I’m not sure I’ve ever been this busy before. At least as far as writing is concerned. I have a major deadline coming up in about 6 weeks and I’ve got the nose to the grindstone, working every waking hour, to get this book done on schedule. It’s fun, but it’s hard. There are distractions. I have to get the taxes done. There are TV shows I’d like to watch and books I’d like to read. All of that goes onto the back burner until April 1.

However, things arise that require my attention. Such as a recent advisory at the HWA message board that a site was hosting pirated copies of work. I checked out the site and yes, indeed, something of mine was there.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had people giving away (or, in this case, selling access to) copies of my work. I’m not an obvious target, but apparently these pirates cast a wide net. I filed a DMCA notice with the site (they provided a helpful template to do so) and within about 48 hours the offending content was gone. Just mine, mind you—the site still offers scads of books by names you would certainly recognize. [Addendum: after  I wrote this article, I found a site containing two pirated anthologies featuring my work. DMCA notices filed. In this instance the response was that it would be "difficult" to remove the file, but they would try. Hmm.]

It’s a little like playing whack-a-mole, though. You bop it down in one place and it pops back up again in another. Thanks to sites like the now defunct MegaUpload, people have plausible deniability. They can upload the content anonymously and provide a link to it from some other equally anonymous site. When challenged, they can claim that they are just providing a link, not hosting the content. I’ve dealt with this before. I usually focus my efforts on the hosting site, since all the links in the world don’t mean a hill of beans if there’s nothing at the end of them. Every once in a while, one of the link providers will provide a shame-faced apology when challenged.

I’m sure there are people who are saying, “What’s the big deal?” This instance doesn’t represent a big financial hit for me. The work was originally offered as a give-away chapbook, for which I was paid in advance. It’s now available only as an eBook, and I do get royalties from this, though they won’t buy me a fancy dinner most months.

However, it’s the principle of the matter. This work belongs to me. If I want to give copies of it away, that would be up to me (and the publisher, of course). No one else has the right to do so. The situation isn’t the same as with a physical book, where a person can buy a copy and then do with it what they want—short of selling photocopies of it or scanning it in and giving away (or selling) the scans. It’s perfectly acceptable for you to resell your paperback or hardcover copy of a work. It is not acceptable to distribute an eBook. In effect, when you purchase an eBook, you are licensing it in much the same way that you license software. There are terms of agreement that you enter into with the author and the publisher.

I’m not going to get into the whole “piracy can be good for your career” argument touted by some authors. I don’t believe it anymore than I believe  that leaving the jewelry store unlocked at night is good for business.  Letting unauthorized people control the distribution of your intellectual property just isn’t right, regardless of any perceived “benefits.”

Writers are facing the same situation that musicians did a decade or more ago when file sharing services started robbing them of the royalties they relied on to make a living. There is a general belief that this situation has shaken itself out for musicians, that entities like iTunes and Pandora have legitimized online music distribution. All you have to do is hit Google, though, to see that there is a lot of music being illegally distributed on the internet. And now books, as well.

All we can do is go after the sites that are illegally distributing our works, one at a time. Whack that mole and wait for the next one to appear. I recommend putting Google Alerts to use so that you can find out when your name or a particular title shows up on the internet. That’s the main way I find pirated copies of my work. I’m too busy to go trolling cyberspace all the time, but when cyberspace comes to me, I act.

One sad fact, though, is that some of these sites are beyond my reach. If they dig in their heels and the server is located in some distant land, there’s little I can do about it. Hell, there’s little anyone can do about it—even the big authors with deep pockets and lawyers on retainer.

That doesn’t mean, though, that we should just throw our hands in the air and give up. We pick them off one at a time. People will always steal—and some offenders don’t even consider this theft, more the pity—but this is a kind of theft that we can stop some of the time, at least. Intellectual property is real property, with real value. And I have the royalty statements to prove it.

At every convention I’ve attended, there’s a table full of promotional items. These usually consist of postcards or bookmarks, but sometimes there are fliers or little gadgets intended to entice people into purchasing a product. Usually a book, in my experience. Everyone is clamoring for everyone else’s attention, and if you don’t have the weight of a publisher behind you, it’s a tough row to hoe. If no one has heard of you, what is to entice someone to buy your book?

I’m seeing more and more book trailers these days. However, these suffer from the same basic issue: If I haven’t heard of you before, what will entice me to click on a link and spend 1-3 minutes of my time watching an ad for your book? Sure, it has the benefit of being “free,” except my time isn’t exactly free. There’s a limited amount of it, so I’m judicious about what I spend it on, most of the time.

I started thinking about this topic because I received a familiar letter in the mail last week. A thick envelope from the agency that represents The Road to the Dark Tower, my first book. Every six months, they forward my royalty statements from Penguin. It’s thick because there’s a separate page for each type of sale. Regular sales, international sales, various kinds of eBooks. It’s all rather befuddling and could easily be condensed to a page or two, in my opinion, but the bottom line comes on the front page: Total revenue from sales for this period and the remaining balance on my advance. This time, the balance left was almost exactly the same as my revenue for the last six months. In other words, another period like this one and I’ll earn out. The book is still selling well and consistently, seven years after publication. The revenue for the past several accounting periods has been roughly the same, so I’m confident that I will earn out (± a few dollars) by early 2012.

One thing these statements reminds me of, though, is how much I make from each copy sold. For trade paperbacks, my share is about $1.25 per copy. For eBooks, it’s roughly double that. (Go eBooks!)

Let’s look at that from a different direction. Suppose I decide to give a few copies away to generate publicity. Suppose with my author discount I can get a copy of the $16 trade paperback for $8. (I don’t recall what the exact discount is, but let’s assume 50%.) That means I have to sell seven or eight physical copies or three or four eBooks to pay for every copy I give away. If that donated copy leads to a review then it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that half a dozen people reading the review might be inspired to buy a copy.

Similarly, if I buy a pack of 250 postcards with the cover image on one side and promotional copy on the other. I can get that for about $20. If I distribute them via various means (I often tuck one in with a package if I sell a used book on eBay, for example), I would need to get 8 people to buy an eBook or 16 people to buy a trade paperback to break even. Averaging that out to 12 of either variety, that’s a 5% response rate. Worth it? Hard to say. What’s the ultimate goal: to break even or to turn a profit? Or to gain readers who, through word of mouth might generate more sales? All of the above, naturally.

How much does a book trailer cost? Some of them are done on the cheap and suffer from the same issues as a lot of self-published books: low quality. The three companies offering to make book trailers that I sampled in an unscientific survey charged anywhere from $200 to $2000. I’m sure you can do the math. That means the trailer would have to generate on the order of 100-1000 sales to break even. At the upper end of that range (and I’m sure there are companies willing to charge much more than that), you’re approaching half the typical advance for a traditionally published first novel. Worth it? I’m not convinced. If you have mad graphic arts skills and can put something together for free and doesn’t look like it was made by a 12-year-old, then why not? But I’m not sure I’d shell out any money for one.

The other thing that got me thinking about the expenses of promotion was the publicity campaign behind the A&E miniseries Bag of Bones. The cable channel put a lot of money into getting the word out. There were the obvious: print ads all over the place, billboards, TV spots, a sophisticated web site. They also hired an award-winning photographer to spend a few days on the set before filming to create a series of photo essays that were posted to a companion site called Dark Score Stories in which the lives of the characters leading up to the beginning of the miniseries were profiled—a prequel of sorts. That site got a lot of fans of the King novel excited about the miniseries.

However, the part that the general public doesn’t see intrigued me. The photo essays were turned into a lavish, limited edition hardcover sent to what Klout calls “influencers.” People who might be relied upon to talk about the miniseries and generate word of mouth. (Full disclosure: I received a copy.) Then, A&E sent out screeners of the miniseries to generate advanced reviews. This wasn’t just a couple of DVDs in an envelope, though. The discs came in a wooden box roughly a foot on a side. Inside the lid of the box was a faux turntable that spun when you opened it. Digital music played. It was pretty cool. Underneath was a nice little book with promotional material and the DVDs, plus a disc of assets (PDFs and stills) to accompany reviews. It was an impressive package. Finally, the publicist arranged interviews with various members of the production. I spoke one-on-one with Mick Garris for three quarters of an hour while he was still editing the miniseries and participated in a conference call interview with one of the actors.

Did it work? Certainly there were a lot of published interviews and reviews of the miniseries in the days leading up to its premiere. Alas, the reviews were not all that glowing and in some cases were really harsh. Although the miniseries ultimately fared pretty well in the ratings, one can only wonder how much better it might have done if it hadn’t been roundly panned beforehand. Is it true that any publicity is good publicity? Hard to believe.

What’s my bottom line? As usual, I don’t think I have one. These are just things that I’ve been thinking about for the past few days as I ruminated over what I would write about this month. Food for thought, perhaps. Something to start a discussion, maybe. I don’t think there are any definitive answers about how to promote your work. But I think you should weight the costs and potential returns before sinking a lot of money into a campaign that might never pay for itself.

I have no excuse for my long absence other than a good one.  I have been busy to the point that time was stretched, tried to snap back and hurt me, and something had to give.  In retrospect, I probably should have shirked something that took more time…but there you have it.  I have been absent from these hallowed, storytelling halls for too long.

I thought it was appropriate that on the day when Nanowrimo starts, I poke my head in here and actually post a few words – an update on life, liberty, and the pursuit of stories, and a word of encouragement to those brave souls about to take the fifty-thousand-word-plunge yet again.  For those about to write, I salute you.

Since I was last here my tiny digital publishing company has grown into a life-consuming monster.  We are nearing 300 digital titles.  We have a growing list of print books in trade paperback.  We have fifty-one audiobooks published, two brand new series launched, and mountains of words copy-edited, proofed, written, rewritten, and presented in a variety of hats for your entertainment and enjoyment.  Yay us.  Follow our exploits at : The Crossroad Press Blog or on facebook - http://www.facebook.com/CrossroadPress or just rush by the store at The Crossroad Press Online Store and BUY some things…you know you want them.

For myself, I’ve had a bit of a breakthrough on my Donovan DeChance series, so I am going to spend at least part of Nanowrimo working on “Kali’s Tale,” Book III in the DeChance Chronicles.  I am also novelizing my screenplay “Killer Green,” a project you can follow along with by signing in and reading over at The Killer Green Read-Along Blog  if you so desire.

My intention today is just to drop in (here I am) Pick up my day (I have done so) and to promise that from here on out I’ll find some point in the month to post and schedule something worthwhile.  If, as you ponder life, you come up with any questions dealing with digital publishing, audiobooks, or my work in general, feel free to post them here so I can respond…subjects for essays are always welcome.

With Halloween behind us, and Nanowrimo in site – I say to you – Onward!

And sorry for the long absence.

-David Niall Wilson

NECon has come and gone for another year. It was a mix of the old and the new. Old faces and new. Familiar activities and new ones. Similar programming topics and contemporary ones. One thing I noticed with most of the panels—and I’ve observed this at other conventions as well—is that, for the most part, the panelists have all been around the block a time or two and have ended up in general agreement about most aspects of the business.

The organizers challenged this by having a panel where the people sitting to the left of the moderator took one side of the debate and those sitting on the right took the other. Then, halfway through the hour, the two groups had to switch sides. However, the concept for the panel collapsed on itself as some people found it impossible to support a view that was so fundamentally different from their own. In the end, the group met in the middle and, once again, everyone agreed. I only attended one panel where people argued with each other. That was fun—not simply because people disagreed, but because people agreed that  there was room for differing opinions.

I’ve been contributing essays to this community for over six years now. Once a month I try to come up with an idea that’s worth expressing. Often, I admit that I don’t really have a point or a take-home lesson, but there’s something that I want to ruminate over and I use this blog to hear myself talk. Other times, I do have opinions or advice that I want to share. I remember Mort Castle’s response when I pitched an article titled “Six Marketing Myths” for the second edition of On Writing Horror.  He agreed that there was a need for an article that attempted to debunk what he called “the great rise in bullshitskayay thanks to Internet.” Every now and then, I find some bullshitskayay to expose. Caveat scriptor.

However, I’ve come to believe that I’m preaching to the choir. We veterans (and some of us are more veteran than others) agree on many things: Don’t give away your work. Payment in exposure is a fantasy. Royalty only anthologies might earn you the price of a postage stamp—if you’re really lucky. Paying someone to review your work (here’s an especially egregious example revealed last week by Nick Kaufmann) is a terrible idea; in fact, paying anyone to do much of anything pertaining to your writing is probably a bad idea. Having your brother-in-law’s cousin’s kid sister design the cover for your book will probably make you a laughing stock. The list goes on and on. There are tons of websites (including this one) and books out there chock full of useful, helpful, legitimate advice aimed at novice writers.

But will they listen? For the most part—and, though I’ve held this opinion for a while, it’s still pretty discouraging—no. New writers are so desperate to be published that they are easily duped into believing that, despite all evidence to the contrary, something that has been shown not to work by other writers doesn’t apply to them. Self-publishing their first, unedited novel might be a bad idea for everyone else, but they’re going to be the exception to the rule. That anthology that’s being slapped together by someone who’s never published professionally in his brief career is going to sell gangbusters, so getting paid up front isn’t a big deal. We’re going to be rolling in royalties.

Those who don’t learn from history are, in fact, doomed to repeat the same mistakes. I know how the temptation of the possibility of publication can temporarily blind a person. I remember talking with my wife about an offer of representation from an agent for my first novel. After all, the agent’s request for $250 for office expenses didn’t seem all that unreasonable. In the back of my mind, I knew there was a chance it was a scam (more than a chance, in fact. A certainty.) but it wasn’t so much money to risk and the potential benefits? Well, that’s the honey in the trap, isn’t it? Once I started thinking rationally and got past the dizzying possibility that I could have a book out in the world with my name on the cover, I came to my senses. No blood was spilled, no money wasted.

I know the counter-argument. If everyone always does the same thing the same way, innovation will be stifled. I’m not talking about not thinking outside the box. This is a new era in publishing, and some of the old ways are changing. A few years ago, the thought of putting up your backlist of novels for $2 or $3 a pop seemed ludicrous, but I know of at least a few people who are making a decent income thanks to e-publishing. I’m talking about falling victim to the same scams that keep reappearing in different forms. How old is the pyramid scam in business—and yet people are still duped every year by it. I’m talking about using your head and heeding the advice of people who have been there, done that. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. You don’t have to make the same mistakes other beginning writers made. You’re ahead of the game because you have this solid foundation of past experience as a launching point.

Bottom line—and I’m not sure if anyone who needs to hear this message is actually listening by this point, but here goes anyway—don’t be seduced by the evil temptress whose name seems to be THE PROMISE OF PUBLICATION but in fact is just SCAM THE NEWBIE, AGAIN.

I’ve been going to writing conventions for a decade. I attended one local writers guild convention in the late 1990s (Joe R. Lansdale was a guest, which was a big draw). Then I resumed my long-fallow interest in writing and I wanted to start networking with other writers. My first big convention was the World Horror Convention in Seattle, which was a terrific experience. I remember sitting around in the lobby with Jay Clarke (Michael Slade), Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Del Howison and few other people as they regaled us with stories about the business. I learned then that most of the important stuff at conventions takes place outside of the panel rooms. In the bars and in the lobby.

Over the years, I’ve attended a number of different conventions. World Horror, World Fantasy, Stoker & Edgar Weekends, Crime Bake, and local events like ApolloCon and the Houston Writers League convention. There are many I’ve heard about that I’ve never managed but hope to get to some day, like ReaderCon and BoucherCon. Maybe even ThrillerCon.

However, my favorite is NECon, for any number of reasons. For one thing, it’s comparatively small. It’s possible to spend four days at a World Horror Convention and not see certain people, or at least not get any time to visit with them. In four days at NECon, you should be able to find time to visit with just about everyone. There’s only one track of panels, so we’re all usually gathered in the same room at the same time. But, as with other conventions, the most important stuff takes place outside the panels.

From a business perspective, I’ve had more opportunities open up to me at NECons than at any other con. I was invited to participate in Thrillers: 100 Must Reads by Hank Wagner at NECon. I had an opportunity to submit a synopsis for a shared-world novel series to Ballentine through contacts made in Rhode Island. I met long-time long-distance friend Rich Chizmar in person for the first time at NECon. Pete Crowther, too—and meeting him in person gave me the chance to submit to PostScripts. Not every opportunity has panned out. My synopsis for Ballentine wasn’t accepted, and I’ve yet to crack PostScripts, but they were chances I wouldn’t have had at all otherwise.

From a personal perspective, the closest friends I’ve made in the business are the ones I look forward to seeing at NECon. I’m not a very social person, and I’m also not much of a late night person, but I’m much more social at NECon and I often stay up past midnight at this convention. The parties at the bigger cons are too big and too crowded for me. Even when I was younger, I found them loud and claustrophobic. NECon, whether it’s at the university campus or the nearby convention center hotel, has plenty of breathing room. I can talk to people at these parties. Hear and be heard. I don’t have to squeeze through a mass of humanity to make it to the snack table. There’s a reason we call it “Camp NECon.” It’s a break from real life, but it’s also sort of a break from big-scale conventions. Most of the attendees are writers or avid readers. Few of those who show up are just fans of a guest of honor. The atmosphere is relaxed and relaxing. We play miniature golf and throw darts. We have fun and laugh a lot. I usually come back from a World Horror Convention exhausted. I come home from NECon feeling energized.

Which is a good thing. NECon is this coming weekend. When I get back, I’ll have a little over 4 months to produce a new book, so I’m going to need that boost of energy I get from this particular little gathering of friends.

Though my field of expertise is in chemistry, I hold a minor in math. I’m not sure that there has ever been a study to confirm or refute this, but I maintain a strange calculus: one acceptance letter is equal to any number of rejections. That is to say, an acceptance wipes the slate clean. I feel good about my writing again and I even feel armored against the next few inevitable rejection letters that will follow.

Another way to say this is: you have to develop a thick skin in this business and be persistent. I saw a beginning writer comment somewhere about a phenomenon described as “submission terror.” The condition was so disabling that the writer couldn’t convince himself to send anything out. In other words, he’s taken to writing his own rejection letters.

There is much to be said for persistence. I had a short story published recently by a pro-paying market that was originally written for a themed anthology in 2007. It didn’t make the cut (the editor told me he might have considered it if he’d received it less close to the deadline, and there’s another lesson to be learned there, assuming he wasn’t just sparing my feelings), so I de-themed it and started it on its rounds. Until the day it was accepted (I repeat, by a pro-paying market), the story had accumulated nine rejections, not including the original one. Each time I got it back, I updated my submission log, found a new market, and sent it right back out again.

That’s by no means a personal record. A fairly recent story found a home on lucky submission number thirteen. I published another that had been written eight years previously and accumulated 15 rejections, in a glossy magazine with national distribution.

When do I give up? Rarely. I have one story that I really like that has been rejected 20 times. I’ve rewritten it a few times over the years and, though I’ve yet to find the right home for it, I think it’s out there. It’s just a matter of keeping at it and researching the marketplace. I’ve never truly trunked a story, though some are in submission hiatus because I can’t think of any viable place to send them at the moment. I will occasionally consider a semi-pro market if it has a reputation that appeals to me, and I often give literary magazines a shot even though they rarely pay more than a pittance. I favor print over electronic publication, too, though I have published a number of stories in electronic media.

I still hesitate a moment before opening an e-mail that I know is a response to a submission. I feel myself cringe. I know the odds are against me, still, despite having published over sixty stories. I haven’t done the math, but I suspect that rejections lead acceptances by at least 3:1. Maybe higher overall, but in recent years that feels like the right number. But every one of those acceptances carries with it enough weight to overpower a number of rejections. I celebrate every one of them.

Rejections are rubber bullets. They may bruise but they damage no internal organs.

There are probably still coaches out there who tell athletes to work through the pain after they suffer an injury or come up with a charley horse. This philosophy comes complete with all sorts of pleasant little slogans. Bite the bullet, for example. Tough it out and things will be better. The philosophy is not universally embraced in the medical community.

How does this apply to writing? It came to mind last Friday when I got up at 5 a.m. for my morning writing session. I was two thirds of the way through a short story that I had to have in the editor’s hand by Tuesday. No exceptions. Miss the deadline, miss the opportunity. The story had been slow in coming, but I’d finally found the groove and had nearly 5000 words on the page already. I knew the ending of the story and I figured I’d have no trouble finishing the first draft in the approximately 90 minutes I had available if I put my mind to it and didn’t get distracted.

Talk about distractions. I always check my work e-mail first, because the company I work for is owned by a Japanese firm. If I respond to e-mails from my colleagues on the other side of the world early in the morning, they’ll see them that day, whereas if I wait until I get to the office they won’t see them until the next day. The first thing I saw when I pulled up my INBOX was a message of concern from the manager of our UK office to our colleagues in Japan because of the earthquake that had happened through the night our time.

That sent me to the NY Times site and CNN and BBC and CBC for the latest. I found myself getting sucked in and I was aware of the time ticking away on my brief work session.

At that moment, I made a conscious decision. The news, important and fascinating as it was, would have to wait. It would still be there later when I finished my work. I’d made a commitment to finish that draft, if only to myself. As much fun as writing is, it’s also a job, and I had a duty to perform. Though the news, with all the scant details available in those first few hours after the quake, was swirling through my mind, I pushed it all aside, opened up the word processor, reread and revised enough of the previous day’s work to build up some momentum, and plowed on with the story. When I came up for air an hour later, I had written nearly 1500 words and reached the end of the draft. Then and only then did I allow myself to go downstairs and watch the breaking story on CNN before heading off to work.

There are a million reasons not to write at any given time. Every little thing that happens in life gets inside our heads and messes us up. An argument with a spouse, or an illness in the family. The dog has run away, or there isn’t enough money to cover the bills, or zombies are banging on the front door. All these things compete for our attention and make it difficult to do our job. And, never forget, this writing thing we do is a job. If my head isn’t together and my attention wanders and I don’t perform up to spec at the day job, it won’t be long before my boss will bring it to my attention. The same is true of writing, except here I’m the boss and sometimes I have to crack the whip. On myself.

It’s difficult, no question. Creativity is a delicate and fragile process, and it doesn’t take much to upset the equilibrium. To create a mental charley horse. Sometimes, though, you just have to write through it. Nose to the grindstone, as they say. Shake it off, get out there and write!