OOC -- help?

[sythyry]

Various people have been after me to publish various bits of fiction. I'm thinking about it, without making any decisions yet, and I've got a couple questions.

Please answer these if you read Sythyry, even if the answers are negative. [Poll #349513]

Also, do you have any other advice?

Comments

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

Prioritize: pick the one in the best condition that will take the least work to get into "finished" condition, do it, and while you move onto the second work, shop that one around. And so on.

When I've been shopping stuff out, I always start with the big presses/magazines on the off chance I'll hit it big, but with the expectation that it will probably get picked up by something smaller.

Take this advice with a grain of salt: I haven't sold a short story or novel yet, and it takes me forever to kick my own ass into motion to shop my stories around.

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

Honestly, whether I buy it or not depends on if I have money and am thinking about it at the same time.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Absolutely, positively do not waste World Tree novels on small presses.

[shaterri.livejournal.com]

I think it's well worth having both novels around so you can shop them seperately (or, in ideal cases, together); but I think you should definitely get the one you're unsatisfied with in better shape first. Agenting might actually be an appropriate action to take, particularly if your intention is to go big with the books (my inclination would be to go small-press and promote heavily). Just out of curiosity, which of the two have I read?

[petersheil.livejournal.com]

I used to do some gaming with a UK company now called SFCP (Small Furry Creatures Press) and had great fun having snowball fights by post and a game called En Garde! (set in revolutionary France). I haven't been in touch with them for several years, so don't know if they are still around. I think the company used to publish some stuff, I could hunt out a contact if you like.

Peace
peter

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I wouldn't buy it unless it had significant extra content. The most natural content to add, to me, would be artwork. There are plenty of scenes in Sythyry's diary which are crying out for depiction! I'm one of the guys who bought the World Tree book partly because of the front cover (I spent some time looking at the stuff on the website as well), as well as because I loved the whole idea. I wasn't disappointed with my purchase.

I think if you could add such artwork into the novel it would both encourage more purchasers and warrant a significantly higher price for the book. You might want to talk to publishers to see if they agree with that, though. *grin*

[alari.livejournal.com]

I answered no because I'm poor. =

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

That's a good reason! And I will leave the on-line version available for you, and anyone else who cannot or will not buy it.

[kulhain.livejournal.com]

I gave a "50% likely chance to buy" because it'd depend on how much it cost. If it's $20, it'd be a while. If it were $10 I'd be more likely to snarf it up.

I'd like to read this lj in book format because I missed a lot of the earlier story and I find it hard to read a ton of text on screen.

--
Lost Dragon

[kulhain.livejournal.com]

PS - weight Haiku Jaguar's opinion heavily and my opinion not so much.

If you come back and ask a computer question, maybe we can flip the weighting around. ;)

--
Lost Dragon

[melskunk.livejournal.com]

I would be more likely to buy this than to actually get off my butt and buy the World Tree book, because I do not game and I think that's a market you can certainly take to the bank.

Besides, I really, truely enjoy your writting, your characters, and so forth.

[pobig.livejournal.com]

I'd probably get a Sythyry book just to see how I reacted to it as a physical book rather than something that came to my attention on LJ one day.

All the commentary I've read by SF authors pretty much says that once something's done in any meaningful sense, the only sensible thing to do is get it out the door into the fresh air to get some thorough, disinterested attention, and start a new one.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I'd buy it, but I've read it. I think to sell it as a novel it would need more story. It wouldn't need much more story, but it would need to have a beginning, a middle and an end, and at the moment it doesn't have anything resembling resolution.

I'd think you could fix up what you have to give it an end at the end of the school year -- Seeks$'s rejection, Sythyry's grades, the house for next year, Dustweed etc, as sufficient resolution, but I don't think it's there now. Close, fixable, but not quite there. Also, get rid of the footnotes and "translation" notes and quizzes and just inclue properly.

The point isn't selling it to your friends and loyal readers, the point is selling it to people who just pick it up at the bookstore. You could probably sell 500 from a small press without changing anything, or 5000 from a major press if you fixed it.

And I know I said this before, but people do read and take seriously anthropomorphic animal stories, Tooth and Claw is all dragons all the time and it is nominated for the World Fantasy Award. Tell them it's like T&C -- it isn't, but never mind that. Tell them it's like Brian Jacques -- and never mind that either.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

What papersky said. Italicized, in bold, in 72-point font. :)

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Well, pretty much.

I don't plan to do novelize Sythyry (unless, at some point, a novel-sized story should appear somehow). Sythyry's Journal is a work in a rather small subsubsubgenre -- if there's a third successful example of it, I don't know it. It's not structured as a novel. The closest things I know to it, structurally, are web comics. A Sythyry collection would be pretty much like a Sluggy Freelance collection: mainly directed at people who read it live the first time. So I'd do that via Padwolf or Sofawolf or Cafe Press or something else designed for small runs and limited distribution.

The actual novels are much more like novels, and I am trying to figure out how to do ordinary novel-publishing things with them.

[rowyn]

if there's a third successful example of it, I don't know it.

Y'know, this may not be the weakness we're all assuming it is. Sythyry is something different. Maybe that's a good thing; maybe there's a way to make that unusual angle work for you, and not against you. ;)

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I am! Sythyry advances my goals very well! These goals are: keeping me writing small stuff even when I don't have a big monolithic project to work on, or much energy due to a cute baby psychic vampire kaiju; to promote awareness of World Tree; to amuse myself and my friends. And, I suppose, to impress authors and editors with my leet lit skillz.

[sirius-achamoth.livejournal.com]

What kind of book, though? I imagine something along the lines of a children's 3D foldout thing, only not... possibilities!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Eep!

[read-alicia.livejournal.com]

Having multiple books to send out is a wonderful thing if you strategically send them to the agents/publishers who are most likely to be interested in them. Most folks simultanously submit only one novel - but having multiple books makes the spray-and-pray submission process more "legit."

I do recommend getting a professional editor (or a friend, but not a close one) to read all three of your books and give them detailed notes. It may turn out that your oldest novel does not hold up and should be filed away under "Research and Development." Then revise all the novels you intend to send out - I can say from personal experience that sending out the first draft of my novel royally screwed me over; editors and agents have given me much more positive feedback from the revised draft.

The revisions should take you long enough that you may only end up sending out one novel at a time. I suggest only sending the novel you consider your best work to agents - if that one catches, there will be opportunities to sell the other books through that agent.

The Library + Writers Market are Your Friends :)

Furry books are selling - mention others in your cover letter and include lots of World Tree art in your submission packet!

[rowyn]

furry gaming-based stuff will never sell, period.

Do not sell your work as "gaming-based stuff". Not only does that sell you short by lumping your works in with a lot of unsatisfying work-for-hire material, but it's not even accurate. Your market is not the DragonLance market. People see "gaming fiction" and at best you're going to get a mental comparison with Conan the Barbarian. It's not even that such things are necessarily bad -- it's that they're not you. Yes, technically, WorldTree is an RPG setting and Sythyry and your other novels are placed in it. But Sythyry isn't anything like a typical campaign, and I suspect that your other novels aren't, either.

Descriptions in Sythyry are weak. I suspect they're weak in your novels, as well. The Prime species in WorldTree are sufficiently eccentric that I think this acts as a barrier to new readers. I suggest that, rather than trying to improve your descriptions (an iffy prospect in any case, since written descriptions tend to be dull even when written by the best), that a handful of illustrations of the major characters in whatever work you're doing would be most helpful. This is especially true for Sythyry, since the best ways of describing the people (Orren = otter, Rath'ani = raccoon, etc.) would not be natural for the narrator and are artificial when supplied by the "editor".


But I sincerely hope that you find the time and energy to pursue publishing. You have a gift for writing about anything, and your creations with WorldTree are vivid and genuine. I think of Sythyry as a person, and a person distinct from Bard Bloom. Zie just happens to be a person who doesn't live on Earth and who thinks I'm a monster. Well, hey, everyone's got their differences. :)

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is: You are very very very good and you deserve a wider audience than you currently have.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

furry gaming-based stuff will never sell, period.

Rowyn said: Do not sell your work as "gaming-based
stuff". ot only does that sell you short by lumping your works in with a lot of unsatisfying work-for-hire material, but it's not even accurate. Your market is not the DragonLance market. People see "gaming fiction" and at best you're going to get a mental comparison with Conan the Barbarian. It's not even that such things are necessarily bad -- it's that they're not you. Yes, technically, WorldTree is an RPG setting and Sythyry and your other novels are placed in it. But Sythyry isn't anything like a typical campaign, and I suspect that your other novels aren't, either.

Well, you're entirely right and entirely wrong. My fiction
is written as fiction -- the novels are constructed as
novels, and Sythyry is constructed as ... um ... well
... there might be a formal term for a slice-of-life fiction
presented as a journal, in the way that "epistolary novel"
is a novel written as a sequence of letters. It's not
transcribed gaming: I don't think any of the stories would
make good games.

But the connection to the RPG is quite solid. I don't know
that I could hide it at this point, even if I wanted to. To
an editor's casual eye, looking for some reason to reject it
quickly, the gaming connection -- or the furry connection --
could be sufficient reason and then some. That's what I'm
more worried about.

Descriptions in Sythyry are weak. I suspect they're weak in your novels, as well. The Prime species in WorldTree are sufficiently eccentric that I think this acts as a barrier to new readers. I suggest that, rather than trying to improve your descriptions (an iffy prospect in any case, since written descriptions tend to be dull even when written by the best), that a handful of illustrations of the major characters in whatever work you're doing would be most helpful. This is especially true for Sythyry, since the best ways of describing the people (Orren = otter, Rath'ani = raccoon, etc.) would not be natural for the narrator and are artificial when supplied by the "editor".

Well, description isn't my strong point. I do try to
describe people and places better in fiction -- it flows
more naturally in third-persion fiction for me in any case.
Illustration would be good if I could manage it.

But I sincerely hope that you find the time and energy to
pursue publishing. You have a gift for writing about
anything, and your creations with WorldTree are vivid and
genuine. I think of Sythyry as a person, and a person
distinct from Bard Bloom. Zie just happens to be a person
who doesn't live on Earth and who thinks I'm a
monster. Well, hey, everyone's got their differences. :)
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is: You are very very very
good and you deserve a wider audience than you currently
have.

I hope you know Sythyry isn't me! But I'm glad you think of
zir as a person. Zie does return the favor, in that zie
doesn't think you and Esory are at all the same person.

And thanks very much for the vote of confidence. Let's see
if the editors think the same of it.

[rowyn]

But the connection to the RPG is quite solid. I don't know
that I could hide it at this point, even if I wanted to. To
an editor's casual eye, looking for some reason to reject it
quickly, the gaming connection -- or the furry connection --
could be sufficient reason and then some

I am not well-versed in the business, but I suspect the gaming connection would not be obvious to an editor unless you chose to mention it. An example:

Several years ago, a new TV series came out -- "Vampires 90210" or something like that. It was a big Aaron Spelling drama production about vampires, wiht lots of politics, romance, and bloodsucking in it. It was a lot like "Melrose Place" with slightly nicer and more likeable characters.

Anyway, it wasn't just about generic "vampires". It was about White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade vampires. It was OBVIOUSlY about these vampires. No effort was made to hide the connection: they came in clans, with Gangrel that lived out in the woods and turned into wolves, and violent street-ganger Brujah and power-brokering Ventrue, and they used all the names and terminology that White Wolf coined.

The one thing the series did not do, however, was mention White Wolf. Or the game. Anywhere. Not in a tie-in, not in a footnote in the credits, not in the magazine promos. As far as I know, there wa no official acknowledgement of the connection whatsoever. For all I know, the show didn't even get White Wolf's approval and the reason it folded was lawsuits rather than bad ratings.

But regardless of the reason, my point is that this was a big-ticket production with lots of people involved and nation-wide network TV audience waiting for it, based on one of the most successful RPGs out there. And they didn't see fit to acknowledge a connection between the two.

If you submit a WorldTree manuscript to a publisher without a cover letter stating "Based on the WorldTree RPG setting", then I will lay odds that the editor will not look at it thinking "gaming fiction".

Even if you mention it in the cover letter, but carefully -- say, for example: "My writing credits include WorldTree, a work I co-authored with my wife and published by PadWolf Press. This novel is based in the same setting" -- then, again, I doubt the editor is going to assume "gaming fiction". OK, maybe he'll Google "WorldTree". But I'd expect him to read the first page or two of the manuscript and decide whether or not he likes it based on that, before bothering to do any research on you.

And whether or not it can slide under the radar of an editor as "not gaming fiction", it can certainly go into bookstores without being marketed as a gaming tie-in. The question is "Do you want it to be tied to the RPG sourcebook?"