My experience writing and selling a short story • Hacker News Board

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#31

Post by ghaff » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 10:10 PM UTC

dqpb wrote: post #25

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!

I don't understand why you would sell for that amount.

Because that's the market rate. The alternative is not to sell.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#32

Post by spoonjim » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 10:11 PM UTC

dqpb wrote: post #25

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!

I don't understand why you would sell for that amount.

To get people to read what you’ve written.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#33

Post by ordinaryradical » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 10:11 PM UTC

Did anyone find it curious that the revision process highlights perceived moral impurities (immigrant deportation commentary, MAGA similarity) as story failures / problems?

There’s a profound sub-narrative here on self-censorship, what is or isn’t acceptable within the bounds of fiction, and how genre in-groups police themselves toward Acceptable Messages.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#34

Post by pipnonsense » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 10:11 PM UTC

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 that people can read your books from the beginning, from the first chapter, in installments. With Substack (or any newsletter platform) new people can only get the future emails from the time they subscribed. In my site people will receive the first installment/chapter of the book (you can have several books published in there, one can be "Short stories").

It has the "paid subscribers" feature also.

I built it mostly to myself, as I am starting a side-career as a fiction writer wanted to own my audience. Fiction writers currently don't have a good platform to both distribute their work and gather an audience. What I built does the job pretty well I think.

Any interest?

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#35

Post by m0llusk » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 10:18 PM UTC

ordinaryradical wrote: post #33

Did anyone find it curious that the revision process highlights perceived moral impurities (immigrant deportation commentary, MAGA similarity) as story failures / problems? There’s a profound sub-narrative here on self-censorship, what is or isn’t acceptable within the bounds of fiction, and how genre in-groups police themselves toward Acceptable Messages.

To me it seems conscientious. It is good to know if story elements are likely to trigger issues from some historical parallel or other such. This is kind of like taking a moment to consider any scientific experiment in order to check if it may approach or even exceed some moral boundaries. Everything is contextual, and these are not so much hard limits as they are social harmonics that one could tune into or reflect as well as avoid.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#36

Post by sammalloy » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 10:18 PM UTC

diob wrote: post #26

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

Yeah, I remember a study they did with music where they separated groups and in each group different bands would come to dominate based on luck (whoever got momentum first). Wish I could find it, it was quite a time ago.

> Yeah, I remember a study they did with music where they separated groups and in each group different bands would come to dominate based on luck (whoever got momentum first). Wish I could find it, it was quite a time ago.

I’m not familiar with that study, and I try to keep up with the literature. You might be very interested to read about the historical rise of the grunge genre as an example of the kind of luck you are talking about. There was definitely a magical kind of serendipity at work between all the different musicians and bands who were up and coming at the time.

Some of the one on one interviews with the key players are amazing. If they didn’t pick up a certain phone call or move to a specific city or play music with this one person, entire careers would never have been made.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#37

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 10:20 PM UTC

gizajob wrote: post #22

It's a pretty terrible, hackneyed, non-story, now I've read it. Flag me down all you like. Seems like the author is more interested in the stats about writing than the actual writing. Some simple advice would be to read some Neal Stephenson, Paul Auster, and China Mieville for starters, not Michael Crichton. Good writing is a serious art and craft. It's irrelevant how many hours a specific work takes down to the seco…

[deleted]

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#38

Post by m0llusk » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 10:21 PM UTC

gizajob wrote: post #22

It's a pretty terrible, hackneyed, non-story, now I've read it. Flag me down all you like. Seems like the author is more interested in the stats about writing than the actual writing. Some simple advice would be to read some Neal Stephenson, Paul Auster, and China Mieville for starters, not Michael Crichton. Good writing is a serious art and craft. It's irrelevant how many hours a specific work takes down to the seco…

My guess is he was going after some subtle points that are not normally the focus in this genre, so for many readers it is going to come across as hollow.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#39

Post by ordinaryradical » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 10:22 PM UTC

m0llusk wrote: post #35

ordinaryradical wrote: post #33

Did anyone find it curious that the revision process highlights perceived moral impurities (immigrant deportation commentary, MAGA similarity) as story failures / problems? There’s a profound sub-narrative here on self-censorship, what is or isn’t acceptable within the bounds of fiction, and how genre in-groups police themselves toward Acceptable Messages.

To me it seems conscientious. It is good to know if story elements are likely to trigger issues from some historical parallel or other such. This is kind of like taking a moment to consider any scientific experiment in order to check if it may approach or even exceed some moral boundaries. Everything is contextual, and these are not so much hard limits as they are social harmonics that one could tune into or reflect…

What you said I vibe with. But notice that even if it was presented in that precise context (“do you intend to invoke this theme?”) the author internalized it as story problems, hence we enter the territory of self-censorship.

Also, I think it would be very optimistic to assume an editor is deploying the word “problematic” about your story as anything other than an attack on its appropriateness and validity.

> where an eloquently written editorial review argued that it had problematic themes.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#40

Post by sammalloy » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 10:24 PM UTC

nibbleshifter wrote: post #27

sammalloy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> writing has to be among the worst ways to make money It’s being a musician, actually. Most writers have the skills to maintain good side gigs of some kind or another. Musicians have to dedicate more of their time to musicianship, and often end up on the lower side of the pay scale. Sure, there will be a few with a profitable clientele paying for private lessons and tutoring, but that’s far more rare.

Most of the musicians I know make the bulk of their music-related income from private tutoring, its what funds the rest of it. They usually also will have a day job of some sort. Recording and producing music, making music videos, etc is a massive cost center that may or may not break even. Usually not. Playing live gigs is usually a money loser for most - venues often have extremely unfavourable terms (especially wh…

> The real money is basically in teaching the offspring of upper middle class people how to play an instrument.

Agreed, but even then it’s bordering on low income. I saw an article a while back that claimed some musicians were making big money giving lessons online, but I never followed up on it. Apparently the really good ones could reach a larger pool of more potential students and double or triple their income.