Общополезности

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Възникват ли нови жанрове на Запад?

Да, постоянно. Някои още не са си намерили утвърдено име.

По въпроса как ги приемат по-големите издателства... скептично? Ама те по-големите издателства са си муднички по принцип.

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С благодарности към Мирослав Пенков и неговите студенти в University of North Texas:

Литературни списания в САЩ, според престижа им

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Примерно писъмце (query), когато някой submission не е получил отговор много дълго

Dear Editors:

On DATE, we submitted to you NAME OF STORY by AUTHOR. We have not heard from you since then. Can you please let us know what the status of the submission is?

Kind regards, etc.

Повечето издания си пишат колко време трябва да изчакате, преди да пращате таквоз. Rule of thumb: Do not send before 120 days have passed.

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And now for some celebration of out most favorite topic:

Bryan Doyle: No

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Daniel Bensen: Literary agents

(A talk with yours truly. )

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Daniel Bensen: Promotion strategies, part 1

(Yours truly featured again. )

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Daniel Bensen: Promotion strategies, part 2

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Това е външен линк, но реших, че тук ще е подходящо.

Преместих го в по-подходяща тема – Кал.

В статията се описва как 2 автори получават 1 млн. аванс за книга в САЩ. Единия от тях описва как са стигнали до това. Мащаба, страната и други неща са различни, но има и някои общи неща. Като интереса на другите да се занимават с теб, известността в различните и проявления и ползата от нея.

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2013/04/15/how-to-get-a-book-deal/#more-9295

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Daniel Bensen: Promotion Strategies, part 3

(hi, Dan! )

[Люба]

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... местя, но ... вземи да преименуваш темата на "Литературни общополезности". Или по-точно да насочва. Да не стават обърквания като моето
И като ме прочетеш, вземи и да ме изтриеш без-следно

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Ама това е форумът „Фантазийска преводаческа школа“ – предполага се, че темите са свързани с преводаческо-продуцентската ни дейност.

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Видях и го признавам това, ама кое те кара да си мислиш, че е нормално човек да гледа цялата нишка най-горе, а не само 'неговата търсена и нужна тема' според моментния спомен какви теми с "Полезно" като корен има
Инак това с Фантазийската школа го видях и осъзнах като потеглих да местя и не ми излезе "Полезно" като тема. А само 1 страница от темите на малобройната откъм теми "Фантазийска школа" Айде, трий ни. Стига сме спамили народонаселението. Ама имай и това моето наум като кръщаваш следващи теми в бъдеще... ако приемеш логиката

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Абе... нека си седи тук засега. Може да е полезно на другите.

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Вземи го вкарай в "Пътеводителя" с насочващ акцент, ако не е тогава ...? Оставям го

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Ъ, „Пътеводителят“ е само за Фантазия – понеже тя е единственият форум, който не е тематичен. Останалите форуми са фокусирани върху темата, която е в заглавието им - както „ Фантазийска преводаческа школа“ тук.

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Playing the Short Game: How to Sell Your Short Fiction: a 32-part series by Douglas Smith

(Who just won his third Aurora award for a short story. )

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The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review: Ouch! Form Rejection Letters

(...) With that said, we do understand the hurt and difficulty of having work declined, which is the word we prefer to use. Declined. Rejection is such a loaded word. Declined is a much more accurate way of saying, we value the opportunity to read your work and thank you for trusting us with it. It just wasn’t for us. Perhaps a future work will be and we wish you the best in extending this work to other journals.

(...)

On form declines. Yes, they are difficult to receive. We know. The truth of it is journals are not only artistic outreaches but also businesses. Our staff are real people who really read your submissions. We receive many submissions and so our time is limited in how much we can spend on unsolicited submissions while publishing the journal, tending to our families, writing our own stories and novels, as well as teaching classes, etc. We must manage our time strategically in order to make the journal sustainable. We’ve seen too many fantastic journals fall under because of talented and well-meaning editors over-extending their services and their abilities to sustain. For this reason, we do not often give personal detailed feedback. We do sometimes but not always. We will sometimes offer “we did like something” general feedback which means we did like something but because we are not a workshop submissions basis, we do not feel it our place or responsibility to instruct submitters on how to change their stories to suit our ideas of perfection. We are not the end all of aesthetics, though, we try to be very eclectic. Offering personal feedback on works that we haven’t fallen in love with would be like that guy or girl in high school who was into you but decided you weren’t the one for him or her because your laugh was a certain way or because you wore Lee jeans instead of Levis and so he or she tried to change your laugh or jeans brand in hopes of finding you more attractive. What a dick.

Remember this “love,” this artistic aesthetic and preference is very subjective. No editor is completely objective and we feel editors should never claim to be. Therefore, one journal’s response to one work does not in any way validate or invalidate a work. Aficion comes with preference. It would be irresponsible of us to instruct submitters on how to write their stories “better” when really we would be instructing submitters on how to write stories “our better.” Again, Levis instead of Lees. If you like to write Lees, go for it! In fact, once you have formed your Lees so perfectly to your butt and thighs and calves and have perfectly worn out the knees, we might even find that we like Lees too! But changing your Lees to suit us is not the craft of an editor. Change must come from within the writer. Even a single line of constructive feedback, though well meaning, can derail a direction a writer was on and potentially kill what would otherwise have been a fantastic end product. If we had the time to sit and have coffee and debate and discuss the values of Lees and Levis with you and how they fit into your craft overall and in your story specifically then perhaps we would be that writing feedback you deserve. We are able to do this for you in our Eckleburg Workshops but not in our submissions system. We consider personal feedback to be appropriate in workshop venues and/or in response to a submission only when a work is so close to our perfection already that we cannot forget it, whether or not we felt the work met its full potential or not.

FIRST RULE: Be true to your voice and then read, read, read Eckleburg and if you love us and still want us so badly you stay up at night fantasizing about us then keep reading and writing until your work and Eckleburg have become so simpatico that we are lovers meant to be. We hope to one day be this for you but we understand if we are not. There are many journals and many editors from which to choose and we would encourage you to stick with the same plan. Read, read, read that journal until you decide you are meant to be or not. Either way, the onus is on the writer to decide if his or her work suits the journal and vice versa after reading the journal obsessively. Really. Read it obsessively. No better way. Unless an editor solicits you, which is very cool. We do solicit sometimes if an editor finds a writer and craft we adore. If we do end up providing personal feedback at some point then fantastic but it shouldn’t be a determining factor. One story might not strike us at all and then the next story might hit so perfectly we’re astounded. Such is the way of it sometimes.

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Интервю с преводач: Калин М. Ненов

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Piers Anthony: Internet Publishing

A very detailed resource of online publishers.

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Playing the Short Game: How to Sell Your Short Fiction: a 32-part series by Douglas Smith

Почвам да вадя ценни неща.

Първите са линкове към блоговете на успели колеги:

Kristine Kathryn Rusch: Business Rusch Publishing Articles

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(Тонът им е смазващо добър. Или просто смазващ... )

Dean Wesley Smith – съвети за самиздат:
Think Like a Publisher
Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing

(...) when you write your story, its copyright is automatically protected. You don’t have to register your copyright (file with your particular government) to protect it (a recommended exception: if you’re sending anything to Hollywood, you should formally register copyright. You’re still protected if you don’t, but it will make proving your copyright easier in any subsequent lawsuit in the event of theft of copyright, something that is much more prevalent in Hollywood).

Същото важи и в България.

Copyright vs. moral rights:

First, there is a large difference in how moral rights are dealt with under international copyright law versus US copyright law. For example, the Canadian copyright act defines moral rights as including the following (taken from http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/ccl/ ... oralRights):

“Right of Paternity: includes the right to claim authorship, the right to remain anonymous, or the right to use a pseudonym or pen name.

Right of Integrity: In the case of a work being adapted, modified or translated, the author/creator’s right of integrity must be respected. … [An] author/creator’s right to the integrity of his work is violated if the work is a distortion, mutilation or modification of the work that is prejudicial to the honor or reputation of the author/creator.

Right of Association: … [An] author/creator has the right to prevent anyone from using his work in association with a product, service, cause, or institution.”

Or basically, whoever is acquiring the non-moral rights to your work doesn’t get to mess up your work or associate your work or your name with something with which you wouldn’t want to be associated.

Again, under Canadian copyright law (and I believe, under most non-US international copyright law), moral rights are personal to the author and remain with the author regardless of what other rights are licensed *unless the author waives their moral rights*. If waived, the period of the moral rights transfer is the same as the period of the other rights licensed.

However, copyright law in the US allows moral rights to be transferred along with copyright. Apparently to comply with international copyright treaties, the US added moral rights to their Copyright Act, but the definition of moral rights used is not as inclusive. In the US, moral rights provide the author the right to:

- Claim authorship for a work
- Prevent the use of the author’s name on any work not created by the author
- Prevent intentional distortion or mutilation that prejudices the authors honor or reputation
- Prevent the destruction of famous works

I’m with Colleen on this one. If a market asked for moral rights, I would not sign the contract. But again, folks, I am not a lawyer, so do your own research before signing any contract.

Интересен паралел с дискусиите, които водим тук, в България.

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Reversion of Rights

Typically, for a magazine (serial rights) sale contract, rights will revert to you based on the magazine’s publication schedule, and will usually be tied to when the subsequent issue (the one after the issue in which your story appeared) is published. For example, a magazine that publishes four times per year or every three months might not revert rights to you until four to six months after they’ve published the issue with your story. This is only fair–they don’t want you selling your story as a reprint (second rights) and have it appear in a competing market until they’ve had a chance to sell their issue containing your little tale.

For anthologies, it’s typical to have a one-year post-publication reversion clause. Again, this longer period is only fair, as book marketing and distribution has a longer ramp-up period and requires a longer period to get their investment back, compared to magazines, which have an existing subscriber base.

Doug says typically. Not always. He elaborates on that point later in the post.

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Send to the Best First

One last argument for “start at the top”–if you do sell to some lower level, non-pro market, nobody will care. Nobody. Established pros won’t be impressed. Editors at the big markets won’t be impressed (do not include those sales in your cover letters. You’ll just underscore the fact that you’re a newbie, and worse still, a newbie who submits to non-pro markets. I’ll have more to say on cover letters and submitting in an upcoming post). So what have you gained by selling to a lower, non-pro market? Nothing. So don’t do it.

So *gulp* this confirms my gut feelings about my first sale .... (Though its payment was pro-rate. And I had tried many markets before that.)

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Courtesy of Douglas Smith, another extremely useful market list:

Ralan.com

Especially Pro markets and Anthology pay-to-pro markets.

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If we fail miserably at sales, we might switch from Duotrope.com to this one. But then we'll lose all those great stats.

И още един ресурс, подобен на Duotrope:

The Grinder

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Re: Send to the Best First: Cover Letters

If you have publication credits, include only professional and highly regarded markets. No matter how proud you are of your sale to some non-paying market (and you shouldn’t have been submitting there to start with [...]), including them will hurt your credibility, not help it.

If you have a lot of publication credits, select only a few of the best.

If you’ve been published before in this market, make sure that you mention that in your first paragraph: “I am a previous contributor to Amazing Stories (issue #595, Winter 1999).”

...

I would definitely include an Honorable Mention from WotF [Writers of the Future]. WotF is a well-regarded contest, and many WotF winners have gone on to professional careers. Any editor would definitely count that as a “pro” credit.

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Douglas Smith: Doing your own tracking

If you can't use a service like Duotrope or Grinder. (Or want to supplement it.)

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Ahahahaha ... time for revenge!

If the editor does comment on what worked or didn’t work for them in your story, whatever you do, do NOT revise your story to address that feedback.

Huh? (you say) What? Why not?

Because that editor is just one person. Their feedback is just one opinion. It’s too small a sample. I’ll give you an example from my very first story, “Spirit Dance,” for which I received the following two early rejections:

#1: “A nice effort but a bit too slow going in the first half for our tastes.”

#2: “Opens well, but doesn’t quite hold up to my expectations. Otherwise a solid effort.”

So exactly what change should I have made to “Spirit Dance” based on that feedback? One liked the opening but not the rest. The other didn’t like the opening, but liked it after that. Two diametrically opposed opinions. And their feedback reminds us that these are personal viewpoints: “for our tastes” and “my expectations.”

So I changed nothing. The story didn’t work for those editors for completely different reasons. I kept it in the mail. It sold after eight rejections to a professional anthology, giving me my first sale. That story, in its original form, has sold thirty-two times, been published in eighteen languages, and won the Aurora Award.

Don't agree entirely--there may be useful feedback out there--but still bear in mind. Here's Doug's caveat:

If you’ve accumulated multiple pieces of feedback (at least a half dozen) on a story that all cite the same specific problem, then fix that problem. Also, if an editor requests a rewrite, then, yeah (duh), do the changes.

If you get half a dozen personal rejections, you must be a top-notch writer already.

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When to give up: NEVER!

Is there a point where you should tell yourself that this particular story is never going to sell? Is there some magic rejection count that signals that this story should go on the shelf?

The short answer is NO. As I said last week on how to best deal with rejections: keep it in the mail.

But, you say, surely any story that’s been bounced twenty times can’t be a very good story?

Trust me, at twenty rejections, it’s still a virgin. (...)

Here’s a more recent and even more telling example. I mentioned last week that the first story I ever wrote, “Spirit Dance,” was also the first story I ever sold, to the Canadian anthology series Tesseracts. It sold after eight rejections. Eight rejections. That’s not many, right?

The second story I wrote, also set in my Heroka shape-shifter universe, was “A Bird in the Hand.” After “Spirit Dance” sold, I figured that “A Bird…” would also shortly sell. Nope. It didn’t. I continued to write and sell stories, but “A Bird in the Hand” remained unsold, year after year.

But I kept it in the mail. I never gave up on it. And finally, in 2011, the story appeared in Warrior Wisewoman 3, a popular anthology series. This sale came fifteen years after I wrote the story and after (wait for it) sixty-five rejections. It even got some nice reviews.

Whew ... I haven't beaten the 30 mark yet, anywhere.

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Rights to give--or not

(...) if you sell to an online magazine, they may request the rights to maintain your story in an online archive, even after rights revert to you. I never agree to this. First, they generally don’t offer any additional fees for this right. Second, why would any other editor ever agree to purchase reprint rights for my story if it’s freely available online?

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Legal liabilities in contracts

Every contract will have a clause, intended to protect the publisher, that asks the author to warrant that they are the sole author of this story, that they haven’t plagiarized any of it, that it does not contravene any laws, etc., etc.. With this clause, the publisher is asking you to declare that nothing about this story is going to prompt a lawsuit against them.

That’s fair. But you need to ensure that any such clause also includes the underlined part in the following example (which is an amalgam of multiple contracts I’ve signed):

“You, the Author, warrants that the Work is original; that you are its sole creator and owner; that you have full power to make this agreement; that neither the Work nor any part of it is in the public domain; that neither the Work nor any part of it infringes on another’s copyright; and that the Work does not invade anyone’s right of privacy nor is contrary to law. You agree to indemnify and hold harmless the Publisher from any and all costs and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising from any claims, suits, judgements or settlements resulting from a breach of the above warranties that are sustained in a court of law.”

The underlined part protects you from being hit with covering legal fees and expenses required to defend nuisance suits brought against the publisher and you by your bitter ex-spouse or some random nut job who is convinced you stole their story idea of possum shape-shifters. Without the underlined wording, even if those suits are thrown out of court, you’ll still be on the hook for covering costs up to that point and likely would remain out-of-pocket for some of the costs. With the underlined part, you’ll be liable for claims that are upheld against you in court–that is, you’ll only pay for situations where you are proven to be in the wrong.

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What if the story is never published?

(...) you need to look for (or request) a clause that specifies a strict time limit on when rights will revert to you regardless of whether the story is published. I’d suggest something like one year after the date of the signing of the contract for a magazine, or two years after for an anthology.

You can pick any time period that you’re comfortable with, but be reasonable. For most magazines, a year is reasonable; less than a year not so much. Some magazines buy well in advance of expected publication. For my twenty-five cent a word market I mentioned above, I’d be fine with giving them two years, since they pay so well.

The other issue to deal with in this situation is payment. Most markets that include this type of reversion clause will also agree to pay the author even if they don’t publish their story. The logic here is that they’ve tied up the rights for that story for all that time, so the author deserves to be compensated for not being able to market the story elsewhere. If your contract does not deal with the issue of payment on delayed or non-publication, then you should add that as well.

Putting this all together, you should look for (or suggest) a clause something along the lines of the following: “If the Story remains unpublished one year after the date of signing of this agreement, then all rights granted under paragraph xx above shall revert to the Author, and the Author shall remain entitled to all payments under paragraph yy.”

What if the market folds/is sold?

A contract should also deal with what happens to your rights should this market suddenly cease to exist. The easiest way is to include a clause that states something like “In the event that [magazine name] ceases to publish (or the publication of [anthology name] is cancelled), then all rights granted under paragraph xx above shall immediately revert to the Author.” You can also include the clause about still getting paid, but if they’re folding, good luck on collecting.

The contract should also deal with happens to your rights when the market or publisher that bought your story is purchased by another publisher. The safest option is to include a clause stating something along the lines of “No assignment of this contract by the Publisher shall be binding without the written consent of the Author.” That way, the original publisher cannot assign your contract (include your contract and the associated rights to your story in the assets they sell) to the new publisher. You get to decide if you still want to sell your story to the new kid on the block or just get the rights back. If the new publisher wants your story, they’ll need to offer a new contract.