Monday, April 11, 2005
Scriptwriting
The other alternative for fiction writers is to get
work within the modern day equivalent of pulp
fiction -- television.
It's not as easy as writing for the pulps.
You almost have to live in Los Angeles or New York
City.
It's extremely competitive.
As local cable TV stations grow and have time to
fill, it's more possible to break into the industry
at your local level. Here in St Louis there was a
cab driver with a collection of bizarre friends who
put on a very strange TV show in the late 80s, early
90s or so. I think his diabetis finally killed him.
But he was still driving a cab -- so he did not make
much money.
Another possible alternative is the Christian market,
if that appeals to you. I have heard that there are
companies making low-budget Christian movies that
are distributed on cable or via DVD. The success of
THE PASSION has probably increased this.
However, that is not right for everybody and I am
sure that the money for scripting writing is still
limited.
For some time to come, the big money in script
writing for TV and film comes from Hollywood and
Manhattan.
And it is highly competitive. You may have to go
through hell just to find an agent who will even
take a look at your sample script.
work within the modern day equivalent of pulp
fiction -- television.
It's not as easy as writing for the pulps.
You almost have to live in Los Angeles or New York
City.
It's extremely competitive.
As local cable TV stations grow and have time to
fill, it's more possible to break into the industry
at your local level. Here in St Louis there was a
cab driver with a collection of bizarre friends who
put on a very strange TV show in the late 80s, early
90s or so. I think his diabetis finally killed him.
But he was still driving a cab -- so he did not make
much money.
Another possible alternative is the Christian market,
if that appeals to you. I have heard that there are
companies making low-budget Christian movies that
are distributed on cable or via DVD. The success of
THE PASSION has probably increased this.
However, that is not right for everybody and I am
sure that the money for scripting writing is still
limited.
For some time to come, the big money in script
writing for TV and film comes from Hollywood and
Manhattan.
And it is highly competitive. You may have to go
through hell just to find an agent who will even
take a look at your sample script.
Fiction writing poverty
One other danger for current fiction writers is that
publishers and bookstores track their sales much
more closely than in the past.
Let's say you publish your first novel and it
sells 35,000 copies.
Then you publish your second novel and it sells
only 33,000 copies.
Rots of ruck selling your third novel.
Because your second novel sales failed to exceed
your first novel's sales -- your career is now dead
in the water.
I've heard that any number of writers have been
forced to publish their third novels under
pen names, because their real names are now
"red flagged" as "losers."
If a writer is crazy enough to pursue short stories
in a serious way, the situation is even worse.
There is almost NO short fiction market outside of
the fields of science fiction, fantasy and horror.
The few science fiction magazines are still hanging
on, such as FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION.
There are maybe hundreds of privately published
magazines in the SF&F&H field, but only a few pay
anything substantial at all.
They often pay only upon publication, not acceptance.
They are published irregularly and infrequently
to schedules that are downright glacierly -- so
it can take years to see a story in print.
Since there's only a very limited amount of
room, you won't sell more than one short story
at a time to one market, even if you submit
50 great ones.
In short, the writing of short stories is for
only two kinds of writers:
1. Beginners looking to break in. (Having published
a few short stories can help you when submitting
a novel to an agent or book publisher.)
2. Established writers who don't care about the
money but who want to write a short story just because
they want to write it.
Stephen King falls into this category. It makes no
financial difference to him whether a magazine pays
him 1 cent or $10 per word. But he sometimes has
ideas for short stories, so he writes them.
Plus, he lets small magazines publish them as a
favor to the magazine -- as a way to support the
horror field that has made him so much money. Because
any magazine publishing one of his stories is going
to sell very well.
If you need to make a living as a fiction writer,
you must:
1. Write well and prolificly and probably in more
than one field.
Or --
2. Be extremely successful. Stephen King, Tom
Clancy, John Grisham and a handful of other A
List authors make millions.
Most fiction writers are below the poverty level.
publishers and bookstores track their sales much
more closely than in the past.
Let's say you publish your first novel and it
sells 35,000 copies.
Then you publish your second novel and it sells
only 33,000 copies.
Rots of ruck selling your third novel.
Because your second novel sales failed to exceed
your first novel's sales -- your career is now dead
in the water.
I've heard that any number of writers have been
forced to publish their third novels under
pen names, because their real names are now
"red flagged" as "losers."
If a writer is crazy enough to pursue short stories
in a serious way, the situation is even worse.
There is almost NO short fiction market outside of
the fields of science fiction, fantasy and horror.
The few science fiction magazines are still hanging
on, such as FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION.
There are maybe hundreds of privately published
magazines in the SF&F&H field, but only a few pay
anything substantial at all.
They often pay only upon publication, not acceptance.
They are published irregularly and infrequently
to schedules that are downright glacierly -- so
it can take years to see a story in print.
Since there's only a very limited amount of
room, you won't sell more than one short story
at a time to one market, even if you submit
50 great ones.
In short, the writing of short stories is for
only two kinds of writers:
1. Beginners looking to break in. (Having published
a few short stories can help you when submitting
a novel to an agent or book publisher.)
2. Established writers who don't care about the
money but who want to write a short story just because
they want to write it.
Stephen King falls into this category. It makes no
financial difference to him whether a magazine pays
him 1 cent or $10 per word. But he sometimes has
ideas for short stories, so he writes them.
Plus, he lets small magazines publish them as a
favor to the magazine -- as a way to support the
horror field that has made him so much money. Because
any magazine publishing one of his stories is going
to sell very well.
If you need to make a living as a fiction writer,
you must:
1. Write well and prolificly and probably in more
than one field.
Or --
2. Be extremely successful. Stephen King, Tom
Clancy, John Grisham and a handful of other A
List authors make millions.
Most fiction writers are below the poverty level.
Selling us on salesmanship in print
The first section is brilliant in its own way.
At 116 pages, it's much longer than any of the
subsequent sections.
It does a great job of both selling the
profession of direct mail copywriter, the
opportunity to make 6 figures (and multiples
thereof) as a direct mail copywriter -- and
starts to weed out those who think it can
happen without some study and hard work.
One section compares the pay DM copywriters
make to other kinds of writers such as
reporters, technical writers and fiction
writers.
To the best of my knowledge, this section
is fairly accurate -- and when evaluating
how much fiction writers make, it's
actually TOO POSITIVE.
That is, they give an example of a fiction
magazine's (very) low rates for short stories,
then compare them to what you could make
writing DM salesletters. In the process, they
assume you even COULD write and have accepted
for publication a large number of short stories.
In practice, one writer being the author of
large numbers of stories in one magazine has
not happened since the late 1950s when Robert
Silverberg could write enough short stores to
fill entire issues of magazines. And even then,
that was not common.
It also happened in the pulp fiction era, before
TV satisfied the need of America for story and
drama, when large numbers of pulp magazines
filled the newstands across America.
Love pulps, adventure pulps, science fiction pulps,
war stories, western stories, true confessions,
detective stories -- modern Americans would be
amazed at the volume and range of short fiction
widely available in those days.
And many writers in those days wrote and published
huge amounts of stories and novels. Still, it was
relatively unusual for one magazine to carry just
one writer. The authors churning out huge volumes
wrote for many different magazines.
Lester Dent wrote a short novel for DOC SAVAGE
every month for many years, but magazine also
published short stories about Doc Savage by
other authors.
And Lester Dent also sold many other stories and
novels to other magazines.
Typical pay for writers in those days -- 1 cent
a word.
Sounds pretty terrible, until you remember that
that's probably the equivalent of 10 - 20 cents
now.
And few magazines pay that much.
It's now impossible for fiction writers to make
a living the way the pulp guys did in 1930s and
1940s. There are not enough magazines and they
do not pay enough money.
Of course, there is a huge market of original
paperback books which did not exist in those
days -- but the quantity is limited.
That is, a publisher will not want to put out
more than one book at a time by the same author.
Of course, many successful authors have large
numbers of books in print -- but only one
current bestseller at a time.
Some authors do publish books under different
names (just as some pulp writers did in older
days), but this is counterproductive in the long
run because the success of a pen name is not
associated with your real name.
At 116 pages, it's much longer than any of the
subsequent sections.
It does a great job of both selling the
profession of direct mail copywriter, the
opportunity to make 6 figures (and multiples
thereof) as a direct mail copywriter -- and
starts to weed out those who think it can
happen without some study and hard work.
One section compares the pay DM copywriters
make to other kinds of writers such as
reporters, technical writers and fiction
writers.
To the best of my knowledge, this section
is fairly accurate -- and when evaluating
how much fiction writers make, it's
actually TOO POSITIVE.
That is, they give an example of a fiction
magazine's (very) low rates for short stories,
then compare them to what you could make
writing DM salesletters. In the process, they
assume you even COULD write and have accepted
for publication a large number of short stories.
In practice, one writer being the author of
large numbers of stories in one magazine has
not happened since the late 1950s when Robert
Silverberg could write enough short stores to
fill entire issues of magazines. And even then,
that was not common.
It also happened in the pulp fiction era, before
TV satisfied the need of America for story and
drama, when large numbers of pulp magazines
filled the newstands across America.
Love pulps, adventure pulps, science fiction pulps,
war stories, western stories, true confessions,
detective stories -- modern Americans would be
amazed at the volume and range of short fiction
widely available in those days.
And many writers in those days wrote and published
huge amounts of stories and novels. Still, it was
relatively unusual for one magazine to carry just
one writer. The authors churning out huge volumes
wrote for many different magazines.
Lester Dent wrote a short novel for DOC SAVAGE
every month for many years, but magazine also
published short stories about Doc Savage by
other authors.
And Lester Dent also sold many other stories and
novels to other magazines.
Typical pay for writers in those days -- 1 cent
a word.
Sounds pretty terrible, until you remember that
that's probably the equivalent of 10 - 20 cents
now.
And few magazines pay that much.
It's now impossible for fiction writers to make
a living the way the pulp guys did in 1930s and
1940s. There are not enough magazines and they
do not pay enough money.
Of course, there is a huge market of original
paperback books which did not exist in those
days -- but the quantity is limited.
That is, a publisher will not want to put out
more than one book at a time by the same author.
Of course, many successful authors have large
numbers of books in print -- but only one
current bestseller at a time.
Some authors do publish books under different
names (just as some pulp writers did in older
days), but this is counterproductive in the long
run because the success of a pen name is not
associated with your real name.
