The Hopelessness of Copyright

Just returned from a panel discussion with law professor, university counsel, expert on Internet, and technical-research librarian: In short, for writers, copyright is hopeless. Because writers aren't organized like musicians, and won't be soon, the Internet (and Google's book-scanning, and office photocopying, and Amazon.com's cut of the take on your e-book, and so on) has made a morass of the laws surrounding published material and dimmed the rewards you may have expected as a writer. There are laws but few feel bound by them.

So, for best results: Write your book. Publish it yourself and own all rights. If you like, release portions of it electronically and LICENSE the material -- meaning anybody can read it or listen to it, but nobody is allowed make money from it -- with a creativecommons.org license. Take your payment in good will and prestige. Then use those to make money not from your writing but from readings, or leading classes, or becoming a small-press publisher, or serving on discussion panels, or editing, or advising, or -- get a day job.

After the panel I thought, "This sounds so hopeless," but it suddenly occured to me that this is exactly what has happened to me, and what I do.

Don't Know the First Thing About Marketing

Now you've got a book (or chapbook) -- what do you do? I presume you want people to buy and read it. Here are the steps I'm taking with my book Meet Me: Writers in St. Louis, due to be published next month. Even if your book is already published, these will help.

The Postcard: You can design and send a postcard announcing the availability of your book at ANY time in the marketing process. I'm doing it pre-publication.

1. People, libraries, and stores have to know your book is available. I designed (using a template) and bought, online, from 123print.com, 250 postcards announcing my book and a little of what it's about; pages and price; plus the ISBN and the publisher's contact information for pre-orders. Beautiful, full-color glossy postcards. 100 postcard stamps cost me $28. No, the postcards don't match the book cover, which isn't designed yet (!). I want people to anticipate the book more than I want the card to "match" the cover. That would be the ideal, but it won't happen this time; I won't wait. (Writer, never waste your time waiting for something to happen that's out of your power.) Some postcards I will hand out or post wherever writers gather.

I AM holding back the postcards until I test the publisher's online pre-ordering system. Nothing worse than publicity for a book that is not available!

Remember: You can design and send a postcard announcing the availability of your book at ANY time in the marketing process. The only requirement is the book has to be obtainable.

What, I, the WRITER, paid for this? You bet! If you want to sell your book, these days YOU, the writer, promote it.

What Your Skills are Worth

Copyediting: $26/hr
Manuscript evaluations: $46-$51/hr
Teaching/leading a workshop: $75/hr
Writing queries: $78/hr; $200 per project
Online research: $65/hr
"Generating content": $84/hr

Info is the "average" from the 2006 Writers' Market. You'd be making more today!

Go out and charge likewise!

What Are You Worth Per Hour?

Maybe you can’t make a living wage from your fiction or poems or essays. But you CAN make money using the array of skills you employ when you do creative writing. Here are some of your skills. Not everyone can say they have them! How good are you at each of these, and how experienced? Do you know what they are worth? Can you set a price on them? That’s the first step toward getting paid.

-copyediting $_____ per hour

-evaluation of manuscripts/critical feedback $____per hour

-teaching or leading a workshop $____ per hour

-writing queries, proposals, or synopses $____per hour

-researching potential publication venues $____per hour

-navigating and gathering information from websites helpful to writers, such as litmags.org or duotrope.com, and preparing to impart this information to those who want it $____per hour

-generating “content”: writing articles for publication or the web $____per hour

Those are just some of the skills you are probably undervaluing! More later, plus actual figures you SHOULD be charging.

Thanks to Becky Ellis of the blog cherrypiepress.blogspot.com for finding litmags.org.

Scribd.com

Scribd.com is where writers post their work for readers to download and get 80 percent of any sales. It's an alternative to Amazon.com which takes 50 percent. I've priced my poetry book, Fierce Consent, at Scribd's suggested retail of $5, in PDF format. And I'll see if my experience at Scribd.com is at all different than, or more trafficked than, lulu.com. I'm always looking for ways for writers to get more from what they do.

Read the NYT article about Scribd here.

"I Have Wasted My Life"

"I'm sorry you haven't had a happy life," my mother said. She was comparing me with my sisters, all homeowners, settled, and wonderful: blond brick, gas fireplace. Then she's got the writer, for godsakes, a-comin' by with red-rimmed eyes again.

"That's not exactly true," I said. "You mean that I haven't had a normal life.

"How could I have had a normal life? I was born with a talent. I assume that meant I should use it. So I use it. Anyone or anything that tries to stop me or get in my way, I'm gone."

"That's the problem," Mom said.

I don't argue with Mom, or try to explain things. So I let her think she stung me a little. That's the price I pay for having caused her so much worry.

Thank God that writers sent quotations down through the ages to help us. There's that shocking line by poet James Wright: "I have wasted my life." What shocked people was that the line expresses not anguish, but joy. Writers understand this perfectly.

What Finally Drove Me to Enter a Poetry Contest

I'll admit up front that I want two things from contests. One is money. My car skidded and is in the shop. (On me, not a scratch. God protects writers.) But when the repairs totaled $4000 I asked myself, where else does a poet have a chance of getting money? So I'm a-going for the green. Knowing very well the odds are long: estimate is between 800 and 1200 to 1. BUT NOWADAYS THAT'S ABOUT THE SAME AS THE ODDS OF GETTING A JOB. (P.S.I already have a second job.)

Next, I want honorable mentions, something nice to put on apps for writers' colonies, grants and the like. We all know good work is not enough. Publication is not enough. Someone from the outside has to declare you special. A fiction writer I knew turned "second place" and "finalist for the Umpteenth Named-After-Famous Writer Award" into a resume so awesome people in a neighboring state were talking about her in hushed tones two years later. Of course it takes a fiction writer to do that.

Collateral benefit: getting the work revised, updated, and in order. Somebody stop me, please, if I try this again.

Skirmishes in the Money Wars

I got three offers, two of them with figures attached. Of both, I asked for more money, pointing out my well-known reliability, track record and 30 years of experience. Asking for more felt very risky -- remember, I'm a writer and am supposed to be grateful for anything at all. But I know budgets are always more flexible than managers say, that an initial offer is always a lowball, and that it's a game. I have often meditated on this motto I saw framed in a real-estate office:

"In business, you don't get what you deserve; you get what you negotiate."

Result: One offer withdrawn; they just didn't have more money. One offer on hold.

The third offer, a contract job. I was asked to make an estimate. I did -- noting the source and therefore asking for 25 percent less than the market price. And I asked for a percentage of the money up front, like a normal contractor. Never heard from them again.

In fighting for us writers to get paid what we are worth, I ain't winning but neither am I caving and kissin' people's feet. Now hear this, everybody: Pay the writer.

Eating and Living Like a Writer, Part 1

Living on nothing as we writers tend to do I have some tips for all the other, more normal people who now find themselves financially at sea:

-Make your own "meat." One cup of vital wheat gluten makes 1 lb of "ground beef" in less time than it takes to go to the store and buy it. With a bit more effort, I make convincing "barbecue" and fried "chicken."
-Substitute Velveeta for cheddar, or learn to make "cheesy" sauce out of cheap ingredients like a potato and a carrot. You'll find such recipes in vegan cookbooks. You'll learn some real neat "substitution" tricks in them, and you don't have to be a vegan to use 'em.
-Shop ethnic markets for reasonable deals. Their regular customers won't stand for price-gouging.
-Don't dine out, or go to cute coffee places that sell individual cookies for, like, $2.25.
-Don't order in. No pizza is worth $17.
-Read magazines in the library.
-Pack your lunch. Because I work 10 to 6, most days I pack lunch AND dinner.
-Buy corn tortillas; a stack of 36 is insanely cheap, good for you, and you can do 1000 things with them for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.
-Attend free events, such as literary readings. Sorry, but you will just have to miss Joan Baez.
-Eat more bean-and-grain dishes and potato dishes, meanwhile telling yourself it's glamorously South American.
-Close off the rooms you don't use much. (Why do you have rooms you don't use?)
-An electric blanket is essential.
-Be aware that your car has a 13+-gallon tank and that keeping it filled adds lots of extra weight.

It Hurts to Be First

A small group of fellow writers, acquaintances, good people all, asked me to meet with them to get some guidance about a self-publishing project. I asked to be paid $100 for this, and through the contact person we set a date to meet.

Then the contact person sent a polite and apologetic email saying the group was following the leads I had suggested to them previously, had learned what they felt they needed to know, and frankly some of them had been uncomfortable with the idea of paying me -- someone they knew -- and therefore had decided not to meet with me after all.

It hurt. Clearly, the money was the sticking point. I feel embarrassed having asked for it. I think the writers' perceptions of me have changed. But I wouldn't be following my own advice if I had bartered a Sunday afternoon, a 40-mile round trip, and hard-won expertise for "Thank you, you're very generous" and "Isn't she a nice girl." I want to say, "I AM a nice girl. But I'm 51 and if you've noticed that I'm on the skinny side these days, it's not because I'm dieting."

As small as this incident is, as small as I feel, this was a victory in the battle for writers to get paid.

The Privilege of Doing It

A scientist comes up to me after I discuss how writers never get paid very much because, it's said, just being published is pay enough, and it's a privilege to be a writer and I should be satisfied with that. . .She said to me, "I was a researcher and never got paid very much -- because just getting to do my research was, they thought, compensation enough. . ."

Surprised, I told her I thought all science people really raked in the cash with those grants.

Oh, no, she said. Post-docs, researchers, all sorts of people, they aren't paid very much.

I said, They also exploit young people. Because they're young, employers think they don't have to pay much.

She said, They do it to journalists, too. I said Yes, I know; I worked at a newspaper where goodies like circus tickets were supposed to compensate for pathetic paychecks.

Now I wonder: In how many professions are skilled and dedicated workers being b.s.'ed that they shouldn't be well paid because they have "the privilege of doing it." And like fools we believe and profess and accept that! What a wonderful scam!

(Winner of the June 2008 Artificial Difficulty Award!)