/lit/ - Literature

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Anonymous Mon Feb 2 23:37:01 2015 No.6090032 [Reply] [Original]

Hey /lit/ wanna talk about some super common slush-pile first paragraph follies that will surely get your work insta-canned?

1. Light is cascading, draping, soaking, etc.
2. Beads of sweat are cascading, flooding, spilling or amassing in any way.
(These first two seem esoteric but trust me when I tell you like 60% of manuscripts start like this)
3. Going into an unnecessary amount of detail to establish an environment that the reader has no vested interest in.
4. "Pyrotechnics" - a first paragraph thats like 4 pages long with 15 modifiers and a dozen semicolons.
5...

Also ITT: ask a guy who has worked for just two years now at a lit agency anything.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 2 23:38:48 2015 No.6090042 How did you land your position?

Anonymous Mon Feb 2 23:43:26 2015 No.6090069

>>6090042
Kinda fell ass backwards into it. Wanted to be a writer. Went in to meet with a low level connection I had to see if she we rep me. Somehow ended up offering me an internship instead. Wrote my readers reports super curtly because I didn't think anyone would actually read them. When a job opened up they offered me the job based on the reports I'd been writing. That curtness kinda landed me the job I think.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 2 23:44:36 2015 No.6090074 >>6090032 >3. Going into an unnecessary amount of detail to establish an environment that the reader has no vested interest in. Who is the best American writer?

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 2 23:48:37 2015 No.6090096 >>6090074 Ha, well I'm not gonna bite on that. You learn to stifle your personal tastes with this kind of work. But I get your point. perhaps better defined as "unmotivated detail" or something like that. You just know it when you see it.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 2 23:49:24 2015 No.6090102 >>6090032 >>6090032 Do you worry that reading so much shitty writing will liquefy important brain lobes in your brain?

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 2 23:51:20 2015 No.6090114 can I email you the first 750 pages of a work and you tell me if it's shit or not?

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 2 23:51:20 2015 No.6090116 By the way, if you guys really want to get published, start writing nonfiction. Agents are all about it. Gets your foot in the door. I seen it a million times.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 2 23:52:21 2015 No.6090125 >>6090116 >>6090032 Interesting, please provide example

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 2 23:52:58 2015 No.6090136 >>6090102 Oh god yes. Everyday. I should be reading right now but I felt my soul escaping me in real time tonight so I made this post to keep me grounded

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 2 23:54:09 2015 No.6090144 >>6090032 What is the project you would most like to complete & sell to an agent? also >>. Beads of sweat are cascading, flooding, spilling or amassing in any way is a good kek

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 2 23:55:33 2015 No.6090154 >>6090096 Yeah I know what you mean.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 2 23:55:59 2015 No.6090157 >>6090125 The only ones I can think of are clients at my agency, so I don't wanna drop names. But I can think of a few big names and a bunch of not so big ones

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 2 23:56:33 2015 No.6090159 >>6090116 Waiting for a philosophy student to come and state >all writing is fiction.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 00:01:16 2015 No.6090192 do you value depth of vision or creative versatility more in writing?

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 00:01:39 2015 No.6090196

Also, and this is the really scary shit. Did you know that once you get an agent, there is absolutely zero assurance they will be able to actually sell your work to a publisher? And then, even if you do get a publisher, odds are remote in the extreme that your book will earn out its advance. And you'll join an absolute army of writers who never earned out their first advance and couldn't shake the reputation that their books don't sell and never publish another book.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 00:03:15 2015 No.6090208 >>6090157 nonfiction like essays or memoir or?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 00:04:19 2015 No.6090211 >>6090196 w/e i don't want anything i don't deserve

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 00:05:39 2015 No.6090215 >>6090032 What common traits do you find among works that come into your agency and succeed?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 00:06:06 2015 No.6090218 >>6090192 Certainly both are welcome, we're not in the business of turning down talent of any kind. I would guess creative versatility looks better on the page while depth sounds better in the pitch?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 00:08:08 2015 No.6090226 >>6090218 Is it true that you sell the sizzle and not the steak?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 00:10:30 2015 No.6090243 >>6090125 Please respond, what sort of non-fiction would you recommend an aspiring writer tackle?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 00:10:59 2015 No.6090247 >>6090144 Personally? I don't even know anymore. Its been interesting because while the job has sort of killed the dream of being a professional writer, I've also enjoyed what little writing I do now a lot more. Its more of a hobby these days.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 00:14:07 2015 No.6090261 >>6090208 Essay collections have been selling big lately out of nowhere when everyone thought the market for that was dead. memoir not as much.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 00:16:37 2015 No.6090278 >>6090226 Oh yes. The agents bread and butter is being a champion for the given project. Without that, its just another manuscript drifting around the ether.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 00:19:50 2015 No.6090294 >>6090278 so, David Sedaris

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 00:22:21 2015 No.6090317 >>6090215 Honestly, and you'll hate me for this, having an established platform. Its no coincidence this blog to book phenomenon, its dead simple to sell something to a publisher when you can tack on that so-and-so has 100 million followers or whatever.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 00:24:42 2015 No.6090332 Or hard would it be to publish a play written in rhymed iambic pentameter?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 00:26:01 2015 No.6090341 >>6090294 I don't want to make it sound so contrived though. In my short time I have seen some real cinderella stories, too.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 00:27:14 2015 No.6090350 >>6090332 Don't know about theater or screenplays unfortunately. Not our line of work. Strictly books at our offices.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 00:32:32 2015 No.6090381 >>6090341 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbQTXFJL8lo

>>	chevy chase Tue Feb 3 00:49:34 2015 No.6090448 >>6090381 good ref holmes

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 00:58:33 2015 No.6090500 No mas?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 00:59:28 2015 No.6090508 >>6090500 who are your favorite authors, and what are some of your favorite works? I ask this as socially as I do interrogatively

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 01:00:57 2015 No.6090518 you forgot light is STREAMING the most obvious one

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 01:11:27 2015 No.6090574 >>6090518 You are so right. Also, "A single beam of light..."

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 01:13:49 2015 No.6090585 >>6090508 I don't even know anymore. You know what I do sometimes? I go to Barnes and noble and read the first pages of Donna tart novels and stuff and just try to reverse engineer what people like about these things.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 01:14:23 2015 No.6090590 have you ever accepted a work which named black coffee as being drunk by the protagonist?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 01:17:02 2015 No.6090599 Any signs of the horror market coming back to life? I'm sitting on these fifteen manuscripts.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 01:18:46 2015 No.6090608 >>6090032 Does your agency have any sort of special priority for selection when it comes to subject matter? e.g. coloured narrators, sparkling vampires, dystopian fiction etc?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 01:21:52 2015 No.6090625 >>6090599 Yo, I really do. I hear the phrase "The new weird" thrown around as a buzzword for the modern, slightly more prose conscious horror genre thats emerging. Hollywood is hot for this stuff too, I'm told.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 01:24:36 2015 No.6090639 File: 160 KB, 400x575, 1422364993250.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6090625 You serious? I need to get to making up third drafts!

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 01:24:51 2015 No.6090641 >>6090608 Each agent pursues their own interests for the most part. I work for two guys whose client lists could not be more different.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 01:33:31 2015 No.6090679 >>6090639 Super serious

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 01:36:17 2015 No.6090692 >>6090032 Opening with dialogue, someone said adverbially

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 02:49:41 2015 No.6091002 >>6090196 so what, the reward is the work.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 02:51:07 2015 No.6091005 >>6090317 god twitter is fuckin horrible

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 08:20:18 2015 No.6091692 >>6091002 So if a guy who is otherwise capable of having a long career as a writer gets black balled by his first publisher, what, that's a reward?

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 08:37:54 2015 No.6091702

>>6091002
We have a client that is critically well-known but fairly unkown commercially. Guys written 8 novels and 6 collections. Problem is, this guy doesn't make anything on advance. Every two years, when he has a book, he gets the same 75k advance. Guys 50+ years old has written 14 critically important books, and can't make a living off being a writer because of what basically amounts to beaurocratic bullshit. I'm with you, the work is foremost, but if the work is good, and the guy is dedicated, I think that guy should be able to have a fulltime job in the arts.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 08:39:26 2015 No.6091705 >>6090625 >The new weird. Hell yeah, this bodes well for me.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 10:24:33 2015 No.6091929 Hey OP wanna r8 my opening sentence out of 10? Please respond

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 11:04:08 2015 No.6091992 >>6091929 In keeping wih the business themes of thi thread, here's an exercise for you, why don't you practice your pitch letter and I'll tell you if it needs improvement. Single paragraph with a short synopsis.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 11:09:00 2015 No.6092004 >>6091992 We don't pitch letters in Europe. Do you mean a cover letter? I just include the places I've been published, competitions I've been shortlisted for, and so on (they usually ask it to be short), as well as synopsis.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 11:22:36 2015 No.6092039 >>6090032 what are some other tropes or cliches often submitted? in terms of plot, characters, and themes?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 11:25:03 2015 No.6092048 >>6092039 Young introspective white guys are a big no-no.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 11:26:17 2015 No.6092050 >>6090032 what is your salary op?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 11:29:51 2015 No.6092066 >>6092004 Meh, that actually doesn't sound very fruitful after all. OK lets see a sentence, though a paragraph would be better I think.

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 11:38:43 2015 No.6092106

>>6092039
So many war memoirs, cancer memoirs, general emotional/physical trauma memoirs. Also, lots of retired guys who are trying to write funny/quirky novels set in the 60's and 70's. Lots of women from Florida writing psuedo-erotica. I can think of a bunch more.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 11:43:12 2015 No.6092125 >>6092066 Here it is: http://pastebin.com/Pj3rzbpW Just a wee opening paragraph

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 11:48:08 2015 No.6092144

>>6092050
Starting salary for lit assistant in NYC is 30k. I've gotten some raises, but the money is real shit still. The good news is there's only one promotion, when you get promoted to agent you basically work for yourself and can make as much or as little as you want. Some agents work everyday until they die, others show up for 8 weeks out of every year.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 12:03:15 2015 No.6092204 >>6092125 Link doesn't appear to be working for me.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 12:06:32 2015 No.6092216 >>6092204 http://pastebin.com/Pj3rzbpW (second edition) It expired. Here it is again. Appreciate any response.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 12:09:13 2015 No.6092229 >>6092204 http://pastebin.com/3FgkuiHx (second edition) It expired. Here it is again. Appreciate any response.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 12:20:09 2015 No.6092265 >>6092229 >3 views >no replies feelsbadman

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 12:30:49 2015 No.6092306

>>6092265
Ha, never fear, i'm just slow.

I think it's totally serviceable. My critique would be that the second sentence quickly drops a load of exposition that the first sentence already hints at more delicately. And though I personally don't mind it, you might ruffle some passive-voice stickler's feathers with "with a sort of laugh," but you wouldn't want to cater to that crowd anyhow.

>>	ThinkingDust !!bjwBFc7wC0d Tue Feb 3 13:31:31 2015 No.6092567 >>6092229 >http://pastebin.com/3FgkuiHx i would like to read this but the author is being a little precious about leaving it up...

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 13:44:01 2015 No.6092616 [DELETED]

>>6090196
How the fuck do you even justify that? Publishers are fucking awful, why would you want anything to do with them? Ruining someone's career and passion for something before it can even get off the ground because they're not writing "what sells".

It's fucked up.

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 13:58:06 2015 No.6092653

>>6090196
How do you justify this? And yes I understand it is a business and you want to make money. It just seems fucked up to me and makes me wonder why so many people shit on anything but traditional publishing.

I didn't get into writing to be forced to write only "what sells". I got into it because I enjoy it and want to make something out of it and quite frankly the idea that my career could be ruined before it even gets off the ground pisses me off beyond belief.

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 14:04:19 2015 No.6092676

>>6092653
welcome to art, bro. visual art is the same way. the only art that has second chances is music because it's often collaborative so if you're first try flops you switch bands and try again...but even then you can get stuck in some shitty contract where the label won't invest the money to put your album out but you are contractually blocked from releasing any album with anyone else, so you are reduced to spamming free mixtapes and trying to get shows off that...but that's the worst part of art "careers": who succeeds is not just based on being "good" or even "luck" it depends on if your label/publisher/gallery puts a huge advertising push behind you...two artists could be more or less equal but the gallery gods hype one dude all to hell and the other dude gets nothing then guess who will succeed and who will fail and then they can say "the market chose"...you're only hope is to be a tireless self-promoter constantly spamming yourself all over social media like that awful chink that posts himself all the time

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 14:05:33 2015 No.6092679 >>6092676 >the gallery gods which is to say the jews

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 14:43:48 2015 No.6092789 >>6090692 I see no problem with opening with dialogue, perhaps not adverbially, though.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 14:49:46 2015 No.6092810 how do educated people make the follies op mentions? if you blew all your parents money on literature degrees shouldn't you know better?

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 14:55:50 2015 No.6092823

>>6092810
It's because literary analysis isn't focused on what's good or bad, and in the world of publishing that's all that is focused on. Though an anon in this thread made it clear that it's not even good or bad, it's what sells and what doesn't.
Those getting literature degrees aren't trying to figure out if something is good or publishable, the works they deal with have all been published and they are told they're good. So it's really no wonder they still commit these follies. They aren't taught to spot and avoid them.

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 14:56:29 2015 No.6092826

>>6090196
how do you get an agent? what books do i need to read to understand all this shit? why do you need a middle man to sell your shit? the middlemen in programming (aka recruiters) are fucking annoying cunts that everyone hates, but you're telling me writers have to activily seek those fuckers out? ugh

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 14:58:37 2015 No.6092827 >>6092106 give us some sentences as samples PLEASE.

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:03:07 2015 No.6092839

>tfw want to write a coming of age novel in first person present tense but know it'll immediately get tossed in the trash
>tfw want to write a multi-protagonist first person thriller novel but know it'll immediately get tossed in the trash
Why even live?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:05:13 2015 No.6092845 >>6092106 >lots of retired guys who are trying to write funny/quirky novels set in the 60's and 70's Sounds familiar.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:05:53 2015 No.6092848 >>6092106 >lots of retired guys who are trying to write funny/quirky novels set in the 60's and 70's Now who does this sound like?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:06:55 2015 No.6092853 >>6092845 I should've refreshed.

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:07:17 2015 No.6092855

>>6092826

Because publishers get completely swamped with manuscripts and 99.9% of them are shit, so they usually just throw them all in the bin without reading unless it comes from an agent. Literary agents know the market and know what makes a publishable book, so they act as a shit-filter and the stuff they send to publishers therefore comes with some kind of assurance that it's worth considering.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:13:26 2015 No.6092876 >>6092853 Great minds think alike, anon. No worries.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:18:24 2015 No.6092893 >>6092106 don't war and cancer memoirs sell well though? can't blame them for at least trying to be commercial...

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:19:25 2015 No.6092896 >>6092855 so how do i get an agent?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:22:23 2015 No.6092908 >>6090625 Sounds like HP Lovecraft with zombies and werewolves and vampires.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:22:42 2015 No.6092911 thanks for this thread op. lots of good info for me to strategize on.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:24:12 2015 No.6092916 >>6092839 Just self-publish it and if it's actually good, someone will notice it.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:24:17 2015 No.6092917 I started following some agents on Twitter. Do you have any recommendations for who to follow?

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:26:49 2015 No.6092930

>>6092896

There's tons of guides online that can explain it in depth, but most of them want a covering letter, a synopsis and a sample of your MS. Check every agent's website before you contact them, you won't need to write from scratch for every agent, but not everyone asks for the exact same material. If you send something they haven't asked for (like that five page synopsis as requested last month by Agent A when Agent B asks for a synopsis under one page) then you blatantly haven't researched them and that will piss some agents off.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:27:36 2015 No.6092935 >>6092916 What if you are shit at social media?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:31:43 2015 No.6092950 >>6092935 if you don't have your own social media following forget it, maybe different with writing but a lot of artforms the promoters want you to come with a pre-built fanbase, at least regionally, to prove you're worth investing in further

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:31:44 2015 No.6092951

>>6092826
There are a few ways to get an agent, most of them revolve around getting a referral from someone the agent knows or wants to know. (I.e., your professor at your MFA program puts you in touch with agent, or your editor at semi-prestigious publication X, or your writer friend who has an agent puts you in touch.)
But in any case, what you want to get is the agent's 'real' email address. This is how you avoid the slush pile.

The other very popular way to land an agent is to be published in very prestigious publication X or be famous for something entirely different and want to write a book about it.

There are others, too.

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:34:12 2015 No.6092958

>4. "Pyrotechnics" - a first paragraph thats like 4 pages long with 15 modifiers and a dozen semicolons.
>Implying that "Everything around it moves, as if just this one time and one time only, as if the message of Heraclitus has arrived here through some deep current, from the distance of an entire universe, in spite of all the senseless obstacles, because the water moves, it flows, it arrives, and cascades; now and then the silken breeze sways, the mountains quiver in the scourging heat, but this heat itself also moves, trembles, and vibrates in the land, as do the tall scattered grass-islands, the grass, blade by blade, in the riverbed; each individual shallow wave, as it falls, tumbles over the low weirs, and then, every inconceivable fleeting element of this subsiding wave, and all the individual glitterings of light flashing on the surface of this fleeting element, this surface suddenly emerging and just as quickly collapsing, with its drops of light dying down, scintillating, and then reeling in all directions, inexpressible in words; clouds are gathering; the restless, jarring blue sky high above; the sun is concentrated with horrific strength, yet still indescribable, extending onto the entire momentary creation, maddeningly brilliant, blindingly radiant; the fish and the frogs and the beetles and the tiny reptiles are in the river; the cars and the buses, from the northbound number 3 to the number 32 up to the number 38, inexorably creep along on the steaming asphalt roads built parallel on both embankments, then the rapidly propelled bicycles below the breakwaters, the men and women strolling next to the river along paths that were built or inscribed into the dust, and the blocking stones, too, set down artificially and asymmetrically underneath the mass of gliding water: everything is at play or alive, so that things happen, move on, dash along, proceed forward, sink down, rise up, disappear, emerge again, run and flow and rush somewhere, only it, the Ooshirosagi, does not move at all, this enormous snow-white bird, open to attack by all, not concealing its defenselessness; this hunter, it leans forward, its neck folded in an S-form,

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:34:35 2015 No.6092961 >>6092950 Wait, seriously? Anon was asking about social media as far as self-publishing goes. But you're telling me a publisher is going to want me to have a pre-built fanbase?

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:35:15 2015 No.6092965

>>6092958
and it now extends its head and long hard beak out from this S-form, and strains the whole, but at the same time it is strained downward, its wings pressed tightly against its body, its thin legs searching for a firm point beneath the water’s surface; it fixes its gaze on the flowing surface of the water, the surface, yes, while it sees, crystal-clear, what lies beneath this surface, down below in the refractions of light, however rapidly it may arrive, if it does arrive, if it ends up there, if a fish, a frog, a beetle, a tiny reptile arrives with the water that gurgles as the flow is broken and foams up again, with one single precise and quick movement, the bird shall strike with its beak, and lift something up, it’s not even possible to see what it is, everything happens with such lightning speed, it’s not possible to see, only to know that it is a fish — an amago, an ayu, a huna, a kamotsuka, a mugitsuku or an unagi or something else — and that is why it stood there, almost in the middle of the Kamo River, in the shallow water; and there it stands, in one time, immeasurable in its passing, and yet beyond all doubt extant, one time proceeding neither forward nor backward, but just swirling and moving nowhere, like an inconceivably complex net, cast out into time; and this motionlessness, despite all its strength, must be born and sustained, and it would only be fitting to grasp this simultaneously, but it is precisely that, this simultaneous grasping, that cannot be realized, so it remains unsaid, and even the entirety of the words that want to describe it do not appear, not even the separate words; yet still the bird must lean upon one single moment all at once, and in doing so, must obstruct all movement: all alone, within its own self, in the frenzy of events, in the exact center of an absolute, swarming, teeming world, it must remain there in this cast-out moment, so that this moment as it were closes down upon it, and then the moment is closed, so that the bird may bring its snow-white body to a dead halt in the exact center of this furious movement, so that it may impress its own motionlessness against the dreadful forces breaking over it from all directions, because what comes only much later is that once again it will take part in this furious motion, in the total frenzy of everything, and it too will move, in a lightning-quick strike, together with everything else; for now, however, it remains within this enclosing moment, at the beginning of the hunt." isn't a god tier opening paragraph

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:37:31 2015 No.6092978 >>6092950 As if I haven't already lost any hope.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:38:27 2015 No.6092984 >>6092958 heh heh and i had recently been wondering if it was worth pissing some money away subscribing to White Review, well, question fucking answered!

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:41:15 2015 No.6092997 >>6090243 Write what you know, especially in non-fiction. A good book about 4chan that actually attempts to capture its essence has sales potential.

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:42:49 2015 No.6093002

>>6092961
not the OP of this thread but publishers are in dire straits. if you've already got an audience, the book is a guaranteed profit. epic meal time, lol cats, stuff white people like, etc.

remember this is capitalism we're talking about. publishers are a BUSINESS. books are a product. profit is the bottom line, not artistic integrity.

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:45:11 2015 No.6093015
File: 526 KB, 900x3218, 2013-11-10Freud hour part 2.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>6092958
> Everything around it moves, as if just this one time and one time only, as if the message of Heraclitus has arrived here through some deep current, from the distance of an entire universe, in spite of all the senseless obstacles, because the water moves, it flows, it arrives, and cascades
Deleuze? You're alive?

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:45:29 2015 No.6093018

>>6092965
True enough. I guess my rebut would be that Krasznahorkai has been in the business for a loooong time. It affords you some literary freedoms. Look at the first pages of Satantango, I feel somewhat comfortable saying that even in 1985, he knew he couldn't come out the gate with something like Seiobo.

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:46:24 2015 No.6093020

>>6093002
God I fucking hate capitalism and I hate the internet. Sometimes.
Anyway, looks like it's not necessary, but it's a perk. I got a (minor) audience I guess. Time to schmooz.

>>6092997
I actually have a short story collection I'm working on that would have a couple stories feature a 4chan-inspired image board as part of the plot. Look for it some day never, hopefully sooner than that.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 15:59:34 2015 No.6093065 >>6093020 Actually, coming off that note, I guess it's a good thing that I'm working on publishing short stories for now. When I have a good number of them published, I suppose I could say I have a following enough, right?

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 16:07:44 2015 No.6093092

question: i hate genre fiction and never read any sci-fi since Neuromancer like 15 years ago, but the shit I want to write will be considered "sci-fi" probably, but since I don't know shit about scifi should I like study the genre so I don't seem a dilettante making noob follies? or should i just act like it's not science fiction (because it's not really, no martians and lazer guns, just some speculative computer science) and just just try be regular fiction? does shit like genre matter when trying to get it published?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 16:15:37 2015 No.6093124 >>6093092 I would say, based on what little I know about genre fiction, that anything that embraces a 'genre fiction' moniker gets immediately pitched as a YA book. Which, of course, has its own set of pros and cons.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 16:17:06 2015 No.6093134 >>6093124 Or this is an emerging trend/sales tactic, I should say.

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 16:22:33 2015 No.6093150

>>6093124
yeah, it seems like the kind of thing that could get sold to computer science majors and teenage programmers, of course i fancy myself writing "serious stuff" but, what the fuck, if impressionable young ppl want to read my shit and get influenced by it that could be neato in a way, it's not like i want to be a professional writer, but I think it could be an interesting project to work on and maybe make a few bucks

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 16:46:04 2015 No.6093226 Is your job fun?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 16:57:26 2015 No.6093272 >>6093226 it's probably like teaching, not really that fun but at least you can sleep at night knowing you can make rent despite having a humanities degree

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 17:01:17 2015 No.6093287

>>6093226
I wouldn't say its fun. The job really is a 24/7 gig. Like I'm not supposed to be reading material in the office, so when I get home after work I basically start a different kind of work day. I have a creepy basement office at home where I get drunk and listen to talk radio and read manuscripts most nights. It probably sounds lonely, but I like it. Though I wouldn't call it fun, exactly.

There are parts I fully hate though. Vetting contracts. Tax forms and other drudgery. General administrative work that I suck at. I also have to go to readings and events and things that can be fairly painfully awkward. Don't love that either.

So, not a perfect job, not yet at least.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 17:06:33 2015 No.6093302 how's the market for novels written by young female depressives

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 17:07:38 2015 No.6093305 >>6093302 Strong, but not as fertile as the essay collection market.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 17:09:30 2015 No.6093312 >>6093305 >essay collection market collections of essay published in the new yorker by connected jews or like collections of essay by regular people?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 17:13:35 2015 No.6093332 >>6093312 (not op) there have been a bunch of essay collections by non-famous people that have been doing well, esp in the last few years

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 17:13:39 2015 No.6093333 >>6093312 regular people who also happen to be female depressives, specifically.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 17:17:11 2015 No.6093353 >>6092048 really?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 17:21:23 2015 No.6093372 File: 90 KB, 1890x387, KWt3gPu.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6092679

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 17:22:52 2015 No.6093384 >>6093353 ha, that wasn't OP - and it's not true. That's a literary tradition that don't stop.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 17:23:40 2015 No.6093387 >>6092848 who?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 17:26:11 2015 No.6093398 >>6093387 >inherentvice.jpeg

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 17:29:54 2015 No.6093414 >>6093384 thats good news for me. Thy say write what you know and that's all that i know

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 17:31:25 2015 No.6093419

>>6093398
Here's some industry gossip for you. Everyone fucking hates him. Also, everyone thinks he's a big phony - claims outsider status but is married to one of the most high-powered agents in the business. I heard people were prepared to start some shit if he won the NBA in 2013 for Bleeding Edge. I guess luckily or unluckily, he did not.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 17:46:28 2015 No.6093483 >>6093419 >if he won the NBA in 2013 for Bleeding Edge On first reading I had a weird mental image of Pinecone shooting some hoops.

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 17:55:08 2015 No.6093522

>>6093419
it's sort of like MIA, she has this power to the people image, and tweets all these third world problems tweets and shit about whatever social issue of the muslim/south asian world, but married into the Bronfman family of billionare Jew gin peddlers and promptly got knocked up, but not after fucking her way to fame via Diplo...then again her first album did have that gold digger song, but who knew it was her aspirations...

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 17:56:47 2015 No.6093530 >>6092917 what are you trying to write?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 17:58:21 2015 No.6093537 >>6093419 more gossip plz, this delighted me so much >>6093522 tbf they got divorced and I would say Diplo used her way more than the other way around, slimy lil rat he is, but let's not distract from from this thread

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 18:01:43 2015 No.6093554 >>6093537 pitchfork stopped giving her BNM after she split with Diplo...

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 18:02:52 2015 No.6093559

Hey OP, will people laugh at me for writing an honest-to-God thriller novel? Not YA bullshit but like a genuine exploration of our myopic, idealized morality; endurance; and the human condition that just so happens to be interspersed with the occasional gunfight or car chase?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 18:09:16 2015 No.6093587 >>6093559 If people won't, I will: ah ah, your book is stupid

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 18:10:58 2015 No.6093596 Where do you think novellas are going? I really like reading them. Used to be a lot published around the 70's but I'm not seeing anything now.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 18:13:18 2015 No.6093608 Hey OP, what's the industry standard on foreign writers with good prose? Are they more of a hot commodity because they're foreign and edgy or do they suffer a disadvantage?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 18:27:27 2015 No.6093668 >>6093332 Not same guy, but essays pertaining to what though? Just musing about any topic even if I lack credentials beyond an undergraduate degree?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 19:37:50 2015 No.6093933 >>6091692 Then the guy just self publishes?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 20:29:14 2015 No.6094124 >>6093608 Do you mean translation or foreigners who write in English? Cus despite some recent success, u.s. and u.k. publishers are notorious for not translating books.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 20:31:55 2015 No.6094136 does every published story have to start with a clever trick to get people to read it? how much time should you dedicate to working on the clever trick to get people to read and how much on the content of the story? 80 / 20?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 20:34:04 2015 No.6094149 >>6094124 Foreigners who write in English.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 20:48:11 2015 No.6094204 >>6090518 The most obvious one for me would be "light pouring through the blinds"

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 20:50:47 2015 No.6094218 >>6094204 or "a screaming comes across the sky"

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 20:52:11 2015 No.6094224 >>6094204 so suppose someone was really committed to having the shit start with sun coming in the fucking window, how would the commercially successful author describe such a thing?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 20:53:09 2015 No.6094226 >>6094224 Write it in sentence two.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 20:56:27 2015 No.6094241 >>6094224 >suppose someone was really committed to having the shit start with sun coming in the fucking window I will suppose no such thing. That "someone" should find a more compelling way to start his story.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 21:02:07 2015 No.6094269 >>6094241 ok fair enough i just wanted to see how YOU would describe some light coming in a window, because you made it sound like the word choice was the problem rather than the idea itself

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 21:38:36 2015 No.6094418 >>6094269 that guy isnt OP, just for the record.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 21:40:26 2015 No.6094423 >>6093933 I have a lot to say about what's wrong with that/self-publishing in general, but am afk at the moment.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 21:42:23 2015 No.6094433 >>6094149 I'd say they have a significant advantage if they actually have the chops.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 21:43:49 2015 No.6094441 >>6093596 Unfortunately nothing really meaningful happening on the novella front. Which is a shame because I too am attracted to works of that length.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 21:46:01 2015 No.6094448 >>6094136 I would argue that it shouldn't really start with a trick at all. Unless of course its a damn good one. Consistency is more difficult to manage than tricks, I think.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 21:49:07 2015 No.6094461 >>6093559 Some may indeed turn up there noses, but if you send it to an agent who specializes in thrillers, you'd be welcomed with open arms. Pot boilers still sell insanely well in mass market paperback.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 21:54:39 2015 No.6094489 >>6093668 Good question. Humor seems to be the common denominator at the moment. Generally collected with a theme in mind. example could be, say, collections of essays from mom in suburbs (an actual book that actually sold fairly big recently)

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 22:06:31 2015 No.6094536

>>6092911
You got it brother. Something I've learned about this business is there is a pervasive disdain for those who are not yet fully formed writers. It makes sense in many ways, cus bad writing causes fruitless work, but thats the job we signed up for, and I think its bad for the soul to be so resentful of the hopeful many who are so authentically passionate. Just trying to inject some positivity into this sad old business.

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 22:10:58 2015 No.6094550

>>6090032
>Going into an unnecessary amount of detail to establish an environment that the reader has no vested interest in.
I get distracted at geographical descriptions too but I'm so bored to tears with faux hemingwayesque prose being so rampant these days that I'm willing to tolerate zoning out for a paragraph or two if it means the author isn't just writing shopping lists of events.

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 22:19:48 2015 No.6094582

>>6091692

No no no. The reward is doing the work, any successful person will tell you this, businessman or writer. If your motivation is money and a career you are in the wrong industry. If you stop writing because you can't get published you were never a writer to begin with.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 22:32:11 2015 No.6094624 >>6094582 >The reward is doing the work Protestants pls. although it's true with art

Anonymous Tue Feb 3 22:33:55 2015 No.6094633

>>6094582
I would argue that a more meaningful reward would be the dispersion of quality work, and not its systemic prevention. Having lots of good work in the world is the goal, no? Writing books in a vacuum is a romantic notion, but it does nothing for the benefit of readers or the direction of the art form. It harms everything that is good, and supports all that is vacuous and bad. But if that's your thing I'm not hating. The vacuous market has never been hotter.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 22:38:35 2015 No.6094652 >>6093150 > but, what the fuck, if impressionable young ppl YA fiction means T E E N A G E R O M A N C E. I mean, you can keep the other stuff, but you better get some melodramatic love triangles going if you want it to sell.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 22:48:16 2015 No.6094682 >>6094582 But of course we arguing for different things. You'r talking about the responsibility of the artist, I'm talking about the responsibility of the distributor.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 3 23:34:29 2015 No.6094832 OK bumping before bed time. Post all the questions.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 00:25:49 2015 No.6094992 >>6094423 Sure ok but if the dude has written a book and gets black balled by ever other publisher he really has no choice but to self publish. Whats he going to do light his manuscripts on fire?

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 00:28:31 2015 No.6095001

>>6092106
>Lots of women from Florida writing psuedo-erotica

as a young writer in Florida, it saddens me that this is all this state seems to offer.

Just out of curiosity, do agents take any consideration into where the writer lives? Will living in this humid shithole work against me at all?

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 00:28:57 2015 No.6095004
File: 496 KB, 500x287, 1410732572350.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>6094652

>Write story
>Protagonists the story focuses around are two women and one man
>Have no intention of focusing on romance at all, not even sure if any romantic feelings will manifest by the end of the story
>Only the first book done
>"Oh boy anon I can't wait to read who's going to end up with who! :3"

Fuck this fucking gay ass fucking earth seriously

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 00:35:02 2015 No.6095018

>>6090317
But all I see everywhere is 'We only accept original works, nothing that has been published any where else and that includes personal blogs.' So you're telling me to put shit up on the internet to get a following to sell myself but I'm also being told, don't do that cause we won't look at your shit if you do.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 04:13:40 2015 No.6095573 Do agents actually read manuscripts that the general public, those without established connections, submits? Obviously sending it straight to the publisher will get it sent into the trash immediately, but is it the same for agents anymore?

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 04:29:14 2015 No.6095604 OP can I send you my manuscript? I realize that it would be a one-sided favor for somebody you don't know and I feel bad for asking, but I also know that not asking for things in life means you don't get them and stuff like that.

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 04:37:54 2015 No.6095621 [DELETED]

>>6095573
Even agents have a slushpile and a "super slush" pile from agents, lecturers on MA creative writing degrees, family contacts and people who went to Oxbridge.

If you're over the age of 30 and have no short stories published, no online presence etc, you may as well not exist.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 04:38:54 2015 No.6095623 >>6095621 *from friends

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 04:51:34 2015 No.6095641
File: 99 KB, 500x502, 1418361118068.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>6095604
Take all of our manuscripts while you're at it!

Seriously though, there plenty of people on this board trying to sell their shit, most of which are probably in this thread for exactly the same reason as you. Don't open the floodgates of desperation.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 04:54:39 2015 No.6095645 >>6095621 Wait, being an Oxbridge grad will help somebody get published? How do you exploit that?

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 05:04:04 2015 No.6095655 >>6095641 Not many people on /lit/ actually write as a serious pursuit, and many of those who write genre fiction and other plebshit.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 05:35:48 2015 No.6095699 >>6095621 Jesus, it's like agents have agents now, a whole pyramid of filters.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 10:18:56 2015 No.6096355 >>6095699 That guy's not OP. I've never heard of a 'super slush' pile.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 10:22:22 2015 No.6096372 >>6095001 >>6095001 No agents don't much care where a person is from. Though I do think you'll increase your chances of meeting said agent if you either live in NYC, if only because of the proximity to the industry.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 10:25:11 2015 No.6096382 >>6095018 There's always a lot of wiggle room with this kind of thing. But yes, the publisher's ideal client is someone that builds their own audience with work X, then produces original work Y for publication.

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 10:32:57 2015 No.6096413

>>6095645

In my experience, the agent's personal tastes will dictate almost every decision. It really doesn't matter if the prospective client comes from a reputable program or not, if the work isn't tailored to the agent's list, the agent wont be interested because they wont be confident they can sell it. I write fancy rejection letters to Iowa MFA's and Harvard MBA's just the same as everyone else.

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 10:51:48 2015 No.6096492

>>6095604
How's about this for a deal, you can send them here: litdropbox2015@gmail.com

If they're good I'll be in touch, but I'll need to reserve the right to not respond to your queries if I don't want to pursue the work, not trying to be impolite, just need to manage my time better as is. I may take a while to get to reading your work as well. Not a great deal I know, but certainly could be good practice for future inquiries.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 10:53:12 2015 No.6096497 >>6096492 Open invitation to anyone else, as well.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 11:05:23 2015 No.6096523 >>6096492 >>6096497 How do we know this is you and not some master ruseman? Also what's the minimum word count you're willing to receive?

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 11:09:59 2015 No.6096534 [DELETED]

>"It is flourishes like these, and countless others, that deliver in Lolito a credible, often exquisite work sure to court at least a little controversy in its depiction of ageless (im)maturity. And though there may be some hot debate on the topic at the moment, Lolito won't ever become a tiny corner forgotten."

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/declan-tan/review-lolito-by-ben-broo_b_3688309.html

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 11:31:24 2015 No.6096590 >>6096492 Is it worth it to get an English degree and attempt to break into this business? I love writing and whatever but at the same time I don't love it enough to want to be poor.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 11:37:01 2015 No.6096611 >>6096523 Well the short answer is, I guess, you don't. But I mean, if this were a ruse, it'd be a really really shitty one: No punchline or (if I'm being honest) potential for monetary gain, and fairly time consuming.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 11:38:43 2015 No.6096617 >>6096523 Oh, and industry standard is three chapters for fiction, full chapter outline for non-fiction.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 11:38:53 2015 No.6096619 >>6096611 And the word count? I don't wanna waste your time by sending you a PDF that's shorter than what you're looking for

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 11:45:16 2015 No.6096651 >>6096617 >>6096619 Shit sorry this was posted right before I posted my question

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 11:45:28 2015 No.6096653

>>6096590
I don't have an English degree. Worked in restaurants til I was 26 before I got the job. Don't feel like you have to limit yourself to an English degree, this is the arts business after all, you're selling your taste, taste don't come from no degree. Even lit agencies know that.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 11:48:17 2015 No.6096667 >>6096653 What are some writers / novels you like in terms of tone, theme, style and so on?

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 12:07:28 2015 No.6096736

Hey, OP. From what little I've researched about writing with any intent to sell your work, the market is volatile to such a degree that following ongoing trends is not a risk worth taking. Would you say this generally applies, or is it even true? Perhaps this is more applicable to previously unpublished writers, as opposed to those with an established platform and audience? Are there times where I should wait to submit a manuscript to a magazine or publishing house because of its potential marketability at that moment? If for example sparkly teenage vampires are the 'in', I wonder if I'd be given more leeway as far as judgment of the writing's quality goes, since it is what is trending, and selling the most. I remember seeing several 3-6 book novel cycles with that same theme on people's bookshelves and in stores, so I can't help wondering.

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 12:44:47 2015 No.6096933

>>6096736
Yes and no. A lot of genre stuff seems to follow identifiable trends. Like the horror trend I mentioned above for example, I know for a fact that film agents are being given a long leash with acquiring options in this genre. Meanwhile, dystopian YA's moment has decidedly passed now.
This is less true of non-fiction, though I still see trends. And much much less true of literary fiction, which can truly have no rhyme or reason, though I do see patterns at times with regards to the age/gender/ethnicity of literary fiction writer's, but those are more pet theories than anything else.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 13:22:36 2015 No.6097071 >>6090136 kek. sorry man. hey read my manuscript!

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 16:11:10 2015 No.6097662

>>6090317

Oh yeah. That's the way baby. Do all your own marketing, establish a fan base with no help from anyone, then once you finally start to make it allow other people to feed off of you like parasites. Yep, that's publishing kids!

Any aspiring writers ITT, especially genre writers, need to read Joe Konrath's "Guide to Publishing" blog.

OP is a chigger.

Also this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxschLOAr-s

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 16:46:06 2015 No.6097769

>>6097662
Jesus Chirst, you respond to one of a hundred questions with a brief answer and some guy's gotta come in and call you a chigger.

It's one of many traits, many many traits that the PUBLISHER can be swayed by (I think you are also confused by the difference between agent and publisher). Not the end all be all our business model depends on it single most important thing everyone looks for.

Also, I even wrote into it "and you'll hate me for this" - indicating I don't even endorse this.

Looking at your blog suggestion now... this is who you want to emulate? Do you not see the irony of this suggestion?

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 17:12:07 2015 No.6097838 File: 103 KB, 400x400, you-mad-bro.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6097769 Mid list authors have already figured it out, mang. Why have an agent and a publisher if I have to do all the marketing anyway?

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 17:25:10 2015 No.6097883 >>6097838 Don't make me defend publishing, the only way I find myself doing that is when industrious and misguided fellas like yourself start talking about KDP like its a viable solution to the problem.

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 17:26:12 2015 No.6097886

>>6094633
>I would argue that a more meaningful reward would be the dispersion of quality work, and not its systemic prevention.

No sorry, there is no way around this. Te reward is the work, not, doing something having it be successful and then doing the thing you really like.

This is what plebs think. They think the reward is money and recognition.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 17:28:48 2015 No.6097901 >>6097886 >>>6094582 >But of course we arguing for different things. You'r talking about the responsibility of the artist, I'm talking about the responsibility of the distributor.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 17:29:34 2015 No.6097906 >>6097769 Fuck that, I'm down to go on book tours flying bizclass, but I would never get a twitter/facebook/instagram or do interviews.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 17:34:59 2015 No.6097930 >>6090032 Is a 15 year old girl being made into a woman by a 50 year old man too much for a young adult book? There's nothing explicit, but it's so heavily implied you can't miss it.

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 17:54:32 2015 No.6097996

>>6097886

What if your dream is to write stories that will enable people to see themselves as they really are and encourage introspection and spiritual cultivation in a world that is continuously falling victim to the slavering beast that is materialism?

Part of that is wanting your books to be as read by as many people as possible to instill as much change as possible, but is that not essentially going hand in hand with recognition?

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 17:57:28 2015 No.6098004 >>6097996 You mean enable them to see themselves how you see them? If you don't grasp the idea of perspective, you probably have no business writing.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 17:58:52 2015 No.6098010 >>6097930 >a 15 year old girl being made into a woman by a 50 year old man Like, with magic? Like Freaky Friday?

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 18:01:42 2015 No.6098016 >>6098010 Lol'd

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 18:05:03 2015 No.6098031
File: 351 KB, 538x358, yumyum.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>6097883

Misguided because I now earn more money selling fewer units with a higher royalty rate?

Sorry mang, but this nigrah's gotta eat.

Don't worry, though, there are still plenty of trustafarians and ars gratia artis types you can "represent".

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 18:15:53 2015 No.6098067 >>6098031 True that. But you seem happy enough. Enjoy that lonely internet grind, boss. It won't get any easier from here.

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 18:18:57 2015 No.6098076

What would you think of this?
>Walls were sketched on smeared over with a color I had never seen and the four corners constructed carefully of architecture alien to even eyes of many sights. Dripping drops of damp filth hung from the ceiling like webs hanging to the floor, moist to touch and sour to tongue. Surely nobody sane lived here for even an hour, for only a minute has been torment of the total unknowing of the very walls which are normally familiar. A lack of light was everywhere but a crack in the brick; one spidery crack, length of string, like lace, letting light like liquid through and a breeze carrying the smell of newborn spring and grass to the nose. A disappointment to be a prisoner of a stranger and a shame to be prisoner of an enemy- but how strange to be a prisoner of the house you have been born to!

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 18:24:31 2015 No.6098096 >>6097996 I didn't think it was possible for someone to be this self-important. Well done, you soppy cunt.

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 19:32:24 2015 No.6098418

>>6098031
So I guess this is as good a place as any to jump into the industry's perception of kdp and self-publishing, if anyone's interested.

Everyone hates amazon and for good reason, amazon has effectively declared war on publishing (their most recent battle with hachette was precedent setting).

Amazon can do what it does because it doesn't have to make money. Each year amazon reports a loss, but of course its stock shares are traded at such a high value that they can afford to operate at a loss. So amazon sells books at such a significant mark down because they aren't trying to make the money back. Amazon doesn't give a shit about your self-published books, they are trying to consolidate the market (or monopolize it) flagrantly, by design. They intend to undo the advance system (which advances authors money so that they can afford to write good books). This is indirectly true of publishing as well, though not by design a la amazon. Amazon doesnt at all care about quality, they want the open market to dictate each and every sale. So if you think the contemporary publishing system favors twitter followings too much, just wait til you see what amazon has in store. And then, when a monopoly is in place, wait til you see what they do with your royalty rates when no one has representation. Really, amazon is empirically evil. Not just negligently dumb like modern publishing.

Agents and editors don't care much about self-publishing, but view self publishers as scabs, kinda. Willing to take paltry sums for substandard work while kaloo kalaying about their good fortune. Just kinda cluelessly feeding a big corporate machine that has been open about its disinterest in quality.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 19:52:05 2015 No.6098501 >>6098076 Not my taste, sorry to say.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 19:55:36 2015 No.6098517 File: 23 KB, 400x400, tim.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6096933 Thanks for the reply, OP. Appreciated.

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 20:27:00 2015 No.6098668
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Few questions.

1. I want to write sci-fi and fantasy stories. Is it true that it's easier to get a full book published by a place like Tor in that vein if you write some short sci-fi/fantasy stories first and have them published in stuff like Fantasy&ScienceFiction Magazine?

2. I didn't learn English properly until I was 10. I know that my prose and wording are pretty bad, and my grammar is pretty much on the level of a high schooler. I've heard that in scifi and fantasy genres though, you just need a very good world and concept. The prose just needs to be passable and story itself could be cookie cutter as all hell but it will still do well if the idea is unique or interesting. How much of that is true.

3. How do agents and publishers feel about writers who want to write under a pseudonym and remain anonymous?

4. How often do editors or agents sit down with writers and have them completely change concepts and characters? Do they play sounding board with established writers and riff with them?

5. How welcome are one line or elevator pitches along with the novel itself or a few chapters during submission? Any tips on strong elevator pitches?

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 20:32:48 2015 No.6098700
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Do you ever get to meet the writers personally and sit down and fix some stuff or is that something you don't get to touch at all.

If you do, how are most of the writer's like? Any interesting weirdos or stories or people that are full of themselves?

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 20:48:39 2015 No.6098785

>>6098700
I do get to have a lot of influence in the editing process, which can be pretty rewarding. Sometimes the drafting process can be absurdly lengthy (I got an 8th draft of something on my desk right now) other times its good to go from the jump. Most of the editing discourse will happen over email.

There's no feeling like pouring over something with a client forever and then finally selling it. The brotherly vibes in the writer/agent relationship can be quite a thing. Other times it can be all business, which is less fun.

One thing that still amazes me is how fast a guy can go from, "please take me on, I'm dying for representation." To "wow you sold my book, now where the fuck is my money!? Can I have an advance on my advance!? Give me my money." Its wild.

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 21:00:12 2015 No.6098852

>>6098668
1. Yeah, not a real specialist on genre fiction unfortunately. That said, of course you should try to get your work published in those places.

2. Sounds like if you keep at it you might develop a unique sound.

3. They don't really love them actually, and they're kind of a red flag.

4. This really varies agent to agent. But any good agent will happily go into the text with you if you invite them to.

5. Pretty unwelcome unless you're at a writers conference or something. As one of my favorite agents says, "I'm just looking for casual brilliance."

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 21:07:35 2015 No.6098889 >>6098785 So you're sayin....money changes people...lololol. How often do you see writers go from this humble desperate guy to a self absorbed asshole because they started to do well? Any interesting weirdos or savants?

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 21:14:35 2015 No.6098921

>>6098889
Lots of weirdos. Can't name names though. We got one client who claimed she couldn't deliver her book because she was being hotly pursued by a dangerous cult. In on of the more impressive acts of philanthropy, the publisher agreed to let her keep a sizeable portion of her advance when they could have easily sued her and gotten it back.

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 21:25:53 2015 No.6098972
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>>6098852
On the Answers 3 and 5.

3. What does it mean to you guys when you see an author that submits under a pseudonym or says he/she wants to remain anonymous? What are the cliches or assumptions you guys make?

My reasoning is because I'm Taiwanese American (born and raised in the US, but went to all Mandarin speaking schools till I was in 3rd grade+), and it's probably due to browsing /lit/ so much, but I don't want to be associated with Tao Lin. And it seems like that anytime an ethnic or minority author writes anything, that is a huge selling point and they advertise that the author isn't white specifically

I know marketing is important, and this is an extremely naive and rose colored lenses viewpoint, but a lot of my fantasy and sci-fi stories touch upon assimilation and nationalism as a message. I don't want to rely on being a minority to get my stuff out there. I want to be regarded and treated like any other American author if any reviews ever come out for my work.

It just feels like anytime I read a review on anything written by somebody that's not white, the reviewer always points it out.

5. So you're saying if I was to send in like a complete draft of a book into an office, and I had a note card on the cover page with an Elevator Pitch to hopefully catch the attention and not get thrown into the garbage pile, it's a bad idea?

Would it be better to just send in the whole thing then without any addition to it? Or at least maybe a 1 page summary?
Extra question. How often to writer's under contract flake out and end up not meeting deadline? What happens then?

Is it anything like in the movie Stranger Than Fiction where somebody is sent in to enforce and assure the completion of something regardless of quality?

I assume people like GRRM is a very unique circumstance where he's just allowed to take as long as he wants, same as JK Rowling. As opposed to somebody like Stephen King or Maya Banks who have to pump shit out every few months.

And OP, I came late into this thread, and haven't had a chance to catch up on reading everything in here. But just wanted to say thanks for being so patient and nice answering everybody's questions.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 21:29:49 2015 No.6098993 File: 81 KB, 537x761, 1423103153655.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6098972 >I'm Taiwanese American How small is your dick?

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 21:31:11 2015 No.6098999

>>6098852
this is probably something I can look up, but since im here

are writer conferences usually just open to everybody? or is it an invite kind of thing?

Any tips on how to present yourself to agents or publishers and not fuck it up?

Ive read some pretty sad stories of people on their knees begging to be published or aggressive as hell people.

And you have any fun stories that you don't mind sharing about crazy people you've met at conferences?

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 21:36:10 2015 No.6099023 File: 86 KB, 537x761, 1423103389012.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6098993

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 21:36:18 2015 No.6099024
File: 400 KB, 818x767, 4059216-bolin.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>6098993
Sadly about 4.5 inches on average.
But I'm pretty fantastic at eating pussy and fingering, according to the last 3 girls I've been with (2 of them were Caucasian too!) And they like that I'm pretty rough, so there you go.

But yeah...the sexual market is hard for an Asian American in the States.

I make up for it with my height and pretty masculine physique and features. (For a chink anyways).

A lot of my friends say I remind them of Bolin from Legend of Korra, in both personality and physique.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 21:38:55 2015 No.6099033 File: 1.26 MB, 1547x1800, woodyallen.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6099024 >Truly, he was the reincarnation of tao lin, if he had died, that is.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 21:40:28 2015 No.6099037 >>6099033 There you go, even more reason why I want to remain anonymous.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 21:44:08 2015 No.6099058 >>6099024 Here's your first problem, you gotta get rid of these friends talkin about legend of whatever. Ladies have no time for that.

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 21:46:34 2015 No.6099071

>>6098852
>3. They don't really love them actually, and they're kind of a red flag.
In what ways are they a red flag? Like, what negative traits is the desire to write under a pseudonym indicative of and how exactly does the author writing under a pseudonym negatively impact/effect the editor or agent?

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 21:46:55 2015 No.6099076 >>6099058 You'd be surprised.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 21:50:31 2015 No.6099089 >>6098076 too much aliteration my niggy, sounds like anewspaper they love that hsit.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 21:52:00 2015 No.6099095 >>6098785 >I do get to have a lot of influence in the editing process WHAT!? Fuck that.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 21:58:58 2015 No.6099122 >>6090196 shouldn't this make the marxists here happy?

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 22:04:23 2015 No.6099145 >>6099095 Most writers like to hear what others think of their work. Pretty standard really.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 22:04:27 2015 No.6099147 File: 141 KB, 620x748, 72c5d0d7ac08feea5a53a3cf4bb55d64_large.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] did OP died?

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 22:15:31 2015 No.6099190 >>6098004 Isn't the entire point of most books with any kind of social commentary to enable the world as the author sees it? How is that a bad thing?

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 22:22:19 2015 No.6099220

>>6099071
Just a law of averages kind of thing, more often than not, a person with something to hide is up to something, is the stigma, I suppose.

It also indicates a general unwillingness to participate in whatever publicity the publisher might have planned. Which is often written into a contract.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 22:25:24 2015 No.6099231 >>6099147 I'm alive! But gonna be afk here for a hot second. Got life stuff to figure out. Brb

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 22:28:11 2015 No.6099237 File: 50 KB, 576x720, 10396285_10204716347972762_7800485444118440713_n.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6099231 Take your time. That's all we have around here anyways.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 22:39:41 2015 No.6099265 File: 163 KB, 983x1024, 1.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6098096 >>6098004 Thank you for a very important lesson I didn't even know I didn't know. It will be a good thing to remember for the future. Have a Beksinski painting.

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 22:44:35 2015 No.6099283

>>6090032
A question more about the industry, than writing: Are most nonfictional historical, political, and economical texts published and circulated through academic structures, or through an organization like yours? I know research papers are usually dealt with in an enclosed academic setting, and was wondering whether books were the same.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 22:47:32 2015 No.6099297 >>6090032 I have a query letter I've sent to 80 or so agents and have never gotten anything more than a form rejection or no response. How soon should I end it all?

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 22:47:48 2015 No.6099299 >>6099089 Maybe I should hit up a newspaper.

Anonymous Wed Feb 4 22:48:34 2015 No.6099303
File: 76 KB, 600x711, 1420928825147.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

I've heard that for certain genre contracts, the writer is obligated to write a certain amount of words or pages every book they come out with.

Even more so in romance, the author has to ensure that there is a certain amount of smut/sex scenes and they have to occur on certain pages in the book.

How much of that is true?

Have you ever gotten into an argument with a writer over the editing? How do you handle resistant writers or spoiled ones? Ones that can't seem to ever get shit turned in on time?

Have you ever accepted a book with terrible grammar but a great story? Or do you guys generally just skip anything with terrible prose or grammar? Does grammar or syntax fall under you to fix or is that handed off to other people?

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 22:50:00 2015 No.6099308 File: 41 KB, 440x583, 1414640102311.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6099297 let us read some of your stuff and see how it is what do you have to lose at this point?

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 4 22:58:51 2015 No.6099336 >>6099297 >query letter not this guy, but any tips on writing a query letter OP?

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 5 00:06:38 2015 No.6099530 how much money do you make OP? are you paid hourly for the amount of work you do or just a salary?

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 5 00:34:02 2015 No.6099614 >>6096492 hey OP, how long will you be checking in on this email, it might be a while before I send anything to it

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 5 01:14:58 2015 No.6099736 >>6099614 I think if this thread 404's I'll probably start another for the email. Seems worthwhile based on all the traffic here

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 5 03:23:00 2015 No.6100065 >>6099736 Excellent. I assume you're still busy with RL stuff though. If you don't get to answer the questions by the time the thread 404's, would you mind if I emailed them to you?

Anonymous Thu Feb 5 10:41:48 2015 No.6101300

>>6099297
>>6099308

I went to sleep after making that post. Here's the most recent query I made in case someone is still reading this thread.

http://pastebin.com/T0dgea9w

I made so many different queries I can't be assed to remember which version I'm up to now.

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 5 10:48:52 2015 No.6101312 How's the market for philosophical works? Seems like all that sells today are the classics and those pop philosophy books. Any ideas for a good cover design? What works well?

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 5 10:49:20 2015 No.6101313 >>6090114 >first 750 pages >first >not even finished you're already fucked.

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 5 10:56:04 2015 No.6101328 >>6092908 Laundry files?

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 5 17:32:45 2015 No.6102682 File: 58 KB, 500x681, large.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] bumpity bump

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 5 17:39:50 2015 No.6102715 >>6102682 Sure, why not?

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 5 17:45:49 2015 No.6102738 >>6101312 Really depends. I imagine if you don't have any credentials then its going to be a nightmare to get anyone to listen. Try to make a cover fit some sort of theme of your work/book

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 5 17:48:08 2015 No.6102746 >>6091702 How do I go about finding guys like that just to read them? Guys who are critically liked, but not very famous.

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 5 21:45:50 2015 No.6103804 File: 115 KB, 310x225, 1376305518730.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6099023

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 5 23:01:19 2015 No.6104045 >>6102738 I don't need credentials when I'm this fucking good. But thanks m8

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 5 23:04:07 2015 No.6104055 Would you recommend hiring a freelance editor before submitting to a publishing house or agent? For fiction.

>>	Anonymous Fri Feb 6 12:56:42 2015 No.6106016 >>6102746 Nyt book review, publishers weekly, publishers marketplace. All good.places to find stuff.

>>	Anonymous Fri Feb 6 13:04:13 2015 No.6106040 >>6104045 That dude wasn't op. Don't know much about philosophy, guessing its locked into academia real hard. Authors basically get no say in their cover design.

>>	Anonymous Fri Feb 6 13:12:18 2015 No.6106067 >>6092908 >>6090625 I feel vomit cascading up my esophagus

>>	Anonymous Fri Feb 6 13:14:34 2015 No.6106075 >>6106067 Vomitrocious!

>>	Anonymous Fri Feb 6 13:19:05 2015 No.6106093 what % of people who apply are accepted? what % of the work you accept is literary fiction?

>>	Anonymous Fri Feb 6 13:50:03 2015 No.6106193 >>6106093 O% slush, 1% referrals. We sometimes go years without taking on new clients. I would say maybe 40% literary fiction,.and thats with an agent that specializes in that.

Anonymous Fri Feb 6 13:52:33 2015 No.6106204

Any one have any kind of input on how to make this letter better
>>6101300

I've seen people whose first novel gets at least a spec of interest, even if it doesn't go anywhere. I'm on my 7th and everything I make is still bottom of the barrel trash that can't even get a personal rejection.

>>	Anonymous Fri Feb 6 22:39:48 2015 No.6108252 Teh bump for such an informative thread

>>	Anonymous Fri Feb 6 22:44:47 2015 No.6108269 So basically: Don't bother trying to get published Only people with decades of experience, agents and/or established prestige can get published Just give up and self-publish

>>	Anonymous Sat Feb 7 00:03:29 2015 No.6108534 >>6099265 >guy gets lectured on a Scottish snot-spitting brigade barracks >admits the err of his ways and thanks his lecturers with a cool painting Is 4chan suddenly turning good ? Consider this a well-deserved bump.

>>	Anonymous Sat Feb 7 02:59:13 2015 No.6108936 File: 206 KB, 500x459, 141537.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6090032 This thread has been a real bummer to read, OP. Do you have anything positive to add? Is there any hope in the darkness for us?

>>	Anonymous Sat Feb 7 03:15:49 2015 No.6108954 >>6106204 this letter is fucking terrible like, it's not even a query letter it's more like the synopsis for some fan fiction have you done /any/ research on query letters? can you post an extract of your story? I'm curious

Anonymous Sat Feb 7 09:48:53 2015 No.6109541

>>6108954
Every query letter guide I've seen says 1 paragraph for the premise/hook of the story, and 1-2 paragraphs for a brief overview of what happens. Is that not what I've done? Obviously I left "dear x" "thanks for reading" and my contact information out.

>>	Anonymous Sat Feb 7 09:58:09 2015 No.6109556 >>6109541 Dude, It's really bad

>>	Anonymous Sat Feb 7 10:12:54 2015 No.6109586 >>6109556 If I thought it was good I wouldn't be here complaining about being rejected. The issue is how I'm going to make it less bad.

>>	Anonymous Sat Feb 7 11:37:55 2015 No.6109911 >>6108936 Traditional publishing won't be around in a decade anyway.

Anonymous Sat Feb 7 12:41:05 2015 No.6110118

>>6109911
Actually, if there's anything positive to say its that it appears publishing will go on as it has.

Ebooks have plateaued at around 25% of the market, so we don't really fear a technological coup anymore.

Amazon will be the last hurdle. If publishing can survive that I think it should mostly recover.

After all, the sales are still there. Thats the good news.

>>	Anonymous Sat Feb 7 12:48:47 2015 No.6110143 >>6101300 Yeah, unfortunately this has all the hallmarks of some pretty slushy slush. My adice would be don't try to explain what happens in your book, try to explain what your book is. Think macro.

>>	Anonymous Sat Feb 7 12:50:39 2015 No.6110148 >>6099283 We do have a few academic writers, near all of their business is done through university presses. Its a very insular little sect of the business.

Anonymous Sat Feb 7 12:58:20 2015 No.6110176

>>6108269
Nobody in the business is consciously looking to subvert quality. From my experience, and I'm not trying to blow smoke between your buns, truly talented writers very rarely fall through the cracks. The people in this business, especially now that the money is thinner, are authentically committed to finding the good stuff.

So, ya know, all those platitudes about working hard at your craft are true. Yes there is luck involved, and a fair bit of corporate bullshit, but if you really and truly have the goods, none of that will matter.

>>	Anonymous Sat Feb 7 13:02:13 2015 No.6110195 >>6110176 When 0% of slush gets accepted, how can this statement be true? 100% of non-referred work is trash?

>>	Anonymous Sat Feb 7 13:07:27 2015 No.6110210 >>6110195 99.99% is more honest maybe. The query letter discussed above is a good example of the kind of stuff that comes through mail. I mean we read the stuff, we're always optimistic, everytime.

>>	Anonymous Sat Feb 7 13:29:27 2015 No.6110301 >>6104055 I've only met one freelance editor, so my knowledge is pretty limited. But she was a 21 year old intern candidate that we didn't hire. I'm not sure what kind of bang you'd get for your buck.

Anonymous Sat Feb 7 13:55:10 2015 No.6110398

>>6099303
I've heard of variously shadey stuff in the romance market. I know of some dudes that sell bundles of really short romance books (80 pages) to kdp and they follow a super rigid format. So I wouldn't be surprised if there was a precedent like that in other romance markets, its a really specialized little market. Agents that do romance usually only do romance.

Most of our conversations with authors about edits aren't met with much push back. Most of the site we'd make would be stylistic/tonal versus contextual. Very rarely do we say you need to drop a character or change the ending, for exple. But it happens.

The editing process only really has he potential to get heated whe n the book is purchased and the author is working with their editor, because there is contract language that allows the editor some significant veto power, and so shit can get real.

I will say, the few times I've caught wind of editorial beef, the author has seemed to be the one in the wrong. But author editor relations are usually very harmonious, everyone likes to work on a creative product thats about to see the light of day.

Terrible grammar is a big no no. In an industry based on taste, its the one unifier that everyone agrees on, bad grammar is not acceptable.

>>	Anonymous Sat Feb 7 14:14:02 2015 No.6110463 >>6110398 I should mention, lots of shisters in romance. Guys that don't work with agencies, have absurd contracts, take like 50% commission. Remind me more of showbiz managers than lit agents.

>>	Anonymous Sat Feb 7 17:54:25 2015 No.6111302 Afk for a bit. Just bumpin for safety.

Anonymous Sat Feb 7 22:10:57 2015 No.6112417

Thanks for this thread, OP.

I don't want to be a writer or anything, but I've always liked working behind the scenes and I like to read (and occasionally write), so I thought about working in publishing. Hearing about the agent/social shit is making me seriously reconsider, though.

What do you do most days when you're on the job? And what kind of jobs are there? You've focused on your assistant job and agents so far. Surely there's something else? I'd expect marketing interns at the very least. Maybe you just don't interact with these people.

Is New York the only place to be, or are there jobs in other cities on the east coast?

Also, do you know anything about technical writing? Anything at all. I hear it's hard to get into, but it prints money. (I have my suicide planned to perfection for when I get out of college and my only option to pay the bills is to become a teacher.) I just want to get a job so I can come home and live like a frugal NEET until my medical condition kills me. Fuck, how do I accomplish that?

Anonymous Sat Feb 7 23:47:38 2015 No.6112775

>>6112417

My pleasure, good questions.

The job varies a good deal day to day. Some days it's nothing but administrative work, nothing complicated, just housekeeping stuff, payments, etc. Some days I'll spend the whole day talking to agents about what we are reading, writing submission letters for prospective editors, more stimulating stuff like that. But there is always the threat that a client will email me asking me to do something for them which can easily derail any work day.

Its hard to believe, I know, but really there are only agents and assistants at my office. Interns here and there, but no marketing people or anything like that, all that is on the publisher.

I know there are some publishers sporadically located in other places. I know some decent sized imprints in Rhode Island and North Carolina. But the real center of the publishing universe is NYC, no getting around it really.

The assistant gig isn't great, but the agent gig is pretty sweet. If you are less interested in the social/salesperson side of the business, you probably want to work on the editorial side.

No real knowledge of technical writing, sorry to say.

Anonymous Sun Feb 8 00:16:53 2015 No.6112954

>>6112417

Technical Writer here. I procured employment as a TW roughly one and one half years after graduating college. Becoming a TW is as hard as becoming any other type of steady-income writer, but as the field has grown so much in the past few years employers are looking for an appropriate degree in their new hires as opposed to assuming everyone with an English degree has the same level of knowledge about Tech Writing.

The income is good for someone with an undergrad in English (I was making roughly 52k as a Jr Tech Writer and 62k a year later after my promotion), and the job is neither difficult nor time consuming so you can attempt to find contract work to supplement your income on the side if you wish.

Your current employment will determine how much bargaining power you have for negotiating a salary, so do not sit on your thumbs and expect for a 50k/yr job to fall out of the sky and into your lap without putting in the work to find it. Companies know that college graduates are hurting for income, and they will put you over the barrel trying to get you at 30k-40k per year, which is still comparable to a teacher's salary. Worst comes to worst, take the job until you have the appropriate work experience and then jump ship to a higher paying company.

Anonymous Sun Feb 8 00:19:24 2015 No.6112971

Another interesting writerly thing ive been seeing a lot of recently are these kinda pluralistic metaphors (what to call them?):

"She was all mouth."
"He was all ears."
"They were all hate and fear."

Not sure I love it, reads less incisively than it intends to, methinks. But its an interesting little trend to chart. I like trying to figure out how/why these types of things get popular.

Anonymous Sun Feb 8 00:25:24 2015 No.6112995

>>6112971

Thanks for the thread, OP.

My question: how often do you see projects with unorthodox printing requirements. House of Leaves, if you're familiar with that book, would be an extreme example, but I'm working on a novel that I'd like to supplement with some vintage photos, maps, possibly recreations of telegrams, etc. Would it have to be a guaranteed bestseller to receive that kind of deluxe treatment or are publishers somewhat open to novel designs/layouts, etc.?

Anonymous Sun Feb 8 00:38:14 2015 No.6113031

>>6112995
I would say publishers are more into it than the market is at this point. I've seen a handful of really nice, high-design books kinda flop commercially, house of leave excluded, of course. But yeah, so long as it functions in the context of the work I don't see it as a deterrent.

I would suggest that if you are using materials that will require permissions that you figure that out beforehand though. Because that'll be a huge pain.

Anonymous Sun Feb 8 04:38:36 2015 No.6113598

This is kind of an odd question, but here it goes.

I grew up in a rather odd area. I won't say where, but it is a closed community that has made appearances in the media here and there over the last couple twenty years. I have learned that the owners of this community are quite litigious over even the smallest of things. My manuscript deals with some of the more peculiar things to have come out of the community and I call everything by name. Would I be better served to just change the names and rewrite it as fiction, or stick with the format that it is in and hope a publisher has my back when the inevitable lawsuit pops up? What are my rights as an author in these sort of situations?

Anonymous Sun Feb 8 10:59:45 2015 No.6114324

>>6112775
That job doesn't sound too bad, honestly. I might still look into it. I wasn't expecting to be paid a lot because lol I'm getting a humanities degree, so I'll take what I can get. Anything but teaching.

It's interesting that you only have agents and assistants there, though. I was conflating your job with that of the publishers, so forgive my naive ass for not knowing how this all works. What do publishers look like, structure-wise? Are they involved with the writing/revision process at all, or do they just make covers and do the marketing?

NYC. Fun. At least I like public transportation. Do you live out of the city? I hear NYC is an expensive place to live.

What does the editorial side look like? I assume this is where copy editing and revision takes place, which I enjoy. How much money do they make compared to, say, an assistant? (From what you've said it looks like agents have to make their own money.)

Thanks for answering all my questions, I really appreciate it.

>>6112954
Thanks for the answers. It's not going to stop me from grilling you for answers, of course.
The English program at my school has a specific concentration for nonfiction/career/technical writing, which I'm enrolled in. If I played that up, would it help me more than, say, some other guy with a general English degree? Or does your advice about jumping ship still stand? I'm guessing that it won't help that much.

Do you need any kind of technical expertise to start technical writing, or can any technologically illiterate schmuck be fed the right information?

30k-40k a year sounds good to me for a first job right out of college, especially if I can look forward to a better-paying job down the road. Where do you recommend I get started, if not technical writing? Should I look into journalism or some other writing job?

Last question, I promise. Where do most technical writers work? NYC again, or is there a different hub, or no hub at all? I live near DC right now, so I was hoping to stay somewhere in that area.

Again, thanks to both of you for answering my questions. I was despairing for my future because I had no idea how any of this works and you gave me a lot of hope. I'll be lurking this thread until it dies.

Anonymous Sun Feb 8 11:57:18 2015 No.6114475

I'm almost afraid to ask, but do you have any knowledge regarding poetry?
Is there a market that's more dead than poetry anthologies? As far as I'm aware, the only way to get an anthology published is to already be credited through reputable journals and magazines. Is there any way to be a poet these days beyond magazines?

>>	Anonymous Sun Feb 8 19:59:39 2015 No.6116713 >>6114475 Pretty bleak, I think. We represent the estates of some very noteworthy poets, and even those backlists don't earn much at all.

Anonymous Sun Feb 8 20:05:26 2015 No.6116736

>>6114324
Yeah NYC is expensive. I live in Brooklyn which I like quite a bit. I really don't see myself living anywhere else at the moment, course all my friends and family live in and around NYC, so that certainly helps things.

The money for entry positions on the editorial side are comparable I think. 30k. Everything is salary though, which means people have much less job security. Agents have bad years but they don't get fired. Pros and cons both ways I suppose. But yeah, sounds like you'd dig editorial.

>>	Anonymous Sun Feb 8 23:21:01 2015 No.6117508 >>6090136 >>6094536 >>6110118 >>6110176 today, OP was a pretty cool guy. or, this week, I should say.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 9 12:07:07 2015 No.6119587 >>6117508 Bamp

Anonymous Mon Feb 9 14:00:14 2015 No.6119850

>>6090032
OP, if you're still here:

Many thanks for doing this.

Most of what you've written in this thread about trends, agents, the publication process, and what people look for... well, it frankly terrifies me.

Any words of encouragement? Or positive aspects that you see in the business?

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