(continued from left-hand column)

If your story is accepted, please pay attention to the contract. If it says you must have a PayPal account to get paid, open a PayPal account. If it has an exclusivity period, pay attention to it. If it tells you what the discount is for extra copies for authors, don’t bother the editor/publisher with questions about how much extra copies cost

Finally, we get to the editing itself. First of all, remember that the call for submissions was made and your story was selected because the editor/publisher wants to put out a quality publication containing great stories on that topic. Accordingly, assume, even if the editor is heavy-handed or even occasionally misguided in making comments, suggestions, and changes, the goal is to make your story better for the reader. Approach comments with an open mind. It’s easy to get defensive or protective of your work or to take comments personally—I sometimes still have to stifle that urge, even with my long years in the business—but, it’s all just part of the process of being a professional writer.

That’s not to say you have to roll over for every comment made. Just pick your battles carefully, especially if the manuscript is marked-up heavily. Do you really care that much about a punctuation or word change? Or do you care more that the editor misunderstood a character’s motivation or suggested a change which upsets the timeline? If you tend to write long and/or submit at the upper end of the word count range for submissions, don’t be surprised if the editor trims for space and pace. If you don’t like an editorial suggestion or don’t want to make the change, don’t just say “no.” Either suggest an alternative way to solve the problem or explain why leaving the text as written is important in the context of the story. This may be because the seeming error is not, in fact, an error (e.g., an uneducated person may use poor grammar in dialogue) or because the editor has missed some earlier reference, clue, or explanation. Remember, though, to think through the situation dispassionately and objectively. Keep in mind that some comments may have been made because of a lack of clarity at some point earlier in the story.

Sure, editors can be confused or mistaken (they work on multiple stories and projects in a limited time frame), but sometimes an author knows what he or she meant to convey so well, they forget they didn’t actually convey everything they meant to the editor/reader. While you might be able to explain why a particular comment is incorrect to the editor, you won’t be sitting at the shoulder of every reader to give that explanation, so it may make sense to suggest a clarifying change elsewhere when rejecting a specific edit.

Editing is a tedious and time-consuming process. Remember, you, as the author, are only dealing with one story. An editor may be dealing with ten or twenty or thirty stories in an anthology project or magazine issue and may have multiple such projects going on at any one time. So, if the editor wants your changes via the word-processor’s “Mark Changes” feature, do it that way. It they want you to send an email discussing comments by page, paragraph, and line number, do it that way. Make their life easier and they will remember for future projects; make their life harder and they may reject your future submissions unread.

Lastly, once the project is complete and the product is out, carry your share of the burden of marketing the book. Write about it in your blog (with imbedded links to where to purchase), post about it on social media (with imbedded links to where to purchase), do a reading at a local store or genre convention (with copies available for sale), and tell your friends, your fellow writers, and your alumni association.

Anthologies are not generally big money makers and one of the things that makes them work at all is that the marketing muscle of ten or twenty or thirty authors is greater than the marketing muscle of just one author, editor, or publisher. It’s fine to get a copy to show off—maybe one for your mom, too—but if the book doesn’t sell well and make money, it is less likely the editor or publisher will do more anthologies, which makes it harder for all of us to sell our stories. You may think you are too cool to bother with marketing, but think about how cool you will be if people actually read your work and you get fan mail or get a new opportunity to write another story or book or win an award or become a best-selling author. Heck, maybe someday somebody will ask you to edit an anthology so you can write a blog like this, too.

In the meantime, take a look at Familiar Spirits and let me know whether you think I did a good job, in spite of all of my crabbiness and complaining about the process.

Writer on Demand TM Story Collections Now Available Via Kindle Unlimited

Over the years I've written over sixty pieces of short fiction. In the early days, it was either tie-in fiction for gaming properties or stories for themed anthologies for DAW. More recently, there have been stories for anthologies put out by Origins Game Fair or other groups I'm connected with, along with spec pieces I've written for open calls, contests, or just because I had a story idea I had to get rid of so my mind could focus on other stories.

Some of my stories have been reprinted by other anthologies or magazines long after their initial publication (including in Flame Tree's nifty hardcover of Detective Thrillers featured in the photo at the top of this newsletter), but years ago I also started packaging them (and the occasional new story) in groups of three to five stories by genre and putting them up for sale as ebooks under my Writer on Demand TM brand name. The covers, especially, the early ones, are not stupendous, but it's hard to justify spending money on something that is never likely to be a big seller unless lightning strikes and I become a famous writer for something else I've written. (I'm not holding my breath.)

The modest sales have dwindled off a bit, so I recently decided to put the entire seven volumes of my Writer on Demand TM story series onto Kindle Unlimited. That way, they're still available for purchase by everyone on Amazon, the biggest e-book platform, but anyone who subscribes to Kindle Unlimited can download them for free and maybe ... just maybe ... decide they like one or more of my stories enough, they'll check out my other books, stories, and collections.

And, then ... then ... I can watch the pennies roll in and pay for an occasional salty, crunchy snack to munch on while I'm writing ... or marketing ... other things.

You can check out the whole series here:

Tales of Gamers and Gaming

Tales of Humorous Horror

Tales Out of Time

Grim, Fair e-Tales

Tales of an Altered Past Powered by Horror, Romance, and Steam

Not-So-Heroic Fantasy

Shadow Realities 

Some of my other shorter items are on Kindle Unlimited, too, including my Christmas Carol Critique Collection items, my Crimson Life/Crimson Death collection, and a few individual short stories I've put up from time to time.

 BOOK REVIEW 

Creature Feature: A Horrid Comedy, by Steven Paul Leiva

As promised last month, here's the review I just posted on Amazon for this new horror romp.

Witty Wordplay in Period Piece Monster Mashup; Five Stars

Steven Paul Leiva has a writing style which has mostly disappeared from modern genre fiction. Avoiding both the graphic action-soaked pace of some tales and the plotless and tedious exposition of other alleged tales, he instead gives readers fun, smart-alecky characters doing wild and sometimes silly things in advancement of an understandable plot, all told with witty narration, laugh out loud wordplay, and wry observational humor, plus a touch of social commentary. Relaxing, enjoyable, and intellectually satisfying, which is more than you can say about most books these days. Take a look.

Click on the picture to get it in print or ebook!