Viewing: May, 2017

“Like occasionally I’m legit pissed about the fact that there doesn’t appear to be a fandom for this fantastic series because sometimes, all I want to do is talk about my SdJ theories with like-minded folks (but then I look at my latest fandom experiences and kind of… resign myself to being a SdJ super-fan in relative anonymity).”

Stitch’s Media Mix

That’s from a review of my newest offering, Greedy Pigs, out today from Tor.com Publishing. Stitch is a book/media blogger, writer, and student, and I just love her to death. She first came to my attention after she posted a drunken review/quasi-live read of my first Sin du Jour book, Envy of Angels, and I’ve followed her stuff ever since. It isn’t just that she gives my books fantastic reviews (although she does), and it isn’t even the fact that she’s a deeply insightful analyst of everything from movies to comics (she is). Stitch perfectly captures the experience of just loving the fuck out of a book you’re reading, and having that applied to my books is immensely rewarding. That’s simply why we do this, to make people feel the way we feel when we read books or comics or watch movies we love that really capture and compel and move us. It’s one of the best things about the human experience, right up there with tasting food and having orgasms.

You can read her full review of Greedy Pigs here, but that highlighted portion above kind of encapsulates how I’m feeling today, the day of Greedy Pigs‘ release (it’s out in ebook and paperback and you should buy it and read it and love it and review it and tell all your friends about it and all of that junk).

I find myself holding onto a mixed emotional bag on this, my fifth Sin du Jour book launch day, and I also find it difficult not to be honest about that. I just finished line edits on Gluttony Bay, the next Sin du Jour novella, and I was rereading an ARC of Greedy Pigs. The latter is my fiancée, Nikki’s, favorite SdJ novella thus far (quite an accomplishment, as she is my toughest critic), while Gluttony Bay, the penultimate book of the series, is my favorite SdJ I’ve done up to this point. I’m intensely pleased by both books, how the series has evolved, and where it’s going. This whole thing started out as a weird experiment (and it still is that, to a large degree) and me just trying to write something as funny and bizarre and unexpected and different as I could. It’s turned into a group of imaginary people I really care about who (I hope) feel/read very real, and work of which I’m very proud. Yet none of that seems to be translating into hard sales, which are, quite frankly, soft. It’s almost two years on and we’re not moving nearly as many physical books as I’d hoped we would, and we’re not reaching the readership I know this series could potentially impact.

Don’t get me wrong. This has been and continues to be a greatly fulfilling experience for me, creatively and professionally. I’ve got an amazing publisher in Tor.com Publishing who love and believe in these books enough to have committed to putting out all seven of them, which is bananas. They are selling. They’re earning out their advances and moving Kindle copies, if not paperbacks. I’ve gotten nothing but love and enthusiasm from virtually all the critics who have reviewed the books, which is unheard of for me. I’ve got readers who connect with the work and get what I’m trying to do and quite obviously love this world and these people. The people who actually take the time to read the books dig ’em. I am grateful for all of that, truly.

However, it also causes me a lot of frustration, especially lately. None of our current efforts seem to be able to break the series wider, and that intense enthusiasm of the readership we’ve built and critics we’ve converted just doesn’t seem to have the infection rate in others you’d hope. I’m a big believer in “if you can convert one, you can convert a million,” and I still am. So while it’s wholly gratifying to see people love the hell out of these books, it’s also frustrating to see the next 999,999 people watch that and shrug and keep moving. It’s amazing to receive starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, four-and-a-half stars and a Top Pick badge from RT Book Reviews, be one of three SFF books recommended by The Washington Post for the month, have SFF book blogs and fanzines like Barnes & Noble, File 770, and Nerds of a Feather consistently gush over the series, but that also creates an even bigger sense of, “Why isn’t any of this translating to sales/readership?”

These are, of course, hardly revolutionary problems. This is the exact same eternal struggle encountered by virtually every author and publisher every day of their publishing lives always. But I’m not every other author, I’m me, and this is my career and these are my books, and this launch day I just can’t summon my usual up-and-at-’em, let’s-keep-fighting-the-good-fight attitude. I do, however, retain my always profound gratitude to those of you reviewing and buying and reading and loving and talking about these books. I see it on Twitter and I read what you write on Amazon and Goodreads and I get your occasional emails, and I can’t express my appreciation enough for your cutting through all that white noise out there to actually give time and attention and customerage to my little books. Thank you.

Don’t get it twisted, we are not defeated. Not even close. I’m currently working on the very last book in the Sin du Jour series, Taste of Wrath, which is due out in 2018. We have another year of SdJ being current and “hot” and “new” and all that jazz, and I am going to step up my marketing/awareness-raising efforts and be as smart as possible about it and make the most of it. I’m also going to take a big cue from Stitch, whose words actually inspired a lot in me over breakfast this morning. Because there is Sin du Jour fandom out there, even if it ain’t the size of Harry Potter or The Dresden Files or anything. It’s just individualistic fandom, scattered like a thousand similar thoughts waiting to be galvanized into a philosophy. I am going to work on bringing y’all together, and in that there is power. I’m noodling some special events and perhaps some kind of forum for you. If you are a Sin du Jour reader who loves the books and would like to talk to others who do also and you have ideas about how you’d like to go about that, feel free to email me at matt AT matt-wallace.com about it.

In the meantime, you keep reading ’em and I’ll keep writing ’em. That’s what we do. That’s all we can do.

I really think you’re going to love Greedy Pigs. Sin du Jour keeps growing up, but I hope it stays funny and weird and wild enough to keep y’all entertained in addition to moving you just an inch or two.

I have to thank my editor, Lee Harris, as well as Irene Gallo and her whole team at Tor.com Publishing. I also want to thank my new copy editor on Sin du Jour, Richard Shealy, who did a bang-up job on Greedy Pigs. My fiancée, Nikki, is the best alpha reader and life partner one could ever hope to find. My agent, DongWon Song of Horward Morhaim Literary, is the only bullet you need in your gun (go #TeamDongWon).

Most of all, thank you for buying another ticket to take this ride with me. Those stubs are my favorite scrapbook items.

Matt Wallace (Los Angeles, CA 2017)

Obligatory pull quotes from critical praise for Greedy Pigs

“Wallace’s imagination is boundless, and his wryly funny storytelling manages to be heartfelt and completely gonzo at the same time.” – Publishers Weekly

“Once again, Wallace mixes delicious drama and devilishly clever supernatural twists in another stellar Sin du Jour novel.” – Bridget Keown, RT Book Reviews

“Matt Wallace’s Sin du Jour novella series is the best thing to happen to urban fantasy since Anita Blake lusted after her first vampire.” – Joel Cunningham, Barnes & Noble Sci-fi & Fantasy Blog

“…when Wallace delivers, he hits you right in the gut. It’s that gut punch, blended expertly with unmatched wit and creativity that makes Greedy Pigs so damned good.” – Joe Sherry, Nerds of a Feather

“While I may not be sure if I want to live in the weird world of the Sin du Jour series, Greedy Pigs makes it crystal clear that maybe, just maybe, we’re already there. And that’s what makes Greedy Pigs such a fantastic read.” – Stitch’s Media Mix

The essential and fundamental truth you must accept and fully understand about our business is this: There is nothing, not negative margins at the end of the fiscal year and not the pre-fall-of-Rome state of the government and not their parents being eaten by cancer, there is NOTHING the people who employ writers hate more than writers.

The more their market or company or project utterly depends on writing, the more and more fervent their noxiously unctuous contempt is for you, the writer. Movie studios, of whose products screenwriters are the architects and *only* indispensable project personnel (never, EVER forget that. You are the ONLY originator. Everyone else is an adaptor of YOUR work, including and ESPECIALLY the director. FUCK that chimp with their camera. They are a waiter taking YOUR order. And no, they aren’t even chefs. Those are the editors), would chain writers together three abreast at the bottom of a 17th century French galley and swap out their oars for MacBooks if they could get away with it. Online markets, who are utterly and solely dependent on constant 24/7 content written and edited and curated and posted by writers like you, will employ five people who couldn’t themselves fill a single hour of that desperately needed content just so that market can claim they pay writers while they chew bloggers and freelancers through their meat grinder teeth by the thousands and spit them all out broke and uncredited and forgotten. Publishing is a business in which the world’s largest publishers clear billion-dollar profits yearly and in which the majority of people who create the only product those publishers sell can’t make minimum wage creating that product.

They need you and they know it. They are respirator-dependent upon you and they know it. They cannot exist without you and they know it. You should and could have all the power in this process so they designed a system in which you have absolutely none, and under whose authority you not only accept that you have no power, you remain grateful to them for taking it away from you in exchange for simply allowing you to practice a craft that fills their pockets and larders and egos while offering you the slimmest validation possible that you lap up like a starving, repeatedly kicked dog.

You are a professional writer and you are universally loathed by everyone.

Know it.

Accept it.

Embrace it.

Now we can move on.

Ideally, we should eliminate the middle people in these industries and control everything ourselves, especially the profits. That’s another post for another time. Right now we’re talking about dealing with the existing industries, which is what most of you will or are doing, especially when you just begin trying to sell whatever writing you’re trying to sell.

When you venture out into the marketplace to hawk your wares as a writer, be they nonfiction articles or short stories or screenplays or whatever, you will invariably discover two things: 1) Everyone wants you to work for free. 2) Everyone who doesn’t want you to work for free wants to pay you shit, or as little as possible.

They will offer you myriad universes of reasons and excuses and assurances and promises WHY this is all perfectly normal and acceptable and standard. They are lies. Do you hear me? Whatever steaming horse hockey they hand you about working for free or for pennies, they are all lies told by lying liars who are fucking lying to you. Period. There are four lights. Never forget that.

And here’s the truly screwed up part. You’ll probably accept their offer. Because writers, like most artists, are generally terrible businesspeople and negotiators. You will be intimidated and overwhelmed and afraid and eager and anxious and you will find yourself believing anything they tell you as long as the carrot of hope that is acknowledgement and advancement as a professional writer is dangling just out of reach. You will accept their shitty terms and their lies and you will perpetuate the system that retains writers at a notch above chattel.

You must understand that when you do this you are not only letting yourself down, you are fucking me over. Do you get that? You are fucking me and every single other professional writer where we breathe. You are a de facto scab. You are an unwitting traitor to your professional and artistic species. You are a collaborator. You are enabling this century-old machine built to oppress freelance writers by greasing its shitlordy wheels.

Stop it.

You are going to do better, and I am going to help you.

If you’ve ever worked in telemarketing, you may have been issued what is known as a rebuttal guide. There is no harder-nosed form of negotiation than cold calling complete strangers and attempting to wrangle money from them, usually for a worthless product or service. Telemarketers receive every imaginable abuse and excuse under the sun for why a person cannot and will not acquiesce to their terms (and they should, because they’re bilking honest people, but you’re not a telemarketer). A rebuttal guide is a tool used by telemarketers to counter excuses. It offers an easily referred to index of conceivable excuses and with that excuse, the rebuttal to employ. Again, they’re usually doing a shitty thing, but the strategy is sound.

So, that’s what I’ve written for you, the freelance writer negotiating terms for their work. I’ve written you a rebuttal guide. Below you’ll find the things you are most likely to hear from editors and other assorted folk who will want you to work for free or offer you unfair compensation for your work. I have myself been told a version of every single one of these things, or heard them verbatim, I promise you. These apply to fiction and non-fiction writers in pretty much every medium. These also really apply to any type of freelance creator, whether you write or graphic design or draw or play the fucking tuba, whatever, it all pretty much applies. So share it with your freelance friends who do things besides writing.

Now, let’s get totally serious here for a second. I employed a lot of ranting and hyperbole above (that’s a lie, as I meant every damn word). This rebuttal guide is NOT written in that style. I could have done that version, and maybe I will do it just for fun or as advanced guide one day, but you simply can’t go around cursing and chewing people out and badmouthing their business when you want to work for them, especially when you’re first building a reputation as a professional. This guide is written in a wholly professional voice, with a kill-’em-with-kindness tone. In most circumstances it is much more effective to be unshakably, unflappably, and persistently polite and rational than it is to scream and yell. If they can’t rattle you, you will inevitably rattle them.

There is a time and a place for screaming and yelling in our business, but we’re starting with the basics here.

This is a real thing. I encourage you to learn these excuses and learn these rebuttals well. Learn how to string them together. There’s lots of room for improvisation and employing your own words, mixing and matching, as long as you retain the fundamental point. I encourage you to practice your rebuttals, either in a mirror or with another person. I know it can sound silly when people tell you to do a thing like that, but it’s important and it actually works. I encourage you to practice them on the phone and/or over Skype-like video chat, as this is where your negotiations will usually live outside of email, and the phone/Skype is especially difficult for a lot of people. If anxiety or some clinical condition precludes you adapting to the phone, I encourage you to request to handle negotiations via email. There’s always a workaround. You can copy and paste these rebuttals in your email for all I give a fuck, just so long as you’re negotiating for better terms.

Here’s the tragic fact of the situation. Every generation of freelance writers before you fucked you over. I’m sorry, but it’s true. They fucked you over because they didn’t fix anything. All the guilds and associations and the few actual unions, they’ve done nothing to increase writers’ collective bargaining power. It was all the largest of them could do to simply keep getting writers paid. It’s up to you. We spent a century giving each other awards and pep talks while the industries around us built higher and higher walls between us and the money and covered those walls in razor wire and poison dart frogs. That sucks, but it’s wholly up to you to do better for yourself and at least try to leave a better, fairer industry for the writers that come later.

This rebuttal guide is just a tool, and a small one. The important part, the part that affects actual change, is you altering your thinking about writing as a business and your place in it as a writer, acting accordingly, advocating and encouraging others to do the same.

I want to thank freelance writing badass Mikki Kendall, who gave me her eyes and thoughts on this. I absolutely encourage you to follow Mikki on Twitter and take her writing classes. She’s the kind of freelancer you want to be.

And, of course, this is all stuff I repeatedly talk about and elaborate on when I do Ditch Diggers, the Hugo-nominated writing-as-a-job podcast I co-host with Mur Lafferty. Please do listen to that and consider subscribing and supporting our Patreon.

So, yeah. Do better. Demand more. You deserve it.

I wish you steady nerves and good fortune.

Matt Wallace (Los Angeles, 2017)

THE FREELANCE WRITER’S REBUTTAL GUIDE (a Matt Wallace Technology)

Writing for us will be GREAT exposure for you.

Rebuttal: I appreciate that, but I’ve developed/am developing my own online platforms for purposes of exposing myself and my work. My goal with all my freelance writing is to generate real income, not exposure. And considering you need my content to make your platform valuable to advertisers and consumers, I feel it’s worth more than exposure.

Let’s consider this first piece an audition, and we’ll go from there.

Rebuttal: I’m afraid I can’t do that, but I do have plenty of samples available I can show you that demonstrate my ability to write this kind of content and the quality of my work in general. That should be more than enough of an audition.

There’s no money up front, but we do offer royalties/ad share revenue/other compensation down the line.

Rebuttal: That’s a great feature, but I also need to be compensated for the time and energy I’m expending now. I have to keep the lights on and myself fed while I’m writing this piece for you, after all. I’m sure you understand that.

We’re just starting out so we can’t really afford to pay writers right now.

Rebuttal: I understand it’s tough launching this kind of market, but I think you’ll agree it’s equally important establishing your reputation as a professional market that fairly compensates its writers from day one. Not to mention there’s no better investment than quality in a new venture like this, and quality is something you have to pay for. That’s true in any field or industry.

Look, WE aren’t even getting paid right now.

Rebuttal: I hear you, and I understand it’s worth all the uncompensated time and effort you’re putting into the site/zine now as the owner/editor, but you also have to understand I don’t have any equity in your venture. So unless you’re offering to mitigate my risk in the same way by offering me some form of equity I have to assume whatever money I get now will be the only money I ever see.

You know, when I started out I was an unpaid newsroom intern working 29 hours a day with no car and five kids to feed and I was GRATEFUL for the opportunity.

Rebuttal: Wow, I’m so sorry to hear you were exploited like that. That’s really awful. It was patently wrong of them to take advantage of you at that early stage of your career in the way they obviously did. I’m sure you don’t want to perpetuate that kind of exploitation in our field, right? Isn’t it up to all of us to create better, fairer markets for the next generation of writers and editors?

Listen, my dog just died and I’ve been diagnosed with a rare disease and I just wrecked my car and they’re repossessing my house and I stubbed my big toe this morning, and I’m just trying to keep this thing afloat. Can you do me a solid on this one?

Rebuttal: I’m genuinely sorry to hear that and I really hope the situation improves for you, but I’m not in a position that allows me to risk my family’s/my own solvency by working for free/a reduced rate. What I can offer you is my best work at a fair rate, and I truly believe if you invest in quality your market will grow and that growth will hopefully help solve your issues.

There are plenty of other writers who’d kill to accept the terms we’re offering, just to work for us.

Rebuttal: I’m sure there are, unfortunately you get what you pay for, and in that case it will undoubtedly be inexperience and a lack of professionalism and quality that shows through in the work. Isn’t it smarter to invest in professional writers with more ability and experience whose work can enhance your market?

Listen, this is just the way the market is. You’re not going to find a place that offers better terms than us.

Rebuttal: I have to respectfully question your market research here. I happen to know [other comparable markets you’ve researched] pay [this/these rates].

Why don’t you go write for those other markets if they pay so much?

Rebuttal: I’m exploring all of my options. I really think, respectfully, the question is why wouldn’t you want to mirror the professional conduct of comparable markets that are obviously successful doing what you want to do? Isn’t it to your benefit to do so?

Listen, you won’t go broke doing this ONE for free, right?

Rebuttal: No, but I absolutely will go broke establishing a pattern of working for free or being under-compensated, and it’s simply not a precedent I’m willing to set, not for any market, not even one time.

[Such-and-Such Famous/Well Known Writer] worked for us under these terms.

Rebuttal: I didn’t know that, but if it was at the beginning of their career I’d be very interested to know how they feel now about having behaved so unprofessionally and against their own interests. If it was recently then I can certainly understand why they don’t feel they need the money at this stage in their career. Unfortunately this is still how I make my living and I don’t have the same luxury they do. I need to be fairly compensated for my work.

It’s just a bad time for freelance writers. No one’s making any money.

Rebuttal: I’d argue it’s far less ‘the times’ and far more the market’s attitude towards writers and their acceptance of it. I happen to know [these writers I know/follow/researched/talked to] do very well writing for comparable markets. If one of us can make money then all of us can, especially with the sheer volume of markets out there now, all in need of new content 24/7.

You’re just not worth that much.

Rebuttal: We wouldn’t be having this conversation if you didn’t think my work and I have value. This is the price tag I place on that value, and I believe it’s both fair and reasonable for the quality of writing I produce and the time I invest in producing it.

You’re not a well known writer. Your name doesn’t have any value.

Rebuttal: I’m not asking for a star’s wage. I’m simply asking for what’s fair and reasonable for both the market and the content I’m providing. I’m not charging you for my name. I’m charging you for my work and my time. And your market depends on a steady stream of content to make it valuable to advertisers and consumers, and in that way all content has value to you.

You’re being greedy.

Rebuttal: I don’t think that’s a fair categorization. If I were a plumber applying for a job at a plumbing company no one would accuse me of being ‘greedy’ for requesting a fair wage in exchange for my skill set.

Are you only in this for the money? Don’t you care about your art?

Rebuttal: I care very much about my art, but this conversation isn’t about art, it’s about money. I assume you either draw a salary from this market or intend to do so down the line. It’s unfair to apply a higher standard to me when we’re both attempting to be professionals making money from our craft

Demanding money like this is going to give you a bad reputation and no one will want to hire you.

Rebuttal: I’m more than willing to stand by a reputation of expecting fair compensation for my work.

Well, whatever argument you make, I can’t pay you that much money.

Rebuttal: Then I’m afraid I can’t work for you at this time. I hope we can do business down the line when your market is stronger and generating real revenue. Good luck with it!