Okay, I have to comment on this: Publisher’s Marketplace says today that, “Disney Book Group publisher Jonathan Yaged is leaving the company for the plum job of chief operating officer of HouseParty.com, a company that organizes modern-day Tupperware parties, PW reports.”

It’s more lucrative now to be the boss of Tupperware parties than a major publishing group?

If you don’t know about Jake Shimabukuro (as I didn’t two days ago), you should. Because this man is an artist. He doesn’t let anything stand between him and his art—not the difficulties of his chosen craft, not assumptions about any particular piece of music, not preconceptions about his instrument. He just dives into it, invests every single ounce of energy and talent and sheer dogged hard work he has in his body, and smiles with all his heart.

He’s an inspiration in pretty much all possible directions.

And I’m pretty certain this is the way the Bohemian Rhapsody sounded inside Freddy Mercury’s head.

To live outside the law you must be honest.
—Bob Dylan, “Absolutely Sweet Marie”

Okay, guys, this week we’re going to focus on independent publishing. Because independent publishing has problems.

The biggest one is that people don’t take it seriously. And I don’t mean the people who don’t do it. I mean the people who do.

Hey, people—you people, the ones who jump into self-publishing your first draft first novels the same year you decide to be become a writer because, you know, everyone’s getting rich on it these days, so you might as well, too—GET A GRIP.

I know we all adore our own fiction. It’s like Phantom of the Opera around my house, all these stories and half-novels and full novels and bizarre fictional forays only a mother could love. You bet. I’ve been doing this for decades. I could bathe in my stuff. I could spread it all over the floor and roll around in it, and chances are I’d actually disappear. I’ve got that much unpublishable shlock around. And you know what? I heart that crap!

However, I’ve also been around long enough to know something really, really, really important about it. It is Number 1, Class A, Best-of-the-Breed Humiliation Inducer.

Publication isn’t necessarily about getting admiration and flattery, my friends. Publication is about eyeballs. Strangers’ eyeballs. Lots and lots of strangers’ eyeballs. Lots and lots and lots and lots of indifferent or even hostile strangers’ eyeballs.

Not the eyeballs of love.

The world is not populated by your mother. Or your father. Or your spouse, best friends, or kids. Not all of us out here have your personal best interests in mind.

I saw Jamie Lee Curtis on the Tonight Show once (was it the Tonight Show? who knows? who cares?) complaining that the last time she’d been on her host had not been sufficiently adoring of her new children’s book.

“My kids were really mad at you!” she said in all sincere affrontery.

Oooh. You really don’t want Jamie Lee Curtis’ kids mad at you for not being sufficiently adoring of her new children’s book. Because they are certainly the ideal objective audience for such a thing. Is it a real blockbuster, a guaranteed Caldecott winner, the kind of book no half-way intelligent child could possibly put down? Well, those guys would know.

WAKE UP!

We’re standing on the threshold to a whole brilliant, revolutionary, unexplored panorama of the publishing future right now. Anyone can publish. And this is an opportunity that has rarely ever occurred in the history of literacy before. We are so damn lucky to be alive and writing right now!

But the more the reckless amateurs keep peeing in the pool, the harder it makes it for talented, hard-working, long-term dedicated writers to bring serious quality and large-scale respect to the world of independent publishing. If you want to become one of those talented, hard-working, long-term dedicated writers. . .yeah. You have to spend some time developing your talent, putting in long hard-working hours, dedicating yourself to the craft of writing over the long term.

Becoming a writer isn’t something you just go out and get, like a new pair of shoes.

I read a fascinating piece this morning by Henry Baum on the Self-Publishing Review about why self-publishing isn’t taken seriously. He’s talking about Lulu’s marketing of Poetry.com, which they just acquired. (I’m sorry—”Need Help Rhyming”? Are you kidding me?) I’m really fascinated by his comparison of independent publishing to the punk rock movement of the late 1970s. Does indie publishing have the same potential for greatness as indie rock and filmmaking? I think so.

I also read the piece by MCM (why the pseudonym?) this post links to. I love the idea that independent publishing can become—not a stepping-stone to traditional publishing—but a viable literary form in its own right. Are we writing in the best of times, or what?

Is there more money in traditional publishing? Yes, there certainly is. Boy, howdy. Are there more eyeballs? Absolutely. Is it a better reflection of the very best literary production of our times?

Is it, really?

What do you guys think?

(And stay tuned for my interview this week with Michelle Davidson Argyle and Davin Malasarn of the Literary Lab, who just brought out Genre Wars, along with Scott G. F. Bailey, and will be describing their experience of working with Lulu.)

I almost forgot!

I’m doing a Valentine’s Day 2010 Special.

Last year I did a Valentine’s Day Mystery Writing Challenge, in which everyone wrote mysteries for Valentine’s Day. We killed off Margaret Spoon. Which seems like an odd thing to do to her for Valentine’s Day, but even odder when you consider that I could just as easily have made it a Friday the 13th Mystery Writing Challenge. But I didn’t realize it was Friday the 13th until it was too late (that’s the kind of thing that will go wrong on Friday the 13th). And this year it’s Friday the 12th, which just doesn’t have the same zing.

Anyway, this year I’m offering 25% off my regular rates for all inquiries that come in on February 13th, 14th, and 15th.

You’ll notice that’s not just February 14th. That’s because I’m going to be celebrating Valentine’s Day on February 14th, which involves enough chocolate to sedate a herd of elephants, and I will not be online.

But I’ll be back on the 15th, and I’ll be in touch with you all then.

But mostly I’ll be in touch with everyone who inquires about that 25%-off Valentine’s Day Special.

This is it, guys! Our last day. If you’ve got a climax you could really use a professional editor’s advice on—not just Developmental Editing, but a Copy & Line Edit, as well—shoop it on over. After today, we go back to business as usual.

Check out the rules, such as they are, here.

Earlier Free Edits are posted further down in this blog. If you scroll, you’ll find them all—they’re not buried too deep. They’ll all be tidied up on a page unto themselves when it’s all over, like the Free Edits of HOOKS.

Thank you to everyone who’s participated! You are brave souls and true. Thank you to everyone who’s stopped by the read! And thank you to you guys who are sitting there right this very minute thinking, “Should I? Shouldn’t I? Is it polished enough? [Yes.] Will it be worth it? [Yes.] Will I be glad I did?”

What do you think?

“How dare they ignore the fact that I’m annoyed!” I like his attitude! Read Paul Hartsock’s analysis of the e-book shenanigans.

This piece on author’s rights by Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware has been around awhile, but a client forwarded it to me yesterday, and it’s well worth your time.

Author Jacqueline Lichtenberg has written a long and eye-opening post contradicting the standard publishing wisdom, “You determine your own success or failure by just how compelling your story is.” Lichtenberg is looking at TV shows as fiction, as well as books, for which I think she builds a good case. Pay attention to what she’s saying, folks! This is the keystone.

Her post, in turn, refers to an article by Andrew R. Malkin describing his career in publishing promotions.

And Malkin refers to Seth Godin. I mean, these days who doesn’t?

TODAY AND TOMORROW. Last two days to get a Free Edit of your novel’s Climax!

Check out the rules here. Check out the entries for this week below!

Now I’ve just realized my last post on working with an independent editor was back around NaNoWriMo, which is kind of silly. That was a really long time ago.

So let’s talk a little about working with an editor. You guys want to do it. I know you do, because you keep writing to me.

But the cost.

I know. It sucks. I am so on board with you about that. And I had a brilliant idea last night over the dinner table that if there are grants out there to help out people like you hook up with people like publishers, and I could qualify in helping you do that, then I could offer rates you might realistically be able to afford. Like $5/hour or something.

Okay, I’m probably not going to be able to drop my rates that far. But I AM going to talk to Mira over at Mira’s List about it and see what she’s dug up. Because I didn’t get into this originally to discover the next Hemingway or Fitzgerald or Kerouac, but damned if I don’t accidentally keep doing it. Not them, personally. (They’re dead.) But really amazing writers doing fresh, exciting, gorgeous work, who just need a good, experienced editor to help them make it read professionally.

However, you know what one huge, overriding characteristic of most literary novelists is? That’s right. They’re BROKE.

Yeah. Me, too.

So until most aspiring writers get someone to help them out a little financially—like a publisher; or a rich parent—they’re stuck cleaning quarters out of the couch cushions and skimping on their lunch money and generally emptying their lives of anything that costs anything at all, and still only being able to afford a few precious hours of editing time.

I do what I can, working longer hours on their manuscripts than I claim I do (and I can’t tell you how many clients have admitted, much later, that they almost didn’t hire me because my rates were so low they thought I couldn’t possibly know what I’m doing), offering Free Edits, almost killing myself with that Workshop Month from Hell last fall—which, as you might have noticed, has vanished from my blog. I’m hustling. And not because I’m making very much. (That noise in the background in my husband laughing uncontrollably.)

But because. . .

I LOVE FICTION.

And I know how to edit it. I can polish diamonds-in-the-rough to reveal what the writer has really done, the fiction in there that they don’t even realize they’ve created. And I love that.

This is such a great job. Really—working with these fun, creative, interesting writers I’ve gotten to know and made friends with over the past year, watching their manuscripts grow and develop, and being able to show them where their plots need tightening (or loosening) and rearranging, what’s implied in their characters that can be brought out in specific ways in specific scenes to really flesh-out the imaginary people living in their heads, how to keep their stories focused, always, always focused, on their premises so their climaxes become inevitable, extraordinary, unique. . .their own. And if they can afford Copy & Line Editing, the sheer joy of seeing those sentences clarify and blossom into strong, streamlined, professional literature. If I didn’t have a child who also needs my time and attention, my husband would probably never even see my face.

But I do have a child. And a husband. And the hours I take away from them I have to make worth it in some way that’s tangible to them.

Also—and this is really pertinent—people value stuff they pay for more than stuff they get for free. And you know what? This work I do on manuscripts is valuable. Heck, yes, it is. I don’t have even the slightest interest in doing it for people who are going to then dismiss it as trivial because I didn’t make them pay through the nose.

So I charge $50/hour, which is 50-100% less than the going rate of $75-$100/hour. However, my per-word and per-page charges look high compared to the going rates. How come?

Because I DON’T SKIM.

I did some research the other day and found that a lot of independent editors are charging both $75-100/hour AND $.02-4/word at around $6/page.

You can do the math. That averages out to 12-16 pages/hour, which means spending 3.75-5 minutes on each page. I don’t know about you, but I can spend several minutes just absorbing a page for analysis, much less editing it, analyzing it, and writing out seriously useful advice on how to improve it. Even at $50/hour, the surface cheap rate is still only 7 1/2 minutes/page, or an hour and fifteen minutes to do the whole works on a ten-page chapter. Try it. That’s not very long.

Skimming can be a real hazard in this industry, when you’re struggling to make a living wage. These cheaper rates, whether they’re called copy-editing or just “editing,” could only mean very light copy-editing.

I don’t do that.

But I have just re-vamped my Services page today. So if you’re out there hoping to find an editor you can trust to work on a manuscript you’ve lavished so much work and heart and love on, please feel free to check it out. (But be forewarned: my proofreader is busy working her real job today, and I’m brain-dead from checking and double-checking the math, so today’s draft might be full of typos.)

And if you’ve been through that couch a dozen times and still only come up with a handful of loose change, feel free to check out the Art and Craft of Fiction magazine, where I’m writing on the craft and working with broke aspiring writers every week to get them the help they need as cheaply as humanly possible.

And if you can’t even afford that, stick around.

Next month we’ll be publishing The Art and Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual, which is my old posts on the craft from last year before I went private with the magazine—all cleaned up and edited and organized to make writing fiction as intuitive as possible. WITH brand-new extra essays on topics I forgot to cover last year!

I’m doing everything I can for you guys. I swear to god.

You’re like my kids.

So you’re sitting at the table in the captain’s cabin across from Assuipe, guzzling wine and trying not to bang your elbows on the brass table rail that keeps stuff from flying off during storms. He’s allowed you to change your britches, but you’re still wondering whether your heart will ever stop pounding. Probably not.

“Tell me again,” Assuipe says, clutching his quill and preparing to write laboriously as you speak. He’s not very literate.

“It’s the story of a genius of a writer whose greatest idea, the most extraordinary premise, the pinnacle of a brilliant career, is stolen by a—by a—well, a pirate.”

“I like it!” Assuipe belches into his fist. “Go on.”

“It starts in a little seaside village, where the writer lives. He’s down in the waterfront pub with his friends, when he hears the story of this terrible pirate. It’s his best friend, Panther Jack, who tells the story—”

“Screw that,” says Assuipe. “Tell me about when the pirate steals the idea.”

“That’s at the end.” It’s obvious Assuipe knows nothing about the art of storytelling. What a cretin. “Panther Jack is this kind of maverick sailor. He could be a ship’s captain, he’s so experienced, but he’s not into power or authority, so instead he roams the seas on whatever adventure strikes his fancy. He and the writer grew up together—”

“Screw Panther Jack,” says Assuipe. “I want to hear about the pirate.”

“I’m trying to tell you—”

“Your idea about a pirate.”

“NO. The pirate’s not even in most of it. He only comes in at the very end, when he wrecks everything. He’s just part of the climax. He’s not the actual story.”

“I like him.” Assuipe grins, and you immediately wish he hadn’t, because his teeth are the worst. “Your climax is the whole point of your story. Bozo.”

“Assuipe—” You suddenly realize why nobody ever says this guy’s name out loud.

And so you go back and forth for hours, dickering over your genius idea.

“—so the writer goes overseas to think this all out, and while he’s there the pattern of everything he’s been through crystalizes in his mind, and—bingo!—Panther Jack’s story of the pirate comes back to him, and he realizes it’s the kernel to the most brilliant premise—”

“—which is that a terrible and swashbuckling pirate king steals a stupid story so he can live happily ever after—” Assuipe is trying to massage the cramp out of his writing hand.

“No.” You shake your head. “Living happily ever after isn’t part of the climax. It’s the resolution.”

Assuipe sighs and puts down his quill. “Living happily ever after’s the resolution to the story. But before that, the resolution to the climax is me letting you get down off that plank.” He hawks with a revolting sound and spits into his empty flagon. “You know, for a famous writer, you sure don’t know squat about structure.”

Read the full essay on the Art and Craft of Fiction.

There’s really only one thing we can talk about today: CLIMAXES.

The climax of your novel is, bizarrely enough, the premise. It’s the point of the entire story.

Suppose you’re a writer working intensely on an incredibly deep and meaningful story. You’re an eighteenth-century American who’s been in Europe and are on your way home, so you have to do this work on shipboard. But that’s okay because you’re so completely immersed in it that you could work on it anywhere. Or else you’re a European who’s been in America. But, anyway, you’re on a ship, working, working, working away as towering waves crash over the prow and the tang of salt wafts to your nostrils.

Now, news of this extraordinary story has leaked out into the general public. Since you have a huge international reputation as a storyteller, everyone knows this story is worth a fortune. It’s rumored to be the pinnacle of your career. It’s the most amazing production of a brain that’s already produced stories greater than Homer’s, plot twists more baffling than Cervantes’, audience investment more powerful than Shakespeare’s. Anyone who possesses it will be richer than Croesus. But of course you keep it top secret so no one can steal it from you. It is—as Bertie Wooster would say—a real pip.

But disaster strikes. Oh, no! Your ship is hailed and, in quick order, boarded by pirates. They kill everybody on board and take command. You are hauled up in chains before the pirate captain, the notorious Assuipe, with his reputation for collecting strange and unusual treasures and selling them to buyers of enormous wealth known only to him. This guy could sell snow to Eskimos. He’s that good.

And he wants your story.

“No!” you cry. “I won’t tell you! I’d rather DIE FIRST.”

He’s okay with that. In an instant, his minions have flung out a plank, and you are encouraged at sword point to climb up on it and begin your promenade. They’re leaning over the side of the ship tossing edibles into the depths to attract sharks. This guy’s mean.

“Well?” he calls when you’re a third of the way down the plank.

“I won’t!” you yell furiously over your shoulder. You rattle your chains above your head at him.

Poke, poke go the points of the swords.

“What do you think?” he calls when you’re two thirds of the way down the plank.

“Never!” you bellow, yanking futilely against your chains. One foot slips, and you jerk it back with a private whimper.

Poke, poke go the points of the swords.

“It’s time, matey. Will you tell me or won’t you?” he calls when you get to the end of the plank.

The pirates lift, and the plank begins to tip. Below your feet, shark fins are circling. The tang of salt wafts to your nostrils. You shriek.

“It’s—!”

What?

Read the full post on The Art & Craft of Fiction.