I’m putting up this post in the middle of the fear sequence as it appears on my website, not because the post fits in the fear cycle, but because I don’t want to monitor the news for weeks to see what, if anything, has changed. On June 9, here in the States, Democrats in the […]
Continue ReadingOne of my traditional publishers paid me in September. I was surprised. Not because I didn’t know about the money. I did. It was an advance for rights in translation for an entire series of books. I was surprised because the contract called for payment to arrive within 60 days of the contract’s final date…and […]
Continue ReadingI have come to the point where I can’t ignore the contractual changes in the industry any longer. The topic has become so large that I will probably end up with two books out of it: The revised Dealbreakers, and a book on contracts. When I start discussing contracts, most indie writers tune out. But they shouldn’t. Indie writers sign contracts all the time. Some are for foreign editions. Some are for short fiction. Some are with their cover designer. Some disguise themselves as terms of service.
Not everything I write here will apply to the indie writer, but much of it will.
Remember: the more you understand about this business, the better off you will be. And the harder it will be to take you off-guard….
Continue ReadingThe new year hadn’t even had a week to catch its breath before the first year-end numbers for 2014 appeared. The definitive numbers—if you can call any numbers “definitive” in traditional publishing—won’t show up until late February or early March. But the early numbers reveal quite a bit. Publishers Weekly spent the first full week […]
Continue ReadingLet’s start with some really cool statistics. The first is reliable. It’s based on daily data received from 70 million retail locations all over the United States. Here it is: In the first quarter of 2013, brick-and-mortar bookstores saw a 27% increase in foot traffic over the same period in 2012. Combine that with the […]
Continue ReadingI live on the beach. Here the sand shifts daily. We expect it. We watch it. The tide comes in; the tide goes out; the sand moves. But I grew up in the Midwest. The land is firm there, solid. When someone builds a road it remains a recognizable road. Frigid winters and hot summers […]
Continue ReadingIn the traditional news cycle, politicians, major organizations, and anyone with a PR brain dump stories into the week before Memorial Day (and sometimes the week after) in the hopes that no one will notice. Generally speaking, no one does notice because most of America is focused on the three-day weekend and the unofficial start […]
Continue ReadingThe Business Rusch: The Changing Definition of Publishing Kristine Kathryn Rusch This week, the announcements for the Pulitzer Prize shocked the publishing world because, for some reason, the Pulitzer board declined to chose a winner from the three fiction nominees. Lost in the controversy (besides the hurt feelings of the fiction nominees and the fact […]
Continue ReadingThe Business Rusch: Quality Kristine Kathryn Rusch Last week, I finally figured out how to describe the changes going on in the publishing industry. My post, “Scarcity and Abundance,” went viral. If you haven’t read it, please do so, just so that I don’t have to redefine my terms again. As usual with a viral post, […]
Continue ReadingThe Business Rusch: Writers, Venture Capitalists, & Barnum. Oh, My. Kristine Kathryn Rusch I have a magpie brain. I pluck information from various sources, store it in some nest in a back corner of my mind, and pull out the necessary pieces when the time comes. Last December, I did a lot of driving for […]
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