On Getting Published or the Secret of My Success

[valarltd]

I've followed the "fanfic vs. original" debate through metafandom for a while now.

I keep coming across two phrases that make me go "'Tain't So!" in the best Poul Anderson Fashion.

1) It's really really hard to get published.
2) There is no market for short fiction

'Tain't so, folks.

E-publishers are the way to start. You like your slash, try Torquere Press. Ellora's Cave is HURTING for good m/m writers, and good SF writers in general. Cobblestone, Samhain, Phaze, Freya's bower, Loose ID, they all want your stuff. If you write the darker stuff, the stuff mainstream folks don't touch, Circle Dark Publishing is just getting going.

So, how'd it all start for me?
I knew a certain someone from the Master_Apprentice mailing list back around 98. I added her to my LJ. And I caught the call for stories for the Torquere Monsters anthology.

I had a little idea, played with it and let my characters talk. "Prey" came out in Monsters. At first I only wrote for anthologies, then a call for a single shot (10-15K words)--ASAP--came across the mailing list.

I had an idea, wrote the story and sent it. And I was off and running.

My first novel is out this year. My second is contracted. My third is being polished and will go to my editor next week.

Not hard at all. You just have to brave the first step off the cliff and write something then send it to an editor.

I understand trying to get published in paper, by a major publishing house, is a nightmare. But getting e-published is not.

The short fiction market is big and growing. Most places require at least 10,000 words, which to someone used to writing drabbles or 1000 at a go looks HUGE. It's about 20-25 pages. Anthologies go shorter, 3000 or so. That's about 8 pages.

I've sold 13 short stories and 2 novels in the last 2 1/2 years. Getting published--if you have a good story--is not as difficult as everyone says. You just have to know where to look.

I compare it to job hunting. I could have kept looking at clerical jobs and fought with a little pink collar paycheck. Or I could step outside my training, become a trucker and make a living wage.

I could keep submitting work to New York publishers and keep collecting rejections from people who can't afford to take a chance on new authors. Or I could go the e-route and begin building a name.

Comments

[naienko.livejournal.com]

/bookmarks

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

How many of the publishers you mention pay? (I have this weird notion that if you're going to write, you should get paid for it. Like with any other career.)

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Every one of them.

No advances, but 37-40% royalties.
Most anthologies work on flat fee.

[cbpotts.livejournal.com]

Hold on to that notion, like it was your lifeline in the typhoon. It has stood me very, very well over the years. E-Publishing, especially with the big houses, starts slowly financially, but it can (and for me, has) turn into a nice little money maker.

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping to stabilize after my move, enough to really start writing and think about submitting. I'm finding the more I look, however, that e-publishers would be more likely to publish the things I want to write - namely that I don't fit into paper publishing.

I want to write about gay couples, male or female. I want to write about plot and the kissing as somewhat incidental (at least that'd be my intention and focus). I've also discovered I may want to write about primarily about Characters of Color, who are gay, and in the midst of an adventure and I have no idea where I'd begin to submit that to in paper publishing.

So I too have been looking at e-publishers, very tentatively. I've been in awe of your ability to write no matter what. But I definitely need stability, or too many other things tug at me and the plot peter our in my mind like a tap closing off.

I'll look back at this entry in the future and take heart.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Torquere (http://www.torquerepress.com) loves gay couples of every shade having adventures. I've given them several characters of color, and plan to give them even more.

And if you do adventures in the pulp style, they're putting that particular line out as e-book and paper.


And Circle Dark (http://circledarkpublishing.net/) takes any well written story.

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

I'm a comic-book, sf adventure (think Buffystyle), urban fantasy girl. Along with hopes to try my hand at regular fantasy or even high fantasy one of these days.

PS

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

I didn't say thank you.

Thank You.

ok three comments is overstepping it, yes?

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

What do you mean by 'pulp style'? It's occurred to me that I'm really not sure.

Re: PS

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

You're very welcome and TQ takes ALL genres as long as the characters are GLBT. I've encountered high fantasy, space opera, westerns, contemporary, historical, horror, you name it.

Re: ok three comments is overstepping it, yes?

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_magazine

Basically think Edgar Rice Burrough or Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Lots of adventure. Swashbuckling. There's a "tone" to pulp I haven't quite managed, but my spacemen are getting there.

Commander Cliff Cody wears a jump suit, has a ray-gun, and he and his pilot explore lots of wacky planets. And because they're both cyborgs, this makes their prosthetics malfunction at strategically dramatic times.

Or I'm considering doing up "S is for Succubus" (http://www.geocities.com/lady_aethelynde/Original/three.html) as a pulp novel. How much trouble can a butch private eye get into in an urban fantasy setting? Hostile vampire street gangs, missing succubi, all-demon strip joints, all part of a day's work for D.J. Admire.

Re: ok three comments is overstepping it, yes?

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

Oh, DJ makes me think of a character of mine named Morgan. She Captain's a Brigantine. She's too sexyswashbuckling for her own damn good. I've never thought of her as pulpy though.

Then again, leaving a trail of cabin boys exhausted at port and getting into more trouble than you know what to do with now seems very pulpy.

*ponders and watches Morgan try and pimp herself harder*