Getting Your First Book Published

Turns out, I'm getting quite a lot of traffic on substack from folks here going there using the link to these articles.  Thank you for that; I assume you're interested in writing advice.

I've been thinking much about the subject and about the effort to remain positive, to not tear down, not to criticise and only to give purposeful advice that improves one's ability to write.  Not like the stuff I write here.  So this post would not belong over there (though I'm not really going to be critical).

What I'd like to do is offer a realistic breakdown of the writing industry at this time, without discussing publishers, writers or writing.  Just plain facts.

Suppose you're a first-time author and your book succeeds in getting on the Times Best Seller list.  As it happens, most debut authors get an advance between $5,000 and $50,000 before the book is finished.  If you get the latter, you're lucky.  As it happens, an author only earns royalties after the advance is "earned out," which means that the sales of the book have covered that upfront payment.  And yes, its entirely possible, in now and present times, to get on the NYTBSL and NOT have your book succeed in earning you $50,000.  But if you get that advance and you don't earn it out, you get to keep the rest.  You don't have to give it back.  Unless you sign a contract.

If your book is hardcover, you'll typically earn 10% on the list price of the book.  That's $2.50 every time a $25 book sells.  If it's a soft cover, the percentage is usually 7.5 to 8.  For ebooks, authors typically get 25% of the publisher's net receipts, but the ebook price is itself cut from the book price.

I've heard long-time authors refer to new authors as getting their "$7,000", which is in the range of what's typical — which is why they don't give first time authors $50,000 up front, unless you're famous for some other reason already.  But let's be generous.  Let's assume your book sells so well that it earns almost four times that: a nice, round, $25,000.  Well done you.

Here's a question: how many 8-hour days at McDonalds would you have to work to make $25,000?  Well, as many cities and places in America are starting to pay $15 an hour for that sort of job (and it's minimum wage in Canada, but obviously not with the USD buying power), let's use that as our baseline.  Number of days?  208.  That's about five full-time work months, assuming 5 days a week.

At this point, we need to ask ourselves, what's the typical length of a book on that makes the list?  Based on observable trends, industry standards, what publishers expect... on the whole, the range is typically between 85,000 and 150,000 words.  In general, if you're writing on a social issue, or with regards to a cultural subject, its easier to come in on the short side of that.  If you want to get into fantasy and sci-fy, expect to be on the far side of that.  But let's go easy.  Let's split it down the middle and call your book 120,000 words.

To equal your McDonald's paycheque, how fast do you have to write?

We can divide this into three phases.  Phase 1: get your first draft finished.  This is easy, like falling off a log.  You have 125 long, wonderful days to do this, so it shouldn't be a problem.  You only need to write 960 words a day.  That’s assuming a smooth, clean pipeline from brain to page. It assumes your plot works, your characters behave, your world makes sense, and the dialogue doesn’t sound like a school play. It assumes you aren’t stopping to sketch a battle map or rework a broken subplot.  You can't lose any weeks worldbuilding rabbit holes, you can't hit any dead ends and have to go back and fix, you can't have extra time to research or make a youtube video about your progress.

On the other hand, McDonald's expects you to be in on Monday, while the book can get shelved for three years and no one carps.

Phase 2: Rewrite your book; you've got 52 days.  You haven't time to fully rewrite the novel, not if you want to get it done in time to earn the same money you'd get at McDonalds.  So, at best, you'll revise about half the book, 60,000 words, trusting the rest.  Rewriting is more intense than writing so you'll need to step it up to 1,155 words per day.  About. 

Phase 3: Edit & Polish.  This is the easiest of all, right?  The book's written, you just have to trim, tighten, fix awkward phrasing... and be very careful not to have a crisis of conscience that your book is actually shit and you ought to write it over again.  After all, there's no pressure — it's not like the people who buy your book or write criticisms of your work, or post things on youtube or social media are going to denounce you, right?  I mean, the world will understand.  I'm sure it will.

How many words a day?  5,000.  For about 29-31 days.

There, you're done.  Congratulations, you've just earned minimum wage.

Assuming your book does sell $25K and not $7K.  In which case, maybe that big win you imagine where getting published is concerned is going to be something of a let-down, huh?

Here's my perspective.  I have been working "writing" jobs since 2004, by which I mean career work for journalism, media and business, 30 to 40 hours a week, and not a minimum wage.  I got those jobs because I could write.  Not in the overblown, dramatic, drum-banging way that fantasy fiction seems to demand nowadays, but through the use of direct, plain english.  In this regard, much of the time, I haven't been successful at this.  I've been unemployed a lot of the time and forced to work jobs that weren't writing oriented, and because of my nature, I've tended to over-stress my interests in D&D and other subjects over soul-crushing day jobs.

But in 20 years, I've earned 14 times the $25K calculation above in wages, by writing.  My self-published book, How to Run, made me personally that much, and Lulu and Amazon an equivalent amount.  Without stress added on by those who would exploit me.

Therefore, it's my personal opinion that the goal is not to learn how to write like those on the best seller lists, but rather, how to write.  Writing is an excellent way to earn money.  Employers really like people who can write.  They want to hire them, and they want to like them.  Forget the glamour.  Just get the skill.

... And the Frog Drowned

I'm always hesitant to rush into making announcements, and I always do so far too quickly.  As a result, many of the things I plan ... books, posters, etcetera ... never come to pass, so that the reader is disappointed or left wondering, "Is the bastard ever going to produce that thing?"

Unfortunately, I like show-and-tell.  And my relationship with this blog is far less a marketing site to push products, and far more a designer's blog to talk about what I'm working on.  Thus, last February, I posted a bunch of newly-created maps that underwent a series of changes before reaching a standardised format ... which, I feel, helps other designers to witness the design process and recognise how my experience fits into their own.

Likewise this year, I've written a series of posts on how one might write a book giving counsel to a new dungeon master ... and I've called that series "The New Dungeon Master," which might suggest I'm writing a book of that title.  This isn't a bad idea, and certainly something I ought to do ... which is odd, because a year ago, I'd have said, "No fucking way."  Still, I'm not ready to take that leap.  Not yet.

Thirdly this year, starting in late February, while writing about maps here, I began translating my character background generator from an excel file into a wiki post.  It is a very long wiki post, 265,313 bytes, and it's not done.  I maintained a fairly steady pace for about three months, then lost my taste for it in late June.  I have every intention of continuing the process ... and, as it happens, a strong incentive for doing so.

Through August, I've produced somewhat less map than in previous months.  I'll still have a significant amount to show tomorrow, just not as much as I normally would (and in a different dimension).  This is because I've let myself lapse into another project.  Yes I know.  But as the reader knows, sometimes my projects do reach fruition ... and with my life being a great deal less stressful, I feel pretty good about coming to the end of these various productive roads.

Here's a hint of this one ... which, as I say, is definitely being previewed way too soon.  I can't help myself.  It's just my way of stinging the frog.

This is, effectively, the same process as making the maps ... and like the maps, it translates awfully to the blog's graphic ability.  The above is a two-page spread of what the character background generator would look like as an 8x11 book ... the size of the original DM's Guide.  I did most of the writing for this back in February-March, this year.  The above reflects the preliminary lay-out.

For those who haven't done it, laying out material is an enormous headache.  It's struggling with white space, struggling to squeeze too much information into too small a space, and sometimes trying to decide how to best provide that information.  The individualised tables for each human/non-human cultural type is challenging ... and done better here than I did with the wiki, which will have to be changed eventually to reflect the above.  Column width in particular is brutally unfriendly.  Unquestionably, there will be those who will shake their heads at the above and pity my miserable design skills.

But I've printed some of these pages out to show various D&D players and the returns I get are generally favourable.  I hope to improve on these designs.  The shading needs darkening, certainly.  I haven't added page numbers and the columns are inconsistent ... but these pages ALSO haven't been fully edited for grammar and spelling, so there's no point in getting finicky with columns and so on.  This is a broad brush at best.  I have plenty of time to review and improve what's here, for which I'm thankful.

Those who have seen Tasha's Cauldron of Everything know that the book is full of large blank page areas, enormous fonts, page wasting so-so artwork, with other filler.  The book is the usual collection of new character classes, new monsters, new magic items and so on.

Producing my own splat-book of a kind, my sole marketing strength is the providing of solid material: lots of words, and entirely different sort of rhetoric, densely packaged and lacking in the usual listmaking, let's-reinvent-the-wheel content we've seen roll by for three decades.  Tasha's book runs 191 pages; I figure I need at least that many pages to mine off the ground.  I'm not worried that it may have little art, if the pages have 11 pt. font from edge to edge.

Incidentally, about tables.  After trying out a lot of different styles, I've settled on what is precisely the table format from the original books: no lines or border, with shading two or three lines wide (not single spaced, as later company splatbooks would adopt).I'm surprised how consistent and good this looks, as opposed to the cluttery alternatives.  Mixed with much black and white text, it is definitely preferable.

I can't say how long this will take.  I have serious plans to run a table at a game con in Vancouver in February 2023; I've made the downpayment for the table but I haven't heard back yet for confirmation.  I'll need to make sure to get that in the next few weeks.  I sent an email yesterday, but naturally it's only be a day.  I'd like to have this as a product on the table at that time, next to the menu and of course my old book.  Between selling this for $80 and the menu for $50 (or perhaps slightly higher prices), I think we'd make a killing.  That is a motivator to getting this done before Christmas.

Busy Designing

Rest assured, if I'm not writing here, I'm writing somewhere else.  My work was interrupted by the coincidence of life, but I've been able to get back into the saddle on my trade table, the poster and something new, that I intend to present before the end of the month.  I'm waiting for something to complete the project in the mail, whereupon after a few tweaks I'll be able to create a video demonstrating it.  When it goes on actual sale is up in the air, as there are still shipping issues to overcome; I haven't looked into an Amazon number yet, but that may be a necessity.  Weird, to be thinking on those lines.

At present, those who support me on Patreon enough to access the Higher Path should look here for a teaser.

Crass Commercialism

Well some of you may have noticed this blog has been down, restricting access for some time. For various reasons I've decided to step away from the OSR and the tabletop gaming web community - possibly permanently. Part my decision to withdraw is personal, I find myself with insufficient time and desire to write about games but I also have the sense that the 'OSR' scene this blog is devoted to has become a rather disgusting place where crass commercialization is strangling a formerly creative amateur community ...

Gus L., Dungeon of Signs 

In the last few years, I've seen several of this sort of post ~ not always expressing the end of their blog, but often disparaging selling of gaming products by single designers as "crass" and couched as detrimental to "creativity."  Gus L. goes on to include "alt-right" influences also causing his action, but we don't need to talk about that here.  I am quoting this blog only because I remembered where it was, so it was easy to find.  It is the sentiment that concerns me.

I don't want this to be a post excusing my behaviour, or explaining at length why I moved towards commercialism.  In 2015, I lost my comfortable job and turned to the internet as a means to help support myself.  I had published two books about role-playing in 2014, I published a third in 2015 ... and since then I've had a hard time of things.  I haven't been able to maintain reliable employment in an ongoing recession, along with tens of thousands of others in Calgary.  The news keeps saying the recession is coming and going, but no one I know has been able to identify any improvement since four years ago.

The most successful thing I've done has been to employ myself.  I am my only reliable source for income.  Three of the restaurants I've worked for in the last three years have closed permanently; the brick and mortar store I worked for last year is showing signs of collapse.  A straight job, working for a straight employer, obeying the cult of work, has been the bane of most everyone I know personally.  Amazon is killing retail employment across the board, and those I know who were comfortable in customer sales positions 10 years ago are scrambling for whatever they can find.

And this brings us to the subject of robotics replacing human employees, highlighted in at least one American presidential candidate running on a platform that acknowledges this is actually happening.  It is.  And while the magic solution of the government giving people money is a fantasy, the reality is that each and every one of us has one option left in the coming economy.

Find something you can do, and do well, then do it for money.  Being self-employed and a solitary worker, you can sell directly to your customers with a minimum of overhead, potentially finding the means to pay for your food, your rent and your small personal needs.  If you are too high-and-mighty to exploit your own abilities, because you believe abilities should be exploited traditionally by others who offer you a paycheque, and that self-employment is "crass," then may jeebus help you.  The capitalists and the government won't.

But, I would like to express an observation that has arisen out of my experience with this.  Success is often ... shall we say ... a bitch.  I've recently been told by a fellow artist [which I'm accepting as hearsay for now] that I am in the top 10% of earners on Patreon.  Yet I'm making barely a third of my needed income.  I make a bit more through my book-sales.  And I am quite often stressed by this, as anyone might be as they realize they need a second job or simply the panic they feel as they struggle to get more customers to walk into their shop.

I watched this happen three times with restaurants, as I said.  The managers cut the staff, they cut the hours, they cut the food quality, they cut the amount of food on the plates, they water the drinks, they adjust their hours, they police waste of every kind, they make the employees work insensibly on make-work tasks because they're being paid, after all ... and the stress level coming from the top increases palpably.  It is a frustrating and bitter thing to be manically polishing a restaurant until it glows for no customers that will ever come in.  When a restaurant bites the dust, it is often the cleanest it has ever been.

The worst part of commercialism is desperation.  The slow swing around the drain, knowing that you're going down, or merely the knowledge that you're not making enough and this can't last forever, is how it changes your intent.  We start thinking, "This is a good idea; I love this idea."  And we end thinking, "What can I sabotage?  What will keep me alive?"

Ladies and gentlemen, based on the receipts Mrs. Crummles has shown me, Liverpool has little relish for high-minded theatrical entertainments properly conducted. We must give them our pity. Now, we must give them something they will pay to see. "Romeo and Juliet."

Mr. Crummles, Nicholas Nickleby (2002)

Steadily, the all consuming purpose becomes, "What can I create, or write, that will win me an audience, since what I'm writing has such a limited appeal?"  And like polishing the brass and scrubbing the floors, and even pouring money into rebuilding the bar in an attempt to drum interest, there is always the risk that, no matter what we try, it won't work.  The fear that even if Mr. Crummles stages Romeo & Juliet, the ticket sales won't improve.

Maintaining your virtuosity in this mindset is difficult, for the pervading thought becomes, "Can I waste my time with this."  Years ago, when I lived comfortably and could afford to scatter my time, I could waste my hours with all kinds of things.  And now, there is a niggling voice in my head that is always saying, "Is there money at the end of this?"

I've never wanted that voice.  I watched that voice consume my 20-something friends decades ago, burying themselves in cars and houses and five-day trips to Cuba squeezed between ten hour days and mountains of stress.  Some of them were artists, who no longer sit at a piano or take up a brush to paint ... but they have space and means to travel and the enslavement of commitments.  I wanted to write.  I grew up in a wealthy neighborhood, I'd had space and travel, I'd ceased being impressed.  I wanted the freedom to waste time.  I think there is nothing so precious as having so much time that it can be wasted fruitfully and well.

But hauntingly, there is the voice.  The audience does not care for high-minded designs and writings.  Pity them.  But get their asses in the seats.  It's not a choice.  It's a "must."

Sigh.

Estate Work will Continue

Before I progress any further with these posts about estate development and management, I would like to explain my motivation and thinking process.

I would rather not adapt these concepts to produce a book, for three reasons.  First, a book will require illustration and I simply don't have the assets for that.  I could produce the assets through kickstarter, as Baron Opal lately proposed, but that would only mean that my readers were being asked to cough up money for someone else, and not me or my work.  If the readers feel motivated to donate, please do it directly to me and not for artwork, but for the things I do.

Second, much of the material I'm basing my work on originates with the game, Civilization IV.  I've considerably adapted the material and expanded its value, but still it is something the game company could haunt me for.  To escape that would require much reworking of the material to produce a less recognizable result ... which would not improve the material, it would only require a lot of skull sweat and clever writing.  I doubt that Fireaxis gives a damn about my writing about the game on a blog, as much as it might if I published a book, so that gives me reason to discuss the material here.

Third, on the blog I'm free to upgrade the material at will, as ideas present themselves and as adjustments need to be made.  The value of a blog is that it provides a living, breathing process of creation, whereas a book calcifies the moment it is published.  I don't see my being able to complete all the ideas I have regarding how to manage an estate within a stale time frame, because I know I haven't, and won't have had, all the possible ideas that will occur to me on this subject.  So again, it is better that I simply blog the process out, piece by piece.

I am keeping a running document on the side that is organizing all the material being discussed here without the sidebars I'm writing.  I find that useful for keeping my thoughts organized; if asked, I can make that document available any time for those interested.

Of course, publishing a book means that I'll be paid for that book.  But that is really up to the reader.  We can remain trapped in the 18th century publishing model forever, or we can realize that I am publishing the equivalent of a book in blog posts every three months.  I leave it to the reader to give value for those "books" in my Patreon and through direct donations.  Providing free material for all gives me a sense of well-being, so I intend to keep doing it, whatever I happen to write about.  For the present, I'm content to write about this subject, just as I've written on other things.

When the reader feels assured that I've written "a book" relating to the managing of estate ventures by player characters, then take a moment and give a direct donation equal to the value of that book.  Were I to create a singular work, I'm sure the cost I'd attach to it would be about the same as my book, How to Run ... about $30.  So take that as a suggested donation, but don't feel bound by it.

In the meantime, I'm going to work on my book Fallow today (remember, retitled from the Fifth Man), along with detailing how both unimproved and improved land is worked.  It is only logical that persons should be able to build a cottage anywhere and then sustain themselves with foraging, hunting and fishing.  Each of these already has a sage ability associated with it, so I'll be basing unimproved figures on those wiki posts.

Be well and keep reading.

Movin' on Up

Some of my readers will remember my writing a post last year entitled "Acts of Faith," in which I talked about the circumstance of being an artist.  That post has been removed from the blog, as a condition of my posting a rewrite on Vocal Media.  The article can be read here.

It wouldn't hurt me at all if the reader would kindly click the link for the article, as my payment for the article is keyed to how much attention it receives.  Therefore, you could do me a great kindness if you would go there, let the mouse slowly scan past the paragraphs for all of 30 seconds, before passing on to something else you're doing.  Free for you; might mean money for me.