A thread in which those of us who have experience will share our expertise with those who write and who have not yet published, or who are simply curious about the process. Among those expected to participate, @The Flashlight purports to know more than any of us, so his contribution will be most welcome. Questions, comments, personal experiences welcome.
Placeholder while we wait for @The Flashlight to share his expertise: Many things have changed since I sold my second manuscript in 1978 - some for the better, some for the worse - and not always easy to explain to the outsider. Nevertheless, we try.
I'm curious about how other people set their rates for freelance work. I don't like the idea of quoting an hourly rate, mostly because I know how much I hate an open-ended hourly quote when I'm on the client end. So I figure out how much time I expect the job to take, apply my hourly rate to that, and then do a flat per-job quote. I try to minimize the risk of the job ballooning to unreasonable proportions by being very detailed about the scope when I submit my proposal (which seems like a good practice anyway). My biggest challenge is convincing myself that it's OK to charge what, to me, feels way too high. I've finally started to get there by reminding myself that even though I like writing, there are other people who absolutely dread it and are willing to pay a premium just so they don't have to worry about it. And by thinking about things that I dread, like outbound sales, and how much I'd be willing to pay someone to take those things off my hands.
^ I much prefer a per-word rate for some things. X-amount for a read-and-critique, X-amount for a ground-up rewrite/doctor, X-amount for line editing, etc. Ghosting jobs have been offered on a flat rate, with the contract stating a minimum word count, and the flat rate's usually quite nice. It's the copy editing clients that want to haggle.
What kind of ghosting work do you do? Are we talking memoirs, or more like corporate pieces that have to be in a particular person's voice?
Mostly memoirs, a couple of novels. The corporate types don't know what they want as much as what they don't want, so we go back and forth and back and forth and then they go away. The memoirs usually consist of an outline and a sit-down "And then what I'd like you to write is..." In that case you have to either ask for an hourly rate for the time spent interviewing or, better, a flat chunk upfront that compensates you for your time. Under no circumstances do you ever settle for a cut of the royalties because, very often, the subject panics midway and bails (one found out her father was dying and decided it would be bad form to tell the world he'd abused her when she was seven). So you get paid for the work you do and, as you mentioned, walk away before things like outbound sales become an issue.
I always thought doing memoirs would be interesting. It appeals to my journalism side, since I've spent plenty of time writing features that involved getting to know a person and writing about one aspect of their life. And in my job I write a number of things that end up going out with my boss' name signed to them, which is kind of fun because her voice is very different from mine.
^It is very different from fiction writing, and the people I've connected with have led truly interesting lives. The problem is that you need to be as much a therapist as a writer, walking them through the "I don't know if I want to talk about this part..." moments. You need to keep reiterating "This is your book. You can say as much or as little as you want." The reward is that, in unguarded moments, they do reveal amazing things. Which, of course, they then tell you is "off the record," but if you respect that, you put them at ease.
Where's @The Flashlight? So I guess anytime he starts in about writing, publishing or, well, anything, we can just link him to this thread.
I read and I try to learn, but I can't master the art of prioritizing time. Hell, I don't even get through with all the time wasters I'd like to do in a day, let alone actual writing... I'm afraid I'm a hopeless case
This has the potential to be interesting, but is the OP sincere? This looks like a "troll Flashlight" thread to me.
Trafford appears to be a POD outfit. Anyone doing business with any POD company would probably be well-advised to: View the company as a printer, not a publisher, and thus view themselves as the publisher. Approach every transaction with the attitude that they are the client and the company is a vendor. Get a complete list of the services the company will provide in exchange for your fee, and then seek competitive bids. Get a good editor -- not just a proofreader -- because everyone needs one. The idea of being able to say "I've been published" has probably pushed a whole lot of people into situations where they get the short end of the stick. There's nothing inherently wrong with paying someone to print your book -- there are plenty of reasons a perfectly good manuscript might not be a good fit for a traditional publisher, including if it serves a very small niche -- but if you think of yourself as an entrepreneur who self-publishes, rather than an author who gets published, you'll maintain more power in the relationship and be better off.
A lot of unpublished authors are wedded to the idea of a dead-tree book; I'm not sure why. What's the goal? Is it to get your work out to as many people as possible, or just to display a trade paperback with your name on it on the mantel? If it's the former, then you go with an ebook first. It costs you nothing other than the editing/proofing (if you're smart) and a good editor will know how to format for Kindle et al. as well. Yes, you have to split the royalties with Amazon but, again, it's a much sweeter royalty deal than you'd get with a traditional publisher. (Very few people understand how little the standard royalty split actually is.) So you put your work on Kindle, you market the hell out of it, then you think about a print version. If I were just starting out, that's what I would do.
Do you mean getting a publisher to pick up your manuscript, pay you for the rights, and release it electronically, or do you mean self-publishing an eBook?
Yes, that's a fine idea, but a call out thread in the Workshop is a no-no. Point him to the thread during Redroom dust ups, but there is a trollish element to what you are doing here. Please stop.
It's had the desired effect. http://www.amazon.com/gp/seller-acc...e=UTF8&ld=AZFooterSelfPublish&topic=200260520
I started my own publishing company Glannant Ty Publishing. We publish both fiction and non-fiction titles. To date we have eight titles from various authors, both in the US and the UK. These are our two latest titles released within the past two months, the latest having one five book awards:
We are currently a print-on-demand publisher which keeps costs in-line, with distribution through IngramSpark for retail book stores.
@garamet what do you think of Amazon's change of heart so that they pay per page read, instead of download?
Y'know, I get the Kindle newsletter every month and I file it and think "Yeah, I'll read that later..." and of course I never get around to it, so I really haven't been following this all that closely. But now that you've motivated me, I'll give it a look. ETA: Okay, I read up on this and all I can say is... Math has never been my strong suit, and it seems as if Amazon has made a whole lot of work for itself for reasons I can't comprehend. Maybe someone can explain it so that it makes sense, but right now I can't see that it makes a material difference to the author.
