Future is so bright I gotta wear shades

Last night, I was trying to explain how writers make money through royalities to my wife. I might have had an easier time eplaining nuclear physics to her. In particular, I was trying to describe what I was doing on Smashwords, and why I suspected that in the long run I would hit the break-even point on some (if not all) of my writing there.

Midway through the conversation, I realized that my wife did not even understand the concept behind book advances. For the one person in the audience who has only been involved in the modern world of ebook publishing, an advance was something that publishers used to give to writers...it is still possible to get an advance today, provided that you are someone like Stephen King, who is guaranteed to sell copies even if one's writing bores the general public to tears and one's ideas are lifted from other writers.

My wife was not even aware that book advances had to be earned back before a writer got more money from the publishers, much like she did not realize that some writers took fifteen years to get their first book contract and that it can take three years to get your book onto store shelves.

(Gee, why do some of us decide that ebook through self-publication outlets are a better option---getting published by a Big Six legacy publishers sounds so quick and easy; you will be raking in the money before you die.)

Of course, I understand her concerns. She would like me to be making money (as getting a paycheck) tomorrow, rather than a quarter or three down the road. Again, for the newbie in the audience, even on a self-pub site like Smashwords, it can take awhile to get cut a check; it takes a calendar quarter for the distributors (iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, etc.) to send their sales figures to Smashwords, who in turn waits to pay you when the next quarter ends (plus thirty days)---nevertheless, it is still more timely than the print market was.

Anyways, I digress. The important part is that I can foresee making my time investment back (provided that the initial figures are a true indication of how well I am going to do). In fact, I may even make a nice little profit. That means that the future is a little brighter; I might have to invest in a new pair of sunglasses.

For those who are curious what I am doing on Smashwords, you can download a free copy of some my work. The rest of you can just sit here and watch the following video by Timbuk 3: The Future's So Bright.

 

Who died and made you editor?

Yesterday, I had a piece that I had written rejected because...well, I am not exactly sure. The form rejection said that it did not exhibit correct grammar, sentence structure, spelling and punctuation, which is like saying that something is not orange; it really does not narrow the actual problem down.

Looking over the piece, I could only find one sentence that was awkward. The rest of it would have gotten by the harshest of my university professors.

So I am left with wondering why it was rejected. Could it be that they did not want to pay for the piece and that was a handy reason. Or could it be that online editors are not necessarily qualified to do the job in the first place.

Yes, it was an online rejection.

I miss the days of the print market. At least there, you would occassionally get your article back with a sentence circled, so you would know where to look. But online rejections are even more cryptic than the form letters of the print market.

Looking over the piece, I noticed that I was writing at a college level; I was using complex and compound sentences, and some colons and semicolons.
And that is why I think the piece got bounced.

Call me paranoid. But there is one thing I have noticed from college class peer reviews and writing circles: if a person does not know why something is being done grammar-wise, they will say that it is wrong.

And a lot of online editors are not editors by trade. They are business people, computer people, and other people who did not have to suffer beyond eighth grade English (as in they never needed to prove that they knew what a semicolon was good for). These are the type of people that would prefer you to commit the crime of creating a comma splice, rather than use a semicolon.

Maybe I am wrong in this case. But the nagging voice in the back of my head tells me that I just encountered another editor who should not actually be an editor.