Mike Resnick

NOTE: this article first appeared in Speculations #35 — May, 2000

I’m writing this from Florida, where I’m between conventions (DeepSouthCon and Oasis) before going back home to Cincinnati. Because we didn’t feel like driving from Jekyll Island, Georgia (DeepSouthCon) to Palm Beach (where we’re staying with a friend before going to Orlando for Oasis) — Florida is a long state — we chose to fly from Jacksonville to Palm Beach. (Yes, this is getting somewhere; bear with me.)

We checked our luggage at the Jacksonville airport and began making our way to the gate — and happened to pass the airport’s only bookstore. And sitting in front of it was a pleasant young man who had set up a table and was selling copies of a book he had written on the mysteries of the pyramids.

He tried to sell me a copy. I politely declined, we got to talking, and it came out that I was a professional writer. Bad plan for anyone with a plane to catch. He kept me there for 20 minutes, trying to find out how you got national distribution, how anyone could afford a full-page ad in the New York Times Book Review section or maybe Publisher’s Weekly, and when the money started flowing in rather than out.

Yes, he was self-published. He was out thousands and thousands of dollars on his printing bill. He had answered one of those “We’ll publish your manuscript” ads you find in the backs of magazines, and this particular vanity press convinced him that all writers start out like this.

So, since we haven’t discussed vanity presses here for a few issues, perhaps it’s time to reiterate the ground rules:
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NOTE: this article first appeared in Speculations #33/34 — March, 2000

There’s a question about GalaxyOnline.com coming up a little later, but I want to address myself to this remarkable web page right now.

Ben Bova, who has more Hugos than any editor except Gardner Dozois, is the publisher of GalaxyOnline. The columnists are a virtual who’s who of Science Fiction: Gregory Benford, Anne McCaffrey, David Brin, David Gerrold, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Robert Silverberg, Jack Dann, Harlan Ellison, Orson Scott Card, Joe Haldeman, even me.

Each of us has been invited to write about anything we choose, so long as it relates to science fiction and the future. And I mean anything. Among my first few columns were pieces on cancer, Broadway musicals, African hunting, pulp heroes, pets, and lady editors. Others have been just as catholic in their choice of subjects.

I think that, taken as a whole, these columns represent more potential story material and more kinetic knowledge of how science fiction works than any comparable body of work, and I urge each of you to visit GalaxyOnline.com and see for yourself.

2008 note: GalaxyOnline.com died within a year. It was a loss leader to draw fans to the web page, which would then push the parent company’s (unproduced) movies and (unproduced) TV shows. It was a wonderful thing while it lasted, and it paved the way for upscale webzines like Jim Baen’s Universe and Subterranean.

Okay, on to this issue’s questions:
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NOTE: this article first appeared in Speculations #31-32 — January, 2000

The last two issues dealt in some detail with a couple of contract clauses which, when overlooked or misunderstood, can cost you an arm, a leg, and a considerable part of your career.

I see no reason to go into every way a publisher can screw you in such detail — there are books, articles, and long lectures, including a fine set of articles by science fiction’s own Raymond E. Feist — that do the job more than adequately.

But it probably wouldn’t hurt to point out the danger areas, other than option clauses and allowing your publisher to handle foreign rights, where you should be alert.

The first involves subsidiary rights. Sub rights, to use the lingo of the beginner.

Subsidiary rights are just that: all rights other than first publication rights. Now, the operative question is: which should you retain, and which should you part with?
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