Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

It’s been an interesting week, writing-wise, and while no, it wasn’t “interesting” in the sense of “Oh God Oh God We’re all going to die!” it was interesting in the sense used by the old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.

This week I received:

• validation on my writing
• several rejections on my writing
• bad news on the job change front
• an invitation to submit a book to a trade show

Good News First

This weekend, I met someone for the first time and one of the first things she said to me was, “I love your books.” Damn. It just doesn’t more wonderful than that.

Later, a friend posted that her boss kept wanting her to “get back to work!” The reason she was lollygagging? She was in the middle of The Shadow of the Storm (Fallen Cloud Saga, Book III), and couldn’t put it down. Again, it doesn’t get much better than that.

The Not-So-Wonderful

I’ve been submitting my most recent story to markets for about a year now. I’ve sent it to eleven markets and, to date, it has been rejected from eight of them. Discouraging, to be sure, and I’m this close to just posting it here for you all to read gratis (assuming you’re not just here for David Chang’s chicken soup recipe). My reaction to this week’s rejection was to submit the story to two new markets that had recently opened for reading. Take that!

More Bad News

The job-change project continues, and responses from my applications are starting to trickle in. With one exception, all were no thank yous.

The exception? An invitation to take a test to see if I’ve got the editing/writing chops required for a particular project. The test took about four hours and if I pass I can proceed to the next level where I get about 10–15 hours of training. If I do well there, I will be considered for this job. The problem is, I have no idea what the pay rate is. Need to know basis, I guess.

I Know a Guy Who Knows a Guy…

My across-the-street neighbor has an old school chum who is now an editor for the AP—Yeah, that AP.—and my friend asked if I’d like to meet him and pick his brain about this switch to a new career as an editor. Answer: Hell, yeah!

We met at The Rendezvous, a bar down in Belltown (which right there just sounds perfectly journalistic), and over a couple of beers I quizzed my friend’s friend about the prospects, the requirements, and anything I could think of related to breaking into the editing profession.

Item 1: Don’t bother with schooling in editing. Classes are good if I learn from them, but they don’t mean squat on a CV. Better to identify a subject I’m passionate about, and tie that subject with my editorial job search to try to narrow my focus. Editing is editing, but knowledge of a particular subject can help you rise above the crowd.

Item 2: It’s a freelance world. This was disappointing news, but completely in line with what I’ve been uncovering in my search. Full-time editorial staff jobs are thin on the ground, and there are a ton of editors competing for these jobs. As a result, no one wants to hire and train a newbie, so you must have some experience under your belt just to be considered. How to get experience without experience? Freelance.

Many publishers now look solely to freelancers for their editing needs. Freelancing is something most editors do either wholly or as a supplement to other contract or part-time work. This means that the hopes for my Plan A are dwindling. Fast.

At the end, I was depressed by the prospects, which led to a blue funk, which led to anxiety, which led to panic. Today, I’m starting to get my brain around the idea that I might just have to go solo for a while. I’ll have to work two jobs while I build up my editing CV. I’ll have to set up a business from scratch.

Daunting? Yeah, a little.

A Trip to the Fair

By far the most “interesting” thing this past week was an unsolicited contact from a representative from America Star Books, asking me if I would care to have my book, Ploughman’s Son, included in their display at the upcoming Miami Book Fair. Alternatively, they could include my book in their “Hot Indie Authors” guide, which they will be distributing at the fair.

On its face, this gets a “Hell, yeah!” but being a tried-and-true skeptic, I rarely take things at face value and thus chose to look a little closer.

How did they find me? (Ploughman’s Son has been out for years … why now?) What do they get out of it? And who is America Star Books.

The answer to that last question gave me answers to the others. America Star Books is the new name adopted by PublishAmerica and, just like putting new slipcovers on that old broken-down sofa, it hasn’t changed anything.

For those of you unfamiliar with PublishAmerica, it was one of the first companies to embrace the print-on-demand technology, but instead of creating an actual publishing house, they created a factory designed to suck as much money as possible out of new and enthusiastic authors. Back when I was part of SFWA (Science-fiction and Fantasy Writers of America), the organization ran a sting operation on PublishAmerica. A group of authors wrote the worst chapter they could write (including one chapter that was completely computer-generated). These chapters were then compiled into a book (one chapter was included twice), and the result submitted to PublishAmerica. Unsurprisingly, PublishAmerica said the book was great and they would be thrilled to publish it for us (for a fee, of course). This proved that PublishAmerica wasn’t interested in actually editing any books, just in collecting as much money as they could.

SFWA declined the offer and published the book itself. Atlanta Nights by Travis Tea (say it out loud) can be purchased; all proceeds go toward SFWA’s Emergency Medical Fund. If you want a good laugh, go check it out. It’s horrible.

So now PublishAmerica is America Star Books. That tells me what they get out of it: a chance to get money from me.

However, I did not ignore this offer. Instead, I decided to embrace it, just to see how far goes. I have accepted their offer to include my books (I gave them info on both books in The Ploughman Chronicles) in their “Hot Indie Authors” guide. Supposedly, this guide is going to be distributed at the Miami Book Fair in November. If there is any spike in my flat-line sales, I’ll be flabbergasted.

Meanwhile, I’ve already received information from America Star Books about how they can help me market my book to film studios (for only $99!)

Yup. “Interesting.”

k