WORK:Shifts in Fiction Delivery 2001

WHY 80% OF WOULD-BE WRITERS NEVER SELL

Caldwell : BTW, I did make a discovery this morning and it might help us with Teenagers! I found a childrens directory whose market audience is children, parents, family, teens. You can advertise, do links, etc.

JL : Oh, that's a great FIND -- it'll help to market your nonfiction books -- and some novels too. I'm glad you're following up on tour I gave you of types of book-promotion sites you can build to support marketing efforts for Teenagers!

Caldwell : I just submitted a sci/fi/fantasy short story to Wildclown's new ezine mag. He read my outline and asked me to submit it.

JL : Way to go Elizabeth!

Caldwell : Yeah, keeping my fingers crossed and will keep you up-to-date.

Karen : :-)

JL : Yes, we'll want to advertise that short-story if he publishes it -- brag about our Spotlighters and students here. We always brag about our students when they sell something.

Caldwell : I attended the chat Wed. night with Sherry Gottleib. She said some things that I think are appropriate for would-be writers. She told us that 80% of would-be writers would never be published.

JL : That's about right. 80% AT LEAST.

Caldwell : So, don't even think that you can get a first time book published.

Karen : That's DEPRESSING but true.

Caldwell : If that's the case, why bother if you can't get something through the front door.

JL : No, it's not depressing -- it makes you ask the RIGHT QUESTION - 'What's the difference between the 80% and the 20%'? And the answer to that question is all over simegen.com because everything posted here is related to the writers' problems creating and marketing material and the readers' problem finding the material they want to read. In a nutshell, the difference between forever amateur and professional is nothing more than ATTITUDE. See the Student Contract page for Registering with the WorldCrafter's Guild. Students here pay their tuition with their words -- right now, with the publication of this Workshop piece, Elizabeth Caldwell is paying her tuition bill to the school. You have to take a COMMERCIAL ATTITUDE. Your words are coin-of-the-realm. They are valuable and you must get value in return for them.

JL : Once you've got that attitude mastered, you must analyze your market and look at your work as commodity to be funneled into that market.

Karen : It is a commodity.

JL : Indeed. You have to target a particular, well-defined, and exact audience.

Caldwell : If that's the case, Sacred Honor (the historical novel I'm working on now) should sell.

JL : It should if the market for historicals holds up. You have to think in terms of MARKETING -- not writing to please yourself. But ART is made by writing to please YOURSELF. How do you combine these two opposite goals?

Caldwell : I have no idea. I stink at marketing.

JL : Most writers stink at marketing -- that's why we need Agents, Editors, and publishers who have a publicity department. However, with the e-book market, so far publishers do not deal with Agents, and do not either edit (you're lucky to get a quick copyediting most places) or promote your work. The writer must take on 3 separate jobs for which the writer is usually unprepared. Also the writer's inherent temperament usually makes them lousy at those 3 separate skills -- selling themselves, editing at all nevermind self-editing, and publicizing their work. WorldCrafters Guild exists to become part of the solution to that problem. The freelance writer of tomorrow, trying to make a living from fiction writing must create a new business-model for their endeavors. The new business-model for the freelance writer is what we intend to tackle in our School of Business.

JL: So how do combine the goal of writing to create Art with the goal of writing to be Marketable?

JL: You FIRST DRAFT in complete self-indulgent, just for yourself to read mode. Then you take that raw material and twist it around, trim the edges, and make it fit through the pipeline I call the FICTION DELIVERY SYSTEM.

JL : However, to make that system work, before you let your story-ideas surface into consciousness you have to train your subconscious to THINK MARKETING.

Caldwell : Aha!

Karen : This sounds familiar....:-)

JL: Yes, Karen I've said this many times, many ways. Art is created in the subconscious -- commodity is created by what the conscious mind does with the material the subconcious tosses up.

Caldwell : Train my subconscious.

JL : One shortcut to training your subconscious to find stories that are marketable is, I believe, to read and study my review column here on simegen.com. It discusses novels as a dialogue among writers, a dialogue about major trends underlying our society -- ethical, moral and spiritual issues that have our Group Mind gripped in fascination. Once you learn to read novels from this perspective, your subconscious will present you with things to say - things to contribute to this dialogue. It isn't the particular novels which I review that should be the focus of this study -- but the method of reading itself. Master that, and you'll no longer be talking to yourself with your fiction - you'll be participating in a group discussion. Your books will then sell depending on how good a conversationalist you are.

JL : Then subconscious will toss up story-ideas that are pre-packaged to fit into the delivery channels because you've been reading and studying books which did fit through those channels.

JL : It's like learning to drive -- it's not something you LEARN -- it's TRAINING not LEARNING. (like riding a horse)

Caldwell : I've done horses, riding, jumping, etc. Haven't been on a horse for years. Sigh.

JL : Good -- then you know what I mean -- your BODY has to respond before your actual conscious mind knows what's happening. Balance. Likewise with writing -- your story-faculty has to respond to market conditions before your conscious knows you've got an idea.

Caldwell : I've been studying.

JL : That's why Jean's writing this new Sime~Gen romance FOR THE E-MARKET. Writing for the e-market is totally different from writing for Manhattan Publishing -- i.e. multi-national conglomerate publishing.

Karen : And a lot of people, including me don't want to sit at a computer to read!

JL: Yes, indeed -- and that's why the e-market so far is not a well paying market -- well enough paying to support Agents, full-time Editors, and Publicity Departments. But the difference between "Tree" and "E" publishing is not in the reading-device used. The difference lies in the size and breadth of the intended audience -- or "reach" to use the Hollywood term. The Manhattan conglomerates must have product with a very broad "reach." E-publishing is still serving the mid-list or "niche" markets. E-publishing can afford to do that because of the low-overhead. This situation may not last -- already the big publishers are launching e-initiatives because they're seeing their market dwindling.

Caldwell : How will I know if my novel has that wider buyership -- that "reach" necessary for the Big Publishers?

JL : No, I mean that you have to write TO a market-channel -- you change HOW you write by WHERE you intend to market it. You don't look at what you've written, then look around for a market for it. You look around for a market, then write TO that market.

Caldwell : ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!

JL : How to do that is what we teach at this school -- that's what the word PROFESSIONAL means in our designation. That's the difference between us and other writing schools or courses you'll find all over the web. We're training professional writers by teaching professional attitude toward your work. Most beginners resist this with all their might -- many of them even sell regularly and well for years and years before learning these tricks. But the learning is then very painful (and expensive). Learn it first, and it won't hurt at all.

JL : Before you let an IDEA for the item you want to write surface into your conscious mind, you have to have a TARGET AUDIENCE held closely in your conscious mind. To particpate in a dialogue at a party, you must pay attention to the person/people you're talking to. You must pay attention to what the people around you are saying. Then, when you have the urge to say something, it will be something the people involved in the conversation want to hear.

JL : Writing a novel is just like saying something in a group-conversation at a party. If what you say is appropriate, everyone will listen, and someone will say something based on what you said. If it is awkward, ill-stated, ill-timed, or inappropriate, you will be ignored or ejected from the party.

JL : Everything you put in or leave out of what you are saying is decided on the basis of what others have just said, and who is left standing around listening. Who are you addressing? And what are they currently thinking about?

Caldwell : Once you know your market, you write accordingly.

JL : Yes! All novels are composed on a framework or skeleton or template -- just like TV series shows. "The Modern Novel" is the name of that template. It has sub-divisions -- like action, adventure, action/adventure, romance, -- and one of the genres (though never called that) is "Best Seller" -- no manuscript will be publicized like a Best Seller if it's built on the template or formula of something other than the Best Seller template or formula.

Caldwell : Really? That I didn't know. Self-taught mostly.

JL: Yes, well every writer is essentially self-taught. But given the nature of the writer's basic personality -- almost every single one has to LEARN from someone else, the brutal fact of life that getting published means looking at your product as a commodity that will be poured into a pipeline.

JL : You choose your target audience, and that defines the exact FORMULA, then you let your IDEA surface configured to fit into that frame.

Caldwell : formula?

JL : It's not cost-effective to do it the other way.

Caldwell : Absolutely.

JL : yep, formula -- precise formula. The GENERIC FORMULA for the modern COMMERCIAL novel is laid out explicitly in our first course "Essence of Story."

Caldwell : I should take it, huh?

JL : No, you need to READ the course -- the syllabus and ALL the student homeworks. Most of the best info is in the student homework that's posted. You may want to do the Independent Study part of the course.

Caldwell : Then what?

JL : THINK about marketing this novel you're writing -- who will buy it and why.

JL : Before you run the final draft, write the cover blurb and the promotional material for the novel -- shape it to fit into the pipeline that will carry it to your intended readers. Then do the final draft to make the novel fit the promotion angle. Ruthlessly cut anything extraneous. Leave only the images, issues, themes, characters, motivations, etc etc that are part of the genre you are intending to market this as.

Caldwell : Okay.

JL : You already know how to do this, you just haven't thought to apply the same technique. Your TEENAGERS! book fits the EXACT formula for a book of that category.

Caldwell : HURRAY!

JL : Now you need to learn the formula for the kind of novel you want to market, and conform your ms to that formula. Next time, you take the empty template for the kind of novel you want to write, and create material to fit that template - it'll go a whole lot faster and thus more cost-effectively in terms of $/hour earned.

JL : Think about Templates this way. You're preparing a 4-course feast for a family of 12. You have to make a big pot of soup from scratch. When you get done making the soup, it has to go into the refridgerator, leaving room for the salad bowl, the serving platter of assorted meats, the bowl of mashed potatoes, and the big fancy desert box from the bakery.

JL : BEFORE you decide what exactly to put into that soup, and how much of it to make, you look at the space it has to fit into after it's all cooked down, you SELECT a cooking pot to hold the ingredients while they're cooking, you guesstimate the size-reduction during cooking (figuring in what you'll fish out and throw away after cooking) and you PLAN to transfer the cooked soup into a storage container of the right size and shape to fit into the 'fridge.

JL : the ultimate storage container that will fit into the over-stuffed 'fridge is like your Novel Template. Carefully chosen with foresight, considering the job it has to do, and where it has to fit.

JL : WorldCrafters Guild is here to teach you about all the kinds of Tupperware and ceramic ware you can get to store soup in your 'fridge. We can teach you about refridgerators -- how big they come, and how small -- and how many shelves they have, and whether you can put hot-soup in them or whether you have to let it cool first. We can teach you about soup-strainers, and ladles.

JL : What we can NOT teach you is about what ingredients to put in your soup. We can't teach you what kind of soup your family will prefer. Soup is an artform. What kind of soup you make, and what ingredients you use to make it -- that's your art. Nobody can teach you that -- NOBODY.

JL : My analogy is getting a bit tenuous here. The point is, the contents of your story is your ART -- and the Fiction Delivery System (the templates and formulas that publishers will buy) are your vessels. You can put ANY kind of soup in any POT. The choice of pot depends only on where that pot has to FIT after the soup is cooked.

JL : Likewise the choice of story substance is yours. You can put ANY story into any genre, pour that story-soup into any FORMULA that Manhattan, TV, Webcasting, or e-publishing invents. The choice of the container for your story depends only on the size and shape of the marketing channel you intend to use to carry your story to your audience. It does not depend on the story-soup ingredients.

JL : Oh, yes, the definition of genre includes the presence or absence of certain elements -- for example, if you have a vampire in your story, most editors automatically shove it over to the Horror genre. If you have a ghost in your story, it'll be classed as fantasy.

JL : We began teaching you how to do that in Essence of Story and we have continued adding supporting techniques here in the Workshop. We plan to expand on this in seminars soon. Notice how, in the "morphing across the genres" exercises in Essence of Story, the protag can be changed to a Cowboy, a Drill Sergeant, a Detective, a Freedom Fighter -- same protag, same theme, same conflict -- same STORY -- different genre -- i.e. different soup-pot.

Caldwell : I wrote a proposal for Teenagers! when sending out to publishing companies for consideration.

JL : Then do the exact same thing with the novel.

Caldwell : ok

JL : Because you did it right with Teenagers! -- that book is a perfect example of original material POURED INTO a container that fits the marketing channel.

JL : There's a FORMULA (a soup-pot styling) that "sells" -- you have to give the material the look and feel of the formula that is selling now or your MS won't get read and considered.

JL : If you are not an established Big Name, you have to show the editor you know the formula -- you know which style of soup-pot is in fashion right now. The Established Big Names get to invent new soup-pots for us to fill.

JL : After you've convinced your editor that you know all about soup-pots and their rapidly changing fashions, you can get away with stretching or distorting the formula here and there -- but only after you' ve proved you KNOW. And until you become their best selling author, you can't expect them to let you invent a new soup-pot.

JL : Now, what I've just explained is the DIFFERENCE between the 80% that never make it and the 20% who do -- the 20% know that soup-pots exist. The 80% are clueless about soup-pots.

Caldwell : Gotcha!

JL : And that's why the idea that only 20% of the would-be writers ever sell anything is GOOD NEWS and not depressing at all. Because once you know the CLUE - you've lost 80% of your competition in the dust.

Karen : It would be depressing to the 80% that don't make it. :-)

JL : Not if they enroll in WorldCrafters Guild pay attention -- and not FIGHT the concepts.

Karen : I know that.... do they?

JL : Yep - tooth and nail. The whole idea that art can be constrained by commercial requirements -- the suspicion that commercial requirements are not random, arbitrary, and set up just for the newcomer to destroy -- that's gut-wrenching. It just seems all wrong to any artistic soul -- and any writer can point to dozens upon dozens of excellently published books that seem to prove that soup-pots don't exist. It's the best-kept secret in the publishing world, and knowing about it is what makes a professional.

JL : Elizabeth, I showed you the Nessie site so you can see what can be accomplished with energetic promotion. No amount of promotion will help if you don't put your soup in a pot. You promote the POT, not the soup itself.

Caldwell : I know. I've been studying all the sites. Believe me.

Karen : My editing skills have been improved in 10 years. So I can imagine.

JL : It's all in the marketing, once you master the formula for the market you want to hit.

Caldwell : BTW, I thought I would do a Phantom of the Gold Mine for The Heritage Project I'm going to write a historical thread for Heritage. After reading the first episode, I've decided to use two historical characters from the gold mining era in CA, circa 1800s. The two individuals I have in mind are Lola Montez and Joaquin Murieta.

JL : Oh, I love PHANTOMS -- definitely do a phantom. Heritage is a Soap-Opera shaped pot. But that covers a lot of territory, from The Guiding Light all the way to Dallas and according to the New York Times reviewer, Gerald Jonas, it also includes Sime~Gen. No matter how good you are with the formula, you get nowhere without the marketing.

Caldwell : Well my internal subconcious came up with it late last night

JL : Phantom would be perfect -- you probably got the idea telling Linda about theme.

Caldwell : You may be right.

JL : see one - do one- teach one. you don't know it till you've taught it.

Caldwell : :-)

Karen : School's philosophy....see, do, teach. Been doing that a long time.

JL : I hope Jean's thread on contemporary complications on writers-L sparks a Heritage episode.

[To find the previous posts to writers-L, go to http://www.simegen.com/archives/ choose writers-L, then click the link to the archives. You may have to subscribe to the writers-L List before being allowed to retrieve the archives. If you have subscribed but don't know your password, have the software email you your password. The contemporary plot complications discussed involve cell phones.]

Caldwell : Me, too. I've been following Jean's comments. Sets me to thinking.

JL : That's what writers-L is FOR -- "setting to thinking'

Caldwell : I've got a terrorist story in mind.

Karen : uh oh :-)

JL : Terrorist would be good. Right style of soup-pot.

Caldwell : Oh no, Karen. It's from a newspaper article many years ago. And, it deals with a ahem, cell phone. The cell phone works as a mechanism to set off a potential third world war. The idea I've had for about a year. And, I spoke with a former CIA agent who told me it sounded plausible. I've got plot, conflict and theme, I'm working on it.

JL : I believe I mentioned something like that in one of my columns -- or a Workshop post. Watching a rerun of HART TO HART -- before cell phones where his whole financial empire was at stake for lack of a telephone while he drove a rally car-race across Italy. I pointed the episode out as a lesson for sf writers -- about backgrounding and how the use of background detail shapes plot and conflict -- and THEME. Today the device of a CEO of a Multi-national company losing the company for lack of the ability to find a working telephone along a highway would be contrived and unconvincing without explaining why he didn't have a cell phone -- and nobody else on the road or in the Inns and cafe's did either.

Caldwell : I'm also reworking my bio. It actually sounds intersting now. I'm way impressed with all the writer's and staff bios. It makes me feel inadequate.

JL : Creating an "interesting" bio is all in the way it's written, not so much in the inherently interesting properties of the events and accomplishments. Should I hold up posting your first draft then? Have you've applied the trick I was telling you about yesterday as the core of your promotional efforts?

Caldwell : Please do. Hold up my bio. I'm working from the 3rd degree angle.

[Here you will find the AIM discussion on how to write an interesting bio, and Caldwell's first attempt - which you can later compare with her posted bio. ]

JL : GREAT -- and BTW that exercise of writing your own bio is precisely targeted at the marketing trick we've been talking about here.

Caldwell : Well, you can how I applied it and whether or not I was successful with it.

JL : It polishes up one of the essential skills in marketing -- you do the same mental trick to figure out how to market a novel you have written. It's an exercise - not something you do once, something you do constantly. The more incessantly you do it, the better you'll get at it.

Caldwell : for short stories, too, I bet.

JL : Yep, especially for short stories because they're MORE market sensitive. Don't just practice on your own material either. Think critically about every commercial you see on TV - every: magazine ad.

Caldwell : It was suggested by one editor for me to write short stories. He told me that it was good practice.

JL : Depends what you're practicing FOR. Writing short stories can cripple your ability to write novels. Hence the Heritage Project which allows you to sharpen your short-story skills while still expanding your novel-structure abilities.

Caldwell : I never realized that scifi/fantasy stories could be market sensitive.

JL : On the other hand, House Of Zeor, the first published Sime~Gen Novel (not the first published S~G story though) is an 87,500 wd short story in STRUCTURE.

JL : SF/F is VERY market-sensitive. VERY, VERY market-sensitive. Why? Because the bulk of the market is teenage boys. And some girls now. Result - fickle marketplace. Why?

Karen : Karen shakes her head.

JL : Teens are fickle by nature of the condition of teen-ness. It's not a flaw in the teen-person - it's a virtue to be exploited.

Caldwell : Well, don't worry. I don't write short stories now. I'm way too involved with my novel and subsequent ones.

JL : But you need to understand the MARKETPLACE to market sf/f.

Caldwell : You mean that adults don't read scifi/fantasy stories anymore. Even from the most prestigious scifi magazines.

JL : Adults (over 30's) never have been the core readership of "sci-fi" and there's a good reason for that. Big Publishing only markets sf/f to teens. And we have an aging demographic -- the new teens don't read on paper.

JL : OK, I have MY pet peeves about sf/f marketing -- which is a sub-set of all the publishing industry and is currently suffering from the same mallaise.

Caldwell : That's why my stories didn't sell. Too sophisticated!

Karen : There isn't a lot of shelf space alloted for Sf/F in book stores anway.

JL : Good insight Elizabeth -- and Karen, yes, shelf-space is a key issue. Here's what sf/f marketing has been. (JL gears up to lecture mode.)

JL : SF/F originally was 'seen as' (by marketers) bought ONLY by teenage boys. So therefore, editors buy only things that will appeal to teenage boys, and THEREFORE only teenage boys read it. Result - violence and sex are the only items that MUST be there to sell big. (sex is a new addition and a result of our changing culture -- it used to be that parents would not allow teens to read anything that had any sex in it at all. And most of the young-teen boys really don't want to deal with real adult relationships, so "girls" were just there to show-off-in-front-of. )

Caldwell : Hmmm. Well, I did write one erotica short story. and one violent one.

JL : SF/F was originally seen as "action adventure" -- any story that has an sf/f element in it that is not structured on an action/adventure format (soup-pot) was automatically rejected. STAR TREK changed all that -- a little. One reason the current sf/f paper-publishing market has lost its "mid-list" is that the publishers refused to allow it to 'grow up' with its market's aging. Now there are too few teens out there to buy this stuff -- that's what killed the mid-list. I wrote and marketed an array of sf/f aimed at over-40 readers. It was uniformly rejected BECAUSE IT BREAKS FORMULA (and I wasn't a Big Enough Name to be allowed to invent a new formula). One prime example is Boxmaster's Home - you may read the first 4 chapters up to where I broke the formula (so far no professional has cared to read beyond that point), plus an outline of the rest. It is a sequel to two other (unpublished) novels which are also posted in partial format. The first novel in the series, Boxmaster, did sell, but the publisher never produced it.

Caldwell : How are those books written by well-known writers being published?

JL : Because they're WELL KNOWN and no other reason.

Caldwell : Ugh!

Karen : EXACTLY!! Even I know that.

JL : And they sell FAR FEWER copies of each title than they would have in the 80's. Also, the Big Names get big only because of advertising money spent promoting their novels. Today there's a lot less advertising money to go around -- fewer titles are chosen to be promoted. (the key promotional budget is to bookstore CHAINS, buying space in the window and front-of-store displays; buying "dumps" (those cardboard shelf-things full of one title). Bookstore traffic has fallen off, and product-display space is now occupied by magazines, audio-books, calendars, everything BUT novels. Like Karen said, it's all about shelf-space.

FROM THE WRITER'S POINT OF VIEW: here's what's happening.

Publishing houses are consolidating -- becoming bigger and bigger publishing houses with fewer and fewer editors who personally choose books. It used to be that editors had autonomy in choosing books to buy -- now almost every purchasing editor in the genres has to take their choices to a committee of managers (who don't read the genre and know nothing of editing -- who mostly don't read any fiction). The purchasing editor has to 'defend' their choice of books to publish -- very much as a Ph.D. candidate must defend a thesis.

The editor must present the book in terms of how many copies of a previous title JUST LIKE IT sold, not on the basis of the content of the book (the soup-flavor doesn't count; only the shape of the soup-pot counts). Also, one supreme factor in the manager's decision of which titles to publish is how many copies of this author's previous book sold within the last few months. The new book has to be "pitched" to the committee along with 10 or so others -- and each book gets perhaps 20 or 30 seconds to be presented.

One element in the decision is whether -- in that length of time -- the sales force representative on the management committee can understand the content of the book in terms of how HE/SHE can "pitch" that title to distributors and bookstore-chains at the next Book Trade Show. These sales reps mostly do not read novels. If they can't understand why they should go out and sell it, and how to sell it -- it's an automatic reject regardless of how much the editor (who loves to read) wants to publish it.

This system used to work fairly well to market mid-list books. It no longer works because of simple arithmetic.

It used to be that smaller, nimbler publishing houses could afford to publish at a very slender profit margin. It used to be that they could afford to print 65,000 copies of a book, sell 40,000 and clear their profit margin after paying the author and all costs.

Today, with the new tax law on warehouse inventory, with the price of gasoline, with the shrinking bookshelf space, with the sheer SIZE of the warehouse operation of a gigantic multi-national publisher, with the scaling-up of the marketing/distributing process -- publishers can no longer afford such a small profit margin -- and they can't clear that margin on such small print-runs. They can handle profitably only titles that are HUGE BEST SELLERS.

It is the same thing that's happening in every other industry -- economies of scale; just in time inventory. Books are treated by the industrial base as commodity to be moved, nothing more.

As a result science fiction lines that used to be robust are drying up. Print runs are still declining in some sub-genres and types of book. Magazines are folding. Concurrently, sales volumes are drying up.

Why are sales down? Demographics. The younger people who grew up on sf/f and read it voraciously all through college, found the subject matter less and less relevant to their lives as they topped the magic "30 years of age". The field of sf/f was not allowed to grow up with these people, and as a result the field got left in the dust. (this is history -- it's all changing FAST -- and to see how, read my column and pay special attention to developments on TV - most especially how Intimate Adventure has been hidden inside TV sex/violence shows like Witchblade. )

Meanwhile, the newest crop of kids (Generation D) were nourished on children's books about vampires -- which gave rise to the Buffy, The Vampire Slayer tv series (prime example of Intimate Adventure genre), and a plethora of other teen-oriented fantasy shows.

There is a whole new generation that just does not read words on paper. They're not illiterate -- they read and write millions of words on the internet. They play videogames -- they watch TV. They don't read books.

It has always been a bare 10% of the population that would buy and read books -- or take books out of the library. That particular 10% is also the better educated, more affluent, more likely to go to college, group. That is the exact demographic that has led the way onto the internet -- and devoted their 15 book-reading hours a week to internet activities instead. So they don't buy books the way they used to.

FROM THE AGENT'S POINT OF VIEW:

The good news is the melt-down of the entire publishing industry may well have hit bottom.

The three biggest wholesale distributors who control ninety percent of wholesale book distribution are still cutting back the number of titles they will handle each month. Currently, there are only 6 major-advance paying publishers left in what was a huge field of sf/f publishers. Those 6 have writer's contracts which are ever-increasingly less writer-friendly.

On the other hand, hardcover sales are growing. And several small publishers have entered the sf/f field and attained noteworthy status.

Certain small publishers are even getting solid library sales!

E-book sales are increasing -- however, concurrently with that has come during this bust-cycle of the dot-com industry, a consolidation of e-publishers. Many have just closed. Some have been bought out.

Translation markets are growing.

So, we may have hit a turning point, and things will begin to build again.

But the new world we face will not be a rerun of the old 1970's and 1980's Golden Age. WorldCrafters Guild exists to prepare writers to function and prosper in this new - e-based world where publishing has become part of The Fiction Delivery System.

JL : Therefore, the formula of what they will publish gets narrower and narrower. That's what's squeezing the traffic into the e-market.

Caldwell : So, the formula is.....

JL: To start learning the formula, see Essence of Story, read all the student homework, read the Independent Study boards. Read the Editing course. You'll find some of the more servicable soup-pots.

Caldwell : How do I study this market? I hate to spend all that time and creativity on something that will never see the light of day.

JL : That's a professional writer's attitude. So after you've written the novel you love -- study the market, pick a target, and final-draft it to shape it to the market that exists (the soup-pot that will fit into the 'fridge) no matter what it takes.

Caldwell : I hear you.

Caldwell : I've got a tentative market in mind, but now I'm not sure, it's the market I want to target it to.

JL : The novel you love can be posted online -- the novel that's published is one thing, the one you love is something else.

Caldwell : How do you distinguish between the two?

JL : The novel you love can't be "pitched" in 30 seconds to a person who doesn't read at all and make their eyes glow with greed. Make the salesmen see dollar signs by hiding the novel you love inside the soup-pot they love.

JL : CASE IN POINT -- Unto Zeor, Forever vs. SIME SURGEON

Karen : :-) Just re-read both, recently. Very different.

JL : Study Unto vs. Sime Surgeon -- that's what Sime Surgeon is posted online for -- to teach you this formula/marketing/ trick.

JL : The Novel I turned in (that eventually became Unto Zeor, Forever, got HACKED by a VERY good editor (well, she made me do it) -- and because of that, my second novel became my first prize winner. So we published one of the (4 or 5 ) early drafts, PLUS the out-takes (material deleted) from the turned-in manuscript -- so you can retrace the development of the changes from "the novel I love" to the "novel that won an award when published".

Karen : But UNTO itself isn't on line.

JL : http://www.simegen.com/jl/ right under my picture on that page you'll find the link to the used-book market online that usually has copies of my books.

JL : Do you see how this whole domain is focused on the solutions to the problems you're wrestling with trying to shape this novel you're working on for market?

Caldwell : YES I DO!!!

JL : That's what makes us so very different among writing schools.

Caldwell : You can say that!

JL : What we haven't yet managed to figure out is HOW to say that!

JL : We haven't figured out how to market this domain.

JL : Also, in terms of organization -- note how the solutions to your problems are here and you've been here a while already, but you haven't found those solutions yet.

Caldwell : Guess I looked in the wrong places.

JL : You don't know they're here until I drag you by the URL and push your nose in it and explain what you're looking at.

Caldwell : We need to make a presentation..

JL : we have one made in Power Point to use at conventions -- and it's nice - but it needs new graphics. It's too many Meg to run as a web-based thing. We're going to have to work out a new user-interface for this domain. But that's a topic for another day.

Meanwhile, you've got plenty to read, study, ponder, and practice.