My brother writes Sci Fi for a living. He's self taught and self published. He does well, he's sold over a million books. What many people don't know is he suffered from severe tendonitis that really narrowed his career options. He started writing because he could write using voice recognition software. Now he writes with a keyboard, as the pain is more manageable. I'm extremely proud of him for how well he's been able to carve out his own path in life, in the developing world, against adversity.
I've been reading Jasper's work for a quite a while, and given your brother's very regular output would never have guessed!
It's hard to even visualise the effort it must have taken to overcome those obstacles to become one of the better self-published sci-fi authors. Respect.
This is an excellent view on how writing speculative fiction actually works. Amit's publication to Tor should be lauded as a serious achievement in his career and not something that an average person could reasonably expect to achieve/plan for. Congratulations to him.
Agreed, Tor is a very respected publishing house in the sci-fi/fantasy genres.
He’s joining company with works like Enders Game, Wheel of Time, Mistborn, and Stormlight Archive, and a dozen more I’m not able to remember off the top of my head.
It's worth noting that Tor's pay for authors is in the absolute top tier. I've had a short story published in a smaller publication, and they paid me $50 total - $25 for the first six months exclusivity, then $25 again for inclusion in an anthology. That is more typical for a starting out author.
OTOH, getting published in Tor at all is a much much bigger achievement - congratulations to the author!
These figures are interesting for me. One day of contracting dwarfs that.
You'd have to be absolutely passionate and have another income to do this, which is a shame. I think every craft should have its place. Clearly the market is terrible for writers; a bit like indie game makers nowadays.
I hope you get a breakthrough though; because if you keep doing this, you're clearly passionate about your craft!
This comment confuses me. Are you saying that their pay is good for established authors, but they pay only a token amount for authors that they classify as “starting out”? Because the rates you quote are abusive. People who accept token payments for work, out of vanity or a false concept of “exposure”, damage the market for those of us who actually need to get paid for our writing. Such people are the pariahs of the freelance world.
Short stories don't make a lot of money. $100 is a huge accomplishment. The goal is usually to have them spike sales for a novel, but even there (a) it's iffy, and (b) most novels only sell a couple thousand copies.
Writing, unfortunately, remains something you have to get financially comfortable to be able to do... not a way to become financially comfortable. It's surprising that even in 2022 we haven't fixed that.
Did anyone find it curious that the revision process highlights perceived moral impurities (immigrant deportation commentary, MAGA similarity) as story failures / problems?
There’s a profound sub-narrative here on self-censorship, what is or isn’t acceptable within the bounds of fiction, and how genre in-groups police themselves toward Acceptable Messages.
To me it seems conscientious. It is good to know if story elements are likely to trigger issues from some historical parallel or other such. This is kind of like taking a moment to consider any scientific experiment in order to check if it may approach or even exceed some moral boundaries. Everything is contextual, and these are not so much hard limits as they are social harmonics that one could tune into or reflect as well as avoid.
Congrats to superamit! Well done with your persistence and I hope Uncanny is receptive to your future submissions. I'm excited to read the story.
Disclaimer: light self-promo. Are others interested in more publishing posts like these? I've documented the journey to publication stories with stats, rejections, and a sense of the work involved for most of the short fiction I've published in literary journals. It's been cathartic and encouraging to share the entire process.
My most notable piece[1] ended up making it into The Best American Mystery Stories[2] a few years ago.
It would be easy to translate to English and try it in the US market. Is there any interest for that?
It is just like Substack. You create your page, people subscribe and get your fiction by email. The main difference is that people can read your books from the beginning, from the first chapter, in installments. With Substack (or any newsletter platform) new people can only get the future emails from the time they subscribed. In my site people will receive the first installment/chapter of the book (you can have several books published in there, one can be "Short stories").
It has the "paid subscribers" feature also.
I built it mostly to myself, as I am starting a side-career as a fiction writer wanted to own my audience. Fiction writers currently don't have a good platform to both distribute their work and gather an audience. What I built does the job pretty well I think.
> I spent 22 hours, 18 minutes, and 47 seconds writing and editing “India World” across 42 sessions in Google Docs. (Not including hours more spent editing on paper, revising the story at workshops, or reading critiques.)
Given the quality of the work, I suspect that 2x-5x that many hours were spent on developing and revising the story (the parenthetical part). So let's call it 66 hours total.
Later:
> 8/27/2020 - RUOXI FROM TOR.COM EMAILED TO BUY THE STORY! They offered $1422.80 for exclusive digital, audio, and ebook rights for one year, non-exclusive afterward. Likely publication: early 2021. I said yes!
So, ballpark $20/hr. Some commenters have noted the low pay for this kind of work. How it's a labor of love rather than a living. And Tor apparently pays top dollar. On top of the fee, there's a profit sharing program, which starts to sound pretty good. But again, this looks to be the ceiling.
What's more interesting are the non-financial terms. The author can sell the work to others after one year. Depending on whether the author retains copyright (seems to be implied), this could be a pretty interesting way to go. I'm thinking about things like expansion into a novel, movie or other derivative works, for example. The acceptance letter doesn't quite make it clear how this works. How does it work?
Yep for any reputable publication, the rights revert to the author after some reasonable amount of time. Then they can sell option rights or expand etc however they see fit. (If a pub asks for rights in perpetuity be VERY wary!)
Optioning for TV or film is usually the most lucrative, but can be very difficult, especially for new writers breaking into the field. This is especially true for short stories. One big exception is Arrival, which was based on Ted Chiang’s short story, which have paved the way for other short stories to get optioned in similar fashion.
Back in 2013 I published my first book. It's a collection of "funny" texts that I wrote during my blog years. It was hard as you can imagine to publish it. Even harder to make money out of it. My publisher is from Portugal and I'm from Brazil, they sold the books in both countries. I know for a fact that some of my friends bought the book, but they never showed on the publisher spreadsheet of how many books they sold and how much I've earned. It was a proud moment of my life nevertheless, but it would be more fun if I have made some money out of it.
Tor books are all DRM free, and have been for a while. It's nice to be able to archive purchases. Also when using an ereader where artwork isn't always very accessible you can just open the zip file and look at it with a better image viewer. A particular bonus when artwork is really good, or if printing out a map will make reading more enjoyable etc
I'm curious about the stats for SF readers/writers/publishers. As the parent post relates, compared to the past there are a lot less publishers and it would be extremely difficult to be a professional SF short story writer as your sole occupation. Has the pool of writers grown or stayed the same? What about readers?
I was once interested in how self publishing actually works so I spent an hour or two putting a pdf together with Chuck Norris facts that I found on the internet and published it as a paperback. The book is still up for sale, I've made more than $10,000 from it.
It’s as reasonable a measure as any of the level of effort / output in a work, so yes it’s common in short stories and magazine pieces afaik. I’ve heard of rates anywhere from 10 cents to a dollar per word depending on genre and publication.
Generally you’ll be given a size to fit within, so it’s not like you can go Dickens on it and crank up the word count to cover your rent.
Yes, but it depends on where you submit. I've seen literary journals pay in contributor copies (aka nothing), token amounts—a few dollars, a rate per page, or a fixed rate up front. Genres like sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and crime or mystery are more likely to pay per word. Not sure why that is.
If a short story is made into a movie, the first step is for the production company to secure the rights to the IP. This is usually done through an options contract, wherein the writer sells the production company the exclusive but time-limited write to make a film adaptation. When their option period expires, the production company has to either renew the option for more money, or give up on the project.
How much money an option sells for depends on the profiles of both the author and the producer/studio involved. My first option contract for short fiction was $2500 for a one year exclusive option--slightly more than I made when I published the story originally. My most recent option contract was $12,500 for an 18 month exclusivity period.
Authors with large backlists can have lots of option contracts always expiring and renewing, and often have this as a meaningful income stream even if nothing ever actually gets produced.
It's a pretty terrible, hackneyed, non-story, now I've read it. Flag me down all you like. Seems like the author is more interested in the stats about writing than the actual writing.
Some simple advice would be to read some Neal Stephenson, Paul Auster, and China Mieville for starters, not Michael Crichton. Good writing is a serious art and craft. It's irrelevant how many hours a specific work takes down to the second. The author seems to think writing is hard and slow. It is slow, but after the first decade or two it gets quicker when the inspiration comes.
Neal Stephenson is a very poor storyteller. Most of his books are excuses for writing encyclopedic entries on certain topics, and packaging it as a story to make money.
It's irrelevant how many hours a specific work takes down to the second
I am a professional artist and I have found it very helpful to track my work at the resolution of a half an hour. I can quote prices with confidence that I’ll make a decent wage for the time I expect them to take. I can look at how much time I’ve spent so far and decide it’s time to stop noodling on one part and make sure other parts don’t get neglected before I do a final polish pass. I can experiment with new working methods and see if the get me to something that meets my standards faster, once I get used to them. It helps me keep my life from being dominated by projects that sprawl out of control, too.
It may not be relevant to anyone looking at the final art how long it took, but it’s super relevant to me. And keeping similar data is relevant to anyone who wants to try and make a serious go at doing a thing.
I imagine it took the author much longer to write, revise, etc. the work than it did to write this measurement blog. Where are you getting the notion the author prioritizes measuring their writing time investment vs the writing itself?
My guess is he was going after some subtle points that are not normally the focus in this genre, so for many readers it is going to come across as hollow.
[+] [-] eloff|3 years ago|reply
https://www.amazon.com/Jasper-T.-Scott/e/B00B7A2CT4%3Fref=db...
[+] [-] Enderboi|3 years ago|reply
It's hard to even visualise the effort it must have taken to overcome those obstacles to become one of the better self-published sci-fi authors. Respect.
[+] [-] superamit|3 years ago|reply
How long did it take him to get to 1 million copies sold, and was there anything he did along the way that had an outsized impact on his success?
[+] [-] jotato|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xiaolingxiao|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ankaAr|3 years ago|reply
And thank you to share your brother's work.
You don't need to say you are proud of your brother, I can see that in your words.
[+] [-] 0xMatt|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] PuppyTailWags|3 years ago|reply
Please consider reading the work itself here: https://www.tor.com/2022/06/01/india-world-amit-gupta/
[+] [-] Hayvok|3 years ago|reply
He’s joining company with works like Enders Game, Wheel of Time, Mistborn, and Stormlight Archive, and a dozen more I’m not able to remember off the top of my head.
[+] [-] ivraatiems|3 years ago|reply
OTOH, getting published in Tor at all is a much much bigger achievement - congratulations to the author!
[+] [-] keyle|3 years ago|reply
You'd have to be absolutely passionate and have another income to do this, which is a shame. I think every craft should have its place. Clearly the market is terrible for writers; a bit like indie game makers nowadays.
I hope you get a breakthrough though; because if you keep doing this, you're clearly passionate about your craft!
[+] [-] hackernewds|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _glass|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leephillips|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hamiltonians|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] f17|3 years ago|reply
Writing, unfortunately, remains something you have to get financially comfortable to be able to do... not a way to become financially comfortable. It's surprising that even in 2022 we haven't fixed that.
[+] [-] dqpb|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ordinaryradical|3 years ago|reply
There’s a profound sub-narrative here on self-censorship, what is or isn’t acceptable within the bounds of fiction, and how genre in-groups police themselves toward Acceptable Messages.
[+] [-] m0llusk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avk|3 years ago|reply
Disclaimer: light self-promo. Are others interested in more publishing posts like these? I've documented the journey to publication stories with stats, rejections, and a sense of the work involved for most of the short fiction I've published in literary journals. It's been cathartic and encouraging to share the entire process.
My most notable piece[1] ended up making it into The Best American Mystery Stories[2] a few years ago.
[1]: https://arsenalofwords.com/2018/10/30/how-loathing-travel-pu...
[2]: https://arsenalofwords.com/2019/10/01/how-a-regional-writing...
[+] [-] paulpauper|3 years ago|reply
you need top .5% talent and work ethic to maybe earn a lower-middle class salary
A labor of love, as it's said
[+] [-] pipnonsense|3 years ago|reply
I already built it, although it is in Portuguese. https://www.confabulistas.com.br
It would be easy to translate to English and try it in the US market. Is there any interest for that?
It is just like Substack. You create your page, people subscribe and get your fiction by email. The main difference is that people can read your books from the beginning, from the first chapter, in installments. With Substack (or any newsletter platform) new people can only get the future emails from the time they subscribed. In my site people will receive the first installment/chapter of the book (you can have several books published in there, one can be "Short stories").
It has the "paid subscribers" feature also.
I built it mostly to myself, as I am starting a side-career as a fiction writer wanted to own my audience. Fiction writers currently don't have a good platform to both distribute their work and gather an audience. What I built does the job pretty well I think.
Any interest?
[+] [-] Barrera|3 years ago|reply
Given the quality of the work, I suspect that 2x-5x that many hours were spent on developing and revising the story (the parenthetical part). So let's call it 66 hours total.
Later:
> 8/27/2020 - RUOXI FROM TOR.COM EMAILED TO BUY THE STORY! They offered $1422.80 for exclusive digital, audio, and ebook rights for one year, non-exclusive afterward. Likely publication: early 2021. I said yes!
So, ballpark $20/hr. Some commenters have noted the low pay for this kind of work. How it's a labor of love rather than a living. And Tor apparently pays top dollar. On top of the fee, there's a profit sharing program, which starts to sound pretty good. But again, this looks to be the ceiling.
What's more interesting are the non-financial terms. The author can sell the work to others after one year. Depending on whether the author retains copyright (seems to be implied), this could be a pretty interesting way to go. I'm thinking about things like expansion into a novel, movie or other derivative works, for example. The acceptance letter doesn't quite make it clear how this works. How does it work?
[+] [-] jamesjyu|3 years ago|reply
Optioning for TV or film is usually the most lucrative, but can be very difficult, especially for new writers breaking into the field. This is especially true for short stories. One big exception is Arrival, which was based on Ted Chiang’s short story, which have paved the way for other short stories to get optioned in similar fashion.
[+] [-] atum47|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Havoc|3 years ago|reply
Haven't seen this before:
>this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
[+] [-] pacaro|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superamit|3 years ago|reply
And DRM-free! Cool. Feel free to pirate, I guess.
[+] [-] georgeoliver|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vincentmarle|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spookybones|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LaundroMat|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] RickJWagner|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paxys|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaronharnly|3 years ago|reply
Generally you’ll be given a size to fit within, so it’s not like you can go Dickens on it and crank up the word count to cover your rent.
[+] [-] avk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wslh|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glorioushubris|3 years ago|reply
If a short story is made into a movie, the first step is for the production company to secure the rights to the IP. This is usually done through an options contract, wherein the writer sells the production company the exclusive but time-limited write to make a film adaptation. When their option period expires, the production company has to either renew the option for more money, or give up on the project.
How much money an option sells for depends on the profiles of both the author and the producer/studio involved. My first option contract for short fiction was $2500 for a one year exclusive option--slightly more than I made when I published the story originally. My most recent option contract was $12,500 for an 18 month exclusivity period.
Authors with large backlists can have lots of option contracts always expiring and renewing, and often have this as a meaningful income stream even if nothing ever actually gets produced.
[+] [-] anonwriter42|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] no-s|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ankaAr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] radiojasper|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gizajob|3 years ago|reply
Some simple advice would be to read some Neal Stephenson, Paul Auster, and China Mieville for starters, not Michael Crichton. Good writing is a serious art and craft. It's irrelevant how many hours a specific work takes down to the second. The author seems to think writing is hard and slow. It is slow, but after the first decade or two it gets quicker when the inspiration comes.
[+] [-] BeetleB|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] egypturnash|3 years ago|reply
I am a professional artist and I have found it very helpful to track my work at the resolution of a half an hour. I can quote prices with confidence that I’ll make a decent wage for the time I expect them to take. I can look at how much time I’ve spent so far and decide it’s time to stop noodling on one part and make sure other parts don’t get neglected before I do a final polish pass. I can experiment with new working methods and see if the get me to something that meets my standards faster, once I get used to them. It helps me keep my life from being dominated by projects that sprawl out of control, too.
It may not be relevant to anyone looking at the final art how long it took, but it’s super relevant to me. And keeping similar data is relevant to anyone who wants to try and make a serious go at doing a thing.
[+] [-] corrral|3 years ago|reply
I'd love for fiction writing to be better, generally, but if you're looking to make a career of writing—which of those made/makes the most money?
[EDIT] Incidentally, I'd put Stephenson on about the same level as Crichton. Worse in some respects, better in others.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] SamoyedFurFluff|3 years ago|reply
It’s okay to just not like a story you know.
[+] [-] m0llusk|3 years ago|reply