I’ve just finished rereading Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady and have mixed feelings about the era and the characters. It’s difficult to read about Victorian morés from a 21st Century perspective. Not only do I need lenses that will give me a bi-cultural perspective, but I also feel squashed between a culture clash. Just after I finished with Portrait, I read a review of A. M. Homes’ book May We Be Forgiven in The New York Review of Books. One of her main characters says, (more…)
In the SF Bay area, we’ve recently had unseasonably warm days, totally out of character for us at this time of year in San Francisco and the other nearby coastal regions. Most of us have been delighted to sit out in our yards at night and enjoy this new balmy climate. But then I read in the paper recently that the planet has been recording one of the hottest springs, reminding me that while I’m luxuriating in these above-average temperatures, the weather extremes are killing the planet. It’s a startling and disturbing statistic. 
A week ago I typed THE END on page 264 of the manuscript for the fourth and final book 
I guess there is something comforting about the way today’s youth have become accustomed to their parents/guardians checking on them at all times via smart phones, etc. It may feel like being held in a kind of web (and here I’m not referring to the World Wide Web), a loving network. But it also suggests to me what it’s like to be trapped in a spider’s snare. The idea that none of us can have a moment when we aren’t being scrutinized in some way makes me shudder. What has happened to the notion of privacy and freedom? Am I old-fashioned to think they still are virtues?
I’m grieving the loss of dictionaries, thick, massive volumes that I used to get lost in. I would open a page and find hundreds of words, all of them demanding my attention, each a miniature world to explore. But now I’ve become a victim of on-line lexicons because they are handier than putting aside my laptop computer and marching into the other room to unload the Oxford from a bookshelf where it resides. 
Foghorns blast through the 7 AM San Francisco overcast. The only woman in the place, I saunter into the longshoreman’s union hall, trying to appear as if I did this every day. A few cigarette-scarred wooden tables offer a place for the men to gather and talk while waiting to be called to work. Billowing clouds of cigarette smoke hang ominously over everyone. 
Like detectives, writers need to be constantly observant, picking up clues from what people are wearing, how they gesture, the words they speak, the way they interact with others. They study people’s facial expressions and what they might suggest about the person, storing away the data in their memory banks. Or they’ll take notes in a writer’s journal that they’ll refer to later. 
Memoir writing blurs the line between truth and imagination in this revealing conversation with Lily Iona MacKenzie. We explore how creative writing techniques shape both fiction narrative and personal stories, as Lily explains her unique approach: “you lie in service of the truth.”
Yesterday, I had to kill time (terrible metaphor) while waiting to hear a friend of mine do a reading of his newly published memoir at a Corte Madera bookstore. So I hung out at Marin County’s Corte Madera Library. 
For years I felt guilty about breaking the heirloom toys my stepfather’s mother had preserved, relics of another era. I can still remember the excitement of lifting each object out of the boxes where they had been stored and bringing them to life again: tiny china dishes with hand-painted flowers; a miniature stagecoach carrying riders and pulled by horses; dolls with porcelain faces and hands, features frozen in smiles, dressed in stylish Victorian gowns; a doll house with elegant furniture and a family. 
Editing writing requires tremendous restraint. I was reminded of this recently when a poem I had submitted to an anthology was accepted providing I approved of the editor’s changes. I’m open to thoughtful revision suggestions—a text can always be improved—but I assume the recommendations will be just that, insightful observations that cause me to re-think my work. In that light, I can re-enter a poem or story and see if any of the ideas resonate enough for me to make changes. Yet since I’m the poem’s creator, I expect to revise it myself and have the last word on its content. 
I’ve been thinking about how loosely we use abstract words like love, happiness, and truth as if they had concrete, observable meaning. I tend to revolt from using love to close my email or other exchanges unless I really feel love for the person I’m corresponding with. It bothers me when people sign their correspondence “love” without considering whether or not the emotion really applies to the recipient. Maybe you feel loving towards someone on most days, but not every day. Isn’t it deceitful to say “love” if you aren’t feeling it at the moment? Wouldn’t such a response seem confusing? It leads the reader to believe that the writer actually has such strong feelings, that somehow we’re part of the writer’s inner circle. Often that isn’t true. 
Being a first-rate writer requires the same kind of training that an architect receives. A typical program includes courses in architectural history and theory, building design, construction methods, professional practice, math, physical sciences, and liberal arts. Writers may not need to study math or the physical sciences, but they do need to give themselves the best liberal arts education they can find, both formal and informal. And like architects, in order to be successful in their field, writers need not only vision and a rich imagination but also a strong foundation. 
Thank you, Zackary Vernon, for taking the time to share your professional writing journey with me and my readers. 
Being part of an on-line writing group for several years has provided many benefits. But with the positives come a few negatives.Huge thanks to Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop for this excellent piece on “How, What and When Book Authors Get Paid”
September 2, 2024
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I’m reposting this newsletter that I sent out over a year ago in case some of my newer readers missed it. I continue to get questions on the royalty system, both in traditional publishing, and in the newer forms from independent presses to hybrid to self-publishing. I hope this math lesson helps a little to clarify matters.
I’ve learned over the years that many readers, fans and beginning writers think that published authors get rich really fast especially if they produce a number of books. I thought this might be a perfect opportunity for a little reality check in the form of a math lesson. Now that I’ve looked closely at these numbers, I admit to feeling some sympathy for publishers.
Most traditional office workers are paid twice a month and if they’re lucky, they have benefits like health insurance. Writers publishing with traditional publishers are paid twice a year, April 1st and October 1st. (Amazon pays you monthly if you self-publish or if you publish with one of their book divisions.) Needless to say, you have no obvious job benefits although working for yourself from home has advantages (and challenges) as many workers discovered during the pandemic.
My memoir DAUGHTER OF SPIES, Wartime Secrets, Family Lies was published by a small award-winning, women-owned independent press. Always before, I have published with one of what we call in the “biz,” the big 5. Names you’d recognize like Random House, Viking, Henry Holt, Macmillan and so on. Those publishers give you an advance and then pay you a royalty based on the list price. If the book costs $20 and you’re getting 10%, you’re receiving $2.00 per copy sold. In the end with high discounts to booksellers and freight pass through clauses (don’t ask!) and various other tweaks, many of the copies don’t deliver that kind of royalty to the author but we’ll leave that aside for now. One more note. The advance is an interest free loan that doesn’t need to be returned if you don’t “earn out.” (See this link for a post by Lincoln Michel on calculating when your book will earn out.) Every time you sell a book, that royalty is deducted from the advance. If you negotiated a $5000 advance and you’re getting $2.00 a copy, you’ll first need to sell 2500 copies in order to earn out and see any more income from the book.
An independent press rarely pays you an advance which means you start earning money from the first book sold although you still get your royalty checks twice a year. In addition, independent presses usually pay you based on the net price of the book, not the price listed on the jacket. Therein lies a tale. And here comes the math lesson.
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It costs the publisher $3.48 to print the $17.95 trade paperback book. If the customer is ordering the book through Amazon or at an independent bookseller, those outlets get their copies through a distributor. The distributor passes the book on to the bookseller at a 51% discount ($9.17) because the bookseller needs to buy it at a discount in order to sell it for a profit. The distributor charges a distribution fee of $2.29 a book so the net to the publisher when shipping through the distributor is $3.40 ($9.17 -3.48 -2.29 = $3.40) of which the author receives a percentage, anywhere from 10 to 25% or $.34 to $.85 a book.
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I always encourage my readers to order directly from the publishing house website because this is how the numbers work then. It still costs the publisher $3.48 to print the book, but without the distribution fee, shipping and handling per copy comes to $.82 per unit. So, the net to the publisher in this case is $13.65 (17.95 – 3.48 -.82 = $13.65 net.) Royalty to the author depending on the rate she negotiated in her contract runs from $1.63 to $3.41. Big difference! But we are all impatient these days and are hooked on Amazon’s swift delivery times so many more readers go that route rather than directly to the publisher’s website. And I’m always happy when readers order through an independent bookseller because I certainly want to keep them in business. Independent bookstores, run by people who really know and love books, represent a vital resource for any community. However unfortunately, buying a book from them doesn’t necessarily result in a better payment to the author.
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There are other ways to go these days from self-publishing to hybrid publishing where the author puts up most of the front money and gets paid back when the book sells. I’ve never signed with a hybrid publisher and I’ve only self-published two of my out-of-print novels and one short “kindle” single. Unless you publish regularly (by that I mean at least once a year if not more) and in a niche like self-help or genre fiction as two examples, it’s very hard to get yourself heard above the noise. To put it baldly, it is estimated based on the ISBN numbers sold by Bowker, that 2000 books are published EVERY DAY in the United States. As this article details, the sales of most books are shockingly small and still shrinking. The marketplace is saturated. Consumers are turning to media for their entertainment.
This comment by Courtney Maum, the author and educator, really struck home for me. “Publishers print books. Authors publish them.” How successfully books move in the marketplace now depends almost entirely on the author as publishers have cut their profit margins by reducing their marketing and publicity departments in order to focus their resources on the best-selling authors who bring in the most guaranteed sales.
As E.B. White said, “I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.”
But if you’re a writer, you’re never not writing. You have a place you can go which nobody can take away from you, a world you’re creating that only you can visit. I wouldn’t give that up for anything. Whether you publish or not, whether you make any money from the words you throw down on the page is beside the point when you’re lost in the story. And every six months, that envelope arrives and if you’re lucky, a check falls out.
I’ll give E.B. White the final word.
“The whole duty of a writer is to please himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one. Let him start sniffing the air, or glancing at the Trend Machine, and he is as good as dead, although he may make a nice living.”
Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop (www.elizabethwinthropalsop.com) is the author of over 50 works of fiction for adults and children under the pen name Elizabeth Winthrop. These include the award-winning fantasy series, The Castle in the Attic and The Battle for the Castle as well as the short story, The Golden Darters, read on the nationwide radio program, Selected Shorts,and included in Best American Short Story anthology, and Island Justice and In My Mother’s House, two novels now available as eBooks. She is the daughter of the acclaimed journalist, Stewart Alsop. Daughter of Spies: Wartime Secrets, Family Lies, a family history about her parents’ love affair during World War II and their marriage lived in the spotlight of Washington during the 1950s was published by Regal House, October 25, 2022.
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