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Writing/PublishingTrenches

They call it "Royalties"

Wow! Doesn't that word sound all special, important and even... Regal. Like getting "royalties" makes you all royal and shit. Like you're the king or queen or something.

No, you schmuck! Getting "paid" royalties means you've been screwed. And it's only a matter of degree.

Get my free book and find out what they don't want you to know.

The idea of royalties is a farce. They use the fancy label of "royalties" to hide the dirty secret that you do all the work - and they make all the money.

You do 90% of the work; they get 90% of the profits.

And it gets worse.

• They collect all your money
• Deduct the expenses
• Pay themselves
• And then after 6 months to a year (I'm not kidding
• Give you about 10% of the profits

• You do 90% of the work
• They keep your money for 6-12 months
• And then they pay you 10% of the profits - your book generated.

Your book; that you begged and pleaded on bloody knees for agents and editors to even "read" let alone publish...

Get my free book and stop getting ripped off.

Oh, and by the way, you're responsible for driving sales. You know; book tours, readings, email marketing, social networking, et al. They don't pay for, let alone DO, any of it. It's all on you, your time and out of your pocket.

And it gets even better. (Now, I'm really being sarcastic)

In four months or less they'll change the status of your book to "out of print" and the retail book stores will pulp whatever copies of your book remain on their shelves.

You're done, over, finished, invisible.............again!

You know, out with the "old" in with the new. Your book's old news. It's had its day. The publishers have sucked as much profit out of it (and you) as they can - until next time. They're hunting for fresh blood now........"Next!"

"Now sucking the blood out of dewy eyed writer number 5,397,428."

What businessman in their right mind would accept such a relationship? Even hope and pray for it! Yet writers sign these contracts every day.

Are fiction writers genetically stupid? Or just so insecure that we need some authority figure to give us permission to "be" authors. Why are we willing to pay any price, suffer any indignation just for that warm blanket of approval from a "NY publisher"?

You don't need a publisher to be an author - you just need to grow some balls.

Start Here by getting my free book.

I don't know about you...

But I'm going to...

Write on... And Self Publish.

Richard A. McCullough

P.S. You can keep your stinking "royalties" - I'll take the publishers "profits" - instead.

A$$es and Alligators

Sometimes when we're up to our ass in alligators it's hard to remember that our intention was to drain the swamp.

"Being a fiction writer can be like that", he said, alligator dangling from his backside.

It's time to kick the alligators aside for a moment and reconnoiter your situation.

With that in mind I've created this little survey of some astonishingly simple but powerful questions for fiction writers.

Click here to take the survey. You can also see how your answers compare to other writers, just like you, who took this same survey.

This survey's for you!

Write on...

Don't Pay to Self Publish

Authors seem to be confused about publishing their own ebooks and even paper books.

I put up my ebook "Mirror Image" which you can see here on my website.

You can also copy and paste this URL:
http://www.write-better-fiction.com/books_for_writers.html

This book is up in all the ebook formats and on all the major ebook sites including Amazon, B&N, Apple, Sonny, etc. (about 23 so far). And I'll be offering all the ebook versions on my web site soon, as well. And it didn't cost me a dime. I did all the conversion and uploading myself. It's not very hard. Yes, the ebook stores get their cut but that's all.

So, I don't' understand what problems authors are having with self Publishing ebooks or paper books for that matter.

I don't see any reason to pay anyone for what I can do as well or better myself.

I won't do a printed version of "Mirror Image" but I plan on publishing 20 other books between now and Xmas and a number of them will have printed as well as ebook versions. But I have a simple, effective and zero cost way to get that done which ensures maximum distribution.

So, I don't understand what problems people are having with publishing their ebooks or why authors feel that they need to pay someone or some company to self-publish.

Someone is peddling lies and misinformation.

And too many gullible writers are are buying the BS.

Just, stop it right now!

Get your free book and stop getting ripped off.

Write on...

Changin' Times

"The present now Will later be past/ The order is rapidly fadin'/ And the first one now will later be last/ For the times they are a-changin'." ~ Bob Dylan, "The Times They Are A-Changin'

Wrestling With Kindle

Yes, I finally published one of my short novels on Kindle. It's a quirky, SF thriller, called "Mirror Image" described as:

"A space prospector, surveying the asteroid belt, discovers something worth more galactic credits than he could spend in ten lifetimes - plus a woman - who's more than a woman - and he realizes that everything he thought was one way is quite another -distorted and all turned around; like the mirror image in a pane of glass."

Yes, the process with Kindle is tricky and a pain in the backside to get the formatting the way you want it. I'd say I got the formatting "correct", except there's some debate as to what constitutes "correct", especially in the world of ebooks.

Now I'm working on PubIt! (the ebook publishing platform for Barns & Nobel) and although their website interface is simpler and easier to navigate getting the formatting "correct" for the EBUB standard is proving just as tricky.

And after B&N I'll attack Smashwords.

Between the above three ebook "sales" outfits (we can't really call them publishers - because I'm the publisher) my books will be available on about 23 different sites and formats. These are currently the big three in the ebook world.

The good news here for us writer types is that once we figure out how to work with these companies and formats we can use it over and over again.

I, for one, have some 21 books that I plan to publish between now and Xmas. And that's just the tip of my backlog.

Get my free book and stop getting ripped off.

And that's the trick isn't it - having a system and not allowing yourself to get ripped off.

I was forced to develop a system for writing fiction and now I'm forced to create a system for publishing it.

The more things change; the more they stay the same.

Write on...

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