There are dozens of books on how to write, or at least how to write better, including quite a few aimed at science fiction writers, so I thought rather than repeating what they say it might be more useful to write an article on how to sell your science fiction. After all, that’s the name of the game.
So …
Submissions. It’s been said time and again: work on that opening paragraph. And of course it’s true, but once you know the commercial reason, you won’t need any serious encouragement to do so.
And the reason is simply this: the average science fiction magazine gets more than a thousand submissions a month. Break it down: that’s 200 to 250 a week. Break it down further: it’s 40 to 50 a day. That means the average slush reader (let’s dignify him or her and call them First Readers) is reading (and passing on, or rejecting) about half a dozen stories an hour. That’s one every ten minutes, without taking into account coffee breaks, bathroom breaks, cigarette breaks, and anything else that breaks his concentration even for just a minute or two.
Now do you see why the most important thing in your story is the opening paragraph, followed by the opening page? In the simplest of terms: if you haven’t captured the First Reader (or the editor) by then, he’ll never get to page 2. After all, he’s got hundreds of more stories waiting to be read.
Reading aloud. I know you’re careful, I know you realize that typos or even clumsy wordings can put the First Reader in the wrong frame of mind—but you’ve been sitting at your keyboard for hours, staring at your screen. You know there are no typos remaining, so should you send it off?
The answer, of course, is No. It’s a lot easier to write clumsy but error-free sentences than you might think, and over the years I have found that the very best way to give your prose the final polish it needs is to read it aloud. (Not to an audience; an empty room will do just as well.) And you’ll be amazed at how many vague or clumsy or inadequate sentences got through your word processor’s spell-check program.
Novellas. By definition a short story is anything up to 7,500 words, a novelette is 7,500 to 17,500 words, a novella is 17,500 to 40,000 words, and a novel is anything over 40,000 words (though it’ll be a cold day in hell before you see a 45,000 or 53,000-word novel on the stands.)
I would advise beginners to avoid novellas. Even if you’ve got one you know will be a powerhouse, wait until you’ve got a little name recognition before writing and submitting it.
Why?
Because the average prozine runs maybe seven pieces of fiction an issue. The authors’ names invariably go on the cover, as indeed they should. But the cover also happens to be the magazine’s single most effective selling point, and no editor is going to turn over 40% to 50% of his issue’s pages to an unknown name that, when put on the cover, won’t sell a single extra copy.
Study your market. Example: you wouldn’t submit a delicate fantasy to the 1960s or 1970s Analog. You wouldn’t insert a sex scene and submit it to a magazine where the last dozen issues avoid even a hint of sex. And so on. Which is a roundabout way of saying: read the markets you are submitting to, and try not to break too many of their unwritten rules.
Return address. Okay, this one will sound like I’m talking to kindergartners—and on this particular subject I sometimes feel like I am. The very first rule of submitting your manuscript, whether it’s a 300-word piece of flash fiction or a 300,000-word novel, is to put your address (and these days, make that your e-mail address, since no one submits paper anymore) on the title page.
Simple, right? I mean, why am I wasting time stating the obvious?
The answer is just as simple. I edit Galaxy’s Edge magazine. The past week alone, we received six—count ’em, six—stories with no return addresses. Can’t buy, or even reject, a story if I don’t know where to send the contract or the rejection slip—and if I remember the writer’s name, it is definitely not for the reasons writers hope editors will remember their names.
Foreign markets. Okay, you’ve sold a story, and now you hope in a year or three (or six, or nine) it’ll be picked up by some reprint anthology. Is there anything else you can do with it?
Well, yes—you can submit it to a dozen or more foreign markets. The beauty of this is that the editor, who may or may not be all that fluent in English, knows (because you have told him, and perhaps even e-mailed him a copy) that an American editor, one who is fluent in English and works for the biggest science fiction market in the world, has already bought it, which means that it’s a very saleable story. Is it by an unknown? Sure. But many of our established writers are unknown—or nearly so—to foreign markets.
So how do you contact these markets? Who’s buying and what are they looking for? There’s a web page that’s been around well over a decade that will give you what you need to know: it’s www.smithwriter.com/foreign_market_list.htm
Simple, believe it or not, as that.
Word counts. This should go without saying, but every editor in the business can get an exact word count once you send him your electronic submission. So it should go without saying (though of course it never does) that you should never lie on the word count to get an extra five or ten dollars. Editors have excellent word-counters and even better memories.
Lag time. Lag time is the length of time between the day your editor buys your story and the day it is published. The thing to keep in mind is that while lag time varies, it is rarely less than six months, and often as much as two years. So there is not much sense writing about, say, the 2020 election (which is held in November) in August. Ditto any other thing that’s likely to make headlines, from a particular Super Bowl match-up to the first spaceship to wherever, that figures to make your story obsolescent before it’s even published.
Meeting editors. If nothing else, you’ll feel more comfortable dealing with someone (by which I mean an editor) you know than someone you have never met. You’ll also be able to discuss what he or she is looking for, and what you’re working on and will soon be working on, and it never hurts (always assuming you make a good impression) for you to be known to/by an editor.
So how do you meet them, short of flying to Manhattan and staying in a run-of-the-mill $350-a-night hotel and dining on run-of-the-mill $75 midtown Manhattan dinners?
In the traditional way, of course. You go to a convention and meet them there. And no, not just any convention. There are more than 100 of them every year just in the United States.
The biggie, in terms of editors, remains Worldcon, which these days is far outnumbered by Comic Con, Dragon Con, and other “general interest” (by which they mean general interest in the fantastic) conventions. Just about every publisher and most editors show up there, so you’ll go to their panels to listen to them generalize, and then at nights you’ll go to their parties to meet them personally and, if the room isn’t jammed, get a little face time with the ones you want to deal with.
World Fantasy Con isn’t quite as big, but it has damned near as many editors, and the procedure is the same: go to their panels and parties, and without being pushy try to get some face time with the ones who most interest you.
There are smaller regional cons (Worldcon and World Fantasy Con move around the country each year) that are properly located for you to meet a goodly number of editors: LunaCon in New York and Boskone in Boston (or, in both cases, occasionally just beyond the city limits).
And if you read Locus or any of the printed or electronic newsletters of the field, you’ll see when an editor you want to meet has been invited to a convention that is within commuting distance of where you live, and of course you’ll try to get to those when the right names come up.
Agents. I won’t say that no competent agent handles unsold writers, but it’s relatively rare for the good ones to do so. Reason: they’ve got dozens of sold writers vying for their services.
More to the point, a lot of the better agents prefer to handle novels—well, books—exclusively. Fifteen percent of a short story just isn’t worth their while, especially if they pay a carrier service to deliver it fifteen blocks away. If you can find an agent who wants you as an unpublished or barely published writer of short fiction, fine—but make sure he or she has some Names in his stable, and find out what his policy is on short fiction, both original and reprint (and foreign) sales.
Anyway, these have been some tips on selling. As for writing good enough to sell, that’s what Writers of the Future is for—and indeed, what it specializes in.