry. When I finally decided that the time had come to begin my agent search anew, I researched like hell. Still no Internet, so I scoured writers’ magazines and writers’ market guides not only to identify likely prospects but to make sure I knew what I was doing this time. I queried a number of agents, and a few asked to see some chapters, but all ultimately passed. Then one day I received a phone call from an agent.

“Hi, this is [NAME WITHHELD]. How ya doin’? I’ve just read over the chapters you sent, and I’d like to take a look at the whole manuscript.”

Awesome!

“Our standard reading fee is $300 dollars.”

Less awesome. I told him I’d have to think about it.

 The agent said no problem, he understood. He was also a writer, and he told me to hit a bookstore and check out his work to make sure he was bonafide. (Again, no Internet, so I couldn’t simply do a Google search on him.) I told him I’d get back to him tomorrow, hung up, and headed for the bookstore. Sure enough, I did find one of his books, a paperback suspense thriller that – based on the cover and the copy on the back – looked like a rip-off of The Silence of the Lambs. I wasn’t exactly encouraged. I returned home and thought about it all night. By this point, I knew reading fees were bullshit, but I was still tempted. All the other agents I’d queried had passed. What if this guy was my last chance?

But in the end, I couldn’t do it. I called the agent back, and told him thanks but no thanks.

He paused. “Well, how about you send us half the book to read, and we’ll only charge you $150?”

I laughed and hung up.

A few more agent-less years passed. By this point I was living and teaching in Columbus, Ohio, and I’d had a few short stories published in small-press magazines. I’d begun attending science fiction conventions as a panelist, and I was working on learning how to promote myself and – far more importantly for me at this stage of my career – how to network. I was on a panel with a local writer, J. Calvin Pierce, whose humorous fantasy I admired. We got to talking after the panel, and he invited me to have lunch with him and another local writer, Dennis L. McKiernan. After the con, Jim invited me over to house to talk about writing, and the day we got together happened to be the day his writers’ group met. Jim asked if I’d like to come along that night. Not only was he in the group, but so was Dennis and Lois McMaster Bujold. Of COURSE I wanted to go!

Eventually, I became a full-fledged member of the group, and after workshopping a novel with them, Dennis offered to introduce me to his agent. This gentleman agreed to take a look at my novel, and I shipped it off to him. Dennis was enthusiastic about my book and felt confident his agent would take me on as a client. I wasn’t so certain, but I remained hopeful.

In my early twenties, I’d made a vow that if I hadn’t published a novel by my thirtieth birthday, I’d stop pursuing writing and put all my energy into some other field. (To those beginning writers reading this, making vows like this is idiotic: don’t do it.) On the morning of my thirtieth birthday, I was sitting around my apartment, depressed because I hadn’t sold a book yet. The phone rang, and it was Dennis’ agent, calling to say he wanted to represent me. The book I’d sent him was a fantasy adventure, and the agent said he liked it, in part, “because it was about people instead of place names.” It wasn’t a book contract with a publisher, but I figured it was close enough to fulfill the spirit – if not the letter – of my vow, and so I didn’t give up writing. (I’m sure the world breathed a collective sigh of relief.)

I worked with this agent for a total of eighteen years – just about as long as my marriage lasted. He was always responsive to emails and phone calls, and he was happy to spend time talking with me about whatever the current state of publishing was and how it was changing. And believe me, it changed a hell of lot during that time. There were a few things that bothered me, though. First off, he never found a publishing deal for me. Every book I sold, I did so because I made the contact with the publisher. My agent got me better contract terms – not to mention more money – than I would’ve on my own, so I didn’t feel ill-served. And even though I made the contacts, the editors often wanted to know if I had an agent, for they in effect used agents as first readers to vet manuscripts before asking to see them. Over the years, I was surprised learned that this situation – agents not finding deals, only negotiating them – wasn’t all that uncommon. It certainly begs the question why authors ultimately need agents, and it was a question I asked myself from time to time.

After a couple years of working together, my agent stopped letting me know where he was submitting my work and if he’d received any rejections for it. By this point, my wife and I had our first daughter, and I was too busy with life to fret about the lack of reportage from my agent. I figured he’d let me know when he got a sale. During this time, I sent him a couple books that, in retrospect, I’m not sure he ever submitted.

Things picked up for me novel-wise in my mid-thirties. I began selling books on proposals, so I didn’t have to write them unless a publisher had already agreed to publish them. This meant I no longer had to rely on my agent to find me deals. I could bring them to him and he could negotiate terms.

Things went on like this for years, and I was content enough. My second daughter had been born, and we’d moved to Dayton where I took a full-time tenure-track job teaching at a community college. Then I got divorced and moved back into an apartment for the first time in a decade. For a long time I was depressed, and even though I noticed that my agent was no longer as responsive as he had been, I didn’t care all that much. Then it began taking him so long to look over contracts that publishers started contacting me to find out what was going on.

Which brings us to 2012, the year my agent seemed to vanish off the face of the earth. I had four different contracts for him to negotiate, and months went by without any contact. When deadlines for these projects began closing in, I gave up on my agent and began contacting editors directly. Two of them had started negotiations with my agent only to have my agent cease contact. The other had never heard from my agent at all.

Fortunately, all the editors were understanding, and I was able to negotiate new deadlines, and I didn’t lose any of the contracts. I was worried that something bad may have happened to my agent or someone in his family, so I hit Google (yes, Virginia; by now there was an Internet) and tried to find out what, if anything, may have happened to him. I found nothing.

I’d worked with this agent for almost twenty years, but I couldn’t have an agent who was unresponsive and who’d nearly let four different deals – deals I’d brought to him – get away. So after some thought, I send him the following message, both as an email and a registered letter:

I've heard from four different editors that you haven't contacted or didn't follow up with after initial contact. I hope this is simply due to your being extremely busy and that you aren't going through any personal difficulties. However, at this point, months after I originally set up these deals on my own, I'm going to conduct negotiations with these editors myself.

I've enjoyed working with you over the last eighteen years – I've especially enjoyed our phone conversations and the lunch we had in NYC – but I think we've reached a point where it would be best if we ended our business relationship.

I truly appreciate everything you've done for me over the years, and I hope you take care.

I never received a reply. I still don’t know what happened, whether my agent lost interest in me, in his business, or whether he was having personal troubles. There’s a good chance I’ll never know.

So, halfway through 2012, I had a decision to make. Should I try to get another agent? After having published close to thirty novels, I was confident I could find someone to take me on. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was whether I needed an agent. Given the paradigm shift in publishing over the last few years, I had to ask myself if I even needed publishers anymore. Maybe now was the time to strike out into the brave new world of electronic self-publishing.

But there were still some good reasons for me to find a new agent. There are some publishers who refuse to take a look at unagented manuscripts, no matter who wrote them. And when talking to editors at conferences, at one point they almost always ask if you have an agent. Yes, you make the initial contact, but the editors want to know there’s someone they can work with who’ll act as a buffer between the two of you when it comes to business matters. But the real reason I decided I still needed an agent is because I’m not ready to jump into self-publishing. I’m too busy teaching and being a dad to give a damn about becoming a do-it-myselfer. Every editor I’ve worked with (with the exception of one) has helped make my books better. Publishers take care of cover art, copy-editing, and interior design. And although publishers don’t put a ton of money into publicizing most of their authors, they still do some publicity. Everything a publisher does for me – or more accurately, with me, since traditional publishing is a collaborative business relationship for mutual advantage and profit – is something I don’t have to do for myself. And the most precious commodity I have these days isn’t money; it’s time.

Besides, I worked damn hard to get where I am in the world of traditional publishing, and I want to see how much farther I can go before I become a do-it-myselfer (which one day very well may be the only way to go). I decided it was time to start the agent search again, for the first time in twenty years.

I attend a few science fiction conventions throughout the year, and in 2012 I went to Confluence in Pittsburgh for the first time (because they were kind enough to invite me). One morning, I was sharing a panel with Jonathan Maberry, a scholar and a gentleman if ere there was one. Jonathan sat down next to me and asked me how things were going. We chatted for a couple minutes, and then I told him about how things ended with my previous agent and that I was in the market for a new one.

“I can recommend a couple good ones to you if you want.”

Of course, I wanted.

In August I signed with one of the agents Jonathan recommended. I’d known of her for years, had friends who were clients of hers, and I liked what I heard about her. She knows publishing inside and out, has a seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy, and works tirelessly for her clients. (I’m not saying her name only because she doesn’t take on many new clients at this stage in her career, and I don’t want her to be bombarded by queries from people saying, “Tim spoke highly of you on his blog!”) She also attends conventions to meet with her clients and with editors (something my last agent never did). She’s great at keeping the lines of communication open, and she gives good feedback on the proposals I’ve sent her. She’s done a great job negotiating contracts for me, too.

So what’s the moral of all this? I’m not sure there is one. If you're going the self-publishing route, you don’t need an agent, that’s for sure. But if you intend to tilt at the windmill that’s traditional publishing, it’s a good idea to consider getting an agent.

Here are some tips:

·         Make sure you’ve written the entire manuscript of the very best novel you’re capable of, one which is publishable in its current form. An agent can’t represent incomplete, unfinished, or unprofessional work. (Once you’ve published some novels, then you can start selling on proposals, but that’s not how you start out.)

·         Avoid fee-charging agents.

·         Avoid agents who, because of the changes to publishing, tell you they double as publishers and will publish your book if they can’t find anyone else to do it. This, not to put too fine a point on it, is horseshit. They have no incentive to sell your book elsewhere if they intend to publish it. You might as well self-publish the damn thing.

·         15% commission is still the standard. Agents earn their money by getting you more money and better contract terms.

·         Find an agent who will give you some feedback on your writing but who doesn’t pretend to be an editor and make you rewrite everything.

·         Find someone who’s willing to stay in reasonable contact (but don’t text them every five minutes to see if they’ve sold your book yet).

·         Try to find someone who’ll be upfront and honest with you about the bad as well as the good.

·         Find someone who believes in you and your work.

·         Find someone who wants to represent you, not just one novel of yours.

·         Find someone you feel is a good fit with your personality and style of working. If an agent doesn’t seem like a fit, move on and keep looking.

·         Don’t agent-hop every few months just because your book hasn’t sold to a publisher yet. Give your agent some time to do his or her thing.

·         Find agents through referrals from other writers, at conferences, by checking the dedications and acknowledgements pages in published books, through agent guides like Writer’s Digest and Jeff Herman put out every year, and by checking out the website of the Association of Author’s Representatives: http://aaronline.org/

·         Remember, there is no educational path, no training, no degree, and no certification for being an agent. Make sure to do your research before signing with anyone.

DEPARTMENT OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION

My novel Ghost Town, written with Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson of the Ghost Hunters TV show, came out in fall. It’s the sequel to Ghost Trackers.

The Nekropolis Archives, an omnibus featuring my zombie P.I. Matt Richter, and containing the novels Nekropolis, Dead Streets, Dark War, and three short stories about Matt and company is still available.

My horror novels Like Death, The Harmony Society, and Beneath the Bones are still available, as is my Shirley Jackson Award-nominated novella The Men Upstairs.

My story “Thou Art God,” appears in the anthology Dark Faith: Invocations. “The Great Ocean of Truth” appears in the anthology Fear the Abyss from Post Mortem Press. Another story, “No More Shadows,” appears in Evil Jester Digest 2.

Linkage

Ghost Town: http://tinyurl.com/agonkg6

The Nekropolis Archives: http://tinyurl.com/a6jekht

Like Death: http://tinyurl.com/a6pmmty

The Harmony Society: http://tinyurl.com/bc858dq

Beneath the Bones: http://tinyurl.com/b2l9hda

The Men Upstairs: http://tinyurl.com/ah5w3uz

Dark Faith: Invocations: http://tinyurl.com/b4z5r7b

Fear the Abyss: http://tinyurl.com/avsrxh2

Evil Jester Digest Volume 2: http://tinyurl.com/bzznlm2

The L Word

"So, how do you like your nomination for the Snooty Award?"

My friend was teasing me about my Shirley Jackson Award nomination for my novella The Men Upstairs. (The awards were handed out in Readercon in July and, as I expected, the amazing Elizabeth Hand won in the novella category, and in case you're wondering if the cliche is true, yes, it is an honor just to be nominated.) The Shirley Jackson Awards were created to recognize, as the organization's website says, "outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic." Notice the L word -- Literature -- right there in the description.

I don't remember what I told my friend, who's won numerous awards for his own writing, but his playful question got me thinking. When I discuss literature with my college students, I often differentiate between literature with a small L and Literature with a capital L. I ask them what's the difference between the two. "There is no difference," someone will invariably say. "Anything that's written is Literature." "What about the list of ingredient on the side of a cereal box?" I counter. "What about the STOP on a stop sign?" Someone else will then say, "It's Literature if it has a deeper meaning." I then reply, "What about someone who can barely write a coherent sentence, can't spell, can't punctuate, but has a profound thought or insight to communicate? Is what he or she writes Literature?" Silence, head scratching, and more than a few frustrated looks follow.

"Literature" probably has as many definitions as there are people to define it, and of course, as an artistic term, precise definition is impossible and -- more importantly -- not desirable. Nothing kills creativity faster than some imagination-challenged academic performing an intellectual autopsy on a work and then proclaiming his or her findings as "This is the Way All Good and Proper Art Should Be Done." I'd argue that literature with a capital L possesses two important qualities: 1) It has a profound influence on other writers and the art itself and 2) It has an impact on the culture at large. By my definition, almost nothing that writers produce qualifies as capital L Literature. Even Shirley Jackson -- a brilliant writer -- only has one work to her credit that fits my definition, her story "The Lottery." To a lesser extent her novel The Haunting of Hill House (which, if you haven't read, do so ASAP) counts, but mostly in the horror genre. The rest of her work? Writers, readers, and academics love it, but the culture at large? No clue. Of course, this may change in Jackson's case. By my definition, the passage of time is required before a work can even begin to be considered as Big L Literature.

What does it matter, especially for those of us who write? It matters as much -- or as little -- as we want it to, I suppose. One thing's for certain: no one can set out to consciously create Literature with a capital L and be guaranteed of success (and a writer may not live long enough to find out). I can set out to write a short story, a novel, a novella, a blog post, whatever, and at this point in my life, I know I can do so with a bare minimum of success for I've done so in the past, pleased readers to one degree or another, and continue to do so. I also know that I can write work that's entertaining, fun, humorous, disturbing, thought-provoking, suspenseful, and that at least some people find worthy of giving good reviews and award nominations to. I can, and do, set out when I write to achieve any or all of these things, and I know I'll do so with a reasonable amount of success. (Although it's not always easy to remember that when I'm neck deep in the actual process of churning out what seems like an awful piece of crap!)  But I never think about creating Literature. I think writers who do only hamstring themselves. Is this idea Literature-worthy? Is this image, this word, this comma? That way lies madness, not to mention writer's block.

I believe we should write what we want to write, what's fun, what's challenging, what helps us grow as artists, what increases our bank account, whatever. If all you want to do is entertain people, that's fine. But if you want to do more, have your work mean more than the written equivalent of a bag of potato chips, here are some things to consider.

1) Genre fiction vs Mainstream/Literary.

Any type of writing can be good or bad, and any type can be derivative. It doesn't matter if you're trying to ape Lovecraft or Raymond Carver -- a copy's a copy. That said, genre fiction is defined by shared set of story elements and reader expectations. It's the main reason literary types look down at genre fiction. They view all of it as copies of other works. So if you're writing genre fiction, and you want to stand out from the herd, you need to remember that genre can offer as much restraint as it does freedom and be careful not to let those restraints hold you back. But be careful. Some restraints are there for a reason. For example, category romances always have to have a happy ending; it's what readers read those books for. That's a genre restraint that you can't avoid if you're a romance writer, so look for your freedom in other places. And for literary writers, you need to be careful when writing about the "real world." What makes your novel about a married woman having an affair any different from the thousands of others already written? And don't fall back on the old saw "It's the beauty of the language." A pretty copy is still a copy.

2) Read Your Ass Off

This is Writer 101, but the wider you read in and out of your chosen genre, the less chance you'll have of being a human Xerox machine when you write. Find out who the exemplars of Literature with a capital L are in your genre. In horror (the genre I write in most often), names like Ramsey Campbell, Charles Grant, Peter Straub, Laird Barron, Thomas Ligotti, and Caitlin Kiernan pop immediately to mind. Literary writers tend to be spoiled for choice in this area (at least in terms of quality), so I often suggest they seek out work from writers of cultures and backgrounds different than themselves. You're a white twentysomething suburban male who's never traveled farther than your tri-state area? Read Sandra Cisneros, Haruki Marakami, and Jhumpa Lahiri.

3) Go Deeper

Deeper into your characters, your setting, your plot, your descriptions, your turns of phrase. Deeper doesn't always mean adding more words, however. Deeper means going beyond the usual, beyond the expected, beyond cliche.

4) Follow Your Fascination

Many writers chose to work in a genre because they love it, but they're often too concerned with writing what they think will sell. Medieval and urban fantasies may fill the bookshelves, but if you're fascinated with ancient Egypt, use that as the setting for your fantasy series. Most how-to-write books say you need a likable protagonist, but if you're fascinated with sons of bitches, use an unlikeable protagonist. Not only will following your fascinations lead to more original stories, your passion will come through in your writing and readers will be able to feel it.

5) Strive for Quality

Here's another no-brainer from Writer 101. Take the time to make your writing the best it can be in terms of word choice, sentence structure, scene construction, etc., etc. Quality doesn't necessarily mean mean flowery language or poetic imagery, but it does mean producing the very best writing you're capable of every time and then working to make it even better.

6) Write the Stories Only You Can Tell

Draw on your own experiences for your stories, and show us the way you view the world.  We've already had Hemingway, Tolkien, Austen, Lovecraft, Chandler. What we need is you. Even if you're writing a category romance with strict guidelines or a work-for-hire action adventure novel under a house name, there's still room for you to be an individual. Right now, I'm writing a tie-in novel based on the TV series Supernatural. It's set in Southwest Ohio, where I've lived most of my life, and the opening scene takes place near a duck pond just like the one behind my apartment complex. I've been fascinated with Norse myth ever since I was a kid, and so the plot contains some elements drawn from those legends. When I'm done, it'll be a Supernatural novel, but it'll be my Supernatural novel.

As I said earlier, no one can set out to create capital L Literature with any guarantee of anything even remotely approximating success (how's that for encouragement?). But that should never be the goal. The goal is to tell the very best, most interesting, most engaging story we're capable of each time, and when we're finished, sit down and do it again. And who knows? Just like Shirley Jackson, maybe one day you'll win the lottery too.

Department of Shameless Self-Promotion

It's been a while since my last blog, so I have a few projects to plug this time.

Curious about The Men Upstairs? It's still available:

http://tinyurl.com/ccdud4d

My novel The Harmony Society is out in a new edition from Dark Regions:

http://tinyurl.com/cbttnn2

An ebook edition of Cross County -- now retitled Beneath the Bones -- is available:

http://tinyurl.com/ctt762c

The Nekopolis Archives -- an omnibus edition containing all the Matt Richter novels and stories to date can be found here:

http://tinyurl.com/cy7mpjb

I have an essay on developing the style of your world in Eighth Day Genesis, a book on world building for writers:

http://tinyurl.com/btt3vwq

And last but not least, my story "Thou Art God" will appear in Dark Faith: Invocations, which can be pre-ordered here: http://tinyurl.com/d5aj6vt

 

The One That Got Away

(A version of this article originally appeared in Speculations, April 2001.)

"They decided to withdraw the offer on your novel."

I hesitated, not quite believing what my agent had told me. "What? Why?"

"The editor said she was no longer 'comfortable' with the book. Whatever that means."

The publisher in question had made an offer on my novel The Harmony Society over a month before. Not for a large advance, but they had seemed enthusiastic about the book. After years of trying to sell a novel, I thought I'd finally done it -- finally was a Writer with a capital W. And now this.

My agent commiserated with me a bit before promising to keep sending the book around. I thanked him and hung up. I knew publishing was a volatile business and that this particular house had a reputation for somewhat eccentric business decisions. But no longer comfortable with my book?

I felt awful. I'd come so close to achieving my dream of being a published novelist, only to have it yanked away from me -- two hours before I was due to attend a local science fiction convention as an author panelist.

Needless to say, I didn't feel like going. Even with dozens of short story sales to my credit, I felt like a failure and a fraud. I didn't want to have to sit on panels and pretend that I knew what the hell I was talking about. Didn't want to have to face friends and acquaintances and have them ask how things were going with my writing.

I was angry at my agent for pushing the editor too hard for more money and better contract terms, perhaps scaring her off; angry at myself for having been dumb enough to believe that the offer had been a firm one in the first place. Angry that I had no clue exactly what had happened to screw up the deal and that I probably never would. But most of all, I was angry that I had wasted so much time pursuing my dream. A dream which had turned around and bit me hard on the rear.

In the end, I went to the con, if only so I'd have some friends to complain to. They were all perfectly sympathetic, of course, but several of them said with a wistful tone, "At least you had an offer."

I felt like telling them the grass was definitely not greener on this side of the fence, but I didn't. I knew they wouldn't understand. I wouldn't have either, not before.

I moped around all weekend, felt miserable, talked about quitting writing, and stuck more than a few mental pins in an imaginary voodoo doll labeled EDITOR.

Then the con was over, my friends returned home, and I was left with only my wife to complain to. But I didn't feel much like talking anymore. I realized that I'd actually been fortunate to have a con to go to. While it hadn't exactly kept my mind off my stillborn book deal, it had, if nothing else, kept me busy and provided some measure of catharsis.

But now it was Sunday night and stretching before me was my first full week as a failure. The question was, what was I going to do with it?

The next day I sat down and started to write another book.

I wanted to get back on the horse, was afraid that I might never write a novel again unless I did. I used an outline which I had completed some months back so that I wouldn't have to worry about developing a plot and characters. I could just write.

And write I did, well over ten pages a day in between teaching college composition courses and caring for my then one-year-old daughter. I took all the emotional energy churning inside me and channeled it into my book, writing like a man possessed. I finished the novel, titled Necropolis, in twenty-nine days.

I tinkered with the manuscript, editing and revising over the next several weeks, then blasted it off to my agent. But now doubts began to set in. What if I'd written Necropolis too fast, hadn't revised enough; what if it was absolute crap?

Sure, my writers' group liked it, but how could I trust them? They were my friends; they knew how emotionally fragile I was just then. I could have probably scribbled out a grocery list and they'd have praised it as a surefire Nebula contender.

The con had taught me that I needed to keep busy, but I couldn't bring myself to write any more fiction, not then. Nearly a decade earlier, I had worked as a reporter for a small weekly newspaper, but I had written very little nonfiction since. Still, I occasionally thought about getting back to it, and now seemed the perfect time.

I threw myself into reading about nonfiction writing techniques and researching markets. I tossed around different article ideas, finally deciding to write a personal essay about my experience with testicular cancer. I developed a query letter, sent it out to fifty magazines, and sat back to wait. A few days later I received an e-mail from an editor at Penthouse. He was interested in seeing the article.

A couple weeks more, and the article was finished and in the editor's hands. The check was welcome, of course, but I had gained something far more important than money: I felt like my words were valued again -- not by my wife or my writers' group, not even by an editor of a national magazine. But by me. And I needed to feel that way, needed it like a man lost in the desert needs a drink of cool, clean water.

I toyed with the idea of saying to hell with fiction altogether and writing nonfiction exclusively, but I couldn't do it. Despite the instability (and occasional insanity) of a fiction writer's life, I loved it too much to quit. I returned to working on short stories and noodling around with novel ideas. My agent called to let me know he liked Necropolis and would start submitting it to editors.

I'm not the only one who's had a book deal go sour on him, of course. SF novelist J.R. Dunn (This Side of Judgment, Days of Cain, Full Tide of Night) once had an editor send him a two-page letter of revision for a novel. Dunn made the revisions, turned the novel in, and it was rejected.

"Naturally you're going to be furious when your book's rejected," Dunn says, "but you want it to be rejected for good grounds, not a minor technical point." It turned out the editor "basically didn't understand what a radio was. I told my agent to drop the publisher and go on to another, and that's what we did." The novel, This Side of Judgment, came out two years later in hardback to good reviews. Dunn says the moral is "not all editors are idiots" and advises writers to "keep banging your head against a wall" until your book finds a home.

Editor Gordon Van Gelder says that having a book deal fall through is "definitely not common at all." He advises authors to research a publisher to determine size, longevity and stability before submitting. Smaller houses are especially precarious financially.

Van Gelder assures that there is "no stigma" for authors who've had book deals collapse on them, and that actually the book's more attractive to other editors because it had a deal before. For instance, Van Gelder once bought a book by Tanith Lee that had been abandoned after the Abyss line of horror novels folded. Not only did Van Gelder think it a fine book, but it was a sequel and he felt Lee's fans should have a chance to read it.

"It was the right thing to do," Van Gelder says, "plus I made some money for St. Martin's in the process."

Given the mergers and downsizing in publishing over the last few years, and the fact that The Harmony Society was a slipstream novel not easily pigeonholed, my agent and I decided to investigate the possibility of placing the novel with small-press publishers. A recent start-up, DarkTales Publishing, seemed a likely prospect. They published offbeat horror/dark fantasy novels and brought out work by such authors as J. Michael Straczynski, Yvonne Navarro and
Mort Castle, among others. We decided to give them a try.

And they took my novel, with every intention of publishing it. But after a couple of years, the publisher realized their business had grown too big, too fast, and they needed to slow things down. DarkTales would still be bring out my novel, but they couldn't say when. So, after letting out a long sigh, I decided it was off to market once more.

In 2003, The Harmony Society finally found a home with Prime Books (then a new publisher). The book came out, folks read and reviewed it, and eventually it fell off people’s radar, as
books do. But that was okay. I’d managed to get it out into the world, and I had other books to write.

Since that time, I've had a few dozen more novels published – including a revised, expanded version of Nekropolis (now with a K) – and I’m thrilled that this month Dark Regions Press is bringing out a new edition of The Harmony Society for readers to enjoy. In many ways, it’s the novel of mine that means the most to me, and now that you’ve read this far, you know why.

And what, as the saying goes, is the moral of my tale? Simply this, my friends: despite my successes -- or perhaps because of them -- I've learned the most important lesson an author needs to learn: I don't need publication to feel like a writer. The only thing I truly need is to keep writing.

DEPARTMENT OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION

As you no doubt surmised from the foregoing, The Harmony Society is now available from Dark Regions Press: http://www.darkregions.com/the-harmony-society-by-tim-waggoner/

You can read an interview with me about the book here: http://www.darkregions.com/pages/Blog.html

And you can find out what folks have said about the book here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/568043.The_Harmony_Society

Dreamers and Crafters

As both a writer and a teacher, one of the most difficult things for me to do at this time in my career is advise new writers on how to get published. Do I extol the virtues of traditional publishing? Do I sing the praises of self-publishing in the era of the e-reader? Do I tell them to go for either or both? Or do I throw up my hands and say "How the hell should I know? I'm just a guy who writes weird stories!"

Before I go any further, let me give you a couple links. Kristine Kathyrn Rusch -- who's been at various times a multi-genre writer, editor, and publisher -- writes frequently (not to mention insightfully) about the business of writing. Recently, she wrote a couple blogs about the brave new era of publishing we find ourselves in. They're required reading for anyone wanting to understand the shift in the publishing paradigm that's upon us. Go ahead and read them. I'll be here when you're done:

http://kriswrites.com/2012/03/14/the-business-rusch-scarcity-and-abundance/

http://kriswrites.com/2012/03/21/the-business-rusch-quality/

So if you read Kris' articles, you'll understand my confusion when it comes to advising writers. And it's all because of a point Kris doesn't address in either of her articles -- which isn't surprising, because really, it doesn't matter from a business standpoint. The point of which I speak is the education and growth of a writer.

You ever watched the tryouts for American Idol? Ever wondered how in the hell the worst singers -- those who sound like a tomcat getting neutered sans anesthesia -- think they sound good enough to sing in public, let alone audition for a spot on a national TV show? They have no concept of quality, no self-awareness that allows them to judge their current ability level, and they have no one to tell them this particular emperor has no clothes or they refuse to listen to those who do. They don't care about the art of singing. The care only about being in the limelight, being the center of attention, being famous. In short, they don't care about craft; they care only about making their fantasy become reality.

Now imagine that there's no panel of judges to say yea or nay to them. Imagine that all of them can be "professional" singers simply by uploading their performances to Itunes or a similar service. Now ask yourself, what's the motivation for the Dreamers to improve? They're getting their performances out there, they can tell all their friends they're real singers, they can get their friends to go online and give five-star reviews to their songs, they can try to set up live performances or perhaps teach singing to other Dreamers. They get to do all the things that they ever dreamed about, and best of all, they get to do it without any tiresome work.

Now, there are Crafters, too. Folks that want to become better singers because craft matters to them. It's the song, the music, that matters most to them. Crafters may wait to upload their performances until they feel they're good enough, and once they start uploading, they'll continue to work on improving, learning and growing throughout their careers.

So, instead of singers, think writers. Instead of American Idol, think traditional publishing.

Business-wise, Dreamers and Crafters will compete for readers' attention in the new publishing ecosystem, and Darwin take the hindmost. Readers will find quality work (however they define it), and those writers who are found lacking won't be read. From a reader's standpoint, the system will take care of itself.

But from a teacher's standpoint, the Brave New World of self-publishing poses a serious dilemma. How do you help people grow as writers? Hell, how do you even get them to value the concept of growth? I finished my first novel at 19 and sent it out to Del Rey books, and within two months received a kind personal rejection (you used to be able to get personal rejections from major publishers that fast back during the Cretaceous). I kept writing novels, kept submitting them. I wrote around ten novels before my first was accepted for publication. A handful of those early novels have been published since, but the rest will remain forever unpublished because I wouldn't inflict them upon the world.

But what if I was 19 today? Besides my sudden youthening confusing the hell out of my two daughters, I'd have no reason to even consider sending my first novel to a publisher. I could just write it, check it quickly for typos (missing most of them, probably), format it as an e-book, upload it to the Net, and dive right into writing the next book. My first ten novels would be "published" (I think "uploaded for sale" is probably a more accurate term) and maybe I would find some readers, maybe I wouldn't, but either way, what incentive would I have for working to improve? At 19, I was more of a Dreamer than a Crafter. Most of us probably are. But I don't know if I ever would've become however much of a Crafter I am today if I hadn't had to work to get published in the traditional way.

I once had a creative writing student who told a fellow classmate this about receiving feedback: "Why should I do any work to make my stories better? If publishers don't want them as they are, I'll just self-publish them. Either way, they're going to get published."

So as a teacher, what do I do? Share what I know with new writers and let them sink or swim on their own? (I'm pretty sure I know which the student I mentioned above is going to do.) That's mostly all any creative writing teacher can do anyway, and I doubt any technological advances will ever change that. But for those who are standing in that yellow wood with two divergent roads before them, one labeled Crafter and the other Dreamer, what advice could I give them that might lead them to take the road less traveled, the one that will ultimately make them the best writer they can be?

1. Commit to being a life-long learner.

Read a ton -- fiction, nonfiction, and especially interviews with writers you admire -- write a ton, learn everything you can about the business of writing, and never stop. Do you need to take a class or earn a college degree in writing? Nope. But it can't hurt (assuming you've done your homework and chosen a class that's right for you. (Here's an article I wrote a few years back about choosing a creative writing class: http://timwaggoner.com/class.htm) In fact, I suspect creative writing programs and writers who offer classes on their own will see a lot of increased business in the years to come as new writers seek ways to get a leg up on the competition.

2. Make peace with process.

Studies of the current "Instant Download" generation show that people are losing their patience with process. The idea that a series of steps may be required to reach a desired outcome loses meaning whenever we can get whatever we want instantly. But there's no app for making yourself the best writer you can be, just as buying a new pair of running shoes won't immediately make you a track star. Accept that growth takes time and can't be rushed. (Though of course, your learning curve can be decreased. See item #1.)

3. Get good feedback and keep getting it.

Find yourself the equivalent of the American Idol judges. Well-read, honest people who are not only capable of paying attention to what's going on inside their heads as they read, they're also able to articulate it in a way that makes sense to you. You might find these people in a writing class, you might create your own writing group, but however you do it, make sure you cultivate people who can help you improve your game and stay on it.

4. Don't be in a rush to publish.

This may be the hardest piece of advice to follow. Self-restraint isn't exactly one of humanity's greatest strengths. It has to be learned. But no matter how badly you want your dream, do you want to publish work that's not the best you're capable of, work that may garner reviews (real ones, not the fake five-star Amazon reviews you beg your friends to post to help sell your work or, worse, that you pay someone to write for you) that might not be flattering and will stay on the Net forever? On the flip side, don't do the opposite: never publish because you're afraid your work will never be good enough. Remember item #3. Good feedback will help let you know when it's time to publish. More importantly, if you've read widely and well, you'll know if your work is up the standards of what you consider good writing.

5. Earn your readers.

I tell this to students when I talk about publishing: "There is no reason for anyone on this Earth to give a damn about what you write. You must give them a reason." You want to attract readers to your work? Want to repay their time, attention, and money so they'll come back and read -- and hopefully buy -- more of your stuff? Dreamers think only of themselves. They think of how great it'll be when people are reading their work, how wonderful it will feel to be a "real" writer at last. Crafters think about the reader. What will make this story the best it can be? How can I make this scene more exciting and suspenseful? How can I make this description more evocative? Put the reader first, and you'll be a long way toward putting yourself ahead of the horde of self-published Dreamers out there.

The Writing Life has never been an easy one, and in many ways the rise of self-publishing, while appearing to make it easier, has in truth, made it even harder. But if the future of publishing is going to be even more Darwinian than its past, make sure that you do what it takes not only to survive, but thrive. Dream and dream big, but tend to your craft and tend it well.

DEPARTMENT OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION

The Nekropolis Archives is due out from Angry Robot Books late April. It's an omnibus edition collecting the first three Matt Richter novels, as well as three short stories featuring Matt. (And if you want more new Nekropolis, drop by www.angryrobotbooks.com and let the publisher know -- and if you buy lots of copies of the omnibus, that won't hurt either! Remember, big fat books make wonderful gifts!)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Nekropolis-Archives-Tim-Waggoner/dp/0857662082/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332873789&sr=8-1

My surreal horror novella The Men Upstairs is still out, and it's now available for all e-reader formats.

https://www.darkfuse.com/the-men-upstairs-by-tim-waggoner.htmlD