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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

#61

Post by f17 »

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…

I'm someone else, but I just wanted to say: I hope your project succeeds.

I've thought about this for a long time and have a lot of insight into the problem, and thoughts about the pitfalls. If you'd like to talk, post an email address (can be throwaway) and I'll reach out. I'm a novelist myself, with a book coming out in early '23.

The most important thing, over the next 20 years, is making sure that the self-publishing ecosystem isn't controlled or controllable by companies (e.g., Amazon). Amazon are currently the good guys (believe it or not) relative to traditional publishers [1] and chain bookstores, but God knows what they are doing with their algorithm, and we can't let them become a SPOF for the self-publishing ecosystem.

----

[1] Actually, the editors at the publishing houses themselves are a pretty good set of people (and, at least in the US, very underpaid). It's the rest of the trad-pub ecosystem--the tastemakers, the literary agents, the various sausage-makers who decide which books get celebrity endorsements--who can eat a bowl of taint cancer.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#62

Post by leephillips »

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 freelance world.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#63

Post by corrral »

munificent wrote: post #56
keyle wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These figures are interesting for me. One day of contracting dwarfs that. You'd have to be absolutely passionate and have another income to do this, which is a shame. I think every craft should have its place. Clearly the market is terrible for writers; a bit like indie game makers nowadays. I hope you get a breakthrough though; because if you keep doing this, you're clearly passionate about your craft!

> Clearly the market is terrible for writers; a bit like indie game makers nowadays. See also: musicians (recording, less so live performance), DJs, photographers, journalists, documentarians, etc. Essentially any creative pursuit where: 1) Making it carries high prestige and gratification. 2) The product can be reproduced digitally and appreciated by a large audience. 3) Technology to produce it has become cheaper.…

Graeber asserts in Bullshit Jobs that when this happens—lots of people wanting these kind of creative high-prestige, high-gratification jobs—the upper echelons of the career tend to be captured by, bluntly, trust fund kids, because they're the only ones for whom a career path that involves potentially years or even decades of barely being paid is viable. Ditto editorships at prestigious publications, non-profit work, all that kind of thing.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#64

Post by corrral »

f17 wrote: post #49
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!

Short stories don't make a lot of money. $100 is a huge accomplishment. The goal is usually to have them spike sales for a novel, but even there (a) it's iffy, and (b) most novels only sell a couple thousand copies. Writing, unfortunately, remains something you have to get financially comfortable to be able to do... not a way to become financially comfortable. It's surprising that even in 2022 we haven't fixed that.

> It's surprising that even in 2022 we haven't fixed that.

If anything, it's much worse now than in the early 20th century. There were tons of working-class writers making a living at fiction writing, then. Tons as a proportion of the population, relative to today, anyway.

Compared to then, now, nobody reads fiction. Except porn (romance novels & erotica). Only genre that's still kinda, almost doing as well as several genres did back then. Possibly even better.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#65

Post by pipnonsense »

f17 wrote: post #61
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…

I'm someone else, but I just wanted to say: I hope your project succeeds. I've thought about this for a long time and have a lot of insight into the problem, and thoughts about the pitfalls. If you'd like to talk, post an email address (can be throwaway) and I'll reach out. I'm a novelist myself, with a book coming out in early '23. The most important thing, over the next 20 years, is making sure that the self-publis…

I appreciate the offer! I definitely would like to hear your thoughts. You can email me at contato [at] confabulistas.com.br

Thanks!

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#66

Post by f17 »

ivraatiems wrote: post #53
dqpb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I wanted my story in print by somebody legit. Writing was not then and is not now my full time career, it's a hobby, but few things have compared to the excitement I felt when I heard I'd be published. Many writers will advise you that it's ok to let your work go for free, if it'll get you exposure. I made a deal with myself that I'd charge something for it.

> I made a deal with myself that I'd charge something for it.

That's smart. It's probably different for short stories, but with novels, "free exposure" is usually problematic unless it's done right. (I'm launching a novel in '23.)

In principle, the ideal price at launch is $0, insofar as you never want price to be an issue for any reader, and you hope to set off an exponential word-of-mouth phenomenon that renders the first few days or weeks of sales irrelevant by comparison. The problem is that, empirically, you don't get the same quality of readers (as measured by likeliness to read, likeliness to finish, likeliness to review, likeliness to write a fair review, and likeliness to write a useful review) with free giveaways as you do when people buy it.

The S-Tier strat might be to give the book away for free while somehow finding a way to command the psychological investment that people would have in a book if they had paid $30 for it.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#67

Post by ivraatiems »

f17 wrote: post #66
ivraatiems wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted my story in print by somebody legit. Writing was not then and is not now my full time career, it's a hobby, but few things have compared to the excitement I felt when I heard I'd be published. Many writers will advise you that it's ok to let your work go for free, if it'll get you exposure. I made a deal with myself that I'd charge something for it.

> I made a deal with myself that I'd charge something for it. That's smart. It's probably different for short stories, but with novels, "free exposure" is usually problematic unless it's done right. (I'm launching a novel in '23.) In principle, the ideal price at launch is $0, insofar as you never want price to be an issue for any reader, and you hope to set off an exponential word-of-mouth phenomenon that renders th…

> The S-Tier strat might be to give the book away for free while somehow finding a way to command the psychological investment that people would have in a book if they had paid $30 for it.

There are authors who have had success with releasing on blogs chapter-a-month style or similar. In my opinion, if the work is good enough to catch people, it'll get engagement even if it's free, if you find an audience. Lots of authors these days also do Kickstarters and other novel fundraising techniques where they fund future work on the back of long-standing, free or nearly free work.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#68

Post by Forgeties79 »

Hayvok wrote: post #20
PuppyTailWags wrote: post #9

This is an excellent view on how writing speculative fiction actually works. Amit's publication to Tor should be lauded as a serious achievement in his career and not something that an average person could reasonably expect to achieve/plan for. Congratulations to him. Please consider reading the work itself here: https://www.tor.com/2022/06/01/india-world-amit-gupta/

Agreed, Tor is a very respected publishing house in the sci-fi/fantasy genres. He’s joining company with works like Enders Game, Wheel of Time, Mistborn, and Stormlight Archive, and a dozen more I’m not able to remember off the top of my head.

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

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#69

Post by jotato »

eloff wrote: post #13

My brother writes Sci Fi for a living. He's self taught and self published. He does well, he's sold over a million books. What many people don't know is he suffered from severe tendonitis that really narrowed his career options. He started writing because he could write using voice recognition software. Now he writes with a keyboard, as the pain is more manageable. I'm extremely proud of him for how well he's been ab…

I want to read one of his books. What is your recommendation for a book lover (although a casual sci-fi reader at best)

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#70

Post by superamit »

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…

I'm not writing serialized fiction at the moment, so probably not for me. I'm sure others will be interested, though, especially if you can collect a community of readers around the site.
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