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My experience writing and selling a short story

superamit.substack.com

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Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#121

Post by Auracle »

cubesnooper wrote: post #106
Forgeties79 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who haven’t read it, Mistborn is next level. Such a great trilogy.

I’m reading the third book right now and so far the series has been a real struggle to get through. In the first two I found the setting mildly interesting, but mixed with uninteresting characters, dialogue, and plot, with writing that was entirely too verbose and with too many repetitive phrases (like “he raised an eyebrow,“ which happens about once a chapter and sometimes even multiple times per page—see also chuck…

I find the original Mistborn trilogy to be YA-adjacent. You’re never going to get prose like Lord of the Rings out of Sanderson, but if you ever feel like reading more of his work try The Stormlight Archive. It’s his most serious work, for lack of a better word.

Part of the fun is that all of his books interconnect, even though they take place on different worlds with different-but-same magic systems.

If you’re not sure if you want to commit to more, I’d his novella The Emperor’s Soul.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#122

Post by georgeoliver »

I'm curious about the stats for SF readers/writers/publishers. As the parent post relates, compared to the past there are a lot less publishers and it would be extremely difficult to be a professional SF short story writer as your sole occupation. Has the pool of writers grown or stayed the same? What about readers?

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#123

Post by barry-cotter »

leephillips wrote: post #62
ivraatiems wrote: post #12

It's worth noting that Tor's pay for authors is in the absolute top tier. I've had a short story published in a smaller publication, and they paid me $50 total - $25 for the first six months exclusivity, then $25 again for inclusion in an anthology. That is more typical for a starting out author. OTOH, getting published in Tor at all is a much much bigger achievement - congratulations to the author!

This comment confuses me. Are you saying that their pay is good for established authors, but they pay only a token amount for authors that they classify as “starting out”? Because the rates you quote are abusive. People who accept token payments for work, out of vanity or a false concept of “exposure”, damage the market for those of us who actually need to get paid for our writing. Such people are the pariahs of the…

> People who accept token payments for work, out of vanity or a false concept of “exposure”, damage the market for those of us who actually need to get paid for our writing. Such people are the pariahs of the freelance world.

If you want to work in an arena where people are happy to do so for free you need to either get used to it or find a way to make competition illegal or very difficult. That way you can make things better for yourself at the expense of the consumer and people wanting to break in who aren’t related to anyone who matters. For an example see the Screen Actors’ Guild or the American Federation of Musicians.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#124

Post by bryanrasmussen »

pipnonsense wrote: post #34

superamit (or anyone else who writes fiction really), would you publish your stories on a "substack for fiction"? I already built it, although it is in Portuguese. https://www.confabulistas.com.br It would be easy to translate to English and try it in the US market. Is there any interest for that? It is just like Substack. You create your page, people subscribe and get your fiction by email. The main difference is th…

>The main difference is that people can read your books from the beginning, from the first chapter, in installments.

Maybe market it as "Learn to write as Dickens did".

on edit: To get writers on board of course.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#125

Post by LaundroMat »

vincentmarle wrote: post #81

I was once interested in how self publishing actually works so I spent an hour or two putting a pdf together with Chuck Norris facts that I found on the internet and published it as a paperback. The book is still up for sale, I've made more than $10,000 from it.

Do you have more about this? Where did you print the book and where are you selling it?

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#126

Post by avk »

Congrats to superamit! Well done with your persistence and I hope Uncanny is receptive to your future submissions. I'm excited to read the story.

Disclaimer: light self-promo. Are others interested in more publishing posts like these? I've documented the journey to publication stories with stats, rejections, and a sense of the work involved for most of the short fiction I've published in literary journals. It's been cathartic and encouraging to share the entire process.

My most notable piece[1] ended up making it into The Best American Mystery Stories[2] a few years ago.

[1]: https://arsenalofwords.com/2018/10/30/how-loathing-travel-pu...

[2]: https://arsenalofwords.com/2019/10/01/how-a-regional-writing...

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#127

Post by avk »

paxys wrote: post #82

Very surprised that the author was paid per word. Is that still a thing in publishing?

Yes, but it depends on where you submit. I've seen literary journals pay in contributor copies (aka nothing), token amounts—a few dollars, a rate per page, or a fixed rate up front. Genres like sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and crime or mystery are more likely to pay per word. Not sure why that is.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#128

Post by avk »

pipnonsense wrote: post #34

superamit (or anyone else who writes fiction really), would you publish your stories on a "substack for fiction"? I already built it, although it is in Portuguese. https://www.confabulistas.com.br It would be easy to translate to English and try it in the US market. Is there any interest for that? It is just like Substack. You create your page, people subscribe and get your fiction by email. The main difference is th…

Have you seen the Short Story Substack[1]? I appreciate how forthcoming the editor is with the stats.

[1]: https://shortstory.substack.com/

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#129

Post by ricardobeat »

dageshi wrote: post #24
paulpauper wrote: post #2

writing has to be among the worst ways to make money, sorry to say you need top .5% talent and work ethic to maybe earn a lower-middle class salary A labor of love, as it's said

There are more options than the past depending on genre niche and whether you're trying to entertain or write "literary works". For various genres of the fantasy genre there's a fairly well trodden road nowadays of going from royalroad.com (with patreon) to Kindle/Kindle Unlimited. royalroad.com lets people build massive followings and then translate them into patreon and other monetisation. The audiences in the litr…

Fascinating stuff. I had no idea people were reading (or producing) “literary RPG”. It’s like peeking into an alternative world:

> I… finally did it! And I also leveled as a [Demon Larva] thanks to the experience gained from leveling [Identification]! It was a total success!

> I could distribute my Stat Points and Skill Point later. For now, I focused on what was important. I glanced at the pebble closest to me and activated my [Identification]—

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