About Tom Dullemond

Writer. IT guy. Occasional troublemaker. Opinionated. Shockingly, shockingly humble.

Tor’s DRM-free ebook experiment, one year later (HT: @nztaylor)

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Tom Dullemond

Tor kicked the expensive, unworkable DRM locks off their digital books just over a year ago:

For our particular readership, we felt it was an essential and fair move. The genre community is close-knit, with a huge on-line presence, and with publishers, authors and fans having closer communication than perhaps some other areas of publishing do. Having been in direct contact with our readers, we were aware of how frustrated many of them were by DRM. Our authors had also expressed concerns at the restrictions imposed by the copyright coding applied to their ebooks. When both authors and readers are talking from the same page, it makes sense for the publishers to sit up, listen and take note—and we did!

Have a read through to see what their customer and author responses were.

Read it here: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/04/tor-books-uk-drm-free-one-year-later

Monday Markets – Unidentified Funny Objects 2 – May 31 2013

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Tom Dullemond

I don’t see a lot of humorous anthologies around (that doesn’t mean they don’t exist, just that I don’t see them). This collection, featuring stories by Robert Silverberg, Mike Resnick, Ken Liu, Esther Friesner, Tim Pratt, and Jody Lynn Nye, looks great:

We’re looking for speculative stories with a strong humor element. Think Resnick and Sheckley, Fredric Brown and Douglas Adams. We welcome quality flash fiction and non-traditional narratives. Take chances, try something new, just make sure that your story is funny.

Puns and stories that are little more than vehicles for delivering a punch line at the end aren’t likely to win us over.

They’re after 500-6,000 word stories, and are paying $0.05 cents per word as well as a contributor copy.

Note: you need to remove your name from the manuscript, as they will be reading submissions blind.

Also:

If your story is rejected before May 31 you may send another, but we will only consider up to two submissions per author. If your second submission is rejected, we will ask you to wait until next year, when we’re reading for UFO3.

Check it out here: http://alexshvartsman.com/ufo-unidentified-funny-objects/

National SF Convention this Week

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Tom Dullemond

Folks, I’ll be at Conflux 9 in Canberra this week, so won’t be updating much. A busy schedule ahead with a book launch tomorrow (ref: www.pandorasparadoxes.com) and then hanging out with as many local writers as I can.

I’m currently sitting at Canberra University plugging away at some Literarium code while my partner-in-crime Lucas is setting up servers, so I’m still hoping that in the next few days I’ll be able (finally!) to show off some of the work we’ve been doing. Also, there is some fine beer on tap here, and it’s not going to drink itself.

Keep writing!

Monday Markets – Kasma SF Magazine

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Tom Dullemond

Behold:

We prefer short science fiction between 1000 and 5000 words in length, though we’ll consider stories that are longer. Ideally, we’d like to receive fiction that is intelligent, with well thought out plots and characters. Beyond this, exactly what happens in your world with your characters is up to you. We enjoy a broad range and don’t want to stifle author creativity by having elaborate expectations. Often enough, the best stories come as a surprise.

Although Kasma is a science fiction publication, we have been known to (rarely) make an exception and wander into other genres (e.g. fantasy).

Full submissions guidelines here: http://www.kasmamagazine.com/submissions.html

From Self-Publishing to All Sorts of Amazing Publishing Deals (via @PublishersWkly)

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Tom Dullemond

Just an interesting article about Colleen Hoover, who managed to turn her self-publishing into a step to more traditional publishing contracts, including movie deals.

Although publishing, as we’ve said many a time before, is often a game of chance, there might be something in Colleen’s story that helps or inspires you:

Soon after self-publishing, people she didn’t know were downloading the book — even after it was only available for a fee. Readers began posting reviews and buzz built on blogs. Missing her characters, she self-published the sequel, “Point of Retreat,” a month later. By June, both books hit Amazon’s Kindle top 100 best-seller list. By July, both were on The New York Times best-seller list for e-books. Soon after, they were picked up by Atria Books, a Simon & Schuster imprint. By fall, she had sold the movie rights.

All sounds pretty easy, right?

When Hoover finished her third book, “Hopeless,” in December, she initially turned down an offer from Atria and decided to digitally self-publish again. By January, that book too was a New York Times best-seller and she signed that month with Atria to publish the print version, but kept control of the electronic version. The paperback is set to come out in May.

Although we can’t expect to hit the same streak as Colleen, I do find it interesting that here she has agreed to contract out the process of distributing, printing, and managing physical books, while retaining her electronic rights. To me, this seems perfectly reasonable, but I have the impression that the idea that authors would have this much power to negotiate with a publisher would have been utterly alien even a few years ago…

Read it all here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/colleen-hoover-skyrockets-to-success-as-self-published-books-lead-to-publishing-film-deals/2013/04/16/67a842bc-a6bb-11e2-9e1c-bb0fb0c2edd9_story.html

Fair Use (via @jakonrath)

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Tom Dullemond

Joe Konrath:

I define “fair use” as: You can do whatever you want with my intellectual property, as long as you’re doing it without intending to make money. Once you want to make money from it, get in touch and we’ll try to work something out.

This was prompted by a photo and caption he saw on twitter:

“Copyright is fundamental to creative industries, those who believe it’s not relevant are mistaken”

I find that interesting on a few levels. And by “interesting” I mean “bullshit”.

I agree entirely with Joe here. It’s utter bullshit. There are many creative industries, such as the fashion industry and the culinary industry, that do not ‘enjoy’ copyright protection. They are doing VERY well indeed. Copyright is not fundamental to creative industries in any way, and to claim it is is to be utterly wrong.

In fact let me rephrase it as my own quotable quote: Copyright law is fundamentally antithetical to creative industries, and those who believe it isn’t are fundamentally mistaken.

And before anyone starts yelling at me, copyright is distinct from moral rights (ie. the right to be acknowledged as the creator of a work), and certainly isn’t a requirement to make money from your art. See, as I said, the entirely copyright free fashion industry.

Read Joe’s full piece here: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/fair-use.html

Monday Markets – Dying To Live Anthology – June 2013 (HT: @horrortree)

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Tom Dullemond

Diabolic Publications has a few anthologies coming up (linked at the bottom of the page), but I’ve showcased the June anthology, Dying to Live:

We will be publishing an anthology of vampire fiction Dying to Live in October 2013. Submissions are being accepted until June 1, 2013, which is a change from our original date of August. We are looking for dark vampire stories; please do not send any stories about vampires that sparkle!

They’re after 2,000 to 8,000 word submissions and i think payment is around 3 US cents/word.

Check it and more: http://www.diabolicpublications.com/current

Barnes & Nobles launches Nook Press for Self-Pub (via HT: jdalrymple)

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Tom Dullemond

I’ll skip the intro and jump to the details:

The Nook Press platform includes features such as a web-based content tools for authors to write, edit, format and publish their work and online forum for writers to share their work in a secure environment. Authors also have potential merchandising opportunities in the Nook Store and upcoming Nook Press Nook Channel on Nook HD and Nook HD+. Select content will be in social media campaigns, e-mails and newsletters directed to NOOK customers, Nook Media said.

Any opportunity to get work out there is good, but my cynical senses prick a little at things where writers get ‘potential merchandising opportunities’ and ‘select content’ chosen for social media campaigns. I imagine these kinds of services turning into a literary pit fight:

Bloodied scraps of manuscripts and clothes and authors’ skin drift upwards from the pit in a draft made of the heat of dying bodies, only to be snatched by a gnarled, beringed finger.

“Hm, yes.” It’s a deep, hungry, contemplative voice. “This seems ready. Bring her up. We have some social media campaigns she might like to feature in.”

Read it: http://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2013/04/09/barnes-noble-launches-new-nook-press.html

Hanging out with writers is exhilarating…and exhausting (via @LisaJJackson HT @Gretavdr)

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Tom Dullemond

Lisa Jackson on her experience at a writers’ conference, and how she wishes she could’ve absorbed more of the experience:

Writing can be a solitary life, right? Even when working in a noisy cafe, I can encapsulate myself as I focus on my work – be with/around people, yet still alone.

So when I purposely join a group of writers for a couple hours or more, it’s a bit of a emotional overload. I go from my own thoughts to learning about other writers, what they’re passionate about, what they enjoy reading and writing, and what they are currently working on.

I enjoy hanging out with fellow writers too, but I agree that the wave of personalities and stories and works in progress can be a little overwhelming. I wonder if there’s a way to compartmentalise without being utterly anti-social; some way to get the best of both worlds…

I’ll think on it and let you know if something springs to mind.

Read the full post here: https://nhwn.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/hanging-out-with-writers-is-exhilarating-and-exhausting/

I’m a Self-Publishing Failure (via @salon)

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Tom Dullemond

John Winters discusses the other, more common side of self-publishing:

An article in the New York Times claims that 81 percent of us believe we have a book in us. This sounds painful – both anatomically and for the readers of this potential deluge. In fact, extrapolated across the entire U.S., this 81 percent equates to 200 million books. Most of them no doubt about beloved dogs or written by celebrity chefs. I confess I was long among these wannabe authors. My cabinets and drawers are littered with more pages of fiction than the archives of the Nixon Library. However, recently I completed my first novel and subsequently set out after that dream of every writer: publication, followed by royalty checks of the six-figure variety.

I want to quote so much from this article, as John pushes his novel onto Amazon and gets bitten by the promotional bug after selling a few copies, pursues the dream of shooting a book trailer (“The Internet is full of tips on how to market your self-published book, and a trailer is high on the list.”) and generally continues along a path of increasingly expensive self-destruction.

There was one more avenue I’d yet to try in my pursuit of literary fame: give it away. That’s right; many self-published authors simply give the e-book version of their novel away in hopes of building word-of-mouth interest that will in turn result in sales. Roughly 800 people took advantage, and afterward there was even a sale or two.

John writes with a charming and dejected wit, so do yourself a favour and read the full article: http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/im_a_self_publishing_failure/

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