# Dean Wesley Smith on Making a Living with Short Fiction



## Jason Varrone (Feb 5, 2012)

Interesting blog post today from DWS.

http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=7143


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## gspeer (Nov 10, 2010)

You beat me to it, Jason. I just finished reading that and came here to post the link.

I found that both, 1) inspiring, and, 2) frightening -- because now it means I've really got to get to work!  

Gary


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## Kent Kelly (Feb 12, 2011)

Well, I get a little tired of the words per hour myth.  Who are these amazing writers who put out fully edited perfect first-draft-and-final copy on a daily basis?  Personally, I publish my 5th drafts on average.  So for a 15,000 word novella, that's considerably more than 15,000 words.  Now how do I calculate the time I spent on the 2nd draft?  Let's say I rewrote half of the novel, so another 7,500 words ... but I also spent that time reading all 15,000 original words.

I guess I could write the fantasy epic that will make The Lord of the Rings pale in comparison during the spring, then make a Dune-conquering sci fi omnibus over the summer, 15 short stories in the fall and 10 novellas in the winter and call it a year ...


There's some excellent pieces of advice there, but the dishonest and nebulous math isn't one of them.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

Kent Kelly said:


> Well, I get a little tired of the words per hour myth. Who are these amazing writers who put out fully edited perfect first-draft-and-final copy on a daily basis? ...


It is sometimes a little like "big fish" stories, isn't it? 

This 10k/day author posted today that the top word counts are the "best" days, and not every day lives up to the count: http://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.ca/2012/06/when-writing-fast-is-not-enough.html

I've had epic writing sessions, and a great short story produced in two days, but it is a rarity.

I've been meaning to read some of Dean Wesley Smith's work, just to see what he's talking about. I'm so backlogged on TBR though!


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## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

As usual, I object somewhat to his characterization of editing:



> And please don't give me your pitiful excuses about having to... rewrite your story a dozen times to make your story dull and boring and just like everyone else's story.


Like Kent, I find it necessary to do quite a bit of work on my stories to get them up to professional standard. They don't just come flowing out of my head in perfect shape to begin with. Editing doesn't make them "dull and boring and just like everyone else's story;" it polishes them up until I think they're as good as they can be.

That being said, I am doing well (if not quite making a living by his standard) by writing lots of short fiction, most of which doesn't sell hugely, but most of which does sell somewhat more than five copies a month. I'd be doing even better if my major Crohn's issues hadn't knocked me out of writing for much of last year. So there is indeed something to be said for turning out a lot of short stuff, if you happen to be inclined to write that way.


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## Mike McIntyre (Jan 19, 2011)

_That's right. 250,000 words in a year. Working one hour per day and taking the weekends off and two weeks vacation._

Instant fiction, just add water!


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

EllenFisher said:


> Editing doesn't make them "dull and boring and just like everyone else's story;" it polishes them up until I think they're as good as they can be.


I'm virtually certain that was a sarcastic jab at literary fiction, Ellen. Or at least writers of literary fiction. 

The only thing I found interesting was his admonition to write in many different genres, honestly...


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## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

> I'm virtually certain that was a sarcastic jab at literary fiction, Ellen. Or at least writers of literary fiction.


Honestly, I think he's just opposed to overediting. I get that. I even agree with that. It's possible to hold onto a story for years, muddling with it and polishing it and never quite finishing it. I would agree that's not a good idea. But whenever he talks about editing, he tends to adopt a slightly supercilious tone that gets my hackles up.  (insert "hackle" emoticon here)



> The only thing I found interesting was his admonition to write in many different genres, honestly...


Yeah, not sure I concur with that. I write romance and erotic romance, and that's what I'm good at. No one wants to read science fiction or fantasy by yours truly, because it would suck. As I keep saying, I really do believe in sticking to your strengths.


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## Nathan Lowell (Dec 11, 2010)

Dean's an interesting -- and very talented -- man. 

He's also deeply buried in the traditional mind-set and is really struggling to come to grips with ideas like "a regular pay check" and the power of promotion.

His math, however, is impeccable. 

It's important to understand where he's coming from with the "stop wasting time on re-writes" idea. I think he makes a lot of sense with it, and the key is in the difference between creative and critical mind. 

We write with creative mind. Creative mind can do things that you could never plan for. Words, themes, and ideas come together in the creative mind and get put onto the page. It's almost like magic, except it's not. It's darned hard work. 

We edit with critical mind. Critical mind keeps insisting that words need to go in a proper order, that sentences need all the parts, and that grammar is there for a reason gosh-darn-it, and it better be in place. Critical mind can't tell a story to save your life. 

The problem is that most people edit the life out of their stories. I do it myself and I've seen it in others. They polish it until it shines and in the shining, they lose the edge, the ragged bite that makes it real, that makes it zing. 

So write with creative mind, do a spell check and let your critical mind look for sentences that are missing words, for things that you thought you wrote but didn't. But don't let your critical mind think about the story. 

At a workshop with Dean, his advice was "If the story doesn't work, for God's sake don't rewrite it. Throw it out and write something that does." (I may have cleaned it up a bit. He's fond of f-bombs.) 

And I have to admit, I thought his ideas were a little wacky, but then I wrote a story that I couldn't have done before I took the workshop. Second draft was for continuity. Third draft was a spell check. Done. One day. 5000 words. Maybe not perfect, but I love the story. I'll publish it one day. 

As silly, as misguided, as "my brain doesn't work that way" as you might think about this, I've seen the difference. It's staggeringly real. When you see what you can do, you'll never go back.

The real obstacle (and I'm speaking from bitter experience on this) is fear. I didn't trust my creative mind to do its job. I was afraid that if I didn't let my critical mind tear the story apart, I'd do something stupid, unreadable, somehow unworthy. 

For the skeptics, just give it a try. Trust your art. Trust your heart. Just try it. 

The results might surprise you.


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

Nathan Lowell said:


> Dean's an interesting -- and very talented -- man.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...


Excellent comments Nathan (all of it; I snipped for space). Thanks.


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## AndreSanThomas (Jan 31, 2012)

Mike McIntyre said:


> _That's right. 250,000 words in a year. Working one hour per day and taking the weekends off and two weeks vacation._
> 
> Instant fiction, just add water!


Well now, wait a minute...365 days in a year. Minus 108 for weekends, and 10 week days for 2 weeks vacation is 247. 250,000 divided by 247 hours is 1012 words. Divided by 60 minutes is less than 17 wpm typing speed. Even my brother can manage that with only 6 errors.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

*For #2, you must price your short story at at least $2.99 and if your story isn't long enough, add a second bonus story or other bonus material to the mix for the reader. (I know some of you don't like this idea. Fine, keep your story at 99 cents and keep making 35 cent in the discount bin. No problem for me, and not something to talk about in this discussion.)*

I always shake my head when he says this as if it's a quantifiable fact that readers are tripping over each other racing to the one-click button to pay $2.99 for a 10 page (3000 word) story when they can get 3 full-length novels (120,000+ words) for the same price. Personally, I would never pay 3 bucks for a story that's only going to give me 10 minutes reading time, unless it's from an author I know and love to read and I'm dying to read the story. Even then, I'd have to think long and hard before I purchase it. I think value should be considered when determining a book's price and I just don't see much value in charging readers that much for something they'll finish reading in less time that it takes to drink a cup of coffee. But maybe Smith knows something I don't. It's obviously working for him.


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## MGalloway (Jun 21, 2011)

Nathan Lowell said:


> So write with creative mind, do a spell check and let your critical mind look for sentences that are missing words, for things that you thought you wrote but didn't. But don't let your critical mind think about the story.


I agree to a point. My own approach has been to write the first draft of a short story as quickly as a I can, set it aside for a while (usually days or even weeks), and then begin the editing process. Then I re-read and edit each story at all different times of the day and in all different types of moods. If it stands up to that process, chances are good that it will hold up over the long haul.



Nathan Lowell said:


> At a workshop with Dean, his advice was "If the story doesn't work, for God's sake don't rewrite it. Throw it out and write something that does." (I may have cleaned it up a bit. He's fond of f-bombs.)


Although I can see some merit in this method, I can't see throwing out an idea entirely. I generally just set it aside and try coming back to it at a later date. Sometimes I've had ideas sit around for years before I was able to put them together with other stray ideas. Then, suddenly, a story appears with little effort.


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## JamieDeBree (Oct 1, 2010)

Thank you, Nathan...I was trying to figure out how to say something like that, but having not taken one of Dean's workshops (it's on my dream vacation list!), I had no idea how to express how it works. It just...does.

I write one draft, spell check, and email it to my editor. And she constantly says I'm trying to put her out of business, because every time, the structure is better, and she has less and less to nitpick at. Revisions based on the editor's suggestions take me a couple hours, and then it's done. 

Of course, a short story takes me far longer than it should to write, because I can't help but work on several projects at once. But that's another matter entirely...


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## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

> I always shake my head when he says this as if it's a quantifiable fact that readers are tripping over each other racing to the one-click button to pay $2.99 for a 10 page story when they can get 3 full-length novels for the same price. Personally, I would never pay 3 bucks for a story that's only going to give me 10 minutes reading time, unless it's an author I know and love to read.


I tend to agree, and I'd add that pricing a true short story at $2.99 is likely to result in bad reviews, too. I even see shorts priced at 99 cents with one-star reviews because some readers felt they weren't long enough. If a writer has built enough of a fanbase, s/he can probably get away with higher prices for shorts, and the price readers are willing to pay may vary from genre to genre, too. But for most of us, I think charging that much for a short may not work that well.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

MGalloway said:


> I agree to a point. My own approach has been to write the first draft of a short story as quickly as a I can, set it aside for a while (usually days or even weeks), and then begin the editing process. Then I re-read and edit each story at all different times of the day and in all different types of moods. If it stands up to that process, chances are good that it will hold up over the long haul.
> 
> Although I can see some merit in this method, I can't see throwing out an idea entirely. I generally just set it aside and try coming back to it at a later date. Sometimes I've had ideas sit around for years before I was able to put them together with other stray ideas. Then, suddenly, a story appears with little effort.


The problem with Smith is he makes these sweeping statements as if there is only one correct way to write. No two writers are exactly the same, nor will they use the exact same process to write their books. But in his defense, he is making this statement to explain how to make a living as a writer as opposed to simply being a writer. Speed (or work ethic as he calls it) is part of the necessary skills needed to make a sustainable living as a writer. If one simply wants to write to win awards, they can certainly ignore his advice.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

EllenFisher said:


> If a writer has built enough of a fanbase, s/he can probably get away with higher prices for shorts,


I think that's the seminal point to be made. Does an author have a strong enough following to make selling short stories at a premium price worth the risk of a) low book sales and b) negative reviews?



Edward M. Grant said:


> I wonder too, but remember that at $2.99 you're making about six times as much per sale as at $0.99. If you sell a third as many copies of the story, you still make twice as much money.


True. But I'm guessing the only way to prove the merit of premium pricing for a short story is in how much repeat business you get. If the trade off is to get the initial $2.99 sale and lose a reader, I'm not sure that's a smart sales strategy.


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

Thank you, Mr. Lowell, because I believe you're right.

I'm in the DWS camp; I come from the world of television, and I write fast because I was trained to write fast. There is simply no time to do substantial and, I might add, often meaningless/worthless re-writes. Write the story, make sure it looks professional, and launch it. That's the way I write fiction now. It's the only way I know how to do it.

Even the great Bradbury told us to write a story a week. He said (paraphrase) _in 30 weeks, you'll have 30 stories, and I defy you to write 30 crappy stories! Some of them will be good--and it only takes a few._

I wish I had the courage to charge $2.99. I can't do it yet. I like seeing sales roll in too much.

But if one of those stories becomes a breakout, you bet I'll raise them to $2.99.

At any rate, short fiction is a possibility again. For those who love to read it, and for those of us who love to write it-- rapture!

Best

G


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

Gutman said:


> Thank you, Mr. Lowell, because I believe you're right.
> 
> I'm in the DWS camp; I come from the world of television, and I write fast because I was trained to write fast. There is simply no time to do substantial and, I might add, often meaningless/worthless re-writes. Write the story, make sure it looks professional, and launch it. That's the way I write fiction now. It's the only way I know how to do it.
> 
> ...


I have nothing but the utmost respect for people who write to a deadline. It's one thing to write fast. It's another to write fast and make sure it's quality! I suspect that more planning goes into the projects where there is a deadline vs. writing extemporaneously (which can often require more rewrites if one doesn't know where the story is going).


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> I always shake my head when he says this as if it's a quantifiable fact that readers are tripping over each other racing to the one-click button to pay $2.99 for a 10 page (3000 word) story when they can get 3 full-length novels (120,000+ words) for the same price.


To be fair, he does also mention combining two short stories together, or otherwise padding an ebook out to increase (perceived) value, but I mostly agree with you that he's ridiculously hung up on a $2.99 minimum price for _anything_, regardless of length. It's especially weird since he seems to think that paying for editing or covers is something that happens to other people, so it's not as if he's advocating high prices merely to let one break even quickly...


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

Nathan Lowell said:


> Dean's an interesting -- and very talented -- man.
> 
> He's also deeply buried in the traditional mind-set and is really struggling to come to grips with ideas like "a regular pay check" and the power of promotion.
> 
> His math, however, is impeccable.


The math works but I think a few of the assumptions are unrealistic in today's market unless you are Kris Rusch who he conveniently uses as the example. Selling 5-10 of 25 stories a year to major markets would be really unusual. Heck, how many slots are even out there to fill in the pro-rates mags? If 20 or so authors achieved this there would be no space left for the rest of us making the argument null beyond that. 

I also don't think the market will agree with his perception that you can sell 5K word stories for $2.99 outside of erotica. I've seen a few attempts but they are big name novel authors often using series characters to boost interest. And then he further clouds the pricing issue by saying to throw in bonus stories or material to justify the price, but doesn't then reduce the number of stories produced per year to allow those bonus words to be created--like they'll just come from nowhere.

But I get the conceptual sentiment still does work to some extent even if the timing and assumptions must bend.



> It's important to understand where he's coming from with the "stop wasting time on re-writes" idea. I think he makes a lot of sense with it, and the key is in the difference between creative and critical mind.


I agree here, but that's probably because the system basically works for me and has since before I ever heard Dean say it. My published writing is very close to the first draft 9 times out of 10. I tinker a bit, and fix typos and resolve any problems brought up by trusted critique readers but beyond that when I type THE END it's pretty much done and either worth sending out to mags or not. That other 1 in 10 is either never sent out, or saved until I figure out what specific thing will fix it, or was rewritten to editorial request. Althought not all for pro rates, I sell about 1 story per 10 submissions so it's working for me at a decent enough clip.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

George Berger said:


> To be fair, he does also mention combining two short stories together, or otherwise padding an ebook out to increase (perceived) value, but I mostly agree with you that he's ridiculously hung up on a $2.99 minimum price for _anything_, regardless of length. It's especially weird since he seems to think that paying for editing or covers is something that happens to other people, so it's not as if he's advocating high prices merely to let one break even quickly...


Although I'm of the opinion that charging 3 bucks for a short story isn't value, I'll concede the point that the consumers of short fiction aren't necessarily the same as long fiction. So taking that into consideration, perhaps there is some merit to asking $2.99 for a short story if that's the price his target readers expect to pay for his short fiction. On the other hand, being an indie author allows us to pass on some of the savings of lower overhead costs to readers. I say this as someone who ALWAYS hires a cover designer and editor for my short works. Many authors don't. So it surprises me even more that they charge as much for their short stories as they do.


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## andrewwrites (Jul 4, 2011)

Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> *For #2, you must price your short story at at least $2.99 and if your story isn't long enough, add a second bonus story or other bonus material to the mix for the reader. (I know some of you don't like this idea. Fine, keep your story at 99 cents and keep making 35 cent in the discount bin. No problem for me, and not something to talk about in this discussion.)*
> 
> I always shake my head when he says this as if it's a quantifiable fact that readers are tripping over each other racing to the one-click button to pay $2.99 for a 10 page (3000 word) story when they can get 3 full-length novels (120,000+ words) for the same price. Personally, I would never pay 3 bucks for a story that's only going to give me 10 minutes reading time, unless it's from an author I know and love to read and I'm dying to read the story. Even then, I'd have to think long and hard before I purchase it. I think value should be considered when determining a book's price and I just don't see much value in charging readers that much for something they'll finish reading in less time that it takes to drink a cup of coffee. But maybe Smith knows something I don't. It's obviously working for him.


I have math-based posts like this on many other forums, involving all sorts of things (making money creating websites, iPhone apps, etc), and the problem is that it is SUPER easy to boil it down to "all you have to do is work an hour a day, and as long as you making X sales per day, you'll get rich", but the thing is that when you reduce numbers like this, you wind up with a very fragile equation. The problem is, when someone just throws in "so okay, just price all your short stories at 2.99" or "you just have to sell X copies per day" where X is a low number that doesn't seem hard, sometimes those parts of the equation SOUND good, but aren't actually possible or true.

He makes so many assumptions: You can write 50 stories a year, you can sell 5 copies of EVERY story you have written per month at 2.99, you can sell all your stories to magazines, etc etc. If he is wrong on even ONE of these points, it makes a huge, HUGE difference to his math, and ALL these points are completely tenuous. None of his article is based on any ACTUAL NUMBERS or facts that anyone is doing. If he is wrong and you can only sell 3 copies of EVERY story a month at the high 2.99 price, guess what, after SIX YEARS of pumping out 50 stories a year, you are only making $24,000 a year.

This is snake oil, this is how people scam people with get rich quick seminars: They lay out what seems like a perfectly simple, reasonable plan where you just have to do A, sell B items a month, and you'll receive C income, but the trick is that B is always an unrealistic number that SOUNDS small to most people, but is actually unattainable.

To really prove that someone can make money writing short fiction, you can't just do theoretical math with a bunch of conditions you whipped out of your ass. You need to just point to someone who is doing it. There are a trillion writers out there, and if it is possible to do it just like he says, someone is doing it. If people can just whip out 50 stories a year no problem, someone must be doing it right now. If people can have 100 stories in print and average 5 sales of each a month at the high price of 2.99, someone is doing it.

He needs to get some real examples, not just imaginary numbers, because as it stands, his post is just snake oil, he is selling a dream that sounds great, but is just based on something he came up with in his imagination.


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> So taking that into consideration, perhaps there is some merit to asking $2.99 for a short story if that's the price his target readers expect to pay for his short fiction.


Well, I think the biggest "merit" in charging $2.99 for a short story, per The DWS Method, is in making your $3.99 20,000-word collection look a little more affordable...


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## Gone To Croatan (Jun 24, 2011)

Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> I have nothing but the utmost respect for people who write to a deadline. It's one thing to write fast. It's another to write fast and make sure it's quality!


One thing I've learned from years of my software development day job is that the best people tend to have two things in common: they work fast and the software they write has very few bugs, presumably because they've learned what works and what doesn't. The slow developers also tend to produce software with lots of bugs, as they're slow because they don't know what they're doing.

I would imagine that writing is very similar; a writer who knows which plots work and which don't will not have to go back and rewrite multiple times to find a story that works.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

andrewwrites said:


> I have math-based posts like this on many other forums, involving all sorts of things (making money creating websites, iPhone apps, etc), and the problem is that it is SUPER easy to boil it down to "all you have to do is work an hour a day, and as long as you making X sales per day, you'll get rich", but the thing is that when you reduce numbers like this, you wind up with a very fragile equation. The problem is, when someone just throws in "so okay, just price all your short stories at 2.99" or "you just have to sell X copies per day" where X is a low number that doesn't seem hard, sometimes those parts of the equation SOUND good, but aren't actually possible or true.
> 
> He makes so many assumptions: You can write 50 stories a year, you can sell 5 copies of EVERY story you have written per month at 2.99, you can sell all your stories to magazines, etc etc. If he is wrong on even ONE of these points, it makes a huge, HUGE difference to his math, and ALL these points are completely tenuous. None of his article is based on any ACTUAL NUMBERS or facts that anyone is doing. If he is wrong and you can only sell 3 copies of EVERY story a month at the high 2.99 price, guess what, after SIX YEARS of pumping out 50 stories a year, you are only making $24,000 a year.
> 
> ...


Very compelling points made in your post.


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## Jill James (May 8, 2011)

You don't know what you can do until you try. Most of us here took a leap and decided to write a book. When I started writing I never would have imagined I could write 50,000 words in a month until I did Nanowrimo. Some people are plotters, some are pantsers. You might not know which you are until you try both ways.


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

andrewwrites said:


> I have math-based posts like this on many other forums, involving all sorts of things (making money creating websites, iPhone apps, etc), and the problem is that it is SUPER easy to boil it down to "all you have to do is work an hour a day, and as long as you making X sales per day, you'll get rich", but the thing is that when you reduce numbers like this, you wind up with a very fragile equation. The problem is, when someone just throws in "so okay, just price all your short stories at 2.99" or "you just have to sell X copies per day" where X is a low number that doesn't seem hard, sometimes those parts of the equation SOUND good, but aren't actually possible or true.
> 
> He makes so many assumptions: You can write 50 stories a year, you can sell 5 copies of EVERY story you have written per month at 2.99, you can sell all your stories to magazines, etc etc. If he is wrong on even ONE of these points, it makes a huge, HUGE difference to his math, and ALL these points are completely tenuous. None of his article is based on any ACTUAL NUMBERS or facts that anyone is doing. If he is wrong and you can only sell 3 copies of EVERY story a month at the high 2.99 price, guess what, after SIX YEARS of pumping out 50 stories a year, you are only making $24,000 a year.
> 
> ...


No, I don't think it's snake oil. And I don't think it's a "scam" or a "get rich quick scheme." Doing all that writing is hardly getting rich quick, first of all.

I think it's a theory. If you find the theory bs, then fine, call it, but I don't think it's fair to call it a scam. You didn't have to pay $99 for the "inside secret on making a fortune selling short stories!" nor is DWS selling that. He's not getting rich by sharing his thoughts on his blog. He's thinking, he's experimenting, he's talking out loud, and he's sharing his theory.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Kent Kelly said:


> Well, I get a little tired of the words per hour myth. Who are these amazing writers who put out fully edited perfect first-draft-and-final copy on a daily basis?


I have done first-draft-final-copy a few times. In fact, some of my highest paying short fiction over the years has been copy that I wrote and submitted during my lunch break.


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> I have nothing but the utmost respect for people who write to a deadline. It's one thing to write fast. It's another to write fast and make sure it's quality! I suspect that more planning goes into the projects where there is a deadline vs. writing extemporaneously (which can often require more rewrites if one doesn't know where the story is going).


You're right about the deadline and planning. When you have to write as fast as I've had to write, and, yes, hopefully write a quality product, there is planning involved. TV is written to a rigid outline because there's just no time to screw around "finding" the story. After you've done it a while, that planning becomes almost second nature. By the time I had written a dozen years in Hollywood, I could write a beat sheet on a napkin and write a script with that. But that was only after years of experience writing TV.

So I suspect Dean is like that as well. The planning is almost invisible, because he's so experienced at what he's doing. I suspect he's planning all the time; while walking the dog, watering the lawn, etc.

Now that I write fiction, I notice that I do a lot of planning like that. I don't sit down until things are pretty clear in my head. I do not outline, but I'm not a complete pantser either. I know what I want to write, even if it changes in the process. By the time I sit down, the words are ready to explode out of me. It would be a hard slog extemporaneously; I can do it, but it sometimes requires, as you say, more re-writes.

Thanks for pointing this out. I think when you're experienced like Dean, you may forget the things you do that beginners don't see.


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## Alain Gomez (Nov 12, 2010)

andrewwrites said:


> I have math-based posts like this on many other forums, involving all sorts of things (making money creating websites, iPhone apps, etc), and the problem is that it is SUPER easy to boil it down to "all you have to do is work an hour a day, and as long as you making X sales per day, you'll get rich", but the thing is that when you reduce numbers like this, you wind up with a very fragile equation. The problem is, when someone just throws in "so okay, just price all your short stories at 2.99" or "you just have to sell X copies per day" where X is a low number that doesn't seem hard, sometimes those parts of the equation SOUND good, but aren't actually possible or true.
> 
> He makes so many assumptions: You can write 50 stories a year, you can sell 5 copies of EVERY story you have written per month at 2.99, you can sell all your stories to magazines, etc etc. If he is wrong on even ONE of these points, it makes a huge, HUGE difference to his math, and ALL these points are completely tenuous. None of his article is based on any ACTUAL NUMBERS or facts that anyone is doing. If he is wrong and you can only sell 3 copies of EVERY story a month at the high 2.99 price, guess what, after SIX YEARS of pumping out 50 stories a year, you are only making $24,000 a year.
> 
> ...


It's true that his post is mostly based in theory. But it can still be done. I'm a short story only writer and I kept track of my sales every month for a year on my blog. I got tired of constantly counting which is why I stopped 

But to the point: so long as you provide both quality AND quantity, it can be done. All of my standalone fiction is priced at 99 cents. Like Kevis, I couldn't even see myself paying 2.99 for a 3,000 word story so why would I expect others to? You have to factor in that a short story is not going to sell like a novel. So you have to look at your writing across the board rather than each individual work. Dean is correct that diversifying is key.

If you have one short story you can probably expect _maybe_ one sale a month. That's about all I did on Amazon US when I first published for several months in a row. But if you increase the number of stories you have, you increase the number of "odd" sales you get every month.

If you want actual numbers.... I have several fictional pen names (to help with genre) along with my real name that I use to publish non-fiction work. Again, all of my ebooks, both fiction and non-fiction, are shorter works (the longest being a 25k novella which, surprisingly, never sells lol). I publish one new ebook every month, give or take. This October marks my second year of being published. May 2011 my Amazon US royalties totaled a whopping $4.90. In May 2012 my Amazon US royalties were $33.20.

So like Dean said, I'm probably never going to get filthy rich from doing this. But I don't think it is at all unreasonable to expect $4-500 monthly royalties a year or two down the road.


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## Guest (Jun 19, 2012)

I think Nathan Lowell's comments are spot on.  There's a difference between the creative mind and the critical mind, and the key is to refine your own process to the point where it all becomes streamlined.  I don't think I'm quite there yet, but I do believe it's possible to pump out good quality first drafts at a breakneck pace, and I would love to be there.


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## Tessa Apa (Apr 8, 2011)

I am with you! i dont even bother looking much now. It used to be every hour! Now just once a day, and I am weaning towards once a week. Numbers are such a bore - i think I'll know when I can quit the day job  It'll be obvious!!


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

You've never heard of me. I sold 7 stories last year to SF/F magazines, all for money, most for pro rates.  That's with only writing 20 at all (sold another one of those 20 this year, so 8 of the 20 I wrote last year).  It's really not that difficult. Write well, keep the stories out to markets that pay pro. Ignore rejection (I have nearly 500 rejections from the last three years) and keep submitting everything you write to someone who can pay you for it.  I've earned an average SF novel advance over the last couple years mainly from short fiction (both trad and self published).  

I also sell an average (or better) of 5 copies per title per month.  Some things sell zero, some sell much better. That's why Dean says "average" because you can't count on every title selling, but some will do much better than you expect.

I also write about 1000-1500 words per 45 minute "session" (I use an hourglass to help me focus and to remind me to take breaks for my wrists every 1k words or so).  I don't rewrite. My stuff is edited by pros for continuity and copy editing purposes, but that's it.

Dean's method isn't for everyone (caveat here, I've been attending Kris and Dean workshops for a couple years and they have definitely helped me become a much better writer much more quickly than I would have otherwise).  He doesn't expect everyone (or probably, anyone) to follow what he says. He always says "do what works for you".  He's outlining a method to make a living with short fiction and it does have a lot of provisions:
IF you put in your million words of practice first.
IF you constantly strive to learn and improve your writing.
IF you write great short stories that fit into the middle of the genres.
IF you produce a lot of great work (however that happens, binge writing, consistent writing, whatever).
IF you send the work to to the top magazines and give it a chance to earn that way.
IF you learn how to write great blurbs, do good covers, and publish what doesn't sell to magazines or what sells after it is past the exclusivity period.
IF you maximize your income streams by writing in multiple genres and making your work available in as many formats and on as many sales sites as possible AND you bundle stories so that one story can earn individually and in collections.

If you do these things, after some number of years that will vary (the example he gives is six years or so), you will most likely be making a decent living.

And yeah, I believe it. I'm living it (though writing novellas now and novels, because that's where my preferences have shifted to this year).  At the rate I'm going now (with my sales staying as bottom as they are), I'll be making six figures by the end of 2015 if I write and publish everything I have planned.  It's not a quick plan or one that won't take much work, but this is my career. I can do the work and I'm making money along the way while learning a ton about this business and improving my craft. So it works for me.


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## Carradee (Aug 21, 2010)

Personally, I figured out an e-book pricing scale based on word count, one that bears in mind both my earnings per word and what the reader pays per word, to find a balance betwixt the two. It still means that all my currently released short stories will stay at $0.99 US (since they're all <5k words, but my novels' prices will be changing a week or month after I release each one's sequel.

I've also figured out a formula that takes word count and approximates POD book # of pages, cost, retail price, sale price, (among other things) and what the e-book should therefore cost (to avoid too large a disparity between the two, which itself is a buyer turn-off). I've even done some fancy math figuring out my proportion of sales-per-month vs. titles available, and I've used that to figure out how much I need to have available to reasonably expect to make a good income from my fiction.

And you know what? Doing the math, it looks very possible to make a living with all short stories, even at the $0.99 price point. I've already written over 1k words this morning, in 48 minutes. (I've been keeping track.) Including prep time and editing as I go, I've spent fewer than 5 hours writing 4500 words. I think I'll be able to finish drafting the short story in another 2 hours. Add 2 hours for editing and proofreading, another 1 for making a cover, and that's one short story ready for market after 10 hours' work.

I'll be keeping track of the next several things I write, to figure out my average-but I know already that this short story is going to be one my longest ones (that's still a short story and not a novelette). Though I also seem to write this narrator more easily than some of my others. Which is weird, because we're completely different, personality-wise. She ticks people off for fun.

Anyway, writing, revising/rewriting, and editing are three _different_ skills. I don't think it's a coincidence that it's the stories I've written quickly, with minimal revision/rewriting, are ones I've sold. I'm also the type of writer that edits as I go, but I've noticed that my creative subconsciousness is far better at things like plotting than my critical consciousness is.

But let's even assume you rewrite everything four times and therefore take 5 hours to produce about 1k of usable words. At an hour a day, 5 days a week, 2 weeks off, that's still 50k words a year.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Carradee said:


> Anyway, writing, revising/rewriting, and editing are three _different_ skills. I don't think it's a coincidence that it's the stories I've written quickly, with minimal revision/rewriting, are ones I've sold. I'm also the type of writer that edits as I go, but I've noticed that my creative subconsciousness is far better at things like plotting than my critical consciousness is.


I totally agree and my experience matches this as well.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

andrewwrites said:


> I have math-based posts like this on many other forums, involving all sorts of things (making money creating websites, iPhone apps, etc), and the problem is that it is SUPER easy to boil it down to "all you have to do is work an hour a day, and as long as you making X sales per day, you'll get rich", but the thing is that when you reduce numbers like this, you wind up with a very fragile equation. The problem is, when someone just throws in "so okay, just price all your short stories at 2.99" or "you just have to sell X copies per day" where X is a low number that doesn't seem hard, sometimes those parts of the equation SOUND good, but aren't actually possible or true.
> 
> He makes so many assumptions: You can write 50 stories a year, you can sell 5 copies of EVERY story you have written per month at 2.99, you can sell all your stories to magazines, etc etc. If he is wrong on even ONE of these points, it makes a huge, HUGE difference to his math, and ALL these points are completely tenuous. None of his article is based on any ACTUAL NUMBERS or facts that anyone is doing. If he is wrong and you can only sell 3 copies of EVERY story a month at the high 2.99 price, guess what, after SIX YEARS of pumping out 50 stories a year, you are only making $24,000 a year.
> 
> ...


Considering that this is pretty much what he does, he preaches what he practices. This makes it based on reality not imagination. Now what is your very angry reaction based on? Jealousy perhaps?


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## williamvw (Mar 12, 2012)

Doomed Muse said:


> If you do these things, after some number of years that will vary (the example he gives is six years or so), you will most likely be making a decent living.
> 
> And yeah, I believe it. I'm living it (though writing novellas now and novels, because that's where my preferences have shifted to this year). At the rate I'm going now (with my sales staying as bottom as they are), I'll be making six figures by the end of 2015 if I write and publish everything I have planned. It's not a quick plan or one that won't take much work, but this is my career. I can do the work and I'm making money along the way while learning a ton about this business and improving my craft. So it works for me.


Thank you, Annie. I think this is it exactly. I ran an alternate set of numbers last night, adapting Dean's figures for what I thought was realistic in my own life. The result was that by Year 5, I'd be making about $5,000 annually from short fiction. That's a far cry from $40K, but it's WAY better than the $0 I was making annually from short fiction before 2011. More importantly, as you discovered yourself, short fiction is one of several categories in your writing inventory. Can someone make a living from short fiction alone? Maybe. Can someone make a living from a mix of short and long fiction, with each side enhancing the other, after years of smart planning and hard work? Almost certainly. That was my take-away from Dean's post. For the first time in decades, short stories can be a major component of a full-time author's livelihood.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

williamvw said:


> Thank you, Annie. I think this is it exactly. I ran an alternate set of numbers last night, adapting Dean's figures for what I thought was realistic in my own life. The result was that by Year 5, I'd be making about $5,000 annually from short fiction. That's a far cry from $40K, but it's WAY better than the $0 I was making annually from short fiction before 2011. More importantly, as you discovered yourself, short fiction is one of several categories in your writing inventory. Can someone make a living from short fiction alone? Maybe. Can someone make a living from a mix of short and long fiction, with each side enhancing the other, after years of smart planning and hard work? Almost certainly. That was my take-away from Dean's post. For the first time in decades, short stories can be a major component of a full-time author's livelihood.


I think that was in large part what Dean was getting at. Of course, the fact that he writes a lot of shorts makes him lean toward that as a big element. But you also have to remember that 50 years ago or so, it WAS possible to make a living as a short story writer. Then publishing changed and the short story market crashed to the point of near invisibility. For quite a while it was not a practical possibility to make a living writing shorts. Now it is. Not necessarily easy, but possible. Or to make a living doing a mix of both.

By the way, you live just down the road from me, more or less. I'm always amazed at the number of writers who live in Oregon.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

williamvw said:


> For the first time in decades, short stories can be a major component of a full-time author's livelihood.


For those of us who are huge short story lovers, this is a big deal!


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

2.99 is too much for a 5,000 word short story. Forget comparing them to indie novels which are widely available for 2.99, it's even a ripoff compared to the 100,000 word, overpriced trad pub novels at 12.99.

The general advice about writing regularly is good, leaving aside the simple detail that just because you can produce rough draft material at 1K/hour, there's no way you can rewrite, polish, edit, hire editors and cover artists, plus publish, etc. at anything approaching that rate. Your rough draft material is like front line troops; it may be the most visible part of your army, but for every soldier on the front there's are several support personnel keeping them fed, armed, and in the fight.


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## andrewwrites (Jul 4, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> Considering that this is pretty much what he does, he preaches what he practices. This makes it based on reality not imagination. Now what is your very angry reaction based on? Jealousy perhaps?


If this is truly "pretty much what he does", I would think he'd include actual numbers, not just make them up. As for calling me jealous, that's pretty lazy considering I wrote multiple paragraphs, and didn't say he was wrong, just that these numbers-based math exercises are completely deceptive. If I wrote "this guy is an idiot", you could maybe start making inferences about if I'm a jealous author or something (I'm not EVEN an author).

This type of gorilla math is completely typical of inspirational you-can-get-rich schemes. Go to boards where people talk about web businesses, and the pitches are ALWAYS like this. "All you have to do is create 2 websites a month and make $10/day on each and you'll be making 6 figures inside of a year!" type stuff. The key is that there is always some small number that is pulled out of a hat, but when people actually try, they realize that $10/day or 5 sales a day, or 5 sets of knives a week, are not realistic numbers, and are in many cases just best case scenarios that only certain outliers can achieve (if anyone).

I'm not as angry as you think, but it does peeve me when I see a bunch of people just sucking this stuff in. I have nothing against this guy, hell I don't even know anything about him, but for someone who you claim is making his living from short stories, he sure is running a lot of workshops, he has 6 upcoming ones listed on his page. Maybe "scam" is too harsh a word, but this is at minimum an over-optimistic article designed to get people excited and drum up interest and visitors for his workshops.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

andrewwrites said:


> I'm not as angry as you think, but it does peeve me when I see a bunch of people just sucking this stuff in. I have nothing against this guy, hell I don't even know anything about him, but for someone who you claim is making his living from short stories, he sure is running a lot of workshops, he has 6 upcoming ones listed on his page. Maybe "scam" is too harsh a word, but this is at minimum an over-optimistic article designed to get people excited and drum up interest and visitors for his workshops.


Dean certainly doesn't just teach workshops. He writes. A lot. He has written dozens of novels and hundreds of short stories, and yes, speed is his tactic. Like many people, the tactic that works for him is the one that he extrapolates to the general public. That's a limitation of his advice, in my opinion, but he is absolutely practicing what he preaches.


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## Alain Gomez (Nov 12, 2010)

andrewwrites said:


> If this is truly "pretty much what he does", I would think he'd include actual numbers, not just make them up. As for calling me jealous, that's pretty lazy considering I wrote multiple paragraphs, and didn't say he was wrong, just that these numbers-based math exercises are completely deceptive. If I wrote "this guy is an idiot", you could maybe start making inferences about if I'm a jealous author or something (I'm not EVEN an author).
> 
> This type of gorilla math is completely typical of inspirational you-can-get-rich schemes. Go to boards where people talk about web businesses, and the pitches are ALWAYS like this. "All you have to do is create 2 websites a month and make $10/day on each and you'll be making 6 figures inside of a year!" type stuff. The key is that there is always some small number that is pulled out of a hat, but when people actually try, they realize that $10/day or 5 sales a day, or 5 sets of knives a week, are not realistic numbers, and are in many cases just best case scenarios that only certain outliers can achieve (if anyone).
> 
> I'm not as angry as you think, but it does peeve me when I see a bunch of people just sucking this stuff in. I have nothing against this guy, hell I don't even know anything about him, but for someone who you claim is making his living from short stories, he sure is running a lot of workshops, he has 6 upcoming ones listed on his page. Maybe "scam" is too harsh a word, but this is at minimum an over-optimistic article designed to get people excited and drum up interest and visitors for his workshops.


I doubt he's the type to put extra effort into drumming up interest in his workshops. Dean has reached a point in his career where people will attend his workshops regardless of whether or not he blogged. He's been writing for awhile, he has written works many people are familiar with and he's making an income from his writing. Those three things are enough to attract a sizable aspiring author audience wherever he goes.

You do bring up a valid point about the 5 sales things. With short stories it takes quite some time before you can realistically expect 5 sales EVERY day even across all channels.

But the point of his post is not that this is some get-rick-quick-scheme. He says that repeatedly. The point he was making is that it is _realistic_ to expect to make money from short stories provided you put in the time and effort. His conclusion that if you really have a good work ethic you can make $40,000 a year in about six years hardly falls in the same category as "make two websites and you'll be making 6 figures inside of a year!"


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## Alain Gomez (Nov 12, 2010)

MichaelWallace said:


> 2.99 is too much for a 5,000 word short story. Forget comparing them to indie novels which are widely available for 2.99, it's even a ripoff compared to the 100,000 word, overpriced trad pub novels at 12.99.


For fiction, I agree with this. If it was non-fiction, you could get away with 2.99 for a 5k work. Provided the content is useful and well-researched.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

andrewwrites said:


> I have nothing against this guy, hell I don't even know anything about him...


Yes, it is very much obvious you don't know anything about him. Maybe you should find something out about him (and his wife, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who co-runs the workshops) before you impugn someone's honesty and integrity.

As far as their workshops, they don't have to drum up interest in their workshops. They have more people demanding to take them than they can take in.

You have a pretty funny idea of getting rich quick if you think that taking 5 years to make $40k a year qualifies. (Which was obviously intended as merely an example of how it is possible to make a living writing short fiction and not an exact prescription)

Edit: You're right. I didn't bother answering you at length. I don't consider your comments rated it. As for Dean's numbers, he doesn't need to tell me he's sold more than a hundred novels and hundreds of short stories. Anyone who frequents his blog already knows that or they could look him up. Not hard to do. They also know that KKR won a Hugo for editing short stories (when she was the editor at Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine) and has written and sold almost has much as he has.

But getting information before you accuse someone of being a scammer, especially someone who is obviously known and respected, would be way, way too much trouble for you, obviously.


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## Louis Shalako (Apr 13, 2011)

Dean is a must-read, but only if you keep your objectivity cap on. Writers who produce a 200-word story then publish it immediately are rarely doing themselves any good, and for $0.99 it's a rip-off. It gives the rest of us a bad reputation as well.

There are well established authors who write a story, make a quick phone call and make a sale. For the rest of us, it's a six-month wait and a rejection slip. While that market may be dying a slow death, it leaves the bulk of us painfully building up an audience, slowly, over much time. Right now I have fifty stories I could publish on my own.

I choose not to do that for all the right reasons. I also edit my work thoroughly. Even when I don't, I still get rejected. 

We have to be better than established authors to get noticed at all, whether it's fans or editors or publishers. That is a fact of life as I see it.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Louis Shalako said:


> Dean is a must-read, but only if you keep your objectivity cap on. Writers who produce a 200-word story then publish it immediately are rarely doing themselves any good, and for $0.99 it's a rip-off. It gives the rest of us a bad reputation as well.
> 
> There are well established authors who write a story, make a quick phone call and make a sale. For the rest of us, it's a six-month wait and a rejection slip. While that market may be dying a slow death, it leaves the bulk of us painfully building up an audience, slowly, over much time. Right now I have fifty stories I could publish on my own.
> 
> ...


Well, I don't think Dean suggested writing 200-word stories. You're right in a way though because Dean has been at this since the 80s. He knows how to write on the fly in a way that most of us don't, not to mention having KKR to read his stories before anyone else does. He admits that she does.

Dean mentioned recently that he has SOLD more novels that ended up not being published for one reason or anther than most authors write in a lifetime. So you have to apply his suggestions to your own situation and experience level. None the less, he has a point that constant production and work and output is what will gain sales. Work sitting on a hard drive or not yet produced won't. I happen not to agree with him on pricing and a couple of other issues, but Dean is right so d*mn often, he's a hard man to argue with.


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## Carradee (Aug 21, 2010)

Dean's said that his $2.99 price tag for a short story = _at least_ 7k words of fiction.

Also, his math assumes 5 sales per _month_ *across all venues*, and there are a lot more of them than Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, Kobo, and Diesel.

His math shows you how to run the figures, so if 1k words per hour, 1 hour a weekday, 50 weeks a year is not feasible for you, _run the numbers for your own situation_. You might be surprised by the results. I know I was, the first time I did it.


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## MBlack (Mar 12, 2012)

For erotica one can charge 2.99 for a 5k or 7k story and get it, if the particular story catches on. I know of one author who had three short stories in the top 100 paid in Erotica on Amazon, for months. At their peak, I estimated they were together hauling in almost $1000 per day royalties for the author. 60K in a few months from less than 20,000 words.

Problem with charging 2.99 for a short story (of any genre) is how much do you charge for the omni when you bundle them. I'm getting ready to release a series of ten erotica shorts, which will later form a collection. It makes sense to charge .99 for the individual stories -- I can build a name, although I don't make much per sale, and I've still got room to price the collected works at a reasonable 5.99 or 6.99 or so. Yes I could have planned to bundle five in a volume, but the connected storyline (and total length) might feel clipped.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Yeah, since when is writing 50 stories a year for six years with the aim of making 40k a year after that time a "get rich quick" thing? Hehe.

I sell novellas (13-15k words) for 2.99 and have no problem doing so.  Dean's talking about bundling short stories so anything less than 7k words gets a second story added to boost the value.


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

Doomed Muse said:


> I sell novellas (13-15k words) for 2.99 and have no problem doing so. Dean's talking about bundling short stories so anything less than 7k words gets a second story added to boost the value.


Yes, but according to him, you should be charging $3.49-$3.99 each for those 13-15k word novellas. He also advocates $1.99 for a 5,000-word story, which I think scrambles his math, slightly...


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

George Berger said:


> Yes, but according to him, you should be charging $3.49-$3.99 each for those 13-15k word novellas. He also advocates $1.99 for a 5,000-word story, which I think scrambles his math, slightly...


I honestly think he is wrong about pricing, or at least suggesting prices that wouldn't work for most people.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

I use a simplified method of his pricing. (1.49-1.99 for a sub 7k short story, 2.99 for 7-25k, 4.99 for 25k-40k, 5.99-7.99 for 40k and up novels) But I'm also not planning on releasing short stories individually anymore unless they are over 10k words and just plan on doing collections from here on out when I have enough since I'm not writing that much shorter fiction these days (focusing on novellas and novels for the time being).

It is a very volume driven idea, for sure. But the quality has to be there as well and the only way to do that is to keep learning, improving, and write a lot (ie practice practice practice).


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

I read Dean's blog regularly and he has a lot of great information. However, I don't agree with his pricing strategy for _*me*_. It's the way he chooses to run his business and what he advocates. That's great for him. He has an audience and a lot of back list. If I were in his shoes I might think like him, too, or at least consider his pricing strategies.

I know a number of authors making a ton of money by discounting books and/or giving one away for free. Dean is against this. That's fine. I see where he's coming from touting the long tail. But who knows what tomorrow will bring? If a 99 cent book or trilogy puts someone on the NYT Bestseller list and gains them hundreds of thousands of fans, who can argue with discounted bargain bin books? Or just maybe a free book takes an author from making $1000 a month to $10,000 a month. Which would you choose?

I'm going with what works now and when it stops working, I'll try something else. To each their own.


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> I honestly think he is wrong about pricing, or at least suggesting prices that wouldn't work for most people.


You know, I look at his website, and all the short fiction he's got prominently featured there - the Poker Boy stories, the Pilgrim Hugh stories, et cetera. They're as short as 2,900 words. They're $0.99 each. And their sales ranks are as low as 983,000. The Poker Boy collection he published in January, at $2.99? _No sales rank_. His previous collection, also at $2.99? Ranked 642,000. And he wants, apparently, to raise those prices to $3.99, or even higher.

Obviously that's only a small selection of his immense fiction output, at one (albeit large) retailer, but it honestly makes me wonder about his advice, and whether it actually works for _him_.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Short fiction can make you money, provided - as Dean says - you write a lot of it, work in different genres and don't spend a lot of money on covers, editing, formatting, etc...

Next month is my one year e-publishing anniversary and so far, I have only published short stories and novelettes. I have 16 stories and novelettes available so far and hope to publish one more until the anniversary. I was lucky that I had a lot of backlist as well as a bunch of stories that never sold and were just gathering dust on my harddrive, so I had a lot of inventory to publish. Plus, I do my own covers and formatting, so I keep my costs low.

I have stories that sell five copies or more per month and I have stories that only sell every couple of months. But as my publish more stories, my sales gradually grow as well. Even the slow sellers are picking up. However, it takes time to reach a decent level of sales, so it's definitely not a "get rich quick" scheme.

I don't take Dean Wesley Smith's advice in every respect. For example, I publish everything under the same name, because I don't like pen names. I don't publish any story under 3000 words as a standalone and bundle up shorter work with something that's thematically related. I sell stories between 3000 and 7000 words for 99 cents, novelettes of 7000 words up to approx. 20000 words go for 2.99. So far it works - and yes, people do pay 2.99 for a 7000 word story.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

George- that's just Amazon and just a tiny amount of his and Kris's work you looked at... they have over 300 titles up now and are working on updating prices and covers for their earlier experiments in e-publishing. That's also not taking POD and all the other sites into account.  I happen to know them personally and I can vouch that he and Kris are making very good money off their e-published/POD work and they only have maybe a third of their back list up and most of that isn't the novels yet.

Clearly his advice isn't for everyone, but that doesn't mean it won't work if you follow it (and are a good writer, etc, which is part of his advice as he harps constantly on the whole "learn your craft" thing).


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## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

I think virtually every title I have out there, both romance and erotic romance, sells more than five copies a month. I'm only really selling on three platforms-- Amazon, B&N, and iTunes-- and the majority of my books are still not up on iTunes. This suggests to me that five a month is not an unreasonable figure to strive for. However, I price my shorts (under 10,000 words) at 99 cents and my shorter novellas at $1.99. If I raised the prices, I imagine I would see a dropoff in sales, but I could certainly be wrong.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

I have shorts between 99c and $2.99. If I look at the last year, averaged out, I think I sold 5 copies a month of each on everything. Obviously, some months I sold a lot more and some I sold nothing. But still, interesting.

George - I buy a fair bit of Dean and Kris short stories. I always buy then on Smashwords


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## ChrisWard (Mar 10, 2012)

It is possible to make money selling short stories to magazines, if you are a complete production line like DWS suggests you need to be.  I've made perhaps $600 over the last six years selling short stories to magazines, 33 stories in total.  I wasn't so keen on the whole "only sell to magazines paying 5c and above" part.  That's because there are hardly any magazines paying that much, and a billion writers trying to sell to them.  The first story I sold to a pro magazine, Weird Tales, was only paying 3c/word at the time (it's since gone back up to 5c  ) but the story rocked in at over 6k so that was a solid pay check.  However, there are a lot of magazines out there that pay $20 - $50 dollars so that can add up if you make a lot of sales.  Probably the biggest downside to it all is how easily such magazines go under - I've made two other "pro" sales at 5c/word, only to find the magazines went out of business before my stories were published, meaning of course, no cash.  In both cases, the whole "will it/won't it get published" dialogue went on for a year or more.

Whether or not a short story will sell on Amazon at $2.99 remains to be seen.  The more I sell the more I up my prices because I hate the stigma of crapness that is attached to .99c books.  I will never, ever offer a full novel at that price.  If I sell one novel at 4.99 (and I've sold two this month ... hurrah!  ) that's the equivalent royalties of 20 at .99c (more or less).  For shorts ... well, I had a review whine about the length of a story the other day (although it said the length in the blurb ...) and criticizing the fact that I had put a section of a novel in there with it, giving more for the money, as DWS suggests.  And that was at .99c.


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

George Berger said:


> You know, I look at his website, and all the short fiction he's got prominently featured there - the Poker Boy stories, the Pilgrim Hugh stories, et cetera. They're as short as 2,900 words. They're $0.99 each. And their sales ranks are as low as 983,000. The Poker Boy collection he published in January, at $2.99? _No sales rank_. His previous collection, also at $2.99? Ranked 642,000. And he wants, apparently, to raise those prices to $3.99, or even higher.
> 
> Obviously that's only a small selection of his immense fiction output, at one (albeit large) retailer, but it honestly makes me wonder about his advice, and whether it actually works for _him_.


When he wrote his first version of this article last year I looked into it a bit deeper than just a few stories and what you found is what I found across a broader spectrum of DWS and outed pen name fiction by Dean. Nearly all of it had ranks that indicated zero sales for the month on Amazon. The items with better ranks were the non-fiction items (telling us how to sell our fiction!) and they also commanded the higher prices. My conclusion at the time (and it holds today) is that Kris's books really bring up the average. Somewhere along the line, Dean specifically mentioned he'd be "going broke" if he depended on his self-pub fiction so it's not like he's hiding it, but he's also not exactly forthcoming with his _personal_ numbers for fiction either as they wouldn't likely paint a pretty picture for his theory assuming Amazon is about half his sales as he's mentioned in the past. (Not that his numbers have to necessarily, but it would be nice to see an example too.)


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Amazon ranking is a terrible way to see long-term how someone is doing, just fyi.  My thriller novel last fall was selling pretty well (down to 1,900 rank for a while) but if you checked the rank today, it would show it hasn't sold a copy on Amazon in about a month or so. So yeah, it would be easy for me to say "hey, that book has earned me a couple k" and someone to look at the rank right now and be like "liar", but they'd be wrong.  Also, if they assumed it hadn't sold at all anywhere this month, they'd be wrong. In fact, that book has earned me about 100 bucks so far this month, just none of it on Amazon. 

This might be the Kindleboards so it is a bit slanted toward Kindle, but there is a whole huge world of other places and formats in which to sell your stuff.  

Anyway, again, Dean's method won't suit a lot of types of writers.  I'm currently doing my own version of his long-term plan and feel I'm doing well and on track for the six-figure income I want (come on December 2015!).  But a lot of writer friends of mine think I'm insane or have nanobots in my hands or something. So yeah, not for everyone.

Also, as a data point, in the last couple years I've made over 2k USD selling stories to SF/F magazines, most of those pro-paying.  And again, you've never heard of me. I'm hardly a name.  The secret to selling to pro magazines is to write really good stories and mail them over and over while not letting the rejections get you down.


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## AWhite (Jun 14, 2012)

Good, energized article. Reminded me a bit of my programming days. Monkeys typing, that sort of thing. On the upside, he's pushing for folks to improve their craft, as well as spew a gut bucket full of words. And I'm a believer that even monkeys become better writers when they put out a lot o' words.


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

Doomed Muse said:


> Amazon ranking is a terrible way to see long-term how someone is doing, just fyi.


This is true. You have to use caution in make most judgements about sales from ranks. At the same time, numbers 500,000K plus can tell you very clearly how long since it last sold a copy. I know this from watching my own short fiction. 



> This might be the Kindleboards so it is a bit slanted toward Kindle, but there is a whole huge world of other places and formats in which to sell your stuff.


True again. It's all VERY ball-park, and based on Dean's estimate that Amazon is half their business. I'm not saying Dean is lying. He's not. I'm _guessing_ that his numbers rely very heavily on his personal circumstances and theorizing it's going to be very difficult to impossible for even a dedicated novice to repeat it. Of course, you could end up being proof my theory is inaccurate. 



> Also, as a data point, in the last couple years I've made over 2k USD selling stories to SF/F magazines, most of those pro-paying. And again, you've never heard of me. I'm hardly a name. The secret to selling to pro magazines is to write really good stories and mail them over and over while not letting the rejections get you down.


You're doing great there. On par with very established writers.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

George Berger said:


> You know, I look at his website, and all the short fiction he's got prominently featured there - the Poker Boy stories, the Pilgrim Hugh stories, et cetera. They're as short as 2,900 words. They're $0.99 each. And their sales ranks are as low as 983,000. The Poker Boy collection he published in January, at $2.99? _No sales rank_. His previous collection, also at $2.99? Ranked 642,000. And he wants, apparently, to raise those prices to $3.99, or even higher.
> 
> *Obviously that's only a small selection of his immense fiction output, at one (albeit large) retailer, but it honestly makes me wonder about his advice, and whether it actually works for him.*


Glad you brought this up, George. I checked out Smith's sales rankings at Amazon and B&N.com for his short stories. You know what? I'm not impressed. I'm starting to wonder if Gutman was right in saying that what he's advocating is partly based in theory. I didn't bother to check out the other retailers where his books are sold (partly because you can't really see his sales ranking). But I'm going to have to go out on a limb and say that even though I do believe you can make a living selling short stories (especially since there are many authors out there with the volume of work to pull it off), but I'm not sure Smith should be espousing in such matter-of-fact terms how awesome his sales pricing strategy is for short fiction when his sales ranking for his $2.99 short stories don't appear to be moving nearly as many units as he is implying.


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> Glad you brought this up, George. I checked out Smith's sales rankings at Amazon and B&N.com for his short stories. You know what? I'm not impressed. I'm starting to wonder if Gutman was right in saying that what he's advocating is partly based in theory. I


As others have said, sales rankings may not be the best indication of how he's doing. I can see from my own sales and rankings that the graph looks like a wave; every time I put out another title several other titles spike up. I think, to be fair to Dean, you'd have to do a longitudinal study of his rankings to really get any data worth looking at.

But I simply prefer to take his word for it, because it doesn't really matter to me whether it's real or a theory. The only thing that matters is my own sales, and I know what they are and I'm looking for ideas wherever I can get them. Dean has some good ones, and as he says and others have said in this forum, every writer is different and you use what works.

What bothers me, in reference to an earlier post, is that anyone would come on a public forum and call someone a scammer without any real facts to back this up. Whatever your opinion of DWS, he is a professional, and I don't think this kind of treatment is warranted. I wouldn't want it done to me, and my suspicion is nobody would.

That's my opinion.

Cheers!

G


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

Gutman said:


> As others have said, sales rankings may not be the best indication of how he's doing. I can see from my own sales and rankings that the graph looks like a wave; every time I put out another title several other titles spike up. I think, to be fair to Dean, you'd have to do a longitudinal study of his rankings to really get any data worth looking at.
> 
> But I simply prefer to take his word for it, because it doesn't really matter to me whether it's real or a theory. The only thing that matters is my own sales, and I know what they are and I'm looking for ideas wherever I can get them. Dean has some good ones, and as he says and others have said in this forum, every writer is different and you use what works.
> 
> ...


I certainly agree that Smith is a pro and a vet with lots of experience under his belt. As a disclaimer, I'll admit that part of my skepticism lies more with the fact that I'm always wary of one-size fits all explanations for any activity. I also acknowledge that whatever Smith is doing, it's working for him. I just don't like the blanket statements that somehow charging 99 cents for a short story is a narrow-minded sales strategy. When I look at the unimpressive sales ranking on the short stories that he charges $2.99 for, I can't help but wonder if this is plain bad advice to give to authors who don't have either a loyal fan base or his name-recognition. I do concede that he's right that the plan he's laid out, in which the long tail is the focus, an author can certainly make a respectable living on the back of short story book sales.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

I think if you leave out some of the details such as pricing, his comments are spot on. He regularly calls anyone who takes part in Select an idiot. I dont agree with that. 

DWS is not always right and he is a bit excessively judgemental in his opinions. (No one here would be like that!) Now if you want less judgement but also strong opinios Kris is the one. She's the level head in that duo.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

I do disagree with some of the the things they say, but even those things they do make me stop and consider *why* I disagree with them.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

Just had to add for those who are curious. Not only are DWS' sales ranking on those $2.99 books bad. They're especially bad. I'm talking no sales ranking (0 sales *EVER*) or ridiculously bad (as in hasn't sold a copy in several months). That's why I question his dismissive "go ahead and settle for your paltry 35 cents, I'm not going to discuss this with you" comment. Because as has been mentioned before, it doesn't fall in line with the facts that readers don't want to pay $2.99 for short stories.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

I have one short story that is $2.99 (the price wasn't set by me), but ironically it isn't my worst selling short story   However, I don't sell any on Amazon...at all (in fact, I rarely sell my short fiction on Amazon. Kindle owners clearly hate me). My more expensive short stories do ok on B&N and Kobo for the longest time, and my very short 99 cent individual stories did well on iTunes, selling 5-10 monthly for the longest time, with a few bigger months.

I'm moving away from individual short stories personally, except for the werewolf comedy, since people consistently like the story. The rest are bundled together and and I'm going to pull down the singles slowly. I've decided I don't want to sell many short singles, and would rather package them together to get the higher price and the higher royalty.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

Krista D. Ball said:


> I have one short story that is $2.99 (the price wasn't set by me), but ironically it isn't my worst selling short story  However, I don't sell any on Amazon...at all (in fact, I rarely sell my short fiction on Amazon. Kindle owners clearly hate me). My more expensive short stories do ok on B&N and Kobo for the longest time, and my very short 99 cent individual stories did well on iTunes, selling 5-10 monthly for the longest time, with a few bigger months.
> 
> I'm moving away from individual short stories personally, except for the werewolf comedy, since people consistently like the story. The rest are bundled together and and I'm going to pull down the singles slowly. I've decided I don't want to sell many short singles, and would rather package them together to get the higher price and the higher royalty.


The longer I'm in this game, the more I learn to appreciate listening to readers since they tend to vote with their wallets. The fact that I don't have a collections yet is an eyesore. Fortunately, I'm working on one.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

My core group buys pretty much everything I put out. However, in talking with some, they found it hard to keep up with what I was putting out. I publish a lot, especially when you add in anthologies and novels. Also, some had bought anthologies with the story in it, so didn't want to pick up a single of the story they already had. Whereas, the collection seemed to work better for them because I'd only put those out once or twice a year, and then they could grab several stories all at once for gifting.

Also, the individual cost of putting out single shorts was becoming difficult. I have no visual artistic skill. No, really, I don't. Like none. I have to buy covers. So even if those are clearance premade covers (like Becoming Anne in the sig line), that was still $18 that I had to put out. Since I only expect to make $50 on each story over a three year period* I need to save wherever I can. By bundling, I am able to charge more, justify spending $40 on a cover (like Royal Schemes) and make a little extra money. Plus, not annoy my readers 



*Some make more, some make less. But I try to assign a lowball expected earnings so that I can ensure I keep costs in line.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

Krista D. Ball said:


> Also, the individual cost of putting out single shorts was becoming difficult. I have no visual artistic skill. No, really, I don't. Like none. I have to buy covers. So even if those are clearance premade covers (like Becoming Anne in the sig line), that was still $18 that I had to put out. Since I only expect to make $50 on each story over a three year period* I need to save wherever I can. By bundling, I am able to charge more, justify spending $40 on a cover (like Royal Schemes) and make a little extra money. Plus, not annoy my readers
> 
> *Some make more, some make less. *But I try to assign a lowball expected earnings so that I can ensure I keep costs in line.*


I have to admit I never put much thought into what you mentioned. I always simply assumed that I'd eventually be in the black with the cost of publishing singles. But now that you mention it, keeping costs down is yet another reason to focus on publishing collections. Brilliant post!


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

I've been reading this thread but I didn't want to wade in because it's hard to spell out the problem with DWS's model without sounding like I'm running him down. But I'm going to risk it anyway because people need to think about it.

Let me start by pointing out that the negative comment was partly correct. I'm *NOT * saying or implying that DWS is a scammer or that he's selling snake oil. I am saying that get-rich-quick schemes do use the kind of model DWS laid out and this model is fundamentally flawed, despite its prima facie plausibility. Again, I'm *not * saying DWS meant to mislead anyone; I'm saying that the model he used is flawed.

I call the model DWS uses to explain how you can make money writing shorts the Investment Model. The reason is this. DWS's model sounds plausible to us because we're drawing an analogy with financial investment. We all know that if you begin investing even small sums of money on a regular basis when you're young, you'll end up with a sizable retirement income, owing to the twin wonders of economic growth and compound interest.

Financial investment works because the market as a whole always goes up and up for the vast majority of investors-it's stable and thus predictable. The stability of the market is the reason your investment advisor can predict how much money you'll have for retirement on the basis of how much you invest. Fate really has to hate you for you to lose out investing across the market, so most people get ahead in the end-in other words, *the outliers are the ones who lose money.*

But selling books is not like investing in the market; it's like starting a business, like being an entrepreneur. You're subject to small-scale chaos of the marketplace-only worse, because, unlike entrepreneurs, the vast majority of people do not make money selling books and the vast majority of books do not sell. Amazon's books are not like stocks that will, taken as an aggregate, appreciate in value over time, such that you can spread your risk across several of your own books. The opposite happens: almost all books will diminish in value over time. So in this case, *the outlier is the guy who does make money. *

The bottom line is the difference between stable and chaotic systems. You can assume that you'll make money investing because 9 out of 10 people increase their wealth because 9 out of 10 times the overall value of their investment increases. But you cannot predict what will happen tomorrow when you're selling books. The arse could fall out of that 9 out of 10 books that make you money, the same way it has for the vast majority of other books. Because of the chaotic nature of book selling, DWS's model-as the old saying goes-doesn't apply to anyone unless it does.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

WHDean said:


> I've been reading this thread but I didn't want to wade in because it's hard to spell out the problem with DWS's model without sounding like I'm running him down. But I'm going to risk it anyway because people need to think about it.
> 
> Let me start by pointing out that the negative comment was partly correct. I'm *NOT * saying or implying that DWS is a scammer or that he's selling snake oil. I am saying that get-rich-quick schemes do use the kind of model DWS laid out and this model is fundamentally flawed, despite its prima facie plausibility. Again, I'm *not * saying DWS meant to mislead anyone; I'm saying that the model he used is flawed.
> 
> ...


If you consider the financial investment world stable, we have VERY different experiences of it.   

Never lost money on the stock market, I take it.

I think actually that DWS's model works pretty well since it assumes a very small number of average sales across a large number of markets and minimal (nearly non-existent) costs. I think there are problems with some of his assumptions such as pricing. He also ignores that fact that some of us would scare off aliens if we did our own covers. To be honest, some of his covers are that bad, too.

That the value of books deteriorates over time is a traditional publishing assumption. I the long tail type of situation publishing is in now, this is not true.

But the long tail on digital publishing does exist at the moment, and that is the main assumption of his example. May it eventually go away? Of course. That doesn't change that for now, it exists. We are dealing with the here and now, not a theoretical possible future. If it changes, we have to change strategies when that happens.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> I have to admit I never put much thought into what you mentioned. I always simply assumed that I'd eventually be in the black with the cost of publishing singles. But now that you mention it, keeping costs down is yet another reason to focus on publishing collections. Brilliant post!


I have a specific amount of money that I invest in my DIY publishing. I also take some of my trad money and reinvest in DIY publishing (though, I admit 2012 has been a rougher year for all of my stuff, so I won't have as much to invest as the last two years). However, because I do focus on trying to keep my costs down, I have a bit easier of a time to balance things like this year when I have a lot less coming in, compared to last year when I was making $400 for an evening's worth of work.


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

WHDean said:


> The opposite happens: almost all books will diminish in value over time. So in this case, *the outlier is the guy who does make money. *


With respect, I'm not sure I agree with that anymore.

Under the old model, older books did diminish in value--mainly because they went OOP. EBooks--as far as we know--but certainly in theory, do not go OOP. I would argue that a book is an investment that can keep on giving you a return, _in perpetuity throughout the universe_ (had to throw that in, the lawyers love that phrase.) From time to time, these older titles may need tending (new covers, blurbs, etc) but, I don't think we really know yet that these titles will lose value. In fact, some certainly unscientific evidence indicates that books can be dormant and suddenly spike in interest for any number of reasons, including a new title being released.

Not enough time has gone by to say for certain--but in theory, I think a book now becomes a good that does not spoil on the shelf.

(EDIT: Just noticed JRT's post above, so I'm agreeing about the long tail. Not surprising that I _would_ agree with JRT, because we are both in Ory-gun and we Pacific NWest types stick together.)


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Gutman said:


> With respect, I'm not sure I agree with that anymore.
> 
> Under the old model, older books did diminish in value--mainly because they went OOP. EBooks--as far as we know--but certainly in theory, do not go OOP. I would argue that a book is an investment that can keep on giving you a return, _in perpetuity throughout the universe_ (had to throw that in, the lawyers love that phrase.) From time to time, these older titles may need tending (new covers, blurbs, etc) but, I don't think we really know yet that these titles will lose value. In fact, some certainly unscientific evidence indicates that books can be dormant and suddenly spike in interest for any number of reasons, including a new title being released.
> 
> ...


We stick together or stick each other with knives, one or the other. 

The knives part probably comes from depression after nine straight months of rain.

Edit: A comment on whether DWS makes a living at it. Of course he does, but one thing the nay-sayers ignored or forgot is that he says to ALWAYS try to sell your short stories to major markets first. He does try and he does sell there. For him at the moment, indie publishing is added income not the main source.


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

JRT said:
"The knives part probably comes from depression after nine straight months of rain."




Pssst.  Look outside.  But be careful--protect your eyes.  Strange yellow thing in sky...


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Gutman said:


> JRT said:
> "The knives part probably comes from depression after nine straight months of rain."
> 
> Pssst. Look outside. But be careful--protect your eyes. Strange yellow thing in sky...


Don't worry. The big, scary fire-ball in the sky will be gone in a couple of months.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> If you consider the financial investment world stable, we have VERY different experiences of it.
> 
> Never lost money on the stock market, I take it.
> 
> ...


The Investment Model works with finances because brains and luck only count for, say, 10% of the outcome. If you invest regularly, you're outcome will be the same no matter how bright or dim or lucky or unlucky you are. The market raises 90% of all boats no matter what; so, _ regularly investing *is* the dominant variable _ in determining success.

The numbers are exactly reversed for selling books. Ninety percent of the outcome depends on brains and luck (i.e., writing good stories and getting noticed); the investment process-writing stories regularly, etc.-counts for maybe 10% of success. Hence, the _dominant variable *is not * investing _ but being a good writer and getting noticed.

Now, I don't claim my percentages even resemble scientific analysis. But the exact numbers don't matter, the underlying principle does. It's the difference between sufficient and marginally important necessary conditions. Financial investing is a sufficient condition for making money (not guaranteed, by close to it). Investing in DWS's writing process is, at best, a necessary condition (meaning a perquisite) for an unknown (but undoubtedly small) number of people with the ability to regularly write profitable stories.

Bear in mind that the criticism here isn't, "His model doesn't guarantee success!" such that the response is, "He didn't say it was guaranteed!" The criticism is that investing in regular writing is, at best, only a minor variable in the success of a small number of people with the potential for success. Thus, DWS's model doesn't show that you can make money selling shorts, it just speculates about some unknown writer out there who could be making this much money after three years, given _x, y, z_-except that the _x, y, z_ count for more than all the rest of it.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Gutman said:


> With respect, I'm not sure I agree with that anymore.
> 
> Under the old model, older books did diminish in value--mainly because they went OOP. EBooks--as far as we know--but certainly in theory, do not go OOP. I would argue that a book is an investment that can keep on giving you a return, _in perpetuity throughout the universe_ (had to throw that in, the lawyers love that phrase.) From time to time, these older titles may need tending (new covers, blurbs, etc) but, I don't think we really know yet that these titles will lose value. In fact, some certainly unscientific evidence indicates that books can be dormant and suddenly spike in interest for any number of reasons, including a new title being released.
> 
> ...


I don't dispute that some old books still make money and that some old ones could re-emerge. But they're still outliers. Of the 3 million (?) books on Amazon, maybe 2%-10% (?) make their authors a living. The tail can be infinite for that other 90%-98%, it won't matter one bit to making a living-at best they've bought a chance. That's why I say DWS's whole three-year process is only a little less than irrelevant to success. The real variables are good stories and good luck (in whatever proportions).

To put a sharp point on it, investing in stories is closer to buying lottery tickets than it is to investing in the market. So the x-number-of-words-per-year plans are closer to rabbits' feet and numerology than reading the _Wall Street Journal_.


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## Gone To Croatan (Jun 24, 2011)

WHDean said:


> To put a sharp point on it, investing in stories is closer to buying lottery tickets than it is to investing in the market.


And, for most people, investing in the market is very close to buy lottery tickets.

Lots of people have 'invested' in companies they know nothing about and lost all their money. Not just small fly-by-night companies, but huge companies that led their industry until a competitor appeared which took it away from them (Nokia, for example, or Kodak).

Most people avoid such losses by buying indices, so the risk is spread across a lot of companies, but they still rely on more people putting more money into the market to keep pushing it up. Stock indices don't go up because companies become more valuable, they go up because more people are putting money into the market than are taking it out.

In a similar manner, many writers have spent money releasing a book that no-one wants to read, and lost their money. Trade publishers minimise their risks by releasing lots of books and assuming that some will do badly, some will do great and on average they'll come out ahead. That is pretty much DWS's method here; write a lot, write well, and rely on average incomes rather than expecting all of your stories to do well.

Sure, the bottom could drop out of the book market tomorrow, but the DOW could do the same. If I remember correctly, the Japanese stock market is still below the level it was at when it peaked about twenty years ago.


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## faytheamerica (Jun 20, 2012)

There are readers who are willing to pay $2.99 for short stories, though I think a lot of that depends on your genre (I've seen quite a few erotica writers who have a lot of 5,000 word short stories that have a ranking of under 10,000 on Amazon). Usually, those writers have a few books out already, though (at least over 10), and a lot of them started off selling everything for $0.99. I personally have seen writers outside of the erotica genre have more success with $2.99 novellas, though (between 15,000-40,000 words).

Now, I actually think that DWS' advice isn't bad for really dedicated, fast writers (though, personally, if I was just starting out and writing outside of the erotica genre, I'd try to get to at least 15,000 words before charging $2.99). The real thing to get from his math, I think, is to see how you can make real money writing shorter fiction or serial novels if you price things right and write every day. As far as books selling fewer copies over time, well, that's probably true. However, if you have a lot of stuff out and it's priced to give you a good royalty, you don't need to sell many copies of each book to make a living. He's trying to show you that you don't need to be a bestseller to make money writing.


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## Gone To Croatan (Jun 24, 2011)

faytheamerica said:


> As far as books selling fewer copies over time, well, that's probably true.


I'm not so sure of that. If you have 10 fans today and 10,000 fans in three years, sales of your older stories are likely to be substantially higher than they are today.

Eventually, yes, they'll probably drop off unless you wrote a timeless classic that everyone wants to read. But so long as the number of readers who want to read your stories is increasing, you can expect them to buy some of your old stories as well as new ones.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Edward M. Grant said:


> And, for most people, investing in the market is very close to buy lottery tickets.
> 
> Lots of people have 'invested' in companies they know nothing about and lost all their money. Not just small fly-by-night companies, but huge companies that led their industry until a competitor appeared which took it away from them (Nokia, for example, or Kodak).
> 
> ...


A good description of the situation and of the nature of DWS's ideas. I know too many people who invested over time and still have investment values that have dropped through the floor to buy the "over time always works" argument.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Really? You checked the ranks all 250+ books that Kris and Dean have up (all their pen names, too?)?  I'm impressed you'd spend that much time on BN and Amazon just to try to disprove something that doesn't even depend on your belief.  As I said before, I'm friends with them and I've heard privately how much they are pulling in.  Tiny sales over many titles adds up and ranking doesn't tell the whole story anyway (for example, they sell quite a few paper books via the CS extended channels).

Writing a consistently good 50 stories a year for six years and publishing all of them with good covers/blurbs etc isn't exactly getting rich quick. He's talking about doing a lot of work.  From what I've seen in my own sales and trends, his theories hold out.


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## Alain Gomez (Nov 12, 2010)

Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> I have to admit I never put much thought into what you mentioned. I always simply assumed that I'd eventually be in the black with the cost of publishing singles. But now that you mention it, keeping costs down is yet another reason to focus on publishing collections. Brilliant post!


It would keep costs down but it decreases number of works you are putting out. In my opinion, this is a short story writer's greatest assest if you don't have a core group already like Krista does.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Edward M. Grant said:


> And, for most people, investing in the market is very close to buy lottery tickets.
> 
> Lots of people have 'invested' in companies they know nothing about and lost all their money. Not just small fly-by-night companies, but huge companies that led their industry until a competitor appeared which took it away from them (Nokia, for example, or Kodak).


You're comparing outliers to outliers. Everyone in North America lives directly off their own investments in the market or indirectly off the government's investments therein (i.e., pension plans).

How many writers are living off short stories? One in a hundred, one in ten thousand, one in a million? Equating the two is nonsensical: you can't compare two pursuits by comparing the one guy who lost doing something to the one guy who succeeded doing the other.



> That is pretty much DWS's method here; write a lot, write well, and rely on average incomes rather than expecting all of your stories to do well.


That's just it. The average income across multiple books for any but the top 1%-10% is negligible. So the plan to rely on an average income that doesn't exist in the vast majority of cases is no more realistic than recommending lottery tickets.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Alain Gomez said:


> It would keep costs down but it decreases number of works you are putting out. In my opinion, this is a short story writer's greatest assest if you don't have a core group already like Krista does.


True enough. I'm unique in that most of my group know me somehow; have heard me give a reading, have attended a workshop or panel by me, or have "met" me online when I just started writing.

My strongest asset isn't my writing. It's my in-person personality. I do well when I'm in front of a crowd and can be quick on my feet. A lot of the "funny" I do that way is often in my fiction (even my dark stuff). I've heard readers who've met me say they can "hear" me in my fiction and that's why they keep picking it up.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

Doomed Muse said:


> Really? You checked the ranks all 250+ books that Kris and Dean have up (all their pen names, too?)? I'm impressed you'd spend that much time on BN and Amazon just to try to disprove something that doesn't even depend on your belief. As I said before, I'm friends with them and I've heard privately how much they are pulling in. Tiny sales over many titles adds up and ranking doesn't tell the whole story anyway (for example, they sell quite a few paper books via the CS extended channels).
> 
> Writing a consistently good 50 stories a year for six years and publishing all of them with good covers/blurbs etc isn't exactly getting rich quick. He's talking about doing a lot of work. From what I've seen in my own sales and trends, his theories hold out.


I'm assuming this was directed toward me. No, I did not check all of his 250+ books plus pennames on all the sites where his books are sold. I did however, check quite a few of his short stories that are priced at $2.99 on Amazon and B&N.com. And yes, his sales ranking was dreadful.

I've already said several times in this thread (and I'll say it again) that I don't disbelieve that his strategy works for him or many others. My specific and only issue (which is not the same point others have addressed so please don't confuse my post with others) is simply his condescending comment regarding other authors who don't choose to use his pricing strategy. Since, there seems to be some confusion about my posts, I'll repeat that. My concern in the whole debate is ONLY about his pricing strategy and whether or not it's something that is practical.

Again, just because it works for a few, doesn't mean it works for all. The biggest mistake anyone (even DWS) can make is assuming that what works for one author must necessarily work for all and if it doesn't, then that author simply didn't write fast enough or hard enough to make it work.

That's the point I'm making. Hope that clears up the confusion, because my comments have nothing to do with make a judgmental attribution of DWS as a person or writer. Rather, it's based solely on a *healthy* skepticism of sweeping generalizations made by authors that all things are ever equal in this business or that success is guaranteed merely by being a participant in a process or the adoption of a proposed business strategy as opposed to how much timing, luck, or simply being in the right place at the right time may play a part in it.


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## Gone To Croatan (Jun 24, 2011)

WHDean said:


> You're comparing outliers to outliers. Everyone in North America lives directly off their own investments in the market or indirectly off the government's investments therein (i.e., pension plans).


Most people I know have complained that their pension fund is worth less now than it was five years ago. Are they all outliers? That's even before you consider the 300,000,000-odd Japanese whose stock market is below where it was twenty years ago.

The stock market goes up when more money is going in than coming out. It goes down when more money is coming out more than going in. Demographics in the West over the next couple of decades are going to result in more and more people retiring and pulling money from the stock market with less new workers putting money in. Western stock markets look like a pretty poor bet to me.

And I was just responding to your comparison between the stock market and book publishing.



> That's just it. The average income across multiple books for any but the top 1%-10% is negligible. So the plan to rely on an average income that doesn't exist in the vast majority of cases is no more realistic than recommending lottery tickets.


He's talking about an average income of $10 a month from a story that he expects to be well enough written to at least get past the 'what is this crap?' first reader test at a pro-level magazine. That doesn't seem impossible to me, particularly for someone who has a couple of hundred stories in different genres to help readers find them, and a couple of dozen compilations.

Can everyone do it? No. But someone who puts the time and effort into writing good stories, submitting them to magazines and then uploading them, probably.


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

Edward M. Grant said:


> I'm not so sure of that. If you have 10 fans today and 10,000 fans in three years, sales of your older stories are likely to be substantially higher than they are today.
> 
> Eventually, yes, they'll probably drop off unless you wrote a timeless classic that everyone wants to read. But so long as the number of readers who want to read your stories is increasing, you can expect them to buy some of your old stories as well as new ones.


This is my point---thank you Mr. Grant!

I don't think we know enough yet to be able to say that the average mid-lister's books will drop off. It's a new world. I'm not willing to concede--yet--that the new world plays out like the old one!


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

WHDean said:


> You're comparing outliers to outliers. Everyone in North America lives directly off their own investments in the market or indirectly off the government's investments therein (i.e., pension plans).
> 
> How many writers are living off short stories? One in a hundred, one in ten thousand, one in a million? Equating the two is nonsensical: you can't compare two pursuits by comparing the one guy who lost doing something to the one guy who succeeded doing the other.
> 
> That's just it. The average income across multiple books for any but the top 1%-10% is negligible. So the plan to rely on an average income that doesn't exist in the vast majority of cases is no more realistic than recommending lottery tickets.


What you are failing to understand is that the ones who will do the work to write regularly, produce even readable short stories every week and do the work over several years to get them on Amazon is ALREADY an outlier. It has nothing to do with the hundreds of thousands (not the millions you mentioned) who put digital fiction on Amazon.

You are the ones who is comparing things that are completely dissimilar. Throw a story or two (or a novel or two) up on Amazon and if it goes somewhere, it is indeed an outlier. (It has happened before but don't hold you're breath on it happening regularly) _Do that every week, week after week, work that is on a professional level, promoting along the way and that some of them will sell is no outlier. _


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Also, remember that I have been following the name Dean Wesley Smith since I was in the teens (as a reader). He was the editor for Strange New Worlds, the Star Trek non-cannon approved fanfic anthology. The franchise actually chose future Star Trek writers from those anthologies. I read everything I could get my hands on back then to see what I could do to get into those anthologies so that I could be a Star Trek writer (true story).

Skip 20 years ahead, and I now just buy DWS work because I like it


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## Dan Harris (May 18, 2012)

Great chat about this topic - I enjoyed reading everyone's comments.

I read the article and, like most here it seems, was a little sceptical about the financial elements. Maybe not sceptical exactly, but thought that they were a personal approach presented as a general model that everyone could follow. Lots of debunking of this has been done, so I won't pile on.

I just wanted to say that my main takeaway from the article was a realisation when he was talking about word count, and output from writing an hour a day. Because lately I write 750-1000 words an hour, like DWS does. But somehow until he broke it down it hadn't occurred to me that this means I can write a first draft in 100 hours, or 20 weeks at a mere five hours a week. Spend 6 weeks on editing and submission, and I can write two novels a year. That seemed crazy to me, who's only just finished his first ever first draft  But it's actually completely achievable isn't it?

Whether I'll be making $40k a year in six years, or whatever he said, is another matter entirely


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> Also, remember that I have been following the name Dean Wesley Smith since I was in the teens (as a reader). He was the editor for Strange New Worlds, the Star Trek non-cannon approved fanfic anthology. The franchise actually chose future Star Trek writers from those anthologies. I read everything I could get my hands on back then to see what I could do to get into those anthologies so that I could be a Star Trek writer (true story).
> 
> Skip 20 years ahead, and I now just buy DWS work because I like it


I wasn't reading Dean's work for hire stuff back then but I was reading Kris's work when it appeared in mags and anthologies and submitting to Kris's magazine, and Dean's magazine. Kris's was actually my target market and that (linked) nice rejection from her was a real high-point as non-sales went. I got the chance to meet her at a Worldcon and listen to her talk about publishing. Always really respected her opinion and still follow her advice today. I just think they're a bit off here, but it's a pretty mild objection of degree.


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## Mike McIntyre (Jan 19, 2011)

I read the Smith blog, and I read this entire thread, and one word kept coming to mind: AMWAY.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Mike McIntyre said:


> I read the Smith blog, and I read this entire thread, and one word kept coming to mind: AMWAY.


What?? 

Amway is pyramid scheme in which you recruit people to make money for you. That relates to DWS saying you have to work your butt off for years to make it as a writer... how?


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> What??
> 
> Amway is pyramid scheme in which you recruit people to make money for you. That relates to DWS saying you have to work your butt off for years to make it as a writer... how?


I'm kinda lost there, too.


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## Pamela Kay Noble Brown (Mar 3, 2011)

Carradee said:


> And you know what? Doing the math, it looks very possible to make a living with all short stories, even at the $0.99 price point. I've already written over 1k words this morning, in 48 minutes. (I've been keeping track.) Including prep time and editing as I go, I've spent fewer than 5 hours writing 4500 words. I think I'll be able to finish drafting the short story in another 2 hours. Add 2 hours for editing and proofreading, another 1 for making a cover, and that's one short story ready for market after 10 hours' work.


Carradee, are you an artist, do you draw your own covers? Do you use photoshop? I'm just curious because you said "another 1 for making a cover". I really wish I could do that. The covers are so hard for me. It seems like it takes hours just to find a picture to use that matches the mood of the story. It's harder for me than writing the story.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Edward M. Grant said:


> Most people I know have complained that their pension fund .... Can everyone do it? No. But someone who puts the time and effort into writing good stories, submitting them to magazines and then uploading them, probably.


You're dissembling at this point. Five years of stagnant growth in someone's pension fund-which only means it hasn't made more money recently-is being compared to a scenario that hasn't even been done once. Where is the person who lives off 75 short stories that he's written in the last three years? Name one person who's even self-published 75 short stories in the last three years. I bet you can't, but that it won't stop you from believing.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> What you are failing to understand is that the ones who will do the work to write regularly, produce even readable short stories every week and do the work over several years to get them on Amazon is ALREADY an outlier. It has nothing to do with the hundreds of thousands (not the millions you mentioned) who put digital fiction on Amazon.
> 
> You are the ones who is comparing things that are completely dissimilar. Throw a story or two (or a novel or two) up on Amazon and if it goes somewhere, it is indeed an outlier. (It has happened before but don't hold you're breath on it happening regularly) _Do that every week, week after week, work that is on a professional level, promoting along the way and that some of them will sell is no outlier. _





Gutman said:


> This is my point---thank you Mr. Grant!
> 
> I don't think we know enough yet to be able to say that the average mid-lister's books will drop off. It's a new world. I'm not willing to concede--yet--that the new world plays out like the old one!


You're both looking at it as if I'm debating the _conceivability _ of the scheme, but I'm not. I'm not saying it's inconceivable, I'm saying _it's nothing more than conceivable_. Sure, someone somewhere could probably pull this off, but can either of you name one person who actually has? Yet DWS is talking like your average joe can do it if he really tries.

I've seen DWS quote Robert Heinlein's three step rule for publishing, which goes something like "write, revise, send out." Do you know how many stories the very prolific and gifted Heinlein wrote in his whole career? Answer: *59 short stories* (and 32 novels). But DWS assumes that right out of the gate, using only one hour a day, you're going to write 50 short stories a year! Then you're going to pick the best 25-a year!-and send those off. But it gets better, because by the end of year three you'll have self-published about 100 of the 150 stories-nearly double Heinlein's lifetime output in three years, working one hour a day-and another 50 in year 4 to bring you up to 150 published stories to Heinlein's 59.

One final bit. Ray Bradbury, one of the most prolific writers of short stories of all time, wrote around 400 stories across his whole lifetime, most of that spent as a professional, _full-time writer_. But DWS thinks you're able to pull that off in _six years_, _one hour day, starting from zero_. I say bull----.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

WHDean- who is saying you can do it with 75 stories? I mean, maybe you could, if you got lucky... but what's being advocated in Dean's article is writing at least 300 stories over 6 years (and that's just the numbers he's using, if I were doing his strat, I'd aim for more like 85-90 stories a year, giving me closer to 550 stories in 6 years) and then turning those stories into more products via collections etc that require no additional work but increase your footprint on sales sites.  

Also, just plug WMG Publishing into Amazon or Smashwords. Kris and Dean between them have over 250 things up (most of that is short fiction, they've just started uploading novels), all of which they've uploaded in the last couple years.

All Dean is saying is that if you a)write well and package it well b)write a lot and c)put it up for sale either by selling to magazines or self-publishing and d)make them available in ways to maximize income (audio, POD, collections etc), you will most likely make decent money after years of work.

How on earth that seems like some kind of scam is beyond me.  I have only 24 items up, most of it is short fiction (only 2 novels) and I'm earning a pretty consistent 200-500 a month after less than 2 years.  I price my stuff a lot higher than most people advocate, but I already beat Dean's 5 sales average per month most months.  And yeah, my ranks on Kindle on pretty awful for most things. Yet... I still make enough money right now to help pay bills (and over the holidays when my sales spiked a bit, to pay rent).  I look ahead at what I have planned and use my current bottom sales numbers and just grin, because I'm going to be making a lot of money if I put the work in.  And that is the key... put in the work. For a plan like mine (or Dean's) to work, we have to write a lot and publish a lot and do it well.  There's no magic in that, just common sense.

JR- Bradbury wrote more than 400 stories in his lifetime. In fact, that whole story a week thing comes from him (it's what he decided to try to get published). He wrote a story a week for most of his life. I don't even know where you are getting 400 from (published stories, maybe?).  Plenty of the pulp era authors were far far more prolific than that, but they wrote under so many pen names, it's tough to keep track of the numbers.

For what it's worth, I've written almost 100 stories/novels/novellas, etc in the last 3 years. Many of those won't see the light of day (early on I was trying to learn to write).  Now that I've found my writing legs and brought my craft up to a level where people seem to want to read my stuff, it's getting easier to write more words.  A lot of people don't have a workman-like mentality when it comes to writing, which is fine. But for people who do (like those pulp era guys, or Kris or Dean), you can produce a seriously huge amount of work by just sitting down and doing it.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

Mike McIntyre said:


> I read the Smith blog, and I read this entire thread, and one word kept coming to mind: AMWAY.


My mind zinged me with 'MLM!' when someone said the outliers are the ones who work hard, putting out stories every week, putting in the effort [showing the plan]. Brought back horrible memories from my early 20's when I was newly married and eager to get out of a dead-end job.

On the other hand, I often do school visits where I tell kids that you only have to write 250 words per day for a year to write a 90k novel. 250 words is what, four minutes of typing?


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## Mike McIntyre (Jan 19, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> What??
> 
> Amway is pyramid scheme in which you recruit people to make money for you. That relates to DWS saying you have to work your butt off for years to make it as a writer... how?


I think you're being unfair to Amway. The FTC ruled that it isn't a pyramid scheme.

The arguments for and against the Smith formula remind me of the arguments for and against the Amway formula, is all I was saying.

Indie authors and Amway distributors are alike in that both groups have huge numbers of members, most of whom will never make a living at their respective second occupations despite the simple-sounding A-B-C formulas in place.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Doomed Muse said:


> WHDean- who is saying you can do it with 75 stories?


Okay, I went back and checked: he counted all the 50 stories a year. I was only counting those (magically) published in magazines. I still think it's impossible to do in *one hour * a day. I mean it's not like you can also submit manuscripts to dozens of magazines, format, make covers, upload files and everything else by devoting only seven hours a week to it.



> I have only *24 items * up, most of it is short fiction (only 2 novels)


Exactly my point. You wrote 100 overall. But none were published in magazines (I assume you didn't go through that massive hassle), but you still only have 24 for sale after 3 years (not 300 items). And how many hours did you put in? Did you do all this in 1 hour a day? Did you work full time while doing all this?



> Bradbury wrote more than 400 stories in his lifetime. In fact, that whole story a week thing comes from him


I picked up the 400 from Wikipedia. It sounds about right to me. But Ray was doing it full time, as far as I'm know, and no one else that I know of comes even close to RB for output. So how can anyone assume that it's practical to match him in 1 hour a day?


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## Carradee (Aug 21, 2010)

Pamela Kay Noble Brown said:


> Carradee, are you an artist, do you draw your own covers? Do you use photoshop? I'm just curious because you said "another 1 for making a cover". I really wish I could do that. The covers are so hard for me. It seems like it takes hours just to find a picture to use that matches the mood of the story. It's harder for me than writing the story.


I'm a dabbler.  I made the covers for all my short stories (except "Romeo & Jillian"; I also made my cover for _A Fistful of Fire_, though I had that redone in 300 dpi by someone else-still same design). Cover design is good experience.

For my short stories, I already have layout templates for a few of my series/pennames, so it's a matter of finding an image or two and plugging it into a pre-existing setup, following up with color and font adjustment. For example, "The Corpse Cat" has a new cover (vendors just changed their guidelines so I have to convert it to bigger *sigh*), and I've already made other covers for my other currently planned stories with that character, and all those shorts' covers will tie together. Due to the shared template, they were also really fast to make.

Admittedly, I'd played with cover stuff before, a few years for friends and me during NaNoWriMo. 

The first cover I did for something I was going to sell, the one for _A Fistful of Fire_, took a good 40 hours to produce. A lot of that was learning how to use photomanipulation software on an old, sluggish computer, using a program that treated text layers as paint layers, so if you wanted to change it you had to redo the text entirely-with some other glitchy quirks. (I started on Seashore until I got comfortable enough to be frustrated by that program's limitations, then moved to Gimp.)

I've since done more covers than show in my signature, between ones I've done for unreleased stories, or for other pennames, or done and ditched. The last few only took about an hour, which is where I get that number-but I've also gotten pretty good at coming up with creative ideas for what might work, searching for general ideas and letting a photo jump out as me as "Ooo, that would make a good cover."

I collect stock images on my computer (in a folder system that keeps track of where I found that image, and with names left to default, everything giving enough detail that I can track down where I originally got the image). Sometimes while browsing, I'll find one that'll work perfectly for a story idea or a WiP, like the other day when I got distracted slightly when tracking down the URL for the photographer profile for an image used on one penname's story cover: I stumbled upon an image that is _exactly_ what I've been hoping to find when I finished a particular novelette. Saved it, and now I have an image for when I finish that story.

I also save other images, ones that look like they might end up useful, and I've ended up with a few covers that way.

It probably helps that I jumped into this cover design thing with some idea of what I wanted to do with it (for layout) and with some fluency in Search Engine (for finding images).

If I were to draw a cover, it would be by hand, in colored pencil, watercolor, or oil pastel.



WHDean said:


> Do you know how many stories the very prolific and gifted Heinlein wrote in his whole career? Answer: *59 short stories* (and 32 novels).


Um, from Wikipedia, it looks like that's how many he _published_, not wrote, and Wikipedia's also unclear about if that's only under that penname or if it includes his others-at least, if it includes the public ones. He might have others that still aren't known. I don't know if he ghostwrote, too, but if he did, that's another spot that skews the results.

Dean specifically says the hour a day is _writing_, meaning more time would be pulled from a day for other aspects to publishing.

Seriously, change Dean's math with numbers that fit your own situation and see what you get, rather than mock him for the numbers he does for his _example_. It's feasible for him. Not for you? Fine. Find our own average words per hour (including editing time), hours per week, weeks per year.

Myself, I've started keeping track of my own stories, start to finish, including prep time and revision-and I'm still falling in that 750-1k words per hour average he gives. It's been quite heartening to see.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

/shrug

Submitting to magazines isn't very time consuming. 5 minutes maybe? I do it all of the time. For most of the last two years, I was doing it with fiction AND non-fiction, plus was getting asked to contribute (on top of me writing and submitting). I don't see what is so magically difficult.

Formatting doesn't take very long. Don't use tabs and use the enter key, and you've solved 90% of your formatting issues. Apply a pre-made style and boom, done.

I've said already in this thread that from first word to submission is something I've done. I've gotten evening calls, asking me to write articles for first thing in the am for emergencies. It's not that difficult. At least, I don't find it that difficult, especially once you get the hang of it (I admit the first couple of times were terrifying).

My goal: write more than Asimov. I'll need to live to 200 to do it, of course.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Carradee said:


> Um, from Wikipedia, it looks like that's how many he _published_, not wrote, and Wikipedia's also unclear about if that's only under that penname or if it includes his others-at least, if it includes the public ones. He might have others that still aren't known. I don't know if he ghostwrote, too, but if he did, that's another spot that skews the results.


So double the number, triple it. You're still not at 300 stories in six years from zero. And Heinlein was a gifted writer.



> Dean specifically says the hour a day is _writing_, meaning more time would be pulled from a day for other aspects to publishing.


Oh, well then. I guess that's what he must've meant, even if he didn't say it or suggest it.



> Seriously, change Dean's math with numbers that fit your own situation and see what you get, rather than mock him for the numbers he does for his _example_. *It's feasible for him*. Not for you? Fine. Find our own average words per hour (including editing time), hours per week, weeks per year.


You're reading into it. He said nothing about it being feasible for him. In fact, he didn't even claim that _he _ could do it. The whole point of the article was that it was real possibility for you, me and everyone else.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

I actually have sold 12 stories to magazines and anthologies (I did go through that hassle and have made about 2k so far for my trouble). I write full time. The first year I dedicated to learning as much as possible about writing and the business and practicing. In mid-2010, I tested out this new ebook thing by putting up three short stories under a name no one new. They sold a handful of copies and I was impressed they sold at all, so in early 2011, I started self-publishing some things.  I sold my first story to a magazine in 2009 but it didn't appear until later in 2010. I sold a couple more stories in 2010 as well as seven more stories last year, some published in 2011, some in 2012 and some forthcoming (trad publishing even in magazines is still pretty slow).  I have a collection of 25 short stories I'm waiting to publish and a collection of 10 stories I'm waiting to publish because some of them are still under contract so I must wait for exclusivity to expire.
For what it's worth, I'm planning on having at least 185 titles up, mostly novellas and novels with some collections and a few short stories individually, by the end of 2015, which will mark my 6th year (I started writing in Feb of 2009). Starting in 2016, I hope to be making six figures a year (barring unforeseen things happening with the market etc, of course).

My early work was practice to bring my skill up to the point where I felt comfortable submitting it.  That's why most of it won't see the light of day.  Now that my craft is at least decent, I can write a sell-able short story in 3-6 hours.  It took a lot of hard work to get to that point and I know it will take a lot more work to get to the point I want to get to (probably my entire lifetime, basically).  But thanks to the changes in publishing over the last few years, I'm making a lot more money right now than I had thought I would be making only 3 years into my plan (my plan, by the way, was to be making 6 figures in 10-15 years using the traditional publishing system).  So I'm happy and I'm glad I found people like Kris and Dean who could show me how to improve my craft and how to treat my writing like the day job it is.

And yeah, I'm super lazy. I only write an hour or two a day most of the time (less, lately, thanks to health issues).  When I'm feeling good and being really productive, I work 3-5 hours a day, 4 or 5 days a week. I'm hoping now that I have the right meds and everything that I'll get back to being able to do that, because that pace is what will allow me to very easily write a million or more words of sell-able fiction every year.
It's simple math. If you write 1000 words an hour and you work 5 hours a week consistently, you will end up with 250,000 words of fiction at the end of the year (taking a couple weeks off in that calculation, so only working 50 weeks).  If you get your craft to the point where your first draft is 97% your finished draft, this is completely possible.  Not everyone can do it, clearly. A lot of writers can't work this way and need or want to rewrite, or write in bursts instead of daily, etc.  That's fine. Dean's advice (and mine) isn't for those writers.  This kind of workmanlike consistency isn't for everyone.  But it will make you money if you can do it.  

Frankly, I don't care if you believe it or not. I'm doing it and it is working for me (by "it" I mean writing a lot and making money via volume and quality as opposed to marketing or whatever).  So obviously I'm a fan of this method of publishing because I'm making money doing it and it allows me to focus on what I really enjoy, which is writing new fiction.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> /shrug
> 
> Submitting to magazines isn't very time consuming. 5 minutes maybe? I do it all of the time. For most of the last two years, I was doing it with fiction AND non-fiction, plus was getting asked to contribute (on top of me writing and submitting). I don't see what is so magically difficult.
> 
> ...


This is the problem. You're taking the best case scenario and you're assuming your long experience in doing it. But KB has another "What's wrong with my [insert software problem]?" every day because things don't run that smoothly. Some mags don't have good submission systems, you have to keep track of where and when you submitted these 50 stories a year. Where does that time come from?


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

WHDean said:


> You're both looking at it as if I'm debating the _conceivability _ of the scheme, but I'm not. I'm not saying it's inconceivable, I'm saying _it's nothing more than conceivable_. Sure, someone somewhere could probably pull this off, but can either of you name one person who actually has? Yet DWS is talking like your average joe can do it if he really tries.
> 
> I've seen DWS quote Robert Heinlein's three step rule for publishing, which goes something like "write, revise, send out." Do you know how many stories the very prolific and gifted Heinlein wrote in his whole career? Answer: *59 short stories* (and 32 novels). But DWS assumes that right out of the gate, using only one hour a day, you're going to write 50 short stories a year! Then you're going to pick the best 25-a year!-and send those off. But it gets better, because by the end of year three you'll have self-published about 100 of the 150 stories-nearly double Heinlein's lifetime output in three years, working one hour a day-and another 50 in year 4 to bring you up to 150 published stories to Heinlein's 59.
> 
> One final bit. Ray Bradbury, one of the most prolific writers of short stories of all time, wrote around 400 stories across his whole lifetime, most of that spent as a professional, _full-time writer_. But DWS thinks you're able to pull that off in _six years_, _one hour day, starting from zero_. I say bull----.


Then don't try. I don't know that anyone is twisting your arm. DWS has always said that most writers wouldn't do the work required to succeed and he's right.

Has anyone done that? Well, other than that Kindle hasn't been AROUND for six years, some of us have done something quite similar. You have several of them doing it in this thread and you're calling them liars. None of my novels are best sellers yet I have enough of them out that I make a living at it. I do the equivalent of what he says only with novels instead of short stories.

Boo hoo. Poor me.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Doomed Muse said:



> I write full time.


There's the key difference. You can say you only put in a few hours a day doing it, but if you don't work full time, it's a whole different ball game.

By the way, congratualtions on your success.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> Then don't try. I don't know that anyone is twisting your arm. DWS has always said that most writers wouldn't do the work required to succeed and he's right.
> 
> Has anyone done that? Well, other than that Kindle hasn't been AROUND for six years, some of us have done something quite similar. None of my novels are best sellers yet I have enough of them out that I make a living at it.
> 
> Boo hoo. Poor me.


I was wondering how long it would take for someone to trot out that old canard. It's all me; I just don't have the right stuff.  Please. Heinlein and Bradbury didn't have the right stuff either by DWS's standard, so I guess I'll take comfort in that. Come to that, DWS didn't even claim that _he could pull it off_, so I fail to see why I or anyone else should be held to that standard when its creator isn't.

How about 3 years? Where's the beef there? You can count yourself if you want, but it's not like you started from zero. You said before you were traditionally published. But if you want to use yourself as an example, did you write _and publish _ what DWS claims you could've last year? Or are you in the same boat as the rest of the humans (I mean with the people who just don't try hard enough)?


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

Mr. Dean:

The Great Heinlein and Asimov and Bradbury wrote under a different model. I'm sure (because you are certainly a smart fellow) that you either know or remember how long it took to keep manuscripts in the old US Post Office system. It's a miracle they wrote as many as they did.

But I do not think it is fair to compare the output of writers from another publishing age to this one--the one from here on out.

Unlike those Golden Age Masters, DWS has absolutely nothing standing in the way of him publishing anything he wants whenever he wants. Neither do you, neither do I, neither does the next person. Speaking strictly on numbers and output (since the dollar figures are subject to somebody buying the darn things) if Dean says he can crank out that much content, boy howdy I'll bet he can. Remember that the turning out of material is the one thing in his theory that he _can_ control.

At any rate, I've enjoyed reading this discussion and reading your posts. You argue your points like a gentleman, even if I disagree with your conclusions.

And as the original Gutman said, "I'll tell you right out, I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk."

G

PS: For some of us, it is not difficult to be prolific. I wrote, by my lonesome, every week for about a dozen years, the equivalent word count of a short story. I did it for TV, but the difficulty of cranking out story is not universal.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

WHDean said:


> This is the problem. You're taking the best case scenario and you're assuming your long experience in doing it. But KB has another "What's wrong with my [insert software problem]?" every day because things don't run that smoothly. Some mags don't have good submission systems, you have to keep track of where and when you submitted these 50 stories a year. Where does that time come from?


True, however, I'd argue that I have those same questions very early on. Once I found the answer, I didn't need to ask them again 

To track submissions, I donate some money to Duotrope every year and just use their system. That way, I'm searching and adding all at the same time.

Everyone had to start somewhere. There are folks far more experienced than I am. I'm not Harlan Edison here or anything, with 1400+ published credits to my name (I don't think I've hit 75 yet...though I really should go back and count one of these days). I'd argue I'm an experienced n00b at best.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Gutman said:


> For some of us, it is not difficult to be prolific. I wrote, by my lonesome, every week for about a dozen years, the equivalent word count of a short story. I did it for TV, but the difficulty of cranking out story is not universal.


QFT.


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## Gregory Lynn (Aug 9, 2011)

WHDean said:


> You're both looking at it as if I'm debating the _conceivability _ of the scheme, but I'm not. I'm not saying it's inconceivable, I'm saying _it's nothing more than conceivable_. Sure, someone somewhere could probably pull this off, but can either of you name one person who actually has? Yet DWS is talking like your average joe can do it if he really tries.


No he's not. He's saying a competent writer with the work ethic to work his buttocks [/forestgump] off both writing and learning can, if they have a sufficient love of short fiction, eventually make a living writing short fiction.

Or, to put it another way.

He's saying that if you're not willing to bust your hump, give up now. If you think you already know it all, don't bother starting. If you think you can just toss your stories up on Amazon and wait for the money to roll in, you should just hang it up in the breeze.


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## Gregory Lynn (Aug 9, 2011)

For the love of all that is good and sweet in the world, people need to lighten the francis up.

People are acting like he is saying that any old schmoe can make a living by just dashing off a story a week and they're golden.

He's not.

He's making the assumption that you're a writer good enough to get stories published on a regular basis. This is going to exclude the vast majority of people in the world and a large percentage of the people on KB most specifically including me.

He's saying that if you love short fiction, you can make a living writing what you love and you not only have to be good enough, you have to be dedicated enough, versatile enough, and you have to scrounge every [expletive deleted] cent out of a story that you possibly can.

And if you're all that it's still going to take years.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Gutman said:


> Mr. Dean:
> 
> The Great Heinlein and Asimov and Bradbury wrote under a different model. I'm sure (because you are certainly a smart fellow) that you either know or remember how long it took to keep manuscripts in the old US Post Office system. It's a miracle they wrote as many as they did.
> 
> ...


Mr. Gutman,

Thanks, I appreciate the sentiment.

Ray did claim that he wrote a story a week (at one point at least), and I have no problem believing that he did, whether the stories were published or not. But he didn't do it in one hour a day. I agree that RB is bad comparison, but that's because he's was a creative genius. He's rarity; so I see his example supporting my point.

As for DWS, I don't recall him claiming that he produced that much a year and he writes full time, which was one of the problematic points for me. Maybe he does. But he didn't say how much he publishes every year. Someone else might know.

I'm willing to bet you could churn out 50 stories next year, given your background in TV, which is a good pedigree for shorts. But do you think you could pull it off in 1 hour a day? And how long do you think you could keep up that pace, even if it was full time? I mean three years is a long time to be churning out a story a week.

For my part, I have no doubt that I could churn out 50 stories and novellas in the next twelve months doing it full time. But even this possibility only exists because I have a lot of material to work with already. I wouldn't be starting from scratch. Maybe I could go another year or two more at that pace, but 6 years -even doing it full time? That's seems like a stretch for any human.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> True, however, I'd argue that I have those same questions very early on. Once I found the answer, I didn't need to ask them again
> 
> To track submissions, I donate some money to Duotrope every year and just use their system. That way, I'm searching and adding all at the same time.
> 
> Everyone had to start somewhere. There are folks far more experienced than I am. I'm not Harlan Edison here or anything, with 1400+ published credits to my name (I don't think I've hit 75 yet...though I really should go back and count one of these days). I'd argue I'm an experienced n00b at best.


My point was that it never takes long in theory. In practice, however, all the administrative stuff is a time suck, and that time has to come from somewhere. I mean even if it takes you 5 minutes to submit a story, submitting 1 story to 10 mags is 50 minutes, which is one of your hours a week. To leave these realities out is, by definition, to be unrealistic about the time commitments. As for Harlan Ellison, he did it full time. And like Bradbury, he was not your average good writer.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Gregory Lynn said:


> No he's not. He's saying a competent writer with the work ethic to work his buttocks [/forestgump] off both writing and learning can, if they have a sufficient love of short fiction, eventually make a living writing short fiction.
> 
> Or, to put it another way.
> 
> He's saying that if you're not willing to bust your hump, give up now. If you think you already know it all, don't bother starting. If you think you can just toss your stories up on Amazon and wait for the money to roll in, you should just hang it up in the breeze.


If that's all he'd said, there'd be nothing to dispute. Let's deal with what he actually said. I'll even leave the money aside for the moment, and look at one claim that he made on output: that a writer could compose and publish 50 stories in a year working one hour a day. Now, I've challenged people to show me one person who has published 50 stories in one year working one hour a day. A few people have said they've written that much (or the equivalent of it) _working full time_. But no one has offered a single example of someone who's done it in an hour a day-or, even claimed to have done the same amount in double or triple that time. And DWS himself didn't claim that he could do that or the equivalent of it. Maybe that's just an omission and he does publish that much. But no one has offered any evidence that he does. So, don't you think that's a big problem for a model that's offered as a realistic possibility for-as you've called them-"competent writers," no matter how much hump-busting they do?


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Doomed Muse said:


> JR- Bradbury wrote more than 400 stories in his lifetime. In fact, that whole story a week thing comes from him (it's what he decided to try to get published). He wrote a story a week for most of his life. I don't even know where you are getting 400 from (published stories, maybe?). Plenty of the pulp era authors were far far more prolific than that, but they wrote under so many pen names, it's tough to keep track of the numbers.
> 
> For what it's worth, I've written almost 100 stories/novels/novellas, etc in the last 3 years. Many of those won't see the light of day (early on I was trying to learn to write). Now that I've found my writing legs and brought my craft up to a level where people seem to want to read my stuff, it's getting easier to write more words. A lot of people don't have a workman-like mentality when it comes to writing, which is fine. But for people who do (like those pulp era guys, or Kris or Dean), you can produce a seriously huge amount of work by just sitting down and doing it.


I beg your pardon? I said nothing about 400 stories in Bradbury's lifetime. I think you're confusing me with someone else.


WHDean said:


> If that's all he'd said, there'd be nothing to dispute. Let's deal with what he actually said. I'll even leave the money aside for the moment, and look at one claim that he made on output: that a writer could compose and publish 50 stories in a year working one hour a day. Now, I've challenged people to show me one person who has published 50 stories in one year working one hour a day. A few people have said they've written that much (or the equivalent of it) _working full time_. But no one has offered a single example of someone who's done it in an hour a day-or, even claimed to have done the same amount in double or triple that time. And DWS himself didn't claim that he could do that or the equivalent of it. Maybe that's just an omission and he does publish that much. But no one has offered any evidence that he does. So, don't you think that's a big problem for a model that's offered as a realistic possibility for-as you've called them-"competent writers," no matter how much hump-busting they do?


I rarely write more than an hour a day and regularly produce two novels a year. YOU DO THE MATH.

Edit: Actually it will be three novels this year. Yes, I write an hour a day. I spend one heck of a lot of time doing other things that are writing related. But I can easily write 200,000 words a year writing only ONE HOUR A DAY.

Please note: EDITING is NOT writing. There are a lot of other things a writer has to do.

Read it and weep.



WHDean said:


> Mr. Gutman,
> 
> Thanks, I appreciate the sentiment.
> 
> ...


One of my problems with your arguments is that you are blatantly misrepresenting what DWS said.

If you write an hour a day you can pretty much produce a short story a week. He did not say or imply that was all the time the endeavor would take. Almost any experienced writer can produce a thousand words of draft in about an hour.

You evidently missed where he said you would have to edit those yourself, format them yourself, produce the cover yourself, do the bookkeeping yourself, etc, etc. This is a substantial endeavor that will take quite a bit of time beyond just doing the draft. DWS has never, ever said that being a full-time writer who actuallly pays the bills doing it is easy or no work. He does say it is possible.

It is. There are a number of people around here who do it. You don't have to be an outlier who sells a thousand books a day. A number of books selling modestly will do it.

If you would have difficulty going years producing stories on a full-time basis, then probably being a full-time writer isn't for you. It isn't for most people. Most people couldn't. Most people wouldn't want to or they'd soon discover that if they tried.

But admitting that he never said you could do it in a few minutes a day is beyond you, apparently.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> I rarely write more than an hour a day and regularly produce two novels a year. YOU DO THE MATH.
> 
> Edit: Actually it will be three novels this year. Yes, I write an hour a day. I spend one heck of a lot of time doing other things that are writing related. But I can easily write 200,000 words a year writing only ONE HOUR A DAY.
> 
> ...


So, one hour a day writing and what two, three, six more hours a day doing "writing related" things that don't count as writing? I seemed to have missed all these caveats in the original piece. Maybe you should offer to annotate it for him.



> One of my problems with your arguments is that you are blatantly misrepresenting what DWS said.
> 
> If you write an hour a day you can pretty much produce a short story a week. He did not say or imply that was all the time the endeavor would take. Almost any experienced writer can produce a thousand words of draft in about an hour.


Well, here's a direct quotation (emphasis mine):



> That's right. 250,000 words in a year. *Working one hour per day and taking the weekends off and two weeks vacation*.
> 
> *So to make a living writing short fiction, you need a work ethic that will drag you to the computer at least one hour per day, five days per week*. I know that's tough. But if everyone could do it, there would be a lot of writers making a living with their fiction.
> 
> (Sorry, this work-ethic topic just makes me very snarky. And please don't give me your *pitiful excuses about having to research or think about your story * or build character worksheets or rewrite your story a dozen times to make your story dull and boring and just like everyone else's story. And please don't talk to me about how your day job is 60 hours. I have heard all the excuses and am not interested in *why you can't dig out one hour a day average out of your life.* If you can't do that much, stop claiming you want to be a writer. At least to me. Thanks!)


Seems clear to me, what with all the "one hour," "one hour," "one hour." If anything I was too generous. I missed the bit about taking weekends and two weeks vacation. So it's five hours a week.

ETA: I highlighted the bit about excuses because it suggested to me that such things are, in fact, included in the tally of hours.

ETA2: I also highlighted the part about "making a living [at] your computer at least one hour a day" because it seems to preclude anything else.



> You evidently missed where he said you would have to edit those yourself, format them yourself, produce the cover yourself, do the bookkeeping yourself, etc, etc. This is a substantial endeavor that will take quite a bit of time beyond just doing the draft.


Evidently I did. Where does he say it?



> There are a number of people around here who do it. You don't have to be an outlier who sells a thousand books a day. A number of books selling modestly will do it.


I'd be delighted if they chimed in.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

One- Dean is talking about WRITING one hour a day. Formatting and doing the other stuff is clearly time you'll have to carve out additionally. It doesn't take that much time. For short stories and shorter novellas (anything under 20k words), it takes me maybe 1.5 hours to proof and check the notes from my first readers, and get it formatted (formatting takes me maybe 20 mins).  It takes maybe another half an hour to an hour to work with my cover guy (a friend with photoshop, I do most of the design, he just uses the program for me since he knows the tools better).  So to write AND publish a 5,000 word story in a single week, I'd have to work about 8 hours. In a week. That's just back-breaking, I know.
As for working only an hour a day, okay, here.  I have some serious health issues (eating disorder and major/unipolar depression) and I've lost 3 family members in the last 2.5 years as well as had to deal with some other life issue like my husband being laid off etc.  So yeah, between being lazy and these other issues, I don't always work to capacity.

In 2010 (since I don't have 2009 numbers as I wasn't keeping track yet), I wrote about 406,000 words of new fiction. Since I write about 1000 words an hour (actually a little more usually, but let's keep it round for this), that's works out to about 1.1 hours of work a day on average.  Much of that was either published in magazines or is self-published now or will be in the future (my writing underwent a lot of growth this year and I intend to redraft some things I wrote during 2010 from scratch, so they went into the practice file)

In 2011, I wrote about 439,000 words of new fiction.  That's about 1.2 hours a day if I had worked every day of the year (which I didn't, I worked here and there and took a lot of months almost off writing do to aforementioned issues and laziness).  Most of that fiction is either circulating the submission rounds at magazines, self-published, or waiting to be published. Some went into the practice file (like the erotica, which I'm still not confident in my skills enough to let people read yet).

So I guess I write about an hour a day, even being a full time writer.

(for what it's worth, for novels, it takes me about 10 hours to edit/proof them after I get the edits back from my paid editor and another hour or two to format. I hire out most of my novel covers these days so that takes almost no time once I've lined up the artist. So I can write and publish a novel in less than 100 hours of work, or you know, the equivalent of two weeks of work at my old job, where I was working 60-70 hours a week on three different shifts)

Not everyone can do what Dean is advocating. Most people don't have what it takes to write full time, sell to pro magazines, or make a living at writing anyway.  That's okay. If it is your goal to make a living with short fiction, then following Dean's plan isn't the worst idea, that's what I'm saying. It does work. But you have to study, learn, improve your craft, and, as another poster said, be willing to wring every penny out of those stories by selling them wherever you can.


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## ChrisWard (Mar 10, 2012)

It's easy when you have a plot.  I can run out a 5000 word story in three hours, no problem.  If I have a plot... 

I think the biggest problem is having an endless well of creativity.  I find that the older I get (ancient at 33!) the less new ideas I have (although that might be that most of my energy goes into working a full time and a part time job, and looking after a wife and a cat).  I think the most shorts I've ever wrote in a year was about 20, but I don't doubt that if you were writing full time you could make 50 in a year, easy.  That's only one a week.  Whether they'd be any good would depend on how good you were as a writer, but I think DWS only mentioned that perhaps five would be good enough to sell pro, with the rest being self-published.  I don't think its so difficult.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

WHDean said:


> So, one hour a day writing and what two, three, six more hours a day doing "writing related" things that don't count as writing? I seemed to have missed all these caveats in the original piece. Maybe you should offer to annotate it for him.
> 
> Well, here's a direct quotation (emphasis mine):
> 
> ...


Yes, ONE HOUR OF WRITING. He said at the very start:



> If you work for *one really, really tough hour of writing* (snicker) five days per week, and take two weeks off from the really rough pace (more snickers), you will produce (1,000 words x 5 days x 50 weeks =) 250,000 words in one year. Or about three novels.
> 
> Or about 50 short stories (at average length of 5,000 words).


He doesn't HAVE to say the other things will take additional time because the rest of us aren't idiots.

As far as chiming it, sweetie, you just don't want to hear it. People already have told you they're doing it. Take your fingers out of your ears and stop singing "lalala I can't HEAR you."


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> Yes, ONE HOUR OF WRITING. He said at the very start:
> 
> He doesn't HAVE to say the other things will take additional time because the rest of us aren't idiots.
> 
> As far as chiming it, sweetie, you just don't want to hear it. People already have told you they're doing it. Take your fingers out of your ears and stop singing "lalala I can't HEAR you."


Oh, JRT. And it's even SUNNY outside this morning!


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Gutman said:


> Oh, JRT. And it's even SUNNY outside this morning!


I am afraid I don't tolerate foo the deliberately obtuse gladly, even when it's sunny. 

Edit: And good sunny morning to you, Gutman. I'll be more cheerful once I have coffee.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

*sticks head in door, looks around.*



Betsy


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Nothing to see here, Betsy. I am just drinking my coffee. *tries hard to look innocent*


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## LT Ville (Apr 17, 2011)

I thought the post was interesting. I'm now considering raising the price on a few of my stories. I don't know if I'll be brave enough to leave it there if they stop selling, but I'm going to be brave enough to try.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Doomed Muse said:


> One- Dean is talking about WRITING one hour a day. Formatting and doing the other stuff is clearly time you'll have to carve out additionally. It doesn't take that much time. For short stories and shorter novellas (anything under 20k words), it takes me maybe 1.5 hours to proof and check the notes from my first readers, and get it formatted (formatting takes me maybe 20 mins). It takes maybe another half an hour to an hour to work with my cover guy (a friend with photoshop, I do most of the design, he just uses the program for me since he knows the tools better). So to write AND publish a 5,000 word story in a single week, I'd have to work about 8 hours. In a week. That's just back-breaking, I know.
> As for working only an hour a day, okay, here. I have some serious health issues (eating disorder and major/unipolar depression) and I've lost 3 family members in the last 2.5 years as well as had to deal with some other life issue like my husband being laid off etc. So yeah, between being lazy and these other issues, I don't always work to capacity.
> 
> In 2010 (since I don't have 2009 numbers as I wasn't keeping track yet), I wrote about 406,000 words of new fiction. Since I write about 1000 words an hour (actually a little more usually, but let's keep it round for this), that's works out to about 1.1 hours of work a day on average. Much of that was either published in magazines or is self-published now or will be in the future (my writing underwent a lot of growth this year and I intend to redraft some things I wrote during 2010 from scratch, so they went into the practice file)
> ...


Sorry to hear about your problems. It's to your credit that you're able to do as much as you do in spite of them.

My last remark on this is the same as my first, which more or less tells me that I've passed the point of adding anything new. There's a difference between _conceivable _ or theoretically possible, meaning something that doesn't violate the laws of physics, and _realistic_, meaning something people do regularly. I appreciate your response. But the amount of time you actually spend doesn't persuade me that it's realistic to call it a one hour a day endeavour. It seems like hair-splitting to say, well, one hour a day on the actual writing, but several other hours doing other stuff related to the writing and publication. And what about the time of day? If you can pick and choose when that one hour a day is, it's not the same as being constrained to a particular window because inspiration dictates the schedule. You see what I mean with all this?


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> Yes, ONE HOUR OF WRITING. He said at the very start:
> 
> He doesn't HAVE to say the other things will take additional time because the rest of us aren't idiots.
> 
> As far as chiming it, sweetie, you just don't want to hear it. People already have told you they're doing it. Take your fingers out of your ears and stop singing "lalala I can't HEAR you."


No one has yet shown me a single example of a person "making a living" off short fiction after six years of sitting down in front of the computer for an hour a day or anything close to it-and that was DWS's claim. At best, you've suggested some people are making _some_ money doing it full time. You can say that you only write for an hour a day. Okay. But in the same breath you've conceded that it takes far more than that one hour a day to actually publish what you've written-including editing, formatting, covers, etc. In fact, you've said it "will take quite a bit of time beyond * just doing the draft*." But DWS said nothing about _drafts_-he implied just the opposite, namely, that "rewriting" was an "excuse," which tells me that one's five hours a week should culminate in a finished product, not a "draft" that needs editing.

By the way, calling me stupid because I didn't read in a series of important time-consuming caveats necessary to realize this vision doesn't make me look stupid. It makes him look like he's engaged in over-simplification and you in wishful thinking-the kind people do when they're cheerleading, not when they're giving people sound, realistic advice.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Hmmmm...  WHD is posting...

*sticks head in to look around again....*

Oh, it's a long one... *locks thread to read and edit if necessary...*


Betsy


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

OK, JRT and WHD have given each other some good licks; let's call it a draw.  I'm hot and tired and have to take hubby to the doctor (not The Doctor) in a bit, so I don't feel like thinking too much about going back in time revising history (another Dr. Who reference).  

Please, no more name calling.  

Thread reopened with some slight editing.

Betsy


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Betsy, I promise I won't call WHD stupid any more.

WHD, that "wishful thinking" puts a couple of thousand a month in my bank account, so I'll take my wishful thinking over your ... whatever that is you're selling. As for being a DWS cheerleader, I suppose although my cheering involves more arguing with him than he likes, but he's very polite about it. 

I'm done here. Betsy, hope your hubby is doing all right.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Thanks, Jeanne.  Anytime HE thinks he should go to the doctor, it freaks me out.



Everyone chill.  Literally.

Betsy


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

WHDean said:


> But DWS said nothing about _drafts_-he implied just the opposite, namely, that "rewriting" was an "excuse," which tells me that one's five hours a week should culminate in a finished product, not a "draft" that needs editing.


At the risk of repeating myself again, my 5 hours a week (Dean's number, mine is a little different) routinely produces a finished product. I have routinely been given an assignment (fiction, non-fiction), spent a few minutes thinking about it, and have written something that I've sold. They've earned me all ranges, but the most common range is $60-360. That range generally has been 1 evening of writing (about 3-4 hours) and 15-20 minutes editing.

The longer and more complex a piece, the more time I have to spend on it. With that said, I also wrote 40,000 from start to finish in 5 days because I had to. And I did it. And did it well enough to sell (though I try very hard not to do that because it takes me a few weeks to recover).

Some of us can do it. Not everyone can. But there's only one way to find it - try and practice.

ETA: Sorry, Betsy, cross post


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

You're good, Krista...on topic and if there is name calling, I missed it... 


Betsy


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## Jason Varrone (Feb 5, 2012)

I'm so glad I started this thread. I'm kicking myself for not selling tickets...


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> At the risk of repeating myself again, my 5 hours a week (Dean's number, mine is a little different) routinely produces a finished product. I have routinely been given an assignment (fiction, non-fiction), spent a few minutes thinking about it, and have written something that I've sold. They've earned me all ranges, but the most common range is $60-360. That range generally has been 1 evening of writing (about 3-4 hours) and 15-20 minutes editing.
> 
> The longer and more complex a piece, the more time I have to spend on it. With that said, I also wrote 40,000 from start to finish in 5 days because I had to. And I did it. And did it well enough to sell (though I try very hard not to do that because it takes me a few weeks to recover).
> 
> ...


It depends.

I can't produce a finished draft without at least a clean up edit. Some people can.

I remember an old quote from Heinlein when another well known author complained about having to do edits. Heinlein is said to have commented, "Why didn't you do it right the first time?"

Unfortunately, typos, homonyms and omitted words creep in _for me_. That's about all the editing I do which is closer to proofing than true editing. I do not and have never considered that writing.

How much editing is required varies from writer to writer, but I think very few don't need at least a little time for clean up. If you are self-publishing, there are definitely things that have to be done that aren't writing such as covers and submissions end up taking an amazing amount of time. It's a minute or two each story but if you're submitting 50 or 100 stories as DWS is talking about, that adds up to a substantial amount of time. I know. I've been there.


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## Kent Kelly (Feb 12, 2011)

Jason Varrone said:


> I'm so glad I started this thread. I'm kicking myself for not selling tickets...


Hey, it's not a fight. Some authors are just under the (mistaken?) impression that they're supposed to be putting their highly entertaining, engaging, first-draft-and-final 1,000+ words a day, worth paying money for, IN THIS THREAD.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

It's sorta like research. People talk about how research is writing. Well, sorta, but not really.

I'm writing a non-fiction quasi-historical book right now. A significant amount of research has gone into that book, but two months ago, I didn't have any words written. Therefore, when the publisher checked in and I said that, she asked when was my timeline to start (it was June). Because all of the research in the world can't be edited into a readable book. Only the writing can be.

I remember wasting so much time on places like Critique Circle in the early days re-writing and same scenes and chapters over and over and over. Pfft, I don't do that now. I know if it's working or not going to work. The more I write, the more I also know this. When I send stuff to a beta, I know what's wrong with the story when I send it and can ask them to look at something to see what the problem is. It might be a vague "this part is just really depressing...does it match?" or a "I have X happening, and Y going on, but it needs something to connect them. Thoughts?"

That's practice.

Now, DWS can outwrite me any hour of the day. I know that. However, I'll never be able to meet his level unless I practice. That's all. Practice. So, instead of everyone fighting and calling him a scam, try dedicating 15 minutes a day to a small project that's not going to be rewritten into infinity. Just practice. See if it works for them.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Kent Kelly said:


> Hey, it's not a fight. Some authors are just under the (mistaken?) impression that they're supposed to be putting their highly entertaining, engaging, first-draft-and-final 1,000+ words a day, worth paying money for, IN THIS THREAD.


/shrug Mine sell to magazines. So someone thought they were worth paying money for.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> It's sorta like research. People talk about how research is writing. Well, sorta, but not really.
> 
> I'm writing a non-fiction quasi-historical book right now. A significant amount of research has gone into that book, but two months ago, I didn't have any words written. Therefore, when the publisher checked in and I said that, she asked when was my timeline to start (it was June). Because all of the research in the world can't be edited into a readable book. Only the writing can be.
> 
> ...


Yep. You know I do a lot of research and I don't count that as writing.

I also went through the thing of re-writing and re-writing and re-writing some more (much of it at CC and a couple of other workshops). Eventually you get past that although it takes some time. It's all part of the learning curve. As you say: practice. Although I sold one heck of a lot of my practice. 

Edit: I'm one of those nasty people who sold my first novel even though it was to a small publisher. My short stories, yeah, I sold some but I'm not that good at them and didn't want to put that practice in because I don't like them that much.


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## JoyCox (Mar 21, 2012)

JRTomlin said:


> Yep. You know I do a lot of research and I don't count that as writing.


I don't count my research time as writing time either.


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

Look, not everybody is good at this kind of working method. Not everyone can (or wants to, for that matter) _quickly_ produce a 5,000 word story that holds up to very mild, author story edits, and then gets copy edited and sent out or published (and note that _no one_--not even DWS--is advocating skipping the copy edit.)

But some of us are good at it. Some of us are from the school of thought that a short story arrives fully formed, and just needs to be written. Bradbury talks about running to the typewriter. Sometimes it doesn't arrive fully formed, and has to be found. But some of us believe that once it's found, it's found, and it should be lightly edited and pushed out of the nest.

DWS believes this. (I believe it--although, who cares?  )

I've read Asimov's biography (3 volumes, and a hoot.) He talks over and over and over and over again about getting an idea, writing the story (often in a few hours--one sitting) sending it off and it's published. So this is _not_ a new concept.

I think I feel a little like some are playing _gotcha_ with Dean. And maybe Dean makes assumptions that he doesn't spell out and that those of us who simply get what he's talking about have already factored in. That's fair enough.

But I do think that the possibility of carving out a living writing shorts is upon us again. Dean lays out one possible path. If you like writing shorts, it's worth listening to what he has to say, and using what works for _you_ and discarding the rest. I think he'd be the first to agree.

_May the short fiction inspiration of Bradbury, Clarke, Heinlein and Asimov be with you._

G
For The Love of Pulp


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## KaryE (May 12, 2012)

A couple of folks were looking for this, bold added.



> For #2, you must price your short story at at least $2.99 and if your story isn't long enough, add a second bonus story or other bonus material to the mix for the reader. (I know some of you don't like this idea. Fine, keep your story at 99 cents and keep making 35 cent in the discount bin. No problem for me, and not something to talk about in this discussion.) *You also must dig out the few hours extra per week it takes to publish your story and do the cover.*


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> Betsy, I promise I won't call WHD stupid any more.
> 
> WHD, that "wishful thinking" puts a couple of thousand a month in my bank account, so I'll take my wishful thinking over your ... whatever that is you're selling. As for being a DWS cheerleader, I suppose although my cheering involves more arguing with him than he likes, but he's very polite about it.
> 
> I'm done here. Betsy, hope your hubby is doing all right.


Good for you. But you've already conceded that I'm right regarding DWS's claim that good writers can make a living writing shorts by dragging themselves in front of their computers for an hour a day. You've already stated that an hour a day only gets a "draft" of those stories, and that editing, covers, research and all the logistics and maintenance surrounding the publication of those stories takes up additional time-not to mention the mysterious "working on your craft" that's come up several times, which I assume means writing that doesn't count as writing. So, I'm happy to rest my case on your testimony about how much time it really takes. QED.



Krista D. Ball said:


> At the risk of repeating myself again, my 5 hours a week (Dean's number, mine is a little different) routinely produces a finished product. I have routinely been given an assignment (fiction, non-fiction), spent a few minutes thinking about it, and have written something that I've sold. They've earned me all ranges, but the most common range is $60-360. That range generally has been 1 evening of writing (about 3-4 hours) and 15-20 minutes editing.
> 
> The longer and more complex a piece, the more time I have to spend on it. With that said, I also wrote 40,000 from start to finish in 5 days because I had to. And I did it. And did it well enough to sell (though I try very hard not to do that because it takes me a few weeks to recover).


At the risk of repeating myself, you're making my point. You can write a story in 3-4 hours, but you don't do it every week of every month of every year. And you needed two weeks to recover after writing 40k words in a week. Where does that figure into DWS's one hour a day, 250k words a year plan? I call that taking 3 weeks, not 1 week, because recuperation was part of the process.

To put a fine point on it, your experience says that the one hour a day plan is about as realistic as the artisan bread in five minutes plan, and for all the same reasons.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Gutman said:


> Look, not everybody is good at this kind of working method. Not everyone can (or wants to, for that matter) _quickly_ produce a 5,000 word story that holds up to very mild, author story edits, and then gets copy edited and sent out or published (and note that _no one_--not even DWS--is advocating skipping the copy edit.)
> 
> But some of us are good at it. Some of us are from the school of thought that a short story arrives fully formed, and just needs to be written. Bradbury talks about running to the typewriter. Sometimes it doesn't arrive fully formed, and has to be found. But some of us believe that once it's found, it's found, and it should be lightly edited and pushed out of the nest.
> 
> ...


I realize that my case might sound like gotcha, but I'm not picking out a single point and hammering away at that one item. I'm pointing out that the overall production plan is unrealistic. So far, the only counterexamples are one-off remarks from the masters of SF. I say "one-off" because I've never heard them claim that they regularly or always wrote in this high-speed production fashion, day in and day out, year after year. Bradbury said he wrote "The Veldt" in 3 hours. But he mentioned it like it was remarkable, not the routine for every story he wrote.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

JoyCox said:


> I don't count my research time as writing time either.


 

Betsy


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

WHDean said:


> Good for you. But you've already conceded that I'm right regarding DWS's claim that good writers can make a living writing shorts by dragging themselves in front of their computers for an hour a day. You've already stated that an hour a day only gets a "draft" of those stories, and that editing, covers, research and all the logistics and maintenance surrounding the publication of those stories takes up additional time-not to mention the mysterious "working on your craft" that's come up several times, which I assume means writing that doesn't count as writing. So, I'm happy to rest my case on your testimony about how much time it really takes. QED.


Quote from DWS:



> You also must dig out the few hours extra per week it takes to publish your story and do the cover.


Since he did NOT claim that, I win.

And since working on the craft means WRITING, and I sold my "working on my craft" I guess I win twice. (Make that 3 times since I sold it to a publisher and then got it back and now make more money selling it self-published on Amazon) 

You have a real problem with admitting you're wrong don't you. That's all right. Those of us here know it and I actually don't have to win, just take the money Amazon sends me. I can live with that. 

Edit: Now continue on with your totally wrong assertions about what he said. I won't bother with responding to you further. 

I don't actually think you're stupid, just too stubborn to admit you didn't read the blog piece carefully in the first place.


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## AKLoggie (Aug 13, 2011)

KaryE said:


> A couple of folks were looking for this, bold added.
> 
> 
> 
> > For #2, you must price your short story at at least $2.99 and if your story isn't long enough, add a second bonus story or other bonus material to the mix for the reader. (I know some of you don't like this idea. Fine, keep your story at 99 cents and keep making 35 cent in the discount bin. No problem for me, and not something to talk about in this discussion.)* You also must dig out the few hours extra per week it takes to publish your story and do the cover.*


I'm re-quoting the re-quote for emphasis.

He includes that you have to do other things on top of the hour of writing.

So, no one has conceded that you are correct in saying the a writer can not make a living writing for 1 hour a day. I know people who did that, and now write full time.

I've basically been doing a 1-hour a day plan, and it's working out AWESOME. I'm more productive, and most importantly, since it's actually important for me, I make the time, every day.

Oh, also, sitting down for an hour a day is not 'high speed production'. I do stupid things on the internet for far longer than that.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> Quote from DWS:
> Since he did NOT claim that, I win.
> 
> I don't actually think you're stupid, just too stubborn to admit you didn't read the blog piece carefully in the first place.


I already quoted the relevant passage--where he says it twice--which is front and centre in the intro to the piece:



> That's right. 250,000 words in a year. *Working one hour per day and taking the weekends off and two weeks vacation.*
> 
> *So to make a living writing short fiction, you need a work ethic that will drag you to the computer at least one hour per day, five days per week.* I know that's tough. But if everyone could do it, there would be a lot of writers making a living with their fiction.
> 
> (Sorry, this work-ethic topic just makes me very snarky. And please don't give me your pitiful excuses about having to research or think about your story or build character worksheets or rewrite your story a dozen times to make your story dull and boring and just like everyone else's story. And please don't talk to me about how your day job is 60 hours. I have heard all the excuses and am not interested in why you can't dig out one hour a day average out of your life. If you can't do that much, stop claiming you want to be a writer. At least to me. Thanks!)


Again, he says "making a living" takes an hour a day, not writing drafts. One line about a few extra hours a week, mentioned once, doesn't make up for the one-hour mantra, which is repeated again and again. And no mention is made of all the things you claimed he allows for.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

AKLoggie said:


> and it's working out AWESOME. I'm more productive, and most importantly, since it's actually important for me, I make the time, every day.


Like the others, you say it's working well for you. I've never disputed that an hour a day isn't productive, and I'd be crazy to; I've said it's unrealistic to accomplish what he says you can by doing it. You haven't denied that it's unrealistic to publish 250k in a year. You don't claim that you published 250k last year working an hour a day, and you don't claim you're making a living doing it. Those are the claims at issue.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

WHDean said:


> At the risk of repeating myself, you're making my point. You can write a story in 3-4 hours, but you don't do it every week of every month of every year.


I don't? This year I'm not writing a short story a week, because I'm writing novels that I'm under contract to write. Same applies, however.



> And you needed two weeks to recover after writing 40k words in a week. Where does that figure into DWS's one hour a day, 250k words a year plan? I call that taking 3 weeks, not 1 week, because recuperation was part of the process.


You do realize the difference between writing 4000 words in a week and 40,000 right? 4000 in a week is easy, even with a full time job. 40,000 is not nearly as easy. I didn't sleep for a good part of that period. I don't need to recup after 4000 words in a week 



> To put a fine point on it, your experience says that the one hour a day plan is about as realistic as the artisan bread in five minutes plan, and for all the same reasons.


Nope, I'm still not seeing it.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> You do realize the difference between writing 4000 words in a week and 40,000 right? 4000 in a week is easy, even with a full time job. 40,000 is not nearly as easy.


I suspect you have to have done both to realize the difference. Talking about writing and actually writing are two different things.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Wait for inspiration? Mwahaha. That's not really the way to write consistently, in my experience. I sit down at the computer and then go hunt down inspiration with a chainsaw and drag it to the page.  Writing is a job, a fun, awesome job, but something I wouldn't even attempt to do for a living if I weren't able to conjure up the stories and had to wait for some mythical muse to grace my brain.  Fortunately, I have thousands of ideas (notebooks and notebooks full...) and don't anticipate running out of things to write in my lifetime.  I have full novel series planned out into 2015, and that's just about 50 books.  I'm sure by the time I get to 2015, I'll have 50 more I want to write.  Writing fairly quickly and writing a lot is a survival mechanism for me because I want to get those stories out and explore those characters and worlds.  It's fun! And it makes me money. Pretty much a win all around.

If you want to make a living writing, you have to write and carve out the time to do it. I know people with kids and dayjobs who still write a couple books and a bunch of short stories a year. Or look at Jay Lake, who is incredibly prolific while having dayjob, kids, and cancer!
You have to prioritize. Writing for a living means running a small business on the side.  Does it take a ton of time? Not really. Not if you are organized and pay attention. As I pointed out before, it would take me maybe 8 hours a week to write and self-publish a short story (and I know this, because I've done it before, multiple times). It would take me less than that if I were submitting that same story to a pro-paying market.

It's all about what you are capable of, what you want, and what you are willing to do to make the time to get it.  But an hour of writing a day will get you a lot of words.  And if you only have a few hours a week, I advise you spend them on writing instead of publishing tasks. Let the publishing stuff wait until you have time to do that (pick a weekend or use a vacation week or something and get it all up).  I'd far rather have a large inventory waiting on me to find time to publish than have nothing but excuses.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> I suspect you have to have done both to realize the difference. Talking about writing and actually writing are two different things.


You're right. I had written out an entire breakdown of 2011 including my income and deleted it. I don't even know why I thought I had to justify what I did with my time in 2011 and how it was definitely "full-time" work...that didn't even have close to "full time hours."

I give up.


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## tensen (May 17, 2011)

WHDean said:


> But DWS said nothing about _drafts_-he implied just the opposite, namely, that "rewriting" was an "excuse," which tells me that one's five hours a week should culminate in a finished product, not a "draft" that needs editing.


I think presumably the problem comes that someone that is well suited in their craft to be a short story writer, will at that point need less and less drafts. Dean's, Kris, & Bradbury for that matter by the time they were up to writing at the pace needed to sustain a full-time career had most likely mastered the art.

There are a lot of shortcuts in Dean's assumptions. I mean most writers don't get to the point where they are selling ANY of their stories to the professional magazines for at least a few years into their career.

But on the 10,000 hours of mastery theory, if we are giving 5 hours a week for 50 weeks a year, it would take 40 years to reach the mastery. One can get quite proficient prior to mastery, but that said. If one started from scratch with no stories, AND no writing experience.. its gonna take a lot of drek before you could even start producing the 50 stories a year that may have some that will sell to pro magazines. So if you are going for Realism, we are going to have to assume something is missing.

Is the something more years of learning the Craft? Many more hours research? More hours revising until you get the skill to work with less drafts?


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

Doomed Muse said:


> Wait for inspiration? Mwahaha.


That also makes me chuckle. If we all waited for inspiration, the airwaves would be dark, and there would be a whole lot fewer books published.

EDIT: Oh, wait, I said "may the inspiration of Bradbury, Clarke, Heinlein and Asimov be with you." I really mean to say, "may their example of [email protected] + CHAIR=SUCCESS" be with you!


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

tensen said:


> I think presumably the problem comes that someone that is well suited in their craft to be a short story writer, will at that point need less and less drafts. Dean's, Kris, & Bradbury for that matter by the time they were up to writing at the pace needed to sustain a full-time career had most likely mastered the art.
> 
> There are a lot of shortcuts in Dean's assumptions. I mean most writers don't get to the point where they are selling ANY of their stories to the professional magazines for at least a few years into their career.
> 
> ...


Well, you're right that only a good writer can do that. The thing is that the "good writer" is who Dean is talking to. He's not addressing a beginner. He refers to his workshops from which he and Kris exclude beginners. Beginners just aren't ready for what they have to say.

He says at the start:


> ... how a *good short fiction writer * can now make a living with their short fiction.


If you are starting from ground zero, the chances are that Dean really isn't relevent or most of what he says isn't.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> I suspect you have to have done both to realize the difference. Talking about writing and actually writing are two different things.


It doesn't surprise me that you'd go down that road. But it's ironic that you would, since I'm the only one between the two of us who could take "going there." So consider yourself fortunate that I won't return the salvo-at least not today. In fact, I think it's time to use that ignore button&#8230;



Krista D. Ball said:


> You're right. I had written out an entire breakdown of 2011 including my income and deleted it. I don't even know why I thought I had to justify what I did with my time in 2011 and how it was definitely "full-time" work...that didn't even have close to "full time hours."
> 
> I give up.


Spare me. I'm being fair. I've even accepted what you've said at face value and I've made not attempt to discredit your claims. But it's looking to me like you're offering glib answers that invite false inferences so you can score points with a retort. On top of that you're now claiming that I'm asking you to justify yourself, when you're using yourself as an example to defend DWS's scheme. Huh? If you don't want to get asked any questions, don't offer yourself as an example.


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## gorvnice (Dec 29, 2010)

I think people are piling on WHDean a little here.  He's made some very valid points about just how likely (or unlikely) it is to follow the 1 hour a day short story publication model to the outcome DWS claims in his post.  

I love the basic premise that DWS outlined.  With a really fast output, it's possible to generate significant income with shorter works.  

That said, I think his story rankings speak for themselves.  Pricing is fluid, and most people want formulas--but formulas don't really work.  Some shorter works in some genres can sell at higher prices, while other stories in other genres can't.  To say that any piece over 3k words or 7k words will sell for such and such price, without taking other factors (such as genre) into account, is a flawed way of doing business.

The good thing to take away from DWS's post is that there are ways we can write and publish now that are very different from what writers could do ten years ago.  There's so much room to play and experiment, and shorter works are a part of that experimentation.

However, there is no magic formula.  And I agree with WHDean's skepticism about people who simply repeat the mantra without truly digging into the details.  Very, very few people will actually be capable of doing what DWS suggested--and the few people who are capable would be better served writing a lot more than short stories.  

As a new way of thinking about and approaching publishing, DWS wrote a genius blog post.  It was a jumping off point, imo, not a list to follow as some kind of template for success.

I wouldn't take what DWS said and defend it literally, because it doesn't really hold up.  However, if all you take from it is that DWS wrote something silly, you've missed the boat entirely.  What he wrote has real world application if you are a pro and understand the things to take and the things to leave.


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## andrewwrites (Jul 4, 2011)

WHDean said:


> You're dissembling at this point. Five years of stagnant growth in someone's pension fund-which only means it hasn't made more money recently-is being compared to a scenario that hasn't even been done once. Where is the person who lives off 75 short stories that he's written in the last three years? Name one person who's even self-published 75 short stories in the last three years. I bet you can't, but that it won't stop you from believing.


I'm grunching the thread here, but I wish I had never used the term "scam" in whatever context I did, because people just concentrated on it but THIS QUOTE RIGHT HERE is the main point I was trying to make: The dude laid out a formula that looks totally easy, but it breaks down if you realize that NOBODY, not one person, is actually doing it.

But no no, everyone is like "I've been a fan of his for 20 years!" and "but I went to his workshops!" and "I'm friends with him and he's told me stuff in private!" so suuuuure, it must be totally possible. He is selling you wishes.

Also, I love the idea that someone can pump out 50 short stories a year, and it's not going to affect their quality at all, and they're not going to burn out their readers with these forced-out and unrelenting releases, etc. etc.


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

WHDean said:


> You don't claim that you published 250k last year working an hour a day, and you don't claim you're making a living doing it. Those are the claims at issue.


Just for clarity, the second claim was never claimed. It was claimed that if you do that for _6 years_, about midway through the 6th year, assuming everything goes as planned you'll reach the point where you are on a $40K per year pace.

Also, the market required to support this only came into being within the last 3 years, so it would be impossible for anyone to have completed such a six year plan to this point. Thus asking for examples of people who have done it is rather pointless. It's theory.

And he addresses what to do if you disagree with certain assumptions. Recalculate with your own numbers and it will add years to reaching that point.

And finally, near the very end he gets into important territory with a single word: "possible". He's not saying it's universal, or probable. He's saying it's _possible_ and only after years of hard work where even 4 years earlier he would have said it was impossible. That _possible_ versus _impossible_ is the driving force of the post. (And I agree with it if not the specifics.)


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## amiblackwelder (Mar 19, 2010)

Jason Varrone said:


> Interesting blog post today from DWS.
> 
> http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=7143


That is an excellent article and bookmarked!


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## andrewwrites (Jul 4, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> Yes, ONE HOUR OF WRITING. He said at the very start:
> 
> He doesn't HAVE to say the other things will take additional time because the rest of us aren't idiots.
> 
> As far as chiming it, sweetie, you just don't want to hear it. People already have told you they're doing it. Take your fingers out of your ears and stop singing "lalala I can't HEAR you."


You wrote this in reply to a post that actually PULLS A QUOTE from the original article that LITERALLY SAYS you only have to "dig out one hour a day average out of your life".

But go ahead, keep explaining what DWS *really* meant.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Why does this stuff make some people so angry?  If you don't think it will work for you, don't try it. It's pretty simple. I've already demonstrated how these ideas are working fine for me. I don't know what else to say.


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## Boris Guzo (May 31, 2012)

Doomed Muse said:


> Why does this stuff make some people so angry?


This is beyond me.

I've been reading this thread for some time, and I just can't understand what the heat is about.

As an outsider, I see both "camps" have valid arguments, but I just believe it depends from person to person, so not really something to shout about.

I do appreciate all the posters in here, I have read them all and they have all been helpful to me.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

andrewwrites said:


> Classy


You have a problem with the fact that I make money doing exactly what DWS said applied to novels, I take it.

*shrug*

Edit: I can't say DWS or KKR need us defending them, but it does annoy me seeing someone coming here and telling authors that the two of them are lying scammers and that it is impossible to make a living as an author. Wrong. Pure and simple wrong.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

JRTomlin said:


> Edit: I can't say DWS or KKR need us defending them, but it does annoy me seeing someone coming here and telling authors that the two of them are lying scammers and that it is impossible to make a living as an author. Wrong. Pure and simple wrong.


Yeah. This. They certainly don't need defending. I'm sure they are perfectly happy to collect their checks and move ahead with their plans. As someone they have helped immensely, what JR says is exactly why I've tried to defend on this thread. It feels so wrong to let the bad information and thinking and the meanness go unchallenged.


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

andrewwrites said:


> I'm grunching the thread here, but I wish I had never used the term "scam" in whatever context I did, because people just concentrated on it but THIS QUOTE RIGHT HERE is the main point I was trying to make: The dude laid out a formula that looks totally easy, but it breaks down if you realize that NOBODY, not one person, is actually doing it.
> 
> But no no, everyone is like "I've been a fan of his for 20 years!" and "but I went to his workshops!" and "I'm friends with him and he's told me stuff in private!" so suuuuure, it must be totally possible. He is selling you wishes.
> 
> Also, I love the idea that someone can pump out 50 short stories a year, and it's not going to affect their quality at all, and they're not going to burn out their readers with these forced-out and unrelenting releases, etc. etc.


Welcome back. You've taught me something today: I got to look up _grunching_, which means responding to the first post without reading the other posts. Thanks for the info.

While it's kind of hard to have a discussion with you when you don't really want to discuss (because how can you discuss if you _grunch?_), I do want to point out this one little thing:

You say you regret using the word_ scam_, yet you _grunch_ right back in here and tell us that *DWS is selling us something.
*
To my knowledge, he's not selling us anything.

I haven't sent in my payment. I don't think anyone who has read his blog has sent in a payment.

I think it was a blog post.

A post of an idea.

Not a sales pitch.

I know you do not agree with the post, and it's clear it makes you angry.

Respectfully, if you did a little less _grunching _ and actually read the comments, you might begin to understand the other point of view. I've read Mr. Dean's posts, and while I disagree with his conclusions, at least he presents his side without implying that DWS is like the Bernie Madoff of the writing world. 

EDIT: And one other thing: the "Dude" did not make it look "totally easy." With my experienced eyes, Mr DWS made it look difficult, a grind, hard work--but_ possible. _Others do not agree that it's possible, and clearly you are one of them. But he did not make it look "totally easy."

Thank you.


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

andrewwrites said:


> I'm grunching the thread here <snip>
> Also, I love the idea that someone can pump out 50 short stories a year, and it's not going to affect their quality at all, and they're not going to burn out their readers with these forced-out and unrelenting releases, etc. etc.


You mean, like the fatigued audience that deals with writers pumping out between 26-30 episodes of LOST, or (fill in name of favorite TV show)each season for _years_, and then, finally, after one hundred or two hundred episodes, burns out?


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## Mike McIntyre (Jan 19, 2011)

Given the topic under debate, it's ironic that this thread has generated 51,258 *NON-PAYING* words and counting.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Mike McIntyre said:


> Given the topic under debate, it's ironic that this thread has generated 51,258 *NON-PAYING* words and counting.


You're counting the words, Mike?


Betsy


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

Mike McIntyre said:


> Given the topic under debate, it's ironic that this thread has generated 51,258 *NON-PAYING* words and counting.


No, I believe I'll pitch this as a reality show, AMERICA'S NEXT TOP DISAGREEMENT, and then cash the checks.


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## Mike McIntyre (Jan 19, 2011)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> You're counting the words, Mike?
> 
> 
> Betsy


Got a special app. Took me only 27 seconds--or, according to the Smith model, three-sixteenths of a short short story.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

Mike McIntyre said:


> Given the topic under debate, it's ironic that this thread has generated 51,258 *NON-PAYING* words and counting.


LOL. In the span of time it took to start this thread to its latest post, I wrote an entire book (which I expect to get paid for very soon). It's amazing how much material you can write when you choose where to put your words. I think that's what DWS was trying to get at. With that said, I'm still not charging $2.99 for my shorts!  (_Now I'm off to go edit..._)


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

I'm honestly surprised this thread hasn't been shut down yet. I've watched people in here, who I once had a lot of respect for, turn into arrogant a$$hats just so that they could try and prove their point. It's rather sad.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> With that said, I'm still not charging $2.99 for my shorts!  (_Now I'm off to go edit..._)


I wouldn't pay $2.99 for your shorts, Kevis, or for any other item of clothing you might sell... just sayin'. 

Betsy


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> I wouldn't pay $2.99 for your shorts, Kevis, or for any other item of clothing you might sell... just sayin'.
> 
> Betsy


And I had such high hopes for my line of shorts, especially the plaid ones. Might as well go ahead and scrap my trip to Costa Rica. Darn!


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## andrewwrites (Jul 4, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> You have a problem with the fact that I make money doing exactly what DWS said applied to novels, I take it.
> 
> *shrug*
> 
> Edit: I can't say DWS or KKR need us defending them, but it does annoy me seeing someone coming here and telling authors that the two of them are lying scammers and that it is impossible to make a living as an author. Wrong. Pure and simple wrong.


Since some people didn't see what I wrote "Classy" in reply to, since the board deleted it, it was you posting that he made more money than WHDean, something like "I'll take my revenue versus whatever you make" or something. You were basically saying "I make more money than you, so I don't care what you think", to which I said "Classy", so for you to make it seem like I took issue with you making money is INCREDIBLY intellectually dishonest.

Then you say that someone (me) is coming in here and telling authors "it is impossible to make a living as an author". This is unreal. ANYONE who read this thread knows that I have not even come close to saying that, and nobody else has either. NOBODY thinks that, NOBODY has been trying to argue that and EVERYBODY can see through your straw man argument. The saddest part is that you HAVE to know when you write these things that you are totally making that up. There's no way you could misread these posts and think that, you sit there and think to yourself "I'm going to lie and say that people are saying you can't make a living as an author".

Don't keep an argument going so long if you know your only argument is just making stuff up. It's sad.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

andrewwrites said:


> Since some people didn't see what I wrote "Classy" in reply to, since the board deleted it, it was you posting that he made more money than WHDean, something like "I'll take my revenue versus whatever you make" or something. You were basically saying "I make more money than you, so I don't care what you think", to which I said "Classy", so for you to make it seem like I took issue with you making money is INCREDIBLY intellectually dishonest.


Speaking of intellectual dishonesty...

I said nothing of the sort. I don't know what he makes. I don't care what he makes. I certainly couldn't compare my earnings to his. For all I know he's rich as Croesus.

He said REPEATEDLY that no one could make money writing an hour a day. Let me remind you that YOU said that even proposing such a thing is a scam.

*Well, I do make money writing an hour a day*. So your objection had nothing to do with me comparing what I make to what he makes but that my daring to say I made money writing was objectionable.

Tough. I am a LONG way from the highest earning author on this forum and I make enough from my writing to live on. It is quite possible for a midlist author to do whether writing short stories or novels.


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## Eric the Scott (Feb 1, 2012)

Sounds like a party!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-be58fxOLvQ

...Just my luck, get to a party and all the girls are gone.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

Okay. So the wisdom of DWS and his acolytes has convinced me to see the (potential) error of my ways. Time to listen to the vet and see what kind of mileage I'll get if I play by his rules (regarding pricing). Should be a fun experiment to see if the sales ranking for my short stories rise or plummet in the process. The clock begins now...


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

J. Tanner said:


> Just for clarity, the second claim was never claimed. It was claimed that if you do that for _6 years_, about midway through the 6th year, assuming everything goes as planned you'll reach the point where you are on a $40K per year pace.
> 
> Also, the market required to support this only came into being within the last 3 years, so it would be impossible for anyone to have completed such a six year plan to this point. Thus asking for examples of people who have done it is rather pointless. It's theory.


True. But my concern was to clarify what the poster meant by calling the system "awesome." That can mean a lot of things, only one of which is that it's working the way it was laid out by DWS. In other words, does "awesome" means she's churning out 50 stories a year and making money; or does it mean setting aside an hour a day is working out great? Big difference in what "awesome" means.



> near the very end he gets into important territory with a single word: "possible". He's not saying it's universal, or probable. He's saying it's _possible_ and only after years of hard work where even 4 years earlier he would have said it was impossible. That _possible_ versus _impossible_ is the driving force of the post. (And I agree with it if not the specifics.)


Notice the dates on George R. R. Martin's books.

_A Game of Thrones_, *1996*; _A Clash of Kings_, *1999*; _A Storm of Swords_, *2000*; _A Feast for Crows_, *2005*; A _Dance with Dragons_, *2011*.

These books average right around 200k. I checked Martin's site to see what he was up writing during these years, and there isn't much else. So, generously excluding the year of publication on the novel before, it took him 3 years, 1 year, 5 years, and 6 years to write the last four books in that list. Even allowing for all the stuff related to publication, this is pretty paltry on DWS's standard.

What was Martin's problem? He didn't pull off 250k in a year once. The closest he came was _Storm of Swords_, but even that fell short. I guess he couldn't find an hour a day to write. Come to that, he only managed 10 minutes a day on _Dance with Dragons _ (I wonder if his irate fans know that). I guess he wasn't cut out for the writing biz. (Even JK Rowling only managed a Potter book a year. And she could have wrapped each one up in an hour a day. What did she do with all her time?)

You see what I'm driving at? To say that it's "different now" might have an influence on the number of stories you can sell. But it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that it took Martin 6 years to write DWD. It's not like he was having trouble getting published.

ETA: By the way, you'll notice I've picked a new example. Before I was giving people some leeway by taking the small portion of fast writers-Bradbury and Heinlein-as examples. From now on, I'm going to stick with the vast majority of published authors, the average ones.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Kevis- what's your plan? I'm curious  

WHDean- GRR Martin also writes for his Wild Cards series and edits a bunch of anthologies in the last few years alongside Gardner Dozois.  And trust me, editing an anthology is a ton more work than writing a novel a lot of the time. For less money, too. So he has been working on other projects...

No one is saying "you must do X" they are only saying "if you do X, you will probably make a living in a few years of doing X".  

I've written over 400,000 words a year for the last couple years. I might get there this year, I don't know. I'll definitely get over 250k words, and that's without writing much at all for five months of this year so far (I think I've maybe written 75k words this year, maybe. Most of that back in Jan and Feb and very little since).  Writing that much doesn't take that great a time investment on my part. It really doesn't. As I showed in an earlier post, it works out to an average of 1.1 hours of writing a day.

It might not be possible for *you* but that doesn't make it impossible for someone else.


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## KaryE (May 12, 2012)

For whatever it's worth, part of the reason there "isn't much else" for traditionally pubbed authors is that many contracts contain a non-compete clause preventing the author from selling any work which competes with the contracted work. What this means is that if you've sold a fantasy novel, you can't sell another fantasy novel anywhere else, either to your own house or to a competing house. And, the house you published with won't release more than one novel a year for you no matter how fast you write (shorter romances, e.g. Harlequin may be an exception to the one a year thing).  If you google Kiana Davenport, you'll find that the non-compete clause has even been invoked when an author under contract self-published backlisted short stories previously rejected by the house in question.

I wouldn't take the length of time between books as an indicator of how fast he writes. Also, this is why some authors use pen names - to release more books when they've been prolific but their publishing house doesn't want to dilute the author's brand.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> Okay. So the wisdom of DWS and his acolytes has convinced me to see the (potential) error of my ways. Time to listen to the vet and see what kind of mileage I'll get if I play by his rules (regarding pricing). Should be a fun experiment to see if the sales ranking for my short stories rise or plummet in the process. The clock begins now...


You sure you want to do that?

I have seen one heck of a lot of people disagree with his pricing, including some such as myself who you would probably include in your sarcastic appellation of "acolyte". But your decision. *shrug*


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

Doomed Muse said:


> Kevis- what's your plan? I'm curious


As I mentioned before, I think there was some confusion regarding my position on DWS's advice. I never questioned either his output or the output of others. I'm one of those authors who writes 1000+ words in an hour and produces 1st drafts that generally arrive fully formed and needs few, if any, major revisions. On top of that, I'm not nearly the quickest typist in the world. Even though I haven't done it in the past couple of years, I used to run the circuit submitting material to magazines and publishers, so I'm quite aware of how much time that process takes. I write 8+ hours a day, 7 days a week, with no vacations. So if you do the math, I'm averaging 10,000+ days (70,000 word weeks). I've got lots of years of writing behind me and passed the 1 million word mark a long time ago. My point is, I'm not one of those people who is amazed by how fast authors like DWS, Gutman, or other authors can write. Speed comes with practice and skill.

However, I'm not one of those people who spends a whole lot of time worrying about my book prices. I've tried many different price points and once I find what works, I leave it there. But I am interested in testing DWS strategy on book prices. So as of now, I'm hiking the prices of all of my short fiction works to see what it does to my monthly royalty statements.

As for my output, I've already got no less than a dozen novels for the year written and awaiting editing, so being prolific is something I don't have to worry about. Now if someone comes along with a magic wand to get readers to buy my books, I'll be the first person in line to worship at their altar. You don't happen to have a magic wand, do you?


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Doomed Muse said:


> It might not be possible for *you* but that doesn't make it impossible for someone else.


I've dealt fairly with you, or I tried. So I'd appreciate it if you didn't psychologize my arguments. This has nothing to do with me. I don't need writing help. I may need help to stop wasting my time on KB, yes, but it's not fair to imply that I'm dressing up my personal inadequacies as criticism. You may not have intended that, but it can be taken that way.

As for Martin's other work, I looked it over. Even if you add 100k a year, he doesn't come close. Again, he averaged 10 minutes a day on DWS's math writing DWD.

If you say you've managed that much, I believe you. But it seems to me like you're a rare bird. (ETA: Well, you and Kevis are rare birds.)


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

JRTomlin said:


> You sure you want to do that?
> 
> I have seen one heck of a lot of people disagree with his pricing, including some such as myself who you would probably include in your sarcastic appellation of "acolyte". But your decision. *shrug*


Considering the suckiness of my short story book sales, it wouldn't hurt me one bit to give it a try. The worst thing that can happen is my sales ranking continues on its swift descent. And if DWS is right, then I probably only need to sell fewer copies to maximize profits. I'm shrugging too. Sometimes, the only thing you can do is throw stuff against the wall to see if it sticks. Btw, there's nothing's wrong with being an Acolyte. I'm a disciple of quite a few famous authors. So that's a compliment.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Doomed Muse said:


> Kevis- what's your plan? I'm curious
> 
> WHDean- GRR Martin also writes for his Wild Cards series and edits a bunch of anthologies in the last few years alongside Gardner Dozois. And trust me, editing an anthology is a ton more work than writing a novel a lot of the time. For less money, too. So he has been working on other projects...
> 
> ...


I think you *might* just be right about Martin. Let's see, there was this in 2010:


Published in 2010, a rather substantial tome that he edited.

This from 2007: 


I recall Hedge Knight II from 2007.

I think this was from 2007 also:



This one from 2008:



A bunch more but those are the ones I think of off hand. Poor Mr. Martin. Not prolific at all.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> Considering the suckiness of my short story book sales, it wouldn't hurt me one bit to give it a try. The worst thing that can happen is my sales ranking continues on its swift descent. And if DWS is right, then I probably only need to sell fewer copies to maximize profits. I'm shrugging too. Sometimes, the only thing you can do is throw stuff against the wall to see if it sticks.


I'm all for throwing stuff against the wall to see if it sticks. It's how I came up with my own prices. You're right that you can increase profits with selling fewer copies sometimes. It's worth a try.

Good luck with trying it!


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## AKLoggie (Aug 13, 2011)

WHDean said:


> True. But my concern was to clarify what the poster meant by calling the system "awesome." That can mean a lot of things, only one of which is that it's working the way it was laid out by DWS. In other words, does "awesome" means she's churning out 50 stories a year and making money; or does it mean setting aside an hour a day is working out great? Big difference in what "awesome" means.


So, I never said any system was awesome, I said going with the plan of writing an hour a day was awesome. Because it's forces me, no matter how lazy I feel, to write every. single. day. If I am so moved, I write more. Oh, that's where you are gonna grab a gotcha, I guess. Sometimes, I get excited, and I write longer! OH NO, I WROTE FOR TWO HOURS ONE DAY! breaking the law, breaking the law...

I haven't been doing it for 6 years, so I can't tell you what that is like, but I can tell you that I'm consistently publishing 2 shorts and 1 novella a month, and that? that is, in fact, AWESOME. Even if they totally suck. Because I'm writing, putting it out, moving on and not mooning over my mistakes. I'm not quitting my day job just yet, but I'm enjoying what I am doing, and I expect to match my day job's salary in the next 2 years.

But you seem really insistent and strident that no one can possibly be successful by focusing and being consistent on a daily basis, so uhm, ok dude. Whatevs. It's not a militant 'system' that anyone is pitching anyone else. I just don't think a goal of 5k a week is much of a stretch.

(In typing this, more people have posted, including you. I'm honestly incredibly confused as to what exactly you are arguing about. Also, I hope George took a few days off to roll around in his giant piles of cash, Scrooge McDuck Style.)


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

JR- Armaggedon Rag was one of his earliest books (and one that almost killed his writing career and made it so he had to move on to Hollywood for a while). But yeah, he's plenty prolific...

Kevis- let us know how it goes (well, in 6 months when you have data, I guess!)  For what it's worth, I think you have awesome covers!  

Thanks, WHDean. I am a rare bird. I work to learn everything I can about writing, work to improve my craft, and I write instead of just talking about it. That puts me (and a lot of people here on the Kindleboards) so far ahead of most people that want to be writers it isn't even funny (it really isn't. I get a lot of "how do you sell X or how do you write novels" questions from people who don't take the time to just sit down and actually write, sigh).

Franky, my hero is Nora Roberts. She's been putting out an average of 9 novels a year since I've been born. She says she writes about five hours a day most weekdays. Sounds about right to me. (Still, I'll point out, far far short of even a 40 hour work week).  But it's her work ethic I strive to emulate (well, I would deal with making the millions a year she makes, too, hehe).


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

JRTomlin said:


> I'm all for throwing stuff against the wall to see if it sticks. It's how I came up with my own prices. You're right that you can increase profits with selling fewer copies sometimes. It's worth a try.
> 
> *Good luck with trying it!*


Thanks. I need it!


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> As I mentioned before, I think there was some confusion regarding my position on DWS's advice. I never questioned either his output or the output of others. I'm one of those authors who writes 1000+ words in an hour and produces 1st drafts that generally arrive fully formed and needs few, if any, major revisions. On top of that, I'm not nearly the quickest typist in the world. Even though I haven't done it in the past couple of years, I used to run the circuit submitting material to magazines and publishers, so I'm quite aware of how much time that process takes. I write 8+ hours a day, 7 days a week, with no vacations. So if you do the math, I'm averaging 10,000+ days (70,000 word weeks). I've got lots of years of writing behind me and passed the 1 million word mark a long time ago. My point is, I'm not one of those people who is amazed by how fast authors like DWS, Gutman, or other authors can write. Speed comes with practice and skill.
> 
> However, I'm not one of those people who spends a whole lot of time worrying about my book prices. I've tried many different price points and once I find what works, I leave it there. But I am interested in testing DWS strategy on book prices. So as of now, I'm hiking the prices of all of my short fiction works to see what it does to my monthly royalty statements.
> 
> As for my output, I've already got no less than a dozen novels for the year written and awaiting editing, so being prolific is something I don't have to worry about. Now if someone comes along with a magic wand to get readers to buy my books, I'll be the first person in line to worship at their altar. You don't happen to have a magic wand, do you?


I've done what you talk about here in the past, wrote fiction for 8 hours a day although only for 5 days a week. At the time I was averaging more like 500 words an hour. The thing was I burned myself out which I don't at the 1000 words a day pace. I no longer pressure myself to get thousands of words down every day like I used to.

Ok, I got behind schedule because of my health last year and did write more per day in March but usually I don't. It is counterproductive for me. But that's me. It's one way that probably writers tend to differ. But you can be very productive at a steady pace because now I never miss a day of writing and at the end of the year that's a fair amount of writing.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Doomed Muse said:


> JR- Armaggedon Rag was one of his earliest books (and one that almost killed his writing career and made it so he had to move on to Hollywood for a while). But yeah, he's plenty prolific...


Was it? I'd forgotten that and was thinking it was a later one. It's one that I have in hard copy and haven't gotten around to reading, so maybe I won't. LOL


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

Doomed Muse said:


> Kevis- let us know how it goes (well, in 6 months when you have data, I guess!) For what it's worth, I think you have awesome covers!


If I don't burn out first, I should have plenty of data for you, lol. I appreciate the kind words about my covers. Coming from you with your stable of *Godly* covers, that means a lot.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

JRTomlin said:


> I've done what you talk about here in the past, wrote fiction for 8 hours a day although only for 5 days a week. At the time I was averaging more like 500 words an hour. The thing was I burned myself out which I don't at the 1000 words a day pace. I no longer pressure myself to get thousands of words down every day like I used to.
> 
> Ok, I got behind schedule because of my health last year and did write more per day in March but usually I don't. It is counterproductive for me. But that's me. It's one way that probably writers tend to differ. But you can be very productive at a steady pace because now I never miss a day of writing and at the end of the year that's a fair amount of writing.


It's working for you, Jeanne. Everytime I look at your signature, there's always a new book staring back at me! Which reminds me, I've got to get around to reading those books of yours I downloaded. Sometimes, I wish there were two of me. Then again, I'd probably just create twice as much havoc!


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> If I don't burn out first, I should have plenty of data for you, lol. I appreciate the kind words about my covers. Coming from you with you stable of *godly* covers, that means a lot.


I liked Armageddon Rag, for what it's worth. It almost broke his career because the book was so expensive to produce (it has a lot of lyrics in it, the rights for which were super spendy to purchase for the publisher). It's a good book, it just turned out to be a poor bet from his publisher.

Off topic but speaking of Martin, the stories in his Dreamsongs collection are amazing. If anyone wants to study an SF/F/H writer writing mind-blowing short stories, that collection is a good place to start, in my opinion.

Haha, Kevis. My covers are hardly godly and my favorite ones are yet to be released, but thanks. I'm working at improving my eye for such things so I can make better covers in the future. I really do think they help sell books and are a worthwhile thing to know about and hire good help for.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

I also think experience hasn't really been taken into account (JR brought it up). That can't be underestimated.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

AKLoggie said:


> So, I never said any system was awesome, I said going with the plan of writing an hour a day was awesome. Because it's forces me, no matter how lazy I feel, to write every. single. day. If I am so moved, I write more. Oh, that's where you are gonna grab a gotcha, I guess. Sometimes, I get excited, and I write longer! OH NO, I WROTE FOR TWO HOURS ONE DAY! breaking the law, breaking the law...
> 
> I haven't been doing it for 6 years, so I can't tell you what that is like, but I can tell you that I'm consistently publishing 2 shorts and 1 novella a month, and that? that is, in fact, AWESOME. Even if they totally suck. Because I'm writing, putting it out, moving on and not mooning over my mistakes. I'm not quitting my day job just yet, but I'm enjoying what I am doing, and I expect to match my day job's salary in the next 2 years.


I'm not trying to be obnoxious, but this is all too vague.

1. How long is "consistently publishing"? For one month, three months or 18? And has it been the same quantity every month since you started? I ask because that could mean anything.

2. In addition to the one hour a day writing, how do you get the editing, covers, formatting, etc. taken care of? Is that time included in your 5 hours a week?

3. You said, "I'm not quitting my day job just yet," but what does that mean in dollars? That could be anywhere between $5/month and $400/week.



> But you seem really insistent and strident that no one can possibly be successful by focusing and being consistent on a daily basis, so uhm, ok dude. Whatevs. It's not a militant 'system' that anyone is pitching anyone else. I just don't think a goal of 5k a week is much of a stretch.


No, I never said or suggested that.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

I'm both a fan of DWS' post and skeptical of some points inside it. I think great progress can absolutely be made in an hour a day or so. I don't think most writers can make a full-time living writing short fiction an hour a day, or even two hours a day. Most can't sell steadily to 5 cent a word magazines--this is actually the biggest downfall in the argument. There are a limited number of these high-paying mags in any genre, and a limited number of spots inside those magazines. Some can, even without the high number of pro sales part, make a living writing shorts, and a few might actually do it. Polished writers and professional writers who want to do it will have the easiest time, clearly. _Most_ writers aren't either of those things. I don't think he's been deceptive. If anything, overly optimistic because it's an exciting concept. Even if someone can't achieve what he's lined out (and again, I really don't think most people can), what of someone who can earn an extra $10-20k one year from doing it. Seems to me a good concept that might have been a little better received with more conservative estimates, that's all.

While I think an average of an hour a day would help anyone make great progress toward making a full-time income _eventually_, I'm not so sure about charging $2.99 for a 7,000 word story in almost any genre besides erotica. I guess if you're really hoping for only 5 sales per story across all outlets on average per month, maybe. I don't think I'd charge $2.99 for a horror, science fiction or fantasy story unless it was at least 20,000 words or so. I get $2.99 for a story as short as 4,300 words, and I charge the same for stories up to 14,500. My 3,700 worder is 99 cents. But these are all erotic material that can command a higher price point than most other genres.

My thinking might be affected by some things I've been watching in romance and erotic romance, however. There are a lot of complaints about romantic short stories at the $2.99 range, but I haven't yet determined if the readers are unhapppy that the $2.99 only pays for 10-15000 words, or if it's because they pay $2.99 for something that isn't a complete story, but an installment (sometimes with a cliffhanger ending even). I'm thinking maybe it's the installment bit sticking in their craw. If it was a complete story that they enjoyed and that left them feeling satisfied, maybe they would feel differently, even if there happened to be another installment? As long as what they pay for can stand alone, maybe they'd be happy with it? Personally, I'd be pissed at a cliffhanger when I thought I was getting a complete story that could stand alone, so this makes sense to me.

I'm getting ready to publish some science fiction and horror shorts, and I may double them up or even put three together to get 20,000 words to feel more justified in the $2.99. I still worry that would be a disaster of one-stars based on length and price, though. Having a larger catalog is better than a small one, but at the same time I wonder if it might be better to have a slightly smaller one with ebooks that sell better than a bigger one with ebooks that barely ever sell.

I think each person needs to take what works for them away from it, honestly. A 99 cent story or novel that takes off can make a lot of money for a writer and gain a huge audience. It doesn't happen often, but it happens enough to help some writers make steady money, even if it doesn't send them through the stratosphere. DWS completely discounts the 99 cent short story, but it clearly worked for some people. The same could be said for Select. We all have our biases; it's allowed. Even considering the points I'm not down with, DWS has so much really great information that I can forgive anything that strikes me as enthusiastic exaggeration of what many writers will really be capable of.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

So here’s my conclusion on the breakdown of what DWS really meant (but forgot to mention):

1. The model doesn’t apply to beginning writers, only advanced ones. Out of the set of all advanced writers, it only applies to fast writers who are also full-time writers—even though they apparently only write an hour a day. So, only advanced, full-time fast writers (AFTFWs) could do this. 

2. AFTFWs only produce a draft in 5 hours a week, not finished copy. 

3. Five hours a week does not include any other of the things you need to do to get published: editing, covers, formatting, submissions to magazines and other miscellaneous logistical and maintenance matters. How long does this take? Since only full-time writers can pull it off, my guess is that it takes another 10-35 hours a week.  

4. Is anyone on track to making living wage money selling shorts? Maybe. But that’s still an open question because no one has actually done it yet.

Conclusion. No one fits the model. The closest are AFTFWs who realistically devote more than 5 hours a week, if only in virtue of the fact that they do it full time. In other words, the model is unrealistic, pie in the sky. 

As I've said many times, none of this is an argument against the wonders of an hour a day. It's an exposure of the unreality of DWS's model.  

And that's all I got to say about that.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

WHDean said:


> So here's my conclusion on the breakdown of what DWS really meant (but forgot to mention):
> 
> 1. The model doesn't apply to beginning writers, only advanced ones. Out of the set of all advanced writers, it only applies to fast writers who are also full-time writers-even though they apparently only write an hour a day. So, only advanced, full-time fast writers (AFTFWs) could do this.
> 
> ...


So here's a rhetorical question. Assuming that you are correct that no writer can (or has) lived up to DWS's system, has your conclusion led you to believe that a writer, in the prevailing environment of perusing the avenues of both traditional publishing and self-publishing, cannot make a livable income based solely on short stories? Or have you deduced that there is not enough empirical evidence presented either in this thread or the original article to prove the merit of the proposed strategy? I'm asking this out of sheer curiosity, because I'm not sure exactly what point you're debating, and the ones I raised aren't necessarily mutual.


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> So here's a rhetorical question. Assuming that you are correct that no writer can (or has) lived up to DWS's system, has your conclusion led you to believe that a writer, in the prevailing environment of perusing the avenues of both traditional publishing and self-publishing, cannot make a livable income based solely on short stories? Or have you deduced that there is not enough empirical evidence presented either in this thread or the original article to prove the merit of the proposed strategy? I'm asking this out of sheer curiosity, because I'm not sure exactly what point you're debating, and the ones I raised aren't necessarily mutual.


Mr. Dean, I have the same question. Because coming on the KB, asking for proof of DWS' claims, finding none that satisfies you, and then making a list that sums up your conclusions is neither logical or conclusive proof of anything. The only thing it proves sir, is that no one who has posted on KB in the last two days has provided you with the evidence you seem to require to move you off of your position. It really doesn't mean _anything_. 

One more (and final) thing before I crawl back to my writing cave: I cry "foul" in raising the example of Mr. Martin. For one thing, as another party pointed out here, the release date of his novels may have nothing to do with his work speed. You have no idea if it does or not, and neither do I.

But let us suppose it does, for a moment: if you were sitting on the advances he must certainly be sitting upon, my guess is you might select to take it a bit easy. Shoot a game of billiards now and again. Hunt for grouse; call out the hounds. Go spelunking, rather than sitting chained to a writing desk. That is just as likely a reason as any for the pace of his releases, so since 0+0=0, our arguments cancel each other out.

And, as amusing and entertaining as all of this has been, since I cannot have the sport of convincing you that your position is wrong, I will at least be satisfied that these conversations were enjoyable and stimulating.

And with that, I leave this thread and return to Rome for further instructions.

G


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> Or have you deduced that there is not enough empirical evidence presented either in this thread or the original article to prove the merit of the proposed strategy?


More or less this one. I said early on that the relative importance of the variables in the model is reversed. Making money selling shorts is something like 10% following the hour a day plan and 90% the writer and luck. That's common economics sense if you look at Amazon and who's selling (some people can't give away their short stories; others sell them for $3.99).

So where does that leave his projections for sales? In other words, how do you even come close to talking about possible sales figures when there's no such thing as an average sales figure or sale price that could apply in this case? He says, basically, "Oh well, averaging five a month at $2.99 is a modest number." Is it? How does he know? The number comes from nowhere and it's no more or less realistic than assuming 0 sales or 500 sales. Five is just a small number that sounds plausible _because it is small_. That's what gives the model its prima facie plausibility. People can say, "Hey, five sales a month is a pretty modest number." But it isn't because it's a complete fiction.

Let me use a different analogy, which may not help at all. DWS is saying something like this. "Here's how you could make a living on Mars. Step 1: get up in the morning and get dressed. Step 2: go to work because you still have to work on Mars (don't forget to pack a lunch!). Step 3: come home..."

You see my point? The plan for living on Mars is BS because it's built on a non-existent if possible (one day) reality. The "if" is so big that it makes the rest of the "plan" for living there irrelevant. Of course, you'd put your pants on one leg at a time on Mars. So what? All the important questions are left unanswered.

Anyway, you and others probably could project a little better if you've already developed a fan base and so on, where sales have been steady or growing over x-number of months. I don't know your case. But even for you, where you have your own data about you in particular, you probably wouldn't feel confident saying, "I'll be making x-number of dollars by this point on x-number of books." You might aim for that, sure, but can you really know how the cookie will crumble? So how does making projections about some unknown author selling x-number of books in x-number of years for x-number of dollars make any sense whatsoever? I say it obviously doesn't.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

I think the 5 sales average a month comes from a bunch of us who've shared our early numbers.  I know that I usually hit at least that average (and more whenever I put up new work), so it's a good baseline to work from.  I've found it so, anyway. Once I got more than 15 or so things up, my sales haven't really ever dropped below the 5 sales per month per title on average figure and I know a lot of other writers indie publishing who are seeing the same kinds of results after they hit a threshold of 10-20 items for sale.

Remember, too, it's an average. I have stories up that sell a copy or two every three months and others that sell 10 or 20 or 50 copies a month. The average works out though and the money comes in, so that's what matters to me. I can't predict what might sell well or not (my best-selling thing to date is a 4500 word literary short story, wouldn't have predicted that!), so I find it easier to just put everything up and keep on with the writing.

I can't say for sure what I'll be making in another 3 years, of course. But projecting based on my current sales numbers (which are very minimal compared to many people on this board, mind you), I'll be making about six figures a year by the end of 2015 (so starting in 2016 or so) if I write and publish everything I have planned.  That's why averaging and aiming low is helpful. I know that some things I put might sell very few copies and something I can't predict might take off. By having a large number of titles across multiple genres, by making sure they are the best stories I can write, and by making sure they have great covers and blurbs, I'm maximizing my chances of having something take off among readers.  I also maximize my chances for readers to find me by having lots of titles up.  Could it all crash and burn and suddenly tomorrow I sell zero copies of anything? Sure. But that's not really something any business plans on and I'm running a business. I have to work with the couple years of data I have. That data says I will pretty much always sell *at least* an average of 5 copies each of stuff and that putting up new work always boosts my sales numbers and income (I've never put up a thing yet that didn't cause a boost in income and sales).  That's the kind of thing I use to project forward. Nothing about the future is certain, but worrying about things I can't control isn't helpful.

I can control how much I write. I can control how good it is. I can control how good my covers are and how good the general presentation of my work is. I can control where I submit short stories for publication. I can control where my stories are sold and in what formats. 
So I focus on these things. That's what Dean is talking about, as well. If you write 50 short stories a year (at whatever pace you do), send out the best ones to pro markets and put up everything you have the rights to as ebooks both singly and in collections, if you make them widely available in multiple formats, and you keep this up for at least a few years (he gives six as an example, which I think is fair), then you will probably be making a living (which he defines arbitrarily as 40k a year) after those years. All the data I've gathered from my own sales and work habits has shown me he is on the right track with that advice.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Gutman said:


> Mr. Dean, I have the same question. Because coming on the KB, asking for proof of DWS' claims, finding none that satisfies you, and then making a list that sums up your conclusions is neither logical or conclusive proof of anything. The only thing it proves sir, is that no one who has posted on KB in the last two days has provided you with the evidence you seem to require to move you off of your position. It really doesn't mean _anything_.
> 
> One more (and final) thing before I crawl back to my writing cave: I cry "foul" in raising the example of Mr. Martin. For one thing, as another party pointed out here, the release date of his novels may have nothing to do with his work speed. You have no idea if it does or not, and neither do I.


Mr. Gutman,

Actually, I didn't ask for proof. I said he provided no evidence and I asked his defenders what evidence they had. Not much on either the speed-publishing or the money-making front. At best, some people may be making some money and publishing a lot, but they're certainly not doing either in 5 hours a week, 50 weeks of the year. And no one (including DWS) could cite any actual person who is. The onus doesn't lie with me to _disprove _ the case, the onus lies on him and his defenders to _back it up_.

As for the Martin example, I had two reasons for bringing it up. The first is that anyone can conjure up reasons it took him six years to complete _Dances with Dragons_-and they did. The same goes for any other example I could cite. But coming up with possible reasons to explain why so few writers are as productive as DWS claims doesn't prove that they really are productive. These conjectures are just ad hoc explanations dreamt up to explain away the inconsistency. What's worse is that you need these explanations for all but a handful of writers who are very productive. It's not very convincing to say that the 90%-95% of writers who don't put out what DWS claims possible-and yet do it _full time_, not one hour a day-each have some reason for it.

Here's the second reason I brought up Martin. I knew everyone would convict themselves of motivated reasoning-and selective memory-by dreaming up reasons that Martin couldn't finish. But we all know why it took six years: like every other writer (except DWS) _he got stuck or he got bored with it or both_. It happens to great writers all the time (_Simarillion _ anyone?). And every second thread on KB testifies to the fact that people get stuck all the time. Except this thread. Oh no! On this thread everyone writes one hour a day and walks away with 250k at the end of the May. Total BS. All who have said this have convicted themselves of cheery-picking or wishful thinking.

As for persuading anyone, well, I have no illusions there. People have been fooled or have fooled themselves into believing bootstrap reasoning since time immemorial because _it is _ convincing, not because it _isn't_.

A slice, as always, my friend.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Doomed Muse said:


> I think the 5 sales average a month comes from a bunch of us who've shared our early numbers. ...All the data I've gathered from my own sales and work habits has shown me he is on the right track with that advice.


*1. Average sales.* If I pointed out to Sidney Crosby that professional hockey players are pretty rare, he could look around and reply "Well, I know quite a few of them" because he is a professional hockey. His perception is skewed by the company he keeps.

The same question can be asked about 5 sales a month. You may average five sales a month, so it seems reasonable to you. But how many people do that? Are you part of the 6 in 10, making it a real average? Or are you 1 in a thousand making it a spurious average? That's the key difference. DWS provides no evidence that this is a reasonable assumption for any given writer to make. Even if you qualify by saying that he meant "any given _good _ writer," where's the evidence that 5 sales a month is reasonable? He provides no evidence. He doesn't even claim that he averages 5 sales a month. Maybe he does that and more, I don't know; but he didn't mention himself or any other actual person.

As for his caveat that you should put in your own number, try it and see how little it takes to throw the whole thing out the window: average 4 sales a month on 40 titles (instead of 50) and boom: you're adding another 3 or 4 years before you get $40,000. Does 9 or 10 years sound like a great plan?

And can you realistically assume-no matter how committed you are-that nothing will come between you and your 40 (or 50) title a year output over a decade (over even 6 years)? You won't need time off, royalty rates or pricing won't change, buying habits won't change, etc., etc. No, no. In the indie world where everything is supposedly constantly changing, the key things that indies need most to survive will magically stay the same or get better over the next six years. Yeah. Sure. (Don't get me wrong here. I don't doubt your commitment or abilities. I'm just talking about realistic assumptions about the future. And these aren't.)

*2. One hour days.* I keep bringing up the one hour day point because it's another bogus conjecture. For one thing, all one hour days are not created equal. People here were defending DWS's mantra while admitting that writing one hour a day is all they do. But someone who doesn't do anything but work one hour a day writing is not comparable to a person who works one hour days after working 8 hour days.

Take your case. Image if you had to work-to use DWS's own figure-a 60 hour week on top of your health problems. Could you realistically claim that your one hour would be as productive as it is now? I'm not knocking you; I'm just saying that not working counts for a lot. DWS himself said wrist problems force him to do an hour on and an hour off. Would those wrists be raring to go after 60 hours in a keyboarding job? Really?

The point is not that no one could do 250k a year working 60 hour days while averaging 5 sales a month across multiple stories. The point is, first, that he provided no evidence that someone does it; second, taken as a theory, it's completely unrealistic for any but extremely rare exceptions. Therefore, it shouldn't be held up as "possible" at all.

(As a personal aside, I get the feeling you're a nice person. And I'm not trying to talk you out of anything. But if this doesn't work or doesn't work as planned, don't forget that a lot people--not just me--will tell you this was unrealistic to begin with, so don't beat yourself up as failure. If it does work, so much the better.)


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

WHDean said:


> Mr. Gutman,
> 
> Actually, I didn't ask for proof. I said he provided no evidence and I asked his defenders what evidence they had. Not much on either the speed-publishing or the money-making front. At best, some people may be making some money and publishing a lot, but they're certainly not doing either in 5 hours a week, 50 weeks of the year. And no one (including DWS) could cite any actual person who is. The onus doesn't lie with me to _disprove _ the case, the onus lies on him and his defenders to _back it up_.
> 
> ...


No onus lies on him or us. The onus lies on you as someone who has repeatedly attacked another person who gave some advice reflecting his extensive experience as a professional in publishing and said to apply such advice as best suits our own situation.

Your resentment is your own problem.

DWS and KKR, who are aware of this conversation, simply laughed.



Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> It's working for you, Jeanne. Everytime I look at your signature, there's always a new book staring back at me! Which reminds me, I've got to get around to reading those books of yours I downloaded. Sometimes, I wish there were two of me. Then again, I'd probably just create twice as much havoc!


Thanks, Kevis. I don't have all my novels in my sig. There are three that I'm not promoting at the moment and just don't want to clutter my sig.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

I don't really get what is so controversial about Dean Wesley Smith's post that we have to spent 9 pages discussing it.

He said that you can make a living writing short fiction under certain conditions (being prolific, regular output, regularly selling to pro markets). He never said that it was guaranteed. 

Is it possible to write 1000 words in an hour? It is, cause I regularly hit that and sometimes even more, when I'm on a roll. Is it possible to write a complete short story in a day or two? Yes, it is. I've done it myself several times. Is it possible to write a short story every week? Plenty of writers have done it or do it regularly. Is it possible to sell an average of five copies per short story per month? Yes, it is. I have stories that regularly sell that amount or more per month. I also have stories that sell a copy every few months. And while I'm not yet at an average of five copies per title per month, sales have been slowly going up. Is it possible to regularly sell to pro markets? Depends on your genre and whether you can hit the tastes of one or more editors with regularity. And I'd say that this is one area where having a name or being otherwise known (due to attending Clarion, regularly attending conventions, etc...) can help. But even unknown writers can and do sell to pro mags. And if you find an editor who likes your work, you can get follow-up sales.

Does everything that Dean Wesley Smith say apply to me personally? No, it doesn't. But it's worth tracking your own output, figuring out how much you can write, how much backlist you have, how many e-books you can publish, how many you can sell, which genres do best for you. And then you can adapt his plan and his math to your own situation.

So really, what's the problem here?


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## JoyCox (Mar 21, 2012)

Doomed Muse said:


> Franky, my hero is Nora Roberts. She's been putting out an average of 9 novels a year since I've been born. She says she writes about five hours a day most weekdays. Sounds about right to me. (Still, I'll point out, far far short of even a 40 hour work week). But it's her work ethic I strive to emulate (well, I would deal with making the millions a year she makes, too, hehe).


My hero is Lionel Fanthorpe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Fanthorpe A wonderful example of how productive a person can be if they really like to write, and if they get on with the business of cranking out stories instead of spending time coming up with reasons to fail.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

CoraBuhlert said:


> I don't really get what is so controversial about Dean Wesley Smith's post that we have to spent 9 pages discussing it.
> 
> He said that you can make a living writing short fiction under certain conditions (being prolific, regular output, regularly selling to pro markets). He never said that it was guaranteed.
> 
> ...


Excellent question.


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## gspeer (Nov 10, 2010)

JoyCox said:


> My hero is Lionel Fanthorpe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Fanthorpe A wonderful example of how productive a person can be if they really like to write, and if they get on with the business of cranking out stories instead of spending time coming up with reasons to fail.


Thanks for that link. I had never heard of Lionel Fanthorpe. Glad I have now! Very inspiring!

Gary


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## gspeer (Nov 10, 2010)

CoraBuhlert said:


> I don't really get what is so controversial about Dean Wesley Smith's post that we have to spent 9 pages discussing it.
> 
> He said that you can make a living writing short fiction under certain conditions (being prolific, regular output, regularly selling to pro markets). He never said that it was guaranteed.
> 
> ...


In the immortal words of Elmer Fudd, I have always tried to be "vewy, vewy quiet," because I'm still stalking that "dwated wabbit" of Kindle publication. My career has been in writing and editing mostly religious non-fiction. I've shuffled around the keyboard a bit to slap together a couple of short stories, but nothing yet ready for publication. So I am in NO WAY qualified to speak boldly on the issues raised in this thread, nor all the good/bad/indifferent stuff in DWS's blog.

Having said that, I will admit I share Cora's sentiments exactly. Way to go. I think you've summed the whole thread and DWS's intentions beautifully.

At the same time, I've been grateful for this whole thread, because it's been a real learning experience. Being the old dog looking for new tricks, I appreciate any and every learning experience.

Thanks, Cora, and thanks to you all for the wealth of knowledge and opinion expressed here.

Gary


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## shadowfox (Jun 22, 2012)

Maybe some people might be interested in this post by Dean Wesley Smith http://www.fictorians.com/2012/05/07/stop-being-in-a-hurry/

I think it might inform some of this discussion. When Dean says that a good writer can make a living from short stories he is talking about a writer who has done a significant amount of learning and writing over a long period of time. A writer who is already writing at the professional level, and who is significantly more productive than many working writers.

The point of the post I believe is not that everyone can earn a living writing short fiction. But it is talking about a significant development in the market. Before three years ago it is the case that I only know of one author who has made a living in Short Fiction since the 1960's. He is an exceptional guy who has published over 1500 professional level short stories - an amount which is equivalent of 100 books. That's it. One exceptional author in the entire north american continent - an author who would have been earning a million dollars a month if he wrote books.

Prior to three years ago it was simply not possible to earn a living in short fiction because there were not enough markets that paid enough to do it.

Dean is not saying every writer on the planet could make a living writing short fiction. But I do know, personally, at least half a dozen who are making a living in short fiction. And I couldn't have said that three years ago.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

shadowfox said:


> Maybe some people might be interested in this post by Dean Wesley Smith http://www.fictorians.com/2012/05/07/stop-being-in-a-hurry/
> 
> I think it might inform some of this discussion. When Dean says that a good writer can make a living from short stories he is talking about a writer who has done a significant amount of learning and writing over a long period of time. A writer who is already writing at the professional level, and who is significantly more productive than many working writers.
> 
> ...


You're right. That was his main point. That writers now, once again after about 50 years of the short story market being the next thing to dead, have a chance to make a living writing short fiction is HUGE.


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## KaryE (May 12, 2012)

Related Jack London Trivia:



> By the year 1900, London was earning a comfortable living selling short fiction to magazines. In 1903, London sold _The Call of the Wild_ (a novella) to The Saturday Evening Post for $750, or *around $23,000 in today's dollars*.


Nice work if you can get it.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> No onus lies on him or us. The onus lies on you as someone who has repeatedly attacked another person who gave some advice reflecting his extensive experience as a professional in publishing and said to apply such advice as best suits our own situation.
> 
> Your resentment is your own problem.
> 
> ...


I'm not denying that he knows more than me. I affirm it: he knows more than me about publishing. People can factor that into their decisions. I'm saying he didn't offer any evidence. And he didn't.

Resentment? How do you know I don't make fat bank selling stories, but like Gutman and Disco Stu, I just don't advertise? Maybe my real motive is to discourage people so they don't get as rich as I'm getting! That's what you get when you make up motives to discredit people. Too bad the mods let you get away with it on a daily basis, because it adds nothing but acrimony to the discussions. But I guess I missed the section on the "Special Rules for Tomlin" in KB's rules of forum decorum. _Reminder to all--if you believe someone has violated Forum Decorum, please use the report feature in each post as, contrary to popular belief, we do not and cannot read every post in KindleBoards. --Betsy_

So I'm being watched am I?  I guess I'm supposed to be intimidated. Well, I don't scare easy, so you'll have to come with something better than that to shut me up. In fact, I got bored with this thread because I've said all I could say to present the other side-something only one other person did in this big old love in. But now I have to stick around because something I do resent is being bullied into silence for raising perfectly reasonable objections.

As for them laughing, I might be laughing off criticism too if I was hauling in $625 a head for my premium writing seminars.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

WHDean said:


> I'm not denying that he knows more than me. I affirm it: he knows more than me about publishing. People can factor that into their decisions. I'm saying he didn't offer any evidence. And he didn't.
> 
> Resentment? How do you know I don't make fat bank selling stories, but like Gutman and Disco Stu, I just don't advertise? Maybe my real motive is to discourage people so they don't get as rich as I'm getting! That's what you get when you make up motives to discredit people. Too bad the mods let you get away with it on a daily basis, because it adds nothing but acrimony to the discussions. But I guess I missed the section on the "Special Rules for Tomlin" in KB's rules of forum decorum.
> 
> ...


You're being watched? How do you get that from my belief that your resentment is your own problem. If it is your problem, I rather doubt anyone is watching. Try to pretend I'm somehow threatening you if you like, since that is obviously a lie.

I don't know if you make money writing or not. I do know that your attacks on DWS and KKR, such as the one in the quoted post, seem very resentful and angry. I don't care enough to try to figure out why you're so resentful and angry at them.


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## shadowfox (Jun 22, 2012)

Jack London is a hero of mine. Did you know that in his early days of writing he wrote 5,000 words a day, the equivalent of a novel every two weeks, literally for years?

He was the first millionaire writer. When a million pounds was JK Rowling money.

And, WHDean, Dean Wesley Smith is a professional writer who has written over 100 novels, who has professionally published hundreds of short stories, who once owned the fifth largest publishing company in Science Fiction, who has edited professional level science fiction magazines, and  who is a bestselling author whose books have sold millions of copies.

$625 a head is very little to a guy that can write a book in two weeks that will produce $200,000 at a minimum.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

KaryE said:


> Related Jack London Trivia:
> 
> Nice work if you can get it.


It was nice work WHEN you could get it, but of course Jack London was a great writer. Then came a period about 60 years later when you were doing well to give short stories away, there were so few pro paying markets for them.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

JRT and WHD--

In reading over your respective posts, you are both imputing motives to the other that are not reflected in the posts in this thread.  Chill.  Put each other on ignore.  People are surely running out of popcorn.

Betsy


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## B. Justin Shier (Apr 1, 2011)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> People are surely running out of popcorn.


Challenge accepted.












































B.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

shadowfox said:


> Jack London is a hero of mine. Did you know that in his early days of writing he wrote 5,000 words a day, the equivalent of a novel every two weeks, literally for years?
> 
> He was the first millionaire writer. When a million pounds was JK Rowling money.
> 
> ...


I know who Jack London and Dean Wesley Smith are. I've read the former and I've read and found useful the latter's blog. But I fail to see why I should just accept DWS's speculations when (1) they're unrealistic and (2) he provided no evidence.

Second, London was a full-time writer and a genius. Exceptional cases don't stand as examples for the average good writer. Sure, some writers here (e.g., Cora most recently) said they're writing a lot and making some money. Now you say you know some who are too. But like so many others you don't say that they're producing what DWS's says is possible and you don't say they're making a living.

The bit about the future potential doesn't fill in the blank. How can anyone assume that the self-publishing landscape is going to be the same or better for writers in the future when everyone is saying, at exactly the same time, that everything is in flux and that the future is unpredictable? How can you make future projections in an unpredictable landscape? Or do you say everything is in not in flux? Because most people seem to think everything is constantly changing except writers' paychecks, which are only going to go up.

By the way, I'm leaving your last comment alone because I'm feeling charitable. But do yourself (and DWS) a favour and don't try to make something people get paid very well for into a kind of public service. Even if it's true-and _I'm not saying it's not_-no one should be expected to just accept it as fact.


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## shadowfox (Jun 22, 2012)

WHDean said:


> By the way, I'm leaving your last comment alone because I'm feeling charitable. But do yourself (and DWS) a favour and don't try to make something people get paid very well for into a kind of public service. Even if it's true-and _I'm not saying it's not_-no one should be expected to just accept it as fact.


Frankly, WHDean, I do not need your charity.

Your idea that Dean Wesley Smith needs to write controversial posts on a blog to drum up an audience for his " premium writing seminars." and that it is all a scam is just baffling to me. It seems mad to me that he would do that. Why would he bother? A single advert listing the qualifications I've mentioned would fill his "premium writing seminars" up for the next decade.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

BJS--

I do wonder about you sometimes...


Betsy


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

It's hard to argue when you are constantly being told that if you try to offer up evidence that Dean's assumptions aren't that unrealistic, you are somehow an exception. I find being called an exception a little insulting, really. It undermines the years of hard work and the sacrifices I've put into becoming a writer.  I chose not to have kids. I chose to turn down a good job after working years in a very stressful job and instead live very cheaply and make a go of becoming a writer (and my plan was to give it at least 10 years, so I don't find 10 years unreasonable at all).  I guess I'm sort of lucky I found the right spouse in that he supports me emotionally and (before he lost his job) financially. But again, that's not really luck. That's me having the wisdom to not settle down without having exactly what I want in a mate. I had three marriage proposals before him. I could have said yes to any of those men and probably been okay. But I wouldn't have the strong and awesome relationship with someone who really gets me that I have today.  Am I lucky that I can sell stories to pro magazines? I don't think I'd call it luck. I have almost 500 rejections in just the last 3 years. I was persistent. I kept writing. I kept improving. That's not luck.

As for if I were working a full time job and writing? Well, that's many writers I know. I already mentioned Jay Lake, who writes at least 250,000 words a year while having a full time job, a kid, and cancer.  Another friend of mine wrote a story a week for 53 straight weeks while working full time (and most of those are indie published now).  Again, just because it seems unlikely doesn't mean it's impossible. These things are all about your choices in life. Do you watch one less hour of TV to write? Do you get your words in during lunch breaks (I know plenty of writers who do that)?  It's like exercise or anything else. If you want it, you find the time. Get up an hour early. Go to bed an hour later. Take one weekend day and write for five hours. I know another writer who uses all his vacation time to write and puts out his trad-published novels in about two weeks (writes two a year that way).

If you aren't selling an average of 5 copies a month across all your titles, either you need more titles up (I'd say at least 20) or you need better covers, blurbs, and openings/sample.  That's my opinion. It could be other factors, I don't know.

As for the workshops, well, Kris and Dean usually take a loss on them.  So I don't even know what you are getting at with that. (And, as someone who has taken a few of those workshops, you want to know why I've sold stories to pro magazines? Those. They catapulted my writing craft far far higher than I could have taken it in a short time period. Especially the Character Voice workshop.  There are few other ways for a writer to go and get 60+ combined years of experience in story-telling and business distilled and offered up for learning from.)


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

shadowfox said:


> Frankly, WHDean, I do not need your charity.
> 
> Your idea that Dean Wesley Smith needs to write controversial posts on a blog to drum up an audience for his " premium writing seminars." and that it is all a scam is just baffling to me. It seems mad to me that he would do that. Why would he bother? A single advert listing the qualifications I've mentioned would fill his "premium writing seminars" up for the next decade.


I think the reason he doesn't bother with a single advert is that he doesn't need to in order to fill them or, as you so correctly point out, need supposedly controversial posts, although as Cora mentioned, there's not much controversial in Dean's blog post. In fact, it's quite mild in its assertions.


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## Mike McIntyre (Jan 19, 2011)

My hero is Raymond Carver http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Carver -- "the Chekhov of middle America." Although he wrote poetry and the occasional essay, he was primarily known as a short story writer. He is widely credited with bringing the literary short story back into prominence. His writing career lasted 29 years, from 1959 to 1988. The total number of short stories he wrote in those 29 years? A whopping 71--less than two and a half per year. Do I wish he would have followed the Smith formula and published another 1379 stories in those 29 years? You bet. But for whatever reasons, he couldn't follow the formula, and we are left with just the 71. Then again, Carver will be read and remembered longer than _nearly_ everyone who churns out a short story in 5 hours, 50 times per year. The Smith formula, with its emphasis on words per hour, reminds me of that Truman Capote line about Jack Kerouac: "That's not writing, that's typing" (although I admire both of those authors). Relatively few people who pump out a quarter million words a year in a spare five hours a week will ever make a living from them. And on the flip side, relatively few people who spend months or even years perfecting a single short story, as Carver did, will ever make a living from their efforts. But that's it, isn't it?...No matter how it gets done, relatively few authors will ever make a living from writing. That said, whatever inspires you to park your butt in that chair can't be all bad.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

CoraBuhlert said:


> I don't really get what is so controversial about Dean Wesley Smith's post that we have to spent 9 pages discussing it.
> 
> He said that you can make a living writing short fiction under certain conditions (being prolific, regular output, regularly selling to pro markets). He never said that it was guaranteed.
> 
> Is it possible to write 1000 words in an hour? It is, cause I regularly hit that and sometimes even more, when I'm on a roll. Is it possible to write a complete short story in a day or two? Yes, it is. I've done it myself several times. Is it possible to write a short story every week? Plenty of writers have done it or do it regularly. Is it possible to sell an average of five copies per short story per month? Yes, it is. I have stories that regularly sell that amount or more per month. I also have stories that sell a copy every few months. And while I'm not yet at an average of five copies per title per month, sales have been slowly going up. Is it possible to regularly sell to pro markets? Depends on your genre and whether you can hit the tastes of one or more editors with regularity. And I'd say that this is one area where having a name or being otherwise known (due to attending Clarion, regularly attending conventions, etc...) can help. But even unknown writers can and do sell to pro mags. And if you find an editor who likes your work, you can get follow-up sales.


Cora,

The problem with your answer is the same as DWS's. You're quilting together a collection of _best case scenarios _ into a composite that doesn't actually exist. You say you can write 1,000 words an hour or more and write a story in a few days. I believe you. But do you do this day-in day-out 50 weeks of the year? Because that's what DWS 's model requires. Then you cite some other writers who write stories every week. But they're not you, and you don't say that they've done it every week for the number of years that DWS claims you have to. The same goes for mags. Being able to do each of the things on his list _some of the time _ does not mean doing them _all the time, consistently for years_. Do you see what I mean? That's what makes the scheme unrealistic.

(I blame Kantian idealism.)


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Doomed Muse said:


> It's hard to argue when you are constantly being told that if you try to offer up evidence that Dean's assumptions aren't that unrealistic, you are somehow an exception. I find being called an exception a little insulting, really. It undermines the years of hard work and the sacrifices I've put into becoming a writer. I chose not to have kids. I chose to turn down a good job after working years in a very stressful job and instead live very cheaply and make a go of becoming a writer (and my plan was to give it at least 10 years, so I don't find 10 years unreasonable at all).


Doomed,

The first time I said you were exceptional you thanked me. Now you're insulted. But the first time you offered yourself as an example you also said that you wrote "1.1 hours day" and that you were a "lazy" writer, which supported DWS's claim. Now you're saying that you've sacrificed having children, a good job, better accommodations, and other things-in short, you've sacrificed _everything _ to writing.

I believe you this time too. But I won't say you're exceptional, I'll say now you're being realistic. Sacrifice is really what it takes _to do anything well_. The great Konrath (to cite an indie) and every other writer preaches this same gospel: you've got to dig deep, and you have. The only one who says you can do it in 6 years working an hour a day is DWS.

I admire your commitment.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

WHDean said:


> You're quilting together a collection of _best case scenarios _


Let's not bring quilting into this. 

Betsy


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Mike McIntyre said:


> My hero is Raymond Carver http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Carver -- "the Chekhov of middle America." Although he wrote poetry and the occasional essay, he was primarily known as a short story writer. He is widely credited with bringing the literary short story back into prominence. His writing career lasted 29 years, from 1959 to 1988. The total number of short stories he wrote in those 29 years? A whopping 71--less than two and a half per year. Do I wish he would have followed the Smith formula and published another 1379 stories in those 29 years? You bet. But for whatever reasons, he couldn't follow the formula, and we are left with just the 71. Then again, Carver will be read and remembered longer than _nearly_ everyone who churns out a short story in 5 hours, 50 times per year. The Smith formula, with its emphasis on words per hour, reminds me of that Truman Capote line about Jack Kerouac: "That's not writing, that's typing" (although I admire both of those authors). Relatively few people who pump out a quarter million words a year in a spare five hours a week will ever make a living from them. And on the flip side, relatively few people who spend months or even years perfecting a single short story, as Carver did, will ever make a living from their efforts. But that's it, isn't it?...No matter how it gets done, relatively few authors will ever make a living from writing. That said, whatever inspires you to park your butt in that chair can't be all bad.


I'm not sure I can 100% agree with you about Raymond Carvers production -- or lack of it -- since he was also a poet and playwright. You don't seem to count those as production. The fact is that Carver said late in his career that he had given up writing for drinking, which is a tragedy all on its own although like King he overcame that demon but he still lost a number of years of production, so perhaps that wasn't the best possible comparison.

Nonetheless, we all have to decide the best way to write and how much. I still think writing smaller amounts regularly is worth trying, but it certainly isn't for everyone.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

I see it more as making choices. Like anyone who starts a new business instead of choosing to keep working for someone else.  Yeah, I don't work as much or as hard as I can, for a lot of reasons.  And I'm still making hundreds of dollars a month...


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## KevinMcLaughlin (Nov 11, 2010)

I don't really get all the conflict here. Can some folks write 1k a day, every day? Sure. I'd bet lots of folks can without any risk of burnout. My best days have been about 20k, 24k, and 26k words respectively, each in one 24hour period (and interestingly, the "push" sections of the work came out cleaner, required less revision, and came back with less red marks from the editor). Can I do THAT regularly? No, no I cannot. Those were deadline pushes that resulted in significant burnout for me, afterward. Even so, I wouldn't say "nobody can do 20k days regularly", just because of my own experiences.

Writers are different. Some write in bursts, others in a consistent daily effort. Some write many hours a day, others only in snippets or stolen moments. No method is wrong, if it is working.

I'm not completely comfortable with Dean's pricing, I have to admit. That's because I am not really comfortable selling my work at prices where I wouldn't be willing to buy it, and I can't see myself wanting to buy something shorter than 10k words for $2.99. My shorts are 3-4k words, usually, so I'd have to bundle three to make it worthwhile. But sell 10-15k word short stories or collections for that? Sure, I can see doing that. It means adapting how I write, which is never comfortable. But adapting is something all writers have to do these days, and 99 cents is losing steam as a viable price point, thanks to Amazon algorithm shifts, while at the same time $4.99-9.99 is becoming an accepted range for novel length work (that, according to the data I've mined personally from the Amazon site).

So, some folks have said that the method Dean outlines only works if you are an experienced writer, who can write steadily with great consistency for a long period of time, produce great work, and get it out there. I agree. But then, _isn't that the general requirement list for making a living at writing today?_ I mean, your writing must be excellent, and you need to produce more of it with great consistency. Some folks "break out" big with one or two books, but I wouldn't bet my career on that.

What's interesting to me about Dean's post isn't that making a living as a short story writer is easy or simple, but rather that it is possible at all - something which just wasn't true until recently. Which is cool. =)


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

KevinMcLaughlin said:


> I don't really get all the conflict here. Can some folks write 1k a day, every day? Sure. I'd bet lots of folks can without any risk of burnout. My best days have been about 20k, 24k, and 26k words respectively, each in one 24hour period (and interestingly, the "push" sections of the work came out cleaner, required less revision, and came back with less red marks from the editor). Can I do THAT regularly? No, no I cannot. Those were deadline pushes that resulted in significant burnout for me, afterward. Even so, I wouldn't say "nobody can do 20k days regularly", just because of my own experiences.
> 
> Writers are different. Some write in bursts, others in a consistent daily effort. Some write many hours a day, others only in snippets or stolen moments. No method is wrong, if it is working.
> 
> ...


Pretty much.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

WHDean said:


> Cora,
> 
> The problem with your answer is the same as DWS's. You're quilting together a collection of _best case scenarios _ into a composite that doesn't actually exist. You say you can write 1,000 words an hour or more and write a story in a few days. I believe you. But do you do this day-in day-out 50 weeks of the year? Because that's what DWS 's model requires. Then you cite some other writers who write stories every week. But they're not you, and you don't say that they've done it every week for the number of years that DWS claims you have to. The same goes for mags. Being able to do each of the things on his list _some of the time _ does not mean doing them _all the time, consistently for years_. Do you see what I mean? That's what makes the scheme unrealistic.
> 
> (I blame Kantian idealism.)


I have written an average of 1000 words per day (every day, including weekends and holidays) for the past two years or so. I count academic writing, so it's not all fiction. But I don't count blogging, forums posts and translation work. It's not all short stories either, but also novellas and novels. Still, I've built up a pretty nice inventory over the years and I keep finding more stories in old files that I've forgotten. Some of them best remain forgotten, e.g. I really don't think that the world needs to read the very earnest interracial romance set in Mississippi with the very earnest message that racism is bad that I came across a while ago. But sometimes, I find a gem as well.

I don't do the story a week thing, but there are plenty of writers who do. Annie already mentioned Jay Lake, who did the story a week thing for a while, before focusing more on longer works. And there are a lot of very prolific writers. Nora Roberts regularly writes six full length novels per year and used to write up to nine at one point. Lynn Viehl/S.L. Viehl has written 46 novels in various genres plus short fiction, ghostwriting gigs etc... and regularly writes half a million words per year. Barbara Cartland wrote 23 romance novels in 1983 alone and hundreds over her lengthy career and left behind 160 unpublished manuscript after her death. George Simenon published 200 crime novels and 150 novellas under his own name and also wrote non-fiction and various works under pen names. British thriller writer Edgar Wallace managed 175 novels and 24 plays and several screenplays (including the one for King Kong) in 30 years. Pulp writer Walter Gibson, creator the The Shadow, wrote a novella every two weeks in the 1930s and managed 1.4 millions words in a single year at one point. He continued typing while workmen were literally building his house around him. German horror writer Helmut Rellergerd a.k.a. Jason Dark (I suspect only Atunah and Guido Henkel have ever heard of him) has been writing four novellas of approx. 30 000 words every single month since early the 1970s. We've already mentioned Lionel Fanthorpe who has written 250 pulp SF novels. Allegedly Fanthorpe sat on the sofa mumbling into a dictaphone. Sometimes his family threw a blanket over him, when they wanted to watch TV and his mumbling distracted them. Are these people outliers? Of course, they are. But there are sure a lot of outliers out there.

And anyway, nobody has to be Jay Lake or Lynn Viehl or Nora Roberts or Barbara Cartland or George Simenon or Walter Gibson or Edgar Wallace or Lionel Fanthorpe or Helmut Rellergerd or any other incredibly prolific writer. It's perfectly okay if you want to be Raymond Carver or Thomas Pynchon or George R.R. Martin or Uwe Johnson (who famously needed ten years to complete the final installment of the _Anniversaries_ series and was kept financially afloat by his publisher during those ten years) instead. Not every writer can be fast or prolific and that's okay. But just because not every writer is prolific, doesn't mean that no one can be.

Besides, Dean Wesley Smith does acknowledge that life can sometimes derail writing. He even has a name for those events - life rolls.


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## PaigeAspen (Jun 5, 2012)

LT Ville said:


> I thought the post was interesting. I'm now considering raising the price on a few of my stories. I don't know if I'll be brave enough to leave it there if they stop selling, but I'm going to be brave enough to try.


Ditto!

I want to share my newbie view... Please don't shot!

I have just started publishing on Kindle. The first book (@15,500 words) was published on May 18th and the second (@7,700 words) on the 27th. I am not only new to publishing on kindle but am a new writer. The first book I wrote and published (on kindle) took me about 6 weeks. The second was written, edited and published in 7 days. All while working a full time 8-5 and tending to my family, we gotta eat!

The second book is selling much better than the first, 6 copies in 3 and 1/2 weeks compared to 2 in 4 and 1/2 weeks, is half the length and has only one review compared to the first book which has 3.

I do think select is good for new writers like me. Have given away hundreds of each of them. Otherwise, no one will ever know who I am.

I don't have a real "point" to make here other than whatever will be, will be. I read DWS's blog and respect him and I love play with the numbers and dream of quitting my day job.

While I'm waiting for the dough to start rolling in, I'm enjoying making my dream of writing a reality.

Paige

http://www.amazon.com/Kissing-Natalie-ebook/dp/B0086XSOZ6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338328613&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Taylor-Made-Fantasies-ebook/dp/B0084JQIY6


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

CoraBuhlert said:


> I don't do the story a week thing, but there are plenty of writers who do. Annie already mentioned Jay Lake, who did the story a week thing for a while, before focusing more on longer works. And there are a lot of very prolific writers. Nora Roberts regularly writes six full length novels per year and used to write up to nine at one point. Lynn Viehl/S.L. Viehl has written 46 novels in various genres plus short fiction, ghostwriting gigs etc... and regularly writes half a million words per year. Barbara Cartland wrote 23 romance novels in 1983 alone and hundreds over her lengthy career and left behind 160 unpublished manuscript after her death. George Simenon published 200 crime novels and 150 novellas under his own name and also wrote non-fiction and various works under pen names. British thriller writer Edgar Wallace managed 175 novels and 24 plays and several screenplays (including the one for King Kong) in 30 years. Pulp writer Walter Gibson, creator the The Shadow, wrote a novella every two weeks in the 1930s and managed 1.4 millions words in a single year at one point. He continued typing while workmen were literally building his house around him. German horror writer Helmut Rellergerd a.k.a. Jason Dark (I suspect only Atunah and Guido Henkel have ever heard of him) has been writing four novellas of approx. 30 000 words every single month since early the 1970s. We've already mentioned Lionel Fanthorpe who has written 250 pulp SF novels. Allegedly Fanthorpe sat on the sofa mumbling into a dictaphone. Sometimes his family threw a blanket over him, when they wanted to watch TV and his mumbling distracted them. Are these people outliers? Of course, they are. But there are sure a lot of outliers out there.
> 
> And anyway, nobody has to be Jay Lake or Lynn Viehl or Nora Roberts or Barbara Cartland or George Simenon or Walter Gibson or Edgar Wallace or Lionel Fanthorpe or Helmut Rellergerd or any other incredibly prolific writer. It's perfectly okay if you want to be Raymond Carver or Thomas Pynchon or George R.R. Martin or Uwe Johnson (who famously needed ten years to complete the final installment of the _Anniversaries_ series and was kept financially afloat by his publisher during those ten years) instead. Not every writer can be fast or prolific and that's okay. But just because not every writer is prolific, doesn't mean that no one can be.
> 
> Besides, Dean Wesley Smith does acknowledge that life can sometimes derail writing. He even has a name for those events - life rolls.


Cora,

Thanks for offering good examples. I say good because they all seem to produce more than what DWS's predicts for one hour a day. But-you knew the _but _ would come-those are full-timers, not one-hour-a-dayers. DWS is talking one hour a day to 250k. Were Jason Dark's 30k words a month completed in an hour a day after work? I suspect not. Here's an even worse problem. Walter Gibson's 1.4 million words a year sounds impressive until you run it through DWS's math: that impressive 1.4 million should've only taken him 5.6 hours a day, weekends off and two leisurely weeks vacation. What a loafer that Gibson! He barely broke a sweat! Seriously though, doesn't that result strike a false note? That there's something wrong with a theory when it spits out a result like that?

I know that the difference between us-and most of the others-is that you're cutting him a lot of slack and I'm cutting him very little. I'm guessing you look at the word count per hour side and say yeah that can be done. Then you look at output per year side and say that can be done too. Then you look at the monthly sales and say, sure, that can be done. So what's my problem anyway?

I don't have any problem with these individual things over the long haul or two or all three in bursts. My problem is that he's quilting A, B, and C together to create Chimera Writer, who is not only all these things together, but a non-stop production machine for six straight years-one that makes money to boot. Chimera Writer _looks like _ he exists because each of his parts exists in _someone _ at _some time_. But Chimera Writer himself does not exist anywhere at any time. He's a fiction even though he appears to be real-and thus his achievements attainable. But attempting to emulate Chimera Writer is the road to misery.

(I once again took the name of quilting in vain. Sorry Betsy)


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

I dunno. So far being a Chimera writer for me has led to more money and a lot of fun (because writing is fun!)...

The numbers Dean gives are examples. Plug your own numbers into what he's saying to find what will work for you.  I plug in higher numbers than his, personally, because I know that a) I can write a lot more than 250,000 words a year without a problem and b) I price higher and sell better than his averages (and am adding in novels between shorts and novellas).  That's why instead of aiming for 40k a year after six years (the figure he gives as an example), I am aiming for 100,000 a year in 2016 (my sixth year).  Other people's numbers will differ depending on what they want and what they are willing to do to get it.


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## Gregory Lynn (Aug 9, 2011)

I just wanted to mention that this thread has now made it to eleven pages.

If that doesn't give you pause, you're probably never going to make a living from short fiction.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Gregory Lynn said:


> I just wanted to mention that this thread has now made it to eleven pages.
> 
> If that doesn't give you pause, you're probably never going to make a living from short fiction.


I'm surprised no one went back and counted up my words to use against me. I probably broke the DWS daily target at least twice.


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## JoyCox (Mar 21, 2012)

WHDean said:


> I'm surprised no one went back and counted up my words to use against me. I probably broke the DWS daily target at least twice.


Actually, you are at 7113 words now (that does not count any of the material you quoted, of course - only original writing.)

You've been active in the thread for 3 days, making your daily average (as of your last post) 2371 words per day.

The thread itself has existed for 5 days.

In 9 more days, you should have enough material to release 4 short stories and a bundle pack.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

JoyCox said:


> Actually, you are at 7113 words now (that does not count any of the material you quoted, of course - only original writing.)
> 
> You've been active in the thread for 3 days, making your daily average (as of your last post) 2371 words per day.
> 
> The thread itself has existed for 5 days.


God. That's embarrassing. I should've kept my mouth shut.

By the way, how did you do that?


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## JoyCox (Mar 21, 2012)

WHDean said:


> God. That's embarrassing. I should've kept my mouth shut.
> 
> By the way, how did you do that?


I was just curious, so I cut and pasted your original lines of text into Open Office and had them calculate the word count.

Now you're at 7130.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

JoyCox said:


> I was just curious, so I cut and pasted your original lines of text into Open Office and had them calculate the word count.
> 
> Now you're at 7130.


Must. Shut. Self. Up.


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## A. Rosaria (Sep 12, 2010)

A 1,000 words in one hour every day is possible and doable without getting burned out. I email daily more than a 1,000 words, some emails I've sent out are 600 words long typed in 15 minutes. We humans write more than we realize, why I'm not popping out 50 short stories a year is pure laziness to start writing, once I start I do tend to keep on writing especially if a story is burning in my brain and I'm obsessing to finish it. Once I wrote a short story (5,000 words) in one sitting in 4 hours. To do the 50 or more short stories a year all it takes is to sit down at your desk and start writing daily.

I'm an avid gamer, in my late teens and early twenty I used to game an average of 8 hours a day(probably more), I've kept that pace for years, gaming every day, having at least done 2920 hours a year. I've long gone past 10,000 hours gaming. At 34 I still play computer games, but now I still average only hundreds hours played each year. This year alone if instead of gaming I wrote, I would have written 2 novels. Both gaming and writing require you to sit your *ss down and be busy doing something you like. Sure life can interfere, but when you really want it you'll obsess to sit down and do it, even when you are not doing it you'll thinking about it.

And what about the day job. Each working day I work 8-9 hours and travel 2-3 hours, I work about 1,700 hours (probably more) a year, I'm doing this for more than a decade now, totaling at least 17,000+ hours worked and I'm still not burned out. Were I a full-time writer I could easily write one hour a day and finish 50 short stories in a year. All it takes is doing it.

What makes writing such a different job that one hour would tire you more than doing your day-job for 8 hours and traveling about 3 hours daily? Or make it so much more work intensive compared to 2 hours gaming daily?

All it takes is to sit down and write. I blame myself and only myself for not finishing enough stories, because that meant I did not sit down to write enough.

Forgot to add: And I'm no exception!


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## shadowfox (Jun 22, 2012)

My writing year begins in April (because that is when I first got serious about tracking things). Last year I wrote 70 short stories, 2 novels, and 2 novellas. Most of the short stories were 3,200 words long although some went up to 7000. I did that working on writing less than 2 hours a day, and without being a full time writer by any stretch of the imagination. I've never actually been that serious about short stories.

I wrote the 70 short stories because I joined something called write 1 sub 1 on the absolute write forum. It is an ongoing challenge to write a short story a week and submit it to a traditional market. In that year I sold my first semi pro short story which is not bad for someone who had only finished 2 short stories in his life before the challenge. Most of the other writers on the challenge who elected to write 52 stories in the year actually did it. Some of them sold their first professional level story. Almost all sold at the semi-professional level by the end of the year.

This year, since April 1st, I have written 18 short stories and 1/2 a novel. Actually, I've just counted up the number of short stories and I am shocked that I've written so many. It wasn't really planned. 

I never write more than 2 hours a day, and it is rare that I go a full month writing every day. I am not a full time writer. Frankly, I would have written more than that last year but my mother had a (fairly minor) stroke last year which meant I wrote nothing for a full month.

I'm not saying this to brag, or show off... I normally keep my production quite secret. It gets me into trouble usually when I tell anyone. I wrote that number of words because I enjoy writing. A lot of it is crap, but I had fun writing it. I have no serious ambition to make a living via short fiction, I simply wrote the 70 short stories for practice and it turned out I enjoy writing short fiction.

That's what informs my view of the production schedule. I know it can be done because I have written more than that in a year and I find it fun. And I've seen other people write that much. Five of the six people I mentioned making 'living money' did it in 2 years while they worked full time.

As for selling to pro markets... I have no idea if that will happen or not. I guess that depends on how quickly I can learn. But at the start of the year I was getting indifferent form rejections from for the love markets, and by the end of the year I was getting enthusiastic personal rejections from pro-level markets and actual selling to semi-pro markets. So I think I was improving.

The world would be a dim and boring world if everyone was the same. No one has to write 52 short stories a year to be a professional writer... there are plenty of people who make it writing 1 novel a year or less. 

Incidentally, that 5000 words a day I mentioned for Jack London? That was the number of words he was writing before he made a living at it. At the time he was writing that he was a part time writer like me. Once he got good enough to sell at professional levels he actually dropped it down to 1,500 words a day.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

A. Rosaria said:


> All it takes is to sit down and write.


That's the trick, isn't it?


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## jackz4000 (May 15, 2011)

I think the moral to this thread is that if you can write a good 1000 words per day X 250 days that you will have a few novels or 9 novella's or 20 short stories at the end of a year. Seems to make sense to me.

Not factored into that is rewriting or editing or changes which will add to the time it took to get 1000 very good words.

This thread could use some cuts and changes, it's way overwritten. 11 pages?


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

In the art quilt world, we have a saying that we stole from someone (glass artist Dale Chiluly, perhaps?):

"Do the work."  
  

Betsy


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

jackz4000 said:


> I think the moral to this thread is that if you can write a good 1000 words per day X 250 days that you will have a few novels or 9 novella's or 20 short stories at the end of a year. Seems to make sense to me.
> 
> Not factored into that is rewriting or editing or changes which will add to the time it took to get 1000 very good words.
> 
> This thread could use some cuts and changes, it's way overwritten. 11 pages?


Well, Betsy did some editing but I'm afraid she edited out a good deal of the story tension. 

You have to watch that in an editor.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

A. Rosaria said:


> We humans write more than we realize, why I'm not popping out 50 short stories a year is pure laziness to start writing, once I start I do tend to keep on writing especially if a story is burning in my brain and I'm obsessing to finish it. Once I wrote a short story (5,000 words) in one sitting in 4 hours. To do the 50 or more short stories a year all it takes is to sit down at your desk and start writing daily.... Forgot to add: And I'm no exception!


The problem is that doing it once or twice or even fifty time does not equal doing it within an hour an day, every week, consistently for six years (=300 times in 6 years)-on top of editing and making covers and formatting and publishing and submitting to magazines and maintenance on the retailers and...

I have no doubt you wrote a story in 4 hours-it's probably good too. I've written lots of stories, many of which were completed in 4 hours, and they're all the best ones in my estimation. What's more, I dumped 7,130 words on this thread alone in the last 3 days, according to Joy Cox. During this time I worked a full-time job that requires another 1k-4k a day and I wrote half a story (another 2k in about an hour). Adding some leeway for all the things I've forgotten, I turned out somewhere around 20,000 words in the last 3 days-and I didn't even break a sweat, let alone burn out. My average a week is probably somewhere around that 20,000. That comes out to a cool 1 million words a year-something I've been doing for years. _Holy Wordsmithery Batman! Imagine what you could do!_

_Holy nothin' Robin_. This figure is fact, not a guess about how much I could do if I tried really, really hard, and it's still meaningless as evidence of what I could do if a mere 250k of those one million words were converted to stories-because it's just if, if, if. Words in e-books published on Amazon averaging 5 sales a month count. Possible, projected, maybe-if-I-tried-hard words don't count for anything.

Nor can the best-day-I-ever-had-writing be used as a baseline for projecting what I-could-do-if-I-tried-really-really-hard. The best day is remarkable because it is _rare or unique_. To infer that it could be done _everyday _ is day-dreaming about possibilities. And hey, there's nothing wrong with day-dreaming. It's human nature. But you can't call a model for writing success based on day-dreaming realistic. That's my point.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

jackz4000 said:


> I think the moral to this thread is that if you can write a good 1000 words per day X 250 days that you will have a few novels or 9 novella's or 20 short stories at the end of a year. Seems to make sense to me.
> 
> Not factored into that is rewriting or editing or changes which will add to the time it took to get 1000 very good words.


That sounds perfectly realistic to me, assuming 10-12 hours a week and assuming that only a portion of it is published. I can see the mean being less than that, however; and I wouldn't assume that it would be possible to do it consistently year over year. Of course, someone doing this full time could pull it off and have self-published to boot. I have no problem believing that and more for a full-timer.



> This thread could use some cuts and changes, it's way overwritten. 11 pages?


Based on Joy Cox's word count, I say this thread could be cut to 7,130 _good _ words.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

JRTomlin said:


> Well, Betsy did some editing but I'm afraid she edited out a good deal of the story tension.
> 
> You have to watch that in an editor.


Damn editors...


Betsy


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> d*mn editors...
> 
> 
> Betsy


You got it!


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> d*mn editors...
> 
> 
> Betsy


What is a quilter if not an editor of swatches of fabric?


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

jackz4000 said:


> I think the moral to this thread is that if you can write a good 1000 words per day X 250 days that you will have a few novels or 9 novella's or 20 short stories at the end of a year. Seems to make sense to me.
> 
> Not factored into that is rewriting or editing or changes which will add to the time it took to get 1000 very good words.
> 
> This thread could use some cuts and changes, it's way overwritten. 11 pages?


If you're a writer, a professional writer, what you do is write. That there is something mysterious about this and that people who work "ordinary" jobs can produce every day of every week, but for some mystical reason writers aren't capable of doing this is just absurd. (I know we're on the same side in this, I'm just expanding on your comments)

There is nothing about writers that makes them break if they actually sit down and write every damn day. There are thousands of writers out there who do it. It is in fact what makes most of the pros pros.


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## KevinMcLaughlin (Nov 11, 2010)

WHDean said:


> The problem is that doing it once or twice or even fifty time does not equal doing it within an hour an day, every week, consistently for six years (=300 times in 6 years)-on top of editing and making covers and formatting and publishing and submitting to magazines and maintenance on the retailers and...


Snipped the rest. This is the important point.

WH is absolutely, completely right.

Writing one short story in four hours is cool. It doesn't mean you have the discipline to do it once a week for six years.

Working a shift as a nurse is cool. It doesn't mean you have the dedication and strength of spirit to stick with it for a career (I'm an RN, when not writing, which is why I used this comparison). It is hard work, rough on the spirit and body. Most people fail as nurses; one in five quits before finishing the first year of work, even after having invested tens of thousands of dollars into their education.

Hey, that's my personal experience. Anybody else have a hard job that requires discipline, hard work, strong mental effort, and emotional involvement?

Sounds like writing to me.

No, not everybody can write a short story a week for six years. In fact, most people probably can't. Of those who can, most of them probably can't write high enough quality (when they start out, at least) to sell five copies a month of each story, on average. (Of course, if they stick with it they will get better). Not everybody can write three 80k novels a year, either. Not everybody can go take care of sick and dying patients every day.

Discipline. Commitment. Do the work.

Or not. *shrug* The world won't miss the stories you might have written. Honest. Plenty of other writers out there. Dean's point, about the hour a day, had nothing to do with what the average person might do. If you want to make a living as a writer, you are by default striving to be significantly above average. He spoke about what is possible, not about what is likely. We are all *likely* to fail to earn our entire living as writers. Bucking those odds, or not, is largely in our hands.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

You're right, Kevin. Being a writer does take discipline and if you don't have the discipline to write then you won't be a writer. It is no more mysterious than nursing. If you don't have the discipline to go to nursing school and show up at work every day, you won't be a nurse. 

But it IS possible to have that discipline and THERE is where I disagree with WHD.

Edit: I assure anyone who wonders that my frail little writer's psyche will not break if I put my butt in a chair every day and pound out some words. Sure there are days when I don't feel like it. And a few days when I "call in sick". But like anyone who wants to make a profession of something, most of the time I just do it. That applies to pretty much any profession or career I can think of. You have to have the discipline to actually do it.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

WHDean said:


> What is a quilter if not an editor of swatches of fabric?


Well, I like to think I have more in common with an author putting words together to tell a tale, thank you very much!


Betsy


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## KevinMcLaughlin (Nov 11, 2010)

JRTomlin said:


> You're right, Kevin. Being a writer does take discipline and if you don't have the discipline to write then you won't be a writer. It is no more mysterious than nursing. If you don't have the discipline to go to nursing school and show up at work every day, you won't be a nurse.
> 
> But it IS possible to have that discipline and THERE is where I disagree with WHD.


I'm not sure you're really disagreeing with WH. He said "Possible, projected, maybe-if-I-tried-hard words don't count for anything." I think we both agree with him there. What matters is butt-in-chair, do-the-work time.

Dean's equation won't work for everyone; but it's not meant to. It's an easy way to plug in your own numbers and come up with a respectable goal for yourself, however. Planning to skip on submitting short stories to magazines? Remove that revenue from the equation and recalculate. It's a tool which can be useful to help set possible goals, not a prophecy. 



> But like anyone who wants to make a profession of something, most of the time I just do it. That applies to pretty much any profession or career I can think of. You have to have the discipline to actually do it.


Bingo. =) Couldn't agree more. I know writers who produce 2-4k new words of fiction a day. Every day. And then revise, edit, release/submit, do marketing, etc. with the *other* work hours of their week. Does that require discipline? Yes. Are you going to earn a full time income from writing without that discipline? Probably not.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

KevinMcLaughlin said:


> Snipped the rest. This is the important point.
> 
> WH is absolutely, completely right.
> 
> ...


A bit of triangulation, first. If Rosaria reads your post after mine, he might think I'm saying he doesn't have the right stuff because he only wrote one story in three hours. That's not what I'm saying at all, but I can see him thinking it after your post that I implied as much. Again, not at all. I'm also not disputing the importance of the qualities you mentioned either-*I completely agree with you on all that*. But here's my problem with DWS's numbers:

Rosaria sounds like he writes more than one story a year. But for the sake of argument, let's assume he sticks to writing one story a year. I'm going to conjecture the possibility that he sells thousands of copies of this story each year, and year over year on each new story. He could become wealthy, a legend even. Writers would call him Super Rosaria. And when people asked him why he doesn't write more than one short a year, he could say, "I can only think of one good story a year. But then _I only have to think of one_!" and then thunderous laughter.

If I'm joking with Super Rosaria here, so is DWS with Chimera Writer. My Super Rosaria has no less evidence to support him than does DWS for Chimera Writer. My assumption of thousands of sales is as plausible as his assumption of five sales. Real writers manage both these numbers. And the one and only difference between them is talent and luck (in whatever proportions). Sure, you can say Chimera Writer's prodigious output gives him more chance of getting noticed. But how much does that count for exactly? Does one more book increase your odds by 20% of something, 1% of something, or 0.0000001%? Does anyone know? Or is it really just a guess? I say it's all guesswork and no possible guess is any more realistic than any other.

Here's another problem. Take DWS's pro magazines assumption. His model assumes that 10 of the 25 stories you write a year will get picked up by paying pro magazines. (This also goes to exposure, an important part of Chimera Writer's success.) Now how many writers have actually had 60 stories published in six years? Maybe-maybe-I'm way out of the loop on this one, but I don't know anyone who's done this, and he doesn't mention one. So why pick a number that's never been done before in your calculation? Why not pick a number that's realistic? For him to say, "Oh well, put in whatever number you think applies to you," is crazy when his baseline number has never even been achieved before. Like I said, maybe lots of people have had 60 shorts published in 6 six years in pro magazines, but I don't know anyone who has. I'll gladly retract half of this if someone can prove otherwise. I say "half" because he should've mentioned someone in the first place.

(Note to Rosaria: If this turns out to be true, you owe me a cut. Even though it's technically your future, I now own the copyright on your future because I dreamt it up before it happened.)


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

KevinMcLaughlin said:


> Dean's equation won't work for everyone; but it's not meant to. It's an easy way to plug in your own numbers and come up with a respectable goal for yourself, however. Planning to skip on submitting short stories to magazines? Remove that revenue from the equation and recalculate. It's a tool which can be useful to help set possible goals, not a prophecy.


Exactly. Some can write more. Fine plug that in. Some less. Plug that in. Some aren't experienced enough to produce consistent work yet, so allow for that. It was never meant as an exact formula but as a goal setting tool.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

For the edification of the lurkers, I'll present another illustration of one of the two problems with DWS's model. This time I'll remove direct reference to writing so the problem is clearer. Here are two scenarios that explain why the model doesn't compute.

*Scenario 1.* "People make money a living selling *hotdogs * at every busy street corner. Therefore, I can make a living selling *hotdogs * on this busy street corner."

_Realistic_. You're selling the same product in a similar market. You can even draw inferences about how much you'll make and how soon by looking at other sellers' track record. To be sure, you need to be business savvy and put in the hours. And there's no guarantee. Nonetheless, it's reasonable and realistic to infer that you'll succeed as others have.

*Scenario 2. * "People make a living selling *hotdogs * at every busy street corner. Therefore, I can make a living selling *hotcats * on this busy street corner."

_Unrealistic _ because unknown. "Hotcats" are not hotdogs so you have no justification for inferring that you can succeed with what is a wholly new product. There's no comparing hotdogs and hotcats, so all inferences you draw about future earnings (and the rest of it) are spurious.

"But wait!" you protest. "People can eat hotcats (= read my book) just like they can eat hotdogs (=read others' books). And I'm a good and hard-working businessman (=good and prolific writer)."

So? To the first, the fact that people eat one thing doesn't mean they'll eat something similar just because you offer it as a comparable or interchangeable commodity. Your new and unique product is just that: new and unique. You cannot base predictions for your _untested _ product on the back of a _tested _ one. There's no comparison; therefore, any projection of earnings or sales is completely spurious.

Second, you may well be a good businessman. But until you actually sell some hotcats no one can say whether anyone _wants them or not_. So again, you can't infer anything about your progress from what your equals have done, when you're both selling two different products. In other words, the fact that you and your friend both have MBAs doesn't mean you'll succeed selling eggs because he succeeded selling milk.

Presumably it's obvious that books and their writers are hotcats to hotdogs, not hotdogs to hotdogs. You can't project anything on the basis of dissimilar products. There's no average to compare to. There's no elite to compare to. Because there's no comparison, there's no projection.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

I'll just point out that hotcats sound disgusting and leave it at that.

Betsy


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## Guest (Jun 23, 2012)

Quote:

*"I would never pay 3 bucks for a story that's only going to give me 10 minutes reading time"*

Hmmm.

Would you pay 3 bucks for a Starbuck's coffee? And how long would that stay with you?

Would you pay $1,000 for a gallon of computer printer ink? You really do, you know.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

/shrug Just because one individual won't pay it doesn't mean no one else will. I personally buy a lot of short fiction that only takes me 10 minutes to read while I drink my latte and I go on to recommend because it entertained me.


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## Guest (Jun 23, 2012)

Krista:

Amen


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## GPB (Oct 2, 2010)

I'm happy to accept that a disciplined, committed and talented writer can produce fifty 5,000-word stories every year for six years. He or she won't do it in an hour a day all-in, including all those additional tasks that trade submission and self-publication requires, but it's certainly doable in some amount of time that will vary from one writer to the next.

Allowing for all that, price is a killer. What happens if you can't sell five copies of a 5,000-word story every month at $2.99? What if the market will only offer $0.99?

Then, after six years of disciplined, committed work, you're selling 1,500 copies of 300 different stories every month and making...$525 a month. After another six years and 300 more stories, assuming the long-tail keeps all of them selling at that magical five-copies-a-month level, you're hauling in $1,050 a month.

Assuming that DWS is right about pricing, you're making ~$36,000 a year after six years. You have to pay self-employment taxes on that; you have no health insurance, 401k, or other benefits.

Conclusion: You may be "making a living," but it's a pretty lousy one.

My alternative system for short-fiction success is exactly like DWS's, except one of those 300 stories is WOOL. In other words, accept that you're going to make peanuts unless one or more of your stories is a breakout success. The vast majority of what you publish will barely cover costs and won't add up to a real living wage, but your one hit will make up for all of the others, and then some. Keep finding that one hit every few years, and you'll be able to feed your family, put your kids through college and maybe actually take a vacation during your two weeks of vacation a year.

Your breakout hit might not always enjoy WOOL levels of success. There are no guarantees and results may vary. The key is that the success of your breakout hit, whatever it is, will drive your overall success -- income from the hit will outweigh the income from your other stories, combined.

My system won't work for every writer. Not everyone can a) produce 50 stories every year, or b) produce a breakout hit. That's okay -- the system doesn't _need_ to work for everyone. It works great for those it works great for...

(And yes, it does sound exactly like the trade-publishing business model. Funny, that.)


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

GPB said:


> Then, after six years of disciplined, committed work, you're selling 1,500 copies of 300 different stories every month and making...$525 a month. After another six years and 300 more stories, assuming the long-tail keeps all of them selling at that magical five-copies-a-month level, you're hauling in $1,050 a month.
> 
> Assuming that DWS is right about pricing, you're making ~$36,000 a year after six years. You have to pay self-employment taxes on that; you have no health insurance, 401k, or other benefits.
> 
> Conclusion: You may be "making a living," but it's a pretty lousy one.


And yet, I'm sure a number of Americans are living off that wage.

As for no health insurance, move to Canada.


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## GPB (Oct 2, 2010)

Krista D. Ball said:


> As for no health insurance, move to Canada.


DWS didn't include that step in his system, so I didn't either.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

GPB said:


> DWS didn't include that step in his system, so I didn't either.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


>


Hey, it's a thought that I've considered. It's closer than Scotland so there's that.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> Hey, it's a thought that I've considered. It's closer than Scotland so there's that.


It's cold up here


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

The numbers thing is exactly why I put up lots of work. I know that each and every title won't sell all the time, but some sell quite well and it averages out.  This month I've made just over 300 so far. I have 24 titles up. That 300 is mostly from four of those titles. Yep. Four. What are the other 20 doing? Contributing a sale here and there, adding in a little extra money when they do.  From what I've seen in the last year and a half, in six months, it might be four completely different titles that make the majority of the money.  That's why I'm keeping my head down and writing more.  I have no idea what may or may not sell. But I know that something will and I know, from my own data, that releasing new work bumps sales of older work, especially with series.  Knowing this, I don't have a single writing project planned in the next couple years that isn't a series.  (Well, I might write a stand-alone short story for sale to an anthology or magazine here and there, but for self-publishing purposes, I won't bother).  And most of what I'm writing will be short fiction (novellas between 13k and 25k words).

This thread has done one good thing, I suppose. I'm going to start a writing streak project this weekend and see how many days in a row, unbroken, I can get at least 1k words done. It'll be fun. (I know someone who did this and was at something like 600 days unbroken, including holidays and her birthday, last I checked).


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

Doomed Muse said:


> The numbers thing is exactly why I put up lots of work. I know that each and every title won't sell all the time, but some sell quite well and it averages out. This month I've made just over 300 so far. I have 24 titles up. That 300 is mostly from four of those titles. Yep. Four. What are the other 20 doing? Contributing a sale here and there, adding in a little extra money when they do. From what I've seen in the last year and a half, in six months, it might be four completely different titles that make the majority of the money. That's why I'm keeping my head down and writing more. I have no idea what may or may not sell. But I know that something will and I know, from my own data, that releasing new work bumps sales of older work, especially with series. Knowing this, I don't have a single writing project planned in the next couple years that isn't a series. (Well, I might write a stand-alone short story for sale to an anthology or magazine here and there, but for self-publishing purposes, I won't bother). And most of what I'm writing will be short fiction (novellas between 13k and 25k words).
> 
> This thread has done one good thing, I suppose. I'm going to start a writing streak project this weekend and see how many days in a row, unbroken, I can get at least 1k words done. It'll be fun. (I know someone who did this and was at something like 600 days unbroken, including holidays and her birthday, last I checked).


This.

This is exactly why DWS' post was valuable. Because after all the disagreement, and gnashing of teeth (I gnashed a few myself) what it comes down to is what you want to take away.

And who would think this possible; in a novel driven world we are on page 12 of a thread about _shorts_.

It's a wonderful life.


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## Carradee (Aug 21, 2010)

Doomed Muse said:


> This thread has done one good thing, I suppose. I'm going to start a writing streak project this weekend and see how many days in a row, unbroken, I can get at least 1k words done. It'll be fun. (I know someone who did this and was at something like 600 days unbroken, including holidays and her birthday, last I checked).


Yeah. I started the year with a goal of finishing up a short story a week, but that's failed-various life rolls-and this post gave me the kick in the pants I needed to set a new goal and get started hitting it.


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## Louis Shalako (Apr 13, 2011)

At some point I stopped submitting to the 'pay' and 'for the luv' markets and started submitting entirely to pro and semi-pro markets.

And I haven't sold a story since. This article was a tough read for me, that's partly jealousy, partly pure frustration. The funny thing is my two or three shorts do sell a few copies, but I would like to sell a pro story before I die.

It's like my honour is at stake or something, or maybe it has something to do with validation by people I look up to and respect.

If you sold a story for $100.00, (I can do math too,) you would need to sell 400 stories in a year to make a living at $40,000 a year. Can you write 400 stories of any real weight or value in a year? And just who exactly is going to accept and pay for those 400 stories?


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Well, at least GPB has figured it out:



GPB said:


> My alternative system for short-fiction success is exactly like DWS's, except one of those 300 stories is WOOL. In other words, accept that you're going to make peanuts unless one or more of your stories is a breakout success.


That's the bottom line on it-and it's a nice segue into a key difference between Super Rosaria and Chimera Writer. As you all remember from yesterday's episode, Chimera Writer is an amalgam of the strongest points of a number of writers turned into a writing beast that has never existed as a unified whole. He looks real because his parts have existed some times in some writers, but never all of them together in one person. Moreover, some of his constituents have never existed at all: like the part of him that gets 60 stories published in pro mags in 6 years (still waiting for confirmation there; has anyone even had 10 published in one year?).

Earlier I allowed that Chimera Writer was no more or less plausible than my own creation, Super Rosaria. But that's not true at all. Super Rosaria has real life counterparts: JK Rowling, for example, who wrote one story a year. Come to that, just about every other writer who's been successful is a real life instantiation of Super Rosaria.

So there you have the only realistic way to "Make a Living Writing Short Stories": be a Super Rosaria-or a Hugh Howey. Anything else is fool's gold.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> It's cold up here


It's frequently cold in Scotland and for that matter Oregon isn't the warmest (or driest) place on earth.


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## Tessa Apa (Apr 8, 2011)

Louis Shalako said:


> If you sold a story for $100.00, (I can do math too,) you would need to sell 400 stories in a year to make a living at $40,000 a year. Can you write 400 stories of any real weight or value in a year? And just who exactly is going to accept and pay for those 400 stories?


It took me nearly a year to complete my novella (17k words) - I cannot imagine writing 400 stories a year...it is beyond my comprehension. What I do think is possible, is writing 1000 words a day. That is my new goal.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Louis Shalako said:


> If you sold a story for $100.00, (I can do math too,) you would need to sell 400 stories in a year to make a living at $40,000 a year. Can you write 400 stories of any real weight or value in a year? And just who exactly is going to accept and pay for those 400 stories?


Incorrect math 

If you sell a story at $100 to a mag, 6-12 months later, you can resell it elsewhere and/or selfpublish it. You can also submit it to a reprint of year's best and make another $50 off it. THEN you can self-publishing, having already made money off the story, and be able to pay for a basic cover and editing would have already been done from the previous publishing. You start in the black.

You make $20/yr let's say. Big deal, maybe. But that story took you (let's say) 5 hours to write, edit, submit, format. You've made $170 off it. That's $34/hr. That's a good wage.

See, that's how I look my freelance and my fiction. Some times I do knowing that I won't make that kind of money. Other times, I'm making in the $100/hr range. (My average, however, is generally around $40). I keep that in the back of my mine for shorter pieces and for non-fiction. It helps me focus my time better and not make decisions that aren't going to benefit me.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

WHDean said:


> Moreover, some of his constituents have never existed at all: like the part of him that gets 60 stories published in pro mags in 6 years (still waiting for confirmation there; has anyone even had 10 published in one year?).


I bet Jay Lake has, since he's very prolific and published a lot of short fiction before focusing on novels. Mike Resnick probably did so as well. There's likely more.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Elizabeth Bear. Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Cat Rambo. Mary Robinette Kowal. Ken Liu. Plenty of other SF/F writers who sometimes have to turn down anthology invites and other projects because they have too much on their plates already.  Selling to pro markets takes work and perseverance, but it is possible.  Hell, I sold seven stories last year (probably could have sold more if I'd been writing more of them, frankly).

If you are persistent and your stories hit inside the genres that magazines publish at all, you will get published. If you keep up the quality and the number of submissions, you'll get published more and more (magazines have pages to fill and like finding authors who their readers enjoy and editors at those magazines will start asking you to see your next one etc after you've sold them a couple).  Writing for money in many ways is a snowball effect.  The more you write and submit (or publish), the better you get at it and the more chances you have for someone to see and buy your work. The better you get, the more likely it is that someone will want to read what you are writing.  The more people want to read what you write, the more sales you'll have. Etc.

And it isn't like setting up a hotdog stand. I'm not selling hotdogs. No one can go anywhere else to get the stories I'm telling the way I'm telling them.  My books aren't interchangeable commodities with anyone else's books.  If I write good books that people can't put down, they will buy them and they will come back for more. Because only I can tell those stories that way.  All books aren't the same, they aren't interchangeable.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

Okey Dokey said:


> Quote:
> 
> *"I would never pay 3 bucks for a story that's only going to give me 10 minutes reading time"*
> 
> ...


No, I don't drink Starbucks coffee. So I can't say how long that would last.



Okey Dokey said:


> Would you pay $1,000 for a gallon of computer printer ink? You really do, you know.


I don't own a printer. Next question?


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

Krista D. Ball said:


> /shrug Just because one individual won't pay it doesn't mean no one else will.


I agree. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of scrunching going on in this thread by other posters randomly quoting my posts. I already explained, ad nauseum I might add, that my point isn't that no reader would ever pay the retail price for a short story, but rather that I had a problem charging a price for a book that I personally wouldn't pay. If I won't pay an exorbitant price for a book, why would I expect my readers to pay that price for one of my books? I'm not a fan of price gouging. And no, I won't buy a 6,000 word short story for $2.99. And I suspect, most readers won't either.

Arrogance may be a fault of mine, but I'm not so arrogant to admit that I know everything. Hence, the reason, I mentioned in this thread that I changed all of my books prices to test the effectiveness of DWS' pricing guide. Now, before people starting throwing tomatoes, I read DWS disclaimer and know that he says you should tweak things to your own need. But again, I'm not the only one who thinks DWS' prices are a little whacky for the average indie author. The only point I'm trying to establish in this thread is that I don't blindly accept anything anyone says as dogma. Not DWS, not Konrath, no one. Those guys are quite opinionated to the point of sometimes sounding foolish. But to their credit, they usually can back up their boasts with their own numbers. What I refuse to accept is that I (or anyone else for that matter) should blindly believe whatever they say as gospel without doing my own research. The proof, as always, is in the pudding, not the size of the Chef's hat.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

I think genre and name do have something to do with it, too. That always helps


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

Krista D. Ball said:


> I think genre and name do have something to do with it, too. That always helps


Again, we're in total agreement. In fact, I also believe (as I also stated earlier in the thread) that if someone wants to read something badly enough or is a diehard fan of an author, they will pay the asking price for a book, even if it is a little steep.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> I agree. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of scrunching going on in this thread by other posters randomly quoting my posts. I already explained, ad nauseum I might add, that my point isn't that no reader would ever pay the retail price for a short story, but rather that I had a problem charging a price for a book that I personally wouldn't pay. If I won't pay an exorbitant price for a book, why would I expect my readers to pay that price for one of my books? I'm not a fan of price gouging. And no, I won't buy a 6,000 word short story for $2.99. And I suspect, most readers won't either.
> 
> Arrogance may be a fault of mine, but I'm not so arrogant to admit that I know everything. Hence, the reason, I mentioned in this thread that I changed all of my books prices to test the effectiveness of DWS' pricing guide. Now, before people starting throwing tomatoes, I read DWS disclaimer and know that he says you should tweak things to your own need. But again, I'm not the only one who thinks DWS' prices are a little whacky for the average indie author. The only point I'm trying to establish in this thread is that I don't blindly accept anything anyone says as dogma. Not DWS, not Konrath, no one. Those guys are quite opinionated to the point of sometimes sounding foolish. But to their credit, they usually can back up their boasts with their own numbers. What I refuse to accept is that I (or anyone else for that matter) should blindly believe whatever they say as gospel without doing my own research. The proof, as always, is in the pudding, not the size of the Chef's hat.


You are completely right.

DWS, KKR and Konrath all can back up their opinions with a _lot_ of experience and their own numbers, but that doesn't mean they're always right or always right for everyone. But their experience rates them a hearing and giving what they say serious consideration. Then you take what works for you and let the rest go. And I'm sure you'll agree, Kevis, that letting the rest go doesn't mean spending days trying to rip a reputation to shreds.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

JRTomlin said:


> You are completely right.
> 
> Both DWS, KKR and Konrath can back up their opinions with a lot of experience, but that doesn't mean they're always right or always right for everyone. But their experience rates them a hearing and giving what they say serious consideration. Then you take what works for you and let the rest go. And I'm sure you'll agree, Kevis, that letting the rest go doesn't mean spending days trying to rip a reputation to shred.


No arguments here. Personally, I think this is one of the better discussions we've had in this forum in quite some time. It might have gotten fiery sometimes and a few jabs were thrown in the process. But only a fool wouldn't stop to consider the advice, given freely I might add, of some heavyweights in the industry. Doesn't mean I worship at their shrine, but I do respect the experience of people who have accomplished far more than I have. I'm trying to get where they are at (Beer diet included). But I'd be a stone cold liar if I didn't admit that sometimes what they say gets me up in arms. But a little heat never hurt anyone. Well, there was that Freddy Kruger guy. But you know what I mean.


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## A. Rosaria (Sep 12, 2010)

Too bad I'm not yet a Super Rosaria, my sales this month are so bad that in no way I'm reaching the average 5 sales. (Only managed that once and all because of one story.) If you do the work writing one hour daily then you can write 50 short stories a year, but that will never guarantee you will average 5 sales per item.

In my experience, publishing a new story often nets me more sales on average. It's been a while I've published a new story and since then my average went down drastically. The weird thing is that it's not always the newly published story that does most of the selling. In my case I've got two stories that sells the most every-time I publish a new one. I price my short stories at $0.99 and novelettes at $1.99. I feel asking $2.99 is too much for the quality I deliver. I'm still a noob writer with still a lot to learn.

I'm off writing now, I want to finish a short story today.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> No arguments here. Personally, I think this is one of the better discussions we've had in this forum in quite some time. It might have gotten fiery sometimes and a few jabs were thrown in the process. But only a fool wouldn't stop to consider the advice, given freely I might add, of some heavyweights in the industry. Doesn't mean I worship at their shrine, but I do respect the experience of people who have accomplished far more than I have. I'm trying to get where they are at (Beer diet included). But I'd be a stone cold liar if I didn't admit that sometimes what they say gets me up in arms. But a little heat never hurt anyone. Well, there was that Freddy Kruger guy. But you know what I mean.


Well, I haven't felt there was much positive about the discussion, but I think you know that. Otherwise, I agree.


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## Katie Salidas (Mar 21, 2010)

JRTomlin said:


> You are completely right.
> 
> DWS, KKR and Konrath all can back up their opinions with a _lot_ of experience and their own numbers, but *that doesn't mean they're always right or always right for everyone.* But their experience rates them a hearing and giving what they say serious consideration. Then you take what works for you and let the rest go. And I'm sure you'll agree, Kevis, that letting the rest go doesn't mean spending days trying to rip a reputation to shreds.


I totally agree with this. Yes, learn from the big guys, but don't assume that what works for them is going to work for you. Learn from them and then tread your own path.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

CoraBuhlert said:


> I bet Jay Lake has, since he's very prolific and published a lot of short fiction before focusing on novels. Mike Resnick probably did so as well. There's likely more.


Resnick's bibliography was non-standard, so someone else can check that. I did count Jay Lake's stories, excluding a handful of items that were interviews, anthologies and some that maybe novels. I counted 248 stories. Impressive. But I have neither the time nor the inclination to cross-check pro-magazine pubs and dates; nonetheless, I'll concede that he _may _ have done 10 in a year. Maybe he even did 60 in 6 years. Can't say. But I did note this on his Wikipedia page:



> He lives in Portland, Oregon and *currently works as a product manager * for a voice services company.


I know, I know. He's traditionally published, so he can't make a living on stories. That doesn't hold in this bold new world! But it's worth noting that even your example of a prolific author who may have consistently pulled off 10 stories in a year has _only _ written 248 stories in total (sure, a few novels too apparently).

Why am I so confident that he has only written 248 stories? He's a multi-award-winning author, so the pro mags and anthologists are chasing _him _ for stories. And why do I think that? Because Doomed Muse just said that similar multi-award-winning authors-i.e., Elizabeth Bear, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Cat Rambo, Mary Robinette Kowal, Ken Liu-can't keep up with demand. Should we suppose that all these award winners can't keep up with demand while award winner Jay Lake has hundreds of stories on his hard drive that he can't give away? You tell me which is the more plausible. In fact, isn't it also more plausible that Jay Lake had 10 stories published in a year (if he did) because _he was already an award winner_-and not because he was churning them out like a factory? I think reality can speak for itself on this one.

By the way, I'm _not _ trying to claim that this one blog post diminishes DWS as a useful resource or makes everything he says dubious. _Not at all. _ I think he just slapped on the rose-coloured binoculars and got carried away. I keep pounding away at this because it's extremely important that _some _ people realize it. You're probably not one of the "some" I'm talking about. You're settled into another career and writing stories is good fun for you, win or lose. Your plan was already set before you read it, so you took it like a little cheerleading. But I hope you can see that some people are going to make bad decisions because they're going to use this unrealistic model. They're going to change how they write-or worse, make decisions for the future-based on fool's gold. And when it doesn't work out, they're going to be blaming the wrong person, namely themselves.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Doomed Muse said:


> And it isn't like setting up a hotdog stand. I'm not selling hotdogs. No one can go anywhere else to get the stories I'm telling the way I'm telling them. My books aren't interchangeable commodities with anyone else's books. If I write good books that people can't put down, they will buy them and they will come back for more. Because only I can tell those stories that way. All books aren't the same, they aren't interchangeable.


Actually, that's exactly what I said. I said your books _are _ unique and that the uniqueness of your books is the reason the model doesn't compute. My whole point was that you cannot make assumptions about the success of _your unique books _ on the basis of _someone else's unique books_.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Katie Salidas said:


> I totally agree with this. Yes, learn from the big guys, but don't assume that what works for them is going to work for you. Learn from them and then tread your own path.


Of course, sometimes you don't know what will work for you until you TRY. 

We can't be afraid to try out something because of the nay-sayers in the world. Possibly not everything we try will work, even if it worked for someone else, but we'll still probably learn from it.


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## GUTMAN (Dec 22, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> Well, I haven't felt there was much positive about the discussion, but I think you know that. Otherwise, I agree.


One of the big positives to me is all this time spent on discussing _short stories._

I hope writers are _encouraged to experiment_ and write them and try to make their own markets for them. Because the more who try the more likely we are to see (to use an example from KB) more stories like _Wool_.

And if that happens, then we may develop more fans of short fiction who may decide to seek it out.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Gutman said:


> One of the big positives to me is all this time spent on discussing _short stories._
> 
> I hope writers are _encouraged to experiment_ and write them and try to make their own markets for them. Because the more who try the more likely we are to see (to use an example from KB) more stories like _Wool_.
> 
> And if that happens, then we may develop more fans of short fiction who may decide to seek it out.


You're right there, and I see some authors who say they are going to try writing short stories regularly, so positive will come out of it. A developing short story market, which I do think is happening thanks to Kindle, is a very good thing.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Jay Lake still has a day job, because he has been battling cancer these past few years and needs the health insurance that comes with the day job. As far as I recall, he said a while back that he could make a living writing full time, but chooses not to because of the health insurance. Which isn't a choice anybody should have to make, but it's valid for him and his family.


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## KevinMcLaughlin (Nov 11, 2010)

Here's what is possibly a better way of looking at the math (help me out here if I mess up, guys!):

Set your target income. Median US household income in 2011 was $26,000, so I'll use that for illustration for now.

Set your pricing. Say we're doing 10k stories and selling them for $2.99 each (which keeps it simple, since we can avoid things like setting shorts at $2.99 on Amazon and 99 cents on B&N and *hoping* Amazon will price match so you can make 69 cents on the Amazon sales instead of 35).

Target income ($26k) / income per story ($2.09) = 12,440 sales per year. Ouch!

Set target works per year (1k writing per day? OK, so 36 titles per year).

In year two (36 titles up) you'd need to make 346 sales per year avg per title (29 per month) to make that income.
In year three (72 titles up) you'd need to make 173 sales per year per title (14 per month).
In year four (108 titles up) the average drops to 115 sales per year (10 per month).
In year five (144 titles up) the average drops to 86 per title per year (7 per month).
In year six (180 titles up) the average drops to 69 per title per year (6 per month).

So yeah, by year six, with very modest sales, one *ought* to be able to make a modest (mean US) income at short stories. That's with low sales per month, no audio sales, no pro zine sales, no other avenues of sales used at all. Does not include collections of the shorts.

And, like Dean's numbers, take your own numbers and plug them in above, do a little math, and look at what is possible. Higher income? Plug in the numbers. Want a higher income sooner? Produce more work, market better, or both.

It's not a guarantee. But something along these lines IS a decent basis for a business plan. I've done business plans for other sorts of business before (have run a few in my day) and I think it's important that writers who WANT to make a living at their work think in terms of making a plan for years ahead. That includes both production and sales goals. If you're not reaching those goals when you periodically re-assess your plan and where you are at with it, then you need to adjust your expectations or adjust what you're doing to get back on track.

The point of a business plan isn't to daydream about what you maybe-can-do. It is to set goals for your company, for production and sales, for revenue and profit, so that you can accurately assess your progress toward those goals as your proceed.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Well, considering that Mr. Lake has published eight novels and over 300 short stories and I believe he has two more novels coming out soon, that probably exceeds the writing pace DWS was talking about. I'm not sure you can make any exact converson of how many short stories a novel equals when you're talking about writing production but probably at least 20. And considering that he was largely unpublished when he won _The Writers of the Future _ contest in 2004 -- since that is one of the_ requirements _ of that contest (and a darn competitive contest it is) -- you can pretty much put that production down to the last eight years.

So 60 short stories a year or its equivalent? Mr. Lake (especially considering his health challenges) has been one very busy boy!

He's a good writer, too.

Edit: Oops. My memory was off. He won the WotF contest in 2003, that is nine years. I guess he has only produced the equivalent of 55 short stories a year for the past nine years. Does that mean everyone can do that? No. Does that mean everyone would even WANT to do that? No. Does that mean it might be a reasonable goal if it is what you want to do? Yes, I think it does.


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## Guest (Jun 24, 2012)

Price. Price. Price.

Price gouging.

My stories aren't worth 2.99.

I wouldn't pay that much (2.99).

So on and so forth.

What I know is that one time I paid $2.98 for an Elvis 45 rpm that only had 2.5 min of music.

Later in life I paid big bucks for Windows that came on one DVD, although blank DVDs sold for about 50 cents in bulk.

Today I'm paying 3 bucks + for a Starbucks coffee that stays in my body about one hour.

And I'm shelling out (over time) more than $1,000 a gallon for printer ink.

If your story isn't worth 2.99, then don't charge that. Sleep well at night instead of struggling to create something that IS worth 2.99.

I say Best Wishes to the folks who create stories worth 2.99 or more.


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## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

Okey Dokey said:


> Price. Price. Price.
> 
> Price gouging.
> 
> ...


I don't really think it's relevant to compare Starbucks or printer ink.

My copies of _Asimov's_ show a cover price of $7.95. A one-year subscription is $35 per year through Amazon, or $2.91 per issue. Each issue has about 6-10 stories, depending on how many novellas there are, and something like 90ish pages of fiction. The typography's pretty dense--something like 700 words/page. You're looking at roughly 54,000-67,000 words per issue for $2.91. This is for the print version.

Thousands of mass market paperback anthologies are available for $7.99. These might have what, 10-40 stories and be 75-150Kish words long? I suppose a lot of the more reputable authors only get the trade paperback treatment for story collections, so those probably cost more like $12-18 apiece.

Again, for a print version. A traditionally-published ebook version is more likely to be $7.99-9.99.

Amazon's Kindle Singles are vetted works and are frequently by big-name authors. Stephen King's is $3.99. By price, I count the others at 11 @ $0.99, 14 @ $1.99, and 6 @ $2.99. These are what, about 10-30K words apiece?

Of course, none of this is proof you can't or shouldn't try to sell short stories for $2.99. But that's well above market rate, isn't it? Maybe the entire market is undervaluing its work. Maybe that is an exploitable market inefficiency. But common sense suggests that price point is going to be a tough sell.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

CoraBuhlert said:


> Jay Lake still has a day job, because he has been battling cancer these past few years and needs the health insurance that comes with the day job. As far as I recall, he said a while back that he could make a living writing full time, but chooses not to because of the health insurance. Which isn't a choice anybody should have to make, but it's valid for him and his family.


Now you know why I ignored his example the first time it came up. I didn't want to be emotionally blackmailed by being accused of "attacking" someone with cancer. I'm not saying you are, but I'm sure someone will sink to it, so don't expect me to talk about it anymore.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

*The Problem with Averaging 5 Sales a Month*

I mentioned earlier that small numbers are deceptive because they are so small. There are two reasons for this. The first and most obvious is that small changes in small numbers translate into big changes in outcomes. The difference between 2 and 4 sales a month doesn't seem like much until it turns into the difference between $20,000 and $40,000 a year.

Consider a small change in output of 4 sales per month on 40 titles against 5 sales on 50 titles over 6 years. The difference seems negligible until you realize that that in year 6 you've got 240 titles bringing $23,040 versus 300 titles bringing in $36,000-almost a $13,000 difference in income for that year. But it gets worse once you factor in the loss in "exposure effect" of having 60 fewer titles. If, as DWS and others assume, each additional title issues in a marginal increase in sales for all other titles, then those 60 missing stories must increase the spread between those numbers.

The second reason is, however, far the more damning of DWS's math because it covers over the effects of an indisputable phenomena. Everyone knows total books sales fall on a _power _ curve, not a _bell _ curve. In other words, the #1 bestseller in a category might move 10,000 copies a month while #2 moves 10 copies. Similarly, the sale of individual books can be highly erratic, but these massive fluctuations are disguised by small numbers: selling 1 copy one month and 5 the next doesn't seem like a big deal, but it actually represents a huge spike.

Once you talk about averaging 5 sales a month over periods of time, you lose sight of this phenomenon altogether. An average of 5 sales a month (=60/year) smoothes over that one month that sold 30 copies and the two months that sold none. In short, the small numbers averaged out make it seem like sales are more stable than they actually are-as if growth were steady when it's actually characterized by spikes and troughs.

Why does this matter for DWS's math? Well, let's assume that "modest" and "reasonable" 5 sales a month at $2 a sale on 300 titles spread over 6 years. But instead of assuming steady growth, let's assume that real life occurs, namely, that there are spikes in years 4 and 5. You still have an average of 5 sales over six years; but years 4 and 5 see huge spikes. Guess what. That $40,000 payday in year six turns into a $20,000 payday because you earned $20,000 of it during your spikes in years 4 and 5. Sure, you got the money, but you're not living off of it by year six. Never thought of that when you went along with 5 average sales being reasonable did you?

_These rose-colored glasses
That I'm looking through
Show only the beauty
But they hide all the truth... _

[ETA for the mathematicians. (1) Yes, I glossed over the fact that there were fewer books in years 4 and 5 because it doesn't matter to the case. (2) The large number of books dampens the effects of spikes, such that 300 will be less subject to the phenomena than 5 books. But the stabilizing effect of the large number is counteracted by the fact that spikes in sales of one book increase sales of others. So I may in fact be _underestimating _ the effect-I call it a draw.]


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## Craig Halloran (May 15, 2012)

$2.99 for a 5k story? No way for me. I wouldn't pay it or sell it for that. 

I would rather write 10 stories at .99 and hope more people read them at that price. I thought Volume was a big key to self publishing. How can you compete at $2.99 for a 5k story when everyone else sells at .99.

Personally, I love writing short stories, but man, I have a hard enough time getting a single book cover done, let alone 50. I can't imagine.

That's just me though. I'll continue to base most of my book prices on word count and what other indies in the same genre are selling for.  HEck, I'd sell a story for a quarter if it would let me. 

Other than the pricing, I like the math on how many short stories you can write if you really get after it. I wouldn't do it all year long though.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

_I should note that many people on KB are not as up on the word length definition for short fiction as some of us from the SFF world. It's important to note that some of us are thinking short stories are 2000 words, others 6000 words, and others 35,000 words.

This public service announcement was brought to you by the Krista D. Ball Foundation for Short Story Education and the letter Q.

_


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Actually, that would be 390 titles, if you followed Dean's plan to the letter. 300 individual (or doubled up A-side/Bonus stories), 60 5-story collections and 30 10-story collections.

Second, that 5 average per title per year is per year. It really isn't that high of a goal to aim for, sorry.  I'm doing it already, my worst and best months still average out to more than 5 sales per title per month. 

Third, spikes in income are part of being a freelancer. Some months you earn 10,000, others you earn 1,000 (or next to nothing).  If you have planned for this, you come out fine.  I know it can look scary if you aren't used to that kind of life, but it is reality for anyone working for themselves in a business like this.  I'm fortunate in that I used to be both a model and a poker player, so I could tell you all about uneven income. Saving and making sure the bills are paid in future months is just part of being a good freelancer (and always motivation to keep writing!).

Also, most people who "break out" like Jay Lake (or Elizabeth Bear or Ken Liu etc) have a trunk full of stories they probably won't let see the light of day. It isn't like they woke up one day and were selling, award-winning writers. Most people put in years and years of work to get to that point (what Dean calls the first million words).  So you have no idea how much they've been writing in their lives.  The point is, they are prolific now, and that's without even going the self-publishing route for extra money.

It's not a daydream. That's my point. It's sound business logic to make a plan, as Kevin said, and aim for that plan and those goals and adjust accordingly.  And don't make excuses for why you can't.  I wrote my first novel in 19 days while working 300 hours that month at a stressful emergency dispatcher job.  I found the time to write it, because I'd always wanted to see if I could and someone from work bet me 20 bucks I couldn't write a coherent novel in less than a month.  (That novel will someday see the light of day in its new form, because I had a lot to learn about writing, but it wasn't that terrible for a first effort and I won that damn bet!)


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## Gregory Lynn (Aug 9, 2011)

Craig Halloran said:


> How can you compete at $2.99 for a 5k story when everyone else sells at .99.


You wouldn't be competing with them you'd be aiming at a different slice of the market.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

WHDean said:


> Now you know why I ignored his example the first time it came up. I didn't want to be emotionally blackmailed by being accused of "attacking" someone with cancer. I'm not saying you are, but I'm sure someone will sink to it, so don't expect me to talk about it anymore.


That wasn't my intention at all. I simply wanted to point out Jay Lake's specific situation just in case you weren't aware of it (though Annie mentioned it upthread).


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Doomed Muse said:


> Second, that 5 average per title per year is per year. It really isn't that high of a goal to aim for, sorry. I'm doing it already, my worst and best months still average out to more than 5 sales per title per month.


So when that big crystal ball drops in Times Square on New Year's Eve your average monthly sales cannot go below the benchmark you set in that year? That's news to me. I think you're confusing the unspoken assumption that I'm trying to bring out with a mistake in my analysis. It's not true that you can assume fluctuations will only happen _within _ years, never _between _ them.

This is precisely one of the problems I'm trying to bring out in his analysis. People hear 5 sales a month average and unconsciously _assume steady growth_. But it can't be assumed because books don't work like that. In other words, you also have to assume that you'll never lose ground and that those sales will grow steadily over the six years-instead of spiking early-when that does not have to happen to achieve 5 sales a month.



> Also, most people who "break out" like Jay Lake (or Elizabeth Bear or Ken Liu etc) have a trunk full of stories they probably won't let see the light of day. It isn't like they woke up one day and were selling, award-winning writers. Most people put in years and years of work to get to that point (what Dean calls the first million words). So you have no idea how much they've been writing in their lives. The point is, they are prolific now, and that's without even going the self-publishing route for extra money.


That argument is self-refuting. A story that can't be sold doesn't count for anything. It's like saying, "Yeah, I peeled off 250k last year in one hour a day, just like DWS said." But if only 20k of it was publishable, how does that count for anything? He's talking and we're taking saleable stories, not how much hard drive space can be filled with useless text files in an hour a day. So, no, there's nothing prolific about that if, as you say, they'll never let those stories see the light of day.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

CoraBuhlert said:


> That wasn't my intention at all. I simply wanted to point out Jay Lake's specific situation just in case you weren't aware of it (though Annie mentioned it upthread).


Didn't think so, but I thought it would be better to get it off the table.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

Okey Dokey said:


> Price. Price. Price.
> 
> Price gouging.
> 
> ...


I'm not sure what point you're trying to make other than making a _very_ thinly disguised insult toward the authors who don't agree with you, or at the very least, you're insinuating that there is a direct correlation between the price of a product and its worth. What we're discussing is charging a fair market value price for a short story. Maybe it is $2.99. In the end, a reader has the final say in what price he or she will pay to read a book. I'll say it again. No one's debating whether or not readers will pay $2.99 for a book. That point has already been made, so I won't bother repeating it again. The question that concerns me is what is the price that fairly compensates me for my work and still attracts readers to purchase my books. There isn't a correct price per se. But the best price is the one that does both of those things at its optimal price point. If that's 99 cents so be it. If it's $2.99 or more, that's fine too.

To suggest that anyone who charges a lower retail price for a book than you think they should does not mean their books are of lower quality. The Kindle store is full of poorly edited, nearly unreadable works of short fiction selling for $2.99 which sets them at a higher price point than my own shorts. According to you, my shorts which are polished to a spit-shine, professionally edited, and have professionally designed covers aren't worth as much as the overly priced, poorly produced books because of a lower price tag. Really?

Truth is, some authors find that they attract a larger readership by charging less than premium rates for some of their books. As has been mentioned more than once, what works for one author isn't necessarily going to produce the same results for another author. Maybe an average of 5 books sold monthly at $2.99 is awesome to you. Others may prefer to sell a hundred copies at 99 cents. Different strokes for different folks. What matters is what produces results. And the mileage each author gets even by using the same price points will vary.

Despite his official stance on pricing, even DWS is selling some of his shorts for 99 cents. Does this mean that a 7,000 word short story written by Dean Wesley Smith sold for 99 cents is worth less than a 3,000 word story written by (Insert crappy author's name here) sold for $2.99? By the standards you have set in your post that would seem to be the case.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

I doubt that many people who aren't already good writers could make a living selling fiction of any kind... So yeah, the stuff we all do to learn our craft to the point where we sell isn't wasted writing.  Dean in his blog is talking to and about people who have already put that time in, not people who are rank beginners. You have to be good enough that people want to read your fiction before you can even think about making a living at it, obviously. So I don't even know what your point was with that?

Sure, you can average over years if you want. I'm talking about looking at sales year by year (and I'll look at them over longer periods as well, eventually, when I have more data).  You can't control what will happen in the future, only how much you work, how well you present your products to the buyers, etc.  If being unable to count on anything is scary for you, you definitely shouldn't try to make a living as a freelancer.  

This whole discussion is a little silly. I mean, it comes down to "can you make a living writing?" and the answer has been shown over and over again that plenty of people can. If you write a short story a week and publish it (a task which takes me about 8 hours of work...), then it's possible to do it with short fiction.  It might not be possible for everyone, but it sure is a long way from impossible for anyone. Not everyone has what it takes to be a short story writer or to be prolific enough. That's okay. For those who are, the way Dean lays out in his post is one way to make a living doing it. That's all.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> _I should note that many people on KB are not as up on the word length definition for short fiction as some of us from the SFF world. It's important to note that some of us are thinking short stories are 2000 words, others 6000 words, and others 35,000 words.
> 
> This public service announcement was brought to you by the Krista D. Ball Foundation for Short Story Education and the letter Q.
> 
> _


And some seem to be under the rather strange delusion that a novel takes the same amount of work and time as a short story.

People never fail to bemuse me.


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## GPB (Oct 2, 2010)

JRTomlin said:


> And some seem to be under the rather strange delusion that a novel takes the same amount of work and time as a short story.


Who?


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

GPB said:


> Who?


Someone who lumped a writer's novels in with his short stories as though they required the same amount of work, and other people seemed willing to accept this. *shrug*


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## KevinMcLaughlin (Nov 11, 2010)

Thanks for sharing your data. In general, what length range are you selling in the $2.99 bracket? Can you tell us if these works are a particular genre, or spread over multiple genres? I understand that certain genres of fiction are much more tolerant of higher priced shorts than others.


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## Zelah Meyer (Jun 15, 2011)

Thank you for sharing that, it's really handy to know.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

TattooedWriter said:


> I have. Here are some numbers from June so far:


This is interesting and should provide some insight into the money side of this question.

If I could ask a few questions for clarity, it would be much appreciated. Don't feel that if you don't answer them, I'll jump all over you. These are your personal affairs, so I understand. Just to be clear then:

*Total revenue for June 01-27, 2012 from Amazon was around (508 x $2) = $1,016 (+/-).*

Note that I'm asking for the *revenue * figure, not units sold, in order to exclude freebies and so on (because I don't know if the prices listed are the selling prices for the whole month).

Here's the follow-up question. Has revenue been constant over months? If so, or if not, can you ballpark the variability? I don't need screenshots, I'll accept the numbers.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

TattooedWriter said:


> *I wonder how many people here saying that short fiction won't sell at $2.99 have actually tried it*, and how many have tried Dean Wesley's Smith's suggestions.


And I'm wondering who here said short fiction won't sell for $2.99? Or are we just tossing around the "amateur" word in order to make ourselves feel superior to others who have differing opinions on pricing than you?


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

I give up. I'm going to go submit the short story I wrote this morning while on my lunch break.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

TattooedWriter said:


> That estimate is a little low. Some of the books are $4.99 bundles. Sales on amazon us are usually around 700. The month isn't over yet


So, for clarity, 700 paid sales a month over the last year on 40+ titles on Amazon alone, which comes out to about $1,200/month? Correct?

One more question: Do you do this full time or part time, and for how long over this same timeframe at each, if both?

Again, I appreciate the fact that you're giving answers.


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## Carradee (Aug 21, 2010)

TattooedWriter said:


> I do this part time. I have a 9-5, so short fiction suits my time schedules and my writing temperament. If I want to stick with certain characters, I turn out a series.


So that's 46 titles altogether, mostly short fiction, netting you >$1k per month. Nice job!


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

TattooedWriter said:


> Generally 8k-15k. Multiple genres...mystery, sci fi, romance. Some are in series.


Valuable information and very interesting.

Congrats. That's a nice income you're generating. And with short fiction! Wow.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> And I'm wondering who here said short fiction won't sell for $2.99? Or are we just tossing around the "amateur" word in order to make ourselves feel superior to others who have differing opinions on pricing than you?


Several people said it and some of us who didn't say it thought it.


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## Chris Northern (Jan 20, 2011)

I've been watching this thread on and off for the last few days. Lots of well expressed points of view by people whose opinions I respect. My conclusion is pretty much what i though to begin with - it can be done, of course, but I can't do it. I don't write shorts fast enough.

Having said that, a couple of months ago I came up with an idea that was best expressed in a series of connected shorts. I wrote 3 and put them out at 99cents regardless of length (3,500, 9,000 and 11,500 words) and I've just changed the two longer pieces to 1.99 & 2.99 respectively.

Okay, they weren't moving much - this month the sold 2, 3 & 1 copies respectively (by length and only Amazon US - there are a smattering of other sales) and I doubt they will move any better at the higher price - but I also doubt they will sell less (they hardly could) and I think the price more accurately reflects the work. Short fiction is work. Harder work, in my opinion, than a novel.

Short fiction is hard to write well. Pound for pound they take longer to write - you can't waste words or waffle until you pick up the threads of the plot again. If you lose direction it's an automatic stop and cut and start again from where you lost it. I can write 5000+ words of a novel in a day, but it takes three days to write a short story of that length. A novel (one cover expense) would work harder for me at $5 a copy and likely sell better - but some stories beg to be told in shorter form. What can you do? Well, price a bit higher, that's one thing. And write faster, get better, get quicker. I really need to do all three of those things (even though two of them are one thing).

It is clear as glass what Amazon want to see - they want to see $2.99 as the bottom price, but not enough to make it so. I can't imagine why Amazon don't set minimum content X'000 wds and a 2.99 minimum price, but 70% vs 35% makes the preference clear, even though they won't enforce it. I also tend to think that Amazon would like to see the end of free (hence select where they can at least control it), but not enough to make it so by making an exception to their price match policy. 

I've just notice that I'm waffling, so I'll stop.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Chris Northern said:


> I've been watching this thread on and off for the last few days. Lots of well expressed points of view by people whose opinions I respect. My conclusion is pretty much what i though to begin with - it can be done, of course, but I can't do it. I don't write shorts fast enough.
> 
> Having said that, a couple of months ago I came up with an idea that was best expressed in a series of connected shorts. I wrote 3 and put them out at 99cents regardless of length (3,500, 9,000 and 11,500 words) and I've just changed the two longer pieces to 1.99 & 2.99 respectively.
> 
> ...


Nice waffles. Are they Belgian?


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## Chris Northern (Jan 20, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> Nice waffles. Are they Belgian?


Vaguely.


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## Greer (Sep 24, 2011)

Chris Northern said:


> It is clear as glass what Amazon want to see - they want to see $2.99 as the bottom price, but not enough to make it so. I can't imagine why Amazon don't set minimum content X'000 wds and a 2.99 minimum price, but 70% vs 35% makes the preference clear, even though they won't enforce it.


I'll be really curious to see what happens with Amazon royalties when the Kobo Portal goes live, since, if what I'm hearing is right, they'll be offering 70% royalties on anything sold between $1.99 and $12.99.

Kobo looks to be really serious about competing with Amazon. It would be nice if Amazon feels the need to compete on royalties with Kobo.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

ShayneHellerman said:


> I'll be really curious to see what happens with Amazon royalties when the Kobo Portal goes live, since, if what I'm hearing is right, they'll be offering 70% royalties on anything sold between $1.99 and $12.99.
> 
> Kobo looks to be really serious about competing with Amazon. It would be nice if Amazon feels the need to compete on royalties with Kobo.


I frankly don't (personally) care about lowering the floor to $1.99 but raising the ceiling to $12.99 would be nice. Being able to sell an omnibus version of a trilogy for $12.99 at the 70% royalty rate would be great, but I think Kobo will have to get to the point of being a real competitor first. In the US, they're not even close to being competitive at this point, not that it couldn't happen.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

TattooedWriter said:


> It's never a constant, WH. I've had Amazon payments in excess of $2,000 some months and payments of $900 other months. But you have to factor in Amazon UK too, as well as B&N and other Smashwords streams and also AllRomanceEbooks, where one of my pen names sells pretty lucratively.
> 
> I do this part time. I have a 9-5, so short fiction suits my time schedules and my writing temperament. If I want to stick with certain characters, I turn out a series.
> 
> But, of course, this is only my approach. As in all things, YMMV.


I gotta say: you're a tattooed ray of sunshine on an otherwise cloudy thread. What you've offered is worth more than all the conjectures, histrionics, red herrings, and condescension put together. Now we have a concrete case of at least one writer who's making money on marginal sales (i.e., without a full-blown, Wool-level breakout). And now anyone can do some comparisons based on concrete details. They have rough estimates of

1. You average monthly revenue on 46 titles.
2. How you write.
3. In which genres you write
4. What kind of covers you use.
5. Sales rank.
6. How much time you devote.

All of this is grounds for comparison. Of course, the following are still up in the air:

1. Where you stand in relation to all other self-pubbers. Are you 1/4 or 1/1,000?
2. It's still hotdogs to hotcats. How you sell doesn't directly correlate with how anyone else will sell, regardless of how comparable they think they are to you.

But it's still something useful for people considering how they'll approach it.

(And congratulations on your success!)


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> I give up. I'm going to go submit the short story I wrote this morning while on my lunch break.


Oh, BAD Krista. Don't you know that's too fast?


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

TattooedWriter said:


> Interesting discussion. I wonder how many people here saying that short fiction won't sell at $2.99 have actually tried it, and how many have tried Dean Wesley's Smith's suggestions.
> 
> I have. Here are some numbers from June so far:
> 
> ...


In many ways your experience in short stories and mine in novels are quite similar. If you have a number of works out there presented as well as you can present them, you will get sales (though some will sell better than others and make money. You don't have to have a best seller to do it.


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

TattooedWriter said:


> Generally 8k-15k. Multiple genres...mystery, sci fi, romance. Some are in series.


Thanks for sharing. It's really informative. I understand you don't want to share your pen name(s) but do you mind talking a bit about whether you see genre specific trends? For example, that block numbered 32-36 sells exceptionally well. Are those also a genre block? What genre? Or are the blocks of double digit sales tending toward series vs standalone stories even though genres vary? Or is it completely random where say, one SF series is double digit sales while another is single digits for no percievable reason, and the same is true for standalones, and different genres.


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## ElisaBlaisdell (Jun 3, 2012)

I know this has been said in this thread before, (because everything has been said in this thread before, by now...  ), but I'm going to repeat it.

The important point to take from Dean Wesley Smith's post is that now there is hope for a short story writer.

A century ago, it was possible for a master of short story writing to make a living at it. Several decades ago, it was not possible. That it is possible now does not mean that everyone can or will become a master of short story writing. But there is hope.

A disclaimer: I am an aspiring novelist, not short story writer.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Thanks for the numbers, Tattooed Writer. This is very useful.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Thanks for sharing your numbers, TattooedWriter.  I should have about 40-50 titles out by the end of the year, so that gives me hope.  I've had some months at around 1k but most of mine so far are in the 200-500 range for monies.  1k would pay my rent plus some (we're living on about 1800 a month right now, so that's the income I need to replace to be "safe").  Good to see some numbers from someone else.


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

TattooedWriter said:


> Sales of certain stories change from month to month for no reason I can discern. A story that sells well one month might sell just a few copies the following month, then pick up again. I know it has to do with Amazon's algorithms but I can't influence it so I just have to ride it out when certain stories have a lean period. That's where having quite a few titles out there helps.


Indeed. Sounds pretty random. Thanks for taking the time.


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## Guest (Jun 28, 2012)

To Kevis, who wrote:

*"To suggest that anyone who charges a lower retail price for a book than you think they should does not mean their books are of lower quality."*

I don't think I suggested that.

There are writers who price their creations at the low end so they won't "cheat" their customers. This lets them sleep well at night.

Yet there are readers who shun the low end as "bottom fishing." They (the non-bottom fishing readers) are saying (by their purchases) that they consider bottom priced books to be of lower quality.

Now if you consider yourself only capable of writing bottom priced books, or you write bottom priced books so you won't "cheat" readers, then sleep well at night. There IS a market for your books. If you write a great book (or short story) and price it at the bottom, then you have created a bargain.

I'm not casting judgment here. Enjoy your market. Sleep well at night. You've done a good job.

But I agree with the point Dean Wesley Smith makes: if you want to make a *living* with short fiction . . .


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## John Hartness (Aug 3, 2009)

To share more concrete data, here's what I do and how it's worked for me. As everyone says, YMMV. This is what I do, take what bits work for you, and throw away the rest. I got the idea to do this from one of DWS's blog posts last year, and by watching the bundling efforts of Konrath, Crouch, and others at the beginning of this year. 

To complement my novels I write a Bubba the Monster Hunter short story every month. These are mostly stand-alone shorts featuring the same characters, but due to popular demand for a longer Bubba work, I've started on a story arc that will continue for several months. 

I publish the individual stories for $.99. I did not try to publish them at $2.99, but as they aren't my primary source of income (yet) I just wanted to play with them when I started. Now I do feel locked in to the $.99 price point, as readers have come to expect that. 

I quit my day job in March. I write full-time, thanks to all the changes in the industry in the past three years. 

I do not revise overmuch. I run a spellcheck, read through the story a couple of times for continuity, and send it on its way. I'd say that each story takes me one week to create, working one hour a day on the story, Monday-Friday. So roughly 5 hours. Some stories take a little longer, some less. 

The stories range from 6,000 words to 12,000 words. 

Here are the sales numbers through April. Sorry, haven't dumped May into my spreadsheet yet. 

January - 
Voodoo Children - 139
Ballet of Blood - 97
Ho-Ho-Homicide - 88
Tassels of Terror - 63
Monsters Beware (1-4 collected @2.99) - 113
Cat Scratch Fever - 32

February - 
Voodoo Children - 59
Ballet of Blood - 43
Ho-Ho-Homicide - 41
Tassels of Terror - 54
Monsters Beware (1-4 collected @2.99) - 242
Cat Scratch Fever - 98
Love Stinks - 6

March - 
Voodoo Children - 57
Ballet of Blood - 37
Ho-Ho-Homicide - 37
Tassels of Terror - 35
Monsters Beware (1-4 collected @2.99) - 215
Cat Scratch Fever - 101
Love Stinks - 121

April - 
Voodoo Children - 39
Ballet of Blood - 20
Ho-Ho-Homicide - 26
Tassels of Terror - 21
Monsters Beware (1-4 collected @2.99) - 288
Cat Scratch Fever - 64
Love Stinks - 73
Hall & Goats - 30

The sales for this series continue to grow, and I posit that if I were willing to sit in front of the computer and write more stories, I could do just fine doubling or tripling my revenue from this series. I've added a second 4-story collection, which is doing fairly well this month, and to date in June I've sold over 600 of the individual shorts, plus 336 of the collections, bringing in almost a thousand dollars. And I'm working on two novel projects to go along with my short story work this month. 

So take what pieces of Dean's advice you like. Take what pieces of my formula you like. Do your thing the way you want to do it. That's what being indie is all about, right? Owing your career. So go forth and make money. And have fun. Or get whatever out of writing that you get out of it. 

Hope this helps. 

J


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

Okey Dokey said:


> To Kevis, who wrote:
> 
> *"To suggest that anyone who charges a lower retail price for a book than you think they should does not mean their books are of lower quality."*
> 
> ...


What behooves me about this never-ending and increasingly pointless tirade over what other authors charge for their books is that some of the same authors beating their chests and espousing higher prices for short stories are the same ones charging 99 cents for their books. Did I miss something or does the word hypocritical nonsense ring a bell? I'm really past the point of participating in this thread since it's degenerated to mudslinging and that's not conducive to a productive conversation. But for people skimming my posts, I'll summarize the only points I have been making for days.

-I believe authors can (and do) make a living off of short fiction and never stated otherwise (that was never my fight).

-Authors do not get cool points for insulting other authors because they disagree with them. Technically, what another author does with his or career doesn't affect you anyway.

My only beef in the thread (until now) came from this single line from DWS's post:

_For #2, you must price your short story at at least $2.99 and if your story isn't long enough, add a second bonus story or other bonus material to the mix for the reader. (I know some of you don't like this idea. *Fine, keep your story at 99 cents and keep making 35 cent in the discount bin. No problem for me, and not something to talk about in this discussion.*)_

I respect DWS. But I don't like it when authors who have spent a lifetime building up their name takes a cheap shot at other authors in such a condescending manner. Especially when the author taking the cheap shots is guilty of the same thing they are condemning like this: Myth: You Can't Make a Living Writing Fiction (Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing) and Black Betsy: A Jukebox story and Between Showers and He Could Have Coped with Dragons: A Jukebox Story. Do I need to continue? And don't give me any bull about he has a reason for charging that way. So do the other authors who charge the exact same price for their short stories.

By the way, you're preaching to the choir. With the exception of when I'm running a promotion, my books are priced at the upper tier of the pricing ladder. The beauty of being an indie author is that you don't have to answer to know-it-all authors or the parrots who blindly repeat the things they hear famous people say. The only person you have to answer to with your business strategy are readers. They're the ones who make the decision to purchase a book or not purchase it. And that's the way it should be.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Actually, Kevis, Dean does have a reason for having that story at .99. He hasn't had a chance to pair it up with another story and change the price.  That's it. I was sitting in the room and a part of the discussion that changed his mind about having anything at .99, but at that point (which was only a few months ago), he and Kris had so much work up that it will take a while to change everything out.  That's the reason.  

Thanks for sharing your numbers, John!


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

Doomed Muse said:


> Actually, Kevis, Dean does have a reason for having that story at .99. He hasn't had a chance to pair it up with another story and change the price. That's it. I was sitting in the room and a part of the discussion that changed his mind about having anything at .99, but at that point (which was only a few months ago), he and Kris had so much work up that it will take a while to change everything out. That's the reason.


I'm glad I didn't have to wait very long to hear the reason, especially since I knew it was only a matter of time before one got mentioned. Doesn't change the fact that it was lame for him to throw out that condescending comment while using the same prices he advises against. Last year DWS was espousing different prices. This year he's advocating a new pricing strategy and next year, he'll likely have another pricing strategy to reflect the changes in the market--which, by the way, is a smart way of doing business (I applaud him for that). What's not smart is authors blindly adopting the business strategy of other authors just because they have a large microphone. Or worse, throwing eggs at others because they have a different idea on how to build their career

The point is, up until recently, DWS thought 99 cents was a good price for a short story. But now, after having an epiphany, he scorns the 99 cent price point (even though several of his books are still 99 cents) and anyone else who uses it is stupid. If that's the case, was DWS wearing a dunce cap before he came to an epiphany about pricing? Or is he, as I suspect, being a savvy businessman for recognizing changes in the industry and reacting to them?


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## BEAST (Mar 31, 2012)

Hmm, feel like I'm late to the party.

As a relatively new writer in the world of self publishing let me add my two cents...

As far as the calculating and words per day and hours of work, yadda, yadda, yadda... why argue on this point is beyond me. Either you write a thousand words, publishable or nearly publishable words, a day or you can't. Who am I to say you can or can't. I've learned in life that an "average" person will do some amazing things if properly motivated. At one point I wrote for Demand Studios and was popping out 7.5 and 15 dollar articles like gangbusters. I was pulling in three grand a month on top of teaching. Why? Because my grandmother who raised me had health issues and no insurance. I had to do what needed to be done.

As far as making a living from short fiction... why not? I have five titles, two 15K word erotica collections and three novellas averaging 25K. All gay black erotic themed titles. Heck of niche right All are priced at $2.99. As of right now, Freshman Freaks has sold 71 copies on Amazon and 12 copies on B&N. It's earned me over $150 so far in June. Trade Banging and Torn have each sold 40 and 41 copies respectively. That's $80 from them. My other two titles have sold 12 copies between them. Last month each sold 20. And as soon as my titles come off Select I will be putting them up on B&N and look into Itunes. I really want to get on Itunes as I've done surveys and chatted with readers. A number of them read ebooks on their smart phones. I know tons of my friends have Iphones as well. So...

Anyways... Am I living off these titles? No. But an extra ~$400 a month is nice. Now, Freshman Freaks took all of two weeks to write, edit and publish. Same with Trade Banging. Torn took a month to write, edit and publish. Previously, I had set a goal to write 6 novels this year, I wrote two and a half and then had some health issues. You know, the one that comes from sitting on a hard chair all day... I digress. So, as I sat on my donut (TMI?) I considered writing more short fiction. It sells and it is easier for me to write.

Also, one of the many authors I check out a lot is Selena Kitt. She writes erotica and has 101 titles up on Amazon last I checked. Most are short works. I've read some of her stuff and it's good. And I prefer gay erotica. According to her blog she sold over 500,000 ebooks last year. And looking at her price points I'm sure she made nice bit of money. Is she the norm? No, I've checked out pretty much every erotica writer, gay and straight, and she's an outlier. But she gives me reason to dream and SEE that short fiction, short erotica can earn someone an income. Oh, and she does talk about QUALITY writing. Check out her article on Erotica Sustainability if you are interested.

My point? I don't consider anyone giving their opinion based on their experience selling THEIR books a professional in the industry no matter how long they've been publishing. They really can only speak on their experiences. Sure, they can talk to others and see correlations but that's all. So DWS can say what he wants, heck, I had fun daydreaming about increased income from my writing reading his article. But that's all that it is, an opportunity to daydream. And I think most authors realize that.

So, I plan on having 30 or so titles out by the end of the year and 80 or so by the end of next year. I have five or six that will be out next month. And I dream that they will sell well like my three titles. So yea, I'd love to "average" everything and say I can earn $400 for every five titles. Nice day dream right? 100 titles would make me about $8,000 a month right I can have that many out within the next three years. Six figures in three years. WOW! Here's to daydreaming! lol


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## shadowfox (Jun 22, 2012)

Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> What behooves me about this never-ending and increasingly pointless tirade over what other authors charge for their books is that some of the same authors beating their chests and espousing higher prices for short stories are the same ones charging 99 cents for their books. Did I miss something or does the word hypocritical nonsense ring a bell? I'm really past the point of participating in this thread since it's degenerated to mudslinging


I think it's quite public that Dean Wesley Smith had a stroke in the second half of last year, and various other life events, and that it has delayed his implementation of the price change. He is also changing his covers, and putting work into collections. He's doing it as fast as he can. It's only a few months since he changed his mind on prices.

Look, the scientific thing to do on this is an A/B split test. You put work under on pseudonym with one price structure, and work under a different pseudonym using a different price structure. I did that and came to my own conclusions. My personal belief is that the best price will vary over time, and for different authors publishing in different genres. An A/B split test is the only way to give you the best possible answer for *yourself*. That's what I did, and pretty much what anyone wanting to make a living as a short story writer would have to do.

Also, the comment on the discount bin is not actually an insult to anyone, or a put down. There are three main publishing strategies... discount publishing, mainstream, and high end. Because $0.99 is the lowest price you can charge on Amazon it is by definition a price point reserved to discount publishers. But discount publishers generally publish good work. No one is going to read a book they don't like regardless of the price.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson said:


> I'm glad I didn't have to wait very long to hear the reason, especially since I knew it was only a matter of time before one got mentioned. Doesn't change the fact that it was lame for him to throw out that condescending comment while using the same prices he advises against. Last year DWS was espousing different prices. This year he's advocating a new pricing strategy and next year, he'll likely have another pricing strategy to reflect the changes in the market--which, by the way, is a smart way of doing business (I applaud him for that). What's not smart is authors blindly adopting the business strategy of other authors just because they have a large microphone. Or worse, throwing eggs at others because they have a different idea on how to build their career
> 
> The point is, up until recently, DWS thought 99 cents was a good price for a short story. But now, after having an epiphany, he scorns the 99 cent price point (even though several of his books are still 99 cents) and anyone else who uses it is stupid. If that's the case, was DWS wearing a dunce cap before he came to an epiphany about pricing? Or is he, as I suspect, being a savvy businessman for recognizing changes in the industry and reacting to them?


I don't recall Dean saying people who didn't use his strategy were stupid. (Although he can be a bit harsh towards people who disagree with him which I can hardly criticise him for since I can too)

Otherwise, you point that we should watch what is going on in publishing and adapt accordingly is a good one.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

shadowfox said:


> I think it's quite public that Dean Wesley Smith had a stroke in the second half of last year,


What?


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

TattooedWriter said:


> Thanks, WH. I don't think I'm so unique...my partner has done exactly the same thing with similar results. She writes YA/paranormal romance novellas - novels under her own name and a large number of shorter stories under pen names following the same DWS plan.


If you could clarify another point for all reading this, it would be much appreciated. I noticed that _Ghost Dance_, the story in your signature line, was first published in 1997. That suggests to me that you've been writing for a long time. _You were a pro writer when you started_. This is important because people with rose-coloured glasses will assume that you started writing within the last couple of years. They need to told that you're a proficient writer and that you've been published before, so they don't underestimate where they need to be. (I realize humility prevents most people from coming out and saying they're experts, so just that you've been doing it a long time is okay.)

Thanks again for posting.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

John Hartness said:


> To share more concrete data, here's what I do and how it's worked for me.
> 
> Hope this helps.


It does help and thanks for posting. I see two important take-aways. (1) A big chuck of your writing belongs to a series that you've managed to make popular. This is vital information. You're not just writing anything at all; you've carved out a niche and you're supplying that niche with a regular product. (2) Presumably you also paid attention to what was selling and tailored your writing to it-and you were able to do that because you enjoy writing those stories.

As always, the context is essential.


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## shadowfox (Jun 22, 2012)

shelleyo1 said:


> What?


I'm not sure if I am allowed to post links here because I am new, but see the post on his blog dated 14 March 2012 for details.


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