Your hosts here at Writing Excuses have tried to answer the “how to get published” question before. We’re going to try again.

In this episode we begin with a discussion of New Media. Welcome to the Age of the Internet, everybody! The Web is now “old media.” When we say “New Media” we’re talking about social media — Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, user-generated content, and countless blogging tools.  After a brief warning about embracing the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent, Brandon, Dan, and Howard provide some examples for how these tools can help you.

We talk a bit about some submission practices that you should not practice, most of which Stacy Whitman covered with us back in episodes 12 and 13 of  Season 1. Then we throw you some off-the-wall suggestions that might get you published. Some of these cost real money, and none of them come with guarantees that they’ll work. We restate our firm belief that the best strategies for getting published hinge upon writing excellently and networking with people who write.

Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss. Howard owes him a plug after last month’s epic faux-pas at Penguicon. After bringing it up in this context, Howard probably owes him ANOTHER one.

Writing Prompt: For some reason, 1000 years in the future the most cost-effective publishing involves writing on human skin…

Blame for That Horrible Mental Picture of Howard Dressed as an Elf Sans Pants: Brandon Sanderson owns that blame, down to the last mote of scowling-with-eyes-averted disapproval.

Why Mayan Calendars Predict The End of The World in 2012: seventeen minutes in…

This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by Audible.

Visit http://AudiblePodcast.com/excuse for a free trial membership*.

*Note: From the Audible website, here are the terms of the free membership. Read the fine print, please!

Audible® Free Trial Details
Get your first 14 days of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan free, which includes one audiobook credit. After your 14 day trial, your membership will renew each month for just $14.95 per month so you can continue to receive one audiobook credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. A very small number of titles are more than one credit. Cancel your membership before your free trial period is up and you will not be charged. Thereafter, cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. Any unused audiobook credits will be lost at cancellation.

Powered by RedCircle

Transcript

As transcribed by Mike Barker

Key Points: Great writing and lots of it, first. Using social media to build an online following can help your career. Write, submit, write more, keep submitting.

[Brandon] This… we wanted to re-examine the whole getting published thing this year. We haven’t done a podcast on it yet this year. We wanted to look at it through the eyes of writers trying to get published right now. Have things changed? Are there new strategies you can use? What advice do we have, if any? Is this at all useful? I don’t know, but we’re going to try it anyway. All right. So. New media. Let’s talk about new media. Is this useful for new writers? What do I mean by new media?
[Howard] Uh, the web?
[Brandon] Well, more than that. The idea of twitter, blogs, user generated sort of… this content. New media generally refers to twitter and blogs and Facebook and these sorts of things.
[Dan] OK, social media.
[Howard] The Web is old media?
[Dan] It is.
[Howard] Welcome to the Internet age, everybody.

[Brandon] So, using new media. Is this useful for writers in getting published? New writers?
[Howard] I’m going to say it might be a useful part of a strategy, but beware the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent.
[Brandon] Oh. What is the meaning of that?
[Howard] The logical fallacy of affirming the consequent is… well, Brandon Sanderson has maxed out his Facebook friends at 5000, and he is a successful author, therefore if I can max out my Facebook friend count at 5000, I will be a successful author.
[Brandon] You’re talking about a false syllogism.
[Howard] Yes. That one is called affirming the consequent.
[Brandon] Is that what it is?
[Dan] It doesn’t work.
[Howard] Be careful with that.
[Dan] Now, social media, new media, can be very helpful. A great example of this is Mary Robinette Kowal.
[Brandon] OK. Tell us about what Mary Robinette Kowal did.
[Dan] She gave a great panel up at Worldcon in Montreal where she was talking about social media and said… and this is more or less an exact quote. She said, “I won the Campbell Award for best new writer based almost entirely on the strength of my blog.” At that time, she did not have a novel out. She had one or two short stories sold. People knew about her because she had a great blog. She continues to have a great blog, people read it all the time. That got her name out, connected her with an audience that liked her enough to vote for that award. Now, I’m not saying that this is a way to get awards. I’m saying this is solid evidence that building that online following can really help your career.
[Howard] Well, you say online following. I think that the strength of what Mary Robinette Kowal did, and we see that strength also in Jay Lake, John Scalzi, I see it in my own work, I see it in your work, I see it in a lot of people I follow and friend on Facebook and Twitter… is the networking among like-minded professionals and aspiring professionals. We go to conventions in order to try and meet editors, we go to conventions try and learn things from other writers, and the new media allows us to maintain these connections, to learn a little bit more about ourselves, in an environment where maybe we’re a little more comfortable and don’t have to be dressed as an elf…
[Dan] Unlike this current environment.
[Brandon] Those ears look great on you.
[Howard] Thank you. I like the ears and the hat.
[Brandon] I wish it were something else with it though, because it’s really distracting.
[Howard] I’ve got the boots. For those of you not benefiting from the video, I am wearing my boots.

[Dan] No one is benefiting from the video. Now, one thing that I’m going to caution people about is that when you’re using social media this way, you’re using it for networking, and you’re using it to get people to know who you are — to really make it work for you, you have to have something that you can lead them to. My example for this is actually your brother — Howard’s brother, Randy, who… if you’re not following Randy Tayler on Twitter, he is the funniest guy on twitter, I swear. He’s hilarious.
[Howard] Randy Tayler. T-A-Y-L-E-R.
[Dan] Three or four times a day, just a jaw-dropping joke will come out. But there’s nothing… that doesn’t lead to anything. You can’t follow that back and say I should buy his book.
[Howard] In marketing terms, it’s a fantastic marketing message without a call to action.
[Brandon] This is a little bit like what Cory Doctorow said to me when I said, “What do you think of this thing I’m doing with Warbreaker?” If you’re not familiar with Warbreaker, my novel, I put it up on the Internet for free in draft form for people while it was going along. He said, “I think it’s a great idea. I’m glad you’re doing this. To be perfectly honest though, I wouldn’t advise most authors to do this because you’re making them wait to buy the product way too long.” He actually said, “If I were going to do it, I would post those drafts one month apart after the book comes out. Here’s draft one. Here’s draft two. Or even work backwards. Here’s the latest draft, here are the drafts… so that people can get excited about this concept of oo I get to see the drafts as it’s being built and things like this. And I can click the link and buy the book.” Which, I think, is another way of putting it. People ask me all the time, “Do I think releasing Warbreaker for free on the Internet was a useful experiment?” Yes it was. But because of some very specific circumstances I was in. I don’t necessarily think that you as a new writer releasing your book on the Internet is going to get you a publishing deal. I don’t think that’s very likely.
[Howard] And yet there are guys who have pulled that off. There are exceptions to the rule.
[Brandon] I’m going to talk about it. For sure. It worked for me because I already had an established audience. And beyond that…
[Howard] You already had a publisher.
[Brandon] I already had a publisher. It worked for me also because right about a year after I released it online, about 3 million people decided to say, “Who is Brandon Sanderson?” Because the Wheel of Time book was announced, and 3 million eyes turned on me, and they came to my website. A large number of them downloaded Warbreaker, to say, “Well, let’s see who this joker is and let me see if I like his fiction.” Giving them a free sample was very useful for me. It worked for John Scalzi. John Scalzi released Old Man’s War I believe chapter by chapter on his blog before he was a published writer.
[Howard] Did he get all the way to the end? I thought he got about halfway through it before…
[Brandon] I don’t know how far he got before Patrick called him.
[Howard] The other… the other one was… gosh, now, I can’t remember his name and I feel silly because he’s local. The Monster Hunter International…
[Dan] Larry Correia.
[Brandon] He self-published it. Didn’t he? Oh, no, he published it on…
[Howard] Larry Correia. He published it online, he serialized it on the web.
[Dan] He serialized it on the web. First.
[Howard] He did self-publishing, and then Baen Books came along and picked it up.
[Brandon] And then got a book deal. Let’s look at why these situations work, because we really shouldn’t say to you don’t try it. In fact, I never want to say that. Yes, go try it. But I want you to understand why these things are working for these authors, so that maybe you can make use of it as a new writer. John Scalzi had a very, very popular blog. He, much like Mary Robinette Kowal, had lots of people coming… had eyes on him already. How did he do this? He was a great blogger. This is something I think we should bring out. If you are a great blogger, or have interest in becoming a great blogger, if this is something that’s exciting to you, if you have things to say… and they don’t necessarily have to be about writing. In fact, maybe they shouldn’t be about writing. They should be fun and informative and interesting to a large broad base of people. If you can do that, and build an audience on your blog, you can then leverage that by doing something like this. Why did it work for Larry Correia? Does anyone… anyone talk to him about that?
[Jordo] He told us on the episode.
[Dan] He told us when he was on the episode more or less that same thing. He had found a very specific audience of gun fanatics, and wrote a book designed for them in which people use cool guns to kill monsters. Because he knew his audience and he wrote toward it and marketed it very well, he had a big enough audience to get the attention of a publisher.
[Howard] The thing to keep in mind is that the publishing deal he landed was not initially a super sweet deal.
[Brandon] It was not.
[Howard] It was a small deal, bat was essentially the foot-in-the-door deal for a first-time author. The book did well enough that he’s got a deal for a second book and additional books.
[Brandon] But he’s had to prove himself every step of the way. It has not been easy for him.
[Howard] That right there is… in terms of strategies for getting published, your strategy should include more than just the first contract. You need to remember that you are going to work hard to build that career.

[Brandon] The best thing… we probably should have started the podcast with this, is by saying the best strategy for getting published is to have great writing. Have great writing first.
[Howard] Great writing and lots of it.
[Brandon] Everything we’re talking about in this podcast are ways that you may be able to increase your chances of getting the right eyes on that.

[Brandon] But let’s go ahead and do our book of the week. Howard, do you want to talk about this one?
[Howard] I want to talk about it because of the… yes, Patrick Rothfuss, Name of the Wind.
[Brandon] Because you owe him one.
[Howard] Because I totally owe him one. And he owes us a second. I shouldn’t have even said that.
[Brandon] A second book, you mean?
[Howard] Exactly.
[Brandon] He’s going to swear at you again.
[Dan] Now you owe him another one, Howard.
[Howard] I owe him like five. He wrote The Name of the Wind over the course of many years. I don’t know the exact count. This was his first book. It’s a brilliant, brilliant book. Because his first book was so successful, demand for his second book was quite high. Pat’s strategy for putting out the first book was not a strategy that prepared him for cranking out the second book in a timely manner. Bless his heart, he’s taken a lot of flak for that. Some of it, accidentally, from me at PenguiCon. Pat, I’m so sorry. Go download your free copy at audiblepodcast.com/excuse, get a free trial, and you can listen to Pat Rothfuss The Name of the Wind.
[Brandon] This is a wonderful book. I think all three of us have read it and loved it.
[Dan] Absolutely.
[Brandon] Plus Pat appeared on Writing Excuses and was very charming and is just a fantastic person. Really, if you haven’t read this book, you are missing out. It is wonderful.

[Brandon] All right. So. Bringing it back. Let’s talk about other strategies. Do either of you guys have anything you want to throw out at new writers who are trying to break in right now? What would you tell them other than write great books and network?
[Howard] I’m going to give them some don’ts real quick. Don’t print it on colored paper, don’t perfume the paper, don’t try and do anything fancy with your submission packet to make it stand out, because…
[Jordo] Listen to Stacy’s podcast.
[Howard] Listen to Stacy. She talked about that at length.
[Dan] Back in season one. You can find it.
[Howard] Back in season one. All of those tactics will just get in the way. If you want to stand out with an editor or with a publisher, you want to stand out because you have met them in person, you have shaken their hand, and you have proven yourself to be personable and easy to work with. Then they will remember you. If they remember you for the perfumed paper, it’s because they threw your manuscript in the trash.
[Brandon] Now I will say one thing here, to maybe add a caveat. Maybe I shouldn’t do this, but since we’re sort of trying to push the envelope a little bit here, and say… if you do something absolutely brilliant and it is the first time it has ever been done, it might work. Perfuming the paper won’t. Doing some of these little tricks, won’t. The problem with trying any of these things is that you could flop hard-core and fall on your face and look stupid. I think when John Scalzi published a book on his website, if people had said… if he had told people he was going to do that, the conventional wisdom would have been, “No, no one will pay attention to that. Don’t do it, John.” And yet he was one of the very first people to really publish a professional novel like this on a high profile blog, and it worked for him. Things like this do happen. I wonder if there are some sort of extreme things that you could try if you were very, very… how shall I say… if you were very gutsy? And you are willing to…
[Howard] OK. Gutsy. Free idea. And this is for somebody who’s got a good coder as a friend. You have your friend code up a twitter aggregator, and you write your novel via twitter clients with a different twitter client for each point of view. And you write your novel 140 characters at a time. Is it a good idea? Probably not. Has it been done before? I don’t think so.
[Dan] There actually is a twitter project called twistory where…uh… it’s actually some local Utah writers who will replay historical events exactly the way you are talking about. So like the Cuban missile crisis was the one they just finished up. That took… in real time, all the different characters had a twitter, and you could follow the Cuban missile crisis. I think writing a novel that way would be fascinating.
[Brandon] It could be. It could be interesting. These are… like I said, this is the sort of thing where you could fall on your face hard-core. I mean, the one I would throw out…
[Dan] And if you do, it’s not our fault.
[Brandon] Yeah, it’s not our fault. The one I would throw out is if I were really wanting to get published right now and I were extremely confident in my work as I was during the early years, which I hope was legitimate…
[Jordo] You’re not now?
[Brandon] What, I’m not now? Oh, boy. I would go and I would get five friends and we would each chip in several hundred dollars and I would buy five iPads and I would preload them with my books and I would go to Worldcon and I would give them to 5 editors that I wanted to look at my writing. For free.
[Dan] OK.
[Brandon] That’s like spending 400 bucks. Something like that, you might be able to pull off once. You know what I’m saying?
[Howard] Here’s the thing. There’s a lot of aspiring writers who have day jobs and disposable income and are looking at, “Is there a way for me to spend $2000 on ads that will get me noticed?” You know what, the iPad trick, it’s certainly going to get you remembered.
[Brandon] Right. It might be too late to do this now. IPad’s already… it might be saturated. But I would pay attention to which editors can be… I would be watching them, doing my homework, and see… if there’s an editor who says, “Gee, I wish I had an iPad…”
[Howard] [finger snap. Pop.]
[Brandon] I would mail them an iPad the next day with my books loaded on it. But I was very confident. I would’ve been willing to spend $800 for the chance that an editor that I really liked would be willing to look at my books.
[Dan] Out of gratitude for a free iPad.
[Brandon] Out of gratitude for a free iPad. These are the sorts of things… I mean, you can do stuff like this.
[Howard] That has to be a good book, though.
[Brandon] That has to be a really good book.
[Howard] I do not want the editor feeling guilty when they delete my book from the iPad because it was just a disgrace to this wonderful apple device that they are now holding…
[Brandon] What are you saying about my writing, Howard?
[Howard] I’m saying that you could have pulled it off.
[Brandon] Yeah, well. It’s not my fault if you try that and it’s a waste of money, by the way. I’m actually just trying to…
[Dan] Let’s finish up with just the…
[Howard] Just brainstorming…
[Dan] Just come up with new things.
[Howard] Yeah, we’re brainstorming.
[Brandon] We’re brainstorming.

[Dan] Let’s finish by saying that the old methods are probably still the best.
[Howard] The old methods still work fine.
[Dan] Write something really good and submit it. And when it gets rejected, submit it again. And write something new.
[Howard] And keep writing.
[Dan] Always be writing, always be submitting.
[Brandon] I want to throw networking in, though, too.
[Dan] Yes. Networking is how Brandon and I both got our feet in the door.
[Brandon] Be networking, be writing good writing and submitting. That’s still the best way. We haven’t even touched on the idea of using self-publishing with e-books as a way of drawing an audience and things like that, but I don’t see this as being even… it’s more viable now than it used to be. I still don’t see it as being very viable.

[Howard] I’m going to go out on a limb and I’m going to say as a web cartoonist in the sci-fi genre, with the following I’ve got, and with a good following among writers, I have the opportunity if I come up… if I write a good manuscript and I would love to do this… I can put my manuscript one time in front of a top-of-the-line agent and editor. I can leverage my whole web career for one shot. If I screw it up, then it’s over, and I’m a web cartoonist forever. I probably wouldn’t mind that.
[Brandon] See, but you could also leverage it for… posting it on your website and drawing attention to it. You’ve got a lot of eyes that would look at it.
[Dan] Absolutely.
[Howard] I’m not promising you guys the Howard Tayler novel next month.
[Jordo] You told me it was the Star Trek furries.
[Dan] See if you can beat Rothfuss.
[Howard] Oh, gosh.

[Brandon] We will want to re-examine this in a few years. If the e-book revolution happens, which I honestly don’t believe it will, but some people are projecting 2012 as the year of the e-book. In fact, one big industry professional projected that was the… that by the time of the presidential election 2012, that would be the tipping point where we would have a market collapse.
[Howard] That’s why all the Mayan calendars end then, because they had to go electronic.
[Dan] Because of the publishing industry.
[Brandon] If publishing does go about 20 to 25% electronic… if readers… 20 to 25% read electronically instead of physical books, it will crash the physical presence of physical bookstores because they will lose enough of their… they run by a thin margin. It could crash the entire system, and then the mass-market paperback will collapse in the US like it did in the UK. It happened there like 20 years ago. Then we will re-examine. For now, traditional publishing is the best way to go. It is, for the foreseeable future, the best way to go. I still suggest you follow these same things. I know it’s excruciating, but it’s the way to go.
[Howard] It comes down to, even if that market crashes, the good manuscript, whether it’s electronic or on paper or on glossy pages or printed to the inside of your eyelids, the good manuscript is always your best strategy.
[Dan] How much does it cost to mail someone your eyelids? Or someone else’s? I’m not asking for myself, it’s a friend of mine…

[Brandon] Writing prompt. Books on the inside of your eyelids.
[Dan] Yes. Printing on human skin, for whatever reason, 1000 years in the future becomes the most economical and publicly acceptable way to publish a book.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. We had way too many tangents in this episode, so maybe you do have a few excuses. But go write anyway.
[Howard] On human skin.
[Brandon] Don’t write on human skin.
[Howard] On human skin.
[Brandon] Like on Howard’s.
[Howard] OK. No human skin, please.