Author Habits That Annoy You

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Touching very lightly on the subject of Tuckerizations, yes, I suppose there is a point where they get downright silly (which is certainly fine in an opus like How Much for Just the Planet, in which the whole book is downright silly, and intentionally so), and yes, the editor (or perhaps the copy-editor) should have caught it, just as the other alleged dumb mistakes in Ryan's first trilogy ("alleged" because it's been over 2 decades since I've read it, so I have no recollections whatsoever from either trilogy) should have been caught. But to assume that gratuitous Tuckerizations of well-known people in a serious work equates with author apathy makes no sense.

As to my own assertion, I stand corrected on the matter of the exact phrase "fan fiction" appearing at least once in front- or back-matter of the Strange New Worlds anthologies. So far as I can determine, it doesn't.
H O W E V E R :

The first volume carries the cover inscription, "All-new Star Trek adventures — by the fans, for the fans," and each of the first eight volumes carries either this same inscription, or a variation thereof. In the introduction to the first volume, DWS says "The stories in this book represent thousands of fan stories, written because of the love of Star Trek." (SNW I, page xi). In his afterword, John Ordover says that ". . . I gave fans who write Star Trek a chance at having their stories professionally published" (SNW I, page 353), and in hers, Paula M. Block says that ". . . I wrote 'The Girl Who Controlled Gene Kelly's Feet" twenty years ago [c. 1978], during a period when I was deeply entrenched in Star Trek fandom" (SNW I, page 355; she also noted that the story had been previously published in a fanzine, Paula Smith's "Menagerie.")

Consider the writing environment: every one of these short stories was written "on-spec," in an established milieu that the authors did not own. None of them were commissioned; they were submitted in response to a "cattle call" for finished works, and (to all appearances) published as written, with few (if any) substantive changes. Professional authors rarely work "on-spec," unless it's in an entirely new milieu, that they are free to sell to any publisher. The first volume contained 18 fan-written stories, and two by the editors (at least one of which, as noted above, first saw the light of day two decades earlier, in a fanzine). This was out of "over three thousand" submissions (SNW II, page ix). The second volume contained another 17, out of "over four thousand" submissions (SNW II, page x). All of them works that no other publisher can buy. The odds of getting published may be better than the odds in a typical state lottery, they're still considerably worse than the odds on a single-number bet in a North American (0 and 00) roulette table.

Now I never asserted that SNW submissions did not, upon publication in a SNW volume, become professional publications (the very rigorous definition given in the contest rules, for what constitutes a "professional writer" for contest purposes, says they do).

What I am asserting is that, so long as they are published more-or-less as submitted, without substantive changes, they don't cease to be fan fiction. They are both professional fiction (by virtue of having been published on a royalty basis) and fan fiction (by the circumstances of their origin). If you visualize a Venn diagram of two intersecting sets (you know, the thing that looks like a MasterCard logo), the works published in the SNW anthologies (and back in the Bantam era, in the "New Voyages" anthologies that were mostly gleaned from fanzines) are in the area where the two circles overlap.

I don't cease to be a programmer when I'm not cutting code. I don't cease to be a typesetter when I'm not setting type, and neither do I cease to be a printer when I'm not printing. I am all of these things, and more.

 

[Christopher]

As to my own assertion, I stand corrected on the matter of the exact phrase "fan fiction" appearing at least once in front- or back-matter of the Strange New Worlds anthologies. So far as I can determine, it doesn't.
H O W E V E R :

The first volume carries the cover inscription, "All-new Star Trek adventures — by the fans, for the fans," and each of the first eight volumes carries either this same inscription, or a variation thereof.

Fans can write professional fiction. I'm a fan. Keith is a fan. Dave Mack, Greg Cox, Dayton Ward, we're all fans. But what we write for Simon & Schuster is not "fanfiction," because fanfiction is defined as amateur fiction written for recreation and not sold for profit. If a fan writes a work of fiction, sells it, signs a legal contract for its publication, and gets paid for it, then it is pro fiction by definition. The word "fanfiction" does not mean any and all fiction written by fans, it means fiction written solely as fan recreation instead of as work for profit. Even if a story was originally written as fanfiction, like the stories in Bantam's New Voyages anthologies, it becomes pro fiction once a professional publisher like Bantam contracts and pays the author to publish it.

Consider the writing environment: every one of these short stories was written "on-spec," in an established milieu that the authors did not own. None of them were commissioned; they were submitted in response to a "cattle call" for finished works, and (to all appearances) published as written, with few (if any) substantive changes. Professional authors rarely work "on-spec," unless it's in an entirely new milieu, that they are free to sell to any publisher.

But that didn't make it fanfiction. It made it an opportunity for fan writers to earn their first (or second or third) professional sales and therefore become pro writers, like Dayton Ward, Geoffrey Thorne, and others did through SNW. It's much the same deal as the Writers and Illustrators of the Future contest that L. Ron Hubbard initiated in 1985.

What I am asserting is that, so long as they are published more-or-less as submitted, without substantive changes, they don't cease to be fan fiction. They are both professional fiction (by virtue of having been published on a royalty basis) and fan fiction (by the circumstances of their origin). If you visualize a Venn diagram of two intersecting sets (you know, the thing that looks like a MasterCard logo), the works published in the SNW anthologies (and back in the Bantam era, in the "New Voyages" anthologies that were mostly gleaned from fanzines) are in the area where the two circles overlap.

I don't cease to be a programmer when I'm not cutting code. I don't cease to be a typesetter when I'm not setting type, and neither do I cease to be a printer when I'm not printing. I am all of these things, and more.

I don't cease to be a fan when I write pro fiction, but what I write is not "fanfiction" by the accepted definition of the term. It is taking it too literally to think it means "fiction by a fan." Professional fiction written by a fan (like me) is not fanfiction, it's pro fiction by a fan.

 

[I am not Herbert]

Of course you do, but your prerogatives decidedly do not include making insulting assumptions about the intentions of people you don't know. You have the right to say "I don't like what you did." You do not have the right to say "I assume you did this because you don't care about your work," because that is defamatory. The only person whose state of mind you're qualified or entitled to speak to is yourself.

Defamation doesn't come into it. As an initial matter, up to this point I have been solely describing my own personal (internal) reaction to reading such gimmicks in books-- namely, losing interest and putting the books down. Those reactions don't involve communications to third parties, so "defamation" is a misplaced concept. And even if I were saying "Author X is really phoning it in these days, just look at the names he's using" to third parties, it still wouldn't be "defamatory" in any recognized sense of the word, because it would be a (protected) statement of opinion based on my reading of a text, not a statement of fact about which I have some personal knowledge (or about which I am implying that I have personal knowledge).

If you are using "defamatory" in a different sense, just to mean "negative" or "critical," well what were you expecting to find in a thread called "Author Habits that Annoy You"?

 

[Christopher]

If you are using "defamatory" in a different sense, just to mean "negative" or "critical," well what were you expecting to find in a thread called "Author Habits that Annoy You"?

That's not an excuse. As I said, it's fine to speak of your own state of mind and say you're annoyed by something. But speculating about the motives of the person who did the thing that annoyed you is crossing a line. You're not a telepath. You have no basis for making assumptions about why other people do the things they do. Only they can know that.

 

[I am not Herbert]

That's not an excuse. As I said, it's fine to speak of your own state of mind and say you're annoyed by something. But speculating about the motives of the person who did the thing that annoyed you is crossing a line. You're not a telepath. You have no basis for making assumptions about why other people do the things they do. Only they can know that.

I certainly do have both the legal right (as discussed above) and the moral right to speculate as the motives of a writer based on the content of their writing, just as I have the right to speculate as to the motives of a politician in introducing a bill, the motives of a prosecutor in filing a brief, company executives in rolling out a new line, etc. I don't have to pretend that the act I am evaluating did not come from a human being simply because I do not know that human personally and can only assess motive on the content of their actions. The "line" that you say I am crossing appears to be the line separating criticism you (and perhaps other writers) are willing to accept, and criticism you aren't willing to accept. But that line, though real, does not demarcate my rights.

And above all, I have the absolute right to throw a book down and conclude that the writer was phoning it in (which, up until your mention of 'defamatory' comments, was the only thing I had been talking about) without having to go visit the author's university archives to confirm my suspicions.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

It's tricky though, because the scene where someone says, "X'theniqh-Tarfflen? ...I think I'll call you Lenny." is often awful.

It is. And it's not only on ''cute'' moments on sci-fi shows. I worked with dozens of medical reviewers from all over the world. At least two of them had four-syllable surnames, plus a five-syllable first name. The well-paid reviewers decided en masse to give both of their colleagues one-syllable nicknames. I was simultaneously depressed and pleased when my Indian client told me I was the only one in the entire building to refer to him by his full surname.

 

[KRAD]

Professional authors rarely work "on-spec," unless it's in an entirely new milieu, that they are free to sell to any publisher.

This is a hilariously false statement.

 

[CaptainCalvinCat]

And above all, I have the absolute right to throw a book down and conclude that the writer was phoning it in (which, up until your mention of 'defamatory' comments, was the only thing I had been talking about) without having to go visit the author's university archives to confirm my suspicions.

Yeah, but then you're talking out of your a...

I mean, I get that - we all usually do. That being said: It's one thing, if I say it to myself and my friends - quite another, if I tell that in a room, with the author present.

 

[Christopher]

This is a hilariously false statement.

I thought so at first myself, but then I realized that hbquickcomjamesl specified "unless it's in an entirely new milieu," i.e. original writing rather than licensed tie-in writing. The sentence is poorly phrased, because it's written as if tie-in writing is the default and original writing the exception, which is completely backward. But it's basically saying "tie-in writing is rarely on spec," which is mostly correct, albeit an understatement; professional tie-in writing (as opposed to fanfic) is virtually never on spec, because it's contract work on someone else's behalf.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

It's not an implication. Slash is, by definition, a relationship between same-sex characters. Or if you want to get nitpicky, between two men (separate from femslash, which is the same but between two women). You said "slash", so there's no other way to understand it, because there's no other definition for that term. If you simply mean that you don't like any pairing that wasn't seen explicitly in the show, that's another thing.

My understanding was that the term "Slash" had broadened to apply to any romance between two characters, but it looks like I was wrong on that. I was misremembering because I've never waded very far into the fanfiction waters. Apologies for the misunderstanding. I was unintentionally misusing the term, and it muddled my point.

So if there's a broader term for "fanfiction-y character pairings that don't exist in the show" is, please let me know, and I'll revise my original comment.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I did not expect Jeff Ayers to quote me at such length. He emailed me, I sat down on a Sunday evening with a beer, and wrote a response. I thought I was giving some background color, and when I saw how much he quoted I cringed. I'm not criticizing Jeff here, to be clear. He used what I gave him. I'm just a wordy bastard. Sorry!

Let the record show that I was not talking about Allyn in my original comment.

Speaking as an interviewer, whenever I'm asking someone questions via email I always encourage folks to go on for as long as they'd like. I'd much rather try to edit down a wordy answer (while still keeping their comments in context, of course) than have to deal with monosyllabic responses. That's also why I always try to ask open-ended questions instead of things that can be answered with a simple "Yes" or "No."

I've mentioned this before, but the absolute one thing that drives me nuts and takes me completely out of the story is when authors feel the need to use the names of real-life Star Trek production personnel for their characters. This was most evident in the Kevin Ryan "Errand of Fury" trilogy. Besides the horrendous amount of typos, bad grammar and other mistakes that any editor worth his salt should have easily found, the trilogy was simply littered with characters named Okuda, Sternbach, Drexler, Roddenberry, Probert, Berman, Braga, etc. etc. etc.

Hey, Star Trek novel authors: Here's why it's such a stupid idea to do this; and hey, Star Trek novel editors: Here's why you should flag this shit every time you come across it. Authors think this is being all cutesy and easter-eggy, but what they're actually doing is shoehorning the image of that real-life person in the reader's head, no matter how unrealistic that real-life person should be representing that character. The characters' attributes, in my opinion, should be left to the readers' imaginations rather than just a misguided attempt to be clever.

100% agree. Those names are too well known to the hardcore ST fans that are likely to read the novels for them not to take me out of the story. And yes, the first book of Ryan's Errand of Fury trilogy was positively lousy with those types of Tuckerizations. And they weren't throwaway mentions, either. A "Leslie Parrish" was a major character in the first book, which was just weird. (I don't think I read past the first book in that trilogy, IIRC.)

The dedication plaques on the bridges of various ships, referencing Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor, etc. would beg to differ.

You mean those things are are usually out of focus in the background and can't normally be read on the TV screen?

I'm not a fan of authors that overdescribe things. I understand it makes the world they are building more vibrant but it just drags the stoiry down for me.

I remember in Jean Lorrah's early TNG novel Survivors, she very extensively described all the clothing that Data and Tasha Yar wore throughout the story. (They were undercover for a fair amount of the book and thus weren't wearing their regular uniforms.) The descriptions were long enough and frequent enough that they popped out to me.

Now, my previous mention of the Errand of Fury trilogy was an egregious example of this. It was literally strewn everywhere throughout the books, and if I had to guess, if the books had actually been edited well (which they weren't), then perhaps the editor would have flagged this as being just too over-the-top. Luckily the second set of Ryan's books didn't have this problem and were edited far better.

That's good to hear. Honestly, that first book seemed really padded in general to me, like he only had the enough plot for a single novel and stretched it out to three.

But honestly, if you want to pay tribute to various behind the scenes people from Star Trek, at least disguise it a bit and mix & match the first and last names so its not so obvious. So instead of "Leslie Parrish," name your character "Leslie Banks" or whatever.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Allow me to clarify:

First of all, of course a work set in an entirely new milieu, created and owned outright by the author, is very likely (perhaps overwhelmingly so) to have been written on-spec. (I can't imagine that very many authors get completely open-ended commissions, i.e., something like "Here's an advance. Write us a book. Any length, any subject.") And having written it on-spec, the author is free to offer it to any publisher who might be interested.

And a professionally written work set in a milieu owned and maintained by another person or business entity, whether it's movie or television tie-in fiction, or simply set in another author's milieu (e.g., if CLB were to write in ADF's Humanx Commonwealth, or GC were to write in Tolkien's Middle Earth) would almost never be written on-spec, because publishing such a work without the consent of the owner of the milieu would likely result in legal action, especially if it's published for profit.

And I suspect that even if an author were to move one of his or her own established milieux to a different publisher, there might be contractual problems, e.g., if ADF were to sell a HC novel to Titan, S&S, or Hachette, or sell a Spellsinger novel to Ballantine, there might be some issues, even though he created both milieux, and even though I seem to recall noticing that a number of his earlier works have been recently reprinted by an entirely different publisher.

And let me state my working definition of what constitutes fan fiction, an operational definition based on three characteristic properties:

Fan fiction is fiction written (1) on speculation, (2) in a milieu owned by some person or business entity other than the author, (3) with no reasonable expectation that it can ever be published commercially.

It may not be your definition, but it is a reasonable one, and a rigorous one, with no ambiguity. By that definition, if it's been commissioned, it's not fan fiction. If it's the author's own milieu, it's not fan fiction. If there's a reasonable expectation of publication, it's not fan fiction.

If I were to write a short story set in Swift's Lilliput, it would be fan fiction (even though the milieu has been in the public domain for centuries) simply because, between my lack of a track record, and the fact that I'm hardly an expert on Gulliver's Travels, there's no reasonable expectation of it ever selling to a publisher. If the late Isaac Asimov had done so, it wouldn't be fan fiction because even if, for some reason, none of his regular publishers had wanted it, there probably would have been several other publishers interested, based on his reputation, if for no other reason than for the sake of being able to say they've published Asimov.

With some 3000, 4000, or more works vying for some 18-20 slots in a given SNW anthology, and authors meeting the contest's own definition of "professional writer" excluded, the odds of any one author getting one of those slots is considerably worse than the odds of winning a single-number bet at a roulette table (regardless of whether it's North American roulette, with single and double zeros, or European roulette, with only the single zero, or a hypothetical "fair" roulette, with no zero at all). There is no reasonable expectation of publication. Therefore, every opus that makes it is both a professional work (by circumstances of publication) and fan fiction (by circumstances of origin).

 

[Airin]

My understanding was that the term "Slash" had broadened to apply to any romance between two characters, but it looks like I was wrong on that. I was misremembering because I've never waded very far into the fanfiction waters. Apologies for the misunderstanding. I was unintentionally misusing the term, and it muddled my point.

So if there's a broader term for "fanfiction-y character pairings that don't exist in the show" is, please let me know, and I'll revise my original comment.

I don't know of any broad term for that, except maybe "non-canon couple". Though given that most content of the ST novels isn't canon in the usual sense, that's not very descriptive (basically any new romance in the novels would be non-canon).
So I think that when people object to such pairings, it's not so much because they're non-canon per se, but because they see no chemistry or just dislike it. That's very subjective. Though in some instances, a point could be made for the pairing being objectively "absurd": people that barely interact in canon, or that clearly dislike each other, etc. In those few cases I could say that yes, there's no noticeable subtext, and the pairing comes out of the blue. But it's very difficult to draw a line. For example, "World Without End" (a novel from the 70's) shows Scotty and Uhura clearly flirting and having "something" between them. A notion that, back then, could have seemed absurd. But fast forward to "The Final Frontier", and it turns out it could have happened after all.

 

[Christopher]

Allow me to clarify:

First of all, of course a work set in an entirely new milieu, created and owned outright by the author, is very likely (perhaps overwhelmingly so) to have been written on-spec. (I can't imagine that very many authors get completely open-ended commissions, i.e., something like "Here's an advance. Write us a book. Any length, any subject.")

Well, yes and no. While I wasn't paid in advance, my Tangent Knights audionovel trilogy began when GraphicAudio reached out to me and other authors and invited us to pitch original concepts to them, which if accepted would be work-for-hire for them alone. Once they accepted my pitch, then I was contracted to write it. So it was original, but it wasn't exactly on spec. Or I guess it was on speculation in the sense that I didn't know if they'd buy it or not, but it wasn't something I initiated (although I did rework it from an existing spec premise I had, in part to make the premise a better fit to the parameters of the offer).

And I suspect that even if an author were to move one of his or her own established milieux to a different publisher, there might be contractual problems, e.g., if ADF were to sell a HC novel to Titan, S&S, or Hachette, or sell a Spellsinger novel to Ballantine, there might be some issues, even though he created both milieux, and even though I seem to recall noticing that a number of his earlier works have been recently reprinted by an entirely different publisher.

No, as a rule, the rights to an original prose work belong to the author, period. The publisher may have the right of first refusal on a new work in the series, i.e. you have to offer it to them first before shopping it elsewhere, but the author owns it, not the publisher.

And let me state my working definition of what constitutes fan fiction, an operational definition based on three characteristic properties:

Fan fiction is fiction written (1) on speculation, (2) in a milieu owned by some person or business entity other than the author, (3) with no reasonable expectation that it can ever be published commercially.

Then by your own definition, the Strange New Worlds stories were not fanfiction, because they were written specifically with the goal of getting them commercially published in the anthologies. So they fail your third test. And I'd argue that it's borderline on the first test, depending on how you define "on spec," because it's the same situation as my Tangent Knights pitch, something written for a specific publisher rather than shopped around in general. I suppose that's technically on spec, in the same sense as the spec scripts that people were permitted to send in to Star Trek during the open-submissions era of TNG, DS9, and VGR, but it's a narrower form of speculation.

If there's a reasonable expectation of publication, it's not fan fiction.

Okay, now you're moving the goalposts. Before, you said "no reasonable expectation that it can ever be published commercially," in other words, that there's a zero chance of professional publication. Now, by limiting it to "a reasonable expectation," you're excluding low nonzero probabilities as well. And that is misguided, because the probability of selling a work of fiction to any market is always low, given how much competition there is for a finite number of slots. For instance, in the days of Trek pitches, the odds of an spec script getting you a pitch invitation were something like one in a hundred, and the odds of them actually buying one of your pitches were more like one in a thousand. In the decades that I've been submitting original work to magazines or prospective agents, I've gotten rejected far more often than I've gotten accepted, and that's a normal experience for a pro author.

We don't submit works for pro publication because we have "a reasonable expectation of publication," any more than people run a marathon because they have a reasonable expectation of coming in first. It's always a gamble. If we were reasonable, we'd go into a different line of work. We do it because there's a nonzero expectation of publication. So you're absolutely, staggeringly wrong to say that the low probability of getting into Strange New Worlds made it fundamentally different from other pro fiction submissions. That's normal for publishing.

In fact, this is where you get it backward. Fanfic authors have a 100 percent expectation of publication, since they can just publish it themselves as long as they do it for free. They're not dependent on anyone but themselves, because fanfiction is a hobby. Hobbies are always guaranteed to be doable. You don't need an NBA contract to play a pickup basketball game in the park down the street or in your driveway. You don't need a restaurant license to bake a cake in your own kitchen. You can just go ahead and do it, which is what makes it different from doing something as an actual paying job. It's bizarre to me that writing is the only field where people don't seem to understand the difference between a recreational activity and a profession.

 

[David cgc]

My understanding was that the term "Slash" had broadened to apply to any romance between two characters, but it looks like I was wrong on that. I was misremembering because I've never waded very far into the fanfiction waters. Apologies for the misunderstanding. I was unintentionally misusing the term, and it muddled my point.

So if there's a broader term for "fanfiction-y character pairings that don't exist in the show" is, please let me know, and I'll revise my original comment.

IIRC, the "Archive of Our Own" fan-fiction library uses the convention of "character/character" for tagging romantic pairings, and "character-character" for platonic ones. So my fanfic where Kirk and Spock play chess would be tagged "Kirk-Spock," while the one where Kirk and Spock have a sloppy make-out would be "Kirk/Spock" (and, if I understand the system correctly, a story where they play chess then have a sloppy make-out in the next chapter would be both "Kirk-Spock" and "Kirk/Spock," along with whatever other applicable tags exist for content, theme, and tone).

So there is at least one milieu where "slash" (or, at least, the literal "/") has been generalized to any and all romantic pairings, regardless of heteronormativity or canonicity, but I don't think you'd actually call it, I don't know, "Worf Dax slash" verbally in conversation.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Then by your own definition, the Strange New Worlds stories were not fanfiction, because they were written specifically with the goal of getting them commercially published in the anthologies.

I'm not convinced that all of the stories were written -- or even revised from prior work -- with that goal in mind, and perhaps not even of most of them. But even assuming it is true, the odds of any particular opus getting into any given anthology work out (in the case of the second SNW volume, and rounding the total number of submissions for that volume down to an even 4000) to 235.294 to one. For comparison purposes, the odds of a single-number bet winning on a North American roulette table are only 38 to one. Beating 235:1 odds is certainly possible -- somebody's going to do it, and seventeen somebodies did it with SNW II -- but it's not a reasonable expectation.

The lack of a reasonable expectation of getting published doesn't make the effort any less worthwhile. There is little doubt in my mind that even among those who submitted to every SNW contest, without a single publication, there are those who went on to be successful writers in other markets, and very likely learned from their SNW experiences.

Besides, if people only did things with a reasonable expectation of reaching the intended goal, we'd likely still be living in the stone age.

 

[Christopher]

I'm not convinced that all of the stories were written -- or even revised from prior work -- with that goal in mind, and perhaps not even of most of them.

That doesn't matter. They were submitted with that goal in mind, and that's all that counts. What the origins of a story may have been before it was professionally submitted are irrelevant. Once it's purchased, paid for, and published, it becomes pro fiction, by definition. That's the whole point. If an amateur athlete signs a contract to go pro, then from that point on, they're a pro athlete. The new professional status overrides the old amateur status. It's the same with writing.

But even assuming it is true, the odds of any particular opus getting into any given anthology work out (in the case of the second SNW volume, and rounding the total number of submissions for that volume down to an even 4000) to 235.294 to one. For comparison purposes, the odds of a single-number bet winning on a North American roulette table are only 38 to one. Beating 235:1 odds is certainly possible -- somebody's going to do it, and seventeen somebodies did it with SNW II -- but it's not a reasonable expectation.

Again: that is the way it always works. For Pete's sake, it took me five years of submitting stories to magazines and getting rejected before I made my first sale, and after that I still got far more rejections than hits. Your attempt to argue that a low probability of success somehow disqualifies something from being professional writing is laughable, the exact opposite of the truth. Like I said, it's easy to get fanfiction published; the fact that pro fic has a low probability of selling is part of what makes it professional, because it is an actual job that you are competing with other people for. You're trying to compare it to gambling, but that's an invalid comparison, because it's actually a job interview. The fact that it's hard to get the job is the point, because it means you have to be good enough to meet professional standards and beat out all the other candidates.

 

[CaptainCalvinCat]

That doesn't matter. They were submitted with that goal in mind, and that's all that counts. What the origins of a story may have been before it was professionally submitted are irrelevant. Once it's purchased, paid for, and published, it becomes pro fiction, by definition. That's the whole point. If an amateur athlete signs a contract to go pro, then from that point on, they're a pro athlete. The new professional status overrides the old amateur status. It's the same with writing.

Should not be that hard to get that, right?

Like I said, it's easy to get fanfiction published; the fact that pro fic has a low probability of selling is part of what makes it professional, because it is an actual job that you are competing with other people for. You're trying to compare it to gambling, but that's an invalid comparison, because it's actually a job interview. The fact that it's hard to get the job is the point, because it means you have to be good enough to meet professional standards and beat out all the other candidates.

What does a job interview contain? Do you give a short synposis of the story and the characters you'd like to use? Or do you need to explain to a publisher, why you would be the ideal candidate for that writer-gig?

 

[Christopher]

What does a job interview contain? Do you give a short synposis of the story and the characters you'd like to use? Or do you need to explain to a publisher, why you would be the ideal candidate for that writer-gig?

If it's a short story, you write it, submit it to a magazine, and hope they buy it. If it's a spec novel, you submit a synopsis, outline, and sample chapters to prospective agents or publishers; if it's a first novel, you write the whole thing on spec, but in some cases, e.g. if it's a sequel or if it's at a publisher's invitation like Tangent Knights was, you just write the sample chapters and wait for a contract to write the rest.

 

[CaptainCalvinCat]

If it's a short story, you write it, submit it to a magazine, and hope they buy it. If it's a spec novel, you submit a synopsis, outline, and sample chapters to prospective agents or publishers; if it's a first novel, you write the whole thing on spec, but in some cases, e.g. if it's a sequel or if it's at a publisher's invitation like Tangent Knights was, you just write the sample chapters and wait for a contract to write the rest.

But it's not like the job-interviews were the job-interviewer asks me "Mr. Cat, why are you the right man for the job? What do you do, if we don't hire you?".