Still not writing related....

However phase one of the hiatusing process has been completed and on 10-27 I had my little boy.




We are home and healthy and resting now. Hopefully this means the blog content will resume soonish, but I wouldn't look for it before the new year. In the meantime good luck to the Nanowrimo's out there and we'll see you flip side.

Breaking my hiatus again....

We are still waiting for the new arrival over here but until he decides to make his appearance I wanted to boost the signal on a couple of scams and scandals that have come to light recently.

First via Writer Beware (this is one blog you absolutely should be following) comes the very odd story of "Iron" Dave Boyer. Dave ran an unusual scam, he masqueraded as an editor of various publications then cherry picked stories from his slush pile and submitted them to other publications. Sometimes with out changing the name of the story. This is a rare practice, most fake editors and agents don't bother to read your work, they are just interested in scamming money from you. According to Writer Beware's team there are legal actions being pursued against him currently. Dave seems to work primarily in horror, so if you think you may have submitted to him a google search of your stories might be worth the time, and please contact Writer Beware.

The scandal bit concerns Dorchester Publishing. Previously Dorchester decided to exclusively move to an E-book only model due to financial issues. As a press there have been numerous complaints of non payment of royalties to their authors. As a result of this the rights of some of Dorchester's books have been reverting back to their authors. Dorchester has not stopped selling the authors' books that they no longer hold the rights to (and which the author is not receiving any roayties for). Yesterday they were called out publicly over this issue and the author who went public with this, Jana Deleon received an answer at last assuring that the books will be taken down after this broke however she is not the only author in this situation. If you are considering purchasing a Dorchester book I would recommend checking in with the author or borrowing it from the library until the rights issues can be resolved.

Back to waiting for the new arrival.

This post by Laini Taylor says it all

http://growwings.blogspot.com/2010/09/writers-need-cheerleaders.html

Still Hiatusing however....

I am going to be on several panels at Marcon in Columbus, OH over memorial day weekend. Most of them concern my other crazy hobbies but On Sunday at 10 am I will be part of the Writer Beware panel.

If anyone has ever spoken to me about the publishing industry and some of the scams that surround it (agent fees, vanity presses, marketing scams, etc) you know how passionate I am that authors understand how it works. Besides the obvious places, Writer Beware and Preditors and Editors, and a run through of the differences between self publishing and vanity publishing is there any other subjects or scams that people would like to hear about?

If you are in the area drop by, I'll be around most of the weekend. Now back to hiatusing.

Hiatus

As you might have noticed I've been absent lately. There are a lot of reasons but I'm only going to share the happiest here.
Yes.... that is a baby pic. I'm somewhere between 8 and ten weeks pregnant.... leaning toward the 10 weeks right now. He/She is just over an inch long and has a very normally beating heart. The other half is endearingly overprotective (this is our first) and overjoyed.

Things will probably still be quiet here but when I am able to come back I will.

Wow!

In my last post I lamented that November really didn't go so well on the writing front. I vowed December would be different. But so far it hasn't so much. A million excuses and most of them boiling down to doubt. When I get stuck on a project I have a bad habit of starting a new one. It leaves a graveyard of half finished (or less) novels that lately have taken to rising up and trying to eat my brains during writing time. Poor un-rhinestoned Glennis has been neglected so. I've been really doubting if I can actually write something that someone who isn't related to me or friends with me would like. Then something happened: http://kierstenwrites.blogspot.com/2009/12/in-which-i-vow-to-never-hold-another.html

Earlier this week Kiersten (her debut novel Paranormalcy is coming in Sept 2010 and sounds awesome) hosted a contest to give away books. Considering I am reading my way through the local library, my friends libraries, and my four overflowing bookshelves... you can NEVER have to many books. So I entered. I read my way through the honorable mentions and thought, wow there are so many good lines here. Then I scrolled down to the end... and I'd won.

I scared the cats, such was the depth and volume of my squee. Max is still hiding under the bed. Glennis is booted up, (still bemoaning the lack of glitery goodness), the husband has been informed (with a confused, "of course you are a good writer dear why were you doubting?" Therein lies why we love him) and I've spent ten whole minutes twirling about in a resting laurelish glee. Back to making words. And thanks Kiersten, you made my day!

Ya know all that stuff about self publishing I just lectured on....

This says it better.

DeDeWriMo

I failed at writing this month. I got Glennis (my shiny blue netbook still, lamentably, with out rhinestones) and I fired up my computer.... and I got nothing. Some of that was the fault of the flu. Swine or not it laid me up for a solid week. Some of this was my roommates moving out of the house, freeing up time to clean and rearrange things. Most of it was this:
That is the dinning room of our little white house, affectionately known as Cricket house. This time last week the dinning room was plain white. There were whiteish carpets covering the floors and half the furniture was in other rooms. I fixed that with help from the ever patient husband. We hosted our parents and sibs to the tune of 8 seated for Thanksgiving. His parents brought their dog Sophie and the cats fled in panic. It's all done now, the boys even banded together to bring in our massive newish entertainment center that languished forlorn in the garage since August.

The house is less spotted then usual and the fridge is full. Dec is much less chaotic then Nov in it's planning. Therefore I am declaring December to be DeDeWriMo: Denise's December Writing Month. I have no firm plans except make word counts of my previous 1000 words a day total. If I can manage that for the month I will be happy. Wren's Song is outlined perhaps past the ending, Spandex is stuck in the place you put the novels you are editing when you think of them as not very good, and Lily remains aloof. Gemini stepped up into the empty space and has started to poke into my subconscious and make snarky comments. I suspect another 99,000 words might shut her up. So DeDeWriMo it is.

Excuse me while I lecture.

With the announcement last week that Harlequin is launching their own "self publishing" (the quotes are important) line originally called Harlequin Horizons, now Dellarte Press (Writer Beware's announcement), I'd like to take a moment to discuss the difference between Self publishing, vanity publishing and traditional publishing.

Fast forward a moment. You have a complete novel. In the traditional model you submit your novel to publishers. (Agents are helpful and I highly encourage them but in the interest of focusing on publishing I'm glossing here). You get rejected a few times but eventually you find a publisher for your debut fantasy novel A Game of Scones. The publisher buys the rights to print and distribute your book in various formats (Hardcover, Mass market paperback, Trade paperback, E book). There is a contract involved, usually an advance against your royalties. Except in the most dire cases of contract breach you do not have to pay this advance back. Eventually the book rights revert back to you and you have the option to resell them to the original publisher. Your book is edited, copy edited, a professional lays out the text and designs the cover. The number of copies printed varies but is is usually several thousand. You receive a few free copies and copies are usually sent out to various reviewers. Your publisher usually contracts with a distributer and A Game of Scones is stocked in bookstores nationwide. Books sell, usually several hundred or thousands depending on many many factors. You pay nothing for the editing, cover, printing or distribution and you receive a percentage of the cover price. This process means you have to write what someones else would consider a good book. It's harder and it's safer.

Self Publishing is when you the author produces their books themselves. You buy the ISBN, register your copyright, edit or hire an editor. The design your own cover or you pay someone to do it for them. You pay to have it printed and pay for distribution if you want it to be in physical stores. You retain all of the rights to the book and other media. When the book is sold you receive the entire profit.

Vanity Publishing is when you pay someone else to publish a book for you. You pay a fee for editing, you pay a fee to have a cover designed, you pay for it to be printed. The ISBN registration is in the name of the company you paid to print it. After paying the company to print your book each time they sell a copy they take a percentage. There are a lot of books being published this way. Someone ran the numbers for iUniverse's book sales from 2004. Out of the 18,000 books they published that year only 83 sold more then 500 copies. (Courtesy of How Publishing works).

Here is the issue, vanity publish tries to sell you that it is an alternative to traditional publishing and that by paying to have your manuscript publish you can eventually have a traditional publisher look at it and purchase it. In all fairness there are a few manuscripts that have passed this way, but look at those numbers from iUniverse again. 83 books out of 18,000 sold over 500 copies. For most traditional presses 500 copies is a poor selling. By my miserable math skills that is a .46% chance of selling over the 500 copies. I'm going to pick on DellArte since theirs is the most recent numbers. Their cheapest package for publishing is $599. I'm rounding that up to $600 for the sake of having zeroes on the end, call it a simplicity tax. They pay their authors a 50% royalty after the publishing fees, it's about $1 per book. You have about a .46% chance of breaking even at their cheapest fee. The math doesn't add up. If all you want is to see your name in print, this can work for you. But for anyone trying to play the odds and break into publishing, you are better off using your money on workshops, stamps or red pens, honing the craft and trying again, then playing the vanity odds.

I have the flu...

So today's scheduled blog post is not going to happen. Instead you get feverish ramblings.

Ten things you might not have know about D. M. Beucler:

1. I wrote my first book in first grade. I got an F. I rewrote it and got an A. Revisions for the win, even in elementary school.
2. I have two black cats named Blair and Maximilien Catten. They are often found sitting on my computer, manuscript pages, or anything else that steals my attention. Despite over a year of living with both me and my husband they remain firmly my cats and do not deign to let the dear husband pet them.
3. Speaking of the dear husband, we met at a LARP (Live Action Roleplaying) group. I don't remember him. Five or so years later we met again when we dressed up to see Serenity in the theater. I dressed as River Tam, he was Jayne Cobb. A year later we were dating, 3 years later we were married. He's a saint.
   
4. My net book is dark blue. It will soon have silver decals and rhinestone accents. Her name is either Glennis or Wrenna, it's still working out.
   
5. I occasionally write while wearing a tiara. It makes everything better.
6. I sew costumes and wedding dresses. Mine was royal blue. I do not take commissions, it's only for friends and close kin.
7. Cricket house was named because of the large black crickets that invade every year around August. Cricket house sounded nicer then the flies which also come in. New windows are being looked at.
8. One of the reasons we bought the house was because of the full sized floored attic. At somepoint we are going to turn it into a master bedroom and writing room. Also the doors which lock with the old fashioned skelaton keys.
9. I am a geek of the highest measure. I play Dungeons and Dragons in multiple editions, quote most of Joss Whedon's works, can costume a party of ten for a Renaissance festival from what's in my closet, and I've spent over a decade running around the woods hitting people with plumbing supplies.
10. I'm allergic to cold medicine. This means bribery with shiny links, funny youtube videos, and other things to amuse will be appreciated.

Now off to more Buffy, cough drops and hot tea.