81–85 of 85 posts
is it common to pay authors by wordcount? or is there a minimum number of words for a book to be published? i often have the impression that the books i read are longer than they should be.
I am a wanna-be writer of fiction who works as a computer nerd. I have written a technical book, so I have some experience, and I really want to write some fiction. (I have a whole series of elaborate fantasies surrounding the idea of rejection letters) - but I write for ego, for self-actualization, whatever you want to call it. I write for emotional, non-financial reasons. Sure, sure, if I do luck into a '50 shades of grey' I want a piece of the action, but in the ordinary case, any payment is symbolic. If you want to compete for my work (and I'm not saying you do; my fiction, so far, is so bad that I'm not willing to admit to any of it,) then you have to compete on something other than money.
Assuming you aren't going to assign me an editor who will ride my ass until I finish the goddamn thing[1], the things I will look at are prestige and distribution. The prestige you give me is largely dependent on how good the other authors you publish are. Distribution is also an incentive; but you have to convince me that more people will see my work if it goes through you than if I just release it for free online.
I mean, I guess the plan is to release an issue #1 with either known-good authors or really good unknowns... but between now and then, I'd suggest talking up your distribution.
[1]If you are willing to do that, I'm sold. Sign me up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, don't do that. Writers do not need social media endorsements for publishers. Show yourself and if you are new in the field then what's your roadmap? Have you raised any funds? If yes, how and if no then how you'll pay. Your website has only two pags mentioning nothing about you at all. If your website is hosted on a shared-hosting then it'll be taken down by your "human and bot" visitors collectively after publis…
You're right, I need more roadmap details on the site. I will add detail this evening.
Don't get me wrong, I like the concept, and would be interested in writing for you to get my name out there, but as others note, losing control of our work is a huge fear - if we as writers willingly submit our work into a black hole, that's it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Draft2Digital is much less of a pain. They'll even handhold problematic manuscripts through the process.
I checked out D2D. Although an awesome idea on the surface, I'm a bit suspect of their pricing model. 10% of all sales? The problem with that is if you have a bestseller that sells a million copies you're basically subsidizing other books with languishing sales. I'm not sure if you're affiliated with them or not, but a better model would be to charge 10% up to the cost of proofread and copyedit + a profit. Let's say…
If I could go some place in my free time, look up a list of problems like "implement X feature into a language" then I'd definitely have some nice spending money.