Get Off My Lawn

Lately I’ve been feeling as though I come from a long lost world.

Over the last 20 years or so in the field, I’ve amassed 30 something published novels. Used to be this was a record that spoke for itself, but in a con…. five years? ago, I found myself giving my bio and the young lady next to me snorted.

Now, I know if I’d not been ill off and on for the last ten years I could have done more, but I wasn’t expecting the up and down of the shoulder and the snort. When she introduced herself, she pointed out she’d been doing a book a month for four years and had forty four books, because she’d missed a month.

Now, that’s a fair cop. She was doing a lot of hard work and, apparently, doing very well indeed.

However, I’d like to point out that there is a massive difference between traditionally published books and indie books. I’m not saying one process is better than the other, just that traditionally published books took more time and effort from the writer.

No, it’s not just the length of the books — I’ll point out that later I saw this young lady’s books on her sales table, and they probably ranged from 10k to 20k words, which made me snort, becuse I used to put out two or three novels a year, plus a bunch of short stories — it’s the process.

Again, I’m not saying this is in any way better. In many ways the indie process is better, at least if you’re a writer with a minimum of self discipline. You can write whatever you want, and whatever the length the story is, it’s the length it wants to be. And it either works or it fails, but it’s what you wanted to write, and its success or failure is on you, not someone who decides to give it a blah cover, or no marketing, or alternately pushes a huge laydown or whatever.

I’m really only explaining this for perspective. So you don’t look back at those who did what they had to do to get their books out under traditional publishing and go “Oh, those lazy asses, they wrote like a book a year.”

Let’s start at the beginning: In the beginning, there was the proposal, and the proposal was definitely not with G-d.

Let’s say you’re a midlister with a decent reputation. Not a stinker, not a “Drop dead” type of reputation. You were usually expected to turn in a detailed outline and the first three chapters.

Now, I don’t know how other writers work, but once I’ve done the outline and the first three chapters — worked through the plot, and found the voice — I’ve done half the work for the novel. All that remains is finishing typing the story.

Okay, so you wrote the outline.

Ah, if it were that easy. I mean, again, you’re not a newby. You have a book or two out, you have an agent, and maybe an editor whom you have worked with in the past.

But either you finished the arc of your story, or, as happened to me in 2003, you were caught up in a quarter where everyone had stinker numbers, and in the way of trad pub that means you have to start anew.

The normal number of proposals I wrote to sell a novel was three. The most was seventeen. Now the seventeen proposals (2003) were for series, each with five books worked out fully, and I had to have them in within three months.

It worked. I sold one, and later another series. But it was brutal, soul-breaking work. Particularly because you tried so hard not to fall in love with one of those novels in case no one ever came back.

Over the next five years I sold three of those proposals. But…. In the meantime, a proposal I’d sent out in 98 came back accepted. I didn’t even remember what I’d put in that proposal. I was certainly no longer that person. (And it was historical, and I’d forgotten all the research I’d done to write the proposal.)

Now multiply that by twenty years. By the last five years in traditional (nine years ago or so) I could sell a book on half a page proposal, so it wasn’t that bad, but you still had to come up with the concept and sell it well enough in half a page.

And what about other ideas that came? Ideas in series the publishers called dead?

They got written here and there, bit by bit.

However, even in the later years the rhythm of trad pub was brutal. You worked through everything, as hard as you could, and you’d be in the middle of a book, due next month, when a proposal was suddenly accepted for something you submitted two years ago. And they wanted it in six months. And then a revision for the novel you delivered last year came through. And it was urgent.

Look — was it better than digging ditches?

Sure. I was inside, in the warm. And I could be there when the kids came home from school, which was super-important to me.

BUT — to be fair, ditch diggers made way more. Most of those books I sweated and sacrificed over paid about 10k per. Some paid only 5k. The most I ever got paid for a book (non work for hire) was 17k. And the way the market was, most of those paid no royalties. (All the ones not Baen were taken off the market the minute they earned out.)

Most years I made somewhere between 10 and 30 thousand, but 5 thousand was not unusual, for what amounted to a full time job.

So, look… was it terrible. Eh. It could have been worse. Back then few other jobs would have allowed me to raise my own kids.

Was it better than indie? H*ll no. If you’re mildly self-disciplined and stick to it, you can not only do way better at indie, but keep your soul.

Was it easy? No. And it really felt like selling away little pieces of your soul and Dave Freer and I are only now recovering from severe burnout (hopefully.)

And that’s without counting the length of the books. Most of mine had a minimum length of 120k, which is at least 2 and maybe 3 indie novels, depending on genre and story. But there were the goat gaggers. “No less than 170k words” Per contract. Those were complex, involved and deadly. Do not recommend. Contains live bobcat.

All of which is fine. It’s the way it was. Not the way it is. And I have nothing but respect for hard-working indies who make book. (And write a lot of books.) I’m a fan of several of them.

I’m just saying that if you lift your shoulder and snort at my bio, you’re going to get me to yell back “Get off my lawn” and you’d better pray I don’t have a dictionary to throw in your general direction. (The safest place to be when I throw something is where I’m aiming.)

Phaw!