Good point about cost of publicity being inversely proportional to the level of fame. Notice that even though he didn’t do the DVD commentary, “Harlan bitching about publicity” has gotten him press, and presumably he wasn’t paid for it. He wasn’t too proud to be interviewed in order to bitch about being interviewed.

I couldn’t listen to that video (I’ve got sound problems on my computer just now), but if it’s the one I’m thinking of, some DVD makers wanted him to do interviews for a show that he wrote for. I can actually understand his point in this particular case, because if he did the interview he would not be promoting himself, he would be promoting the box set. Your average TV watcher who’s watching the box set is not going to say “This Ellison guy sounds so interesting I’m going to buy some of his books”. Most people don’t even pay that much attention to the names in the credits anyway unless they already know those people.

The interviews you’ve sat for, on the other hand, are promoting yourself. If you make yourself sound compelling enough, someone might pick up WotF XXV, and then say “This Lapp guy has great stories!” and will watch for your stories henceforth.

Wow, I am chatty today, aren’t I?

Along the same lines, another question: why do you blog? I would be really impressed if someone were paying you to do this. If not, you’re sort of giving the milk away for free, aren’t you? Why buy the cow? Instead of writing a blog post, you could have written the first draft of a flash story, or a few pages of a novel.

One reason might be that you just like blogging. Just because you’re making money writing fiction doesn’t mean that’s all you’re allowed to do.

Otherwise, maintaining a tangible web presence is a good way to drum up publicity too. If an author writes interesting blog posts, (for instance about the money flowing to the writer), then surfers are more likely to hang around that blog, which creates bigger exposure when a new publication for that author is released.

Plus it’s just so easy to isolate yourself when you’re writing, it’s just healthy to interact with people with similar interests, and the internet is a great way to do that.

Okay, I think I’m done now. Really.

“Money flows toward the writer” is a beginner’s guide to not getting scammed. Don’t pay to get the manuscript read or published, don’t pay an agent up front, don’t get talked into a bookdoctor.

But an author can certainly choose to spend money. How many writing books have I bought? How much does Clarion cost? Or a MFA? This is not a hard and fast rule for everything; it’s a guide for the necessities. You need a publisher, you need an agent.

It is to be expected that a publisher will do something to promote your book, which is their investment. So do you need a publicist? No. I also don’t need a better laptop or a laser printer or a comfortable computer chair. It just improves the process. So might a publicist or writer-paid editor or fee-based contest or whatever. If someone tells you you must spend money, then you’ve got a scammer.

First, to the Harlan thing: As already mentioned, Harlan was pissed about the person refusing to pay him to use his likeness to sell a product that he’d already been paid for anyway. They essentially wanted to use his already valued name to sell more copies, but didn’t want to pay him for using him as a publicity vehicle. This would be like going to a great publicist and saying “I want you to publicize my book, but I don’t want to pay you for it.” Whether Ellison feels he should get paid for every interview he does, I don’t know, but he certainly wanted to get paid when people were using him to make money without giving him something in return.

And I know you wrote this post as a response to me, but I was never talking about paying for publicity. I think publishers should fork out more for an author, but even so, authors want to sell books, and if that means paying a publicist or whatever, then so be it. They’re not losing money for doing any work; they’re paying for someone else to do that work. It’s not like paying someone $5,000 to publish a story you wrote.

As for the contests: Yes, you can run all these cost analyses. That’s fine and good, but the chances of anyone winning these large contests is slim to none to begin with, even if they are good. You can’t assume that your opinion of your work, or even the opinion of others, is the same opinion as the people who judge these contests. The reality is you can’t assume any chance of success. I only know that I might have a chance at WOTF because I have two honorable mentions, which means something I’m doing one of the judges likes. I don’t know what was liked, which ultimately means I can’t know what my chances are of winning. I just know I have a chance…

I also take issue with your figures up there. If Glimmer Train has a readership of 5K, that’s really small. You pay $15 for the minuscule chance you can win, but the gains are not all that great. Maybe it helps you some, but 5K is not like getting published in F&SF, which costs you only a postage stamp to submit to, or, heck, WOTF, which also costs only postage and has a large readership (and gets you noticed by authors in the field, along with others; many a story I have read of winners of that contest ending up with a book deal just by going to the ceremony at the end of the submission year and talking to the judges and big names who work with WOTF).

And then you run into the problem with your formula. If you have very little chance to win, and it costs $15 to enter, then you’re likely to be out $15 that time around, and $15 the next time around, and so on. If you get lucky, then maybe not, but most people aren’t that lucky. So, already, after two tries, you’ve pretty much lost more than the maximum fee based on your model. If WOTF cost that kind of money I’d be out over $100, with perhaps the same chance of winning each time. It doesn’t just reset, it adds up. Each time you’re adding another $15 with the max always at that $20-something. After a while, if you’re particularly unlucky, or can’t hit the right chords, you’re out a lot of money and have gained nothing in return.

But this is all personal for me. People can do whatever the hell they want. I just refuse to spend money to have someone read my submission to see if it’s worth their time. Contests that require fees are no better than magazines or agents that require reading fees. And none of us would suggest you submit to an agent that wants to charge you or a magazine that wants to charge you. Why is it suddenly acceptable to do so with a contest?

Me, I haven’t seen a contest compelling enough to submit to for a fee. To me, it’s like paying a publisher to publish you, but without a guarantee of publication.

I’m assuming you’ve read Glimmer Train? I submitted to their free submissions until I read a copy and realized I could never write anything they could possibly be interested in. I’m not knocking their style but what they value in their stories is clearly divergent from what I value.

Also, I’m not sure what the ellipsis in your formula represents, so I’m not sure what you’re saying.

Your odds of being rejected for 100 submissions are (99/100) to the 100th power, which is about .366. My whole point from the beginning is that 63.4% chance of winning in 100 tries on average, is quite different than saying that you can expect to win in 100 tries.

It doesn’t really matter, anyway, but I just thought I’d try to clear up the confusion about what I was saying.

“However, I’ve already won WotF, I’ll stick with my usual way of making important decisions, my magic 8-ball.

Yeah, David said everything I think I was going to say, but in more accurate terms.

To be fair, most of the places that charge a reading fee are places I wouldn’t submit to anyway, even if they were free. I typically do not write what is considered “literary” anything. I write my own version of literary, but I find what society deems as “literary” these days (at least by what is published) to be synonymous with “boring as all hell.”

WOTF, however, is on my hit list.