Nothing for Nothing

When it comes to having your writing published, you shouldn’t settle for giving your hard work away for nothing.

But, what counts as something is for you to decide.

Some writers won’t settle for anything less than cash, and preferably pro rates. Others might be happy with a complimentary copy of the issue or anthology in which their work appears. There might be other forms of compensation you find acceptable (for example, ‘exposure’ – that’s the, ahem, polite term for condescending to publish your work and not actually giving you anything in return –  might actually be fine when you’ve written an article about a charity that will give them some visibility or if publication is in a prestigious journal that grants bragging rights or academic kudos, as might be the case in certain niche subjects).

Where you have free access to a publication – such as blog guest posts, public webzines and ezines that are free to download – I would count that as the equivalent of a contributor copy. (Some would disagree, but you do get a copy of the product.) Indeed, as you can point friends, relatives and fans to the appropriate site and there is potential for your work to reach large numbers of readers, it’s better, in some ways, compared to receiving a single contributor copy to take space up on your shelf.

Of course, you do need to decide how valuable your work is and how much compensation it deserves. Expending the first rights of a piece of work that took a lot of time and effot to create on a free-to-view website that doesn’t pay is a bad idea – at the very least, shop it around some paying publishers first. On the other hand, having a previously-published poem appear online gives it a new lease of life. This is why I’ve always welcomed reprints for Atlantean publications – not only don’t I agree with the idea that once something is published it can never appear again, I accept that a small press that only provides a complimentary copy shouldn’t be greedily demanding unpublished work.

For a beginner writer, it is often the case that the morale boost of being published, the potential for feedback (whether from the editor or readers), and the chance to list a title in your bio make it worthwhile to submit to small press publishers or have your work appear in webzines. If you are more established, such things are less valuable and you likely will want your work to appear in paying markets.

Not that non-monetary compensation should be ignored. Appearing in a webzine can still be useful to an established writer if their bio can include a link to their site or to the Amazon page of their latest book. Likewise, I’ve always been amenable to including links and adverts in Atlantean publications alongside an author’s work. You just need to decide if what you’re getting in return is worth what you’re giving up. (This also goes for publishing work on your own site, blogging, and even self-publishing – could you get paid to have it published? Or, are you creating visibility for your ‘brand’? Or, do you have the potential to make money yourself from it?)

Should you choose the self-publishing route, remember that, while there are legitimate companies that do the hard work of putting your book together, sourcing artwork and the like, there are a lot of scams and you need to be certain you are getting real value for money, especially as you can source services such as editing and artwork directly. And, remember: self-publishing companies are honest about what they do and you hire them to provide a service. Such companies don’t pick and choose clients (except, perhaps, at the most basic level of turning away genuinely-unpublishable work). If a company acts like a regular publisher, assessing your work, but then charges you for publication, it’s a vanity press and, not only is likely to cost far more than paying for legitimate self-publishing services, it is likely to be of a far lower standard. Avoid them.

Ultimately, the decision will always be yours. Just never give your work away for absolutely nothing. And, never ever pay someone for the privilege of being published.

Contracts

There is one area of writing that I really don’t enjoy: contracts. It’s not the contracts themselves that is the problem, but the fact that so many are badly written and most are irrelevant. Of course, one might expect a contract where a lot of money is involved, but I’ve found absolutely no correlation between the amounts involved and whether a contract exists – I’ve had to sign contracts for stories where the odds of ever earning anything (such as an editor’s choice award) are low, while the highest paying stories I’ve sold didn’t involve a contract at all.

Given the small amounts of money involved, many contracts are effectively unenforceable due to the cost of court proceedings (especially as I’m usually on the wrong side of the Atlantic), making the signing of them a waste of time. (I’ve had one publisher apparently fold without sending the complimentary copy or payment specified in a contract, although the book remains available on Amazon, and been unable to do anything about it.)

Unfortunately, not only do many publishers insist on writers signing this pointless agreements, but a lot of them are badly written. Now, the vast majority of publishers are decent people who don’t intend to scam writers, but I’ve encountered more than one contract that, unintentionally, was worded so that I would lose control over my story, and some that are just plain incomprehensible or contradictory.

The problem is that very few writers are contract lawyers and, for most of us, writing is either a hobby or a very-low-paying occupation, making consulting a lawyer for every contract a financial impossibility given the amounts involved. However, there are three things you can do before signing a contract. The first is to ask a professional writer. Of course, we’re not contract lawyers, but we have the experience to spot the more obvious problems and offer advice. The second thing you can do is post your question in an online legal advice forum (just make sure you choose the right country, as laws may be different elsewhere). The third is to ask the publisher to clarify any points in writing and keep a copy (save a screen grab if it’s an email or online message); although this doesn’t override the contract you’re signing, if they later claim to control rights you didn’t realise you were granting, it may help prove a case of fraud if they misled you when directly questioned about the contract.

I hope any editors reading this will give consideration to whether they need writers to sign a contract and, if they do, whether it needs to be complicated. If all you want are first publication rights and a period of exclusivity, why do you need a dozen clauses? Nor does a contract doesn’t need to be written in legal jargon, so keep it simple!

So, you want to be published? Part Two

So, you want to published? Well, if you’ve read part one, you ought to have a suitable manuscript to submit. Time to send it off! But, where to? And, what does publication entail?

The following sections seek to cover the main points, but can only constitute a broad overview. Laws vary between countries, guidelines vary between publishers, and things can and do change over time. If you are uncertain, query or research further before submitting or signing a contract.

Markets

The first thing you need to do, is research where to send your manuscript. There are many publishers out there and it is a waste of both your time and theirs if you send it to the wrong one or submit it in the wrong way, and that’s before you consider which publisher would actually be the best one to approach.

Of course, while the structure of this two-part article has assumed you have a submission ready to shop around, it is equally possible to write one aimed at a specific market, for example, to meet the theme of an anthology. Neither approach is the ‘right way’ and even if you aim your writing at a specific publication, the odds are that it will be rejected and you’ll be shopping it around anyway (and, if you have something that suits the theme and length already written, it makes sense to submit it and direct your energies elsewhere).
But, whether you’re writing for a specific publication or trying to find a home for something you’ve already written, you do need to make sure you properly research the market to ensure your piece fits and that you understand issues such as rights and payment.

You may be surprised to learn how often people do something silly, such as sending a short story to a novel publisher or a horror story to a romance anthology. Of course, sometimes publishers are to blame, if their guidelines are vague or so dense that it’s difficult to locate specific details, but that generally results in errors like sending a 4000 word story when the cut-off length is 3000 words, rather than the sort of egregious errors I’ve mentioned, and a sensible writer will query if they cannot find the specifics they require.

Rights

Rights refers to what you are allowing the publisher to do with your work. Many publishers, unfortunately, insist on First Publication Rights – that is, they only want work that hasn’t previously been published. Sometimes, this may be more restricted – they may want work that hasn’t been published in print, but accept work that has appeared online (or vice versa), or work that hasn’t appeared within a specific geographical area (so First British Publication Rights would mean work that hasn’t previously been published in the UK); this latter is less common now, thanks to various print-on-demand (POD) platforms that allow a publisher to release a book in multiple regions at no extra cost.

Self-published work is considered published and most publishers consider work that has appeared on a blog or website or in publications with a limited circulation to be published, too. They usually state this in their guidelines, but, if in doubt, as always, query.

Because few publishers are interested in reprints (or, at least, unsolicited reprints – that is, reprints they didn’t ask for) and usually pay less, you do need to be sure that the publication is the right place for your work. Or, to put it another way, it makes sense to start with the better paying and more prestigious publications before trying lower or non-paying publications or posting it on your blog; you can always seek to have it republished or decide to put it on your blog later.

Of course, that decision has to be balanced by the marketability of your work. Some genres have spawned large numbers of magazines and anthologies, others are quite niche, and if your work falls into the latter, you may find there are few options open to you (just as there are fewer paying outlets for poetry than fiction).
Publication rights cover both print publication and electronic/digital publication and many publishers will seek to acquire both as they release their publications in both formats. Although many publishers, as mentioned, are seeking works that haven’t been published in any format, if they only acquire the rights to publish it in one format, then you may be able to find a publisher of the other who will regard it as unpublished. Print publication can be subdivided into various formats, such as periodical (magazine), paperback, hardback and large-print. These are seldom referred to when it comes to anthologies as most publishers are acquiring the rights to your work for an anthology that will only appear in a specific format, but will come into play where novels are concerned as it is fairly common for different publishers to handle different formats (meaning you either sell them individually or sell them all to one publisher who then resells or leases the rights to other publishers).

As well as straightforward publication rights, the publisher may also be seeking such rights as audio (that is audiobooks) and translation rights (in order to translate it into other languages). Other rights, such as film and stage rights, also exist, but publishers will not normally seek to acquire these. If you retain the audio rights to your work, you can freely record it yourself or sell it to an audio publisher (it is debatable whether this would be regarded as published, but you may find it easiest to have it published first before selling the audio rights, as most audio publishers are happy to accept previously published work). Translation rights exist for each language and do not impinge on the English language rights (so if you have had your story translated into German – or wrote it in German and then translated it into English – you can offer it as unpublished in English unless the publisher specifically mentions translations; but, note that competitions may ban or restrict the entry of translations). Naturally, film rights allow the story to be made into a film and stage rights allow the story to be adapted for the stage and performed, and will usually be sold to those in those fields (you are unlikely to have a say over how the work is adapted).

When granting rights to a publisher, you need to be aware of how long you are granting the rights for and whether or not they are exclusive. One-time publication rights is most common with periodicals and means that a single print run will be produced – although back issues could potentially be available for a long time, once the last copy is sold, no more will be produced without a new agreement being negotiated. Exclusivity refers to the work being restricted to appearing in only that publication (or, for novels, only with that publisher). One year from publication is the most common period for exclusivity, although it may range from three months to three years. Some publications only ever seek non-exclusive publication rights (although they may request the courtesy of exclusivity for a short period). Longer periods of exclusivity should be considered carefully as they will prevent you from reselling or republishing the work elsewhere. Non-exclusive rights refer to how long the publisher may keep the work in print.

In the past, you might sell a work for a single printing or allowing reprinting within a certain period, but with print-on-demand publishing, a publisher can keep an anthology or novel in print indefinitely and this presents something of a problem for the writer as many publishers are now asking for open-ended non-exclusive rights, which may affect the ability to resell work in the future if a publisher is seeking exclusivity. Of course, if you are receiving royalties, this isn’t a bad deal, as you’ll receive royalties for as long as the book sells, but if you sold your story for a one-off payment, the publisher is far more likely to benefit from the deal than you.

Payment

Payment can be a contentious issue! The sensible writer will, of course, avoid vanity presses (those publishers who charge you for the pleasure of seeing your work in print) and will generally avoid those publishers who offer no payment or contributor copy of any sort, as you’ll be paying them if you want a copy (although I do not class with these those webzines and ezines that are freely available to access or download, as you can get a copy for free). But, should a writer submit work to a publisher that only provides a contributor copy or to publishers that offer only royalties (or those webzines and ezines I mentioned)? That is a decision the writer alone can make.

When deciding where to submit work, the writer needs to consider multiple factors such as rights, length, effort, exposure, prestige, personal satisfaction and saleability. Firstly, the more rights you’re offering up, the better the payment you should expect. If a publisher wants audio and translation rights in addition to print publication rights, they should be prepared to pay more. The longer the period of exclusivity they request, the more they ought to offer, and an open-ended period of non-exclusive publication should offer more than one-off publication rights. If the publisher wants to wants to acquire the copyright to a piece outright, the payment ought to be good as you will lose all rights to exploit it yourself in the future.

When a publisher pays by the word or line of poetry, length will, obviously, have a direct effect upon how much you are paid (and allows you to easily compare payment – 2c per word is more than 1c per word). But, you also have to consider length and effort (frequently, but not always, closely related) when deciding what a piece is worth. You may be happy to put a limerick you dashed off in five minutes on your blog, but the epic poem that took you months to get right should be given more respect. Generally, the more time and effort that has gone into your work, the more you want to earn from it.

While the size of the readership will affect pay rates, as small presses with small readerships generally lack the income to pay well, if at all, you might equally be willing to accept lower pay for the opportunity to get your name out there. I’m not talking about those publishers who offer ‘exposure’ under payment (every publisher should be offering that!), but situations such as having a poem on a non-paying webzine that is read by lots of people or in a local newspaper for free. It may be that not being paid or paid less might help you to generate a readership that will increase your income in the long term. Equally the prestige of a publication may affect your decision – is it better to earn $50 from a midline publication or $10 from a prestige publication that will look good on your writing CV? Again, you’re making a call based on long term gain – can a publication credit leverage you better pay rates or more readers in the long term?

Personal satisfaction is that nebulous element of just how happy you are to see your name in print. Some writers are only really interested in writing as a hobby and will be more than happy to see their poem or story in print (although, no matter how pleased, I would recommend they should avoid paying for a copy). Some writers are full-time professionals and would place a paycheque far ahead of any sense of satisfaction. Most are somewhere in between. Only you can decide how satisfying any given publication credit is. This may even change over time. A beginning writer may feel that building up a portfolio of publication credits is their main aim, but once they are established will look mainly at the income they make. Equally, a beginning writer may be hardnosed in pursuit of money. It’s entirely up to you.

Saleability is the last thing to consider. That is, the question of how much would you expect the work to make you. Generally, a reprint will earn you less than an unpublished piece, but a piece that has proven popular may sell better as a reprint. Often, the more niche a piece is, the less it is likely to earn you due to the smaller audience, although if there is sufficient demand and few writers, the reverse may be true. The actual quality of the writing will affect the saleability – the better you are at writing, the greater your chances of being accepted by the higher-paying markets as you will usually have far more competition. And, of course, the more popular and famous you are, the more people will be willing to pay for your work.

By considering all these aspects, you can decide what a reasonable pay rate for any given piece of work is (and you may decide that different pieces are worth different amounts).

The same issues apply to self-publishing when deciding how much to charge for your book. Obviously, you’re keeping your rights, so they don’t factor in, and exposure will either be guesswork or based on experience, but you will need to balance your sense of satisfaction, the book’s saleability and the amount of time and effort (and any costs, such as paying for a cover image) that went into it.

Contracts

The problem with publishing contracts is that 90% of them cover amounts far too small to make enforcing them worthwhile (especially when publisher and writer are in different countries). Only if the writer goes on to become famous or the book sells really well is it worth pursuing any breach. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop publishers from issuing contracts for piddling amounts, often with pointlessly complex language and more clauses than necessary, meaning that you will almost certainly have to deal with them.

Of course, where larger amounts of money are involved or specific duties covered (for example, the publisher has promised to provide a certain level of publicity or the writer has agreed to write a novel to a set deadline) then a contract is a must, but many are nothing more than an inconvenience.

Unfortunately, whether a contract is offered and how complex it is has little to do with the amounts involved. Most small press publishers that offer only a complimentary copy work solely on an informal basis of acceptance letters or emails, but you could still receive a lengthy contract for exactly the same offer.

Generally, you do not need to have a lawyer look over publishing contracts, as the issues are straight forward – what rights are you granting the publisher and for how long, what format will it be published in, when it is due to be published, what happens if publication is delayed or cancelled, and how much will you be paid and when.

But, you do need to read them carefully to be certain nothing slips by you, especially if the language is convoluted and flowery. The last thing you want is to discover you’ve given away more rights than you intended. Most publishers are decent, honest folk, but this might happen unintentionally if the contract is poorly worded (I had to ask for one contract to be reworded because if implied I would have to pay the publisher if I wanted to reprint the story in my own anthology).

Given that most contracts cover such small amounts, the cost of having it looked at by a lawyer will be prohibitive. But, if you aren’t sure a contract is legit or you just don’t understand it, you do have options that don’t cost a penny. If you know a professional writer or publisher, they may be willing to look at it for you and offer their opinion (but bear in mind they aren’t an expert and can only offer a layman’s advice, and remember they are busy people and may not be able to spare the time). If you are a member of a body such as the Society of Authors, you are likely to have access to professional legal advice provided by the body. There are also sites online where you can post legal questions to get lawyers’ opinions (some are free and rely on whoever, if anyone, looks at your question, others charge but guarantee your question will receive an answer; of course, there is no guarantee that the person who answers your question will be an expert in contract law, but they should at least be able to offer some guidance).
If you are lucky enough to be offered a substantial amount of money, then do seek professional legal advice to make sure everything is legitimate.

Today, it is common for contracts to be signed electronically, using Adobe, or for scanned signed copies or even a typed, emailed declaration to be accepted. These methods are held to be held legally binding.

Go, submit!

You now have a basic understanding of all the key points, so what are you waiting for? Go, submit your work.

So, you want to be published? Part One

So, you want to be published? I’m assuming you are capable or writing something and, indeed, have done so. If not, go away and write a story, poem or article, then come back to learn about the next step. Lots of people dream of being published who never finish a thing.

Check Your Work

Before you do anything else, check your work over and make sure you’ve got your spelling and grammar correct. If it’s a poem, make sure it scans. Thanks to spell and grammar checks, there’s little excuse for submitting a document riddled with errors, but do check that you haven’t typed (or the computer has autocorrected to) the wrong word and that no words are missing; and do not so slavishly follow the computer’s corrections that you insert the wrong word or bad grammar by mistake. If in doubt, double check.

Just as it’s good to leave a gap between drafts in order to check how a piece reads, it also works when it comes to checking your grammar and spelling: it’s easy to read what should be there rather than what actually is. A little distance can help you spot errors.

Layout

Once you are reasonably certain your work is free of error, you’re ready to lay your manuscript out. It can be a good idea to create a template so that you don’t have to reformat every document you type as most editors request a similar layout.

Selecting your font is easy – almost all editors who have a preference ask for Times New Roman. A few prefer other fonts, but usually also accept it, so you will almost never need to change your font if you select Times New Roman from the outset. Keep it black on white and choose size 12. Even though, occasionally, you may want to use more than one font (such as including non-English text), this is problematic as, should you or an editor changing the font as a block, this can easily be lost (I’m speaking from experience here!), while some specialised fonts may not be available to everyone; thus such mixing should be avoided if at all possible and be flagged in the covering letter or as a note in the document.

Your document should have your name, address and email at its top. You will probably find it best to locate these on the upper left as, while many editors have no preference, those who do usually follow the so-called standard manuscript layout and will insist that they are located there.

Next comes word count (generally, unless writing flash fiction, you need only round this to the nearest hundred words for a short story or thousand words for a novel; for poems, you may wish to include the line count). This can be placed below your personal details or in the upper right, to conform to standard manuscript layout (personally, as an editor, this really annoys me as, when cutting and pasting a name and address, I end up with the word count in the middle of it).

Then comes the title and your byline, which should be centred. Your byline is the name you will be published under, which may be your real name, a variation on your real name or a pen name. If using a pen name, you may wish to include a note beneath your name and address or in your covering letter that you are ‘x writing as y’, just to make clear which is which.

Finally, we reach your actual submission. For poems, articles and short fiction, this will usually start directly below the title and byline. Novels, non-fiction books and competition entries usually have a front page with all the above details and the submission proper starts on a fresh page – this will be titled with the relevant chapter or section number or the submission title (but not byline) for a competition. Remember to use a page break if creating a front page.

Prose should be left aligned (not justified). Poems should be laid out as they are intended to appear in print (but bear in mind that complicated layouts may be lost during pasting, do try to keep it straightforward).

Fiction and non-fiction paragraphs should be indented using the paragraph layout tool in your program, not indented using tab or spaces. There should be no line after the end of the paragraph. (It should also be noted that you should only ever include a single space after a full stop.)

Section breaks are usually indicated with a star or hash, but you could equally leave a blank line.

Prose should be concluded with The End or Ends (although one publisher I have worked with insisted on x-x-x). Unless very long, poetry doesn’t require its ending to be indicated.

It is acceptable to include multiple short poems in one document, but, normally, you should only have one piece of prose in a document. A good generic document title is the title of the piece itself (so Lord of the Rings, not Fantasy Novel). It is best to save your document in as a .doc or .rtf file as they are the most widely accessible file types.

Any illustrations you may want to submit with your story should be submitted as separated files, not within the document.

Your Bio

You will also need a bio. Occasionally, especially with competitions, you will not need to send one, but most publishers like to see one. Keep it short (80-100 words) and to the point. Primarily, you want to tell them about your writing career and anything relevant to your writing – for example, if you are writing about education and you’re a teacher, tell them. Don’t worry if you have no writing credits – all writers start somewhere and you can spend a little more time describing yourself.

Do keep it interesting and relevant. You don’t have to tell the editor everything about yourself! In particular, avoid personal details that are unrelated to your writing or achievements. Relevance can boost your chances of being accepted, but irrelevance risks making you sound odd, boring, offensive or as if you are either attempting to drop names or force them to accept you so as not to appear discriminatory.

Try and imagine you are an editor receiving this bio from a complete stranger and you have just a few seconds to take it in – how does it come across? You want them intrigued not bored, and you definitely don’t want them confused, abused or offended.

Links and your twitter ID are best listed at the end of the bio, not within it – editors may not want to include them. Do not include more than two.

This will be a separate document – again .doc or .rtf – or pasted into the submission email.

Covering Letter

Your covering letter should be straight to the point and pasted straight into the submission email (ahead of the bio and any pasted submissions).

For most submissions, something like “Attached for your consideration is an unpublished short story called x (y words) by z” is perfect. Editors are busy people and don’t want to have to wade through the verbiage to reach the point of an email.

Generally, you do not need to provide any sort of description of a short story or poem (at most you may want to mention the genre or, for poems, the specific type). For articles and novels, an introduction and/or synopsis will likely be required. You may find it easiest to attach the synopsis as a separate document.

Generally, you don’t need to mention anything about yourself as you’ve already put that in your bio – only if something is very pertinent or if submissions are only open to a specific category of writer should you do so

Editorial Requirements

Okay, so you have your story laid out, you’ve written your bio and you either have a draft covering letter or, at least, a short, generic letter in your mind, and you’re ready to submit.

Go to the publisher’s website and look at their submissions guidelines. (These are not always easy to find – look for Guidelines, Submissions or Contributors – failing that, email them and ask them for their guidelines).

Many editors are quite easygoing – in some cases, there are no real guidelines at all, just an email to send work to – and, if you have followed the above suggestions, you should be able to submit with little or no further effort. Some are stricter, and you may find you have to tweak your layout or provide specific information in your covering letter (pay particular attention if entering a competition – some will insist that no personal detail is included on the story, some will accept a front page; some require entry forms, and so on).

A few editors have very specific requirements – most of these are obsessed with the so-called standard manuscript layout; if your work is entirely or mostly laid out in that style to start with, you will have fewer modifications to make. Of course, some do just have idiosyncratic ideas, and if you want to submit to them, you will just have to suck it up and make your work match their requirements.

As well as ensuring you have the right email to submit to, make sure you have put the right subject in the subject line of the email, attached or pasted into the email your work as requested, and made sure to include anything else required (for example, a few editors request a keyword be included to prove you have read their guidelines, while others request a photo).

Congratulations – you are ready to submit now!

Next time – I’ll discuss markets, reprints, rights, payment and contracts

Preserving Your Voice

In an earlier post, I described how there is no such thing – in an objective sense – as ‘bad writing’. In other words, as long as you make a conscious choice to write a certain way for a specific reason, nobody can say it is wrong (although they may well say they don’t enjoy it!). The reason I wrote that article was the current cult of the ultra-short sentence shorn of adjectives and adverbs, which new writers are being told is the only ‘right’ way to write – despite the fact that such bland, staccato writing is utterly unsuitable to whole swathes of literature. (Such writing is, however, entirely suitable for action scenes.)

Unfortunately, even if you are not blindly following such advice and are confident in your writing style, there is an impediment to preserving your voice (unless you are self-publishing) – the editor. Now, I will hasten to add, this is not an attack on all editors, as there are many highly-skilled editors out there who know exactly what they are doing and will only suggest changes that are likely to improve your writing. (I will also add, based on one editors lament, that they sometimes have to cope with a similar problem when copy editors and proofreaders suddenly take it into their heads that they know best and step beyond the bounds of their position to suggest wholesale rewrites rather than just checking for typos!)

The problem, and it should come as no surprise given that somebody has to be propagating such notions, is that there are plenty of editors who are in thrall to the staccato sentence or have their own quirks.  Suddenly, despite having agonised over your writing as you put it on paper (or screen) and then edited and re-edited it to make sure it is just how it should be, you have someone suggesting that your deliberately laid-out manuscript and carefully chosen words  are flawed, sometimes for the most bizarre of reasons. Suddenly, you are attempting to balance being published with preserving your voice, rather like a politician being told to keep to the party line if he wishes to retain his seat.

Often, an editor’s demands are not too damaging to your manuscript (such as cutting longer sentences in half) or they make so many ‘suggestions’ that you can implement a number of essentially unimportant ones (perhaps even correcting genuine errors or making improvements) to satisfy their need to edit without compromising your writing. It’s when they effectively want to rewrite your piece into something entirely different that you have to decide whether to just walk away or not. (A good editor will give you a heads up before accepting your work that they want to make drastic changes – “I would like to accept it but…” or “I’m going to reject it but…” Bad editors accept your work then start making onerous demands.)

Perhaps the most irritating of bad editors are those who frame their opinion with “All/Most editors would agree…” Would they? Do most editors actually edit anything worthwhile? Do you not have any thoughts and opinions of your own? Perhaps not…

The most important thing to remember is that there is nothing objectively superior about being an editor. Editors make mistakes and have subjective tastes just like everyone else. One editor may look at your work and hate it, the next may love it. All you can do is produce the writing that you want to produce in the way that you wish to produce it and keep sending it out into the world until it finds a home in which it will be appreciated.

The Year Ahead

2013 was a successful for Atlantean Publishing and 2014 looks set to be even better!

If you haven’t already, take a look at the Current Requirements page on our wiki to see what we want you to submit! And, while you’re there, why not take a look around the wiki and learn more about the press, its past and plans for the future?

Keep an eye on the blog as there will be reviews and articles coming soon…

The 10 Commandments For Editors

If you are an editor or planning to edit an anthology or magazine, you may find it useful to bear the following points in mind…

 

1. Thou Shalt Clarify Exactly What You Desire – Contributors should be able to tell what is suitable to send at, if not a glance, certainly a very brief perusal of your guidelines. If you are unclear on what you want – unless the brief is deliberately intended to be broad – you are wasting both their time and your own. If you are using any terms, such as for types of genre, it does help to define what you mean by it as even the most seemingly-obvious terms often have multiple interpretations or grey areas. Make sure to mention whether you allow reprints, simultaneous submissions or multiple submissions.
2. Thou Shalt Use Clear Language – Enigmatic phrasing should be avoided at all costs. Some editors write guidelines that are very difficult to decipher and I have even had to query whether work has been accepted or rejected because the editor somehow managed to talk around the pertinent issue in a reply. If you have any special rules (such as only submitting one piece at a time) make this crystal clear.
3. Thou Shalt Specify Word Counts and Closing Dates – It may sound obvious that you should include these, but I have encountered a number of editors who seem to think that writers have psychic powers in this regard. If you do not have a specific word limit or you are editing a magazine that is open to submissions all year round, please note these facts to prevent confusion.
4. Thou Shalt Indicate Your Layout Requirements – If you don’t want the regular format of 12 pt Times New Roman double spaced, please clearly indicate what you do want. In fact, even if you do want the regular, it doesn’t hurt to indicate this – but, please, don’t put ‘Standard Manuscript Format’ as there are plenty of variations on the theme. If borders and indents are important to you, please explain what you want as clearly as you can rather than relying on writers to attempt to decipher your demands.
5. Thou Shalt Make It Possible To Contact You – If you fail to provide contact details you may just find you won’t be getting many submissions! Please do not hide them away so that we have to go searching for them and if you are using a different contact address to your usual one for a specific project or have separate contact addresses for submissions, queries and orders, it really does save everyone a lot of time and hassle to make these abundantly clear.
6. Thou Shalt Not Conceal Any Element of Your Guidelines – Some editors forget to mention key rules in their guidelines and then respond huffily when you ‘break’ their rules. Whether it is a bar on reprints or restrictions on certain topics or themes, make sure they are covered in your guidelines – and, if it’s a complete ban, don’t phrase it as a ban on extreme examples! Suddenly announcing that an unmentioned rule has been violated or suddenly broadening a rule beyond that indicated is sloppy and unprofessional.
7. Thou Shalt Not Move The Goalposts – Yes, there will be rare cases where events beyond your control force you make unexpected changes, but in normal circumstances you should not change anything in your guidelines once they have gone public. Contributors may only pay one visit to your site before locking themselves away to beaver at producing a submission and it is extremely annoying to discover that it is no longer eligible. If something may be subject to change please make this clear from the outset so that writers know they may need to check back. Likewise, if you plan to close when you have accepted a set number of pieces makes this clear rather than stating a hard deadline.
8. Thou Shalt Make Your Guidelines Accessible – Even the most perfect of guidelines are useless if nobody can actually find them! Check that your site is coming up in searches for your anthology or magazine and that sites advertising it have links to your site. And, finally, make sure that the guidelines can be easily located on your site.
9. Thou Shalt Remember That Thou Art Not The Entirety Of Existence – Some editors seem to take the approach that they are the only outlet around and act as if writers have nothing better to do than visit their site ten times a day in case of updates, spend hours searching for guidelines and even longer formatting submissions to match their peculiar layout demands. But, they aren’t. Writers often have multiple projects on the go at once, as well as such pesky distractions as families and jobs. They cannot always prioritise your eccentric demands, so don’t expect them to. Behaving this way doesn’t make you an elite, it makes you appear like a pathetic amateur. Avoid such behaviour at all costs!
10. Thou Shalt Remember That Thou Are Being Judged Too – Yes, you will be judging the writers’ submissions, but they will be judging you, too! From the moment a writer looks at your guidelines through the way in which you deal with them and respond to their submissions, they will deciding whether they want to do business with you. Whether you are a non-paying small press or a top-flight publisher potentially offering huge advances, the way you present yourself reflects upon your future success. Not only can sloppy submission guidelines cause writers to decide not to submit to you and poor responses cause them to boycott you in future, but they can also affect whether they will purchase you product – and most people will not keep their disappointment to themselves, but will tell their friends or post on blogs and in forums. Professional guidelines and a professional attitude and approach are likely to ensure that you receive plenty of good-quality submissions and will gain readers. A sloppy and unprofessional approach will lose you support. So, make yourself the best editor that you can be!

 

The Future of the Small Presses

Talking to a writing group recently, discussion led us to consider the future of the small presses. Just as the various changes affecting the publishing world – print on demand, ebooks, rising costs – are challenging the traditional world of publishing represented by the big presses, so are the small presses equally challenged. On the one hand, the various benefits accruing for authors to self-publish their work are benefits for the small press publisher; on the other hand, the same problems afflicting our larger brethren are affecting us.

Caught in the midst of change if is, of course, impossible to predict accurately what will or will not occur, but it clear that we will see some major changes, especially as new generations of tech savvy authors rise to take advantage of nascent technologies.

Traditionally, a publisher was a necessary evil for all but the wealthiest of authors. Most people could not afford the cost of having a book printed and, even if they could scrape together the money, did not have the room to store the huge numbers of books necessary to make production affordable. Adding to that the need to market and sell the book, it is easy to understand why very few went it alone and why even fewer were successful. The big presses dominated through financial clout and the possession of warehouses to store their goods. The small presses couldn’t compete on the same level, but, by gambling on more than a single author’s work, stood a chance of surviving, even prospering, although many did fail shortly after beginning.

Now, of course, with print on demand publication and, even more so, ebooks, authors no longer need to pay exorbitant sums to have books printed and are not faced with finding space to store all those unsold copies. At worst, an ebook that sells no copies will just take up some space on your hard drive – and, with the option to sell through, say, Amazon, you don’t even have to worry about providing a marketplace for your book. Okay, if you just sit back and hope people stumble upon it amongst its thousands of rivals in the Kindle store, you probably won’t make many, if any, sales, but, in theory, you don’t really even need to put any effort in to market or actually sell your work. Which means, of course, that you don’t really need a publisher. Just type it up, make it available and sit back and hope for the best.

Now, whilst that possibility is already denting the might of the big presses, the fact that they carry a certain kudos and can still market books in a way few independent authors can, does mean that people will still want to be published by them for some time to come. But, where does that leave the small presses? Essentially, small presses were largely doing what self-publishers can do for themselves these days. Does anyone really need them any longer? Aren’t all self-publishers their own small press?

Well, I don’t think that the small presses are completely doomed. Yes, we will face severe challenges and many will doubtless fail, but many others will doubtless appear, taking advantage of new opportunities and adapting to changing times as ever they have done. I don’t think that magazine and anthology publishers will totally disappear, for a start. Not only do magazines and anthologies offer variety, but they act as an outlet for writers to present their work to potential new readers. Even if you are providing substantial tasters of your collections, you cannot guarantee that people will visit your site or trawl through Amazon to look at your work. Having a story or poem in a magazine or anthology boosts your chances of being read by people unfamiliar work who will, then, hopefully, want to read more of your writing.

But, that does leave small press publications of single author works. Doubtless, we will see a decline in small press-published novels and collections of a single author’s output as the authors decide to publish their own work. However, it is probable that they will not cease completely – not every author has the time or inclination to put in the effort to properly edit and lay out their work, let alone publicise it, nor the money to buy in such services, so some will surely continue to turn to the small presses to handle everything for them. And, of course, there is more kudos in having a book released by a publisher than in releasing it yourself, in having someone publicly back your writing, so that we will likely see some prestigious lines continue.

However, I do think it likely that small presses will evolve to be less about publishing per se and more about acting as facilitators for authors. Small presses may act as umbrella promoters for multiple authors, acting as portals for their publications, or sales outlets, and concentrating upon releasing magazines or anthologies that allow authors to present samples of their work to readers. Hopefully, editors will play a part in ensuring the quality of published work, even if they are less directly involved in selecting and publishing the work itself. Small presses may become collectives rather than the personal fief of an editor willing to invest their time, money and effort, raising funding for projects from their members and providing feedback, advice and support.

The small presses will definitely change, but I don’t think they will die.

Press Freedom

I’m rather hacked-off at Hacked Off, the collective front of the rich, corrupt and criminally inclined who want to stifle free speech in order to prevent their indiscretions and criminality from coming to life – and, worse, are doing so by hijacking the legitimate concerns of innocent citizens whose phones were hacked by an equally unpleasant bunch of journalists, using the forore to whip up and direct the voices of the ‘Moral Majority’ to distinctly immoral ends.

The UK already has overly stringent curbs on freedom of speech and the freedom of speech, with libel laws that are ridiculously easy to abuse. What is more, we already have laws against the various activities of those journalists who brought their profession into disrepute. We do not need new laws. Introducing new laws is the automatic reaction of a rudderless government desperate to be seen to be doing something as they are not active in enforcing the law itself. And, that can make them prone to manipulation, as we have seen.

About the only change that was necessary was one to ensure that retractions and corrections are displayed as prominently as the original story – no more burying an apology for huge front-page headlines on page 26 in tiny print. But, beyond that, if anything, the current system is in need of more press freedom, not less.

Of course, this all goes hand-in-hand with political correctness and attempts to extend anti-hate crime legislation that would equally stifle freedom of speech. Yes, there should be some sort of protection against actual abuse, but not at the expense of being able to hold or express an opinion. Indeed, by slapping down polite debate of controversial topics, all the law is doing is escalating disagreement to outright abuse and conflict from the outset on the principle that one might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb, or, in this case, punished for abuse or assault as for a polite difference of opinion.

Once freedom of speech is eroded, all other freedoms swiftly follow as there is no longer any reliable means of bringing abuse to light. One only has to look at the many cases of NHS whistleblowers being gagged and suspended and the subsequent revelations to see what happens when free discourse is prevented and people live in fear of speaking out. Already, too many people find themselves self-censoring for fear of being accused of intolerance, at best, or being arrested. Even where the fear exceeds the reality, and it is difficult to say if that is the case any more, the fact that a climate of fear has been created means that our freedoms have been successfully encroached upon. And, let me be clear, none of those using the Hacked Off campaign for their own ends is doing this because they want to protect you. No, they want to be able to do whatever they want without being called to account to their actions – and that cannot be allowed to stand.

Thankfully, there is a growing resistance in press circles to the proposed new regulations as outrage at what is being done overwhelms the shame-by-association that had muted opposition until now. The press as a whole did nothing wrong. Those that did break the law should face the penalty, but the remainder should not be blamed. Everyone at all levels of the writing world, from individual writers and bloggers, through the small presses and local newspapers, to the largest publishing houses and newspaper syndicates needs to stand firm in the face of oppression and say, with a single voice, NO! to the restriction of their freedoms.

Consistency?

Recently, I have been trying to make more time for submitting my own work (it’s the one downside to being an editor, you are so busy reading everyone else’s submissions that you seldom have time to send out your own!) and one thing has really struck me – the lack of consistency between different publishers in terms of manuscript format.

Now, there are some standards that almost everyone adheres to, even if they are largely irrelevant when it comes to e-submissions where things can be changed at the click of a mouse – almost every publisher wants work to be in 12 point type and doublespaced. Unfortunately, those are frequently the only consistent demands!

It would make life so much easier if all publishers would agree upon a standard format and layout for submissions so that writers did not have to keep checking that they have laid their manuscript out correctly – or if, at least, more editors would be willing to overlook minor failings. Instead, it seems that editors are becoming more and more stringent about refusing to look at submissions that make even the most minor of errors in meeting their demands. At the same time, it seems more and more editors are adopting an idiosyncratic approach to format and layout, forcing writers to doublecheck before sending that they have got the right one for the right magazine or anthology. Get it wrong and you are out of the running without even being considered.

I suppose it is the easy way to cut down on the size of the in-pile, but I find it irritating, with many of the demands having no clear reason other than a perverse desire to trip the erstwhile writer up. That so many of the most demanding publishers produce poor quality publications perhaps speaks for itself – rather than seek quality writing, they will publish any old tat that kowtows to their demands. That may be up to them, but I believe it is a real shame.