Nursing Home Ninjas is under contract

My cozy mystery, Nursing Home Ninjas, is now signed for publication by Five Star Mysteries. http://www.gale.cengage.com/fivestar/
We are already through the first level of editing. Now we enter the next stage, which includes the copy edit, one of my favorite parts. That's when you learn a lot about the craft, when an editor rips your deathless prose to pieces.

It's been nine years since I had a real publication contract, and that was for a computer programming book. (I had contracts for this title and another one with an e-publisher last year for a while, but that didn't work out.) I retired after the 2003 book and played music for a while. The music business dried up, and I got bored. So I started writing fiction to keep my brain from drying up like a prune. It will be interesting to see how things have changed since 2003. The undustry has changed a lot since then. I have already seen changes in the publisher/author relationship.

Small Presses and Royalty Advances

A discussion is underway at the Absolute Write forums about one particular e-publisher not paying advances on royalties to authors. The original question that was raised asked whether agents will pitch to non-advance-paying publishers since that would defer the agent's income as well as the author's. But the discussion morphed into one about whether no advance was better than an advance.

I was going to post a response there, but it got to be too long. When long posts appear in a public forum, detractors of the poster's position will cull small items out of context and use them to blindside the poster.

Besides, I am not in the good graces of the publisher and her staff and stable. I could post my hat size, and those wagons would circle. So I decided to stay out of the fray and post here instead, a friendly environment for my bottomless opinions.


I lived mainly on book advances, freelance writing, and piano playing for many years. Here's how advances used to work and what they were intended for:


Non-fiction: You pitched a project, signed a contract, and got an advance to live on while you wrote the book. The amount and payment schedules were negotiable. A publisher who said, "I don't pay advances under any circumstances" attracted neither agents nor authors.

Fiction: Can't say for sure, but I was told you took an advance on a completed manuscript so you could pay bills while you wrote the next one. (You wrote your first one on spec and hoped it found its way out of the prehistoric tar pit aka the slush pile.) Same thing about authors and agents. No advance, no interest. Well-established authors of fiction could get advances for works not completed.

Freelance writing: No advances. Payment on publication.

Piano playing: There are no advances for piano playing. I did get some advances over the years, but my wife would not let me pursue them.

To suggest that money received later is better than money received now, all other things being equal, evinces a lack of grounding in finances 101. At the very least whoever has the money gets to work the float.

Furthermore, many books, although they are profitable for the publisher, do not earn back the advance. In which case no advance means more profit for the publisher and less pay for the author. And no one can predict with 100% accuracy which books will fall into that particular doughnut hole.

So the argument that no advance is always better than an advance is specious and assumes your audience is stupid. Not a wise attitude when your audience is populated by writers.

However, the argument being made in that discussion, and not being presented very well, is that getting no advance, higher royalties, and frequent payments is better than getting an advance, lower royalties, and infrequent payments.

There is validity to this argument but no certainty. It can be true, false, or a wash depending on the size of the advance, the delta between the royalty percentages, and the success of sales.

Try to look at it as the author investing in the potential success of the publisher by postponing payment and helping the publisher with its cash flow. The only reasons to do that, however (other than altruism), are if no one else has bought your work, and you're tired of submitting.
If you write for a living as I did and don't have a substantial nest egg, you probably can't afford to underwrite the publisher's expenses. And probably don't want to, either. This is a business model to attract authors who have a day job and who cannot find their work a home with a more established publisher who pays advances.

On the Street Where You Die - just released

Announcement: I just released the first in a series of "soft-boiled" detective novels on the Kindle platform.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006Q1V2XQ

From the book's description:

Stanley Bentworth is not all that tough. Previously a homicide cop, he drank his way out of a job and now runs a one-man private eye agency finding people who don’t want to be found. He doesn’t accept tough-guy assignments, calling himself a “soft-boiled detective,” but a recession is on, and business is off, so when a wealthy financier, formerly a mob enforcer, needs an anonymous blackmailer found in a life and death situation, Stanley seizes the chance to earn a fee.


If he fails, the blackmailer outs his client to the wise guys, in which case the client gets a one-way ticket to the landfill, and Stanley risks becoming an unwilling passenger on that ride.

He knows he must not fail, no small feat given that Stanley Bentworth is not all that tough.

On the Street Where You Die

Just finished uploading this "soft-boiled detective" novel to Kindle. The next job, besides writing the next book, is to get the word out. Conventional wisdom says that there are several approached to publicizing and promoting a new book:

1. Blog - that's what this is
2. Social networking - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
3. Online discussion groups that address the genre and/or subject matter - Not sure.
4. Book signing tour - Can't sign an e-book
5. Send the book to reviewers.

Let's talk about number 4. There are numerous commercial book reviewers who will review books for a fee. Not an option. That's like a paid endorsement. Except the reviewers are celebrities. But there are countless review sites that do not and will not charge. It's difficult to keep up with all the different review policies and submission guidelines. We need to standardize and streamline this process so an author doesn't spend endless days and nights researching reviewers and formatting and emailing advanced reader copies.. Any suggestions?

Final Kiss at Seven

The title of this article is the title to my new work in progress, the second installment in the Stanley Bentworth series of mystery novels. The first is out for beta reading, and I got bored waiting for feedback, so I started writing. This morning.

I wish successful writers wouldn't tell us that they have a quota of, say, five pages a day. Robert B. Parker said that. So did Lawrence Block. When they hit that quota, they quit for the day. So it takes them a little over three months to write a 100,000 word book. That's four books a year, figuring you can multitask editing and correcting with writing. (Don't check my math. I didn't.) That's a lot of books when you're 30 or younger. It's not enough when you're old.

At noon today, I looked down at the bottom margin toolbar and saw that I'd written 10 pages of deathless prose. Am I supposed to quit and go swimming? Or mow the grass? Or wash the car?

I know, it's November. But I live in Florida.

See what you can make of the title. It came first. I didn't write it, but I've had it for 48 years.

Then and Now

Back in the day (my day, not necessarily yours) it took a while for an author and an editor to establish a personal working relationship. Usually, it was impersonal, business as usual, emails back and forth related only to the project. Eventually I settled on one editor with whom I found a personal bond. She is my daughter's age, and she mothers me. Go figure.

She works for Penguin now, but over the years she moved a few times among publishers. Where she went, I went. But, as I said, it took a while for what started as a professional relationship to evolve into a personal one. I dedicated one of my books to her firstborn.

When we got down to work, however, it was all work. As it should be. We knocked out a lot of books together, and she knocked out a bunch more with other authors. And still does. The rest of whatever teams she'd assemble for copy editing, artwork,  layout, promotion, and so on, were mostly unknown to me. I don't even remember any names. We interacted, but only related to the project. I didn't know about their lives, and they didn't know about mine. Those were professional collaborations, in every sense of the word.

Things have changed substantially in publishing and probably in every profession nowadays. What with social networking, texting, discussion groups, cloud computing, and so on, the notion is that you are in a family rather than a business. And in that family, as in all families, you have to be wary of one another's idiosyncracies, personal issues, hot buttons, and such, lest some off-hand comment incites a food fight for the whole family and sometimes the whole world to witness.

It's as if Jerry Springer is overseeing the publishing business.

But solitude is the writer's friend. Drama, suspense, and conflict are necessary inside the book, but outside it, the only interaction I want is with Emma, shown here.

I neglect to give and do not require gratuitous strokes. Except, of course, to Emma.

I guess I have to work on that.

Or self-publish.

Self-Editing

I'm back. They're doing the outside today. It's noisy but I can work.

The wonderful book, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003JBI2YI/), suggests that you print sections of your manuscript to review it and make notes in the margins. Using the computer, they say, tempts you to fix things on the fly. They are right. That's what I do. So I tried it their way. Instead of printouts, I use the iPad's iBook app. It lets me make notes and highlight blocks of text that need work, but it does not accept changes. Just like paper although without killing any trees. (Yawn, old homily, sorry.)

Their way is better. It keeps me from scattering my attention all over the work. Focus, focus.

Most of my writing and editing in the past was with non-fiction. With fiction, however, there is a laundry list of issues--dialogue, scenes, points of view, and so on--that the non-fiction writer does not need to address. The Browne and King book is a must-have. But don't expect to read and understand it before you've knocked out a fiction manuscript or two. You probably wouldn't relate to a lot of what it teaches, not having already made those mistakes. I find myself reading a chapter of B&K and then reviewing four work-in-progress manuscripts and highlighting areas of concern.

They're tearing the sides off my studio. I may have to go get a haircut or something.

The Studio Gets a Facelift

After almost 20 years, I'm getting the studio polished up a bit. I started the project not long after we moved here in '92. It had been the woodworking shop of the previous owner so it needed an interior finish.

The last two items on the inside to-do list were a floor and ceiling. It has neither. Well, the floor is concrete, but the ceiling is nothing but exposed rafters. I finally admitted that I am not able to do ladders and hammering and spackling things that are above my head. Not without a safety net. So I hired some guys. They'll be here this morning. (In six minutes, if they're prompt.)

They'll also be repairing some siding and soffits and repainting the outside.

The downside is that I have to move all the equipment around, which means disconnecting everything, which is going to be a mess. And I'm relegated to the RV with a laptop. Oh, the suffering.

I hope they're late. (Four more minutes.)

8:27. They just got here. I'm out of here.