Cedar Sanderson's Blog, page 263

Friday: Change of Plans

I had planned to post a review here. Only… the book I read for this week was so disappointing I just can’t bring myself to do it. I picked it for Amazing Stories Magazine, to review there, which I will do as I’m obligated to do so. But here, you guys don’t want to hear about a dreadful horror anthology that made me want to scrub with bleach (and I have delicate skin and a strong mind!) when I was through writing it.

What it did make me contemplate was horror fiction, and the nature of it. I’ve never been a huge fan of horror. Life is bad enough without looking into the abyss on purpose. This wasn’t that kind of horror. It was the kind that sounded a lot like a teen at the dinner table trying to come up with the grossest possible scenarios to make his family lose their appetite, and it was about as mature. Horror ought to be, done right, very cerebral. It should suck you into a prison of the mind, trapped metaphorically with the protagonist, who even though they could move out of the way, cannot for some reason, and instead faces the oncoming train with dilated pupils and no hope…

I have little patience for that main character. Jump, man! and if you don’t, well, that was your own decision. But I have written horror. Mindflow, which appears in the first Something Wicked anthology, was not written on purpose to be horror, but I have been told it is.

Inspired by the bad horror, I just went ahead and prepared a novella for publication, it will appear tomorrow or Sunday on Amazon. There is no supernatural element, it is simply and dreadfully a woman, broken in soul, who is compelled to solve her friend’s murder even though doing so threatens her own sanity… again. I wrote this about two years ago now, after being given a challenge to write a story where I symbolically opened a vein and bled on the page. Violet is not me, but the memories of her life before the security of the asylum are taken from my own experiences, and those of many others who exist at another’s sufferance. The security of the asylum… the craving for catatonia… I have felt those sucking at me like the riptide that would take my conciousness and leave me in blissful unawareness. It was a difficult story to write. I hope that it is not easy to read, and that it will make you think about your own existence. I’ve come through out into the sunshine, into speaking, and flowers. It can be done… and there is more to Violet’s story.

Memories of the Abyss, a mystery and horror novella

Heinlein’s Rules of Writing

Timeless. My daily goals are not always met, but I’m trying, every day. 

Heinlein’s Rules:

1. You must write. 
2. You must finish what you write. 
3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order. 
4. You must put the work on the market. 
5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.

Shameless Dabbler

Hat tip to Karen Ahle for the title of today’s post.

It’s a warming feeling to watch people picking up your book and reading it…

I really am a shameless dabbler. I’m not an expert in anything, but if asked, I can answer questions on a lot of topics, and have often joked I have a ‘trivial mind’ because I know a little about a lot. I’m interested in topics that vary broadly, and today’s post is going to reflect that. I’m having an incredibly lazy day, since my dear First Reader has the day off and we are whiling away the time together, a rare treat.

During the course of the day, Amazon has come up a couple of times, both positvely and negatively, as often seems the way. I, personally, like the service Amazon gives me, both as an author and a consumer. I hate shopping, malls literally give me panic attacks, and the idea of wasting half my day tracking an obscure item down, much less visiting more than one store to compare prices… well, that’s right out. But my life is diverse, as I said, I’m interested in a lot of things, and Amazon makes it so simple. Some websearching, price comparisons, look at reviews (when have you been able to do *that* in a brick-and-mortar store?), click it into my cart, and I’m all done. Saves me time, effort, and money. What more could you ask for?

Sure, I’m all for Mom and Pop shops. They can be fun. But I’m always on a budget. Poor college student, mother of four, self-employed… I can’t afford to support Mom and Pop, too. But I can use Amazon to boost my own income, and I do. I’ve sold used books there, could sell other things, too, but decided I’d use Etsy for those. As an Indie Publisher, it’s a god-send to distribute my own books world-wide, for relatively little money. Sure, I could use Smashwords and other places, and will for some things, but they don’t give me a fraction of the sales I get through Amazon. I’d read this article today about Indie Bookstores, and thought “wow, if only…”

See, that’s the thing. Indie Bookstores aren’t friends with Indie Authors. You would think, given the similar names… but no. I’ve approached a couple with ‘hey, I have a book out’ and like the author of the article, been made to feel like it was something to be ashamed of. The exception to this has been Mansfield’s Books in Tilton, NH, because George is awesome. If you’re in the area, his shop is worth traveling to see. Because I’m a dabbler, I do have more to offer a bookstore than just “I’m an author”, and Lin Wicklund suggested I pair the two businesses I run and use that to parlay a relationship with a bookstore, which I’m going to explore, thank you Kitteh-Dragon.

But now, I’m off to run errands with my sweetheart and our dog, maybe take a long walk with them, and perhaps we will go find a bookstore I know of and haven’t checked out yet… Because while I do like Amazon, I also like bookstores and want to encourage them, if they aren’t hoity-toity. Warm, friendly, knowledgeable… bookstore owners, if you read this, that’s what we readers are looking for.

Oh, yes, for all you readers out there: free story by Sarah Hoyt on the Baen main site, scroll down to find it…

For you aspiring authors out there, a great post by Peter Grant on his long-term plan and how he is implementing it.

Keepers of the Gate

if it doesn’t pass by the gatekeepers, is it a real book? Yes! 

I’ve been sent a couple of links today, by friends who know I’m writing and who are aware of the industry. One talks about a man who, when the gatekeepers of traditional publishing pooh-poohed his book on the Civil War “No one’s interested in the Civil War!” took it an published it himself very successfully. Frederick Chiaventone writes, “they are rapidly becoming viable alternatives to traditional approaches to writing and publishing. It can be ultimately less frustrating and possibly more rewarding.”

The second article, (and my apologies for the source, it’s not one I consider reliable, but the story is compelling, although you may want to fact-check it elsewhere) discusses JK Rowling’s recent exposure as a mystery novelist, then goes on to the tell the story of a man who, 35 years ago, plagiarized a famous novel, submitted it to both publishers and agents, only to have it rejected all around. The point was not for him to profit off his endeavour, it seems, but to see how badly broken the system was, even then, three decades ago.

I talk to young and aspiring authors fairly often. I am one myself, still, and because of that, read a lot of these articles seeking enlightenment on what to, and not to, do. I’ve come to the conclusion that the ‘gatekeepers’ perfectly fulfill the cliches about absolute power and what it does. It’s not, entirely, about ideology, although that is certainly part of it. It is also about a lack of space.

I had the opportunity one day at a convention, to sit and listen to the head of my favorite publishing house (the only one I will someday submit a manuscript to) explain why they cannot ‘discover’ more than one new writer a year. Not that they don’t want to, they simply don’t have the ability to fit any more into the publishing calendar. Let’s face it, for them, the established mid-list authors pay the bills. The fans already know who they are, and buy anything they write. So the new guy gets a little push from the publisher, and for this particular house, quite a lot of pull from fans like me who will buy anything with that dashing little rocketship on the spine. One author a year, from one house. That’s like… winning the lottery (which I don’t play!) sort of odds.

Where does that leave me? Well, I could write my heart out like I had this past week, thousands of words a day, finish the manuscript, edit it, maybe even pay an editor to go over it so it’s the best it can be… and then send it off to make its lonely way from agent to agent, publisher to publisher. Years later… And yes, I mean that. Each foray into slush could take from a few months (ligthning speed) to a couple of years (more average) and you cannot submit it elsewhere during that wait for a rejection. Years later, you re-read it, having completely forgotten the story, and think, maybe if I change this. But no, that’s not it. Because it isn’t about how good your story is or is not, and don’t forget that.

Writers get a rap for being insecure, but as you read the paragraph above I think you can see why. In an industry where it’s all about who you know, or what you write, not how well you write, it can be difficult to get motivated. And that doesn’t even take into consideration the young authors who fell into a bad crowd, whether that was a shared-world anthology that was supposed to be their training wheels but instead became a work-for-free perpetual forlorn hope situation, or a vanity press that charged some poor soul $1500 (example taken from the comments on one of those articles) to finally see their book in print, and in both cases, they lost hope and trust in the industry forever.

Instead, I plan to write like a mad woman, thousands of words a day, glowing in the praise of my mentor calling me a ‘lean, mean, writing machine,” start school, eke out the time to edit, and have this novel published by the end of the year. I’m so excited I can’t stand it. I think it’s a good story, fun, thrilling in places, a little sweet romance thrown in, and tons of action. I don’t want to send it off to wander like Odysseus, with little chance of ever seeing Penelope again. It won’t cost me much to publish it, just the ISBN, a little for distribution, and likely, with this one, I’ll hire the cover done. I stink at drawing figures and faces!

It’s not that difficult to do. Why do you need to hang on the gatekeeper’s every word, while they are drunk on the power you give them? Blaze your own path. The internet may be the last frontier we have, explore the possibilities, and find your people. They are out there, readers who want to enjoy what you are writing.

Now, I need to get back to my writing, I’ve spent the day fighting a summer cold (non-drowsy decongestant my left foot, that knocked me down like a two-by-four upside the head!) and re-reading Pixie Noir taking notes of loose ends I need to tie up before I call it a done book.

Friday Review: Go West!

First, the sequel to Take the Star Road, last week’s review, is out! I haven’t started to read it yet, but I’m sure I will enjoy it just as much as the last book. Peter Grant also reviewed Vulcan’s Kittens, an unexpected pleasure for me, as I hadn’t anticipated he would want to read it, although I’d sold a copy to Dorothy at LibertyCon. Click on cover to go to the new book:

Into my reading last week. I had planned to read and review just one book, but you know how it goes. One thing leads to another. I picked up Kai Starr’s Three Ways From Sunday, and once finished, segued into Celia Hayes’ To Truckee’s Trail. It’s hard to imagine two more different books, although nominally in the same genre. Both are tales of Old West, although at different eras. But they diverge in style of storytelling and practically everything else.

Three Ways from Sunday is an odd book to read. I found it technically well done, fluid dialogue, tightly plotted, and draws you on through the story until the very end. Now that I am sitting here trying to think of what it was like, though… the only thing that comes to mind is the movie Sin City. Where dark, gritty violence is the undercurrent sucking at everything in the story, and the main characters – I can’t call them heroes – have already been sucked under. Even the ending is ambiguous, leaving you staring at the screen wondering what will become of them after this.

Click on cover to read a sample, or purchase.

To Truckee’s Trail is a very different story. It reads like non-fiction, very good non-fiction, with immaculate research and a strong grasp on what it would have been like to travel the Oregon Trail, with the divergence to California. The characters come alive on the pages through narration, letters, and journal entries, showing a depth of honor, morality, and simple determination that is inspiring to read. i found myself contemplating my own ancestor’s journey to Oregon on that trail as I read. I have read a lot of material on the Trail over the years, both fiction and non-fiction, and I cannot say enough about Hayes’ ability to bring history to poignant life on the page.

Click on cover to sample or purchase.

I am enjoying this exercise, not only in reading fascinating books, but in the ability it gives me to have an excuse to read. But today I have about three thousand more word to write on Pixie Noir, shooting to have it done by mid-August, at least in rough draft form. And the reviews and feedback on Vulcan’s Kittens are so good to hear, I know I owe my readers a sequel soon, so busy writer fingers will be flying over the keyboard a lot this summer and fall. Taking a break to read is a good thing!

Sheer Twaddle

That’s a 1922 children’s novel I’m holding…

When I first started writing stories for my children, my ex-husband looked at them and said “you’re using too many big words, you know.” Well, since I was told in highschool by my English teacher to stop using so many big words, this stung, and I started looking into how to write for children. After a while of this research, I decided to throw it all out and write from my heart. This was before Vulcan’s Kittens, but it was at the heart of writing that book, as well.

I refuse to write twaddle for children. I am not going to write according to some arbitrary grade-level yardstick that dictates how many syllables each child’s vocabulary should have at a given age. I learned to read at about age 4, and I was, by fourth grade, reading at above college levels according to the tests homeschoolers have to take. I know very well that my reading development was not normal, I have four children and they have all learned and progressed at different levels. However, the ‘big words’ I kept getting taken to task for were learned by reading. Sometimes I would stop and look things up, other times I deduced what the word’s meaning was from context.

If I write with a limited vocabulary, I take that away from my child readers, and make my stories tepid for older or more advanced readers. I’m not advocating writing with a turgid style and polysyllabic vocabulary, but rather refusing to talk down to my audience, even if they are children and I am an adult. It used to be that children’s books were what appealed to children, even if written initially for adults. Now, the divisions are more rigid. When I was working in the library, the divisions were early readers (picture books), meant to be read aloud by parents; EZ Readers, meant for those just beginning to read; chapter books, or the “J” section, which might be broken even further down into different reading levels; and finally, YA, or young adult books, which have appeal all the way up into adulthood, and often deal with more problematic issues.

I do understand that for younger readers, it could become frustrating to try and read a book so far over their heads that they can’t understand it. But I think that the child should be allowed to read what they want, and if they want a challenge, they can get it. When I was a girl, about ten at the time it happened, I had gone through all the books in the children’s section and was denied access to the adult section of the library. I know there are reasons librarians do that – there are books emphatically unsuitable for children in most library collections – but still, I was ready for a challenge. I wound up reading, instead, the entire collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ work that was tucked into a dusty storage room, because she considered them children’s books.

This one dates to about 1900 I believe.

The history of children’s literature is blurry, at best.  Picture books, and moral tales written nominally for children, but meant for parents, have been around for a very long time. Novels written for children saw their golden age first in the mid eighteenth century well into the nineteenth century. Some of those have endured, becoming the classics I remember with fondness. Now, however, a modern child – my daughters, specifically – will turn up their noses at those books in favor of modern books. Why?

Well, I’d argue that a big part of it is the style differences. Back a hundred years or more, the educational standards for those who were reading these novels were a bit higher than they are now. Also, the English language, if you haven’t noticed, drifts. Some words don’t mean what they once did. In addition, there is a school of thought that dictates, as I mentioned above, that books written for children now must adhere to some strictures of limited vocabulary. Certainly another problem is that life has changed. In an internet world, reading tales of farm life, outdoors adventures, and travel by sea seems strange, like reading about an alternate universe. For those of you seeking free classics of children’s literature, look at this super list on Project Gutenberg.

I’m not advocating that the old books should be tossed aside, certainly. Remembering the past is important, especially for children. They absorb history in books like Captains Courageous, and Call of the Wild. They can see an adventure that is rarely found in today’s books. As a children’s librarian, I saw that fantasy books are very popular right now, and my guess would be that they give their young readers those adventures all over again in an unreal world that contrasts with our sedate civilized existence (as seen through young eyes). I was reading a ‘mommy blog’ I’d stumbled across the other day, where a mother writing about her sixth-grader went on at breathless length about her son’s misbehaviour. What had he done? Why, he and a friend had gone to the park, and were gone, by her account ‘a few minutes’ before she tracked him down, hauled him home, and grounded him. Is it any wonder young ones seek adventure?

A boy and his horse get caught up in the Civil War… adventure stories are always popular.

So I’m writing, when I do for a younger audience, with a sense of wanting to teach. Words they may not know will go into the mix, along with concepts of history, honor, and adventure. I’m not going to write twaddle for my children, or for yours. When my young readers challenge me on Sekhmet’s parentage, I’ll sent them some of my research, but delightedly counter-challenge them to research on their own to learn more about the mythology and history I put in my books. Because I do write in the internet era, and I can make my books interactive that way. I’m going to resist writing twaddle, and try to steer my children away from reading it.

Nor am I advocating that children should only be allowed to read ‘elevating’ or ‘educational merit’ books. There’s a lovely essay on the Defence of Reading  Rubbish by Peter Dickinson that I highly recommend. I was pointed at it by Kathryn McCrary, who also told me that she was not allowed, as a girl, to read Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys, both series that have endured through decades of child enjoyment despite being labeled trashy.

Speaking of learning more about children’s books, try this little quiz out. So what do you remember fondly reading as a child? Could you go back and read it now? What words did you learn in books, and can you pick up a sixth-grade level book now, and enjoy it?

Writing Gender

My weekly post at Amazing Stories is up.

Since I was very young, I have felt most at home alone in the woods.

And, to go along with that exercise in writing manly men, I have to go along with the posts at Mad Genius Club this week, ‘Light and Set, and Inspiration from the Past, both pondering Louis L’Amour, arguably the greatest Western author, and a master at writing vivid, distinctive characters. Men, yes, and rugged, rough men with a sense of honor so deep you couldn’t see the bottom of it. Men that, as a girl, I wanted to know, and later, wanted to model my future mate in that mold. It took me a while to get that part right.

L’Amour’s women, though, are perhaps tougher than their men. The PC police may attack his writing for portraying women who needed a man, but if you read with an open mind, then you see that they didn’t so much need a man as a partner. They needed help, but not because they were weak, because they were lonely. It is the human condition, we truly are not meant to pass through life alone, and company is sometimes the saving grace that keeps us going.

As for strong women… I have lived like that, hauling water, splitting wood, fighting nature for a garden and hunting and fishing… It’s not easy. Your average modern woman has absolutely no idea what it requires, and the idea that L’Amour’s women, left alone for months if not years while their men went yondering, were delicate flowers in need of masculine rescue is absurd. They had families to raise, and homes to keep, and not in the housecleaning sense, but the paying for, maintaining, and managing stock, sense. These are the women I try to emulate, my pioneer ancestresses who were tough old ladies who didn’t give up.

I’ve been reading some of L’Amour’s short stories, as collected in Off the Mangrove Coast, for some of his non-Western work, and rediscovering that his prose could be lyrical to the point of poetry. His characters are each so vividly brought to life, in so few words… I am trying to learn from this master of storytelling. If you haven’t read him, he’s not hard to find, with millions of copies of his books published, and it’s well worth the effort.

Review: Take the Star Road

I picked Take the Star Road, by Peter Grant, to read for this review because I love science fiction that harks back to the age of exploration, that celebrates humanity’s hunger for the stars, and most of all, tells a good story. I was rewarded with everything I had hoped for in this book.

The story opens with young Steve Maxwell, stranded half-way between Earth and the stars, on an orbital platform. He’s barely making it, taking whatever scutwork he can, and hoping for an opening on a ship. One night after work he comes to the rescue of his boss, and that leads to the opportunity he’s been waiting for.

Grant’s details are spot-on. Just enough about the ships, the physics of interstellar travel, and planetary trade to give you a well-developed universe, but balanced with enough story to keep you reading. I did find it was a touch stilted in places, and it would have been nice to have more tell and less show with incidents like Operation Sweet Tooth, but for a first novel it was remarkably well done. Not only the hero, Steve, grows through the book, but so do Grant’s writing skills. I am very much looking forward to the sequel.

The supporting characters are as well developed as Steve, and the sub-plot about the Tongs had me intrigued. Some reviewers compare Grant’s writing to Heinlein, and I see a lot of Honor Harrington in the story, like a slimmed-down Weber book. Which is exciting, as On Basilisk Station is a great story. I don’t think it’s too much alike, though, just reminiscent of great Space Opera, with an optimistic take on the future of humanity. If you are seeking Human Wave reading, this book will fit your tastes.

I had the pleasure of meeting Peter Grant and his lovely wife at LibertyCon, and he’s a fascinating person to talk to, which comes across in his writing. There is wit, depth, and a perspective to his writing that kept me from wanting to put down the book. All too often recently I have allowed life to interrupt me and derail me from finishing a book, but this one had my imagination going enough to keep me coming back until I was done.

A word about comics

I didn’t grow up with comic books. Or comic strips, even, as there was no newspaper delivery out in the Alaskan Bush where I spent most of my childhood. So I came to comics rather late in life. I can remember tracking down Gary Larsen comics whenever possible, and Calvin & Hobbes, and when I was perhaps 14, I found a book of collected Pogo in the library and fell in love with it, even though I am sure, looking back, that some of it went right over my head. So I just don’t get some of the jokes about comic books and geeks that I hear, although I am proudly a Geek-Girl

My prize copy of The Body Politic, #001, with a sketch of Kevyn, my favorite (fictional) Mad Scientist.

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One of my problems with comic books when I came to them later in life is that I read so fast. I can read the average novel in something like two hours, maybe three, if I am uninterrupted (and these days, that is rare indeed). As you can imagine, that made shelling out money for a comic book a weird concept to me as a teen. Why pay for perhaps ten minutes of enjoyment? I scratched my head, went back to my M. M. Kaye novel (the fattest books I could find in the library, and mostly about the India of my beloved Kipling) and skipped it. Far Side and Calvin were gone, and there was nothing more for me in the comic strips.

Fast forward a few years, and my discovery of Baen’s Bar. I came for the Free Library, stayed for the company and Webscriptions, and somewhere along the line, someone mentioned Sluggy Freelance. I went and took a look, and stayed for quite a while. This was fun, witty even, and there was a story here. It rambled, true, and delving into the archives could be chancy, but I could follow along from day to day. I bookmarked it, and started to keep my eyes open for other of these webcomics, they called them.

I now have a list that I have sorted by publication days. Some come out three times weekly, others only once weekly, and just a few on a daily basis. Every morning with my coffee, I go through my list and read them. Looking at comics this way allows me to truly savor the jokes, make the story linger, and connect with characters in a new way. I’ve also come to an appreciation of the art involved. Not just the writing words part that was originally important to me, but the lines and cartooning and expressiveness possible in this form. As I start to learn more of those skills myself, my respect has deepened for those who create the webcomics.

The top one on my list every morning? Schlock Mercenary. This was true before Howard and Sandra Tayler chose me as winner of the Body Politic a few days ago. I really love the story, the characters, and it’s one of the few fictional worlds I’d actually want to go visit. This is something I never would have thought I would say, because books have always been my chosen escape. But Howard’s art and story really drag me in, and I look forward to my visit to his world every morning. There’s no other strip that I can say that about, and if I’m in a hurry, I’ll skip the others, but always look at Schlock. Thank you, Howard, for letting us see into the world, and Sandra, for helping behind the scenes to make it happen. I got my book today, and will proudly add it to the collection – the Schlock books are the only comic books I own, and I re-read when I want a comfort read. I understand that as of post time, pre-orders for The Body Politic are about half gone, so if you want a glossy new book that Howard has defaced, you will have to act fast.

My latest comic to follow? Elf Life, a funny, well drawn fantasy epic with… well, go take a look for yourself. He’s still getting re-organized, but it looks like it will be worth the effort.

A History of Contracts

I am proud to present a guest post by an old friend and very intelligent man. I hope you all enjoy this foray into the long history of the publishing contract and glimpses of the evolution of the industry.

Quilly Mammoth

Quilly Mammoth: Owner and Despot of Just Barking Mad. A former enlisted man of Mr. Carter’s Army that the Army saw fit to entice into becoming an officer. After fourteen years of active and reserve duty he felt that with the end of the Evil Empire his chores were done. Currently a production manager he has also conned someone into publishing his science fiction.

Some History.

In 1873 the first edition of Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” was first published in America. As the first edition was set to ship the print shop caught fire and all but 100 copies were destroyed. Naturally a second run was scheduled, and here’s the rub, author royalties often shifted based upon the number of the run. And in this case the printing had to shift from Osgood to the George Smith Company. Verne and Hetzel came to an agreement wherein the first Smith edition would still be called the first edition.

Now this occurred because at the time Hetzel and Verne were not only Publisher/author but truly Teacher/Student and nearly father/son. Hetzel always reminded me of Campbell and to a degree the GE. But this is a rarity in the realm of contracts where a setback is amicably settled without lawyers.

Verne realized that publishers have a significant outlay in cash for marketing,, shipping distribution and advances. Hetzel knew his protégé needed cash. The exact details are lost to time as Verne burned all his personal papers before his death and all that are left are some of Hetzel’s. But this is unusual.

And with advent of the Linotype machine in the 1880′s contracts became tighter giving publishers a tighter control over the works they published, because printing became a quantum leap cheaper. Technology rears its head and people panic, because it affects their business model.

Flash forward nearly 100 years. Sitting in the front row of Grateful Dead concerts are people with recording tape cassette machines. With the Dead’s permission and that of Bill Graham, their promoter and producer. Some of Graham’s other acts started floating the idea of selling their own tapes at concerts. And the music industry flipped out. This new recording technology and the fact that bands could sell their own music, after all they still owned the copyright, scared the crap out of them. To them they had shelled out a lot of money up front that might be simply negated by a simple and relatively cheap mass cassette reproducer.

So they went all barbarian and stuff and made the most restrictive contracts ever produced. Bands joked that they had to tour or die as their payments were now so delayed and ambiguous. Established acts like Willie Nelson _retired_ because they felt they could no longer perform or record profitably. Over time sections were struck down by courts and the industry relented to a great deal. (but not all the way, see Tim McGraw).

Then the interwebs happened and the music industry freaked out again and DMCA and so forth happened. Artists were made to make addendums to their contracts to restrict on line distribution of _any_ material they create, even if it wasn’t on a CD. Interestingly some of the biggest blow back to this is in rap and country. Cats and dogs, you know.

So now writers can publish their own writings to Amazon and skip publishers all together and do so successfully. See Ric Locke. But some publishers, who actually deal with the future, can’t handle it. Which is why you see such an emphasis on electronic rights.

And this is the crux of an important debate that all writers must enter into in good faith. How do you protect your creative rights AND insure to a publisher that he might not be taken advantage of down the line?

Remember, like in the music business, publishing is now corporate. The days when there was a publisher/editor like Hetzel are long gone. 150 years ago publishers were essentially a middleman. A fellow like Hetzel would find a writer like Verne and with financial backing, usually but not always silent investors, find a printer and sell to his network of book shops. The invention of the type writer made this even more lucrative for publishers in the Hetzel model because one didn’t have to decipher hand written manuscripts. Co-incidentally the typewriter became commercially available in 1873.

This sort of relationship between publisher and editors began to change over one hundred years ago, most of Mark Twain’s books were published by publishers like Harper Brothers. In their early days Harpers printed books under contract from publishers like Hetzel. However, Harpers adapted from being primarily magazine publisher to publishing magazines and books. Printing presses were becoming more automated and paper cheaper.  Type written documents made it easier to handle a larger number of works which meant more production and more money. They also contracted writers with a contract similar to a magazine author, that is they were essentially works for hire.

This created a new field called “publishing attorney”. If you were a writer of the stature of Twain you had one and they negotiated separate contracts then what a publishing house offered as their standard. And if you had a really good publishing attorney he would include the following clause in your contract giving the purchasing publisher not only the printing rights but the right to publish:

“in whatever modes should then be prevalent, that is by printing as at present or by use of phonographic cylinders, or by electrical methods, or by any other method which may be in use.”

This was the contract Twain had written for his autobiography to be published 100 years after his death. He wanted the book published and didn’t want any possible conflict with any of his heirs over it due to the rights to any publishing method that might exist in the future. But he also had all of his contracts hand written as he believed that prevented them from being too long and complex.

But why do publishers of music and books demand such restrictive contracts that only a select few creators can control their destiny?

Corporations do this because the ability to go beyond their scope due to technological advances is off the charts different from a 100 years ago. That’s why I included the Linotype, because it sets the stage for the fear of picking up your creation and going elsewhere. And this is where the accusations-of socialism come up. You are the owner of your labor. That was what original Socialists and Anarchists like Bakunin agitated for…ownership of labor. The flip side is that Socialist and communists believe that ownership reverts to the state and corporatism thinks it reverts to them.

So other than being a libertarian and solely going it alone, self-publishing both in print and electronically, what can a writer do?

Offer your own contract from reliable sources. Wayne Borean offered on my own blog several sources.

“The Writer’s Guild of America West has an excellent page of sample contracts . ONECLE has a huge page of sample contracts,/a> covering a wide range of things. SFWA has a lot of information on contracts .” 

And some advice on some of the new contract software:

“On a final note, if you need a lawyer to explain the contract to you, it’s a bad contract. I’ve seen far too many of those. Most Software EULAs are nearly impenetrable. That’s one reason I recommend that people avoid proprietary software. If you can’t understand a it, how do you know if you are within the legal bounds (and yes, I don’t consider an EULA a contract, since the user doesn’t sign it, but if you are in a state which has adopted the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act , an EULA is considered to be a contract, enforceable the second you purchase the software).”

Some good advice from both Mark Twain and Wayne Borean: complex contracts you can’t understand are bad contracts. It is possible to have a contract that both protects you and the interests of the publisher. After all, Mark twain was able to cover the publishing rights in a medium that wouldn’t be invented until nearly 70 years after his death and do so in a two page, hand written contract!