DOWN WITH THE FLU

Status: SICK

Doing: Writing this blog; surfing the net; answering e-mails; taking it easy

Watching: Nothing on the RTN channel. (Retro Television Network.)

Listening to: "Carbine [Escape Mix]" by Nokturnal Transmission's (Blue Amazon)

Reading: Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey (Page 173)--haven't read this book in a month

TOPIC: SICK

Okay. So it's official. After 3 years of not having the flu--I get waxed by a strain called the Brisbane N1-H5 rhino virus--which is not covered by this year's vaccine; against the current strains.

As a result, I've been out sick this week--and thus no writing. Nothing on Stories of the Dead Earth--Book 3: Jasper (left off on Chapter 27.

I've been taking it easy--doing little more than resting and relaxing. I've reduced my weight training to 3 sets instead of 5 for the week. (But power lifting has become troublesome--because of the weakness and achiness prevalent in my body.)

My e-mails have backed up some, and I still have to post a chapter my novel, The Price of Freedom on my other blogger account. I might be able to get one done with my Stories of the Dead Earth saga.

I dunno. I was pretty backed up last month and didn't post. This month? Well, welcome to the flu.

After my 2 week vacation (ending on March 16th), I have to get cracking on completing Starchild Duel and then start Starchild Ruin.

I know what I said before about my current housing situation, but I promised some people that I would end POF on a good note--if things go sour this summer.

But the book is far from being completed--as predicted. I'm still on Chapter 190.

So until then, I have lots of hot tea and honey to chug down, plus this persistent bladder infection and more kidney stones to worry about. (Passed another one last night--making it two for the week.)

Sky

FELLOW WRITER HITS THE NAIL ON THE HEAD

Status: Writing Chapter 27 to Stories of the Dead Earth-Book 3: Jasper

Doing: Writing this blog; surfing the net; answering e-mails; working out

Watching: Nothing at the moment. (It's 2AM...what'd you expect?)

Listening to: "Prisoner" by Kevorkian Deathcycle; "Six Feet Underground" by Division

Reading: Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey (Page 173)

TOPIC: CAN OF WHOOP-ASS ANYONE?

Whether you like him or hate him, this guy (Christopher Rivan) is starting to become one of my personal fan favorites. (And I don't even know him! lol)

But what he said in a group I belong to had me in stitches. :0)

Please note: The group e-mail posted is the same; only the name of the respondee has been changed for privacy reasons.

***

The problem, *****, is that publishers don't DO that.

A publisher is going to accept and print what he thinks he can get someone to buy. You're right about that. What you're missing is what it MEANS.

We've all read, or even written, the dystopian drama about the future society where only the "right" sort of news makes it to press. Basically, that's precisely what publishers today do. If your book doesn't fit into some narrow little mold they think they know about the consumer, then they kick it back to you.We're all getting the pablum writing that the big publishing houses think we want to read. I'll bet Baen rejected ten books TODAY that would make it on your "read until it falls apart" list. You will NEVER see them.

I find that a lot more saddening than personally getting a rejection letter, because I really don't CARE if someone likes or hates my writing. (You pump out 75,000 words a month and you soon stop getting overly attached to your stuff.)

I point out JK Rowling's "paltry" nine rejection letters because I think we can agree that Harry Potter was the most groundbreaking and effective piece of fantasy fiction published in the last decade. Certainly it was a commercial success; Rowling is the first billionaire in HISTORY made purely through book sales. Yet some dumb-ass editors thought THEY knew better than anyone else. Some utter buffoons sat there on their high horses and rejected her.

A few of them even took the time to write scathing letters of rejection to her. I hope they get a paper cut in a really unfortunate location every day for the rest of their damn careers for that. You lose credibility when you complain about not having the time to read all the manuscripts you're sent every day, but then you take an hour and a half to write a letter whose only purpose is to make someone feel bad.I think you missed my point about Dan Brown and Kevin Anderson.

My point was simply this: it irks me to be told by someone that I don't pay the proper attention to details in my query letter, when the same industry allows such colossal blundering from their "established" writers simply because they are established. Writing a bad book is one thing, screwing up major details and releasing press notices that are complete fabrications is something else, something the publishing industry as a whole refuses to accept responsibility for.They make YOU, the person that spent most of your life working on this piece, jump through hoops, beg, plead, and cry, and when they finally deign to accept your work they pay you PENNIES on the dollar. Why?

Two reasons: 1) The publishing industry is NOTORIOUS for being inefficient. Books are destroyed at EVERY bookseller in the THOUSANDS every week. Talk to the employees at the local Barnes and Noble sometimes. At least one day per week they destroy books. What's worse is that on the next shipment there will be another case of the same damn titles!The publishing industry has massive overhead in storage and copyediting. These things cost money, and like any industry, the publisher passes the costs in two directions: to the reader and two the writer.

(When paperbacks were first printed, by the way, they had an estimated lifetime of twenty-three years. Now, with all our advanced technology, new glues, and fibers, that lifetime has been cut to FIVE years. Think about WHY the publisher might want to sell you a book that falls apart in months. Hardcover books published in 1650 are still in libraries, yet my frickin' copy of Terry Pratchett's "The Wintersmith" is already showing cracks in the binding and I got it for CHRISTMAS.)

and 2) It's always been done that way. Some shmucks are so happy to see their name in print that they'll tolerate being paid like they work at McDonalds. I'm not terribly mercenary, BUT, if I write it, then I need to get paid for it. No editor will EVER spend more time working on my writing than I have.The problems with self-publishing are NOT in the costs; you'll easily make more money per book through a vanity publisher than through the most generous traditional house. The problems lie in DISTRIBUTION and MARKETING.

Because you're self-publishing, YOU have to get on the phone and talk to the agents at the commercial buying houses and booksellers. YOU have to talk people into SELLING your book.Do the math, if you spend six months collecting rejection slips, you still haven't gotten paid-- and no one has read your book. If you self-published and spent the same six months marketing your fiction and just TWO booksellers picked it up, you're going to get a check.

Probably not a very large one, but at least you're making SOMETHING besides heartbreak.Now, I'll freely admit that most of my experience and opinion comes from non-fiction. I had a publisher seek me out for my NF. I was considering a vanity publisher at the time, and had the contract in front of me when I opened the email from the "traditional" publisher. Let's see. THEY were going to take copyright and distribution rights away from me.

They were going to pay me a whopping 7% (NF is about twice what Fiction royalties are.) per book, and they were going to lock me into a contract so even if I hated their guts, the rest of the four-book series had to be published through them until 2012. The book would be released in 18 months at an estimated 1% buyback (meaning I'd lose 1% of my royalties to buybacks.) THEY were going to assume all editing-by-proxy- - meaning that once I sent the book in, any changes they made were up to them, and I had no rights or legal say in the matter. (See Piers Anthony and "But What of Earth?" for an example of editor-by-proxy gone completely berserk.)Vanity publisher: I paid them $550 for the initial printing of a 420 page book. POD, so no buybacks and no warehousing. The book was released eight weeks after I sent it in.I market my book myself. I don't even BOTHER talking to booksellers or I could probably triple my royalties, but I don't need to.

I sell primarily through my website, which links to the publisher's ordering form. In the first quarter I made $1700 profit after repaying myself the initial $550 outlay. I also make 50% on books sold through them, and 10% on books sold through other retailers. I also retain all copyrights and publication rights. I can call my publisher right now and tell them I've found a better deal somewhere else.

That's MY book, and I get to decide what happens with it and where it goes. If you're willing to do the legwork yourself then self-publishing is the way to go. If you're not, or you can't get your head round the idea, then go the traditional route. There's no shame in it, in fact there's a lot of pride, but you WILL be part of a process that flatly doesn't give a rat's ass about you or your work. There isn't a single person in a major publishing house that would piss on your manuscript if it were on fire. There are thousands piled up at the door. Yours is just one more, and frankly, if they can get out of reading it somehow, then they certainly will.

Brace yourself, I'm going to get political here.

Traditional publishing reminds me of the media. A lot of people sit there in front of the boob tube and believe what the idjits on CNN tell them. They ignore spins and specific verbiage designed to get them to think a certain way (Ever wonder why our president is RARELY called anything but "Bush" while Hillary Clinton is ALWAYS referred to by title and her husband is ALWAYS called "Former President?" Why are the terrorists and murderers in Iraq placing IEDs in schoolyards called "insurgents? "

Why is it that the Council on American-Islamic Relations released a statement to the press in 2002 demanding that major media outlets stop linking the words "Muslim" "Islamic" and "Terrorism" together in articles and stories?) However, if you're willing to do the work yourself, to seek out first or even second source materials, you're connected right now to the largest repository of knowledge and information in mankind's HISTORY.

In three minutes I can tell you whether the main headline on Yahoo! news is accurate or inaccurate, just by running some basic search routines and cross checking my sources. Most people don't do it. They don't take the time to be informed. I don't care whether you're left or right as long as you make the choice for YOURSELF. Most people don't bother, and the media makes it for them.

Which brings me back to the publishing houses. Once you're in, its easy. After you finally scale the wall, the publisher does EVERYTHING for you: marketing, scheduling, printing, release, distribution, promotion, intermedia discussion, etc. You just sit there and collect your (paltry) checks.

You have to do all the work up front. Write the novel, proof the novel, and then submit, submit, submit. It may take years of heartbreak and rejection, but eventually you might break through to the promised land. How about doing that work over a sustained period of time instead of up front? Put the same amount of effort into promoting a book you self-published that you would put into trying to get some jackass from Laser Media to read it.

Work as hard at marketing your writing to the booksellers as you were willing to work to market it to an agent.

I'll bet you make more in the long run.

WEDNESDAY'S MUSINGS

Status: Writing Chapter 25 to Stories of the Dead Earth-Book 3: Jasper

Doing: Writing this blog; surfing the net; answering e-mails; working out

Watching: Nothing at the moment.

Listening to: Taped music from C-89.5FM (Seattle)

Reading: Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey (Page 173)

TOPIC: FRENCH AUTHOR DIES

PARIS (Reuters) - Writer and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet, an "enfant terrible" of France's literary establishment who helped found the New Novel school in the 1950s, died on Monday aged 85, his publishers said.

Robbe-Grillet became a cult figure among France's postwar intelligentsia with a genre of novel-writing that rejected conventions such as plot, characterization and emotion.

It effectively launched a type of semi-philosophical fiction in which nothing much happens but a vast amount is noticed, imagined or thought.

After publication of Les Gommes (The Erasers) in 1953, he went on to publish more than a dozen novels over a 20-year period including Le Voyeur (The Voyeur) in 1955 and La Jalousie (Jealousy) in 1957.

But the cold genre that he helped pioneer, often lacking narrative focus but providing obsessional description of inanimate objects, failed to find broad appeal and never really took hold among the public at large.

With his fame at its height, he was invited in 1961 to write the film script for "L'Annee Derniere a Marienbad" (Last Year at Marienbad) -- almost a reflection of the "new novel" in film form, with a repetitive, dream-like interaction of three nameless characters in a chateau.

From then on he largely devoted himself to cinema, not only script-writing but also directing a number of other films including "The Beautiful Prisoner" in 1983.

He was not widely known in many parts of Europe outside France, but won some notoriety in the United States and taught in New York and St Louis for many years until 1990.

Then in October 2007 he shocked the French establishment by penning "A Sentimental Novel" which contained descriptions of incest and pedophilia. He dismissed criticism, saying it was not a serious part of his work.

In 2004 he was elected to the elite Academie Francaise that acts as custodian of the French language.

But a rebel to the end, he refused to accept its conditions for entry which involved buying a ceremonial outfit and making a eulogy to his predecessor, so was never formally admitted to the body.

He died in hospital in the Normandy city of Caen, a spokeswoman for Fayard publishers said. She did not give a cause of death.

GARFIELD TRUISMS IN LIFE

Status: Writing Chapter 25 to Stories of the Dead Earth-Book 3: Jasper

Doing: Writing this blog; surfing the net; answering e-mails; working out

Watching: Nothing at the moment.

Listening to: Taped music from C-89.5FM (Seattle)

Reading: Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey (Page 173)

TOPIC: FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Somehow...this explains my journey to being a successful writer; no matter what form it takes:

Just hide the food!

SUNDAY'S MUSINGS ON SELF-PUBLISHING. (Part 4)

Status: Writing Chapter 24 to Stories of the Dead Earth-Book 3: Jasper

Doing: Writing this blog; surfing the net; answering e-mails; working out

Watching: "Twister"; "Full Metal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa".

Listening to: Nothing at the moment.

Reading: Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey (Page 173)

TOPIC: WHAT SELF-PUBLISHING REALLY MEANS

I know I've had this argument before...many, many, times over with people across the writing spectrum.

"Yes, world! Schuyler Thorpe intends to self-publish his own books! Hurray for me!" (Please note my underlying sarcasm in this sentence.)

But you know what? It's something that I have to do. It's the only option left open to me.

Why?

Because I've grown tired of the long-assed waits by the mainstream--in their decisions to decide who is good enough and who isn't; by a set of publishing standards that are more obsolete than a Model T Ford is these days.

My beef with them is quite obvious: They've forgotten the Golden Rule of Publishing--and they are more content to sit on their laurals; and dictate what can be taken and what can't--based on what I see as a lottery.

Just so their bottom line is protected.

But I've also come across articles in the recent months which point to a staggering trend of rejections by the industry--simply because the books written today do not follow the same path of illustrious commercialism as their previously published counterparts.

There is simply no chance these days for the new writer to show the industry what they can do--based on guidelines that are more restrictive than they are flexible.

But the usual attacks on me for pointing that out is that I am not "good enough for the mainstream", "your writing sucks", "I'm so naive"--and the usual put-downs that I've had to weather for years now--just so that others can illustrate how easy it is to belittle other writers' talents; simply because they refuse to conform to a set standard written by an industry that doesn't give a rat's ass about what being a writer really means!

I have nothing against self-publishing. But so many people do. They erroneously assume that self-publishing means vanity-press.

It's just so sad that so many people are blindly misinformed on what these two distinctive methods of publishing are.

Self-publishing means that you (the author) assumes all risks of publishing your own books, taking care of your own editing, and the covers which will later be incorporated into the target book in question. You also assume all the risks of the promoting yourself and marketing your own book.

THAT'S WHAT SELF-PUBLISHING IS! THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO DO! AND AM DOING RIGHT NOW!

Vanity-press publishing is where you (the author), pays a printing mill money to publish your book and has your rights stolen from you in the process. These outfits have a terrible publishing record, along with their nightmarish editing resumes, and the extremely crappy cover art which graces these poorly written pieces of literature.

Companies like:

• Publish America
• Trafford
• Xlibris
• Author House (and its various surname entities)
• Red Dog Publishing
• Dorrance Publishing
• IUniverse
• Lulu.com

These companies come off saying that they are usually traditional or are a respected subsidy publisher--but in all honesty? They lie or deliberately mislead the prospective public in order to get their money's worth from that same unsuspecting author or writer. That's what we call a scam.

And surprisingly, they've all worked rather well. People still publish through these same "mills"--believing that they are really published!

How sad for them.

And this is what people think I'm doing? I admit free and clear, I'm paying an indie editor and a book cover artist money to complete the work on The Starchild, but that is a far cry from going into vanity-press publishing.

The ignoramuses still believe that what I am doing (self-publishing), is still vanity-press; and they say that it will kill any chances of me being mainstream published.

Seeing what I see in that, knowing what I know about the whole backwards enterprise, I would rather take my chances doing this on my own--than rather have the mainstream take what I have and butcher it.

Self-publishing isn't the evil alternate that so many paint it be as "unreliable", "umarketable", and irrevocably a "blight" on our publishing careers.

So many people dream of being traditionally published, but the odds against them are greater and more tougher than they realize.

I know I did. I wanted to become traditionally published. But once I started looking into what it entailed, I didn't run away from the idea. I wanted to look at a different way of getting there on my own.

But as the days turned into weeks, the weeks turned to months, and then years, I started to become disenchanted with the idea that this is where my work was meant to be.

People may not fully understand my methods of execution, but this is what I want to do.

I don't want be contained, caged in, or restricted. I want to be free.

Money is something that I seek to use for my own benefit and those that I hardly know. Driving to be rich, to be famous, and well-known--? Is something that I have been shunning for quite some time.

It's not me. It never has been. I've lived with extreme poverty all of my life. Subsisting on what people and the government have given me to just barely make ends meet.

Having money, saving it, is something that I can only have in my dreams. Because reality--for me--is an ugly truth that I have to face each and every day.

So self-publishing for me isn't about screwing up my writing career in the worst way. It's about investing in a future I hope to one day cultivate through my books.

One small step at a time.