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Radical Write This article should contain sufficient controversy to offer something to offend almost everybody. The one group it should not offend– but inspire– are those authors out there who view writing not only as an art, but a way to make a living. It’s written for you– for free. We have all seen the "horror" market rise and fall in the last several decades, we have seen major publishers abandon the market, and yet we have seen the mega bucks earned by some horror writer superstars. What does that tell us? It tells us potential earnings are all over the spectrum– depending on what color in which you write. This active status member of the Horror Writers Association suggests your favorite writing color should be green. First some credentials– not to tell how wonderful I am– but to show that I walk the walk as well as talk the talk. My first book (PSYCHIC BATTLEFIELD), written and accepted by St. Martins Press within two months of submitting the proposal to my agent, earned me an advance of $32,500.00. It was a work of supernatural non-fiction, detailing the use of psychics by military and intelligence organizations for five millennia. I have no "shelf" manuscripts, and I never sent anything book length out over the transom. I now have one espionage related and four horror related projects being shopped by two established New York agents– and they ain’t shopping at the bottom of the market either. So what’s this got to do with you? Everything. How many of you are submitting to markets paying 3 cents or less? (C’mon, raise those tentacles and hooks!) Why on earth are you doing this? If you wrote 100,000 words–a book length manuscript–you’re getting paid $3,000.00! Now, let’s presume you’re an average writer as far a production goes. You write 1,000 finished words in maybe four hours. (Some of us write a lot faster, but that’s a different article.) Totaling it up, you spent four hundred hours writing your book. With a payment of $3,000.00 for your efforts, you have earned yourself $7.50 per hour. Wonderful. Would you like fries with that? Say that three times fast, and you will qualify for a better paying job. Here’s a radical message: The hell with tiny paying markets! The guys out there who have access to an offset press or the computer equivalent, who want to pay 3 cents a word, and want you to submit your manuscript in Urdu on a moonlit Tuesday night– tell them all to go to hell! Do not submit a shopping list to these guys. (Most of them aren’t going to be around in a year, and most of these so called editors don’t have credits themselves with one of the major publishing houses. Some have no credentials at all.) Let’s all help them get to where they really belong– publishing history, the graphics graveyard. Now, here’s where you say, well, I gotta start somewhere. Right you do. So did I– at the top. You know what? You just might start there, and be accepted there. If you’re rejected, you can always move down the ladder towards the garbage heap of low paying markets. But only a monetary moron and a literary lunatic is going to start at the bottom when it comes to market submissions. Call yourself a professional writer? That means you get paid for it. The only time it makes sense to submit to these low paying markets, (and the only time I have submitted to them) is when they are the only ones looking for the type of story you have written. By that I mean you have written it for love of the genre, with money as your last consideration. Just remember, cash is better than genre love when it comes to meeting the demands of one’s creditors. And never, never, never submit to a non-paying market– except as a rare act of literary charity. So how does one enter the major player markets with a genre like horror? Well, like the con men say, "ya gotta have an angle." Go more mainstream with a horror twist. Go for the type of book that is going to get you out of the genre ghetto, and into the new non-fiction or new fiction sections of the bookstores. That means knowing what’s going on in the markets. That means getting bookmarked on your ISP those freebie publishing publications on the web like BookWire and Publisher’s Weekly, and reading them like you would the Necronomicon. It also means forget writing about werewolves, vampires and mummies, unless you’re Anne Rice. No more haunted house stories please, unless you’re Owl Goingback. It means being innovative, imaginative, creative– it means being a goddamn writer! Further, it is time to fully realize that it really is who you know that counts. Start networking. Network with the writers in HWA, people you know in the industry, people you’ve heard about through the various organizations. Write them, praise them, send them interesting articles– get yourself out there. As H.L Mencken said, "If you want to catch measles you have to go where they’re at." Too many postings are in the HWA newsletters about writers who have "sold" a work to a pittance paying publisher. Stop this now. If you believe in yourself, if you believe you are great at what you do– submit to the majors, get an agent, do it the right way. Is this difficult? Uh huh. Can every writer hope to do it? Uh uh. But so what? That’s why it’s cool to be published by a major, because so few out there can do it. But, maybe you can. Try there first. You never know. Now, I fully expect replies– or should I say ripostes– to this article from the penny dreadful publishers out there who pay next to nothing for the works written in the blood of the talented horror writers who are "nice" enough to submit to them. Oh, it’s hard to be a publisher. Oh, I can’t afford to pay more. Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a desktop publishing program. You know what, guys? If you can’t afford to enter the publishing field for real– don’t. Stay out of it. You and your three cents a word fish wrappers aren’t buying any real credibility for a writer with the majors anyway. And yes, Virginia, if you want to make a living wage in horror, or any other type of writing, you have to go with the majors– for the most part. To change the present poor situation for horror writers, it is time for a revolution in the way we think, the way we do what we do. Do not kowtow to penny pinching publishers– ignore them. Submit nothing to those who would pay you less than minimum wage for your literary efforts. Instead, make what you write more acceptable in the market by going more to the mainstream, by writing out of the genre. (After all, do we really need another vampire story?) Think more about writing as the offering for sale of property– intellectual property. In any sales situation, you will get rejections, so you might as well go for the big commissions on the big ticket items. That means books, not short stories. That means agented submissions by real agents. That means no vanity press–and that means most of what is euphemistically called e-publishing. There you have it. The Declaration of Independence for the members of the Horror Writer’s Association. Satan may have fallen a long way, but at least he started in Heaven with a guy who was the god of his industry. Even now he gets to reign in Hell. Gets a lot of reviews too. Word to the wise. By following the radical advice given above, by giving yourself the benefit of the doubt about your talent and your marketability, when you hold that scarred and trembling hand that types your monster manuscripts, you just might be able to say of your writing career, "It’s alive! It’s alive!" Originally appeared in the Horror Writer's Association newsletter. Reprinted with author's permission.
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