{"id":3968,"date":"2011-11-24T23:43:58","date_gmt":"2011-11-25T04:43:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=3968"},"modified":"2011-11-25T01:30:47","modified_gmt":"2011-11-25T06:30:47","slug":"breaking-into-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=3968","title":{"rendered":"Breaking into writing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just tried to post this as a comment on Sarah Hoyt&#8217;s post about <a href=\"http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/lifestyle\/2011\/11\/21\/breaking-in-breaking-out-dropping-out\/\">breaking into writing<\/a>.  Dunno if it went into moderation or just got eaten<\/p>\n<p>Sarah, who I esteem very highly and is full of pungent and sensible advice on writing and other matters, left out two rules:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>1. Write the book *before* you sell it.<\/p>\n<p>2. The probability that your manuscript will be accepted varies directly with the size of the pre-existing fanbase the editor knows you have.<\/p>\n<p>OK, this might just be me.  But I&#8217;m a successful writer of nonfiction, with four solo books and two collaborations under my belt &#8211; all of which have done well. One of the four solo books cracked the NYT bestsellers&#8217; list, and all but the very first of the solo books are still in print. So there&#8217;s reason to believe I&#8217;ve been doing something right.<\/p>\n<p>1. Write the book *before* you sell it.<\/p>\n<p>When editors don&#8217;t have to deal with the risk that you&#8217;ll blow a deadline or not deliver at all, they become amazingly compliant (well, for editors).  <\/p>\n<p>And it puts you in a power position come contract time. When we&#8217;re talking terms, I never have to speak the possibility that I might take the *completed* manuscript down the street to another publisher, but it&#8217;s there.  Pulling me extra royalty points, and the ability to cross out any clause in the contract that claims rights other than &#8220;you get to print and sell this edition of this book&#8221; without fuss from the editor.<\/p>\n<p>(In particular, *never* sign away the copyright. Nor &#8220;ancillary&#8221; rights like electronic publication.  And if they tell you &#8220;standard practice&#8221;, your proper reply is &#8220;Fuck that noise!&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>2. The probability that your manuscript will be accepted varies directly with the size of the pre-existing fanbase the editor has reason to believe you have.<\/p>\n<p>It is possible that the most powerful words a writer can say in today&#8217;s market is &#8220;Look at these site stats! My blog has X thousand readers&#8221;, for X high enough that at a 10% or so nibble rate the publisher can count on selling out a normal print run.<\/p>\n<p>The most effective way of becoming a famous writer is to be famous for something else, first. Even if it&#8217;s just Internet fame &#8211; that can be enough.<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE: It was in moderation. It has appeared now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just tried to post this as a comment on Sarah Hoyt&#8217;s post about breaking into writing. Dunno if it went into moderation or just got eaten Sarah, who I esteem very highly and is full of pungent and sensible advice on writing and other matters, left out two rules:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3968"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3972,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3968\/revisions\/3972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}