Did you know that your expectations can negatively impact your relationship with others in the publishing industry as well? Rachelle Gardner, a literary agent who is very active online, shares some of the writer expectations she’s encountered and gives very direct reasons why they are not based in reality.

…there are many writers who hold on to unrealistic expectations long after reality should be setting in. This is an ongoing concern for agents, editors, and publicists who constantly find themselves not living up to writers’ expectations. In many cases (and yes, there are plenty of exceptions), the writer’s hopes and beliefs were simply too idealistic to begin with. –SOURCE: Managing Expectations by Rachelle Gardner

If you aren’t clear as to whether or not your personal expectations will damage your professional reputation or sour your experiences as a writer, be sure to read Managing Expectations by Rachelle Gardner. It’s definitely worth your time.

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One of the concepts I mentioned last time was the idea that you need to have some sort of language key to use as your foundation. Before we get any further, I’d like to remind you that your aliens need to be able to create the symbols in the first place.

My basic requirements for a symbolic alien language are:

• The biological ability to create a symbol
• The proper instrument(s) to represent a symbol
• The ability to understand what it means

Mind you, some writers have employed the use of an invisible symbolic language that can be seen either on the astral place or by manipulating subatomic matter. Whether or not your symbolic language appears to humans or other aliens is not something that you need to decide right now, because that could develop as a plot element for your story. However, you still need to know how your aliens will use your language. –SOURCE: Creating an Alien Language: Rudimentary Symbolic Language

Be sure to drop by and check out the full article at Apex Book Company. Word on the street is that they have a book sale going on right now, too.

Related posts:

1. My New Guest Series at Apex: Creating an Alien Language
2. Guest Post: 3 Science Fiction Writing Exercises at Apex
3. My Guest Post at Apex: Are You a Believer or a Skeptic?

Here’s a sample of the article:

No doubt, many — if not all — of the social media business models that are out there include the collection of your data or content. Anonymous data allows a website to personalize your experience and make every attempt to provide you with relevant choices. It also allows web designers to understand how you interact with a particular page so that they can improve their design efforts as well. In fact, if you’ve ever used Google Analytics you’ve probably benefited from the collection of anonymous data by viewing how different people interact with your website. “Public” data, as defined by data that is attached to your name or persona, is another story entirely. — SOURCE: Social media and Your (Lack of) Privacy

Regardless of what side of the privacy fence you’re on, I do hope that you read about the issue from multiple perspectives and come to your own conclusions.

To read the full article, visit Social Media and Your (Lack Of) Privacy.

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1. What Social Media Means to Me and My Writing
2. Guest SFWA Blog Post on Website Usability and Design
3. Remember, Social Media is about Being Social

Here’s one of the exercises from the article:

Create an Alien – Whether you create something that’s humanoid or the size of an amoeba, designing an alien can be a lot of fun and help spark a few story ideas. There are a number of different methods that you can work with to add a bit of chance to the results. One approach you could take would be to write several types of adjectives on small pieces of paper. Toss them in a shoebox and then randomly pull out a string of descriptions. Another method would be to pick an environment, like a Martian desert, and design an alien based on how they’d survive within it. If your goal is to create an alien for a dark fiction setting, you could try creating a cute alien first and then twisting it into something predatory. After you have your creation in hand, you can then explore several different options to flesh out your alien. You could determine how they reproduce, if there are any other types of aliens within that species, what type of pets they might have or food they might eat, etc. — SOURCE: Three Science Fiction Writing Exercises at Apex Book Company

If you’re interested in chiming in, be sure to drop by Apex Book Company and the blog. They’ve also got some great books to put on your summer reading list, too!

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1. Guest Post: Science Fiction and Happy Endings at Apex Book Company
2. New Guest Post at Apex: Creating a Language Based on Symbols
3. My Guest Post at Apex: Are You a Believer or a Skeptic?

Due to recent trends in technology and on-line marketing options, it is easier for a writer to self-publish today than ever before. Whether entirely on their own, or with the help of a plethora of book printers and retailers that specialize in small print runs, Print on Demand (PoD) technology or electronic publishing, almost anyone can set out to publish their Great American Novel and have physical copies in their hands in a matter of weeks, if not days. Some publishers brand self-publishing as the demon-child of the mainstream publishing industry, an evil to be avoided at all costs. Others (often those who are trying to encourage authors to print books through their services) rave about the mainstream publishing industry as archaic and tout their avenues as the easiest and fastest ways to get published.

So, who’s right?

The answer is found, as it often is, somewhere in the middle.

There are times and circumstances where producing your own material is the best choice. And situations where it may seem like the best choice, but really isn’t.

Self-published work may be right for you if:

You’re writing for a very niche market.

If you are interested in creating either fiction or non-fiction materials for a very specific community or small interest group to which you already have established ties, self-publishing might be a good choice for you. If, for example, my parents wanted to write a book about calling and cueing square dances, they probably won’t be able to sell it to a mainstream publisher. The niche market for their book would be just too small for most publishers to consider. However, since they’re already well-established in that niche, and have both the contacts and opportunity to market such a book to its most likely audience, it might be a good opportunity for them to do so as a self-published project.

Histories of a local area, or other projects specific to a certain town, landmark or attraction may be a great idea for that area, but not marketable anywhere else. A friend of mine recently published a book on ghost hunting in SE Arizona, which is selling like hotcakes through her ghost tours and local shops, but would be of little interest to someone from Michigan who’d never been to the area.

Your work is not in a form that is easily marketable.

Poetry, flash fiction, novellas and short stories suffer from similar challenges when it comes to publishing. While there are certainly some publishers who produce these types of works commercially, the competition for a space on their pages is fierce. Many anthology publishers are seeking increasingly more “big name” authors to include in their collections, in hopes of boosting sales, which has caused lesser-known authors to seek out different markets. Unfortunately, several poetry, flash fiction and short story markets pay at or below professional rates (if they pay at all.)

If you’re writing for one of these genres, it’s a good idea to do your research and find out what is and isn’t working in the current market to apply that to your own publications. If five, long-time poetry magazines have folded in the last year, creating a cookie-cutter publication of that sort may be a challenging business model for you. Before you self-publish, find out what’s working and what’s not, and learn from others’ mistakes and losses to avoid suffering from them yourself.

You already have an established readership or distribution model.

Even for those who write in the traditional publishing industry, the restrictions on commercially-produced projects keep us from being able to release what, when and how we would like to. The bigger a publisher is, the more concern they have to have with the profitability of any given project, and the more likely they are to have to “think big” in terms of print runs, marketing, and overhead.

Self-published materials can get into an established audience’s hands faster and with less restrictions than if an author were to go the traditional route. Additionally, when you self-publish you can customize your project to your reader’s desires with a lot more flexibility than if that same project was published through a large publisher. As a self-publisher, your “share” of the profit can (but is not always) be larger. However, this approach really works best if you’ve got a readership or distribution model already in place.

While some creators may thrive on marketing their wares book-by-book, it can be very challenging (and depressing) to learn that folks who have never heard of you and don’t know anything about your writing are rarely interested in paying money to read your work. If the writer has used a traditional printing paradigm (i.e. you pay the printer then hope to sell enough books to earn back your investment and make a profit) it can be a very expensive lesson to learn.

If, on the other hand, you have an established readership, self-published materials can be a great way to provide additional content to them, especially work that wouldn’t be feasible to produce through traditional means. My recent fiction effort, The Shattered Glass Project, is an experiment in this sort of model–providing established readers with the opportunity to directly support and be involved with the creation process.

A short story read only by those who are willing to invest as its being created? A series of poems written from the perspective of an established character? A game “ransomed” and released when a certain fund-raising level has been met? A novella that acts as a prologue for an upcoming novel? All of these can and have been done successfully by writers with established readers who are hungry for more material.

Self-Publishing is probably NOT the right choice for you if:

You believe that self-publishing is a way to avoid all the challenges of the traditional publishing industry.

There are a lot of challenges that writers face when seeking mainstream publication. Even after you’ve finished your novel, edited and revised it, buffed it to a high polish and written that dreaded query letter, you still have to find an agent or publisher who loves it enough to invest time and/or money in it. From agents blogs, the average offer rate seems to be somewhere under one percent – that is to say, out of every 100 queries or pitches received, 99% of them will receive some form of rejection. And once a writer has found representation, there’s still no guarantee that the agent/writer team will be able to place the book with a publisher.

It’s no wonder that many authors think that self-publishing is the answer to their prayers. Someone who receives 100 rejections on the novel they’ve spent years writing and which represents the pinnacle of their creative expertise, often finds it much easier to think that something’s wrong with the industry, than with their work. When self-publishing companies and printers say things like “we can have your book ready in a week, guaranteed,” it’s an intoxicating siren-song to those who have struggled for months or years to get someone in the mainstream industry to give them so much as an approving word.

But easy is not always best.

While agents and editors may seem like stumbling blocks to publication when you’re receiving rejections, they serve as a filter to catch and weed out the large portion of submitted materials which are simply not ready for commercial publication yet. Those who, rather than working to improve their creation to publishable levels, seek to do an “end run” around these obstacles, may get to see their words in print (usually at a hefty cost to their own pocket book.)

But their true goal – becoming a creator of publishable works, and a professional writer — is unlikely to be obtained in this fashion. Producing a product yourself–one which you either have to sell personally, or which is only available by special order through mainstream bookstores–is not a substitute for being published through a traditional publisher. And, it isn’t the “foot-in-the-door” to other publishing opportunities that many self-publishing companies market it as. Traditional industry professionals don’t usually see self-publishing as “published”. They see it as “couldn’t get anyone else to take my work, so I paid to have it printed myself.”

Learn what is right for you.

Your greatest chances for success with a self-publishing project come when you are realistic about the challenges and opportunities that self-producing your work brings with it. Don’t turn to self-publishing because you’re frustrated with mainstream publishing and think it will be faster/easier/more profitable to do your own project. Learn what does and doesn’t work as self-produced material, and use those to determine if self-publishing is right for you.

About Jess Hartley

For the last ten years, Jess Hartley has worked as a novelist and freelance writer, editor and game developer.

She has created game material and fiction for White Wolf Publishing, 12 to Midnight Games, Mind Storm Labs’ and Margaret Weis Productions on the Supernatural RPG line.

On an independent basis, Jess also writes “One Geek to Another,” a weekly etiquette and advice column for modern geeks, and authored “Conventions for the Aspiring Game Professional, an e-book designed to help those who are interested in working in the industry. She also guest-hosts “Out of Character,” a weekly gaming podcast that is part of the Pulp Gamer Network.

Her current independent efforts include The Shattered Glass Project, a fae fiction experiment based on a reader-sustained, patronage model.

Jess lives in Arizona, with her family and a menagerie of other interesting creatures, where she participates in a plethora of strange and curious pastimes which often make her neighbors and acquaintances scratch their heads in confusion.

To learn more about Jess, visit her website at www.jesshartley.com.

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2. Guest Blog Post: Brozek on Editing Anthologies
3. Guest Post: Gender Portrayals and Genres at Apex Book Company

Here’s a quote from my article:

As a skeptic, I find myself unable to get into a science fiction story when it doesn’t offer me any explanation as to why things are happening. I also have a really hard time getting into stories that are poorly retrofitted into an existing setting, because I look at continuity as being an important part of a creator’s ability to suspend disbelief.

Be sure to check out the article and provide your two cents. Read Are You a Believer or a Skeptic? at Apex Book Company.

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1. Guest Post: Gender Portrayals and Genres at Apex Book Company
2. Guest Post: Science Fiction and Happy Endings at Apex Book Company
3. Guest Post: 3 Science Fiction Writing Exercises at Apex

In the music or video world, remixing can often be a very good thing. People take short samples of music or short clips of videos and create entirely new works of incredible creativity.

However, creating a proper remix takes a great deal of talent and effort. It is more than simply a process of splicing together various elements, it involves the creation of a brand new work using pieces from others that usually offers commentary or adds to the original works.

Unfortunately though, some have tried to use a form of remixing as a shortcut to creating content for their site. This usually involves copying and pasting various passages of content from various sources and stringing them together to create a new work that is meant to replace the original, not expand upon it.

This practice, often called “splicing”, is a form of plagiarism that is not only unethical, but also is illegal and, frankly stupid.

If you are are considering engaging in this kind of behavior here are a few good reasons to avoid it.

Copyright Law and Splicing

Legally speaking, most well-done remixes are viewed as safe because they rely on fair use, which allows artists, reviewers and others to use small portions of content for the creation of new works and for the purpose of commentary and criticism.

The problem with fair use is that there are no hard and fast rules as to what is and is not a fair use. The law was written to be flexible and each case is handled on an individual basis. However, the four factors used by courts to determine fair use are as follow:

1. the purpose and character of your use
2. the nature of the copyrighted work
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market.

Factors one and four are the most important and it is easy to see why splicing is very likely to run afoul of the law. Since the intent of the use is to create a replacement for the work and not a wholly new one, that hurts splicing seriously on both the character of the use, which looks to see how transformative the use is, and the effect on the potential market.

So, for example, using snippets from various articles to create a new work, is likely to be considered an infringement. Copyright holders who have had their content used in this manner are free to file DMCA takedown notices and, in extreme cases, file a lawsuit against the person doing the splicing.

How Search Engines See It

Search engines crave original content and value it very highly. Sites that prominently feature original works are ranked highly in the search engines and those that have duplicate content are pushed either way down in the rankings or, even worse, in the the supplementary index where almost no visitors see it.

The problem with splicing is that it doesn’t create original content. Since all of the content is lifted verbatim or nearly verbatim from various sources that Google already indexes, the search engine can trivially detect this and works to reduce the ranking of these pages.

Though it is difficult to tell how much content one needs to include for Google to be able to detect it as duplicate, anything over a few sentences typically is discovered and is treated as duplicate content. As such, if you splice together a story using a few lines or paragraphs at a time, Google will most likely detect it and penalize you accordingly, making the effort worthless.

Quality of Work

However, even if Google and the other search engines are fooled by the splicing effort, your human visitors most likely will not. Different articles, even from the same source, have different styles, tones and structure. Stitching them together creates a mash that doesn’t flow and seems very awkward.

Real remixes and mashups take advantage of this, using the juxtaposition to create commentary. Spliced works, on the other hand merely come across as poorly-made creations that are inconsistent and awkward.

If one wants to take the time and energy to fix this problem, they need to dedicate so much to it that it would, in most cases, have simply been easier to create a new work from scratch. However, since creating a completely unique work avoids the copyright and duplicate content issues as well, it is by far the best approach to take when trying to craft high quality content for your site.

Bottom Line

Though there is a place for legitimate remixing, using splicing as a shortcut to create content for your site is not only probably illegal, but also stupid.

Not only does it produce content that is not widely-accepted by the search engines, it also produces poorer-quality work that won’t be well-loved by human visitors. Any attempt to edit content to avoid these issues will require more work than simply writing a new piece, making the entire purpose for splicing content moot.

In the end, if this is an approach to content generation you are considering, you would be wise to abandon it and either use content legitimately, for example under a Creative Commons License, or, even better, create your own work from scratch and only quote/cite material you need to bring into it.

Doing so not only keeps other bloggers and search engines happy, but is by far the best way to build and grow your site online.

About Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey is a copyright and plagiarism consultant and the CEO of CopyByte, a consulting firm specializing in copyright on the web. You can also find him at his blog Plagiarism Today, a site dedicated to helping content creators protect their work, and stomping around the New Orleans area looking for geocaches.

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1. How Search Engine Technology is Catching Plagiarists
2. My Guest Post at SFWA: An Overview of Writing for Print vs. the Web
3. JK Rowling Copyright Case: Why Writers Need to Pay Attention

Here’s the thing: most people online provide advice as a way to share what they know (or in some cases, what they don’t). I recently overheard a quote that proclaimed “unsolicited advice is self-serving.” Yeah, that’s really true, but without that “unsolicited advice” no one, including me, would have a lot of material to blog about.

Just because there is all this advice out there, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be afraid to make a mistake. I believe that the number one reason that many people stop writing or never submit is because they are paralyzed with fear. Paralyzed by it because someone out there is always better, faster, more connected or more visible than they are. So, if that writer makes a mistake, they feel like someone is going to find out about it and cross their name off the “I am a writer” list with a big, fat “X.”

If you want to write professionally, handling bad news and criticism in a way that doesn’t damage your soul for eternity pretty much comes with the territory. The only way you’re going to learn about this business is by getting out there and hoofing it. Yes, there’s a lot of conventional wisdom out there that is worth listening to, but that is up for you to figure out what’s meaningful to your career and what’s not. Your experience is going to be different than mine is, because you are a different person than I am. That doesn’t mean “you’re doing right” or “you’re doing it wrong.” If you find something that works for you? Great. If you fall flat on your face? Learn from it. Embrace it. Then? Get back up again.

For clarification purposes, please note that I do believe there’s a difference between reality and fantasy. Experienced authors make writing seem effortless, because they’ve got millions of words behind them. If you’re just starting out? You’ll probably need to focus on how to write rather than how to be a writer. In my experiences, writing isn’t about what you do on the first try, it’s a journey that you have to repeat over and over and over again. Yes, you’ll encounter bumps along the way, but who cares? I don’t measure my career by how many times I fall down, it’s about how many times I get back up. Of course, the irony of this blog post is not lost on me because that I’m telling you — flat out — not to worry about always making the “right” decision when it comes to your career. That certainly includes listening to anything I have to say. *smiles*

If you do one thing this week, I would like to encourage you to try something new. Have a hard look at a story you’re having a hard time selling, write something in a new genre, or give your manuscript to a brutal critic. Break out of your mold and be brave! BE BOLD! Become…a writer who isn’t afraid of making a mistake!

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Even though there are stories out there with happy endings, for those of us who enjoy dark science fiction it can be pretty tough to identify which ones those are. Yes, while just about everyone might point out the ending from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, I see each film in the series as the end of a story arc, in part because there are dozens of books in that universe that do explore some fairly dark storylines. –SOURCE: Science Fiction and Happy Endings

If you’re interested in the article, read the rest of Science Fiction and Happy Endings at the Apex Book Company blog.

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1. Guest Post: 3 Science Fiction Writing Exercises at Apex
2. Guest Post: Gender Portrayals and Genres at Apex Book Company
3. My Guest Post at Apex: Are You a Believer or a Skeptic?

Here’s a quote from the article:

In today’s article, I’d like to share with you some tips to consider when you’re reviewing your current website or when you’re thinking about creating one. Let’s take a look at these tips for your website’s design and usability.

1. Structure Your Theme Around Your Update Frequency – First and foremost, I believe that you have to make a decision, up front, about how often you plan on updating your website. If you’re not going to blog or update very often, you can simply choose a different website theme that’s a little more static than a blog, but still attractive and professional. — SOURCE: Authors! 8 Tips For Your Website’s Usability and Design

Enjoy!

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2. Read my Guest Blog Post at Apex Books
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