Monthly Archives: September 2014

Archive Seasons 7-10, Career and Lifestyle, Guest, Live Audience, Season 09, Theory and Technique

Writing Excuses 9.40: Understanding Royalties, with Paul Stevens

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Paul Stevens, an editor at Tor, joined us in front of a live audience at Westercon 67 to talk about royalties. After a brief definition of the term, he explains how royalties are calculated, how they’re processed on Tor’s side, and what sorts of things authors should and should not expect.  We talk about contractual terms, advances, the differences in royalty rates between the different mediums (ebooks, audiobooks, paperback, hard cover), and much more.

We’ve had a lot of requests for an in-depth discussion of royalties. This, folks, is very definitely it.

 

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Write the writing prompt that Dan Wells should have given us.

The Hum and the Shiver, by Alex Bledsoe, narrated by Emily Janice Card and Stefan Rudnicki

Archive Seasons 7-10, Career and Lifestyle, Guest, Live Audience, Season 09

Writing Excuses 9.39: Publicity for Books

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Patty Garcia, Director of Publicity for Tor & Forge books, joins us in front of a live audience at Westercon 67 to talk about what publicity activities look like for commercially published genre fiction books. In large measure, these activities center around driving discussion about the books with the most-followed reviewers, and we talk about what some of those are. We grill her about what sort of criteria we should be using for review copies, and what other activities new authors and established authors alike might consider spending time on.

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Write a short essay that touches on one of your books, and that will drive interest in your book.

The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addisson, narrated by Kyle McCarley

Archive Seasons 7-10, Career and Lifestyle, Guest, Live Audience, Q&A, Season 09, Theory and Technique

Writing Excuses 9.38: Q&A at Westercon

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Peter Orullian joins us in front of a live audience at Westercon 67 for a Q&A. The questions include:

  • As a writer, how do you handle reviewing other people’s books?
  • How do you compartmentalize your writing to prevent that obsession from displacing everything else?
  • How do you create frightening, unique creatures?
  • What are the basics about networking at a convention?
  • Is there a yield for the average story idea?
  • What rules do you follow and what rules do you break when writing epic fantasy?
  • What can you do in critique groups to teach craft if you’re avoiding prescriptive critique?
  • How strongly do you believe that the audience won’t remember what you’ve told them, but will remember how you said it?

 

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Write about a support group for writers.

Spellcaster by Claudia Gray, narrated by Khristine Hvam.

Archive Seasons 7-10, Season 09, Theory and Technique

9.37: Training A Critique Group, with Kathleen Dalton Woodbury

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Kathleen Dalton Woodbury, the forum moderator at the Hatrack River writers group joined us at Westercon 67 to talk about critique groups. We cover how critiques should be offered, as well as importance of receiving critiques graciously and without defense, and we reflect on lots of the good and bad writing groups and critique groups we’ve been a part of.

This is hard to get right, but once you do get it right your critique group can become the team that helps you turn your work into something outstanding.

 

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A magic system in which the audio you play in your car will give your car superpowers.

The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, narrated by Jim Dale