Contains affiliate links. Not the earliest start ever, but here we go. Monday. A fresh start. A new challenge to suck it up and be productive.
Flipped through the Agents section of the 2015 Writer’s Market
Which is a bit ridiculous, since I’m quite familiar with the corporate world and the hostile language used to weed out the pretenders in that arena. Seemed that attending writers’ conferences to meet agents was a requirement for the better agents. Blech. I think that would be a great way for me to waste money and feel inadequate about my lack of assertiveness. Will likely go the self publishing route before taking that step, but who knows?
Part 2
Doing some cleanup on the computer; copy content to Google Drive using Google docs, clean up plot and character profiles, maybe settle on some names?
Research: word counts. I think my target is 65-95K, lower is better for YA, but sf/fantasy trends on the higher range.
Since my plot alone is 4K+ right now (at about 5 hours of work), it might be reasonable to assume that 1hr = 1,000 words of raw content, so 65-95 hours to write the thing?
Not sure how to average in the proofreading, rewriting, editing. .5x? 3x? 5x? At 5x, that looks like about 400 to 575 hours until I’m ready to hit the query stage. Assuming an average of 3 hours per weekday (15hrsx week) that’s 38 weeks or roughly 10 months.
In other words, a year wouldn’t be unlikely. Assuming it takes another year of concentrated effort to get through the publishing process, and a third year to get another story far enough along for an advance, initial contract should be minimum $150K and closer to $300K? Advances range from millions (yes please!) down to the $3K range (or negative sums for the self publishing route!)
If the first time author’s book is seen as a potential bestseller, $500K seems to be the low end of the target. However, the pressure to perform is high; if the book doesn’t make up and exceed targets, you’re going to be stuck self-publishing or getting out of the game…
Monday
Start Time: 11:00 am & 2:00 pm
Location: Abbotsford Public Library Garden & couch/living room
Soundtrack: Epic Film Scores