Is paying for words important?

I was wandering through Posman Books the other day, coveting all the pretty new cookbooks that have little to do with actual cooking, when I happened upon these signs:

and

The posters were striking because they were so desperate and earnest and because the person who wrote them clearly cares so much about writing, about books, and about trying to make sure that everyone involved in the process of making and selling books is able to earn an honest living.

As a writer and a reader, I spend plenty of time thinking about the value of words. I don’t mean that in any philosophical, abstract sense (though I spend plenty of time thinking about words in that way, too), but in a concrete, dollars and cents kind of way. Even when I haven’t had what you might call “disposable” income, I’ve always made buying other people’s words, whether in magazine or book form, a priority. I suppose that’s because, besides just loving words and feeling my best when I’m surrounded by books, I want to make sure that other writers are able to make a living, too.

It’s impossible to buy every book we want, of course, but how about you: How do you decide which creations to buy? And to what extent does supporting the author enter into your decision to buy versus borrow? Is paying for words important to you?

Gig Lead: Atlanta-area Real Estate Blogger

Just got a gig lead from a friend in the real estate market who’s looking for a blogger to write 20-30 posts per month about a realtor’s “property of the day.” That’s about all I know, but if you’re qualified and interested, drop me a line to say why at collazoprojects[at]gmail[dot]com and I’ll forward your information to the powers that be.

9 Things I’ve Learned (So Far) from the Process of Getting a Book Published

I thought I knew a lot about writing, but the past month has been an exceptional crash course in book publishing and I’ve enjoyed every minute.

Here are a few things I’ve learned about the process that I hope you’ll find useful:

1. Your agent is everything. Honor that.
The role of the agent was quite mysterious to me… until I had one. An agent has many roles, and you can learn a great deal from him or her. Though I didn’t choose my agent because of the particular circumstances of this project, I feel incredibly fortunate to be working with him, and in this short month of collaborating, I’ve learned about contracts, royalties, foreign rights, the elements of a book author’s career trajectory (or what a book author should be thinking about after his/her first project– more on that below), and more. Most of what an agent does is behind the scenes and may not even be visible to you, but it’s important to be aware how much of an advocate he/she is and how much work he/she is doing on your behalf. A great agent is worth every cent of his/her commission.

2. You should always read your contracts.
Contracts are a contentious area for many writers: we don’t like to read them, we don’t understand them. we’re not sure what’s open to negotiation and what’s non-negotiable. When you’re having a book published, it’s really important to read your contracts, because they’re setting the terms of your financial and professional life for years to come. Again, your agent is invaluable in demystifying terms of contracts. If you have questions: ask.

3. Work with everyone as if his or her role is central– because it is.
Early on, I made a list of the names of folks involved in bringing our book to shelves at each publishing house where Lisa and I have direct interaction. There are publishers, editors, copyeditors, proofers, and publicity folks… and all of them play an important role in moving your book forward and championing it. I’ve been grateful for the absolute professionalism and politeness of everyone in the process, and on this particular book project, how quickly and intensely everyone has moved. I have tried to reciprocate with absolute gratitude for the hard work that each person has invested in our book.

4. Be supremely organized.
It’s really easy to lose track–and quickly–of the life of your book, particularly when foreign rights are involved, but the more organized you can be early on, the more easily you’ll be able to manage the promotion of your book, as well as the nitty-gritty pragmatics of authorship, including payment of advances, management of taxes, and royalties.

5. Prepare to be astonished.
The process of this book wasn’t/isn’t exactly normative: its trajectory has been incredibly fast, so I don’t expect that future books will involve waking up to near daily emails about acquisitions. That being said, I think there’s a lot to be amazed about during any publishing process. For one thing, the countries you don’t expect to be players at all are often your ace in the hole when it comes to foreign rights. Who would have thought, for example, that Korea would be one of the best paying foreign rights holders for the Pope book? Not me.

6. Your work isn’t over when you finish writing.
If you really want your book to thrive, you’ve got to be active in its promotion. You may work closely with the publicity and/or marketing director(s) of your publishing house(s), and the work that they invite you to collaborate on may be as involved as writing the book was. If you’re open to this, you’ll learn a great deal.

7. The success of one work sets you up for the next.
This seems obvious enough, but it has a lot of pragmatic elements that are best left for discussion with your agent. As my agent explained in simple terms: You can’t take on a middling second project if your first book was a success. Doing so makes it much harder for an agent to negotiate good terms for you on future projects. In other words: Decisions about what projects you’re going to take on become more important.

8. Your taxes become a lot more complicated.
If you think freelance taxes are complicated enough, then you may be best off hiring an accountant who specializes in working with writers (yes, they do exist). For authors whose books are being published by foreign houses, you’ll suddenly be entering the world of foreign certifications. I can’t really explain to you what that means… other than a whole new pile of paperwork.

9. You don’t need to know everything that’s happening on your behalf.
This is especially true if your book is being picked up by multiple foreign publishers. You’ll want copies of your contracts, of course, but you don’t necessarily need to know how many publishers bid for your book, what the offers were, or even why your agent made the decision he/she did about the winning bidder. When you have a great agent, you can simply trust that he/she is making the decisions that make the most sense for your book, for your long-term career prospects, and for your finances.

Business Advice for Creatives from Bourdain & Zimmern

Unlike many travel writer friends, I’ve never been a Bourdain-groupie, but I really loved this conversation between Bourdain and fellow chef/writer Andrew Zimmern, which is in this month’s Delta SKY Magazine.

Saying yes and saying no to projects, doing things that people don’t expect of you/your career trajectory… these are all topics that resonate with me right now.

I definitely recommend reading the entire piece (especially if you don’t know the backstory of how he got Kitchen Confidential published). Here are a couple of the exchanges I enjoyed most:

ZIMMERN: … So, what determines for you yes or no these days?

BOURDAIN: I am constantly on the lookout for interesting people to collaborate with…. I like making things. I like doing things alone and I like doing them with a team—it’s a quality of life issue for me. Will it be fun to do? Do I have to talk on the phone with a***holes? It’s very important. You know, can we make something interesting here? Do I get to hang out with people I respect and admire? That is a privilege; it’s not work.

ZIMMERN: One of the things that you’re describing has been an awful lot of freedom, and I think that that kind of wind in your hair, not wearing a helmet, flying against convention, is what not only attracts people to you but it also creates this sort of fetishization of you as well. The other day I saw on Eater that someone was saying that they thought you were the next Julia Child.

BOURDAIN: It’s flattering but wrong‑headed. I mean, Julia Child changed the f***ing world. I am not a particle of dust compared to her. I am flattered to even be mentioned in postironic jest in the same paragraph. But to be actually compared? No. Absolutely not. She was such an important figure, a pioneer out there … I’ve tried very hard to do as creative and subversive television as possible for a long time. Anytime anyone thinks they’ve identified the brand, f*** up that whole notion or subvert it…. I don’t want people to feel comfortable in their assumptions of what I’m going to do next…. That was a lesson I learned in the bone, meaning the instinct to think about what do they want—What do they expect? What do my biggest fans want me to do next? How will they receive it? Who’s watching? Who’s reading?—this is a lethal, lethal instinct. I have to not think that. We all want to be loved, but I’m not going to even ask what people want, because that will ….

ZIMMERN: Kill your process.

BOURDAIN: I just can’t. That’s the road to madness. . . . Like any other job, you show up, you do the best you can, you do the things that keep you safe and happy. And happy is important, because we both know very well what happens when life is either too easy or too unpleasant. I work very hard to not hate myself, and worrying about what people want or expect—I would hate myself. I would say that a very large proportion of my fans would much prefer for me to be chain smoking and drinking heavily all the time. I may well do that again, who knows? But I’m not going to do it for them. You know, there’s no earring. There ain’t no thumb ring. The leather jacket is long, long ago gone. I’m a daddy. I’m aware of my place in this f***ing world.

ZIMMERN: With all the stuff that you have going on, is this a point in your life over the next six months where you’re waiting to see what happens next?

BOURDAIN: No, no, no. I say no to 95 percent of what I’m asked to do. I am very much in the “no” phase of my life. I mean, it’s almost an automatic no. I’m being very, very, very careful about what I’m saying yes to, and I’m doing only those things that sound like fun.

I don’t know what to make of this month’s Condé Nast Traveler

Text & Photo:
Julie Schwietert Collazo
**

The April 2013 issue of Condé Nast Traveler.

I don’t know what to make of this month’s Condé Nast Traveler, which is billed as a special issue covering “The Greatest Journey in the World!,” a 12-country, 24-city, 40-hotel, 135-meal tour of Asia.

It’s fascinating, especially from the perspective of a writer; nearly the entire issue was written by one writer, Hanya Yanagihara. (Hard to know whether the assignment was enviable or punishing; I suspect both). This almost never happens; in fact, I can’t think of a single other example of an issue of any magazine being written by one writer.

On the other hand, the issue is totally puzzling. Despite the “Truth in Travel” tagline touted by this magazine, is the issue really just one big ad for GeoEx, the tour operator who packaged and (presumably) sold the trip to Traveler? In my opinion, it seems so, and not just because there’s a generously sized sidebar where readers are given a detailed explanation about how they can book this very trip–or a shorter variation–through GeoEx. The core feature article is written in such a way that it reads like a detailed trip itinerary, the kind you might read in, say, a tour operator’s marketing brochure: “Your driver will meet you today at 10 AM….” An epic trip with almost no real narrative in a magazine that often excels in this form of travel writing (as an example, see this incredible article about Oman, from the January 2013 issue of Condé Nast Traveler), at a length that is mind-boggling… well, I just don’t know what else to say about it.

I’m reading this issue from the perspective of an industry insider, as someone who understands how magazines get put together, as well as what kinds of considerations influence how they get put together– “truth in travel” aside. The average reader won’t be aware of these concerns, but I do wonder whether this kind of approach is interesting and useful to the reader, and I wonder whether the process of putting together this particular issue is quite as transparent as it appears.

Have you read this issue? If so, what are your thoughts?

Backstory of Pope Francis in His Own Words

If you follow along here, you’ll know that the earliest weeks of 2013 were not as successful or as filled with hope and promise as I had planned. And if you’re a freelance writer yourself, I’m willing to bet you were in similar straits; writer friends and I have been privately lamenting what has felt like an unusually sluggish season, the holiday slow-down seeming to slump right into the new year.

While it appeared that I was knocking every ball out of the park, that wasn’t what life felt like if you were seated at my desk, in front of my computer. Pieces I’d filed months before were getting published, yes, and I was proud of those publications. But I’d been paid for them or was still awaiting payment, and pitches and queries that were circulating through editors’ inboxes weren’t generating responses. As you know, I was getting worried.

Mentally, I was viewing where I was at as the long, deep trough of a sine curve, a phase that’s familiar to every writer. I knew it would swing up again, but it was really hard to wait out the trough. A friend described the feeling more vividly (and, really, more accurately) as the crash after a high. “The highs are so, so good,” she wrote. The lows? Yeah, not so much.

That same friend (who, by the way, is a successful writer) confessed that she’d resorted to scanning Craigslist ads, and I confessed that after years of not needing Craigslist, I’d been doing the same. I’d even applied for two “real” writer/editor jobs—the kind that involve going to offices—and I’d interviewed for one of them. Though I dreaded the thought of going back to the 9-to-5 and almost everything that accompanied it, I was also being realistic: when you’re a parent, you can’t budget your family’s needs on the hope that an editor is going to respond to your query this week (much less that you’ll get paid within 90 days). I needed something solid.

And then, the phone rang.

It was early-ish in the morning and I didn’t recognize the phone number, so I didn’t answer. When I listened to the voice mail, I heard my friend Lisa say, “Call me back ASAP. I’ve got a job for you! It’s important!”

And that’s how, suddenly, the upswing of the sine curve began.

Lisa, one of the most interesting people I know, has written about almost everything: food, wine, and travel (which is how we met), but also American military service dogs, Barack and Michelle Obama, Dan Brown, Stephen King, and everything along the spectrum that you could possibly imagine (and plenty you couldn’t). She’s got I don’t know how many book credits to her name. She carries a chicken-shaped purse named Peckerhead and she drives (or drove) a hearse and she’s been on Oprah, uh huh.

She asked some friends recently what her “brand” is (because she avoids the kinds of silly marketing language conversations that so many writers get trapped in). My response: quirky intelligence or intelligent quirk. She thought that was about right.

Lisa has been a lifesaver for me in more ways than she knows. She has made several suggestions and introductions that have resulted in key assignments and gigs. And this time, she was calling to ask me if I wanted to work with her on a book.

A book, people!

I’ve got a few book contribution credits to my name (The Voluntary Traveler, No Foreign Lands, and Fodor’s Puerto Rico and Fodor’s Caribbean), but this would be the first book where my name would appear on the cover. It would also be the first one involving signing with an agent, receiving advances and royalties, and consenting to media interviews.

Was I interested?

Lisa explained that her agent had proposed the idea of putting together a compilation of quotes based on the writings of the newly installed Pope. Several of Lisa’s published works have followed this format (including books about Barack and Michelle Obama, as well as Bill Gates), so we’d have her experience and a general template to guide us. The only caveat was that we’d have to turn this book around fast… as in one week fast.

Now, putting together a book of quotes is probably simpler than writing your own manuscript from scratch, but it’s not as simple as you might think. My mission, should I choose to accept it, would be to review everything that Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, had written in Spanish, stretching at least as far back as 1999. I’d been brought on board because I’m fluent in Spanish, was raised Catholic and so have knowledge of Catholic traditions and beliefs, and because I’m deeply familiar with Latin America history and cultures. I’d select quotes I felt were most representative of his thoughts and beliefs, as well as most compelling for readers, would start organizing them into categories, and work with Francisco to translate those into English. A rich archive of Bergoglio’s homilies, letters, and speeches were available in Spanish, as were several books (many of which are now being translated into English for the first time). I’d read them all.

Lisa, meanwhile, would be reviewing English-language interviews and primary sources, and would be tracking new developments as the Pope offered his first Masses and gave new interviews. She’d also be writing the book’s introduction and a timeline of the Pope’s life.

Had you asked me if I EVER thought I’d write about the Pope, my answer would have been “Definitely not.” Though I love many rituals and traditions of the Catholic Church, I am no longer a practicing Catholic, and that is largely because I feel that the Church has been unable to resolve many of its beautiful traditions with some of its strictures that are decidedly outdated and exclusionary. The thought of working on a book that would involve massive amounts of research and as-objective-as-possible analysis of the words and beliefs of the top figurehead of the Church would have been inconceivable… until this opportunity arose.

And while I expected, correctly, that it would be an incredible professional opportunity, it has, surprisingly, been a profound personal opportunity, too. Reading Bergoglio’s work—going back to every single bit of primary source material that was available—meant not relying upon the not-so-objective filters of the media. Though the pace of this project was fast and intense, it was comparatively slower than that of international journalists who had to report Bergoglio’s ascendance knowing little, if nothing, about him. And that comparatively slower pace meant that I had to come to my own conclusions about a Pope that people were already pigeon-holing based on secondary and tertiary accounts about him, many of which were translated (and mis-translated, or translated poorly). It also meant that I got to read in full context what others were reading taken completely out of its original context, and shaped to fit a particular set of assumptions or motives.

What I read left me hopeful about the direction of the Catholic Church under Francis’ leadership. Throughout his career, he has been remarkably consistent in his thoughts and actions, but not dogmatic. Above all, he seems to value conversation, inclusiveness, radical honesty, thoughtful action, and love. His views on homosexuality, women, and many of the flash-point issues that tend to divide Catholics are actually far more progressive than you might believe, and I’m proud that I was able to find, translate, and share his thoughts on these topics so that misperceptions might be corrected.

So where are we now?

Manuscripts have been fine-tooth-combed by heroic teams of editors, copyeditors, and proofreaders, who are some of the most courteous and professional folks I’ve ever worked with. The book is now in proof stages, headed to printers. The UK edition, published by HarperCollins UK, will be a hardcover, projected to be on shelves around May 9. The US edition, published by New World Library, will be a softcover, projected to be on shelves around the same time. Both are available for pre-order right now on Amazon… though I urge you to support your local bookstore and purchase the book there if you plan to buy it. So far, foreign rights have been secured in Brazil, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, so editions by a variety of international publishers will follow.

Believe it or not, there are Pope books that are hitting shelves before this one and the process of “crashing” a book has been a fascinating one that has taught me a lot. Practically speaking, there has been a lot about the process that is likely to be of interest/use to many readers: How does a book come to be? Who’s involved? What do agents do? What do contracts entail? How do advances and royalties work, anyway? How do you choose which press publishes your book? What are foreign rights and how do they work? What’s the work flow like once the manuscript has been submitted? As the process continues to unfold, I’ll share the answers to some of those questions and others you might have here. Feel free to ask your own question in the comments section below.

Tax Time

I’ve been drowning in paperwork this afternoon. (Photo: Julie Schwietert Collazo)

Be assured that I’ve been keeping a running list of subjects I want to write about here, but things suddenly went from un-busy to insanely busy and I’ll soon have some capital-B Big News to share and all the good, informative, and hopefully useful back stories to go along with it.

In the meantime, I’m dealing with all the mundane paperwork of the season that you’re dealing with: taxes. Now that my final 1099 has come in (the stack was thick this year), I’m pulling together all my documents and making sticky-note reminders about deductions for which we U.S.-based freelancers are eligible. (Seriously, click on that link. It will probably save you some money.)

I am also dealing with some new forms for the first time, a process which has made my head spin this afternoon. More on that–and the Big News– soon.

Peace and Panic

At the end of January, I finished up a couple of big contract gigs that had been paying the bills and–rare enough for writers–allowing me to cushion my savings account a bit.

The timing was perfect.

For one thing, I could go to Cuba without worrying about being offline or falling behind on work. For another, I could finally turn my attention to that ever-growing section of my daily to-do list labeled “PITCHES.” And I could enjoy some activities that should be part of my daily routine but which were often relegated to the status of “If I have time” luxuries: reading that stack of books next to the bed and on both sides of my desk; cooking and baking; going for walks.

We’re nearing the end of February now, and I have to say, this has been the most peaceful month I can remember having in a looong time. I haven’t woken up a single day with the frantic, pressured sense of needing to meet a looming deadline. I’ve been writing entirely for interest and joy rather than a set of formulaic project specs. I’ve written a couple essays (one of which is being published in Hub City Writers Project’s 2013 holiday anthology, I found out yesterday), have been mulling a book proposal, and have cleared a good number of those pitches off my plate. My days are more closely approximating my “Ideal Day” (along with publication goals and financial goals, I also write work-life balance goals each year) than they ever have.

And yet….

As the end of the month approaches, mild worry is beginning to set in. A regular, well-paying freelance gig I enjoyed went belly-up and most of the articles I’ve had sitting in editors’ publication queues have not only been published, they’ve been paid, too. The last big check for the contract gig has been deposited and there’s not a new big project on the horizon to take its place.

When do I push the panic button?

Not yet, not yet.

I’m not taking a passive approach to reupping the bank account, but none of my efforts has panned out yet. And that may actually be a good thing. I’m working hard on crafting the best pitches I can. I’m doing the writing I want to do, the writing that lights me up and feels important, not like an SEO widget maker.

Maybe, just maybe, the anxiety of not having the next big project, the one that feels safe and financially reassuring, is what keeps that fire lit. It makes the work of tending that fire possible.

How do you deal with moments of financial worry? How do you create balance between the work that makes you alive and that you take to pay the bills? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

The Myths of Opting In to (Nearly) Everything

Text: Julie Schwietert Collazo

**
You may know that I was offline last week, not by choice, exactly, but by circumstance, as I was in Cuba. Land of slow, expensive, and typically inconvenient Internet, I decided I’d simply not make efforts to get online, check email, and keep up all the things we’re told we have to do to “maintain our brand.”

It was fantastic, really, until I logged into gmail and saw 363 messages in my inbox, 360 of which were totally unimportant. I felt both overwhelmed and saddened by this, and I vowed that when I returned home I was going to make some changes that would make my online life more manageable and sane.

I’ve been on an unsubscribe spree and let me tell you: It feels good.

When I got home, I made good on my promise. I started unsubscribing from mailing lists and digests that either provided little or no value or which I wasn’t sure how I got subscribed to in the first place. I started “unliking” businesses on Facebook that I actually didn’t really like or whose social media messaging I found terribly annoying (“‘Like’ this post if you want to be on the beach with this cocktail!’”).

I was just starting to feel good about getting back to the basics of email and social media–you know, connecting with people I know and like and value. And then, I got together with a colleague to discuss something else entirely and our conversation eventually came around to all of the organizations and groups and lists we opt into because we think we “have” to.

“So there’s this new blogging collective,” he said, “and I joined–did you?–even though I don’t really know what the value is.” I knew about the collective. I’d even read the website and its “sell” pretty thoroughly. I’d considered joining, too. Ultimately, though, I had a hard time justifying the $75 membership fee. $75 may not be a lot, but when you multiply that by the number of groups you think you should belong to, your expenses add up quickly (though you can, if you’re a US freelancer, deduct professional membership and conference fees on your taxes).

E. went on to talk about a number of other groups and services he’d heard about lately, and I started to feel like I’d felt when I opened my gmail after five days in Cuba: Was any of this actually important?

Somehow, many of us have bought the myth that we have to opt in to nearly everything: professional societies (even when they haven’t proven their worth, or, in some cases, even established what benefits they’re actually conferring upon members); social media platforms and “influence” ranking programs (“Maybe I should sign up for Klout, just in case it’s important!”); newsletters (“Maybe one press release out of the hundreds I receive a month will actually be useful.”); and events (“If I don’t go to TravelMassive/TBEX/TBU/fill-in-the-blank, no one will know who I am and I won’t be considered for opportunities.”). We end up spending massive amounts of time on the upkeep of these things (time we don’t even realize we’re losing until we go off-grid, like I did), and missing out on the other things in our lives that we really cherish (in my case: family, reading, other hobbies, and oh yeah, actually writing).

While I’m not arguing that these things are unimportant or that they’re not useful, I am questioning whether we’re doing/joining these things because we’re truly convinced they’ll be beneficial or because we think that we’ll somehow be left behind if we don’t opt in. I wonder if we think, before we opt in, about whether the “sell” of this “must-do” thing actually aligns with our personal and professional values and goals.

I’m also suggesting that many of these opt-in groups, activities, and lists may actually be distracting or, in some cases, a waste of precious time and resources. I value networking and connecting with other writers, but I’ve found that the most valuable, lasting, and mutually beneficial connections I’ve made have come out of one-on-one encounters where I’ve reached out to someone I respect or they’ve reached out to me, not at the events where sharing is occurring over well drinks or where bloggers are speed dating to get a tourism board’s attention.

I’d love to know how you handle the opt-in choices in your own life and career. Do you feel pressured to join groups or sign up for events or lists because you think it’s what you should do? How do you make your decisions about what to join? Do you feel overwhelmed by all the noise about what’s supposedly important? Share your experiences and advice in the comments.

Roger Ebert on Interviewing

I’ve been reading Ebert’s 2011 memoir, Life Itself, and among the many experiences and observations that have resonated with me was this, his methodology for conducting interviews, which is pretty aligned with my own approach:

My secret as an interviewer was that I was actually impressed by the people I interviewed…. I tend not to confront or challenge, and my best technique has been to listen. [W]hen you allow people to keep on talking, they are likely to say anything….