Posts Tagged ‘Chuck Rothman’

Hunting for a Literary Agent

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Written by Chuck Rothman

Index

1. What is an agent and why do I need one?
2. When do I need an agent?
3. How are agents paid?
4. Where to I find information about agents?
5. How do I choose an agent?
6. How do I contact an agent?
7. How do I create an outline and sample chapters?
8. What happens if I don’t get an agent?

1. What is an agent and why do I need one?

   An agent is a writer’s business representative. His job is to market your book, negotiate a deal with the publisher, keep track of rights sold, and generally handle the business end of things so that the author can concentrate on writing. (more…)

Tags: agent, Chuck Rothman, Intermediate, Rothman, writing
Posted in Agent Etiquette, How to Sell Your Novel, Information Center, SFWA Blog, The Business of Writing | 5 Comments »

Copyrights and Meteorites

Tuesday, January 4th, 2005

Do I need to Copyright my unpublished manuscript?

No.

No? Won’t an editor steal it?

No. Editors don’t steal. That’s a myth. And, unfortunately, many new writers believe it.

Think about it. How would stealing a manuscript benefit an editor? If he doesn’t like the story, there’s no reason to steal. If he does like the story enough to publish it, what advantage would he get from stealing? Saving the cost of paying you? If the magazine pays in copies, all he’s saving is postage. If the magazine pays cash, the money is already budgeted for that story. Why risk your reputation over money you were planning to spend anyway?

And if an editor did steal stories, word would get around. Top authors would stop sending anything. Without top authors, the quality of the magazine would drop. As quality drops, so does circulation. Very soon, an editor who stole stories would be out of business, with no one willing to hire her (would you hire a thief?).

Maybe they’ll print it with the name of a famous author to boost sales.

Nope. First of all, do you really think a big-name author would allow that to happen? If a magazine put, say, John Grisham’s name on your story, Grisham’s attorneys would be on the line within a week.

Besides, names don’t make that much of a difference to a magazine. They get plenty of big names just in the course of doing business — legitimate stories from these people. Also, a big name on the cover doesn’t make that much of a difference except for newsstand sales, which, for most fiction magazines, are not a major source of income (most magazines lose money on newsstand sales).

In addition, one of the joys of editing is discovering a new author. Editors are delighted when they can publish someone for the first time.

OK, so they may not steal my story. What if they steal my ideas?

Editors don’t buy ideas; they buy stories and articles.

Ideas are a dime a gross; there isn’t a person walking the street who can’t come up with an idea that could potentially make a first-rate story. It’s the execution of that idea that makes a story. A brilliant idea is worthless if the story is poorly written, with weak characters and no plot. Similarly, some excellent stories have been written from very unimpressive ideas.

Since the chances are quite good that someone thought up an idea similar to yours independently, you can’t depend on ideas to succeed as a writer. You need to know how to write.

In any case, all this doesn’t matter. You can’t Copyright an idea, just its expression. Even if someone did steal an idea, Copyright wouldn’t protect you.

But I’ve heard about people suing publishers for stealing their stories?

Those stories involve either movie studios or songwriters; things are different in Hollywood. And in the vast majority of these, the cases are thrown out of court. Why? Because these were all groundless. Whenever a movie or song becomes successful, people come out of the woodwork and try to cash in.

Also, most people complain about people stealing their ideas and, as I mentioned, ideas aren’t Copyrightable.

But that’s Hollywood. It is not book or magazine publishing. In sixteen years of writing fiction professionally I have never heard of an editor taking a submitted story and stealing it. Never. It just does not happen.

I’m still concerned. How do I know I won’t be the first?

If you’re not going to trust the editor not to steal your story, why are you going to trust her to publish it?

Publishing is based on trust. The editor trusts that you haven’t stolen the story from someone else, for instance (plagiarized submissions considerably outnumber those stolen by editors). As an author, you are expected to keep your word to the editor. And vice versa. Nearly all editors do.

Still, it can’t hurt to get Copyright, can it?

Yes, it can. It can hurt your pocketbook, and it can hurt your chances of getting a story published.

Pocketbook issues first. It costs money to register a Copyright. (By the way, you do have some Copyright protection from the moment you create a story, whether you register it or not. You cannot sue for damages, but you can prevent anyone from publishing without permission.) The last I checked, it cost $20. Now if you don’t sell the story, this isn’t very cost-effective. The same if you sell to a market that pays in copies. If you write twenty stories a year, you will have to earn over $400 from sales to pay for Copyright costs. That’s $400 a year for the equivalent of meteorite insurance. Is that worth it? I’d rather spend that money on postage or books or new computer equipment or even a night at the theater. I make little enough money writing as it to waste it on nonessentials.

Also, if you do Copyright a story, technically, you are required to include a Copyright notice. This has to indicate the date of Copyright. Now, suppose an editor sees a story of yours with the line “Copyright © 1988.” His first thought will be “This story hasn’t sold in nine years?” Not a good first impression.*

What should I do, then?

What all professional writers do: send your stories off without worrying about theft. The publisher will Copyright the story when they buy it; let them deal with it. There are too many other problems facing a writer to have to worry about meteorites.

For a look at Copyright law, you can go to the Copyright Office Website

Tags: beginners, Chuck Rothman, copyright, Publishing
Posted in Advice for New Writers, Contracts and Copyrights, Copyright Education, Information Center | Comments Off

Manuscript Format

Tuesday, January 4th, 2005

Written by Chuck Rothman

Over the years, publishers have developed certain standards to make their jobs easier. Manuscript format is one of them, and something that often creates some heated discussion in various newsgroups. There are several points that you need to remember:

1. The standards are there for a reason. They are not arbitrary and are generally set up to make certain jobs easier.
2. It’s not your job to design the manuscript. You supply the words; the publisher supplies the format.
3. You don’t have to stick to the format except in the final version. If you prefer something else in your drafts, fine. It’s simple to change the font once you’re printing out the final version.
4. The wrong format or font won’t destroy your chances; it may not even hurt. It a question of whether you’re willing to take the chance that you’re writing is good enough to overcome the difficulties you’ll cause by not doing things properly.
5. As a personal aside, I’ve noticed the people who fight hardest against the standard format usually end up using Times Roman instead — which, on most computers, is the default font that comes up automatically. Hard to believe they’ve put much thought into their choice.

That stated, here are the rules for standard format:

• Manuscripts must be typed, double-spaced, on one side of the paper, with wide enough margins (min. 1-in.) for the editor to make notations.
• Fonts (and here’s where the fights occur): The preference is for monospaced fonts — fonts where all letters are the same width. The most commonly used monospaced font is Courier; the most commonly preferred size is 12 points (also called 10 pitch — 10 characters to the inch). This is a hangover from the days before computers, when most typewriters used what was known as “Pica” type — essentially 12 point Courier. It is also acceptable to use a 10-point monospaced font like Prestige Elite — again, a hangover from typewriter days, when you could buy “Elite” typewriters that used 10-point (12 pitch– I know, it’s confusing) Prestige. The actual font is less important (as long as it’s large and dark enough) as the fact that it must be monospaced; proportional fonts screw up word counts.
• No fancy formatting within the manuscript. Indent each paragraph five spaces (1/2 in.). Indicate italics by underlining (do not use italics; they are easily missed). Indicate boldface by drawing a wavy line beneath the text and writing “bf” in a circle in the margin. Do not hyphenate words (the typesetter will include the hyphen so the word might read “Schenec-tady”). Do not right justify the text (you may like it, but it’s harder to read — especially on long paragraphs — and it messes up word counts).
• Indicate a blank line by placing a # in the center of the line. The # indicates space to a typesetter.
• At the top of the first page, type your name (the one you want them to write the checks out to) and address at the upper left corner. Type the word count at the upper right corner Skip down to the middle of the page. Type the title of the story, centered (optionally: ALL CAPS). Go down a line. Type “by Your Name” (if you want to use a pen name, type it here; the check will be sent to the name at the upper left). Go down another line and begin the story.
• Don’t put on a Copyright notice. It’s unnecessary. You also don’t have to indicate the rights offered. Most magazines tell you what they’re buying; if you don’t like it, don’t submit to them. Don’t write “Approximately” by the word count. Editors know the word count is approximate.
• On each additional page, put your last name and the page number in the upper right corner: Name/2
  You can also include a keyword from the title of the story: Name/Keyword/2, but this is optional — it’s rare that you have two manuscripts in a position when they can be mixed up, and if at the last minute you decide to retitle your novel, you only have to change the title page instead of printing out the entire thing with the correct keyword.
• At the end of the story, center the word “end”.

Tags: Chuck Rothman, manuscript, Rothman, writing
Posted in Advice for New Writers, Information Center, Manuscript Formatting, The Craft of Writing | Comments Off

What Is a Word?

Tuesday, January 4th, 2005

Written by Chuck Rothman

When you submit a story, you’re expected to include a count of words.

Now, this sounds simple. Press the “Word Count” button on your word processor and there it is. Unfortunately, this count is likely to be wrong.

Why? It all depends on your definition of “word.”

To a computer, a word is anything with space around it. “To a tee” is three words. “Antidisestablishmentarianism” is one. Simple. Too simple.

Because, in publishing, you are most concerned with space: the space a story or article will take up when published. And the computer method is inaccurate. Some words are long, some words are short. So, years ago, publishers set up a standard definition: a word is six characters (including spaces).

Now the length of the word didn’t matter. You could determine the length of a story without worrying about the length of the words in it. “Antidisestablishmentarianism” is just short of five words. “To a tee” is two and a third. You get more accurate counts.

But there’s another factor. Consider this exchange of dialog:

"I'm pregnant," he said.
"What?"

A computer would call this five words. A magazine editor would count it as 25.

Why? Because the two-line exchange takes up as much vertical space as two full lines of text. An editor has to have some way to account for short paragraphs.

So, years ago, a standard method was developed to count words in a story:

1. Count the number of characters in an average, mid-paragraph line (BTW, this all assumes a monospaced font. If you’re using a proportional font, the number of characters can vary immensely, throwing off the numbers and word count).
2. Divide by six. This is the number of words per line.
3. Count the number of lines on a page. (This includes any # for blank lines.)
4. Multiply #2 by #3 to get the number of words per page.
5. Multiply by the number of full pages (plus any fractional pages), to get the total number of words.
6. Round the number to the nearest hundred. Authors tend to round up; editors round down. This is the number you put on the front page of the manuscript.

There’s a second reason to use this other than making it easier for editors: this method usually gives higher word counts (My count is generally about 20% higher than the computer’s). Higher word counts mean higher payments. It’s perfectly OK with the editors to use this method, so you might as well take advantage.

Tags: Chuck Rothman, manuscript, Rothman, word count, writing
Posted in Advice for New Writers, Information Center, Keeping At It, Manuscript Formatting, The Craft of Writing | Comments Off