Thread by @NMamatas

1 like = one bit of publishing advice you're not going to like

1. Monetary success and quality of writing can be plotted on a type of Laffer curve: the writers who make almost no money are either awful or excellent. The B- middle, which satisfices without thrilling large audiences, is where the $$ is at.

2. You're likely not going to be published because a publisher thinks they can make a lot of money with your book, but because stores with lots of books sell more copies of the certain few books that sell. Your book will likely be "wallpaper" in a bookstore.

3. The best guess for how many books you can sell through your own efforts is determined thusly: imagine what you believe to be a realistic number of books you can sell. Now remove a zero from that number.

4. The essay your publicist asks you to write about, say, imposter syndrome, will likely get a much larger audience than the book it was designed to expose audiences to.

5. There is a particular writing style found in almost all US bestsellers, and it's easy to master. So easy, in fact, that most books written in the bestseller style have no chance of becoming bestsellers.

6. If you're trying to place short fiction in university-backed literary journals, the major obstacle you'll face are semiliterate and highly opinionated graduate student slush-readers.

7. If you're trying to place short fiction in genre-fiction magazines, keep in mind that many short fiction editors are just a person with a small inheritance or a settlement from a lawsuit seeking to trade esteem for small checks.

8. The audience you think you developed as a Kindle Superstar "selling" books via Unlimited at $0.00 will almost entirely vanish if you end up with a trade publisher that expects consumers to purchase a $25 hardcover.

9. It's actually easy to make a full-time living as a writer, but that full-time living will likely be along the lines of those of a full-time employee at Walmart or a non-union employee at a factory.

10. "No-money" media options/shopping agreements have become acceptable because agents hope a few lines in a trade magazine will get someone's attention, somewhere, about their clients' titles, even though the reality is that nobody who can't even afford $500 can make a film.

11. There's almost no antisocial behavior, personality defect, or criminal act not involving children that can derail an author's career...so, go for it! (And don't be surprised about the sort of scum you'll meet in the industry.)

12. The inordinate influence sales staff has on editorial decisions is thanks to large-scale innumeracy in the industry. Hunches disguised as numbers create self-fulfilling prophecies that sink books all the time.

13. It's actually a good thing that nobody can really predict what will sell. If books had the marketing power of say, the movies, there would be 1000 or so books published a year in the US. A couple romances, some policy books, a cookbook, a few thrillers, etc.

14. A common scam: a formerly prominent writer creates a small press for half their books, explains to new writers that New York is dead while still publishing with New York, and then getting the new people to staff the press in exchange for minor ebook releases.

15. The most exciting books from a publisher standpoint are the ones that are hardly books at all, but are at least shaped like books and fit easily on shelves in a variety of non-bookstore retail outlets.

16. Deadlines aren't that important. Drop-deadlines are almost important. If someone actually calls you on the phone to make sure you're alive, you should probably get to work.

17. Most people in publishing are pretty terrible, but librarians are actually as nice and thoughtful as you imagine they are.

18. MFA programs are generally an expensive way to figure out that you don't like writing very much.

19. None of the people who wish to interview you—journalists, podcasters, bloggers—will read your book before they interview you, unless they're your pal already.

20. The best way to find the last few copy errors in your manuscript is to sell the book, have it go through the publishing process, and when the box of finished author copies come to your house open it, retrieve a copy, and flip to a random page.

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21. You'll never ever be satisfied with your acclaim or income. I don't mean you'll be happily ambitious; I just mean you'll exist surrounded by a miasma of unease, disappointment, and resignation at all times.

22. Here's an old joke that's funny because it's true:

Q: "Who knows less about publishing than a midlist author?"
A: "A bestselling author!"

Beware advice from people who got big back when every shopping mall had a bookstore.

23. The real reason not to follow trends is that there are any number of authors who can write this or that trendy title to order in six weeks or less and are happy to do so, so publishing certainly doesn't need you to get up to speed and then present yourself as available.

24. People make a big deal about the low pay in publishing, but there's plenty of free time to buy stuff online while at one's desk so it isn't so bad.

25. The bit you won't like: it's the free time gained from definitely not answering emails from authors or agents because there are hard limits to the amount of whining one should expose themselves to in one day.

26. Much of the publicity stuff on the back of an ARC—national exposure, print runs, author interviews, online promotion—aren't so much lies as they are eventual untruths. The ARC is the publicity stuff, and if enough people bite, then something might happen.

27. Men have it easier than women in the publishing industry unless the men are very very stupid. (Men still have it easier overall; very very stupid women aren't even allowed to participate.)

28. It's hard to say who knows less—your favorite English professor from school, or those easily agitated randos on Goodreads. Neither should be paid even the slightest attention however.

29. Even great reviews in the New York Times Book Review can't guarantee a large uptick in sales of paper books anymore. Best venues are widely read websites with a big juicy button right in the middle of the review.

30. There's nothing particularly melancholic about the creative writer's soul. If there is a link between writing and depression it's due to uneven cashflow, significant poverty, large amounts of negative public scrutiny, and a very unpredictable career path.

31. You'll outlive your work, even if you die fairly early (say in your mid-60s).

32. If you use links other than amazon, almost nobody will click on them. If you use amazon links, you are helping bring about the future where they will dominate all publishing and crush you like a hot grape for fun.

33. If you crave a large audience the best thing you can do is buy some stuffed animals and video yourself playing with them, using different voices for all the characters, and distribute the result via youtube.

34. If you don't live in New York but spend a lot of time organizing and going to readings and other events in the hope of creating or sustaining a literary scene, you're pretty much just part of a cargo cult.

35. How important is social media? Add up all your followers across all platforms, then divide by 100.

That's the number of guaranteed first-week sales you have earned from all your online antics.

36. If you get famous you'll find out who your friends are comes with a flipside: if your friend gets famous, you'll find out how much of a friend you had all along.

37. In the old days, you'd be able to make ends meet by writing light narrative journalism, copy for auction catalogs, and the occasional ghostwriting gig for some dotard with a lot of money.

Now, you're going to take online surveys 15 hours a day and call it writer's block.

38. If you're a young or middle-aged man and you went mad with words and wrote a whole book in a weekend, especially one limned with all your social and sexual theories, it is shit and you should throw it away.

39. The only good freelance editors are the ones willing to stop editing your work after 50 pp, return most of your money, assign you a reading list, and then tell you, "Come back in five years."

40. If your favorite writer now is the same megabestseller who was your favorite fifteen years ago, you're not going to be good at this. You may in fact be so awful that you'll become a millionaire.

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41. The less prominent the editor, the more likely they are to overedit. The less prominent the legitimate publisher, the more likely they are to pay on time. This yin-yang flow is why famous authors will occasionally publish with some classy little boutique or regional press.

42. Even a white European non-Anglo surname will count against you in subtle ways.

43. You generally need an agent to sell a book though it is likely that once you have an agent you'll sell some of your books yourself.

44. Nobody cares about standard manuscript formatting anymore except in the world of short fiction.

45. Some best-selling authors have fans. Other best-selling authors happen to write the right thing at the right time. The first group may have a nice career as a best-seller. The second group can at least always call themselves as best-sellers, no matter what happens after.

46. If you go to the store and your book is on the shelf—"Man, nobody is buying it!"

If you go to the store and your book is not on the shelf—"Man, this dumb store didn't even order a copy!"

47. There are no moral deserts.

48. You'll carefully fill out the publicity sheet so that all sorts of personal and professional information will remain on file in the publisher's office, to remain unread and lost forever.

49. Doing a cover reveal on a book blog is pretty much useless, but publishers keep arranging them because they're free to do and easy to set up.

50. The only reason you think you'd be satisfied with movie money and not concerned about a filmmaker might do with your book is because you are not far enough along in pre-production yet.

51. It's not unusual to find authors who sold millions of copies of their mass market paperbacks in the 1980s toiling in the small press today.

That won't happen to you though, but only because the mass market paperback is a dying format anf you'll never sell millions.

52. The exciting subgenre that made you think "I can do this!" and start writing will no longer be relevant by the time your manuscript is ready

...I keep telling my students with their urban fantasy, chicklit, and steampunk novels

...who never believe me

...or get published.

53. A good way to practice for your local bookstore event is to sneak into a school house on a Saturday and sit at the front of an classroom for an hour.

54. Many magazines and journals have strict rules against publishing their interns, assistants, or slush readers... except for the magazines you actually want your work to appear in. For those the rule is "We don't publish nobodies unless we know them."

55. Fantasy writers will definitely hear warnings against just writing down what happens in your Dungeons and Dragons game and then calling that your novel, but those novels keep getting published, so you may as well do it, you horrible lowlife.

56. It's not just that nobody checks the dubious health and fitness claims made in books, it's that nobody responsible for checking would even know where to begin with the task of checking health and fitness claims.

57. No authors are punished for their political beliefs, unless they put their beliefs in their books.

58. Men aren't allowed to smile in their author photos unless their book is about Jesus wants you to be rich.

PS: Jesus does not want you to be rich.

59. "Write every day" is useful advice for the giver, not the recipient as it encourages the recipient to shut up about what they want to write and how'll they start one day soon.

60. Having an agent is like hiring a home improvement contractor, not like marrying a spouse.

Fire early and fire often.

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61. As I am finding out, going viral doesn't help you sell books.

62. A request from DM: "If agents and publishers only publish stuff they're passionate about, why are so many books published?"

The premise is wrong: all sorts of crap is published cynically—but if you publish enough garbage maybe one day you'll get to do passion projects.

63. If youse think I'm going to write 1000 of these for free, youse all nuts. I'll stop at 100. (Yes, this counts as publishing advice you won't like, but the advice is to me, and the not-liking part is to you.)

64. Seeking validation via a creative writing class is an exercise in ego and nothing else, but so to is seeking to be treated harshly in creative writing class. The inverted narcissist is still a narcissist.

65. But really, the dumbest person in publishing is the small press editor/publisher/production manager who spends five minutes pouring text into an InDesign template and thinks, "Sweet, I'm done! Those assholes in New York are dinosaurs!"

66. A sleazy textbook publisher trick: asking to reprint a piece and sending along an agreement with no mention of money. This is "find the fool"—you're supposed to ask them if they have any money to spare, and sometimes they'll make you guess how much. ($500 is good.)

67. If you're daydreaming of a launch party for your first novel, you'd better have some kind of enthusiastic best friend with a knack for entertaining because otherwise no way.

68. Go ahead and write that book where you trash thinly veiled versions of your friends. The only complaint you'll get is from people disappointed to find they didn't make it into the book because they're not really your friend.

69. Thanks to the rise of blogging and then social media, it actually does help to be good-looking to publish now.

I'm very thankful I squeaked in under the wire by starting in the late 1990s.

70. Threads like this one lead to concerned notes from one's current publisher.

71. Your royalty statement will be nigh incomprehensible, and the reserve against returns will be unreasonably huge.

72. Buy copies of your book from the publisher when they start remaindering them so you'll have extra. This way, years from now, you'll be able to prove to the attendants in the old age home that you were a writer and not just delusional.

73. Email ruined publisher-funded lunches.

74. In 2018, getting a bunch of your pals together to start a group blog is a waste of time and energy, unless you're a right-wing crazy complaining about mythical "SJWs"—then you'll be able to give away some Kindle Unlimited ebooks to people who won't read them.

75. 9/10ths of publisher marketing is deciding on a price and format of a book, assigning BISAC, and showing a powerpoint page of their catalog to bookstore and other retail buyers for forty seconds.

It doesn't sound like much, but it's what works, especially if a buyer smiles.

76. Nobody at your local university will care about your work either.

77. Have you spent years writing in secret, filling notebooks with observations, carrying on correspondences with underappreciated yet excellent writers?

Are you now ready to debut and about to start submitting?

You may be a genius, but you're probably just a crackpot.

78. Scholars: journal articles and university presses have taught you NOTHING about the workings of trade publishing.

79. Techies: nobody wants to read your submission in PDF and every sentence you say that begins "But in tech..." is wrong and stupid.

80. Despite how bad being a writer is, working in a bookstore is a thousand times worse because you have to talk to people.

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81. "The check is in the mail" means that at the end of the day, a check was placed in a wire outbox in a hallway, where it will stay for one-three days, to age like fine cheese, before actually entering the USPS system.

82. Outside of major award juries picking a fairly obscure book from a good publisher to nominate, there are almost no "surprise" best-sellers anymore.

83. Rushing to make a deadline just means that your novel ms will be in the editor's email inbox, unread, for an extra week or three.

84. Any online attention will lead to instant negative reviews of your work from people who skimmed the first few pages and then ran to amazon.

(The proof is that only 9 pages of 318--the first story--relate to Lovecraft.)

Also, this guy definitely doesn't have a girlfriend.

Or a dog.

85. When you show up to a bookstore for a signing, be sure to first locate the restrooms, because while you're sitting at that card table next to your books, pen in hand, you're going to be asked where the restroom is. A lot.

86. Less-experienced editors will actually make up reasons why they rejected you, instead of just saying nothing, or being honest.

(Remember that editors are often motivated by a need to feel not just important, but loved.)

87. When writers get together they just talk about publishing, not art. Not even gossip about sex! Just stupid publishing!

88. When someone suggests that you sleep with them to help your career, not only is it gross and wrong, it's a double-trick: they're looking for "life experience" material to help their OWN career!

89. You can't sleep your way into any publication better than a poetry chapbook anyway, because nobody's like fifteen to fifty grand in bed.

(You can thus also be sure any such gossip swirling around an author is a lie.)

90. Don't bother with writer conferences or in-person pitch sessions with agents. These are mostly just a way to turn a vacation into a tax write-off.

91. Often aspiring writers see am auspicious origin in their childhood story-telling and crayon book-making, but don't believe it: hundreds of thousands of kids do the same and never become writers as grown-ups.

92. If you actually get famous, you may end up with less freedom to write what you want, not more. "Make it just like the last one, please!" say both publishers and fans.

93. Your entire genre might vanish. Your choices then will be to turn to self-publishing, or to tweak what you write somewhat (e.g., "Not a Western, but a historical novel about Billy the Kid.") The more your reader base likes junk, the more likely the first choice is best.

94. Publishing parties are usually just as boring as any other type of professional party, but there are exceptions: novelists who used to write for fine art magazines to make ends meet can usually throw a good one thanks to a rich pal who bought a brownstone with painting money.

95. This was asked in a message: "Will your publisher care if you refuse to do readings or make appearances?"

Answer: Not really—most bookstore events just mean many returns. They may make you go to ALA or a trade show if it's local to your house and they need not pay transport.

96. Making bookmarks, fancy business cards, and other things to hand out to potential readers, will lead to zero extra sales of your book or series.

97. Once upon a time, small presses published stuff that was too good to be published by major presses. Now they too often adopt the role that short fiction in magazines once had—a venue for writers to learn how to write as the public watches. It's pretty embarrassing.

98. You'd be amazed by how many copies a small press book can sell, and by how few some large press books can sell. I long ago stop being surprised at the number of books from Big Five publishers that barely get into the triple digits in Bookscan reports.

99. The good news is that no one commercial failure can derail a career.

The bad news is that this myth is so widely believed that performative angst and terror are now commonly used to generate pity sales here on Twitter. Don't believe it!

100. Getting published isn't actually a big deal. All sorts of crackpots, morons, semiliterate bozos, criminals, and assorted reprobate manage it every day.

What separates them from you is that they were systematic in their approach to getting published.

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