Understanding Issues...

Last week went so quickly and I was trying to get so much done that I missed any blog posts.

Plus a trip to the dentist on Friday for root canal work just makes me glad I don't live in the 18th/19th century with the dentistry of the time...

Finally got some more of the novella completed; these last chapters are certainly picking up the pace as the past starts to unfold and there's trouble afoot.

Originally the novella was being written for the pocket novel market, but then changes were made to what was wanted- 20th century onwards.

DC Thomson (who produce the My Weekly Pocket Novels and those by People's Friend) have been a topic for discussion re rights and contracts over the weekend.

Apparently they are sending out new contracts to writers and the new terms have caused a few upsets.

Now I'm a great believer in not giving up your rights, or limiting your rights, unless you are paid an adequate amount to compensate, so I was interested in what the issues involved were.

So let me refer you to Womagwriter's blog post from Friday. Womag has seen an actual contract...

Okay, I've not been in a position to be offered a contract by DCT so I'm not a writer who finds themselves faced with agreeing to such terms or losing a portion of their regular income.

But it does rather seem they want a nice portfolio of stories they can use again and again in assorted media without paying more for it.

And as for that restrictive Clause 8: " In the case of a collection of your contributions where you are the sole or majority author in book form, you commit to offering the Company the right to first refusal to publish any such collection in any format... such an arrangement would be subject to new contractual terms..."

(Now, I am not a lawyer, so this is only my personal opinion of how that clause reads.)

So they can say, yes we want to publish your collection. But if you don't like the contractual terms they're offering, and you can't negotiate on those terms to your satisfaction, then it's goodbye to you publishing your collection yourself, unless they turn down your offer...

Some years ago I read an interview with an author who had been contracted for a second book. The publisher didn't like the second book presented to them, but being bound by the contract she could not offer that book to anyone else...it does sound like it could be a potentially similar scenario...

Writing is a business, and we mustn't lose sight of that fact.
The publisher wants to get the best deal they can, and so does the writer. Sadly the writer is usually the one who loses and ends up doing all the hard work to promote their story/novel for less financial return.

(Is it any wonder that self-publishing to Kindle/Smashwords is thriving?)

We all know that magazines are struggling.

The elusive younger end of the market do everything online (and admittedly not just the young nowadays)- or so it seems. With Smart Phones and iPads, magazines are actively pushing digital subscriptions, as print figures for many magazines drop...

While these are not magazines with short story markets, Bauer have closed 'More' magazine; and 'Full House' is closing too. I've also heard that glossy 'Easy Living' is on the way out...

Could changes in contracts be an advance sign that magazines are trying to build potential collateral that could make the difference between them closing, or being bought out by another publisher?

In the world outside publishing, if a business fails it has more chance of being bought out or taken over if it has an order book/a market; publishing is no different.

But I do worry that if DCT's contract doesn't get revised, then other publishers will start to go that way too, and that won't be good for any writer...

As a last word on rights, you might like to peruse "Authors and book rights – some more truths" - from the futurebook.net website- a digital blog from The Bookseller- it was taking too long to load as a link, so I've just included the name here.

As writers we need to protect our rights, so if you aren't clear on the subject start reading up- there are numerous rights you hold and unless you understand them, you could be signing away a potential source of income.

If you have any thought on this issue, or rights generally, then do please leave a comment.

My Workshop Experience- Writing for Children...

First, I must say a big thank you to Ann Evans who ran the workshop for Nottingham Writers' Club on Saturday.

It was only a group of 10, but it did mean we could ask lots of questions as we went along.

Now I don't write for children, but sometimes I do need to have children in my stories- as Sarah, the heroine in my novella is having memory flashes and dreams/nightmares from when she was a child, I'd been finding it very difficult to convey the thoughts and language of a 10-12 year when she's experiencing these moments.

So I was hoping that elements of the workshop would help me get a grip on that.

We began with picture books and worked up...

I learnt that the pages are spreads, so if you open the book and have two pages in front of you, that is a spread.

I'd never really thought about how you would lay out a manuscript for a picture book, but it is nothing like a standard manuscript; it's broken up into stages, so the editor knows what the visual clues are (for the illustrator) and the text for each page...

The language use and sentence construction needed for the younger age range proved that it is as hard work as a longer length work.

There was discussion on the skills needed for producing stories suitable for older children who have a lower reading ability. The exciting stories required by their age, but the text not being as complex as you'd usually get. These are referred to as Hi-lo stories.

Writing for young adults did seem to be popular- and it is an expanding market...

There were exercises to do and it was the last set that gave me the breakthrough with Sarah.
We did bullet points about our character- character traits and so on. But we had to include their aim- either for the day or their life, and the thing they fear.

Now Sarah fears storms, so that was easy enough. But as I slowly began to tune into Sarah as a child, I recalled my own care-free childhood around the same age, and like most children wanted to grow-up to be like my mum.
In the past life wasn't as complex as today, so our parents were our role models, who we aspired to be like, so I'm sure Sarah would have felt the same...

As the exercise progressed I found there was a depth to Sarah I hadn't been aware of, and in doing so I discovered why she is so concerned about an aspect of her friends lives in the present.

I will certainly be doing this again, with one of my secondary characters who is a bit two-dimensional at the moment. I haven't quite found the key to him...

We had a variety of discussions, including age ranges and book lengths. Nothing seems hard and fast with lengths, as a publisher may have specific requirements for a particular country/market.

So generally: Ann suggested; picture books approximately 300 words.

4-5 year old- books with line drawings, 1,800-2,000 words or less. At this point parents will be reading the book to their child/children, and then the children will eventually be able to read the book themselves.

7-9 years old- 12,000-25,000 as an average.

9-12 years old- 25,000-60,000.

But clearly every child is different. Consider how many younger age range children were reading Harry Potter tomes- each book seemed to get thicker with a larger word count than the previous one...

While I may never write books for children, I'm not going to forget that the back story of each of my main characters includes their childhood influences and experiences.

After all our childhood is a part of who we become later...