Posted by Richard White for Writer Beware

Dear New Publisher:

You may have noticed people discussing your company on various web sites. Normally, this would be a good thing, I mean, free publicity, right? But, when you go to these sites, they may be discussing your company in unflattering terms and asking all kinds of questions about your ability to get books into bookstores.

“But, wait. They can’t say that about my baby.”

Actually, yes they can. See, just as every writer does not “deserve” to be published, not every person who dreams of being a publisher deserves to hang out a shingle and call themselves such.

Publishing is a unique critter. Even so, one thing it has in common with other businesses is you need experience. Period. This cannot be overstated. If you have no experience in the industry (and being an unpublished or even a published author does not equate to publishing experience), what are you offering your authors?

Sorry, good intentions are not enough.

And if you’ve never worked in the industry, you don’t know what you don’t know.

Any publisher thinking about starting up must be able to answer the following questions:

• What’s your experience in publishing?
• If you don’t have any experience, do you have partners who have publishing experience, people who can guide you over the shoals of a start-up publishing business?
• Have you ever run a company before in any capacity?
• What’s your business plan?
• Have you secured sufficient funding to get this business off the ground
• Do you have realistic goals (starting small, focusing on your strengths, adding new lines only after you get established, not taking on too many authors)
• What’s your target market? Bookstores? E-books only?
• What’s your plan for getting books into bookstores?
• Do you have your distributors lined up before you open up for submissions?
• Do you know the difference between a distributor and a wholesaler?
• Who’re your editors?
• How much experience do they have editing novels or non-fiction?
• How many authors do you expect to publish a year?
• Who’s handling publicity for your company?
• Have you established a realistic time line to release ARCs to readers/reviewers/etc. before the book is ready to sell?
• What reviewers will you be sending preview copies of the book to?
• Do you have a web site oriented to attracting readers and selling books and not just there to lure in new authors?
• Who’re your sales reps? How many do you have?
• Do you intend to use your authors as an unpaid sales force?
• Who’re the artists you have lined up to do covers?
• Are you paying advances?
• How are royalties calculated? Cover price? Net?
• Can people see a copy of the contract to compare it against other standard publishing contracts?
• Is your contract author-friendly, or at least author-neutral?

If you’re not ready to answer these questions, not only are you going to lose a lot of money and time, but you’re going to cost your authors a lot of money, time and possibly cost your authors their book. You’re also going to pop up on writing web sites, but it’ll be because people are trying to figure out who you are, why they should trust you with their work, and what you’re offering that they couldn’t do on their own.

New publishers should be ready to PROVE they’re ready to go from the moment they make themselves available for any author to submit to them. They should be able to stand up to any scrutiny and have answers for questions that are going to be asked.

And I say these things not only as a member of Writer Beware, but simply as a writer. Writers want publishers to succeed. We don’t want them to fail because it’s not fun to watch something come crashing down around the creator’s ears. It’s also not fun to watch what happens to authors who, time and again, get caught in a start-up that wasn’t really ready to take that first step and wind up losing their book in the carnage.

What we want is for all new publishers to be certain they’re ready to go.

BUT, my primary concern is always for the authors. New publishers don’t have the right to experiment with other author’s books. I’ve seen too many new publishers crash and burn and authors lose their books because contracts couldn’t or wouldn’t be released before the company just disappeared.

None of these publishers set out to do this. But by reading the lists of failed publishers on the Absolute Write Bewares and Background Check forum, there is a unifying theme to them all. Inexperience. Sure, you could be THE one. Or, you could be one of the other 99 who disappear in less than a year.

So, yes, new publishers MUST earn our trust.

Do your homework. Be ready before you ever ask for the first book. Do not learn as you go.

Period.

As readers of this blog know, I’m fascinated by the strange phenomena that flourish at the fringes of the publishing world. So I was thrilled recently to discover yet another example: an online course that teaches people how to become Virtual Author’s Assistants.

What’s a Virtual Author’s Assistant, you may ask? The course website offers this explanation:

Author’s Assistants are people who work behind the scenes to create, organize and coordinate all the different pieces necessary to get a book published. To writers, they are miracle workers.

The world of publishing can be frightening, overwhelming and frustrating. An author’s assistant is the expert the writer turns to guide them step by step through the process.

From their homes, Virtual Author’s Assistants organize the publishing process for authors around the country and around the world.

Expert? As it turns out, potential Virtual Author’s Assistants need know nothing about the publishing industry. “[D]on’t worry. We’ll teach you. All you need is a love of books, a few basic business skills and a desire for fun and interesting work.” (Wow. Who knew this publishing stuff was so easy and entertaining? I must have missed that nugget of wisdom in my 25+ years as a writer and writers’ advocate. And gosh, I must be awfully dense, because after all that time, I’m still learning.)

VAA course content includes such important items as how to prepare and proof a manuscript, how to get an ISBN and bar code, how to register copyright, how to put together a media kit, and how to launch an Amazon Bestseller Campaign. Aspiring VAAs will also be tutored in how to create a business website to attract author clients, and ways to identify and solicit authors as business prospects (this article offers a glimpse of how that might be done, encouraging VAAs “to know where authors and aspiring authors hide” and to “[s]ell the author on the amount of money and time you can save them over doing this work themselves”). Those who complete the course will be “a certified graduate of the only course of its kind in the country,” and will receive the suitable-for-framing certificate to prove it. They’ll also be eligible to place the “Virtual Author’s Assistant Professional insignia” on their websites and business materials.

Best of all: this expertise can be yours in just 30 days, for a cost of only $597! You can also, optionally, buy a website. For $85 more, you can earn a Master Virtual Author’s Assistant certification. And if you’re really enterprising, you can recoup some of your expense by becoming an Affiliate, earning 10% every time you successfully refer someone to the VAA program.

Leaving aside any questions of information quality (the course is offered by Jan B. King, a publishing and business consultant who does appear to have professional writing and publishing experience), this all sounds highly dubious to me. I don’t know about you, but if I were hiring an assistant, I’d be looking for someone with real-life experience, not a made-up certification from an online coursepack. Not to mention, I’m not exactly rolling in disposable income–and I’m a commercially-published author who is getting paid for my work. From the verbiage on the Virtual Author’s Assistant website (see “The 24 Services Authors Ask For Most“), it’s apparent that the main consumers of VAA services are expected to be self-published writers. But what are the odds that such writers, who will have to shell out possibly substantial sums to printers or self-publishing companies, could (or should) afford to pay for an assistant, virtual or otherwise? And if they can, would it not make sense to seek out a specialist–a qualified book shepherd, for example–rather than someone with just 30 days of online training?

So how likely is it really, if you spring for VAA training, that someone will hire you? The VAA website dodges that question, citing only the “thriving” Virtual Assistant industry and alleging that more books would be published “if they had the help of an author’s assistant.” Another VAA website provides even more circular reasoning in its FAQ: “How competitive is the market for author’s assistants? Let me answer this way: About 500,000 new trade books were published last year. At present there are fewer than 300 fully-trained professional virtual author’s assistants. The demand is very high for qualified author’s assistants and will be for a long time in the future.”

The same website hosts a VAA Directory that lists 58 members. A spot check of their websites suggests that most primarily focus on general Virtual Assistant services, so I’m guessing that VAA certification is something most Virtual Assistants add, rather than specialize in. However, that makes it impossible to get a sense of how “high” the “demand” might actually be for VAA services. I did find the website of the International Association of Virtual Author’s Assistants, but it appears to be a vehicle for selling marketing and other services to authors, rather than a professional group for VAAs.

Bottom line: this seems to me to be a program that offers little advantage either to people looking for work they can do at home–since I find it extremely unlikely that there really is a “very high,” or even a “high,” demand for VAAs–or to authors, who may be solicited to pay for services they can ill afford, may not need, and could likely get from more qualified providers. However, I try to keep an open mind–so I’d love it if any successful VAAs or authors who’ve happily used them would comment here.

In the meantime–caveat scriptor, and caveat emptor!

Copyright, literally, is “the right to copy.” It guarantees the authors of creative works–including books, artworks, films, recordings, photographs–the exclusive right for a set period of time to allow other people to copy and distribute the work, by whatever means and in whatever media currently exist. It also prohibits copying and distributing without the author’s permission. You own copyright by law, automatically, as soon your work is fixed in tangible form–i.e., the minute you write down the words.

Contained within copyright is the entire bundle of rights that an author can grant to others or utilize him/herself. For book authors, this includes the right to publish in book or other form, to make translations and audio recordings and films, to create serializations or abridgements or derivative works…the list goes on, and continues to expand as technology makes different forms of publication and distribution possible.

When you sign a publishing contract, you are granting the publisher permission to exploit (i.e., to publish and distribute for profit) some or all of your rights for a defined period of time. Because you own the copyright, granting rights doesn’t mean you lose or abandon those rights–merely that you authorize someone else to use them for a while, either exclusively (no one else can use them at the same time) or nonexclusively (you can also grant them to others). Eventually, once the contract term has expired or the book has ceased to sell in significant numbers, the publisher will cease publication and relinquish its claim on your rights. This is known as rights reversion. Sometimes reversion is automatic (as in a fixed-term contract); sometimes you must request reversion after the book has been declared out of print (as in a life-of-copyright contract). Once your rights have reverted, you are free to re-sell them if you can or use them yourself, as you choose.

For many readers of this blog, the above will seem pretty elementary. But confusion between rights and copyright is not unusual–not just among authors (one common misplaced fear, that granting rights to a publisher means you lose them forever, is often used as a justification for self-publishing), but among inexperienced publishers. If I had a dollar for every small press contract I’ve seen that hopelessly conflates rights and copyright (for instance, requiring writers to grant copyright, but then reserving a variety of subrights to the author), I could take my husband Rob out to a very fancy dinner.

Some suggestions to untangle the confusion and protect yourself:

- First and foremost, understand copyright and the rights it gives you. The US Copyright Office, the UK Intellectual Property Office, and the Australian Copyright Council all offer information. The more you know, the more likely it is that you’ll recognize bad contract clauses when you run across them.

- Except in specific circumstances, such as doing work-for-hire, don’t give away your copyright, not even temporarily. Inexperienced publishers sometimes ask for this, believing they need it to properly exploit authors’ rights. They don’t–and if things go wrong, it can work out very badly for you.

- You don’t necessarily need to be afraid of life-of-copyright contracts. In a fixed-term contract, you grant rights for a defined amount of time–say, three years. In a life-of-copyright contract, you grant rights for the duration of copyright (currently, in the USA and most of Europe, your lifetime plus 70 years). New authors often find life-of-copyright contracts very scary–but they’re standard in commercial publishing, and many smaller presses have them also. They are not intended to allow the publisher to hold your rights until 70 years after your death, but rather to create an open-ended situation in which the publisher can keep your book in print for as long as it continues to sell.

Of course, you need to evaluate the situation. For a new small publisher, life-of-copyright might not be such a great idea, since the failure rate for new publishers is very high. A fixed-term contract might be better, as it would at least ensure you got your rights back eventually, even if the publisher didn’t bother to return them before disappearing. And a life-of-copyright grant term must be balanced by a rights reversion clause (see below).

- Speaking of grant terms, make sure there is one. Whether it’s three years or life-of-copyright, your contract should state the term for which rights are being granted. I’ve seen small publishers’ contracts that lack this important detail.

- Make sure your contract includes some provision for rights reversion. While you want to grant rights to a publisher that will properly exploit them, you also want eventually to get your rights back. When and how this happens should be clearly spelled out in your contract.

A time-limited contract is one way to ensure reversion–but beware of automatic renewal clauses that make it difficult for you to terminate, or that rely on you remembering to send the publisher notice before the renewal date and thus can easily be forgotten. Beware also of excessive grant terms–for instance, the contract of one well-known author mill extends for seven years, which is longer than many commercially-published books remain in print. For a smaller publisher, three to five years, with the possibility of renewal if both parties agree, is probably the most you want to consider.

For life-of-copyright contracts, there should be a rights reversion clause detailing when the work will go out of print (ideally, this should be tied to minimum sales or royalty levels, rather than mere availability for sale, so that the publisher can’t hang on to your rights if your book is selling just a couple of copies a year) and what steps you can take to demand that the publisher return your rights (usually, a letter asking the publisher either to republish or return rights, and providing a timeframe for the publisher to respond). Never sign a life-of-copyright contract that does not include such a clause. Yes, they exist; I’ve seen them.

Also look for a clause requiring the publisher to publish within a specific period of time (say, 12-24 months), or else return rights. This will prevent the publisher from sitting on your book without ever publishing it, or from pushing the publishing date back indefinitely due to incompetence or malice.

- Last but very definitely not least, never rely on a publisher’s verbal assurances. A confused or devious publisher may assure you that, even though its contract requires you to give up copyright, “you aren’t really losing your copyright, because we’ll give it back later on.” Or, even though its life-of-copyright contract doesn’t include a reversion clause, “you don’t need to worry, because we never hold on to rights forever.” Maybe the publisher means it, maybe it doesn’t–but do you really want to risk signing with a publisher whose contract doesn’t match its promises? Along with Yog’s Law, a principle by which authors should always abide is this: If it’s not in writing, it doesn’t exist.

For more on copyright, including the reasons why you don’t need to register copyright for unpublished work and a discussion of several common copyright myths, see the Copyright page of the Writer Beware website.

Publishing contracts are, as a rule, neither well organized nor well written. Related, but critical, provisions are often scattered in provisions from the front to the back, and a provision on page six will often negate or vastly modify a provision on page two. Further, there is no such thing as a “standard” contract that cuts across publishers, across types of books, or across much of anything.
We have organized this presentation thematically, rather than trying to perform a paragraph-by-paragraph dissection of a contract that may bear little resemblance to either a preexisting contract you might encounter or your (or your clients’) particular needs. In the appendices, you’ll find two representative publishing contracts. Materials from the morning session include more publishing contracts and clauses, and comparing all of the materials should be educational—if all too often frustrating.

Download the .pdf

The words “online marketing” are fairly generic, since there are quite a few components involved with this business practice. Marketers (like myself) often utilize web analytics, social media, blogging, natural and paid search, online advertising, etc. For authors, online marketing may be a little more targeted to our writing and publishing efforts via social media and blogging platforms.

Since online marketing is part and parcel to my career, I don’t think twice about leveraging my knowledge for my fiction efforts. Not every author has my experiences, though, which is why I turned to a few authors to find out what they thought. Alex Bledsoe, author of Blood Groove and The Sword-Edged Blonde, had this to say on the subject:

“It used to be that a writer could simply write, and the publisher had a whole marketing structure there to take care of him or her.  Back then it was feasible to be a recluse and still be a best-seller.  It’s the romantic ideal of being a “writer.”  Now, though, those structures are long gone, and the writer has to work in partnership with the publisher, or in some cases entirely on his or her own, to publicize books.  The money simply isn’t there unless you’re on the level of a cottage-industry author.  That said, there’s also unprecedented ways for authors to find readers and vice-versa.”

Just like an online merchant targets their efforts to their customers, any author can focus their actions to attract, retain and reach their readers. Some authors, like Pat Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind, chose a more blended approach to attracting readers:

“I maintain a blog, but I also really enjoy getting out and meeting people face-to-face at signings and conventions. It’s a real trade-off. The blog is more work, but it’s available to everyone with a computer. I make jokes, keep people informed about signings, and occasionally answer questions or give advice. Talking at a convention or a library is easier in many ways. You get to talk to people face-to-face and make a real connection. The audience is smaller, but connection is more personal, dynamic, and real.”

Pat’s approach works for him because, as he outlined in his quote, he feels comfortable making those face-to-face connections. Unfortunately, not every author may not have as much time to blog or go to conventions as Pat does, which means that their marketing efforts have to be structured differently. Does that mean that there’s “one way” to structure an online marketing plan? No, absolutely not. Often, the best online marketing plans are the most customized ones. For your work, that might mean you need to incorporate feedback from your agent or your publisher; another author might set up a content management plan (e.g. blogging schedule) to help them save time.

Unfortunately, time is a factor for online marketing because creating content can be time-consuming. Is it worth it? Lilith Saintcrow, author of the new release Redemption Alley, had this to offer:

“Fans want a personal relationship–that’s why they’re fans. A professional interactive presence online helps fans feel recognized and provides an emotional value to them, over and above the cost of a book. Fans are the people providing my paycheck; my professional online presence is a way for me to find out how well I’m earning that paycheck. It’s value added for the fans, and the best parts of a performance review for me, all rolled into one.

Developing a personal relationship with your readers does provide intrinsic value to them, because fans do enjoy connecting with the authors they admire. In online marketing, we cultivate that personal attachment through something called “personalization.” From creating personalized newsletters to writing about your editing process, personalization is about touching a reader in a place where they identify with you and subsequently, your work. By using personalization techniques, you’re fostering another form of advertising called “word-of-mouth.” 

The easiest way to personalize your readers experience with your writing is to simply be online to engage your readers. The key to personalization is not “selling a book to an individual,” it means that you might field questions about your writing or talk about your hobbies or charities you support. It means, simply, that you’re both a professional author and someone interesting to talk to. How will you know when your efforts are successful? While there are multiple ways to track your actions, often the strangest things will start to occur. You’ll find yourself networking not only with readers, but with other authors and professionals, too. 

Another good example of how an author effectively uses personalization is Yasmine Galenorn author of the New York Times bestselling Otherworld series. Yasmine is very active on social media, but she also blogs and offers a newsletter for her fans, too.

“I find that it’s important to establish a certain presence with readers, especially in today’s cyber-focused world.  Because of the internet, authors have the ability to reach out to readers in ways like never before. However, there is a balance that must be reached.  It can be dangerous to become over friendly with strangers who think they know you because of your books, and social networking can be time-consuming and tiring.  But when kept in perspective, the net can also be a wonderful way to connect with readers and other writers.  We can give our audience a glimpse behind the mask.  While we ideally want our books to be the central focus—for writers of series, this can be an invaluable tool.  Readers become heavily invested in our worlds. They want to know a little more about the person behind the cover, the creator of their favorite characters whom become beloved friends to them. And online networking can give them a hint of who we are.”

Yasmine is not alone in her experiences with her readers, for there is a challenge with becoming too accessible. Since the internet provides instant gratification with long-lasting effects, you’ll need to set up clear guidelines for yourself to manage your time and your communication. Regardless, if you do decide to engage your readers keep in mind that you’ll need to monitor the conversation. Unlike writing for a print medium, if you have a set-and-forget mentality for the internet, you may find yourself either completely removed from the conversation, or the subject of a delicate one.

Because the bulk of my published work has either been short fiction or game design, I’ve been able to experiment with the concept of personalization. One example of how I’m experimenting with different tools is my website for an urban fantasy novel called “Argentum.” Offering a portion of the first draft for a limited time, I’ve been able to connect with fans interested in watching the novel’s journey. Even though I’ve made mistakes, I’ve been honest and upfront about everything I’m doing, which has offered my readers an intimate look at the process of writing (and marketing) a novel online.

Just like my experiences with personalization might be a little different from the authors I listed above, yours will no doubt be different, too. Don’t be afraid to customize your marketing plan to your personality, because in the end “getting personal” means your readers will get to know “you.” What you want them to see is entirely up to you.

About the Author

Monica Valentinelli is the content and web analytics manager for the digital sheet music retailer http://www.musicnotes.com and the project manager for the horror and dark fantasy webzine www.flamesrising.com. In her spare time, Monica enjoys writing fiction, and has over a dozen game and fiction credits to her name including: “Pie,“ a short story found in the “Buried Tales of Pinebox, Texas,” her recent novella “Twin Designs” which was part of the collection Tales of the Seven Dogs Society, her flash fiction piece “Prey” on Pseudopod.org with more works on the way.

To read more about Monica, visit her urban fantasy novel located at www.violetwar.com or her blog located at www.mlvwrites.com.

“Bits of destruction” is a phrase Fred Wilson uses to describe the destructive part of “creative destruction” brought on by digitization. We hear a lot about the destruction wrought on the newspaper business. A more interesting and nuanced wave is now hitting the book publishing business. Actually, it is three waves: the digitization of back catalogs, e-books, and print on demand. However this plays out, a lot of people will be affected, but the way in which it will play out is not at all obvious. This is too big a subject for one post, so read this as an introduction to a multi-post investigation.

Originally appeared in the Bulletin of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Spring 1995. Copyright © 1995 Terry McGarry. Reprinted with permission.

Many copyeditors prefer to spell the word “copyeditor.” I laughed when I got page proofs of a short story I had written about a copyeditor: the anthology’s copyeditor had changed my character into a two-word protagonist. As author, I could have stetted my spelling, but I deferred to house style.

After you have delivered a finished manuscript, and usually after your editor has gone over it, your publisher’s managing editor assigns it to a copyeditor.

The copyeditor prepares the manuscript for the typesetter, proofreading for typos and keying design elements. She also styles the manuscript, making sure that its spelling, punctuation, usage, and fonts are internally consistent and follow the publisher’s house style. She checks for faulty grammar. Depending on the latitude afforded by the publisher (and whether the editor requested a light or medium copyedit–fiction never gets a heavy copyedit), she will either recast grammatically incorrect sentences, shuffling the words into syntactic order without changing them, or she will suggest possible fixes in a query. And she keeps an eye out for errors of logic and continuity, querying things that seem physically impossible or that violate the internal logic of the book’s universe.

The copyedited manuscript is usually reviewed by people at the publishing house–the editor, the managing editor’s staff, or both. Often the author gets to see it as well. The copy editor’s queries are answered (called “deflagging” if queries have been written on Post-it Notes stuck to the pages), and if she has made changes the author or editor objects to, those changes are changed back. The manuscript then goes to a type house, where typesetters generate galleys or page proofs; these are read against the copyedited manuscript by one of the publisher’s freelance proofreaders.

Your copyeditor should not be rewriting your sentences for political correctness or because she thinks it sounds better her way, or rewriting ungrammatical sentences that are complex enough to require a phrasing decision. (One of prose’s beauties is its infinite malleability, the myriad ways in which a thought can be expressed, and even the most basic grammatical error can have several potential solutions.)

The freelance copyeditor gets two or three weeks to prepare a manuscript. She works at home or in a private office rather than in the publisher’s offices. She sits down with the edited original (or sometimes a photocopy of it); a sharp colored pencil (everyone who works on a manuscript uses a different color, so that marks can be identified); a copy of the publisher’s house style sheet, if one is provided (these can run from two to twenty pages); and the publisher’s preferred dictionaries and style manuals (usually Web 10, Web 3, and The Chicago Manual of Style). She has no idea, aside from genre, what kind of book this will be; unless the book is one of a series or written by an author whose work she’s familiar with, she comes to the writing style and the imagined scenario completely cold.

Her library usually includes a hodgepodge of reference materials–medical dictionaries, foreign-language dictionaries, dictionaries of quotations, encyclopedias, other style manuals, books on sports and fashion and the military and science, atlases, city street maps. The cardinal rule of copyediting is Look Everything Up. The copyeditor must know where to look things up, and how to find out where when she doesn’t know. She’s not far from a phone, so she can make fact-checking calls as the need arises. She looks up every compound word, every brand name, every geographical and biographical name. If the book describes routes through existing cities, she makes sure the streets are contiguous; if the routes are through imaginary places, she’ll sketch a little map. She will check quotations, foreign words and phrases, even such things as whether a constellation is visible from a certain point on Earth at a certain time of year.

She keeps several lists: one of design elements (front-matter heads, epigraphs, part and chapter heads, section heads, extracts, footnotes, tabular material, artwork, line-for-line settings), one of words (preferred spellings, invented words, foreign or alien words, specially capitalized words), one of proper names (characters, places, organizations, starships, pets and horses, alien races), and one of usage (which numbers are spelled out, whether the serial comma is used, how possessives are handled, whether a full sentence after a colon is capped). Every entry on these lists notes the page of first occurrence in the manuscript–and in the copyeditor’s working list, usually several pages of occurrence, in case the author later starts treating an element differently and she has to go back. When she is finished, she will alphabetize and type these lists and submit them with the finished job.

She usually also keeps several miscellaneous lists for her own reference, to keep track of what people look like, which starships are in which fleets, the complexities of tribal relationships–any of a thousand things that might pose problems.

She keys the manuscript as she goes, marking the design elements for the compositor, as well as qualifying dashes–em-dashes, en-dashes, end-of-line hyphens–and insuring that italics and small caps are correctly applied and clearly marked. She makes sure that quotation marks aren’t missing, that words or blocks of text haven’t been dropped or repeated.

She watches for typos, misspellings, and incorrect punctuation, as well as grammatical problems such as dangling participles, noun-verb disagreement, faulty parallelism, unclear antecedents. She also watches for unintentional puns, double entendres, or embarrassing mixed metaphors, and queries them; and she’ll query if a word or phrase is constantly repeated, on a page or throughout the whole book, listing all the occurrences.

Lastly, she reads for sense, continuity, and logical consistency, and queries anything that doesn’t seem to add up. She visualizes what’s going on, and applies common sense to everything as she reads.

Copyeditors must follow the publisher’s rules without compromising the author’s work–and without letting any mistakes get through. They are classic middlepeople. They have to please a publisher who wants an error-free book that conforms to house style, and an author who wants nothing changed but the mistakes (and assumes that the copyeditor will be able to tell a mistake from something intentional).

A copyeditor familiarizing herself with an author’s style is a little like a detective reconstructing motivations from a limited number of physical clues. From the printed elements in the manuscript, the copyeditor identifies the rhythms of the author’s prose, the way he uses modifiers, his punctuation preferences. She can thus avoid breaking the author’s style in imposing house style. Every page entails a dozen judgment calls, as the copyeditor weighs various style precedents against the book’s prevailing usage. While she may sometimes make the wrong decision, she is keenly aware of her responsibility to the author’s intent.

There are as many ways to fail as a copyeditor as there are to fail as a writer. Because copyeditors are trained for consistency, some become inflexible and allow the writer insufficient leeway for personal style and poetic license. Some copyeditors are too passionate about their political agendas and impose them on the author’s work. Some lack confidence and overquery; some could phrase their queries with more tact. But most copyeditors are careful people who got into their line of work because they love words and want to see a clean book.

Fiction copyediting requires a light touch, a fine sense of when to leave things alone, and an ear for style. Many journalistic copyeditors are extremely uncomfortable working on fiction; they’re afraid to change anything and they’re afraid that if they don’t correct what they perceive as errors they will have failed to do their job.

Speculative fiction is particularly challenging to copyedit. On the most basic level, it’s full of made-up words and unusual names. Most speculative fiction reflects the evolution of language: it will include new words, slang, and acronyms, words spelled in a new way, or even an entirely futuristic narrative voice. High fantasy will include archaic words and syntax and variants thereof. Alternate history and hard SF, because they manipulate established facts, require specialized fact checking.

On a higher level, SF is demanding on the copyeditor in the same way it is demanding on the reader and the author: each new novel presents its own custom-made universe, which takes time to understand thoroughly. The copyeditor must learn the details and limitations of that universe in order to be sure that the scenario’s own rules have not been accidentally broken. Think of how much work you put into world building–perhaps years of research and backgrounding. The copyeditor has at most three weeks to learn your world inside out, so she can double-check that it’s functioning just the way you want it to.

For these reasons, many copyeditors refuse to work on SF–and the ones who choose to work on it, because they care about the genre and their craft, are truly more inclined to be an author’s ally than her enemy.

Here are some things you can do to aid the copyediting process (not necessarily to make the copyeditor’s life easier and her work better, but to avoid misunderstandings that will aggravate you):

Keep your own lists of character and place names, invented or archaic words, and preferred spellings; print them out and submit them along with the manuscript. Proofread them carefully so that the copyeditor won’t wonder whether you decided to change a name when you wrote the list but didn’t mark it in the manuscript. By default, the copyeditor will choose the spelling that predominates in the manuscript, which may not be the one you really prefer, or will just stick with the way the first occurrence was spelled.

Submit a list of slang, jargon, acronyms, etc., and what they mean. For the reader, a gradual, unexpository introduction to the details of your world is part of the enjoyment, but it would help the copyeditor immeasurably to understand the details right off the bat.

Write a general note to the copyeditor. Try to describe your idiosyncrasies of style. Are comma splices an integral part of the rhythm of your prose? Point that out. If you have strong preferences regarding usage, state them, and she’ll incorporate them into the book’s style sheet. Let her know if you’re following a dictionary other than Webster’s–say, Random House or American Heritage.

Be aware of the rules of grammar and punctuation, and when you break these rules for a reason, put three dots under the occurrence, to indicate to the copyeditor, typesetter, and proofreader that you meant to do it this way and it should be stetted. New comment: Don’t put dots under every line of the entire manuscript. That won’t work. If you really feel that absolutely nothing should be changed–and be aware that that would include inadvertencies–discuss it with your editor; if she agrees, they’ll include a note in the copyeditor’s instructions.

When you’ve finished writing, go back to the beginning of your book. See if you took to capping or hyphenating or italicizing things later on when you didn’t start out doing so. (Do your characters wear grav boots in Chapter One, grav-boots by Chapter Eight, and gravboots by Chapter Twenty?) Writers often establish their distinctive style and treatment of words during the process of writing, and the preferred style dominates only toward the end, when the writer has settled into the work and made final–and possibly unconscious–style decisions. Some examples of decisions it’s helpful if you make early and stick by:

• Are you setting subjective, first-person thoughts in roman or ital?
• Are you capping the word “Human” as you do the names of your extraterrestrial or magical races, or would you prefer to keep “human” lowercase but uppercase “Terran” as the analogue of “Xerxian”?
• Are you using the serial comma or not? Do you prefer “gray” or “grey”? (House style may force the copyeditor to insert the serial comma or spell it “gray,” but in case you sell to a house that follows author preference in such matters, make your preference clear.)
• Do you want to set all non-English, non-Standard, non-Terran words in ital (which is what the copyeditor will do if you don’t specify), or do you want, say, just the first occurrence of such words to be italicized, but the words to appear in roman thereafter, to reduce their “alien” feel?
• If you are still using a nine-pin dot-matrix printer, and can possibly afford to upgrade, do so. It’s tough to tell an “e” from an “a” in nine-pin printouts, especially photocopies; and reading such printouts is taxing to the eyes, which means that the copyeditor, typesetter, and proofreader will miss things. Turn hyphenation off, so that if the copyeditor sees an end-of-line hyphen she will know that you meant it to stay in the word.
• Try not to succumb to the fun of fancy fonts or the elegance of paper-saving small fonts. Straightforward Courier 10 (Courier or Courier New, 12-point size) is the easiest to read, and leaves room enough for inserting marks. In smaller fonts like Times Roman, the correspondingly tiny punctuation is likely to be missed or misread (and is often overprinted entirely by underlining). Underline for emphasis rather than using an italic font; the copy editor will just have to underline all the ital text anyway, and in some fonts ital is tough to distinguish from roman, particularly for short words like “I.” Avoid sans-serif and condensed fonts, where some characters are indistinguishable (I and l and 1) or run together to look like something else (r + n = m). Turn right-justification off.

New note: Please go into Preferences in your word-processing software and turn off smart quotes, smart ellipses, smart em-dashes, and any other automatic format changes your software commits by default. Smart quotes aren’t; faux-typeset ellipses come out too jammed together to mark clearly for the typesetter; a typeset em-dash will come out looking more like a hyphen in Courier.

If, for some reason (e.g., a revised chapter that came out shorter), the manuscript’s pagination is not strictly sequential, make a note at the bottom of the page before the break: “p. 251 follows,” say, on page 234. Usually it’s apparent whether such gaps represent missing pages, but a note will save the managing editor a lot of scrambling after the copyeditor calls to ask for pages she hasn’t got.

Don’t go ballistic over stupid queries. It’s better to be safe than sorry, and it’s a brave copyeditor who risks exposing her own ignorance so a potential error doesn’t slip through.

Here are some mistakes often found in manuscripts:

• Commonly misspelled words misspelled. (There are lists of these in many reference books, but here are a few: accommodate, supersede, embarrass, harass, feisty, inadvertent, ophthalmologist, occurrence, camaraderie, desiccated, forgo [abstain from], millennia, liquefy, rarefied, fluorescent, inoculate, stratagem.)
• “Lay” used as a transitive verb in the simple past: “Yesterday he lay the book on the table.” He lay on the bed yesterday, but he laid the book on the table.
• “Lay” used as an intransitive verb in the present or progressive: “He lays down on the bed”; “He was laying on the bed.” He lies down on the bed now, he is lying on the bed; he lay down on it and was lying on it yesterday.
• Characters’ names, physical characteristics, or gender changing in midstory (not by marriage or witness-protection program or hairdresser or plastic surgeon or sex-change clinic); dead characters reappearing (not by cloning or reanimation or coroner’s error); unrelated secondary characters having the same first or last name.
• Incorrect subjunctives. The restrictive “that” and nonrestrictive “which” reversed. “Less” and “fewer” used incorrectly. Dangling participles and unclear antecedents. “Smile” or “frown” as a verb of utterance.
• Number of items or people changing for no reason (two horses plus five horses becoming a group of eight on the next page). Continuity errors (empty drinking vessels being picked up and drained).
• Third-person-narrative paraphrasing of thoughts underlined or italicized (with no emphasis intended).
• “He thought to himself,” “opening gambit,” and similar redundancies. (That telepathy might make it necessary to specify whether a character is thinking to himself or to someone else is a small example of how SF copyediting is different from general- fiction copyediting.)

There are, of course, more of these. But that’s why there are copyeditors. The more problems a writer can identify and fix before the copyedit, the better; but writers have other things to worry about.

Do copyeditors and writers have an intrinsically antagonistic relationship? From the stories that circulate at conventions and on-line, it may seem that way; but in fact they need not have. The copyeditor fulfills a support function–backing up the author. She’s on your side.

A writer, at least while writing, is concerned with plotting, characterization, phrasing. And the writer will always have blind spots about her own work. After I write, I do a second pass in “copyediting mode,” and I still miss things. Your workshop group or friendly second reader will also miss things, and so will your editor. Copyeditors read specifically for the nuts-and-bolts mistakes that are potentially the most embarrassing. And copyeditors, too, are backed up–by the publisher’s in-house editorial staff, by the typesetters, by the proofreaders.

A lot of people pull together with the aim of making your book perfect; yes, that’s our job, what we’re expected to do in return for a paycheck, but it should make you feel pretty good anyway.

Related sites:

The Slot: A Spot for Copy Editors
Copy Editor (link no longer valid)
The Editorial Eye (link no longer valid)
The Word Detective
Windhaven

A Cautionary Tale

by Tappan King

Copyright © 1991-1997. This document may not be reproduced in any form without express written consent of the author. You have been warned.

FOREWORD

From March, 1986, until its untimely demise in February, 1989, I was the Editor-in-Chief of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine, and Editorial Director of its “twisted sister” publication, Night Cry. During that time, we received an average of one hundred manuscripts per week, in addition to a backlog of more than 2000 manuscripts left behind by my predecessor.

I had never edited a fiction magazine before (although I had been a consulting editor to Bantam Books between 1980 and 1985, and was involved in the founding of the Bantam Spectra imprint for science fiction and fantasy). It was an education, to say the least. During those three hectic years, my colleagues and I (including Associate Editor Alan Rogers, Managing Editors Robin Bromley and Peter “Stoney” Emshwiller, and Assistant Editors Robert Simpson and Margaret McGlynn, and several freelance readers) I made a valiant effort to keep up with the torrent of manuscripts.

During, and after, my tenure, I appeared on several panels at SF conventions which dealt with the basics of submitting a manuscript. Over time, I discovered that the audiences were far more interested (and, I think, learned more) when the panelists presented the information in dramatic form, role-playing the various characters involved, from hapless new writer to grizzled, jaded editor.

I’d been on the GEnie network (GE’s online information service) for about a year, when a side discussion in the Science Fiction Roundtable (SFRT) (in topic on the editorial relationship) spawned a new topic called “Packaging Your Manuscript.” Author Martha Soukup, an Assistant SysOp (System Operator) for the SFRT, gave it the following topic header:

CATEGORY 6 — THE WRITTEN WORD
Topic 18
Packaging Your Manuscript
–physically, that is. The virtues of paper clips, rubber bands, boxes, folders, and enclosed bribes to the editors: when to use what.

The topic proceeded fairly innocuously for about a month, with lighthearted banter about the proper format for pages, preferred type styles, and various types of fasteners.

But one evening at the end of July, some Imp of the Perverse overcame me, and I decided to see if there was any interest in an online version of the sort of dramatization of the editorial process I’d done previously. To my horror, the response was overwhelmingly positive. Over the next week, my waking hours were involved with the extempore creation of a thirteen-part cliffhanger, presenting in excruciating detail the trials and tribulations of Myrtle, an innocent young manuscript cast upon the winds of fate by a fledgling writer.

The response was gratifying. Not only did the members of the GEnie RT seem to enjoy the Saga of Myrtle, they also seemed to learn valuable lessons about the pitfalls of publishing, and the all-too-human nature of the editors who hold writers’ fate in their trembling hands.

A transcript of the Saga follows. It is essentially unchanged from its initial appearance, save for a few alterations for consistency and elegance. If you are interested in the rest of the dialogue, several members of the SFRT have complete transcripts of the discussion.

One disclaimer: The individuals depicted in this purely fictional exercise bear no resemblance whatsoever to actual writers or editors, living or dead, real or imaginary. Especially not the Editor-in-Chief and loyal staff of The Twilight Zone, who were, at all times, prompt, efficient, and thoroughly professional in the performance of their responsibilities.

Message 226    Mon Jul 29, 1991    at 20:43 EDT

A quick poll of the membership: Who’s interested in the Sprawling Saga of what actually happens to an SF or Fantasy short story manuscript from the time it leaves the author’s hands to the time the author gets a “yes” or “no”? Fair warning: It’s not pretty …

>T<

Message 243    Tue Jul 30, 1991    at 10:50 EDT

Okay:

THE SAGA OF MYRTLE THE MANUSCRIPT, FIT THE FIRST

Myrtle is sitting in a mailbox on a rainy Monday morning, waiting for the postmam to come. One of her stamps has already started to curl, and the rain dripping in has started blearing the return address in the upper left corner. But she’s exhilarated to be starting out on her journey.

Wait! She’s been scooped up, tossed on the floor of the jeep, and rides there under Polly the Postmam’s Reebok all the way back to the station. By the end of the day, the side of her flap has gotten bent up. Now she’s been summarily sorted by size and destination, and fed through the cancel machine, and thrown in the bottom of a large canvas bag. It’s dark in here, and most of her company is stuffy business correspondence with no spark of creativity. It’s also cold in the cargo compartment of the plane, and the Indian River Grapefruit is starting to seep …

Four days later, she’s shaken out of the bag she’s been sitting in over the weekend, and dumped on a large metal table. A bored temp, wearing headphones and reading dirty magazines, flips the envelopes out over the post office floor, fifteen feet into a series of waiting mailbags, propped open in racks.

Myrtle lands in the wrong bag …

NEXT TIME: FIT THE SECOND–BENIGN NEGLECT!!

Message 246    Tue Jul 30, 1991    at 19:39 EDT

Our saga continues …

FIT THE SECOND: MYRTLE IN THE HOUSE OF BENIGN NEGLECT

It is now three weeks since Myrtle the Modest Manuscript was placed in a mailbox, and sent on her way to Shameless Stories magazine. But she has only arrived at her destination this morning, as a result of mishandling by the Postal Service.

But wait! When we say “arrived,” what do we really mean? Well, we mean that the canvas bag with U.S. POSTAL SERVICE on it has been delivered to the service entrance of the Smegma Building, where it sat on a loading dock until Tuesday morning, when Jaime, the Mailroom Guy from Chutzpah Publishing (parent company of Shameless Stories), recently recovered from root canal surgery, returns to work and drags the bag up to the mailroom. The bag is then opened on Wednesday morning, about 7:20 am, when Jaime is all alone in the mailroom, listening to Vanilla Ice and drinking a Cherry Coke, and tossing envelopes into various wooden boxes along the wall.

Here’s a sampling of the company Myrtle has on the big dented metal table in the middle of the mailroom: Business envelopes addressed to the Publisher, the Business Manager, the Comptroller, the Circulation Director, the Art Director, the Ad Sales Director, the Field Sales Director, the Publisher’s Mistress, the Publisher’s Bodyguard, and the Nice Old Lady Who Answers the phone.

But wait! There’s more! There are also manila envelopes for Sleazy Stories, Scary Stories, Smarmy Stories, Smutty Stories, Sunny Stories, and Little Baby Bunny Stories, all published by various divisions of Chutzpah Publishing.

Jaime, being a dedicated young man (despite the “J” shaved into the side of his head), works late all that week, and finally gets all of the mail sorted by Friday afternoon, leaving the work table clean as he heads out for a hot date.

Monday morning, he wheels the huge piles of stuff around to all of the different offices. It is now four weeks since the manuscript was mailed … .

NEXT TIME: MYRTLE UNDERGOES TRIAGE …

Message 249    Wed Jul 31, 1991    at 10:47 EDT

FIT THE THIRD: INCOMING WOUNDED

It’s Monday morning <M-day plus 28>, in the offices of Shameless Stories. The Editor-in-Chief, Saul Badliver, is on his fourth cup of coffee, sitting with his feet up on a pile of slush, while his two assistants, Kitty Devonshire <the Managing Editor>, and Byron Wilder <the Associate Editor> sit on the beat-up old office couch (having moved piles of manuscripts onto the floor to make room). They are discussing the December issue …

… when Jaime the Mailroom Guy rolls in a large cart with three large stacks of mail on it. Byron and Jaime slap hands as Jaime hands Byron an enormous stack of manilla envelopes. “Ah, sh*t, says Byron, “more incoming wounded … ” Kitty gets all of the form letters, bills, and other official looking correspondence. And Saul gets a small stack of stuff with his name on it.

Now watch closely: Kitty, with an apparently absent-minded air, flips quickly through the letters she’s holding. About a third of them go directly into the trash, unopened. (They are junk mail, press releases, and other stuff that’s obviously not for Shameless Stories. She rarely makes a mistake.) Byron dashes back to the airshaft he laughingly calls an office, and dumps the stack of manila envelopes (which all bear the words “Editor, Shameless Stories,” or some such variation) under his desk, and returns to Saul’s office before his coffee cools.

Saul, on the other hand, is an old-fashioned kinda guy. He feels he has to open every envelope that has his name on it, just in case it contains money. Myrtle the Manuscript has Saul’s name on it.

Now those of you who followed the narrative this far probably think this is a distinct advantage for Myrtle. For the terrifying truth, read on …

NEXT TIME: SITTIN’ HERE IN LIMBO …

Message 252    Wed Jul 31, 1991    at 19:50 EDT

FIT THE FOURTH: THE FIRST CUT IS THE DEEPEST

As the staff of Shameless Stories sit around drinking coffee and discussing the December issue, bleary-eyed Editor-in-Chief Saul Badliver is slicing open manila envelopes with the miniature Toledo sabre he got in a duty-free shop a few years back. He sticks the end of the point into the small opening made when he squeezes the end with the flap, slides it quickly in, and then saws upward with the razor-sharp blade, until he reaches the other side.

Many things can happen when he does this.

If it’s one of those horrible envelopes with the gritty gray fluff in it, he tries to pull it open by the staples, often lacerating his hands on the little staple points. (If the author has thoughtfully taped it shut with strapping tape, he throws it into the “too difficult to bother with” basket.) If the envelope is flimsy, he can tear a great chunk out of the side of the envelope. If the knife catches on the paper clip, he can gouge a great hole in the first page of the ms, or flip the sucker out of the envelope and onto the floor.

Saul, from long experience, is slitting all the envelopes at once. He will then go back and look in each envelope — but just then the Associate Publisher comes in to scream at everyone about something, and then there’s a meeting about advertising, and then it’s lunchtime, and then an article for the magazine needs editing … .

It’s now Thursday afternoon. Saul closes the door of his office, rolls up his shirt-sleeves, and begins to clean his room. By 5:45, when Kitty sticks her head in the door, Saul has a great huge pile of opened envelopes stacked up on his desk. Including our heroine, Myrtle.

For the next hour, Saul opens each envelope, glances at the cover letter and first page, slips the manuscript back, and flips it into one of five wire baskets on his desk. The baskets are labeled: A, B, C, D, and “BYRON.” At 7:24 pm, 31 1/2 days after the manuscript was mailed, it lands with a satisfying “thump” at the bottom of the basket labeled “C”.

Where it will sit for a surprisingly long time … .

NEXT TIME: BYRON WILDER, MANUSCRIPT WRANGLER …

Message 254    Wed Jul 31, 1991    at 20:27 EDT

FIT THE FIFTH: BYRON, THE BOY WONDER

In the three-and-a-half days it took Shameless Stories Editor-in- Chief Saul Badliver to go through his stack of some 100 manuscripts addressed directly to him, Byron Wilder, Shameless Stories’ Associate Editor, has processed nearly 500.

Byron, whose job is in a bit of a lull because the staff is between issues, is frantic to get caught up on manuscripts, because he knows things will start getting hectic again in a week or so. His first action is to use his Workman Press envelope slitter, which he copped at last year’s American Bookseller’s Association convention, to open all of the envelopes in rapid succession. Since he works with single-minded devotion, and the tool in question is awesome in its precision, he gets all of the envelopes opened by Monday afternoon.

He then peeks into the top of the envelopes while listening to REM on his Walkman, and drops them into three cardboard boxes under his desk. Two of them are labeled RAW SLUSH: JUNE. One of them is labeled SOMEBODIES 6/91. When the first two boxes are filled, they go on shelves in the office of Kitty Devonshire, the Managing Editor. (There are boxes on those shelves labeled “DECEMBER,” so don’t be too surprised if you haven’t heard about your story yet … .)

A few minutes later, Yasha Fitzsimmons, a sometime short feature writer and professional manuscript reader, shows up with a backpack full of manuscripts and hands them to Byron. Byron empties them out, takes the large stack with the rubber band around it labeled REJECTS and puts it behind the telephone on his desk. The other stack, which is labeled KEEPERS, is put in yet another box under Byron’s desk. Byron then takes Yasha into Kitty’s office, and helps him fill his backpack with the December and January manuscripts, and two mysteries from the review mailing pile.

When Yasha has gone, Byron closes the door of his office, and starts in on the KEEPERS pile. By the time he finally goes home at 6:15 on Monday evening, he’s read all 36 of the manuscripts that made the first cut. Twenty-two of them he rejects outright, sealing them and tossing them in the outgoing mail. The remaining four he sticks Post-it notes on with a few key words, and puts them in another cardboard box labeled KITTY. When that box finally gets full, he’ll take them down to Kitty’s office for a second read.

It should be noted here that every few days, Kitty Devonshire takes massive quantities of manuscripts and SASEs out of their mailing envelopes, puts the manuscripts into the SASEs along with rejection slips, and then puts them back on the shelf in those cartons labeled by month. This is less callous than it seems. Since Shameless Stories can buy less than 150 stories a year, the vast majority (something like 399 out of 400) will be rejected. When this happens, all the staff of Shameless Stories has to do is toss it into a large cardboard box labeled OUTGOING MAIL, and their job is done.

Myrtle, meanwhile, is still languishing in the office of the Editor-in-Chief… .

Message 260    Thu Aug 01, 1991    at 11:58 EDT

FIT THE SIXTH: A NEW HOPE

When we last left Myrtle the Manuscript, she was lying at the bottom of a wire basket labeled “C” in the office of Saul Badliver, Editor in Chief of Shameless Stories … .

Forty days and forty nights have passed, and Myrtle is still in that basket, now crushed by the weight of dozens of other manuscripts. In the 71 days since she was mailed, a total of 814 new manuscripts have arrived at the offices of Shameless Stories, and 428 have been read, evaluated, and rejected. Are you beginning to get a sense of the enormity of the situation?

I forgot to mention that the December ‘91 issue of the magazine has been assembled, edited, and sent to the typesetters, and the December/January issue is currently being finalized (It’s a big Anniversary Issue, which means the words “Anniversary Issue” will be splashed across the cover … )

And the Editorial Staff finds themselves in another lull …

“We’ve got to do something about all of these manuscripts,” says Managing Editor Kitty Devonshire, clucking her tongue at the huge, overflowing baskets on Saul Badliver’s desk. “I’ve got a whole stack of letters from writers asking what’s become of their manuscripts.”

“Well, I’ve got a meeting with the Publisher this afternoon,” says Saul, rubbing absently at his ulcer, “Why don’t you and Byron go through the stuff in my office and put it in order?”

So while the Editor in Chief wastes an entire afternoon listening to the Publisher’s bad jokes, Kitty and Byron tackle the piles in Saul’s office.

The process yields: Six manuscripts that fell out of the “A++” basket on the top of Saul’s filing cabinet and down behind into the primordial gunk. Eleven manuscripts that were crushed under the wheels of Saul’s vintage 1924 Art Deco office chair. Nine baskets of neatly stacked manila envelopes, labeled “A++,” “A+,” “A,” “A-,” “B+,” “B,” “C,” “D,” and “BYRON.” One hundred forty-seven paper clips of various sizes shapes and descriptions, sixty-six rubber bands, eighteen International Postal Reply Coupons, and forty-nine dollars worth of loose stamps.

Kitty has also managed to match 36 query letters to manuscripts in Saul’s office — INCLUDING MYRTLE!!! She glances at the cover letter, notes that Myrtle’s author has been published in several other magazines (though not in Shameless Stories) and slips a Xeroxed form letter into the SASE sent with the query letter, which reads in part: ” … your story has been held for a second reading … ”

NEXT: THE GREAT QUARTERLY SLUSH KILL AND PIZZA PARTY …

Message 268    Fri Aug 02, 1991    at 11:33 EDT

FIT THE SEVENTH: ONE MEDIUM MANUSCRIPT WITH ANCHOVIES AND EXTRA CHEESE …

The Associate Publisher’s niece’s best friend, who mailed a story to Shameless Stories five weeks earlier, has just called up the Associate Publisher and shrieked that she is being given the runaround by the Associate Editor. The Associate Publisher has just reamed out the Editor in Chief:

“How many damn manuscripts have you got in there, anyway, Saul … ?”

“Conservatively, I’d say about five thousand … ”

“Five-<farking>THOUSAND!!??! Well, I got news for you, <buster>, you ain’t going home tonight until you find my niece’s best friend’s story. It wouldn’t kill you to buy it, either … ”

The Editorial Staff of Shameless Stories exchange Significant Glances. In three separate “offices” the following phone conversation takes place:

“I’m going to have to work late on the backlog. You wanna come over and take part in our Quarterly Slush Kill and Pizza Party? We’ll expense it to petty cash … .”

Imagine this scene:

A half dozen editors, readers, and significant others sit cross- legged on the floor. In the center are several pizza boxes, two gallons of Diet Pepsi, and a bottle of Maalox. Surrounding them are stacks of manuscripts. Play passes to the left. Kitty is reading aloud:

“When I came to the Castle of Count Eripmav, I had no idea what laid in store for me … ” <Loud Bronx cheers and rude noises, “Gong Show” sound effects, etc.>

Byron: “Only the daring dues of Lucas Skysaber saved the beauteous princess Layla from the dreaded Dark Lord Vaguer … .” <More rude noises.>

Byron’s significant other: “The thousand injuries of Fred I had bored as best I could … .” <Still more rude noises>

Saul: “You’ve probably read all the stories you ever want to about killer sows from outer space, but mine is a little different … .”

Silence.

Kitty: “That sounds like a keeper to me. Next?”

Yasha: “Mightily thewed, Kovacs the Barbarian hacked and slashed his way through the Dread Forests of the Nightmare Goons … ” <More rude noises … >

Outside, a dog is barking …

NEXT: THERE’S GOT TO BE A MORNING AFTER …

Message 275    Fri Aug 02, 1991    at 23:01 EDT

The damn-near endless saga of Myrtle the Manuscript continues …

FIT THE EIGHTH: DAWN OF THE HALF-DEAD

Gladys the Rumanian Cleaning Lady, opens the door of the office of Saul Badliver, Editor-in-Chief of Shameless Stories, at 5:15 am, Friday morning, and recoils in terror. Three huge Xerox cartons heaped high with stamped, self-addressed envelopes obstruct her passage into the room.

The cartons contain one thousand, one hundred and twenty-nine truly execrable attempts at short fiction which will soon be on their way back to their creators. For in four hours, young Byron Wilder will stagger in that door, eyes red from the smoke at the midnight show of “Pump Up the Volume” at the Waverly that he attended to get the taste of bad prose out of his mouth. He now bears an eerie resemblance to Christian Slater. He will arrange the manuscripts in relatively neat piles, and bribe Jaime the Mail Guy to take them with a dub of the new Jesus Jones CD.

Five minutes later, Managing Editor Kitty Devonshire will enter that same room, and gather up a stack of two hundred eleven manuscripts which are held together by three red rubber bands, and covered with a note that reads “SURVIVORS,” traced in anchovy juice on the back of a cover letter.

And, at a quarter to eleven, Saul Badliver will finally enter his office, scratch his head to find it relatively free of manuscripts, except for a single large wire basket labeled READ THIS OR DIE!!!

Saul shakes his head, empties the large flower vase behind his desk that is filled with dead chrysanthemums, rinses it in the Gladys Rumanian Cleaning Lady’s business sink, fills it with overcooked black coffee, walks back into his office, sticks a little magnetic sign on his door that reads DON’T EVEN THINK OF OPENING THIS DOOR and sits down heavily on a piece of pepperoni Pizza which is still stuck to his 1924 Art Deco chair, ready to do penance for his sins … .

A NOTE TO OUR READERS: There is something you must understand. As strange as it might seem, the Editors of Shameless Stories truly love good fiction. They actually live for the moment when a fresh, interesting, or even basically competent and entertaining story will fall on their desks. They edit Shameless Stories, rather than taking a real job, because they, like you, really love this stuff. Really they do.

What you must understand, however, is that reading submissions is for them like making Pablo Casals attend a tuba-testing convention. Like locking Andrew Wyeth in one of those “All the Art You Can Eat” shows at the Holiday Inn. Like taking Paul Prudhomme to Domino’s Pizza. Do you begin to encompass the horror of it all … ?

Saul Badliver picks up an envelope, takes the story out. It is a very flawed leftover series story by a VERY FAMOUS WRITER WHOSE WORK SELLS TONS AND TONS OF BOOKS. He wants to reject it. He knows the letter alone will kill the better part of the morning. He suspects that more people will buy the magazine because of the VERY FAMOUS WRITER’s name on the cover than will cancel their subscriptions because it’s garbage.

His hand trembles. He puts the manuscript in the KEEP basket to the right, loathing himself for doing so.

He will go through a similar process ninety-four more times today before he finally pulls Myrtle out of the basket … .

NEXT TIME: BITING THE BULLET

Message 292    Sun Aug 04, 1991    at 12:42 EDT

FIT THE NINTH: THE MOMENT OF TRUTH

The heart-stopping saga of Myrtle the Manuscript continues …

But first, it might be useful to recall why all of these underworked overpaid professionals are taking the time to read, or at least look at, thousands of terrible manuscripts.

The first reason might be summed up by the phrase: “Stephen King won’t live forever.” (Substitute “Terry Brooks” or “Bill Gibson” or “Toni Morrison” or “John Crowley,” or whoever your favorite writer is, for the proper emotional effect.) New writers have to come from somewhere, and just about everyone who’s writing now once, long ago crawled out of the slush pile.

The second reason is that there is in fact, a magazine to be put out. “Shameless Stories” prints approximately 60,000 words of (semi-)original prose thirteen times a year. A little math will show you that the staff has to actually buy about 150 stories a year so the pages won’t be blank.

The third reason (and one you might not have considered) is that one of the few compensations editors have is to be able to say “I discovered Elizabeth Hand.” (Substitute “Bob Aspirin” or “Mel Brooks” or “Dorothy Dunnett” or “David Drake,” or whoever you like, for the proper emotional effect.)

So Saul Badliver, having read all the way down to poor, long- suffering Myrtle, is engaged in an exercise called “issue balancing,” which might be compared to packing a suitcase …

I’ll describe this process in a moment, but first another digression:

Where did that basket labeled “READ THIS OR DIE” on Saul Badliver’s desk come from? Well, it’s composed of several different kinds of material:

1. Stories from Big Name Pros which came directly to Saul’s office, and have never left it.
2. Stories from Fairly Big Name Pros which came first to Saul’s office, but may have made a detour through Kitty’s office if she knows the writer, or if Saul is overworked. (The less publishable ones were most likely returned with a nice note from Kitty. Those few that made the second cut were returned to the basket.)
3. Not All That Well Known Pros who came first to Byron, were quickly sorted into a pile labeled “SOMEBODIES” (remember?) and then sent to Kitty for “culling” and have found their way to Saul’s basket.
4. Stories by nobody in particular that were so well written that they made it past Yasha, past Byron, and past Kitty, and were placed in Saul’s basket with a note that reads “BUY THIS!!”
5. Stories that are unpublishable, but require a personal response (the Associate Publisher’s niece’s friend’s story is one of these) and
6. Stories that got stuck to the bottom of the basket.

Myrtle falls into category 6 …

Message 295    Sun Aug 04, 1991    at 13:10 EDT

FIT THE TENTH: I SHALL BE RELEASED … .

So anyway, Saul is “balancing” the next couple of issues of Shameless Stories. As I mentioned it’s a lot like packing a suitcase. There are certain large objects that have to go in first. Then there are some medium-sized things that get packed around them. And finally, you stick stuff into the corners and try to close the bag.

And if you pack the blue shirt, you need to pack the blue blazer and the blue socks and the burgundy tie. But if you decide to pack the beige suit, then you need to pack the brown shoes and tan socks and the ecru shirt and the chocolate tie. (Saul is not a very snappy dresser … )

Similarly, Saul has a bunch of sheets of paper with the names of months at the top: FEBRUARY, MARCH, APRIL, MAY, etc., a bunch of pencils, and one of those white cylindrical plastic erasers that come in a plastic holder. As he sits in his stuffy, overheated office, swilling cold coffee from a vase, he keeps juggling forty or fifty stories back and forth between those issues. Asking himself a number of questions: Does the author’s name have any drawing power? How long is the story? How long have I had it here? What has to go in that month? What’s the subject of the nonfiction piece? Does the issue have a theme? What season will the issue come out? Did I publish something by this author recently?

And somehow all of those decisions have to be optimized to make a balanced, pleasing issue that will satisfy all of the magazine’s constituencies.

As it happens, the February ‘92 issue is the Christmas issue. [Don't ask. Accept it on faith.] The Large Object that must be included is that awful series story by the Very Famous Writer. As it happens, the first scene of the story takes place in winter, and the protagonist’s name is Noel. Voila! A Christmas Special!

The second thing to go in is an overlong novella by a writer Saul discovered, and whose career he has been nurturing for five years. It’s maybe a bit overwritten, but otherwise it’s award-caliber. And the author has agreed with Saul that setting the last scene on Christmas morning will actually make it a better story. 27,000 words down. 33,000 to go. No, wait. Make that 29,000. The Long-Winded Critic is doing his Year End Wrap-up, which will probably come in about 4000 words.

Okay, what’s left? Well, the VFW’s story is a vampire-detective tale. The Overlong Novella is a winsome contemporary fantasy. The issue needs some hard SF. Right! There’s that “The Stars Are Sentient Goldfish” story by the astrophysicist, complete with a scientific appendix explaining why the story could actually be true. Stan Schmidt, eat your heart out! Gee! Everything’s kind of long. How about some of those shortish one-punch stories that have been sitting in inventory forever? Right. The psychic cannibal story, the last man on Mars story, and that strange thing with the killer sows. Let’s see, 29 minus eighteen equals 11,000 …

Oh! Here’s that story Kitty and Byron liked so much, about the mermaid and the dish washer repairman. Okay, now how much have I paid for all this? Good. I’m still $800 under budget. Well, that story by the Associate Publisher’s niece’s friend isn’t all that bad … Wait! What am I saying … ?!?

NEXT: THE APOTHEOSIS OF MYRTLE

Message 298    Sun Aug 04, 1991    at 14:25 EDT

The harrowing saga of Myrtle the Manuscript continues …

FIT THE ELEVENTH: THE UNKINDEST CUT

It is now ninety-one days since Myrtle, fervid with hope, began her voyage out into the world, dreaming of fame and fortune. She is now a sadder but far wiser dame. She has seen her peers treated with contempt and a cavalier attitude. She has endured physical slights which no self-respecting manuscript should have to endure. (Somewhere along the way she lost her paper clip, her SASE, and the bottom third of her cover letter … ) She has seen stories of far worse quality than she elevated rapidly to cover lines, and stories of somewhat better quality condemned to ignominious rejection because of the state of the internal organs of the editor reading the story.

But now, at last, her day has come.

For on that fateful Friday, at 6:24 in the afternoon of the hottest day in the history of New York City, Saul Badliver discovers he has exactly 2,450 words left in his word-budget, and exactly $150 left in his editorial budget.

And there, at the bottom of the basket, is a 2,700 word short story by a writer with one previous publication credit (a whimsical story about household appliances that got seven Nebula recommendations when it was published the previous year in Asimov’s SF). This one is funny, too. It’s the story of a group of miniature aliens who take over a small boy’s model railroad layout.

And the story begins on Christmas day … .

FLASH FORWARD TO: The editorial meeting for the February ‘92 issue.

Everyone is in agreement on the contents of the issue (although Byron thinks the Famous Writer’s story “chokes on the hairy banana,” and Kitty things the Sentient Goldfish story is pretentious). However, a two page ad spread for a mind- controlling cult’s endless science fiction series has just bumped the Xmas Xuiz; and cut into the slack allowed for illustrations, pull quotes, and author bios. Somewhere, 700 words have to be cut.

Saul, who has not actually bought any of the stories for the current issue except the one from the Famous Writer, and the three one-punchers in inventory, has been having misgivings about the “terrier subplot” in that story about the model railroad, which both he and Kitty think slows down the narrative.

“I think I can get 700 words out of the railroad story,” he says. Kitty sighs, gathers up all of the manuscripts in the folder labeled FEB on Saul’s desk, makes three copies of each of them, and hides the originals in a secret filing cabinet whose location only she knows.

Thus it is that Myrtle herself never undergoes the Editorial Process. That honor is reserved for one of her clones … .

NEXT: LET’S MAKE A DEAL!!

Message 304    Sun Aug 04, 1991    at 21:55 EDT

FIT THE TWELFTH: IT DON’T MEAN NOTHIN’ TILL YOU SIGN IT ON THE DOTTED LINE …

Tuesday evening. 96 days after Myrtle left the mailbox. Saul Badliver, who has been phone-phobic all his life, picks up the Xerox of Myrtle the Much-Abused Manuscript, which has the shreds of its original cover letter clipped to it …

… and fails to find a phone number. The author didn’t remember to put it on either the cover letter or the first page of the manuscript. Taking a wild gamble, Saul dials directory assistance for Arcata, California, gets a listing that vaguely resembles the author, dials it with trembling hands …

… and gets an answering machine. But all is not lost. Myrtle’s author, who just got in the door from picking up the kids at the daycare center, picks up the phone just as Saul is about to hang up (which is fortunate, since the entire conversation is thereby recorded for posterity … )

“Ah, hem, this, er, is Saul Badliver, Editor in Chief of Shameless Stories. I have your story here about the aliens and the model railroad, and I’d like to buy it for the magazine.”

Dead silence.

“Hello?”

Finally, the author answers. “Ah, hem, er, that’s — that’s wonderful, but … ”

“But what?”

“Well, when I hadn’t heard anything after two and a half months, I sent you a letter withdrawing the story, and sent it to F&SF. I just heard from Kris Rusch this morning. She’s considering it for their Christmas issue … You did get the letter, didn’t you … ?”

Dead silence.

“Um, ah, yes, we did, and we actually, er, sent you a letter about a month ago saying we were still considering it, so I wonder … ”

“Oh, dear. Now I don’t know what to do. I mean, you did have it first, and I only heard just heard from Kris, and she’s still considering it, so I guess — you pay, what? eight cents a word, right? I think F&SF only pays six … .”

“Um. Eight cents?”

“Well, that’s what it says in Writer’s Market … ”

The house of cards which is the Christmas issue of Shameless Stories is starting to fall apart before Saul Badliver’s eyes. “Um, eight cents. Right. Well, I can have a contract out to you tomorrow.”

“Gee! That’s wonderful!”

“There’s just one small problem. That scene with the terrier … ?”

NEXT: DON’T MISS THE EXCITING CONCLUSION OF THE SAGA OF MYRTLE THE MANUSCRIPT: GOIN’ TO THE END OF THE LINE …

Message 308    Mon Aug 05, 1991    at 13:09 EDT

The Death-Defying Saga of Myrtle the Manuscript continues …

FIT THE THIRTEENTH (AND LAST): THE BEST-LAID PLANS …

Friday morning: 99 days after Myrtle began her journey, she sits with warm contentment in Kitty Devonshire’s Secret Filing Cabinet, while her young clone undergoes The Editing Process.

Saul Badliver sits at his desk, drinking his eighth cup of hi-test coffee, clutching his ulcer-ridden gut, and marking up the photocopy with a recently sharpened blue pencil. First he styles the heading, putting reverse square brackets on either side of the title and author, to center them, and then writing 14 PT AVANT BF in the margin. (These are all Mystic Words of Power which can only be properly explained by Hagia Sophronia, High Priestess of Orthography and Matron Saint of Copy Editors) Then he draws a small left-pointing arrow from the first indented paragraph to the margin, and writes FLUSH beside it. Above the text he writes 9/10 OPT X 14 PIC FL/RR W BRKS. Then he goes through and draws little vertical lines between all the dots that make up ellipses, writes “1″ above every dash and “M” below it, circles every “#” mark and writes “1″ to the left of it and “LI” to the right of it. When he reaches the end, he crosses out the “- 30 – ” at the bottom of the page, and writes “END” above it. Then he goes back to the beginning and starts over …

But not before Kitty Devonshire comes in the door with the signed and executed contract for the story. (The reason Saul took so long to buy the story in the first place is that the publishers of Shameless Stories are cheapskates, and the Bookkeeper begrudges every penny spent on the magazine. In fact, the normal boilerplate offers half on signing, and half thirty days after publication. Myrtle’s author has wisely crossed this out, and allowed the magazine only First North American serial rights and an anthology option. For this, the author will be paid the princely sum of $190.) The author has returned the contract FedEx and Saul knows he’s going to have an unpleasant argument with the Bookkeeper over all of this. Nonetheless, he initials the changes, and Kitty takes the contract down the hall.

A half hour later, Saul has made a large number of small changes to the manuscript. Most of them are justifiable and actually improve the story. One or two are petty and arbitrary. He then puts a cover sheet on top, and fills in the name of the magazine, issue date, title of the piece, and priority (everything is RUSH!!!), and puts it in an out-basket with other edited manuscripts.

In the days that follow, Myrtle (or, more properly, her descendants) will go through seven sets of galley proofs, be styled and restyled by the Art Director, sliced up, waxed, and pasted down on boards by a paste-up artist, along with art commissioned especially for the story and then …

A four-page Christmas ad supplement from the Norwalk Mint comes in, with porcelain “Quantum Leap” figurines at $195 bucks a pop. Something’s gotta go … .

Saul calls a hasty editorial conference. The consensus is that Myrtle is dead meat. She’s the right size, and the boards haven’t been shot yet. Saul agonizes. Myrtle the Mechanical sits on his desk, haunting him with her naive charms.

(“She’s too expensive,” Saul tells himself. “And too long. And we already have a Christmas story in that issue … .”)

“Aw the hell with it,” he says at last. “Leave her in. We can cut the damn Killer Sows story instead, and have room for the Xmas Xuiz, too!!”

Byron grins. He liked Myrtle. Kitty rolls her eyes. Another farking repagination. “This is it, then?” she asks warily.

“It’s a wrap,” says Saul jovially. “Auld Lang Syne” can be heard faintly in the background.

Six months later, Myrtle achieves immortality.

– 30 –

AFTERWORD

The Posting of the Saga of Myrtle the Manuscript produced a good bit of discussion. Many readers couldn’t believe editors could be that ditzy. Others (some editors) wrote to say that they felt I had glossed over the Awful Truth. One of them (my wife, Beth Meacham, Editorial Director of Tor Books) felt it would be fairer, both dramatically and statistically, to have Myrtle’s odyssey end in rejection, but I have always been a sucker for happy ending.

And then there’s the matter of the terrier.

As an added treat for those of you who are reading this New and Improved version, here’s the part those online didn’t get to see:

The Poignant Saga of Myrtle the Manuscript:

CODA: CARPE CANEM

A telephone rings in Arcata, California. The Author of Myrtle the Manuscript answers:

“Hello?”

“Um, hello? This is Saul Badliver again, from Shameless Stories … ?”

“Oh, hi, Saul. What can I do for you?”

“Well, actually, I’ve been doing some thinking. I’m just putting the Christmas issue to bed, and in looking over your story, I realized I’d – um – made a mistake about that scene with the terrier. It really is kind of funny, and I’d – um – like to put it back if you don’t mind … ”

Dead silence.

(The awful truth, of course, is that one more full-page color ad came in a short time ago, and the issue has been increased in size by another four pages, and so Saul suddenly has to fill an extra page, and there’s nothing that will fit. And he’s been feeling kind of embarrassed about cutting out the terrier scene, since it is kind of funny after all … )

Finally Myrtle’s author responds.

“Oh. I guess that would be okay. I don’t suppose we’ll bother about the extra money, since it’s so small … ”

“The extra money?” asks Saul.

“Well, yes. I mean if the story is going to be 700 words longer, you technically owe me another five dollars and sixty cents, don’t you?”

Saul laughs hollowly. “I suppose you’re right. I’ll add it onto the contract for the next story I buy from you.”

“That would be fine. Oh, dear! I’ll have to tell Mike Resnick, though, so he can put it back in, too.”

“Mike Resnick?” Saul replies, with a sinking feeling in his gut.

“Oh, I didn’t tell you. Mike wants to reprint the story in his new theme anthology, TINY ALIEN STORIES. It’s going to be out next spring from St. Martin’s Press.”

“When next spring?” asks Saul, warily.

“I think it’s a January or February hardcover. I’m not sure. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no particular reason.” (Actually, Saul has realized that the books will probably in the stores before the magazine, because of Shameless Stories’ lackluster distribution system.) “Um – congratulations on the sale, by the way … ”

“Why, thank you, Saul. I don’t suppose you have any word for me on the other story yet, do you?”

“The other story?”

“Why yes. The one about the evil creatures masquerading as Nintendo cartridges?”

“Oh,” says Saul, looking balefully at overstuffed basket of manuscripts marked READ THIS OR YOU’RE DEAD MEAT Kitty Devonshire has just set down on his desk. “That story. Right. Well, it’s been held for a second reading … ”

THE REALLY AND TRULY END

Copyrights and Meteorites

by Chuck Rothman

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

Julius Epstein, who co-wrote the screenplay for Casablanca and has not received a cent of royalties over the past 54 years, recalls something the producer Irving Thalberg is purported to have said. Writers, confided Thalberg, are the most important people in film, “and we must do everything to keep them from finding out.”

As decisions that affect writers and editors increasingly seem to be made at remote corporate levels, it’s no wonder that many authors, including some science fiction and fantasy writers, suffer from a sense of helplessness. A publisher’s freeze on buying new books, decisions on whether to keep your backlist titles in print, the size of your next book’s print run, or — given the recent cancellation of over 100 books by a major publisher — whether your novel under contract will even be published: these variables can leave writers feeling like very small cogs in a very big and intimidating machine.

This state of affairs is, of course, one of the big reasons for an organization such as SFWA. For all the legal paperwork, a publishing house or corporation is essentially a collection of people whose power comes from working in a cohesive fashion towards certain commercial goals. So too can SFWA derive power from working collectively. It was through this “collective power” of SFWA, for example, that we were able to persuade Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books to pay each author a compensation fee on English language export copies of past Star Trek titles and to insure that the publisher will pay a percentage on English language export sales for future Star Trek books. The agreement was worked out in an amicable fashion, to the benefit of all parties involved.

And it is precisely because the voice of a collective body carries weight that I agreed with those who thought it important to raise objections with the publisher when Star Wars royalties were threatened.

But let’s return to the “State of Publishing” theme: what’s the book market like these days? For me, the short answer is: better in ‘98 than it was in ‘97 — and surprisingly healthy, considering 1) the staggering devastation of the wholesale market for paperback books; 2) the mergers which have led to downsizing lists as well as people; and 3) foolish financial and marketing decisions made by publishing managers who focused on celebrity books and ignored both midlist and backlist, which in truth represent the backbone of American publishing.

Well, the short answer isn’t much fun, but now I get to give the long answer.

If the question is, are people still reading in large quantities, still buying books, my answer is yes. According to The Wall Street Journal, from 1991 through 1996 annual book purchases rose to $26.1 billion from $20.1 billion, an increase of about 30%; Barnes & Noble sales for October ‘97 were up over October ‘96. It’s a natural tendency for people to recall the past as a Golden Age, to mourn that publishing isn’t what it was 6 or 7 years ago. Has the market for books declined? according to the publisher-supported Book Industry Study Group, the annual number of book units sold peaked in 1994 and has declined since then. Still, the number of book units sold in ‘96 is higher than that sold in 1991 (substantially higher for paperbacks, about the same for hardcovers). Book unit sales were highest in 1994, but the paperback revenue in 1997 (actual dollars received from paperback sales annually) climbed a slight 1.8% (excluding children’s books) from ‘96 to ‘97. Hardcover sales revenue for ‘97 fell 4.4%. Let’s consider these two figures separately, first the mass market paperback’s slight revenue increase, then the hardcover revenue decline.

The paperback market’s revenue increase is reassuring if a bit surprising, when you factor in the damage done to wholesale distribution by consolidation: over 250 small distributors, who knew their local markets (e.g. where to stock romances, where to stock science fiction) were thrown out of work. Solid writers who are not regular NY Times bestsellers — which would include many sf and fantasy authors — saw their print runs cut in half. This way of introducing an author to new readers has been severely curtailed, as supermarkets, drug stores, one-stop shopping stores and the like now carry less variety and display books by fewer authors. I’d mentioned the ID consolidation in last year’s Nebula speech: now here are a few specifics from a recent Wall Street Journal article to bring home the human cost in terms of lost jobs: “During the past couple of years, Kroger Co., a Cincinnati-based chain of roughly 1300 stores, has gone to 5 distributors from 95; Albertson’s Inc., a Boise, Idaho chain of 800 supermarkets, to 7 from about 100, and Walgreen Co., a Deerfield, Illinois company that has more than 2,000 drugstores, to 6 from more than 100.” The fact that mass market revenue climbed at all during this period of upheavals shows the strength of American readership, the success of well-run bookstores, and the success of online ordering.

Trade hardcovers had a decrease in sales, and returns were 35% (up from 32% the previous year). One recent article commented, “It has been a bad year overall for book publishers, which have paid multimillion-dollar advances to star authors, many of whose books have not sold well.” A film studio executive who became chairman of a major publishing conglomerate stated categorically, “You don’t build books anymore.” As one reporter noted, “That Hollywood-style approach — in which books that don’t ‘open’ big are quickly abandoned — is whipsawing publishers and wreaking havoc on their finances.” I am hopeful that after so many financial baths, with heavy hardcover returns, those publishing houses who have strayed from long-term nurturing of talent and supporting their midlist, will return to their core business.

Publishing has always required flexibility, and the role of imaginative publishers and editors is often overlooked. The force of the personalities involved, not just national economic indicators, tell us how healthy the publishing market really is. Bookselling can flourish in hard times, as it did during the 1930’s Depression, when Bennett Cerf was building his Modern Library list and founded a new line called Random House.

If you’ll bear with me, I’d like to take a moment to note and to honor the first printer and publisher of books in the English Language: William Caxton.

Caxton was born in Kent around 1422, studied and apprenticed in London, where he rose in the merchant’s guild and became a successful wool merchant. Appointed by the guild to a governorship in Bruges, Caxton traveled to several European cities where he learned about the movable type developed by Gutenberg. Caxton bought a printing press and published the first book printed in the English language: his translation of the Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye in 1474, followed shortly thereafter by his translation of The Game and Play of Chess.

Caxton returned to England with his printing press and soon set up shop near Westminster Abbey under the heraldic banner “The Sign of the Red Pale” — the closest we can come to the name for the first English language publishing house. There he published the first books printed in England, including the first dated book (1477), The Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers, translated from the French by his friend and patron Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, brother-in-law to Edward IV. The next year Caxton published another translation by Woodville, as well as Christine de Pisan’s The Moral Proverbs, the first printed book in the English language by a woman author. That year he started publishing works by his favorite English writer, Geoffrey Chaucer — the first printed edition of The Canterbury Tales. Caxton had a passion for books. Oral language, he noted in one of his Prologues, is “perishing, vain and forgettable,” but “writings dwell and abide permanently.”

This was a time of horrendous bloodshed in England. Caxton’s patron Anthony Woodville was beheaded at the order of Richard III for trying to secure the crown for the late Edward IV’s son. To have survived these violent times with his printing press unharmed and his head still attached to his shoulders, was a feat in itself. In an age that had not yet evolved the novel but enjoyed French “romances,” Caxton published a large amount of fiction, including The Chronicles of England in 1480. Filled with fantastical stories of Merlin and King Arthur, of Albion and her wicked sisters, the Chronicles falls largely into what we would call the fantasy genre. Caxton reprinted both the Play of Chess and the Chronicles in 1482 — meaning that a fantasy genre work is likely the first English language book — and certainly the first English language book of fiction — ever to go back for a second printing.

What an exhilarating time for that first English-speaking generation able to buy and read stories, poems, histories, books on medicine, etiquette, philosophy! Thanks to William Caxton, English language publishing was set on its fiery course.

Every so often, writing styles and publishing undergo rapid changes, and the connection with adventurous publishers is no coincidence. Skipping ahead about 400 years, we find a colorful group: the publishers, editors and tramp printers of the Old West. There were successful ones like the pistol-packin’ editor Colonel Dan Anthony (brother of Susan B. Anthony), interesting failures like the tramp printer Alfred Runyon (father of Damon Runyon). These printer/publishers/editors delighted in tall tales, sentimental stories and, most assuredly, the hyperbolic insult. Their insults make some of the recent skirmishes in the Forum regarding Star Wars royalties look positively civil. For example, an 1889 Kansas newspaper called the editor of a competing paper a “lop-eared, lantern-jawed, half-bred and half-born whisky-soaked, pox-eaten pup who pretends to edit that worthless wad of subdued paper known as the Ingalls Messenger.” A gubernatorial candidate lambasted his opponent in print as “a servile, self-asserting and stupid upstart,” and the editor of The Kansas Constitutionalist called his colleague at a rival paper “cross-eyed, crank-sided, peaked and long razor-nosed, blue-mouthed, … soft-headed, long-eared, crane-necked … squeaky-voiced, empty-headed, snaggle-toothed filthy-mouthed, box-ankled, pigeon-toed, hump-shouldered” — among other names.

In this century, of course, the Western frontier gave way to the frontier of space, and those of us who have followed the ups and downs of the science fiction and fantasy market can marvel at the way a few energetic editors and publishers have made a profound impression on the sf market. Any crystal ball gaze at what publishing will be like in the near future must acknowledge that the direction and scope can be altered unexpectedly and dramatically by individuals: how could you predict ahead of time the influence of John W. Campbell or the founders of Del Rey, Baen or Tor Books?

So, barring the unexpected, what will publishing be like as we slouch towards the millennium? Well, I think we’re seeing a lot of shifting of roles in publishing and changes in bookstores. On-line author and publisher links to stores — both to giants like Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or to the specialty stores — facilitate the process of buying books and are creating a brand new kind of book browsing experience in cyberspace, not to mention chat rooms, clubs, and hangouts like Callahan’s Bar. Random House currently offers on-line ordering, and Bertelsmann has been touting its soon-to-be-unveiled cybermall. For out-of-print backlist titles, a few stores have stepped into the breach. The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, Arizona has published worthy out-of-print mystery books. Recently the owners of Hungry Mind Bookstore in St. Paul, Minn. have started publishing books they’d like to sell. Another bookseller who has also turned printer is The Rue Morgue Bookstore in Boulder, Colorado. The number is doubtless increasing.

In the science fiction and fantasy fields, I’d like to see the large publishers pay more attention to specialty stores. I’ve heard grumbles from publishers that half these stores are behind in paying their accounts. Well, that means half are not behind: the glass is half-full, not just half-empty. These specialty store owners for the most part have the kind of dedication that helps keep this business alive. In the long run, no bookstore or publisher can be truly successful if run by an accountant whose only oracle is his computer’s sales data. Our business needs practical folk but also booksellers fired with a love of books, people who recognize the profound cultural need served by good stories. The proliferation of printer booksellers, small presses, specialty bookstores and online marketing by the giants are all good signs for a diverse and flourishing book business.

A glance at recent fiction hardcover bestseller lists show you that just about half the titles involve historical themes. Scratch the surface of almost any science fiction or fantasy writer, and you’ll find a history buff or even a full-fledged historian. Science fiction, of course, is history — future history, alternate history, a futuristic story based on an historical analog or a fantasy that evokes a bygone age — which is one reason why the sf backlist has always been strong. Popular demand for your stories, your histories and worlds, makes you, as individuals and as a group, the dynamic repository of historical perspectives: past, future and, if you will, sideways.

I hope SFWA, in the year ahead, can help achieve more general recognition of science fiction and fantasy and will continue to benefit its members. For example, the SFWA-inspired project of the Grand Masters volumes, edited by Fred Pohl, that Tor Books will be publishing, should attract significant attention and bring together in these volumes the legacy of this SFWA achievement award. A portion of the royalties goes to SFWA’s emergency medical fund.

In one of his epilogues where he justifies printing so much fiction, William Caxton wrote, “The terrible feigned fables of poets have much stirred and moved men to pity and conserving of justice.” Your stories provide pathways to empathy with different, sometimes alien views, perspectives that weigh the moral balance — William Caxton’s pity and justice. That is part of what — collectively and as individuals — you offer the world, and it is no small thing.

[Special thanks to Penninger's Caxton's Chronicle Histories, Edmund Child's William Caxton: A Portrait in a Background, and David Dary's Red Blood and Black Ink: Journalism in the Old West.]