This is Not Okay: Random House & the Hydra

If you’re an author – if you’re a writer – if you’re a reader, then you need to be aware of what’s going on over at Random House’s e-book imprints. This is bad, guys. This is really, really terrible. I’m talking music industry horrific. This is one of the big five publishing houses testing the waters to see if they can get away with the awful business model for which we rallied against the music industry.

Except worse, because at least the music industry pretended by giving an advance.

Recently, two of Random House’s e-book only imprints had their contracts come to light. And these aren’t just weird, back-ass contracts given to the writers they’re trying to scare away: a lot of writers have confirmed that this is exactly what they were offered.

The offer?

No advance, but you get paid a share of the NET profit based on the cover price. That is, after you’ve paid the set-up fees for your book: editing, marketing, cover art, any extraneous fees for ISBN’s or the coffee or massage the editor desperately needs. Not to mention if they ever print your book (WHICH THEY CAN WITHOUT CONSULTING YOU – but we’ll get to that), you get to pay all those fees again. Before you see any money yourself.

How is that different from a vanity publisher? I’m having a hard time figuring it out. Actually, it’s different because with a vanity publisher, you get to choose the price of your editor – if you want one – your cover art, your marketing, your extraneous coffee-tastic fees. You know exactly how much you’ll be paying for all that and exactly what you’re willing to pay. You can shop around, find a friend who owes you a favor.

But with these imprints, you don’t even get that. It’s in-house, which means their friend whom they owe a favor can get this ridiculously lucrative deal doing the cover for your book because it’s not the publisher paying it, it’s you and you get no say.

So, after all that, and only then, and only what screggs there are, you get a percentage of the remainder. Suddenly that net amount is a lot smaller than you expected.

This is where the comparison to the music industry comes in. This is their basic business model, except they would pay the musician an advance, then deduct their fees from that advance after the fact. So the musician would see, say, a 100k advance, but that advance would get eaten up by publishing, business, airfare, and touring expenses, over which the musician would virtually have no say. So on paper, it looks awesome: 100k advance! But in reality, it quickly dwindles to 20k after all those expenses.

WHEW.

Now let’s get to the other, equally horrific part of this contract: primary & subsidiary rights become Random House’s for the length of copyright.

That doesn’t sound as terrible, does it?

Except length of copyright = 70 years after the author’s death.

Except primary & subsidiary rights = “the exclusive right to print, publish, sell and license the contracted work, in every possible format, in whole or in part, in every language, in the entire world”.

As Scalzi noted, they might have well added “throughout the universe” in there. It’s ridiculous. For pennies – for part of the “net” profit, whatever that turns out to be over which the author have absolutely no control – they want ALL the rights. For every possible format. And they have no incentive to do anything with it. Because they don’t have to pay the author any specified amount.

So maybe the author sells well and they are approached by a foreign publisher for foreign language rights. Well. They can’t give those rights because Hydra already has them. And maybe Hydra doesn’t feel like giving those rights just yet – or at all – and decide it’s in their best interest to sit on them. Even if it’s in the author’s best interest to sell them. Under a normal contract, the author retains those rights and can do what they want with them – maybe they don’t like Canada, so they never sell English language rights in that area. But Hydra could, without consulting the author. Hydra could do whatever the hell they want.

Do you see why this is bad? This work, these words born from a year or two or three (or more)’s worth of sweat blood and tears, and Random House wants that work without giving you any idea of what money you’ll – eventually, after they pay the editor, illustrator, taxman, janitor, intern, masseuse, psychic – earn, and then will keep the rights to that work, i.e., the ability to do ANYTHING with it without consulting you until way after you’re dead… And they could just sit on those rights. They could do your e-book and then just sit on them and you could have a hundred other offers on your door but you could never do anything with them because Hydra doesn’t think it’s in their best interest.

This. Is. Not. Okay.

This is not remotely okay.

And we have to let the publishers know that. Because this is them testing to see what they can get away with. This is them insulting the intelligence of would-be authors. This is them saying, hey look, they’re just so damned desperate to see their names in print, they’d be willing to sign with a publisher that’s shittier than a vanity press.

Introducing: Photo Wednesday

So, I like to take photos. And I have a plethora of photos I’ve been wanting to share with you, with the world, with a few words. I’m going to start up Photo Wednesday, in which every Wednesday (aka Hump Day) I’ll post a photo and a few words. Nothing much, really – I’ll see how it evolves from there. It could very well spiral quickly out of control, like the cactopodes did. It could not.

Living in the desert, one really begins to appreciate water and, above all, flowing water. Twice a year – during Monsoon season in the late summer and the second season in late winter – there’s water in the canyons. It flows in a great, icy rush and just being near it, listening to that bubbling cacophony, is enough to bring some much-needed calm. I love to sit next to the creek when it’s flowing, to take off my shoes and dart a toe or a whole foot into the water, a cold shock even in the heart of summer.

Many a picnic has been had at the base of this dam, and many a sunny morning spent lounging around. There’s a breeze that comes with this particular waterfall; to say it’s welcome when the rest of the immediate world is boiling – well, that’s an understatement.

February in Review: Books!

It’s that time again! February may have felt like it buzzed by without so much as a hello or a how ya doin’? but the books I read prove otherwise. I ticked off a few more classics this month, as well as some from the “best of 2012″ lists, and kept heartily on my way towards my goal.

Alif the Unseen by G Willow Wilson
4/5 A young Arab-Indian hacker doesn’t want to foment revolution in his surveillance state – he just wants to shield his clients. Who happen to be dissidents and outlaws. But after programming something new and alive he gets yanked into a whole unseen world, where revolution becomes a side effect.
There’s a lot going for this book: it’s fast, it’s full of action, it’s full of interesting characters, it has jinn and a sprinkling of Islamic Spring ideas & actions. It’s refreshingly different. It’s a good story. The only reason I didn’t give it a full five stars was because it grew a little heavy-handed at the end, which is one of my big pet peeves.

the Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling
4/5 A character study of a small, British town after a parish council seat is left vacant by the death of its owner, Barry. It was not quite what I expected, which was a more political story about the struggle between various townsfolk to fill that vacancy. There was a little of that, but mostly it was about everyone in the town, their individual struggles and dynamics, all the ugly things they thought and did and the justifications for those ugly things. In short, very literary.
So it’s a testament to Rowling’s writing that I not only read such a story, but that I found it… well, enjoyable isn’t quite the right word. Interesting. Too grim & gritty for my usual tastes, but it was very well crafted.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein
2/5 In which a man raised wholly without the human race suddenly finds himself immersed in Earth’s seemingly absurd & hypocritical culture. Also, he has super powers.
Ugh. I am so very glad I read the Moon is a Harsh Mistress before this, because I would otherwise never touch Heinlein again. His ideas were great at the time, but they’ve been worked over extensively and more thoroughly since then. While it’s fun to see where so much of modern sci-fi’s core originated, it’s hard to slog through the outdated misogyny and the tiring, endless rants about religion and culture. And every single time one of the male characters referred to a female character in a babying, derogatory way and she didn’t slug him, I wanted to throttle the author. Considering that happened on almost every page, it didn’t make for a pleasant reading experience.

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
3/5 It’s the future – 2312 to be exact – and Earth is falling apart while humans take to terraformed asteroids to explore new bodies, new cultures, and new landscapes. But something nefarious is going on throughout the solar system, something that could destroy all of human civilization.
There was a plot. I think. At times, there seemed like there was. A semblance of a plot. A ghost. But really, if you’re going to read this, you’re going to read it for the wide and detailed future it paints. 2312 does very well in that regard, enough to warrant a 3 despite an absence of plot. I especially loved the images of Mercury, of the city Terminator forever rolling along its tracks, just ahead of the flesh-melting sunlight, and the sunwalkers who worship the sun by living – literally – on the edge. But plot? Not so much.

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
5/5 As the eldest of three, Sophie is doomed to a life of mediocrity. That is, until a witch turns her into an old woman and Sophie finds unexpected refuge in the castle of the wizard Howl, a man famous for eating the hearts of young girls. But Sophie should be fine… right?
Oh! Oh! Oh! I loved this. I love that switching of the old girl-meets-old-woman-who’s-really-a-witch-in-disguise trope. I loved Howl and his snarky, petulant ways. I loved how Sophie totally owned her sudden old age. I loved that her mother wasn’t evil and her sisters were darlings. The only thing I didn’t love was the Witch of the Waste – her story was a little convoluted and boring. But oh! Everything else.

the Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
2/5 While exploring her father’s vast library, a girl discovers a very peculiar book – along with a hoard of strange and dire letters. Soon her father is telling her a hair-raising story about research and bureaucracy and vampires!
The only reason this gets a 2 is because of the sheer amount of research the author did. That’s impressive. Well done. Probably took a lot of time. But did she need to put every single tiny and insignificant detail into this beast of a tome? Where the hell was the editor through all this? I could skip entire chapters without missing a thing. That’s… not good.
Plus, the epistolary nature of the narrative soon becomes unbelievable and tired. I appreciated the knockback to the tone of 18th/19th century classics, but damn. It stretched the suspense of disbelief too far that someone would remember such details and actually write them all down in a conveniently narrative format.
But the real kicker, the real reason I all but threw this book across the room when I finished: Dracula is not only alive, but collecting eminent scholars to catalog his library. THE HORROR.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick
4/5 In a post-apocalyptic future, few brave the radioactive dust that coats Earth, most opting instead for the stars for a better life and a free android. But some are stuck there, either because they’ve been deemed “special” and aren’t allowed to emigrate or they’re crazy or their job depends on it. For Deckard, it’s the latter – he’s a bounty hunter for escaped androids. And it’s getting harder and harder to tell the simulacra from the real thing.
Wow. This was much better than the movie, if only because it had actual electric sheep. And I still can’t decide whether the androids were to be pitied, which I love. They had their faults just as much as the humans, and could be just as bad – or good. The religion component was a bit strange – I’m not sure I understood what the author was getting at. But over all, it was interesting, well written, and raised better questions about androids than just the equivalent of flapping hands and saying oh you poor dears.

Theft of Swords by Michael J Sullivan
3/5 This is actually two books in one: the first is about two expert thieves who find themselves framed for the murder of the king. The second is about a dragon terrorizing a village and the search for the heir to an ancient empire. Both stories include stealing swords, hence, perhaps, the title.
This was fairly mediocre. It’s straight up epic fantasy, with all of the prerequisite tropes. Snarky thieves, gold-hearted whores, stupid dwarves, enigmatic elves, kings and queens and emperors and priests. It’s full of action if somewhat predictable, but I’ll give it props for some – random – out of the box thinking. The major deal breaker were the female characters, who were either helpless or stupid to the stereotypical extreme. Still, it’s fun. I’m just left on the fence about whether or not I want to read more in the series.

Superherodom Update: Hullo March!

Well, there went February. I hit my main goal, which was to finish a final draft and ship it off to my betas. I’ve heard back from a few and my plan for the weekend is to shore up those areas they’ve pointed out. But I’m struggling like hell with the query letter. Every iteration sounds more stilted than the last and it’s close to the point of hair-rending. But it has to be done. I have to complete it and it has to be the best thing ever, to assuage my fear that I’m sabotaging myself in that area.

If there were some magical way to write a query and have it work, I would publish that far and wide and retire a rich, old man. But, alas, I have seen hundreds and hundreds of them, read query critiques and parsed why some work and others simply don’t. There are rules to follow, of course – start with your MC, tell us what she wants and show us how this story stands out from the thousands of others filling up the agent’s inbox – but alas, these do not magically condense into a fully functional query.

Ah, enough whining. On to March goals!

This month, I’m going to focus on ONE superhero goal, instead of flailing about at all of them and making no noticeable progress on any. For March, I’ve picked the back squat, which means working towards 10 reps at body weight. Considering right now, on a good day, I can do (maybe) 4 reps at BW, this will probably take longer than March. But let’s see about doubling that, shall we?

My other big goal for the year – receiving 50 rejections – will begin in earnest this month. I will have a serviceable query letter by the end of this week (OR ELSE), and then it’s off to researching and submitting to agents – and trying not to fall desperately in love with all of them.

This will free me up in a big way by mid March to really work on my next WIP. Planning for the WIP will begin by week two and I aim to have a solid start (i.e. 10k-20k usuable words) by the end of March. It will also be a nice change to transition from high/epic fantasy to something a little sillier and more urban fantasy-ish, minus the love triangles (which, is that even possible?). OIBM is about the harbingers of the apocalypse – summoned prematurely. With bonus! magic, redheads, demons, not to mention wedding planning.

So that’s March. Hullo, March!

January in Review: Books!

I love books. As you might have noticed, considering I’ve recently renamed this blog to Books & Barbells, after the things I tend to post most about. Although if we were being truthful, it should really be called Books & Diet & Barbells.

I also, by extension, have a crush on Goodreads. And they have not made quitting them any easier with their whole year-long-book-reading goal. After hitting a solid 100 read last year, I’ve – of course – upped the ante this year. To 104. Big jump. I know.

Whether or not I hit that arbitrary number, this means a lot of books! In the past, I’ve done sort of quarterly book updates, wherein I corral all the books I’ve read and blurb a little about them and how I felt and share it. Because there’s nothing as pleasing as sharing an awesome read with people. Or a particularly bad one. But with all these books, quarterly won’t do. So I’m going to aim instead for monthly.

And look – it’s February! Which means that it is time for January’s round-up. You can check this post for the way/reasons I rate things. Otherwise, here we go!

The 4 Hour Chef by Timothy Ferriss
3/5 This was my first foray into Ferriss’ mad, mad world – not my last, as you can see below – and I was both impressed and annoyed. He has a lot of good info in here and you can tell he poured a lot of time, effort, and soul into writing this, but… but damn is he all over the place. It reads more like he found a bunch of interesting facts and tidbits and methods and rammed them all into the book without really making sense out of them. It was discombobulating, to say the least. I don’t know whom I’d recommend it to, because I’m still not sure what it was really all about.

In the Woods by Tana French
4/5 I was introduced to French through the second in her Dublin Murder Squad series and, after thoroughly falling in love with the Likeness, knew I had to read the first one. This story about a detective’s unraveling of his past, a case, and his sanity echoed the same richly evocative words and tones of the Likeness, but it couldn’t quite hold up to the sheer gorgeous gratuity – and it may be wholly unfair to compare the two. That said, it’s an excellent book. And I’m going to read the rest of the series, even if French murders my cats.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
4/5 Oh, how ignorant I was of this book – I sincerely thought Tiffany’s meant an actual cafe of some sort, not the jewelry store. This was surprisingly good, although mostly a character sketch about Holly Golightly. I did love how she was portrayed as both ephemeral and ridiculous, but that scene with the cat at the end really cinched it.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
4/5 Another classic I was wholly ignorant of. And surprised by. Jane is a strong female character without going overboard or being ridiculous, and still managing to fit in with the morals of her time. I loved her sass and spirit, even if the plot itself was wanting and somewhat, ah, deus ex machina-y. I’d like to try Austen next, although I’ve heard that liking Bronte may mean Austen is a no-go.

The 4 Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss
3/5 Another Ferriss book, very similar in vein to 4 Hour Chef, and with the same faults and charms. I got less out of 4 Hour Body than I did Chef, but mostly because I’m already doing a lot of the things he instructs. At least, in this case, I feel more able to pinpoint who his intended audience was.

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
4/5 Literary sci-fi! In this post-apocalyptic world, whoever is still alive must surely be a scoundrel, and so for Hig it’s a dog-shoot-on-sight-dog world. Until he meets a girl. Of course. I liked this a lot and the only reason it got a 4 instead of a 5 is because it sometimes got bogged down by its own literariness, i.e., it tried too hard at certain points. But it was funny and poignant and I might have – did – cry.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
3/5 Oh, Hemingway. When you say it’s about an old man and the sea, you really, really mean it. This is – sadly – my first introduction to Hemingway and I can certainly see the appeal in his short, quiet sentences and simple words. The Old Man and the Sea is beautiful and stark and sad and hopeless. Mostly hopeless.

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
3/5 I’m glad to have read this book now instead of in high school like most of the rest of the world. It seems that most teenagers either loved or hated it, and I certainly would have fallen into the latter camp. Even now it’s hard to decide just how to rate this book, because on the one hand I still didn’t like it. But on the other hand, it captures the immature voice and style of a teenager traumatized by the inauthentic and terrified of becoming an adult quite perfectly.

Achievement Unlocked: Final Draft Complete

I am back to weightlifting like a beast! It feels so good to be back again, and not only back, but at 100%. I did a decent squat set last Wednesday, but really dug in with my deadlifts on Saturday and pushed through a barrier I’ve been hitting up against for the last six-eight months. Hopefully that sticks and wasn’t just a fluke. We’ll see this week.

In other quest for superherodom news, I locked myself in the bedroom for seven + hours on Sunday and finished my final draft. I discovered that not only locking myself away, but live-blogging my progress on my LJ were great motivators. Suddenly I had made my struggle and last push public, so I either had to chime in every hour or so with my progress or admit defeat. Which I simply cannot do. So I finished instead.

Last night I sent said final draft out to my betas, which I suppose means it’s not truly final since if/when they find anything wrong with it, things will need to be fixed. But it’s the best I can do without letting it fester in a (metaphorical) drawer for a year. Because right now I’m so wrapped up in it, I can’t see the garden for all the dirt. If there is a garden. Because my nose = in the dirt. Lots of worms down here, for sure.

So while that’s out being eviscerated, it’s time to turn my attention to something even more dreadful and distressing: the query letter.

I once interned for a short time with an agency and was lucky enough to see the other side of query submissions. I got to see a truckload of queries from all across the board – the good, the bad, and the WTF. It was heartening to learn that about 75% of queries fall into either WTF, did-not-read-submission-guidelines, or simply bad. It was a really great lesson on what not to do. However, standing out amongst those last 25% is a bit more tricky. About 20% of those were just mediocre or cliche. And the last 4% are more of a matter of not-quite-right-for-that-agent, for which there’s not much one can do aside from very thoroughly researching the agents to whom you submit.

But even knowing all that and seeing all that and reading all of the Query Shark’s archives, query letters are freaking hard to write. It is quite possibly the most difficult 250-500 words that relate to your novel that you will ever write. Because now that you’ve had your nose in the dirt, counting the bugs and the worms for the last few months (weeks, years), you’re told to condense that garden (which you still can’t see) into the fruits you would sell at market.

Wow. That’s a labored metaphor if one has ever been written.

It’s like holding a hundred or a thousand strings, all attached to balloons, which together, at a distance, form a cohesive whole, then being told to select just five of those balloons to represent what that whole means, or would look like once whole again. It’s do-able, but only in very specific and limited configurations – otherwise it just looks like a bunch of disjointed balloons.

So here’s to the next step – balloons! the query letter!

What It’s Like to Have Anxiety

I had my first panic attack when I was 20. I still don’t know what set it off – the end of year stress, the copious amounts of sugary, caffeinated drinks I was ingesting, the imminent approach of a summer spent in Russia. I certainly didn’t feel more stressed than usual. I certainly wasn’t afraid of anything. I was young and invincible, as you are at that age. Everything was amazing and terrifying. But none of it was all that bad. None of it should’ve added up to that first attack.

But there I was, teeth chattering, hands clenched at my sides, my whole body shaking from fear. I didn’t know what was happening, just that my head hurt and my chest was tight and there was pain in my arm and my heart was racing and I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was having a heart attack. I thought I was dying. I was crying. I was terrified. I knew I was dying and there was nothing I could do.

It finally ended after what felt like hours but could only have been ten minutes. I fell asleep, not entirely convinced I would wake up again. Not knowing it was going to be a recurrent event. Unsure. Scared.

I don’t know what set off that first attack, but I can pinpoint the reason for almost every one after that: fear. Paranoia. I began to obsessively scan my body for the smallest sign of an imminent attack. Any small twinge or headache became an immediate reason to worry. My primary trigger was heart palpitations, which I started having almost every time I had caffeine. But really, anything could set it off. Sometimes they came out of nowhere. Sometimes they came from something very specific, like searching google for symptoms and finding out that you probably (oh, most definitely) had a brain tumor.

During the worst of it I cut out the caffeine and suffered through massive withdrawal for whatever relief it would give me. During that time I had a hard time going to sleep because I was convinced – utterly convinced – that I would die in my sleep. I took muscle relaxants – prescribed for the omnipresent headaches – just so I couldn’t avoid sleeping. I was scared to move, to leave the house. I frequently found myself crying simply out of frustration. I was fucking tired of the fear.

Because that’s the main thing with anxiety, no matter what it’s source is. It all comes down to fear. Hands-shaking, heart-pounding, scalp-sweating, chest-tightening, mind-numbing, breath-limiting fear. It’s not like the fear you feel before telling a girl you maybe kinda sorta like her, you know, or the fear you feel before an all-important interview, or the fear before hurtling yourself off a cliff and trusting your fragile shell to a thin cord or parachute. It’s a deeper fear than that. Primal. All-consuming. Wholly and utterly irrational. A complete loss of control.

It’s tucking yourself into a ball and repeating to yourself over and over that the pain in your head is just a headache and you’re not about to die from a blood clot and not believing yourself.

It’s not leaving the house because you might not be able to find a safe place to panic in time.

It’s dreading the bus ride every day because you might have an attack and there’s nothing, absolutely nothing you can do surrounded by strangers and hyperventilating each time it happens.

It’s counting the days between attacks and knowing you’re “due” soon.

It’s not being able to talk about it because others expect there to be a reason for it, but the plain horror of it is it’s sheer irrationality.

It’s hating yourself because it cannot possibly be that bad and why can’t you just get the fuck over it already.

This s one unexpected benefit of the Whole30 that I’ve mentioned in passing but never fully explained. It’s one thing to say that I lost weight and my acne cleared up and I felt better as a human being. It’s another thing entirely to say that the Whole30 has given me one and a half years now without a single panic attack and two – just two! – anxiety attacks, both of which I can pinpoint to specifically stressful times tinged with bad eating.

This is fucking momentous. But it’s hard to articulate an absence without first explaining what it was like to live with anxiety. And sometimes, frankly, it’s hard to remember just how painful and awful that fear was. It’s also hard to talk about, and hard to confirm that diet played such a huge role. But I am and it has, and if this helps one person defeat that fear, then it was so fucking worth it.