As any devoted Heinlein fan knows, TANSTAAFL stands for There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. It’s one of those obvious truths about the world, like Murphy’s Law, that ought to go without saying, yet people seem to need to be reminded of it over and over. Something in the human psyche really wants a free lunch, so we keep jumping on “deals” that a moment’s rational thought would say look too good to be true.
This is a useful thing to remember about characters (though I, at least, want characters in books to be at least a little smarter and more sensible than I am), but today I’m talking about writers themselves and the things people believe about writing and the writing business that get them in trouble.
Probably the first one is that writing is easy to do, and/or a quick path to fame and riches. It has always puzzled me how everyone seems to know and accept the artist-starving-in-a-garret trope, while simultaneously (it seems) believing that all writers make millions of dollars and sit home all day eating chocolate fudge and maybe occasionally flying out to New York or Los Angeles to consult with their publisher or agent about their latest movie deal. I wish.
Then there’s the one beloved of all newly-self-employed people of whatever profession: “But it’s tax deductible!” Repeat after me: “Tax deductible” does not mean “free.” Rule of thumb for Americans: If you wouldn’t buy it on sale at 15-20% off, you shouldn’t buy it on the grounds that it’s tax deductible. (People in countries other than the U.S. will have to come up with their own basic “sale rate” based on taxes, but there always is one.) Because when all is said and done, only the most careful and meticulous and obsessive of record-keepers are going to end up with tax savings of more than 15-20% of the cost of a tax deductible item. And let’s face it, 99.99% of writers are not careful or meticulous or obsessive, at least, not about their tax records.
Next up on the too-good-to-be-true list are all the various “deals” offered to writers who are as yet unpublished, or still new to the business. These range from out-and-out scams, like the guy who was selling “professionl critique of your manuscript” for $300.00 for twenty pages and sending back three pages of generic how-to-write advice photocopied out of a how-to-write book, to things that are simply taking advantage of a newbie’s ignorance of the way the field works.
Among true examples of the latter: 1) a writer who was offered a salaried “job” at twice his advance money to turn his first novel into a series…of course without anyone mentioning that this would make the series a work-for-hire that the publisher owned lock, stock, and barrel, that he’d never see a dime of royalty money on his books, and that if the publisher disliked what he wanted to do with his characters or the direction of the series, the publisher could hand it over to someone else to write; 2) a new writer offered a “non-negotiable” contract with a medium-to-small press that required…well, pick your nasty requirement: all rights in perpetuity, sequels to be written under the exact same contract, the writer to put up half the money for the cost of printing the book, that the writer be forbidden to sell any other writing until the contract book was published – the list goes on, as this has happened multiple times to multiple authors I know, 3) services that offer “to copyright your work for you” for a hefty fee (as of this writing, basic online registration of copyright is, according to the U.S. Copyright Office web page, $35).
It’s easy enough to avoid all this stuff, if one can look away from the shiny “great deal” and turn one’s brain on long enough to remember TANSTAAFL, and that if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. To avoid scams, there are web sites that can help, like Preditors and Editors that list agents and publishers and tell you which are legitimate, which are not, and which are borderline at best. The US government has a whole series of web pages on copyright and how it works, including a copyright FAQ page that covers the basics of what you do and don’t
Mostly, though, it’s a matter of common sense. Which, as always, isn’t so terribly common, I am afraid.
With my first business I spent far too much money on tax-deductible stuff, to the point that I had more tax deductions than income. This time around with my writing, my account keeps telling me I don’t spend enough and I tell him that’s a good thing. 😉
Writer beware has some good articles on publishing scams as well.
When I was in high school, I took a semester off to attend a program called the Mountain School in (very) rural Vermont. It was by far the highlight of those four years, which I won’t detail here, but I will relate one story. The dining hall of the campus was octagonal, with round tables set around a central meeting area. Set into four of the walls were stained glass windows, three of which depicted things you might expect in stained glass: planets and stars in one, fruits and vegetables in another. The fourth, however, framed nine letters shaped from pink glass. Tickled, I pointed them out to one of the teachers at lunchtime. She hadn’t ever known what those letters stood for; in fact, no one really had. I found it very hard to explain the importance of the phrase to the uninitiated, even though we were literally working for our lunches as we collected eggs, cut firewood, and tapped maple trees. No one seemed to think it was as cool as I did.
Denise – I should have mentioned Writer Beware, too! Thank you for bringing them up.
Allegra – That is deeply wonderful.