Writing, Getting Published, and Making Money

Angela Scheff at Zondervan guest blogged about Being Proactive about Your Cover and Title. If you want some influence on these factors, read her advice.

Jessica Faust at Bookends wrote about Quotes on Books, Query Statistics, and Error-Free Manuscripts.

Nathan Bransford wrote about The Art of Summarizing Your Work and Sympathetic vs. Unsympathetic Characters. He also wrote about the Book Revenue Breakdown (posted on Feb. 23, 2009), but the post doesn't seem to want to be linkable. To quote it:

There were also some questions about how much an author receives from a book sale, so I thought I'd provide a handy dandy breakdown. This varies greatly depending on what discounts the publisher is extending to booksellers/distributors/wholesalers etc. and what royalty the author is receiving from the publisher. I'm not going to get into what is a "typical" royalty, and please don't consider the below as such, because I can't discuss proprietary info. But here's a basic (and rough) rule of thumb to help with your calculations:

Start with a $24.95 hardcover.

Discounts to booksellers vary, but for a rough estimate figure that the publisher receives around 50%.

Let's say the author has a 10% retail royalty, and the author has an agent who receives 15% of the author's share. This works out to (again, roughly):

$12.48 to the bookseller (50%)
$9.98 to the publisher (50% minus author/agent share)
$2.12 to the author (10% of retail minus 15%)
$0.38 to the agent (15% of 10%)

For another example, let's take a $14.95 trade paperback where the author receives 7.5% retail. That translates to:

$7.48 to the bookseller
$5.83 to the publisher
$0.95 to the author
$0.17 to the agent

So there you have it. Note that the author (and agent) do not actually receive the above money until the advance has "earned out," meaning until all those little $0.95s per book have exceeded the amount the publisher paid as an advance. Subrights revenue, i.e. first serial (excerpts in periodicals), permissions, electronic, etc. also go towards paying down that advance.

Also note that this (thankfully) doesn't include rights the agent/author might have reserved, such as audio rights, foreign, and dramatic rights, which can be very important in helping authors earn enough for a new couch to sit on as they frantically write their next book in the hopes of landing the money for a new coffee table.

Kate Elliott wrote on DeepGenre about Writing Process: Writing With A Craft Goal In Mind.

Book Covers and other things

Jessica Faust at Bookends wrote Networking through Submissions.

Kristin Nelson wrote advice on writing synopsis.

Orbit posted two articles on what goes into making a book cover: The Making of an Urban Fantasy Cover: Part I and The Making of an Urban Fantasy Cover: Part II

A number of agents have critiqued the first 250 words of completed but unpublished novels over at Miss Snark's First Victim.

Angela James wrote an article on the pros and cons of epublishing.

On Writing and Networking

If you want to go to a writing-related convention, you might find the the Convention Finder website helpful.

Lauren Lise Baratz-Logsted wrote on her blog about Getting Blurbs for your book and Giving Blurbs.

Joshua Palmatier has been gathering plot synopsis and query letters for published books for those who would find reading them useful in helping to create your own.

Jane Lindskold wrote about The Problem of Series and how to make them work well.

Jane Lindskold wrote about writing in Tail Bone to Chair: Part One and Part Two.

Kassia Krozser wrote PubWest Workshop: Thoughts on Social Networking.

Synopsis

For those working on writing a synopsis of their novel:

Miss Snark wrote a blog post about what a synopsis is actually used for, and she also did a Crapometer on a bunch of synopsis.

Author Lisa Gardner has a useful lecture on writing synopsis on her Craft of Writing website page.

Writing a Synopsis

It seems like all writers hate to write a synopsis for their novel, but most agents and editors want a synopsis.

Agent Nathan Bransford gives some advice on writing a synopsis:
How to Write a Synopsis

Agent Jessica Faust at Bookends talks about synopsis and what they are actually used for:
Synopsis
How I View a Synopsis

A synopsis is written in present tense and in third person. It should cover what happens in the story in the same order in which the events occur in your book. (Some people start a synopsis with a paragraph summary of the two or three major characters and what their motivations are, and then summarize what happens in the story. This is also fine.) You should include the major plot twists and must reveal the ending.

Short synopsis are generally up to three double-spaced pages. It is generally fine to single-space if the synopsis is only one page long. Stick to describing the major characters and events, and try to describe how one event naturally flows into the next. As in, Heroine does this, but Villain takes it as a personal insult and retaliates with that.

For a longer synopsis, you can summarize each chapter in a paragraph and include more of the minor characters.

The way I did my synopsis was to work on describing my novel in one sentence. It took several weeks, but I finally realized what the heart of the conflict in the story was and I put it in this one sentence. Once I understood what conflicting wants drove the story, I then knew what was important to put into my query letter. After that, I wrote a one page synopsis, then expanded to a three page (double-spaced) version.