Posted by Nicky Drayden on Sep 30, 2011 in
Writer's Life 
For those of you who have a special place in your hearts for zombies, there’s a Blogger Zombie Walk going on today via the magic of the interwebs! Fifty brave souls have chosen to participate, putting up some sort of zombie themed post on their blogs. Leo Godin is one of them, and has highlighted several zombie story podcasts including my “You Had Me at Rarrrw.” So shuffle along and visit his blog for a healthy dose of zombie…one taste of what the walk has to offer will surely leave you infected.
Posted by Nicky Drayden on Sep 9, 2011 in
Writer's Life 
So my writing life’s been pretty rosy lately–I’ve got a couple new short stories out (including my all-time favorite, not for the faint of heart), made some short story sales and got a reprint in this squid anthology, received my first four-figure Amazon.com royalty check (four figures if you count the decimals), and have a ton of fan mail (okay, just one email) sitting in my inbox waiting for a response. Things were going swimmingly, I thought, and I was fairly pleased with the progress my writing career was making…
And then I got THE CALL.
Uh, huh. That’s the one. The one I’ve been dreaming about for years now. On Wednesday I had a great conversation with wonder-agent Jennifer Jackson (no that’s not a typo) about my manuscript THE PREY OF GODS and she offered me representation! I’ve just about picked my jaw up off the floor, but my head is still spinning to see my name listed on her website among writers like Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Amanda Downum and Martha Wells. I’m a bit tongue-tied, but let’s just say it’s pretty surreal.
I’m so pleased that all of the countless hours I’ve spent glued to my keyboard, swept up in delusional dreams of being a writer are finally paying off. But somehow I have a feeling that the real work is still ahead of me.
Posted by Nicky Drayden on Jul 14, 2011 in
Writer's Life I just released volumes three and four of my short story collections, and having sold a total of over 300 ebooks now, I am from hence forth declaring myself an Expert on Ebook Publishing. And not only that, I have also sold two copies of my ebook in the UK, so I can now call myself an Internationally Known Author! (Yes, the capitalization is mandatory.)
But I’m not the only one riding this wave of e-glory. Several of my writing friends are doing the same thing, sticking up their previously published stories on Amazon and hoping for a few bucks to roll in. But without much effort, a few bucks can turn into hundreds, at which point an author must sit up and ask herself, “Why bother with submitting to penny-a-word zines when I can get more money if I take half an afternoon to self publish it?”
Why indeed? The stigma of self publishing is all but gone. With millions of Kindle users, your stories potentially have a much larger audience. And instead of constantly checking your inbox for rejections, you could be constantly checking your Amazon sales ranking, which honestly, is a lot more fun.
I suspect that with this trend, semi-pro zines will see their slush piles shrinking, most likely losing the best talent first. Good stories will be harder and harder to find. And then they’ll be faced with a choice: whither away with a silent dignity or take a bold step into the world of ebooks themselves. The greatest thing about ebooks is that it’s making short stories a legitimate business model again. With a few clicks of a mouse, a zine can reach those same millions of readers…and these are Reader readers, not just writers checking submission guidelines. Zines can become profitable entities, but they’re going to have to attract those self publishers back, and that means upping pay rates, which means everybody wins.
I predict we’ll be seeing rising pay rates in the next few years, both in semi-pro and pro mags. Three cents a word will become the new base rate, and pro magazines will hover around ten cents. But what matters most is that there will much rejoicing that the words we put on the page out of love finally have a ravenous audience in the United States and beyond, and soon we will all be able to proudly bear the title of Internationally Known Author!
