Dreams in Shadow: Monumental Works Group anthology

Dreams in Shadow: 17 Stories All Told is a new anthology from Monumental Works Group, a gathering of speculative writers I recently joined. Within its pages (digital and print) can be found short stories and excerpts from nine authors. Included are an excerpt from my novel City of Rogues and my short story Beneath a Persian Sun. At only 99 cents for the Kindle version, this is a great opportunity to discover some writers with whom you might not be familiar.

About Dreams in Shadow: This first fiction collection from Monumental Works Group features seventeen tales of bright foreboding and dark wonder, shaped by nine authors on the leading edge of the next wave of fantasy and speculative fiction. From visions of the present day twisted through a mirror's edge of evil and uncertainty, to the far-flung reaches of epic-fantasy realms that live worlds away from our own, Dreams in Shadow offers up a wealth of innovative tales and exhilarating excerpts to challenge the imagination.

About Monumental Works Group: Monumental Works Group is a collection of professional fantasists whose collective background covers a wide range of fields and endeavors, from traditional publishing to film and multimedia; from academia to RPG and videogame design. Established writers who share a history of producing quality works of the imagination, the members of Monumental Works Group share a collective vision that places them firmly at the forefront of the next wave of fantasy and speculative fiction publishing.

100 sites for fiction writers: #87 - Bad Agent Sydney T. Cat

This is an ongoing series looking at websites that can be of help to fiction writers with their craft and career.

Bad Agent Sydney T. Cat

Did you know practically anyone can be a literary agent? It's true. There is no college degree or government agency or anything similar that qualifies one as a professional literary agent. Admittedly there are a handful of professional or semi-professional organizations which supposedly list "good" literary agents, but these groups are made up of agents and agencies themselves, so it's kind of like a writer writing about how good he or she is. It's not objective, in other words.

Since anyone can become a literary agent, a few years back authors J. Steven York and Christina F. York decided their cat wanted to be an agent. Thus was born the blog Bad Agent Sydney T. Cat.

To help show there are no qualifications to being a literary agent, every few days there is a blog post which proves the point. Sydney T. Cat makes all kinds of wild and crazy statements. There's nothing too serious here, just a lot of fun, though there might be a kernel or two of truth here and there.

Besides just being a fun site, how can this blog be useful to fiction writers? By opening their eyes to the very real silliness of the world of literary agents and agencies. I'm not suggesting all agents or agencies are bad or useless, but I do think it's time there was some very real regulation of some kind. There are plenty of good agents out there, but there are also plenty of bad agents, and there are few ways for a writer to know which is which.

Also, sprinkled throughout this blog are tips, advice and words of wisdom when it comes to dealing with literary agents. Chuckles abound here, but fiction writers can also learn a few things.

If you happen to be a writer with a love of animals, especially cats, you will enjoy the blog of Bad Agent Sydney T. Cat. But even if you aren't a big animal lover, you will find information here worth knowing.

Books read in 2011: No. 57, Books read in 2012: No. 1 - The Crippled God

by Steven Erikson

Started: December 9, 2011
Finished: January 3, 2012

Notes: Enough is enough. I've been putting off this massive novel for its sheer size and because it is the last in a series, and I'm not ready for the series to end. But it's time.

Mini review: I hate to see this series end, as long as it was, more than three million words total. I will miss many of the characters as if they were friends. I will be looking forward to future works from this author. Without a doubt, this is the best modern fantasy literature I have read in the last decade.

My thoughts on the new KDP Select, plus Facebook and YouTube

In case you haven't heard, Amazon recently announced a new digital publishing program called KDP Select, which is part of the company's more broad KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) program. If you are unfamiliar with KDP, it is basically Amazon's program for allowing writers and publishers to publish e-books through Amazon.

If you are unfamiliar with KDP Select, what this program does is allow writers and publishers to make their e-books available to U.S. Prime Amazon members through the Kindle Owners' Lending Library. Make sense? Probably not unless you're an indie author or a publisher. Basically, think of the Lending Library program like the old-school libraries in which you could borrow books for free, except in this case it's e-books, and technically it's not free since you have to pay to become a U.S. Prime Amazon member.

Still, what this means for readers is they can pay some money and then borrow an e-book each month without having to shell out the full purchase price to read the e-book. Of course it also means the reader will not actually own the e-book, thus the e-book will only be available on their personal Kindle for a month.

Are you lost yet? Sorry. I realize all this might be over the heads of a lot of folks who are not writers or publishers. But, to be honest, this post is mainly for those who are in the know.

For writers and publishers, what does KDP Select mean for us? It opens up a potential other market, with a chance to make some more money.

Unfortunately, at least as things stand right now, there are a lot of down sides to this. You have to read the small print. Actually, I highly suggest anyone considering using KDP Select should read the small print before jumping right in.

Why?

Well, first off, if you join the KDP Select program, your e-books within the program are exclusive with Amazon for at least 90 days. If you don't understand the word "exclusive," in this case it means for at least 90 days you cannot sell those e-books that are part of KDP Select anywhere else online, including on your own website. Do I need to repeat this? I hope not. I hope the importance of this got through to you the first time.

Secondly, the money to be made from KDP Select is somewhat questionable. I'm not suggesting there is not money to be made here, but ... well, let me try to explain. If you have an e-book enrolled in KDP Select, you do not get paid the same way you do in the KDP program. In KDP, you sell an e-book and you get paid for it. In KDP Select, each month Amazon allots a certain amount of money to the program, then you would get a percentage of the program. Considering the amount of money Amazon is going to allot to KDP Select could change from month to month, and considering you are being paid a percentage instead of as a straight sale, you will never know how much money you are making or can make from month to month, at least not until it's time to pay you, and then you have to trust Amazon's word on what your percentage of sales should be.

Thirdly ... I'm not going to go into a thirdly. Just read all the fine print. Most of it does not sound very good to me, to be honest.

As you can likely tell by now, no, I am not planning to take part in the KDP Select program. I see little benefit to it as things stand right now. If the program should change in the future, I will reconsider.

I'm read several places online where some indie writers are saying KDP Select is a good thing because they're not selling at any of the other sites anyway, so why shouldn't they just publish everything through Amazon?

Why? Does one have to be a brain surgeon to figure out the why? Because it is never a safe bet to have all one's eggs in one basket. Is that simple and quaint enough for others to understand? In the long run, indie authors are much better off having their e-books (and books, for that matter) for sale at as many different venues as possible.

For example, if an e-book is placed within the KDP Select program, that means at least for 90 days it is not available at B&N, Smashwords, Apple, Sony, Kobo, Diesel and plenty of other, lesser-known sites. Even for those who do not sell much at those sites, 90 days is a death sentence for their e-books; one is almost guaranteeing their e-book will never get any recognition at those sites, or anywhere else beyond Amazon. Which is downright foolish. Amazon is big, but it's not the end-all, be-all of e-book sales.

Now let me add here that I do not mean to disparage Amazon. I don't like their KDP Select program as it is, and I have concerns about some of their other business practices, but I don't blame the company for what it does. It's looking for new and/or other revenue models, which only makes sense for a business, especially one as big as Amazon.

However, I would like to bring up a few names: AOL, Compuserve, Netscape, even eBay.

Recognize those companies? Younger folks might not. Older folks will. Us older folks can remember a decade or more back when those companies were huge, dominate forces in the Internet world. All of them are still around, admittedly, but none (with the possible exception of eBay) are anywhere near as powerful, financially strong, popular or as useful as they once were. EBay is still the strongest of that group I mentioned, but even they are practically useless for most consumers nowadays, at least compared to what eBay used to be until about 10 years ago.

I bring up all these dinosaurs of the Internet because I see a lot of today's major players making the same mistakes those companies made a decade ago. Those older websites/companies were at the top of their game at one time, and they did certain things very, very well. Their customers loved the sites, and loved what the sites and companies did for the consumer.

But enough wasn't enough. Those companies couldn't simply focus upon what they did well. They had to expand. They had to try new things. They changed their interfaces, they brought about new products, they did a little of this and they did a little of that ... meanwhile, they moved further and further away from what they once upon a time did at the core of their business model. And eventually, over a few years, they began to lose customers.

I see this happening today, and my prediction would be the same fate awaits many of today's giants, though it might take a decade or so for it all to work out.

Every time I sign onto Facebook, there's some new change, always something annoying and usually not helpful to me as a user. What this does is make me go back to Facebook less and less.

YouTube I have already given up on. The site has changed so much recently, I practically find it worthless.

And, unfortunately, I'm starting to spot signs of Amazon doing the same things. Expanding. Reaching out. Trying new things. All while forgetting about its original mission.

Please don't get me wrong. I realize growth is good and necessary for business. I get that. Really, I do.

But when it gets to the point in which a company is no longer serving its customers, those customers will go away.

It's happened before. It'll happen again.

Just ask Compuserve.

100 sites for fiction writers: #86 - Write 1 Sub 1

This is an ongoing series looking at websites that can be of help to fiction writers with their craft and career.

Write 1 Sub 1

Do you think you have what it takes to write one short story a week for every week of the year?

It sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it? But it can be done. In fact, members of the website Write 1 Sub 1 are continually pushing for this.

The goal of the site's members is each week to complete a short story. The story can be between 140 and 15,000 words in length. You don't have to necessarily submit the story to an editor during the same week you complete it, but the ultimate goal is to get the stories out to editors and publishers and to get those stories published.

Where did the idea for this site come from? From famous speculative fiction author Ray Bradbury. Legend has it that Bradbury used to write and mail off a short story per week, so now others are trying to imitate his work ethic.

The online community at Write 1 Sub 1 is growing, with more and more fiction writers taking on the challenge. If you would like to take part, all you have to do is join the site by following it, then post a Write 1 Sub 1 badge on your website or blog. That's pretty much it. Oh, yeah, then you've got a bunch of stories to write, of course.

Once your stories are completed, if you need help finding markets for them, you can always check out the Write 1 Sub 1 listings for Short Fiction Markets and Writing Contests.

Guest post from James Hutchings: Using Creative Commons

Indie author James Hutchings has a new e-book collection available, The New Death and others, which features 44 stories and 19 poems. James has been seeking reviews of his new work, but since my reading pile is so huge (meaning it might take me years before I could get to his e-book), I suggested he do a guest post for me. You'll find it below, and though his thinking here is not necessarily unique (ie. Cory Doctorow and a few others espouse such), it is definitely rare and thought-provoking.

Many writers, whether published or just starting out, are very nervous that someone else will steal their work, whether that be another writer using their ideas in their own stories, or someone making pirated copies of their books. When I put out a collection of my writing, I specifically gave permission for anyone at all to copy my ideas, or even to cut and paste whole stories. I also contacted the Pirate Party, a worldwide network that wants to lessen copyright, and told them that I was giving anyone permission to put my ebook on file-sharing sites. In this post I hope to show why I went against common wisdom.

Creative Commons

I used a free service called Creative Commons. Creative Commons is useful for people who want to give the general public permission to use their work, but with restrictions. In my case I didn't mind people using my work for non-profit purposes, such as posting on a blog, but I didn't want to allow anyone to make money off it. Similarly I wanted anyone who used it to give me credit. I could have just listed these things myself. However I'm not a lawyer, and perhaps I would have worded it wrong so that someone could twist what I said to do more than I meant. Also I could have been unclear about what I was allowing and what I wasn't allowing. Sure, someone could email me and ask, but the whole purpose of having a written statement is so that people don't have to ask.

Creative Commons has a series of different licenses, which give permission to do different things. They're all legally 'tight', and they're all summarized in plain language. So all you have to do is go to their site and answer a series of questions, to get to the license that does what you want. In my case I used the Attribution Non-Commercial License.

Why?

That's what I did. But why? Common sense would suggest that I'm giving something away for free that I could be selling. However I believe that, in the long run, I'll be better off. The main reason is that I've seen how many people are, like me, trying to get their writing out there. Go to Smashwords and have a look at the latest ebooks. Then refresh the page ten minutes later, and you'll probably see a whole new lot. The problem that new writers face isn't that people want to steal your work; it's getting anyone to show an interest in your work at all. If someone passes on a pirated copy of my work, it might get to someone who's prepared to buy it - and that someone would probably have never heard of me otherwise. Even if they don't want to pay for what they read, I might come out with something else in the future, and perhaps paying 99c for it will be easier than hunting it down on a file-sharing site.

Science fiction writer Andrew Burt tells the story of someone who disliked his book, and to get back at him decided to put a copy on a file-sharing site. The effect was that he got a small 'spike' in sales immediately afterwards.

I also have some less selfish motives. Many people would assume that the purpose of copyright is to protect authors and creators. Leaving aside the fact that someone else often ends up with the rights (how many Disney shareholders created any of the Disney characters? How many shareholders in Microsoft have ever written a line of code?), that doesn't seem to have been the intention in the past. The U.S. Constitution says that Congress has the power "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Note that protecting 'intellectual property' isn't mentioned. The authors of the Constitution seemed to see the point as getting ideas out there where people can use them: almost the exact opposite of keeping them 'safe' and 'protected'.

The original idea of copyright seems to have been a sort of deal: you have an idea, and we want you to get it out into the world where it will do some good. To encourage you to do that, we'll give you a monopoly on its use for a limited time. After that, anybody can use it (it will enter the 'public domain').

A lot of people don't know that copyright used to give a lot less protection than it does now, especially in the United States. In the US, it used to be that works were copyrighted for a maximum of 56 years. Today copyright in the US can last for over 100 years. In fact Congress keeps extending the time. In practice, they're acting as if they never want ideas to go into the public domain.

This is great for the owners of 'intellectual property'. But it's hard to see how this "promotes the Progress of Science and useful Arts," or how forever is a "limited time." In a sense it's a theft from the public. Anyone who publishes work has accepted the deal that the law offers, of a limited monopoly in return for making their idea known. Congress has been giving them more and more extensions on that monopoly, but doesn't require them to do anything to earn it.

It probably doesn't matter that much that Disney still owns Mickey Mouse, or that Lord of the Rings is still under copyright. But remember that these laws don't just apply to the arts. They apply to science as well. So an invention that might save lives could be going unused, because its owner wants too much money for it, or because it's tied up in court while two companies fight about who owns it.

Conclusion

I'm far from an expert on either the law or the publishing industry. However I hope that I've given you, especially those of you who might be thinking about publishing some writing, a different take on the whole issue of whether authors should worry about their ideas being stolen. At least I hope I've shown you that there's a different way of thinking about it, and that that way doesn't require you to just give up on making money; in fact that it might be more profitable as well as better for society.

James Hutchings lives in Melbourne, Australia. He specializes in short fantasy fiction. His work has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, fiction365 and Enchanted Conversation among other markets. His ebook collection The New Death and others, is now available from Amazon and Smashwords.
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License.

100 Sites for Fiction Writers: #85 - Storybook

This is an ongoing series looking at websites that can be of help to fiction writers with their craft and career.

Storybook

Though this series has been about websites useful for fiction writers, here I'm taking a bit of a left turn. Storybook is sort of a website, but not really. Actually what it is is software that can help fiction writers structure their plots. In other words, its outlining software. But it's more than that.

Storybook allows writers to keep track of scenes, what goes on within those scenes, which characters appear in the scenes, etc. For writers who like to outline, or think they should be outlining because they have difficulty keeping track of all this information in their head, the Storybook software might be right.

What's best is that the basic version of Storybook is free. If you want the extra features offered in Storybook Pro, the cost is less than $30 as of this writing.

Storybook Pro allows you to do a few extra things, come nice touches, not available in the more basic version of the software. For one thing, extensive charts and graphs are available to help writers make better sense of what's going on within their stories. Storybook Pro also allows you to work offline with the software, so you don't have to be plugged into the Internet. With Storybook Pro, you can also download all files as plain text, which makes it available to do much of your writing right in Storybook Pro.

Obviously this type of software isn't for everyone. Some writers are lucky enough to keep track of everything in their head. But many prefer to outline, especially when working on longer, more complex projects like novels or screenplays. For those writers, Storybook or Storybook Pro are gold.