Thursday, October 06, 2005

Negotiating a Book Contract

Nope, not poetry. A former colleague from my first job out of grad school teaching a year at the U Missouri and I decided to work on something that had a chance of earning some money. So....never having read romance novels before, we read a bunch and started writing. We had the writing skills. I needed a partner since I still have cognitive difficulties and this made it a whole lot easier , tho still slow. Not the great american novel, but not trite cliches and bodice ripping either. Our characters romance with style:-)

A publisher definitely wants the book. Now we're down to negotiating the terms of the contract ,which could take a few more conference calls and drafts of it before we're done.

Anyway, I wanted to share this.

Pris

7 comments:

Ivy said...

Congratulations! You must be so excited!

Pris said...

Thanks, you guys. Yes, if you can get a foot in the front door, there's a big market for this genre. I can only average about a page a day, barring other problems, then we share off pages and honings. While it's slow, it adds up over time. We have a series in the same small Southern town setting in mind and have actually finished two over this last year and a half and have started the third. Cross your fingers. I do need the moolah and it's actually way more fun doing this than I ever thought it would be.

Pris said...

Thanks, Michael!

Lyle Daggett said...

Likewise, congratulations.

Makes me think of a story about the poet Tom McGrath (one of my huge favorite poets). At some point back in the '40's or '50's, I forget exactly when, McGrath was kicking around trying to figure out how to make a little money to live on. A man he knew, a labor union activist, gestured at a newsstand across the street and said, "You know what you should do -- you should write stuff for some of those pulp magazines over there."

So McGrath shrugged his shoulders, bought a few of the pulp mags and read through them, sat down and typed out half a dozen stories and sent them off to one of the magazines.

As McGrath tells it, he heard back from the magazine a few weeks later -- in the envelope that came back was a check for $150.00. (That was really good money back then. Not that it's pocket change now.) McGrath sat there holding the check and thought, "My God, somebody's given me a license to steal!"

I guess he got caught up in other things before long, and I'm not sure if he wrote any more pulp stories or not. The maddening thing, for me, is that he wrote the pulp stories under at least one pseudonym, and I don't know what names they're published under.

Too bad the pulps aren't publishing much any more. I might have tried writing for them myself.

Pris said...

Hi Lyle
I know. Poetry will never earn any of us money to speak of, so there has to be another way.

Peggy said...

Congrats Pris!
Peggy

Pris said...

Hi Peggy
Thanks. Yes, it seems we both have neat news right now.