"Dead Trees?" Technically, yeah, but c'mon....

Dead trees.
I love electronic publishing.  I have found friends, and readers, on continents I may never visit.  I have found fans for my work in other countries, such as England, India, Australia, Germany, Russia, Italy, Sri Lanka and others.
And I pump my fist in a "Right on!"when the stars of the self-publishing firmament hold forth, the Joe Konraths, the Kris Ruschs, the Dean Wesley Smiths, and so forth.
And yet...
DEAD TREES!
Ack!  There it is again! 
The insult to all paper books that dare to continue to exist in this world.  DEAD TREES. 

Why does the phrase irk me so much?
Perhaps because of the sheer sneering un-necessaryness of it.
And because it reminds me of the SCRAP OF CLOTH argument from an earlier era.
Back in the late 1980s, there was a tempest-in-a-teapot over flag burning.  In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled that a guy who had been arrested for burning the American flag outside the Republican convention in 1984 (these cases take longer to work their way through the system in real life than they do in t.v. dramas) had been engaging in free speech.

Then politicians sanctimoniously got into the act.
They tried several times to pass an amendment to the U. S. Constitution banning flag burning.  (The Supreme Court ruled that the arrest of the guy in 1984 had been unconstitutional, as it violated first amendment freedom of speech.  If the amendment was part of the constitution, that little inconvenience would be taken care of).
The hypocrisy of these politicians, who were letting any number of important problems fester for lack of attention, was disgusting.
But, they drew a counter-reaction from the liberal spectrum of American opinion which was, in some ways, even more revolting.
Thus began the "scrap of cloth."
Numerous prominent people began talking about how the American flag was just a "scrap of cloth," and that people should not be prosecuted for burning it.  Scrap of cloth this, scrap of cloth that.
Hey!
That's my flag, man!

I would never burn the American flag. But I don't believe that attempts to ban flag desecration are just.
I was personally disgusted by the flag burners.  But prosecuting them for visually expressing their opinion would do genuine harm to America. 

If it was constitutionally protected, the nutty conservatives wanted to simply amend the constitution to lessen free speech protection.
Meanwhile, the nutty liberals responded by talking about a scrap of cloth. 
That was a terrible ploy, guys.  Basically, you were saying that the flag wasn't worth anything as a symbol.
Oh yes it was.  And is.
So now we come to the Dead Trees.
I love the smell of books.  I love the feel of paper.  I love old covers with outdated covers (like bloated lettering and bad hair in book covers from the 1970s).
But I also love what electronic distribution has done for me, both as a reader and as a writer.
I love that I can read books that are out of copyright for free.  I love the ability to research (my undergrad years would have been a hell of a lot easier if the internet hadn't been in protean form back then!).
And, I love having fans, and new friends, from all over the world.
So, I am for the electronic world.  And I know it will only continue to grow and grow as the devices get easier on the eyes, cheaper, and more durable.
But please don't refer to my old books as dead trees.
Or … well, actually go ahead. 

After all, I do believe in freedom of speech.

The Vanishing Contributor's Copy

Let me take this opportunity to lovingly pat my old carriage horse before she goes out to pasture.

Let me change the vacuum tubes in my radio so I can listen to some of the biggest stars broadcasting out of New York.

Let me....  Nah, you know this is all metaphor.  I'm talking about contributors' copies.

When I used to page through Writer's Market, before there was an internet (okay, now there's a genuine reference to a memory of a time gone by), I used to calculate how much I would make, based on the market's rate (big mistake to focus on that, but that's a subject for another post).  Whatever market listing I was perusing often said this: ". . . And one contributor's copy."  Or 2 or 3.  Sometimes they just said "Pays one contributor's copy."  Not the princely $.05 per word (which has not budged a single penny as the definition of professional payment in decades -- another topic for another day.)

Fast forward to present day. 

Now, I'm getting contributors' copies along with payment.

Feels good.

But.....

In the electronic age...

What do contributors' copies actually mean?

(Mean spiritually, that is, not to get too heavy on you.)

I got three contributor's copies when my story "Two Dwarves and Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs" was published by EQMM.  They arrived by regular mail inside a thick, loose-fitting plastic bag.  Felt nice.

More recently, my flash fiction piece, "What is the Difference between Optometrists and Ophthalmologists?" was published in the anthology Flush Fiction, the first all-fiction book by the publishers of the long- running Bathroom Reader books.

(If you remember Jeff Goldblum's People magazine writer from The Big Chill, you know how long each of the stories takes to read.)

Two contributor's copies.

My story.  My name.  First page, even.

But...

I have placed three flash fiction pieces with the estimable Every Day Fiction, an online journal.  You read the story on the web, or you subscribe to the kindle version, or you can sign up to get it emailed to you.  No paper.

And, in recent months, I have self-published my own short works online.  No paper.  and each story with its own cover, designed by me.  One of them with a blurb from a friend who is a novelist (and who would not blurb it unless it was good -- that was our deal.)

So, I've got online work that is more easily accessible, versus printed work that is far less accesible.

Whence now, O thrill of the contributor's copy?

Does print represent professional validation? 

Not necessarily.  My three stories in Every Day Fiction went through a team of wonderful Canadian editors and first readers.  They have always provided thoughtful feedback even on stories they rejected.  (Am I selling them short by attributing their niceness to their Canadian-ness?  Probably. Being Canadian never lent class to Seth Rogen.)

There's something comforting about paper, its permanency.  But those electrons that can be zapped anywhere on Earth… 

It's two different things.

I think that in the long run, print publishing will be dead.  The killer app will be a cheap reader that you can spill orange juice on without ruining it.  Then it will take the place of the breakfast paper.

So, I will be watching for the orange juice-proof e-reader. 

Then I will know that sample copies are at their twilight.  Until then, I will pinch the spine of Flush Fiction in my left hand, flip the pages with my right thumb, hold it up to my nose, and inhale the smell of success.

The Very Picture of Success

Hey, aspiring writers!  Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I thought I'd show you a picture of what success looks like:

Now I will explain the picture.

I have submitted stories on and off for over 20 years, but I didn't get serious about writing and publishing until a few years ago.  Since 2007, I have kept the spreadsheet seen above.  The 25th submission since 2007 sold:  Two Dwarves and Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (check out the very perceptive review from Arlene on that page!).

Then it was all rejections until the 38th submitted piece sold.  Then the 64th (again, to Ellery Queen).  Then the 73rd.  Then the 120th.  Then the 190th (an anthology, my single proudest achievement).  Then the 219th.  Some of these places did not pay in pro rates, one did not pay at all.  But they were magazines and sites where people went to enjoy fiction, and my stories were among those they enjoyed, and it is a great feeling.

From the first, to the 219th, I placed seven stories (not all of these have been listed on my web site because they're not published yet).  So:  219 divided by 7 = 31 and change. 

I submit over 31 stories for every one acceptance.

(That doesn't include the stories I have judged to be good enough for publication but didn't sell, which I then self-published.  Check out the Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords links on the sidebar.)

You want to be published?  Do what I did.

Follow Robert Heinlein's famous rules.

If you publish yourself, you must do the work of formatting, proofing, covers, etc. 

Keeping excellent records is both instructive and entertaining:

• After selling two stories to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, I have gotten six rejections in a row from them.  Not a problem; some of them included very flattering comments from the editor.  But this knowledge is instructive if you think that after you've made the first sale, you'll never be rejected again.  Dude, you'll be rejected by the same places you've previously sold to.

• On July 8, 2011, I got four rejections in one day: a record.  I had developed a thick enough skin by then to be actually entertained by it.

• A tab on my spreadsheet called "promising" reproduces all submissions where I got personal notes from the editors, asking me to submit more.  (When they say, "I would like to see your next story," they always mean it.  I know, because I got that comment in some, but not all, rejections from the same editor, meaning that some of my stories, not all, impressed her.)  It tells me who to send the next story in that genre to.

• Some magazines and web sites are class acts.  Some are not.  There is a well-regarded magazine that sat on my submission for over 200 days.  I thought maybe they were considering it.  But then a follow-up letter (with SASE) was not returned.  I withdrew the story.  On a whim, I submitted a second story and got the same treatment.  They're a high-paying market with visibility on the Barnes & Noble newsstand, but I'll never touch them again.  You won't be able to keep track of such things unless you keep good records.

I hope this helps.  Please leave me a comment if you enjoyed it. 

Why "Cruel" Cline?

The question Why are You Eric "Cruel" Cline Instead of Merely Eric Cline? has no easy answer.

Oops.  Wait.  Actually it does.  It's because that *@&#!!! insurance agent Eric Cline stole the URL.  Behold!  http://www.ericcline.com/ 

Damn you, Eric Cline, of Seaford, Delaware!  (No relation.)  I hereby order all of my loyal fans to boycott his financial products!  (Yes, I know most of you are homeless drifters, but if you do ever scrape together enough money to buy financial products, promise me you won't buy them from the URL-stealing Eric Cline.)

Oh, I had other dreams, before I became an author.  Dreams of power.  Dreams of influence.  Dreams of a political career.  But they were all shattered when some fancy-pants Canadian sullied the waters for me:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Cline  (No relation.)

Yeah, that's right.  THE "Eric Cline" on Wikipedia is the former Health Minister for Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (or is it Saskatchewan, Saskatoon?).  Not only that, but he dared to pursue political goals I don't believe in; I mean, the very idea of promoting a Mineral Sands Processing Facility at the Regina Research Park!

So politics was out.  But at least writing was in.  I had the field all to myself . . .

http://eildath.livejournal.com/

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!

That's right.  An Eric Lee Cline (no relation) of Kentucky has posted Star Wars fan fiction!

I hereby call down Armageddon on the world!

Whoops, I can't do that either.  Because respected scholar Eric H. Cline, Ph.D (http://home.gwu.edu/~ehcline/)  (no relation) is a world-renowned authority on the Biblical Armageddon.  So he has all the authority over that.

So, the world is littered with semi-famous Eric Clines who are all insurance agents, retired Canadian politicians, fan-fic writers (gasp! choke!), or Indiana Joneses.

There is no room left for me on the web as Eric Cline.

Thus, Cruel Cline was born.

I patterned my nom de sade after my hero, Ambrose "Bitter" Bierce.  All of you reading this are hereby ordered to read his truly perfect story, set during the American Civil War (which, in real life, Bierce fought in), called "A Son of the Gods."  After you read it, you may note some ... similarities to the opening scene in Kevin Costner's movie Dances with Wolves.

The only thing I can do to comfort myself in the situation is to recite the classic German poem:

John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt,
His name is my name, too.
Whenever we go out,
The people always shout,
"There goes John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt!"
Nah nah nah nah nah nuh nah!

The REAL Eric Cline.  Accept no substitutes.

"Two Dwarves and Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs" is Now Available (and Kinda Sorta Always Has Been)

To my faithful readers (by which I mean Mom, some guy or gal in Germany, and someone else in Australia, and maybe someone else in Russia, but I think my site was accidentally linked to some sex site in Russian, which accounts for hits from there):

My debut professionally-published story, "Two Dwarves and Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs" is available for purchase electronically.  Yea!


I'm not sure which of the "Nine Deadly Ports of Call" my story was.

But I think it has been for a while.

As a 21st century netrepreneur, I'm still feeling my way.

The June 2011 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, in which the story appears, is available at fictionwise.com.  The site is owned by Barnes & Noble, so you can certainly get the issue for their Nook reader.  But it is also, according to the site, in these formats as well:

eReader (PDB)
ePub (EPUB)
Rocket/REB1100 (RB)
Portable Document Format (PDF)
Portable Document Format - Large Print (PDF)
Palm Doc (PDB)
Microsoft Reader (LIT)
Franklin eBookMan (FUB)
hiebook (KML) [1.4 MB]
Sony Reader (LRF)
iSilo (PDB)
Mobipocket (PRC)
Kindle Compatible (MOBI)
OEBFF Format (IMP)

Just looking at all these formats make-ah my head-ah hurt.

I'm an author whose story is being sold in these formats.  (To be clear, you're getting that entire issue of the magazine, which includes my story.)  Yet I don't know what they are!

My only scraps of knowledge are these:

EPUB: It's my understanding that the people in the industry are sorta trying to coalesce around it as a universal format.

Kindle Compatible (MOBI):  I have a Kindle, but what do you have to do after you buy it to get it onto the device?  I dunno.

Portable Document Format (PDF) and Portable Document Format - Large Print (PDF):  Okay, this makes sense.  PDFs keep the formatting exactly as the author lays it out because the text is fixed on the page.  So if someone needs larger letters, they've got to get something that was saved in larger font to begin with.

Sony reader: I've heard of it. Er, at least I've heard of Sony.

Palm Doc (PDB).  Whaaaaa??  Are the Palm people even still in business anymore?  I mean, seriously, isn't this like Atari, or Studebaker automobiles?
After that, we get into some weedy territory.  Hiebook?  iSilo?  Some of these things sound like the fake brand names that they use on t.v. murder mysteries, where the writers can't use real corporate products, else they'd be sued: 

"Chief, the victim was an executive at iSilo.  They're coming out with the new Hiebook.  He was hit over the head with a bottle of Bundmeiser beer.  Then he was shot at close range with a Schmidt & Weston revolver.  There's a rumor he was just about to post a video exposing corporate misdeeds on YooTabe."

Believe me, I love the fact that my story now has an infinite shelf life.  But I'm telling you honestly, I'm not sure how to reach some of these shelves!

I could have included the link to fictionwise.com (here it is again!) when I wrote my original post about the story, but I simply didn't know it existed.

I would be very interested in anyone's comments about how they shop, and read, using these devices.  I have my own experiences with the Kindle, which have been good.  But going forward, I want to be able to provide you, my readers (Mom, person in Germany, other person in Australia, either-person-or-accidental-clicks-from-sex-site-in-Russia) with good stories that will be visible on the reading device of your choice.

Comments are open.

Christopher Hitchens

Yesterday morning (December 16, 2011), I drew in a sharp breath; I had lackadaisically logged on to Slate at breakfast, and there were the words: Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011.

How many people are there, outside of your own circle of family and friends, whose death would cause you to gasp?

In tribute to him, I shall attempt to, not parody exactly, but certainly emulate his offhanded-learnedness-mixed-with-pop-culture-accessibility-but-not-dumbed-down style.

But my real tribute to him was made that morning: a sharp, surprised, saddened intake of breath.  On behalf of a stranger whom I was never in the same room with.

All else is exegesis.

#

Percy Shelley said that poets were the unacknowledged legislators of the world; Hitchens showed that prose stylists could be the unacknowledged coup leaders.

Christopher Hitchens was a writer, a journalist, and an essayist.  He went to Afghanistan in the 1980s when Osama bin Laden and the CIA were making common cause.  He was in Bosnia when artillery shells were being lobbed.  He was also a lover of novels and poetry, and he showed that both the physical life and the mental life were vitally important.

Thoreau wrote: "How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."  Not standing up to live was one of the few types of vanity Hitchens could not be accused of.  Indeed, one wonders if he would have signed on with a magazine called Humility Fair.

Although he was witty, he is best not experienced as a collection of epigrams.  Indeed, Vanity Fair magazine, the morning after the night he died, put out a video tribute which I found notable for its blandness.  Hitchens was about his ideas, and a few sound bites could not express them.

Rather, his metier was the full-throated paragraph; typically laying out the case against (fill in the blank with a worthy opponent), lay out the case against that opponent with a recounting of its misdeeds (framed in deliciously unfair invective), and followed by a killing blow.  You might have said he was setting up and knocking down straw men, except that his targets were either powerful institutions (organized religions, governments) or sacred cows (Mother Teresa, notably).

His range of topics was so wide, one might think of him as a dilettante, speaking of matters he knew little of.  But, 'It ain't braggin' if you can do it.'  He was a polymath, much like that other prolific author, Isaac Asimov (although certainly with a vastly different personality!).

When musician Warren Zevon (cue "Werewolf of London") discovered he had cancer, one of the songs he wrote for what he knew would be his last album included the lines:

I don't want your pity or your fifty dollar words,
I don't share your need to discuss the absurd.
--"Rub Me Raw" The Wind

With that same grit, Hitchens went on the record saying that, if he did supposedly recant his atheism on his deathbed, "it won't be me," just a cancer-riddled, delusional brain.

His personal life was as chaotic as his prose was elegant.  His mother committed suicide when he was in early adulthood (a biographical fact he shared with that other mordant author, Kurt Vonnegut).  He made no secret of his fondness for alcohol.  His brother Peter became a conservative and a Christian; they debated in public a couple of times, but (admirably for both men) didn't turn it into a gimmick.  He knew his cigarette habit had given the genetic predisposition to esophageal cancer inherited from his father the push it needed to start growing in him.

Inevitably, with such a prodigious output, and with such savoring eagerness to jump into a fight, he ended up on the wrong side of some issues.  (By which, of course, I mean that he disagreed with me.)  His essay "Why Women Aren't Funny", generated predictable outrage among the column-writing class; it was a nothing of a piece that generated a nothing of a controversy.  His longstanding support of the Iraq war, on the other hand, which caused such discomfort in his many longtime admirers (including myself), was deadly serious.

But one of the risks of putting yourself and your ideas out there is the risk of being wrong.  And if he was wrong about Iraq (and, oh, he was!), he was at least not a chickenhawk; as a correspondent, he had been in more combat zones than some people who serve in uniform.  If he was wrong, he was at least a wrong adult, rather than the overgrown frat boys and technocrats (in America and England) who blundered in without a second thought.

I would have liked to close this post with a shout out to the man himself, but his own belief was that he would not hear such a shout post-mortem.  He agreed with early American poet Philip Freneau:

In spite of all the learned have said.

I still my old opinion keep;

The posture, that we give our dead,

Points out the soul's eternal sleep.

--from "The Indian Burying Ground"

Sleep well, Hitch.

Why Doesn't Anybody Want to Buy a Gag about Bernie Madoff being Brutalized in Prison?

I love writing.  I have a full-time job and commitments at home, so I have to squeeze it in on my commute (on a subway train) and on the weekends, but I just love it.

I experiment with everything.  I have written SF, fantasy, mystery, children's stories, and....

...drumroll please...

...gags.

I love visual humor.  Problem is (since I try to write to sell) there's not much of a market for it.  I could name seven different SF/Fantasy markets that pay pro rates, and at least two mystery magazines.  But humor?

I relished creating the gag below.  I wrote the text on the train, then created at home with a collage of publicly available images in PowerPoint, then Paint.

And then....

And then I sent it to Mad Magazine's Fundalini page, which accepts unsolicited contributions.  But, they don't respond if they reject your material.  (They allow email submissions, and their target audience is in their mid-teens; I am sure the crap-to-diamonds ratio is truly staggering.)  So you basically have to write it off after a certain time period has passed.

And that was about it.

Oh, I was able to send to another publication, The Funny Times (a publication of whose existence I was unaware before doing a desperate duotrope search).  The submission was done through something called "the post office" (I had forgotten it existed, too). 

The Funny Times staff sent me a rejection slip in a reasonable 46 days.  (I appreciated their professionalism enough to make their name a hyperlink on first mention.  Cline may be Cruel, but he ain't bitter.)

And that was definitely it.

But wait, didn't somebody go and invent something called The Internet?  Can't you just post whatever the hell you feel like, fer free, on yer own web site?

(Sigh.)  Yeah.

But, but...

...It just doesn't seem validated, man.

I grew up reading Mad Magazine.

In black and white.

Before they could use the word "piss" in print.

I look through it today, and it is definitely not your father's Mad (or, in my case, your creepy, deranged loner uncle's Mad).

I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, here.  I did a snarky one-panel joke about a sleazebag grifter being the victim of prison rape.  This isn't like John Kennedy Toole committing suicide, and then his posthumously published novel winning the Pulitzer prize.  Hell, this isn't even like The Odd Couple being cancelled and then Tony Randall winning an Emmy award for it afterward.

This is just, this is just....

(DEEP sigh.)
So, now that you've been burdened with the arr-tiste's baggage, enjoy the damn cartoon.

(Deep sigh, ending with the flapping of lips towards the end.  That kind of sigh.  Like a snorting horse.)