As many of you already know, I write out of order. It is, perhaps, the most irritating part of my own writing process—at least to me. Fortunately, this new world of publishing really works for someone like me. Everything I write is not set in stone. I can move the pieces around when I’m done. Why am I starting like this? The clue is in […]
The Business Rusch: A Career Versus Publication
I was a bit stunned at the response to last week’s blog, not because the response was negative—it wasn’t—but because so many of you said that you had no idea that writing was a career choice. On a gut level, many of you knew that some of us had made careers as writers, but over the years—decades, maybe—the idea that a writer could not just […]
The Business Rusch: What Writers Need To Know
On Monday, I spent an hour talking with a very knowledgeable business reporter who works at a well-known business daily newspaper, one you probably read. I didn’t exactly speak to her on what’s called “deep background,” but that ended up being my function. She had found a blog of mine that pertains to an article she’s writing, and wanted an interview. I won’t know whether […]
The Business Rusch: Ghosts of Writers Future
Earlier this week, I sat down with the pile of estate planning books I’d bought to prepare for this series of blog posts I’ll be doing on estate planning for writers. My plan is this: I’ll blog about this topic about once a month as I research it and as I determine how to improve the wills that Dean and I already have. I wrote […]
The Business Rusch: Rights Reversion
Over the last couple of years, a number of writers have written to me to ask how to get the rights to their traditionally published novels reverted back to them. These requests increased while I wrote the most recent short series, “Why Writers Disappear,” and finally, one of the readers mentioned via e-mail that I should do a blog post on getting rights reverted. It’s […]
The Business Rusch: A Tale of Two Royalty Statements
Today I had hoped to write a blog about something other than traditional publishing contracts, but events have conspired against me. Cory Doctorow published a column on Publishers Weekly’s website about a new contract demand that might be coming from Hachette. Apparently, Hachette has decided to ensure that all of its e-books have some sort of DRM. That’s an acronym for Digital Rights Management which is just […]
The Business Rusch: The Future And Balance (Deal Breakers 2012)
I started this small series on deal breakers two weeks ago, in response to Novelists, Inc’s request for an update of an article that I gave them last August. I thought such an update would be easy until I read the article itself. Then I realized just how much had changed in the last year. Because of some of the responses I’ve gotten privately, and […]
The Business Rusch: The End of Reversion Clauses (Deal Breakers 2012)
Dean Wesley Smith and I have spent a good part of this summer teaching, as well as talking to other professional writers. One thing we discuss is the history of the business because it helps us understand how we got to where we are. In the beginning, publishing was a handshake operation. Writers and publishers were often friends who lived and worked in the same […]
The Business Rusch: Deal Breakers 2012
I have a sticky note on my computer marked “Deal Breakers—by July 30.” It’s a reminder to revise the deal breakers article I wrote last year for the binder that Novelists Inc. give out at their conference every year. I was scheduled to speak last year, but had to cancel because of problems with the estate we dealt with all fall. As a result, my […]
The Business Rusch: The Writer’s Guide To Evaluating A Traditional Publishing Company
The Business Rusch: The Writer’s Guide To Evaluating A Traditional Publishing Company Kristine Kathryn Rusch About once a week, I get an e-mail from someone asking me to recommend a traditional publisher for them. I can’t, not because I don’t believe in traditional publishing, but because I have no idea what that person wants in a publisher, what that person is currently writing, and what’s […]
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