Non-Fiction – The Business of Writing

Category: Non-Fiction (page 1 of 3)

A Writer’s Repair Cafe

Last weekend I was in Bewdley, Worcestershire, finding out about the Repair Cafe they have there (for an article). Repair Cafes are a worldwide scheme, originating from one location in Holland in 2008 and exploding into over 1200 locations worldwide today.

The idea is simple: instead of throwing something away when it is broken and buying a brand new replacement, see if you can get it repaired. Their success rate is high. When Bewdley’s Repair Cafe first opened its door a year ago 40 people walked in with broken items and 38 walked with repaired pieces.

It reminded me of a query I once had from a student who was troubled about what to do for the best: keep working on two short stories that she couldn’t sell, or to give up on them and write something new.

Bye Bye Wunderlist For Writers

May 16, 2017 / BusinessOfWriting / 2 Comments

Wunderlist for Writers

Microsoft, who bought the Wunderkind software company in 2015, has announced that development of their productivity software, Wunderlist, will cease, and the software will be withdrawn at some point in the next few months.

Staff are now focussing on a Microsoft To-Do programme called ‘To-Do’, which is in its infancy, but will be developed further over the coming months.

Real Life

May 1, 2017 / BusinessOfWriting / 4 Comments

Recently, on a Facebook group I’m a member of, a member posted how demoralising she found the constant posts from writers commenting about all the rejections they’d received. With all this negativity being posted, she wondered whether it was worth writing anything and sending it off in the first place.

I could see her point. The facebook group is for writers who write short stories for the women’s magazine market, and so members are forever writing material, submitting it, and then waiting for a reply: hopefully an acceptance, but quite frequently a rejection.

What The Editor Changed

April 24, 2017 / BusinessOfWriting / 6 Comments

What do you do when you see your work published in a magazine? Do you buy an extra copy and frame it on the wall? Do you pass it round to friends and family, insisting that they read it? Or do you file it away in your achievement files of published work?

Have you ever thought of sitting down and reading through the piece yourself? Have you ever played the ‘What The Editor Changed’ game?

Titivating Too Far

April 3, 2017 / BusinessOfWriting / 0 Comments

Perfection. Whenever we create something, we want it to be good. No. We want it to be great. Well, let’s face it, if other people are going to read our creative words, we really want them to be perfect!

And quite right too. But don’t let perfection hold you back.

A story that is often raised in writers’ groups is that of the perfection of editing, when a writer once reportedly said:

Confused By Your ALCS Statement?

March 19, 2017 / BusinessOfWriting / 5 Comments

This week is an exciting week for writers, because those who are registered for ALCS (Authors Licensing and Collecting Society) will be receiving their March 2017 payouts.

Statements became available to writers online about ten days ago and, funnily enough, when writers are offered free money, most of us log into our accounts to find out how much we are getting. (In previous years we have managed to crash their system, such is our eagerness to see whether we can afford a celebratory drink, or a celebratory meal.)

If you don’t really understand what ALCS does, where it gets its money from, or how it gets its money, then a quick glance at the statements might have you scratching your head. So I thought I’d take the opportunity to get in touch with ALCS and ask them some of those questions, in the hope that it might help you.

My thanks go to Jade Zienkiewicz and her colleague De’Anne Jean-Jacques at ALCS for their time in answering these queries. Please note, this is quite a long post because of their detailed answers. Here goes …

It’s A Writer’s World

March 6, 2017 / BusinessOfWriting / 8 Comments

Well, I wasn’t expecting that. Last week, I had an email from the lovely Jill Finlay at The Weekly News. She wrote to say that a story I’d sent to her a couple of weeks ago would be in the next issue (out now – dated 4th March).

The Weekly News usually publishes two stories in each issue, and the story accompanying mine was also written by a male writer. According to Jill, this is a first – both stories in the same issue written by men.

Turning Sunflowers Into Birdfeeders

February 27, 2017 / BusinessOfWriting / 3 Comments

Payments come in all shapes and sizes. But it doesn’t matter what the format is, it’s important you chase up what is rightfully yours, even if it is ‘just’ a prize.

I’ve finally received my prize for a submission I made to a gardening magazine, which was selected as the Star Letter in their January issue, published at the beginning of December. A neighbour had spotted a sunflower growing out of a branch of a tree. While it wasn’t the World’s tallest sunflower, the branch was certainly giving it an altitude boost.

So I snapped a photo, wrote a 54-word letter and submitted it. I was delighted when they published it as the Star letter, not just because of the prize, but because it meant I had another published photo to add to my DACS claim. My prize turned out to be an RSPB Premium Bird Feeding Station with additional bird feeders and bird food – worth £65. So £65 for 54 words and a photo was not to be sniffed at.

Negotiate. Nicely.

February 20, 2017 / BusinessOfWriting / 7 Comments

I recently had to renegotiate a contract with a magazine I’ve done work for in the past. Looking back, I realised that the current contract which I was working with was over ten years old. And ten years is a long time in the magazine world.

You won’t be surprised to learn that I didn’t like the revised contract. But that didn’t matter, because these things are always just a starting point.

When you receive a contract, take yourself off somewhere quiet and read through it. If it helps, read aloud each clause. Do whatever it takes for you to understand it.

Highlight in one colour clauses you don’t understand.
Highlight in another colour the clauses you don’t like.
Then put it to one side and do something else.

The Geology of Writing

January 30, 2017 / BusinessOfWriting / 0 Comments

What’s writing got to do with geology? Well, it’s all to do with prioritisation and focus.

I did this as an exercise, last week, at one of the writers’ groups I go to, and it’s a great way of showing how important it is having your writing projects correctly prioritised.

First you have time, represented by this jar:

DACS Details

January 23, 2017 / BusinessOfWriting / 0 Comments

You may remember that at the start of the year I posted about the upcoming changes at DACS and ALCS regarding the way we can claim secondary rights for any images used in our work.

For those who don’t know, when our work is published it becomes available for photocopying. The Copyright Licensing Agency collects money from various sources (organisations such as schools, universities, public sector organisations, etc), and they redistribute that money to writers and illustrators, via a couple of distribution agencies. To receive a share of the cash you need to be a member of the relevant distribution agencies: ALCS and DACS. (I should point out that it’s not just photocopying money that is redistributed by these organisations, but it’s one of main sources of their income.)

DACS Change

January 2, 2017 / BusinessOfWriting / 0 Comments

It’s all change at DACS. There are two dates you need to put into your shiny new 2017 calendar:

16th January 2017
17th February 2017

The first date is when the DACS Payback Scheme opens for your 2016 claim, which is much earlier than usual (traditionally, it’s opened in August). The second deadline is the cut-off date for claims.

For those of you who don’t know, the DACS Payback scheme is the system photographers use for claiming money they’re entitled to for any secondary uses of their work (the most common example of which is photocopying: a magazine might pay you for using your photo in their publication, but if someone else then photocopies that magazine article you’r entitled to be paid for that use too). It’s similar to the ALCS system for words.

Products

December 12, 2016 / BusinessOfWriting / 0 Comments

Two weeks ago I mentioned that the follow up to my short story collection (Ten Teatime Tales) was in production, now that some of the stories I wanted to include in it are now out of their exclusivity period. Well, I’m pleased to say that Ten Teatime Tales 2 (it took me months to come up with that title) is now available. (Just in time for all of those new electronic reading devices that will be unwrapped in a couple of weeks time.)

As writers, we tend not to think of our scribblings as products. But if you’re hoping to generate an income from your creativity it’s important to think about the different formats you can exploit in your work.

What’s Mine Is Mine

November 28, 2016 / BusinessOfWriting / 0 Comments

41i3axnkn9l-_sx311_bo1204203200_ Sometimes, it’s not until you build up a body of work that you really appreciate what you have created. And that’s when the consequences of being a little slap dash with the rights you grant others in your work becomes apparent.

When you’re starting out, it’s easy to be swayed into granting more rights in a piece of your work than you’d like. You know you really ought not give a publisher copyright in your article, but they are going to publish it (which is what you really want) and, let’s face it, who is going to turn Ten Alternative Uses Of A Nose-Hair Clipper into a movie?

Publishing Dilemmas

November 21, 2016 / BusinessOfWriting / 0 Comments

file-17-11-2016-16-07-01 Last week I was approached by two different writers, each with their own publishing dilemma. I hope they found my comments useful, but what the queries demonstrated was that when it comes to publishing your book you need to be clear what your dream is. Only then can you decide what is right for you.

The first writer had made the decision to self-publish her novel, having spent many years writing it and then even more time trying to interest a traditional publisher. She’d come to accept that to get what she wanted – a print book she could encourage retailers to take – that self-publishing, or independent publishing, was the way forward for her. It would cost her money, but it was what she wanted.

The Business of Writing

Simon Whaley's Resource For Writers

Category: Non-Fiction (page 1 of 3)

A Writer’s Repair Cafe

Bye Bye Wunderlist For Writers

Real Life

What The Editor Changed

Titivating Too Far

Confused By Your ALCS Statement?

It’s A Writer’s World

Turning Sunflowers Into Birdfeeders

Negotiate. Nicely.

The Geology of Writing

DACS Details

DACS Change

Products

What’s Mine Is Mine

Publishing Dilemmas

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