The short answer to this question of course is: Yes. The longer answer, which we shall get to presently, is “Treat writing like a business and do a Cost Benefit Analysis”.

There are plenty of services that will take advantage of you otherwise. Literary agencies that charge reading fees, bogus fee-charging contests, and unscrupulous Vanity Presses are traps that immediately spring to mind. By adhering to this rule, the novice writer can avoid being bilked of both their time and their money.

Like any rule, though, if the phrase “Money always flows towards the writer” is adhered to too rigidly, it can actually hurt you. See, there’s actual intrinsic value to publicity. It’s hard to quantify, but put it this way, would you pay $50 to be a part of Oprah’s book club? Of course you would. No brainer. Of course, this situation could never happen, could it? Okay, let’s change it up a little. Would you pay a publicist $5000 to get you on the Today Show? Again, this should be an “absolutely”. But look! Money is moving away from the writer!!!

Further, agents charge you 15% of your fees. Just because they see it before you do, doesn’t mean you aren’t paying them that money. Money is moving away from the writer, but again agents provide a service with real value. No one objects to paying your agent, so why object to paying for publicity?

Now, in the YouTube video I linked to above Harlan mentions that the interviewer tells him that he should do the interview for free because of the publicity he’d get. Now, he’s freaking Harlan Ellison and he doesn’t need the extra publicity, but you do, and, if confronted by that situation, you should probably agree to do the interview for free.

Because of my Writers of the Future win, I’ve been doing a lot of interviews lately, each of which has taken me a fairly substantial amount of time to complete or arrange, and as we all know, time is money. But how do you think Sirius Radio would have reacted if I’d asked for payment? Maybe I should have charged my good friend Dave Steffen for the time I spent on his interview at Diabolical Plots? No effen way.

See, what Harlan Ellison neglects to consider in his interview is that the relation of money to publicity is inversely proportional to your level of fame. When you’re a nobody, publicity is damn expensive.

What you need to do as a new author is price it out yourself. Treat it like any business investment, because remember, what you are running is a business. Should you pay $10 to enter a contest? Do a Cost Benefit Analysis. Try and calculate your odds of winning (look at previous winning entries, the number of entries received, etc, etc. Be as scientific as possibly). Then look at the amount of publicity you’d get from a win. Will you story be published by an online site with a massive circulation? Be in print? [Again, circulation is important. POD houses don't count (unless it's Cyberwizard Productions )].  Assign a dollar value to that level of publicity, say, $10,000 for a WotF win and maybe as little as $1 for a win at a smaller venue.  Now take your odds of winning as a decimal percentage and multiply by the amount of publicity you’d get to figure out if it’s worth your time to enter.

Let’s take a concrete example: The Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers.

Privately, I calculated my odds of winning at 1%. I’ve won a national contest before, this one is for new writers only, and I had a particularly strong story. On the other hand Glimmer Train doesn’t like Spec Fic, and while my piece was extremely literary, it still had a spec element.

Glimmer Train has a circulation of 5K, and these are all Wise Readers (Dudes that will nominate you for awards, or at least remember your name). So I figure a win is worth 1K in publicity (I’d have to pay a publicist that much to get a commensurate amount of fame). Add in the $1250 in prize money and you have $2250 in real value in a win.

Here is the formula again:

(Real Value) X (Odds of Winning) = (Maximum Fee Paid)

$2250 X .01 = $22.5.  The Entry Fee is $15, which is less than $22.5, therefore, my business sense tells me I should enter, even though I’ve calculated my odds of winning at 1%. This is a Cost-Benefit Analysis.

There is one writing rule that trumps all others (including “Money Always Flows Towards the Writer”), and that is “writing rules should be adhered to rigidly by the beginner, and treated as a loose guideline by the master”.

Tags: Contests, the business of writing

Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon, an online friend, has just reviewed Writers of the Future Vol. 25. Dr. Phil is the author of the delicious “A Man on the Moon” in Vol. 24 and, because he was a published finalist and not strictly a winner, has the distinct luxury of being able to attend the workshop twice. Jealous? I am!

Anyways, he has just reviewed Writers of the Future XXV on his livejournal.

He picked Donald Mead’s “The Shadow Man” as the most beautiful story in the collection, and Fiona Lehn’s “The Assignment of Runner ETI” as his favourite.

As for the Phoenix?

“After the Final Sunset, Again” by Jordan Lapp
illustrated by Joshua J. Stewart
First story I read in the collection, because Jordan is an online friend. A Phoenix in the City story where one constantly wonders how the hell this all got started. (grin) We’ll call it my favorite urban fantasy story of the collection. Exceptionally well done.

So, I’m going to avoid review-o-mancy in this one, but I have to say that in an anthology as chock full of urban fantasy as this one is… hey…wait… Oh well, I’ll settle for the “Exceptionally well done.” Thanks, Dr. Phil!

Tags: reviews, Writers of the Future XXV

Oh man, I just got an e-mail from an author we rejected from EDF because of a dead narrator. First, we get TONS of dead narrator pieces from beginning authors and it’s almost always a cop out. If you’re a master writer, you can do this… but this guy wasn’t.

So what does he write back to us? “My friends like it, so screw you!”

Wow. And I bet his Mom thinks he’s cool too.

Sometimes I wanna go all Mamatas on these guys, but then I think… what’s the point? Guys like this don’t wanna learn. They know it all already…

Tags: Responses to Rejection

Spotted this review over at the Baryon Review

The volume opens with this years winning entry, “Garden of Tian Zi” by Emery Huang. It is a tale of a conglomerate run future and genetic engineering that also shows there can still be a human relationship. Donald Mead shows an unusual tale of the results of the bombing of Hiroshima in “The Shadow Man”. Gra Linnaea’s “Life in Steam” is a steampunk tale that shows the Church as inquisitor yet again. Fiona Lehn takes an alternate THE LONG WALK/RUNNING MAN tale and adds in charity, multicorps, and war in “The Assignment of Runner ETI”. Heather McDougal gives a western setting in a dying gold rush town where “The Candy Store” just happens to open. Jordan Lapp gives the story of a Phoenix in “After the Final Sunset, Again”. There are plenty of others between the covers to give you interest and leave you waiting to see what the writers do next.

All in all, a positive review. Congrats to everyone involved.

The Phoenix seems to be connecting with people at least enough that they mention my name in reviews (which is not bad seeing as how I’m the second-to-last story in the book). Man, that’s a great feeling!

Tags: reviews, Writers of the Future XXV

I spotted this link over at the SFReader forums posted by Andre L. West which inspired me to write about potentially fake or scam writing contests.

How can you spot a fake contest?

• They don’t post the previous winners.

Dream Quest One does post its previous winners, and indeed any contest, legitimate or otherwise will be able to post previous winners so long as they’ve been running for a while, so this is not of particular importance, but still the first thing you should check.

• They post previous winning entries, but they are of extremely low quality.

Dream Quest One’s previous 1st place winner is posted here. I’ll let you judge the story’s quality on your own, but since this contest claims (from the SFReader link) to attract 400-500 entries per quarter, it’s surprising that a better written story could not be found.

• The previous winners have no web profile.

This is possible, but is it probable in today’s day and age? None of Dream Quest One’s previous winners has a significant web presence. My own web presence is paltry, but at least I have one. So does nearly every writer I know. This is a clearly a red flag.

• The editor/contest organizer has no web presence other than the contest.

Scammers tend not to want their real names associated with a bogus contest, and so develop only a very thin web alias to take responsibility. A Google search of Andre L West reveals dozens of links having to do with the contest, but almost nothing else. Again, not definitive, but certainly a red flag.

• They charge a fee.

This one is a little more problematic. Legitimate contests also charge fees (with Writers of the Future, with no fee, being the notable exception) . Often these fees are for fundraising purposes and go to support the magazine. I have absolutely no problem with this, and in fact, EDF will be launching its own fee charging contest soon (with all proceeds going to raise our payment rates).

However.

A key thing here is to look at a contest fees vs prize payouts. The top fiction prize at Dream Quest One is $500 (for poetry, it’s an even lower $250), whereas the entry fee is $10 USD. Seems about right, doesn’t it? Except that if they attract, as advertised, 400-500 entries, then they are pulling in $4-5000. For a payout of $1275. Where does the extra 3K go? There’s no magazine or other charitable cause attached to the contest. Mr. West claims it goes to administration, which means the fees for administering the contest are a staggering 75% of gross.

• They pay their judges.

Again, thorny. It’s common for even legitimate contest to offer a stipend (we plan to for the EDF contest). However, you also get big names and advertise the heck out of them. You’re paying them to attach their name to your contest. If they have no name to speak of, what are you paying for? Slush reader is a volunteer position after all.

• The contest doesn’t normally publish fiction.

SFReader has a contest that asks for publication rights when they don’t normally publish fiction. However, SFReader is a huge, thriving site where it’s likely your work will get seen. Same thing for Writers Digest. Dream Quest One appears to exist solely to support the contest. Sure they publish your work there, but who is going to be reading your work? Other contest entrants. Period.

So what is my conclusion regarding whether or not Dream Quest One is a scam writing contest? From the points above, it’s hard to say. There are lots of red flags, but instead of being a scam, it could simply be poorly thought out and incompetently administered. Either way, you won’t see me shelling out money to enter.

Tags: Contests, Dream Quest One, Scams