hi guys hey so two weeks left right not counting today two weeks am i correct yes okay you should be pretty close to being done if you need something to spur you on you can turn in your final which we'll go over again today on the last day of class and be done with this class and not have to worry about anything for it while you're doing the rest of your finals I highly suggest that you consider that because then you don't have to be stressed about this one you can get it taken care of final what you're gonna do yeah okay so I guess I will go into what what it is so if you'll remember there's basically three parts to your final correct right there is your self-evaluation sheet this is a physical sheet the one I handed you or if you lost it one that you have been writing the whole time and totally dot making up you've got to do be honest on this thing you're at the Lord's University don't make it up give me your self-evaluation sheet all right this is what how often you turn things in on time and how often you read everyone's submissions number two you can then email me you don't have to print it off you can print it off if you feel like it but you can email me 2,000 words which is about a double submission of polished prose which I am going to give you a final review on meaning I'll write out a few paragraphs you know this will let you get show me something that's really polished so that then you know a lot of times when we're in the writing groups we are giving you some of the same comments it's like oh you overwrite this oh your dialog is a little clunky and you're thinking yeah but I'm writing this so fast of course it is so your chance to do something that you think is pristine and then get an evaluation from me on it okay this is probably the reason why you're taking the class alright is to get that so you turn that in I will grade this qualitatively everything else is quantitative did you do it or not but you know your grade is mostly based on this and on this one you will then attach as a document in an email to me 30,000 words which I am just going to look at and say yep that adds up to 30,000 and it doesn't look like they repeated the word thaw for 17 pages so they did it okay I would prefer their part of but if there's something else you really want my critique on go ahead and submit that that's fine my preference is honestly that you're giving me the first 2,000 words the opening or at least the opening of a character sequence because the idea is that I want to read this like an editor or a new reader you know that you're trying to sell this to so that I can give you the honest evaluation like if you give me the big climactic scene at the end my advice to you is going to be much worse than if you give me the beginning because the beginning I can read like an editor and say this is how likely I am to put this down here's what you're doing really well and what's grabbing my attention that sort of stuff here's what's boring me that's the most important stuff for you to have so try and give me what you would want a new reader to be reading with that in mind do entries generally start in chapter one they start at a prologue they will start with whatever begins it so if the prologue is weak weaker than chapter one maybe you don't want to have a prologue for your story and you can submit me chapter one and saying I'm cutting the prologue but you know it doesn't have to be the chapter one of what you wrote it's the first chapter of revised where you're going to be does that make sense and it's yeah yeah you just attach the thing and send it to me and basically I'm going to say how many words and you just go ahead you know I mean right in your email if you would how many you got so I don't have to add it please so let's go ahead and put this in here so I forgot to this one here and then I had to open everyone's file and like at I would just rather have this and then I can check so tell me how much you got I believe today we have one last day of doing business type stuff in the last two weeks we will probably do as q and A's you bring something craft wise or that you are interested in having me talk to you about maybe something you're having trouble with your writing in a general term that you think would help others and we'll talk about it okay so those are the next two weeks I will have stuff prepared to blab about if you don't bring questions but I want those to be focused mostly Q&A if possible all right let's run down the list of stuff left over from last week one of them was movie deals right all right what else was I gonna talk about someone they made a list for me taxes yes queries oh yeah platforms okay was that was the whole list I got it all alright so very kind of nuts-and-bolts sort of stuff this week but this this sort of thing is somewhat important it's very important it's just good for you to know about no one else is going to tell it to you let's start with platforms what I mean by a platform is this is basically the self marketing lesson did you guys need chairs there's a seat right here so self marketing from the beginning of time basically every author has been forced to self market it's become a bigger and bigger deal in recent years the main reason for that is on the online ability in the 90s early 90s if you wanted to connect with readers you basically had to travel to them now you don't have to anymore but that kind of that offers you opportunities but it also allows the publisher to shift some more of the burden to you there are two basic ways to approach this the first way is to say I am going to do as little marketing as possible and I'm going to write as many stories as possible you take the opinion of a month spent on doing online marketing or any other type of marketing is a month that I'm not writing and I might as well have more things out there either being purchased if you're self-publishing or with the potential of being bought by a publisher so this is this is you know kind of just to take it I don't like to to self market this is very rare but it is it is possible some people have the theory that this is just the way you should do it other people go the other way and say what good does it do me if I write three books a year if no one reads any of them I'd rather write one book a year and spend that other time really pushing that book to start making a name for myself and to drive people to pay attention to me you'll kind of have to decide where you want to be on the scale because you can do anything in between there's a lot of different things you can do for self marketing they are all of varying levels of a value depending on how good you are at it one of the main ones is blogging blogging there are a number of authors out there that what they do is they have a very very good blog that is widely read and becomes a marketing tool for their books some authors that do this so that you can kind of watch and see Scalzi is very good at this so is Joe Kahn Roth I think what is that is that see sorry Joe if I spelled your name wrong Cory Doctorow is quite good at this you'll find you'll find that there are a number of authors that do this the trick with this is the idea of the platform people don't want to come to your blog to read about your books if you have never if they've never read your books okay now blogging can be split in two you know I generally blog for my readers that's what my blog is for my blog is a come and find out what's going on in Brandon's life I'm popular enough that that's that that's a good marketing tool for me it allows me to connect with my readers it is not selling a lot of books it's giving added value to the readers already have who then hopefully continue to read my books and are interested in things like this there you can probably see how that's different from for instance from Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow is one of the prime bloggers at blowing blowing one of the biggest blogs on the Internet he blogs about things such as such as freedom of information he's does technology he talks about you know cutting-edge sort of pop culture things and he writes very engaging ly and interestingly about them sometimes very controversial about them his blog then because the blogging is fascinating or controversy or whatever you want to call it draws millions of readers then those blog people recognize his name and he has a link to download his books as part of his blog a person who did this you might that you might find interesting is Larry Correia Larry Correia is a local author who's self-published in the days before he publishing came around and Larry is a mega gun nut okay this guy he is he is really into his guns he loves them and he started writing books for gun nuts right he read a rights of series his first series is called monster hunter in that international it's basically imagine if you took men in black and combined it with gun fanatics so they don't just kill monsters they kill them with cool guns and talk about how cool their guns are right so larry became an expert in the platform of sort of gun rights and types of guns and he tapped into this he started being very vocal on various blogs and forums where gun that's hang out and talk about their guns he he would gained a good reputation among them that's important the platform good reputation and good content the idea is that you are shilling your book to them as an afterthought to the good reputation and good content this is where a lot of online marketing new writers go wrong they pop into a form that they've never been on before and then they say hey everybody go read my book or they do a blog post about how awesome their book is nobody wants to read that but if you do blog post on how the new Glock is like totally inferior to the old block and it should change back all the gun that's like yeah or no you're wrong and but you do know your stuff and by the way you write these books I'll probably like them because I like the sort of stuff you're talking about Larry made a platform for that he became he took off really big he eventually published with Bane which is the perfect publisher for him gives him a lot of control but also kind of has that same audience he eventually got got made into because his day job wasn't accountants he got made into I'm so envious GI Joe's accountant he appeared in the GI Joe comic book as spreadsheet the official GI Joe accountants he has a GI Joe character and because the GI Joe writers as you can imagine her gun nuts and so they like his books they like him and he's like a big guide that would fit in GI Joe and so he is Larry is now spreadsheet the GI Joe accountant yeah I know isn't that perfect it's like awesome so but this is this is what Larry did you can talk to Larry about doing this he did it perfectly for the platform sort of way that you're doing it good reputation good content and books that then tie into that content and you can see how making a platform that way could be very effective the problem is it takes a lot of time to do this all right takes a lot of time Joe Conrad does this kind of as a self-publishing guru John Scalzi does this as a controversial blogger who writes interesting things about a lot of stuff he was a oels blogger back in the day like their official blogger that was this job before he became a writer he started his own blog wrote all sorts of cool things blogged his novel as he was writing it and an editor from tor read the novel being blogged and contact him said I want to buy this but you know Scalzi had hundreds of thousands of readers at that point because he was such a good writer blog wise this takes a lot of time if you're naturally good at this or if you naturally have a platform that's interesting to you that you want to write about that does tie to your books then this is a method you can use you don't have to do this if you do it right it can be wonderful way to get attention but a lot of people break into this and think I have to be doing this it is not the only way to go about doing it if you've got good books you will find ways to make people read them or coerce them to read them you don't need to do this okay questions about any of this yeah yeah I'm not as I'm not as in touch with the why a world on this as I am with the adult world just because these are the circles I move in but from what I understand like for instance and children's why a book trailers are a bigger deal an adult no one watches them and kids lots of lots of teens watch them the video blogs and things like that things for kids to come do online at your at your website is it is usually a good idea but that's not necessarily the platform you're doing you're talking more about well let we'll transition to that they're doing probably a lot of them are doing more like this this is the get to know the author this is the you know if you go look at a blog post that I do it'll be like you know this is when I was breaking in here was a fun story about me or I've read this book and here's me talking about it you would have very little interest in that if you if it wasn't me writing it and that's the sort of thing they're doing with the video blogs is making themselves more we're out there now this is probably you know the next level down from doing this is doing this you put extra content about your books you have a you know a FAQ where you answer questions you have a blog where you know here's a reader mail submission it's about you and your books no one's going to want to read this except people have already read your books and it can be effective timewise in that this is for people once your books are out to help you kind of generate some momentum if you don't have time for this or this sort of thing you can move to this this is kind of like the do one blog post a week and make it like you know an interesting question that a fan asks you that you didn't answer or something like that this basically they're they're blogging more than once a week if they are blogging only once a week they are writing a really in-depth interesting blog post that would be of interest to people who had never heard of them before things that are not directly related yes yes but boy that's kind of spreading yourself thin and do remember they do like for instance Larry Correia is writing books about gun nuts shooting monsters and he's gonna Cory Doctorow is writing books about people fighting against the government establishment his big series is little brother and the new one that just came out both are new york times bestsellers they're why a books you know he's got one about gold farmers in China on mmo's staging a revolution and stuff like that like he it's very similar to what he's blogging about but it's not the same Stahl's yeah I don't know what the heck's calls he's doing you know but that's scalzi he does blog on science fiction and fantasy writing topics and things like that but more he brought he's just interesting so people read his stuff I did this after I was published I didn't worry about a website before once I got published I'm like ah rats put up some information and that's you know if you go to their websites their websites I need a new one we're working on it but mine can be a few years old it doesn't really matter if people are visiting it's because they already know who I am and they want to read my blog if you go to you know blowing blowing you're wanting it to be if it looks outdated that's a bad thing because it's a tech blog and a pop-culture blog you know what I mean like there's a difference there so this is the next level the next level down there's actually one down here this is the minimum effort a online marketing thing minimum have a static webpage about your book where it can be bought a little barred or free of you and things like that so that when people say who is this person they go they find some information if you are not going to update regularly do not indicate that you're going to okay this is a big mistake don't put you know under construction or more content coming if someone comes to your website and your latest blog post is two years old that looks really bad if they come to the website and it's a static page and says here's me and my books that is colonel right doesn't matter so so if you're gonna do if you're not gonna do this don't promise that you're going to it's going to hurt you all right makes sense so breaking over in the other direction there are all these social media things social media kind of the the buzzwords of today's today's culture right these can be very helpful it can be very useful it's kind of like this stuff usually if you're gonna be doing this you will have a Twitter feed you will have a Facebook page what are the new kids doing is it's still Facebook and Twitter Tumblr they're gonna have a tumblr that's what the new that's like right there I bet there's a new one that the new new new kids are discovering but tumblr is what you know that the next generation yeah you're gonna have some of those things and you're gonna pick on pick them don't use probably live journals though I like live journal it's kind of like the book like seven generations before haha but live journals fun but yeah social media you'll want to be doing some social media stuff Georgia are Martin still uses his live journal and so it's just fine but you know beyond some of those things and if there's any special sort of information you can add you can you can you can post them there but again it takes time is this the sort of thing you want to put time into most of the time something like Twitter for instance people are only going to follow you for two reasons either you are writing interesting stuff about a topic they're interested in or you are a Rotter they like to read and so they want to see what you write what you tweet about your books and things like that and decide what your Twitter feed is going to be if you're going to put one up I mirror my Facebook and my Twitter with you know Facebook Twitter and Google+ all get the same posts that's of ease for me some of the authors who are a little bit more extreme are doing new information for each social media section you know based on what they think that social media is good at doing okay this is not now if this is your goal you should start this right now if this is your goal maybe get the static page up but don't worry about anything else or if you're gonna do a hybrid if this is your goal ignore it until you have something for people to buy okay but this one I would say would be the minimum all right you can put tons of effort into this there are lots of other things you can do for self-promotion one of the things that people like to do these days I don't know how effect is these are the started before I before I broke in our blog tours rather than going on a tour which is really expensive you will contact other bloggers and you will write an interesting piece and you will sit you will say hey here are some examples of interesting pieces that I write that posted on my blog do you mind if I do a guest blog I'll give you a guest blog on this topic which your readers might find interesting you go contact some blogs with a decent readership that you think you can you can approach doing on and you write guest pieces for them and do a blog tour I don't know how effective this is but a lot of people seem to do it it's something to consider particularly if you can write interesting blog posts about a variety of topics they another thing that you can do people used to do mailings you can't really do mailings anymore you can do them to independent booksellers you can't do them to Barnes & Noble really but you can go visit your local Barnes & Noble or any Barnes & Noble you Pass or any independent bookseller you pass just while you're on vacation or whatever you can drop off a copy of your book and give it to the manager or to the person in charge of that department I always gave it I said is there a sci-fi reader on your staff if there is I gave him a copy of my book I pitched it to him and said if I give you this weed will you promise to read it and that worked fairly well now my book was in the bookstores for sales so they can hand sell the copies they had on the shelves if your book is self-published that's not gonna work so well for you unless you're trying to convince the manager to stock your book okay that's one thing you can consider you'll probably want to have some sort of little giveaway for your for your signings you really don't need to but people expect it like a bookmark or something I don't know how effective these are everybody always has bookmarks I don't know you guys go to signs you get all the bookmarks you what do you do with them do people does anyone use them yeah so some of you says somebody use them they might be useful but you know it's expected that you probably have one of these they're fairly cheap so you just give them out you know it's at your at your book signings signings sightings so if you're self-published getting into the bookstores is difficult convincing you might be able to convince a local book sort of carry a few of your books you're more likely to get them to have a signing for you where they'll sell the books on consignment which means you bring him in you sell them they take a cut and then pay you you know what's left over and if it sells well and does well then they maybe they'll carry a copy and put it on the shelves if you are self-published though your best bet is to do online marketing and not to worry about the print editions too much selling fifteen extra copies through hours and hours of effort to get them into bookstores is probably not going to be worth your effort nearly as much as writing one cool blog post that gets reblog and tweeted around that points out to your website which has links to your theory books that's gonna be my guess okay yes do you need a purchase a domain name once you get popular yes you should probably but like i said george RR martin the biggest writer in fantasy today uses LiveJournal okay so yeah so and i'm sure there are others yeah a web domain is 8 bucks I mean it's not like you should probably go by your name if that's what you're planning to do and just have your name and put something up on it of you should probably at least consider that yeah do not use Kickstarter to help alright here's the problem alright if you've got a cool thing that you want to build for people Kickstarter it fine I am very against authors using Kickstarter that do not already have an established reputation because they don't know the quality of what you're creating and that false kind of under the face of Kickstarter says don't use Kickstarter to fund your life okay in other words you're not supposed to use Kickstarter to get tuition you're not supposed to use Kickstarter for all these kinds of things now technically writing a book is probably okay to Kickstarter but what if you've got a finished product that's an e-book that they can read and you're gonna do a Kickstarter for a hard copy that's okay do not have them Kickstarter you to pay you before you write your book I think that is not that is abusing Kickstarter number one you're probably gonna fail number two it's kind of abusing Kickstarter write a good book get it out there if it starts to take off then say let's do a Kickstarter for a hard copy you know hardcover that can be awesome does that make sense you see the difference between those two things I want you to prove to the readers that you're worth being kick-started before you do it alright that's a personal opinion you could disagree with me on that one so so yeah let's talk about okay we already talked about the conventions as publicity let's just go ahead and move on to the next topic anything else self-promotion it's not something you need to think about a lot but I feel like you should have something in your notes about this for when you do publish what you're gonna do with it if you are published through a mainstream publisher you can ask your publicist to get a signing for you that has varying results but usually you'll end up getting one locally I in the past for all my local stores have gone in asked to meet the community relations manager that's the BNN term or you know whoever is in charge of events prove to them that you have a book that they would be interested in in selling no it's more like yeah this is this book is on your shelves I'm a local author can we do a signing if you're in children's Kings English does a lot of those in Salt Lake if you're an adult then sam Weller does a lot of those BYU bookstores another great place to have events all the books are around here are pretty awesome they're very skeptical of self-published books because a lot of people do that if you have self-published you might ask locally to the Barnes & Noble like a new arm hey can I be part of your next author Palooza that's when they get like 20 authors together and they'll probably say yes to you on that because even if you only bring two people in they don't have to do like a lot just for you because they're already doing this big thing and if they have 30 authors and you know some of them only bring two people in well it's still creating this big event does that make sense if you aren't if you're actually you know you're you're you've been published and they're carrying your book already it's much easier to get a book signing and I just walk in and ask him community relations mannered you're not supposed to but I do okay all right so ping taxes taxes oh boy we'll talk about the boring one then all go to queries everyone's always interest in that and movie deals taxes okay so as a writer you are self-employed all right this comes this is - a lot of writers that came as a surprise to me you are a small business owner okay when you write a book when you sell a book you don't actually sell a book what you do when you sell a book to a publisher is you are licensing to them the right to publish that book for a set amount of time depending on sales and things like that you retain the copyright and you are then a corporation who is licensing something to another corporation to sell just as if you had the designs for a new type of bathroom sink thingy I know widget and you went to you know somebody and said will you wise license do you want a license this to sell my widgets it's that actually as far as the government is concerned basically the same thing okay that's what you're doing that means you will be getting a 1099 1099 not a w-2 OOP you don't give those anymore so this is all like fascinating tax stuff I'm sure there any accountants in here yeah oh that's right hey this is fascinating view yes the resident accountant if you write really well maybe you'll end up in GI Joe uh-huh yeah yeah yeah you can go beak larry correia if you ever met him at some cons somewhere you can commiserate about accountants who write sci-fi fantasy so you don't get a w-2 what this means is basically you can correct me if I get anything wrong here the 1099 is basically kind of what you get if you're an independent contractor and this means a couple of things number one you when you start making over ask your tax professional about this I am NOT a tax professional this you know don't construe this the wrong way but once you make over I think it's like five hundred bucks under five hundred bucks is like a hobbyist income and it changes but it's about that ask your account and what it is as long as you're under five hundred bucks nobody cares okay nobody cares it was under 500 bucks and you're okay once you start getting over that then there's no longer hobbyist income and you start having to deal with things like self-employment tax what self-employment tax anyone know right it's mostly actually Social Security isn't it yeah mostly it's your Social Security your Social Security is 15% of your of your income and your employer pays seven and a half and you pay seven and a half or something like that it's like 7.2 so it's like 14 1/2 percent or something basically no that's what's holding that's not the self-employment tax okay no no no it's played by your employer it's not taken out of your money the self-employment tax your employer pays half of your Social Security that's what self-employment taxes you're you're you're wrong you're wrong I'm sorry am i right yes you're on your honor let me explain this self-employment tax is 15 percent ish that your employer pays half of it doesn't get taken out of your wages your employer pays this every one of you have a job your employer is paying an extra seven half percent to the government to be put into your social security fund and you are paying half of that in your yearly taxes when you do your taxes there's a thing on there that you pay am i right yes so that once you get over five hundred dollars you have to pay an extra 7.2 percent between five hundred dollars I'm not sure on this number again check up to about 100k and after that you'd have to pay it okay yes what happens if you're a writer this is counted as self-employed income yes yep you now have a new tax form and once you make over that you have a new tax form you're gonna be doing all this am i right get me if I'm wrong on any of this but you're gonna have a new tax form okay and which you're going to pay this right here okay and this is one of the big ones that's uncounted that people don't expect that you're going to have an extra 7.2 percent 2% to 5% that's being that's right now being paid by your employer so if you make from your employer you're making 40k there's actually a 7 point 2 percent on addition to that that they're paying that's not counted on your income keep that in mind all right self-employment tax estimates normally your employer this is what you were talking about your employer is taking out withholdings from you that they are giving to the government to make sure at the end of the year you don't end up owing the government money all right even if you know you yeah if you are making money that you are not doing that on you actually have to pay taxes quarterly not yearly if your gut if your employer is not withholding money for you and paying your taxes your you are required to pay every quarter now if you're getting money back every year because you're a poor student and you're under notes underneath a certain threshold so you're not paying any taxes this one's not a big deal okay once you start making a real income at this I would say this one probably kicks in I don't know what the real income is but you know basically if you're making under 20 grand you're probably getting it all back anyway they're not gonna care if you pay estimates if your estimates are here I give you a hundred bucks but you're gonna give it back to me in April you're probably gonna be okay again I'm not a tax professional don't you if you get in trouble this not my fault but you will have to be paying estimates and usually the estimates you're okay as long as you pay whatever you had to pay the previous year all right I'm sorry this is all so boring but you probably ought to know this so I this loft took me by surprise so for instance if last year you ended up paying $3,000 in taxes your lucky dog that means you you're actually making money at this but you're not gonna pay very much you have to pay then the next year you would want to play one-fourth of that every quarter as an estimate to the government if you do that you'll be safe even if you end up earning more than that and end up owing 6,000 if you've paid estimates based on the last year's last year you're you're gonna be okay you'll have to pay 3,000 at the end at during tax period and then the next year you'll have to pay on 6,000 okay does that make sense to people do these two things make sense these are things you don't know about you didn't have a question okay okay so self-employment tax its estimates I'm sure does that make sense you were thinking about these weren't you yes yep yep yeah you're thinking about this one and then they probably hit you at this too but it's kind of muddled in there somewhere yeah so so these two things now there's also the one that you expect which is insurance insurance insurance is the big scary thing it's not as bad as it sounds unless you happen to be sick then it's awful if you happen to be healthy then insurance is not a headache at all and that ironic yeah um but I guess that's not irony yeah it might actually be ironing yeah but anyway so so it's not as hard it's not as bad as you think if you are really worried about insurance there are self-employed professional organizations like the national organization self-employed people howard belongs to what you can talk to him if you join those you can get insurance and they're required to take you it's just really expensive or you can just get a private plan which is what we have because we are lucky and our whole family yeah as nothing that keeps us from being insured and so now that we're on a self-employed thing they can't just drop us once you get in you're good they can raise our cost and it is expensive but but yeah so no it's a it's because because a large group they're able to mitigate the risks by having people that are not going to be risky and one person they consider a very big risk and so the premiums are higher even if it even with the discount what the employer is doing but you know we've got insurance I think ours is a thousand bucks a month yes for our family but you could ask my wife it might be a little less than that but that's what it costs and these are unnoticed costs so let's this is this is the things that kill the self-employed people you have to be aware of you're going to have to play it pay this you're gonna have to pay this you're gonna have to pay this you're gonna need to earn more than you think you need to earn a lot of people say you need to earn about thirty percent more than you're making from your day job in order to quit your day job and have the same i'm standard of living okay I don't know if it's quite that high but that's that's a rule of thumb people have given so be aware of this the $500 thing now some of the good news okay you can is you can take deductions all right as long as they're legitimate business expenses the the big one I suggest you avoid is a home office unless you're a tax professional and you know exactly how to do it home offices are a red flag for the IRS all right be very careful that in the other big problem with having a home office is if you claim a home office it becomes then commercial space when you sell your house you get hit with tax penalties you're not hit with so it's really not a good idea to try taking a home office if you're ever planning to sell your house or you know does that make sense because the the benefits for it being residential are pretty cool so these are you saying then that if you want to do no it's better to work from your house and just not claim it that's probably the best thing to do we claim ours but we did it under the advice of a tax professional where we actually bought a house where we made the basement office space and the basement has offices and the basement is used for office work and the family doesn't live down there you know we have an office in our basement it is considered commercial space so if we were to sell the house we would not get you know when you sell your house you get like certain you can just wave off the profit do you make on it and things like that you can't do that if it's commercial so we did it under very strict advice and it's worked very well for us but be really careful about home offices you really probably don't want to consider that one until you're making enough money that it's your full-time thing and then go talk to a tax professional don't talk to me okay yes that's all that being said what's the advantage you deduct part of your part of your living expenses all of your like utilities and all those things are part of the necessary requirements to do your business and so you get some you get some cool deductions they can be pretty substantial deductions but that because they can be pretty substantial deductions because it's so easy to say yeah this room is my office the IRS red flags those very quickly so you have to have good records if you want to do that the things that you can do that are very easy you know that are completely legit are things such as your computer warning you need to depreciate it you think I was gonna forget that uh I had I tried to do all this stuff on my own for a few years and then I just broke down and got an accountant if you need an accountant who knows writers sort of stuff come to me I've got an accountant Eric girl who kind of specializes in it has me and James Dashner and and a bunch of the authors in the area because he now who's done all this research on this stuff but computers have to be depreciated this means you can't take them as a deduction on the first year except in special cases like last year I think you could buy any amount of new equipment and deducted immediately there's like weird rules on things like this but usually you have to depreciate which means that you take like one fifth of it one year one fifth of next year one fifth the next year or something like that talk to your tax professional but your computer buying a new computer can be a pretty pretty substantial reduction even if it's you know even if you're if you're making but soon you're making a thousand year you're probably going to be able to deduct all this money and not have to worry about any of this for instance if your computer costs you two K you bought a nice laptop and you're depreciating that over four years that's half of your money that you're already deducting right any of your flights and hotels when you go to a convention for this yeah if you're going to a convention yeah but but you can deduct the two days the convention correct you just can't deduct the rest um your food you can deduct half am i right on that one half of your food okay on when you're in a convention or something like that when you're away from home you can take half the food there is also a standard deduction for a day out I'm not sure how that one works talk to your tax professional yeah but there is some sort of thing where you don't have to keep the receipts you they just say a day of a person at a convention is this much in deduction from food just take that okay so with these things you can also deduct your ticket to the convention world cons like 200 bucks okay your hotel is going to be probably your hopefully sharing with other people cuz you're new writers but you're probably going to be paying like $50 bucks a night you're there for three nights your flight you've already deducted this entire thousand dollars okay so this can be very useful for you to actually save you tax headaches and also save you tax burden that's when no this is if you're only making a thousand bucks that's a year now big warning you can take a loss it's a big red flag but that means you can take and write off all these things if you have another income that you can use as these are actually exemptions these are not deductions right yeah exemptions are different from reductions but let's not go there you can take all of this stuff as an exemption but if you take a loss multiple years in a row it's a big red flag and talk to your tax professional before you do it you see I'm saying that a lot I just don't want you guys to sue me I'm also being recorded so I want to be careful on this but you can take a loss some authors I know strongly recommend taking the loss but yeah okay question that means that you spent $2,000 and you made a hundred so you're going to take a hunt 1,900 dollars of exemptions from your other income that you don't end up having to pay taxes on okay yes it is a red flag yep it's a big one it's but if you if you keep if you're the type that keeps good records but you know you can do this and you might get audited you'll probably get audited if you do it a lot but if you have good records it can actually you know and you can prove hey I'm a writer I'm not making a living at it there's nothing wrong with not making a living at writing yet most businesses take a loss early in their business you just have to means you have to be taking making good records now I should probably explain the difference between exemptions deductions I'm going to get this one a little wrong so tell me but you can do all of this and then take the standard deduction that you normally take right now that a lot of you probably do because these are from your business they are something different these are what you're doing to make money a deductions are things were the government's like we're gonna be leaning on you because your taxes for this and this and this so we would like you to duck this you have a kid we understand how hard it is that you have to pay for this kid that's for the good Society we give you a deduction because you have this kid because we want to encourage you to help benefit society these as exemptions are things that you're doing that you are actively trying to make money at and you need to be able to do this stuff to make money the argument for this if you just think about it this way let's say you spent five hundred thousand dollars to make five hundred and fifty thousand dollars that's a ten percent earnings that's actually in the business world okay it's not fantastic lot of businesses are looking for much more than that but that's okay if you were charged your taxes even with deductions on the five fifty you would end up owing like seventy thousand dollars maybe just off the ballpark and you only made fifty do you see what I'm saying there this is why you also this is something we can say at BYU I actually do not pay tithing on any of this my bishop called me in when I first did this and I was going to try doing said if you spent five hundred thousand dollars and made five fifty and owed fifty thousand in tithing what are you gonna do so that's why it's important to keep in your head what the difference between exemptions and deductions are sorry this is boring guys but no one else is going to warn you of this stuff very smart thing to do is to get a business credit card spend only stuff for the business on that if you are a member the church which I assume most of you are you ask yourself is this something I feel okay not paying tithing on and if the answer is yes because it is actively you trying to make money off of it then you put it on the business card and then you're gonna try and claim it as an as an exemption but so Brandi talked about something understand reproduction which is taken off income that you earn if you keep track of your tiny expenses and if all of this bus and typing exceeds the standard deduction get enough of that yeah so anyway there you are there you are right here okay questions on this complicated stuff how much is a tax professional they are cheap they are worth your money most of them charged by the form it for most of you it'll be like a hundred bucks maybe 200 to do all of this okay BOE does it for free I like having a tax professional because they will keep track they will they will tell you when to pay your estimates they all of this stuff the other thing is once you start having foreign sales uh does it get crazy okay my phone is going off who is calling me I have a bachelor party tonight that I'm organizing it's probably yes someone going to that once you get four in sales okay you'll have this in your records just you can write this down most countries we have a tax treaty with this means that they will try to charge you taxes on the money you make in France because we have a tax treaty with them the money that you pay on that in France you do not have to pay again here or you can convince France I am paying my taxes here and they will not deduct anything from it when they send the money to you and then you pay it here it works differently for different countries and different things like that so but that gets really complicated get a tax professional I did it myself for a couple of years yeah it get a tax professional one the first year we did it and he's like yeah and he did it it cost us like two hundred and fifty bucks for all this stuff I've been doing I was like why didn't I do this earlier this was so nice and then he deducted himself because there's certain amounts because that you can deduct right for the the business part of it he could deduct so it wasn't the whole thing but yeah so so yeah yeah yeah the tax night my accountant is worth every penny so so really the stuff gets really complicated all right so you can have in your records when do you want to start your own business Brandon's answer completely arbitrarily when you're making about 30k a year that's when I would start your own business some will say start it right at the beginning when you're earning around 5k the advantages of starting a business usually most authors do what's called S corp or its S corp ass Corp which is really just a corporation with an S election which means small small business this is versus I believe boy this gets really complicated like just a normal LLC or maybe it's an LLC within that select anyway most people do what's called an S corp you'll have to talk to somebody this gets into talking to lawyers and things which we talk to this I know a lot less about I just went to my lawyer and Fred said do this the advantages are if you put all your copyrights under the corporation this can give you a lot of liability protection meaning if someone if in your book you end up someone thinks you plagiarize them or things like this then they can sue the corporation but they can't come after your home assets I think in most cases talk to your talk to your accountant your lawyer this is important there was an author a local author very very good author I'm not going to mention their name but they wrote a fiction serious historical fiction series in which they interviewed somebody about their story and used it in the book their documentation they thought was good about this the person was fine with it then as what I understand once the the person passed away the children challenged and said that the documentation was not appropriate the court agreed and the person was sued for in excess of $500,000 which they lost the settlement on okay if the corporation has the copyrights they can go to the corporation for profits on future books they can't take your house okay that's a pretty important level of protection I feel this is why we have done this you can also you can also do some interesting things where you pay yourself a salary and then um profits you make above the salary the IRS will actually count as dividends as a shareholder in the company because of this you can save self-employment tax as long as your salary is reasonable so let's say that you are making 90 K and you and your spouse are officers in the company and you pay yourself 45 K as a writer I don't know what the number listen to your tax accountant your tax your yeah your tax professional the rest of this is not subject to self-employment tax after the 45 K so you get 45 K without paying the seven and half percent because as owners of the company the book is an asset of the company which is earning money for the company and you got paid by the company to write that a salary and then a return dividends which are taxed differently saves you money this is why the 30 K thing is kind of a nice rule of thumb because once you're getting above that is when you can start paying yourself a reasonable salary and having dividends on top of it before that it really doesn't make any sense you may want it for this one and it's only like 500 bucks to establish corporation there's a few things you need you have need to have bylaws regular meetings talk to your your lawyer but you know and you pay like five hundred dollars you file it you've got a corporation okay I'm trying to think there's anything else advantages on this there wasn't there's another few small advantages well you can shop around to in different states have different corporation laws for example Nevada has really positive corporation ok I don't know a lot about that I don't know a lot about that oh the other thing is you're you're all these deductions and exemptions and things we're talking about when you're taxed as a corporation and the IRS looks at it and says wow this corporation that makes ninety thousand dollars a year had 10,000 in deductions exemptions whatever that is small potatoes we have no interest in auditing them when this individual makes ninety thousand dollars and is as taking a ten thousand dollar deduction we're like not a lot of people do that that's interesting or when the company has office space now they all do when the person has office space hmm that's probably a home office they we want to pay attention them so there is the the added benefit of legitimacy okay okay yeah yes because if you're like wow aha okay good I thought that was a little I don't I I know some authors who do that exactly what you just said they're fully behind it they actually like to choose Idaho as one of their big ones because of the tax the way the judges rule in Idaho I don't know how that works I have stayed away from it you can talk to other authors if you come up after I can tell you some of them you could talk to and you can get their accountants I don't know how that works but I've just stayed away from it I think it might raise red flags but it's not illegal yes but that sort of thing you're okay with and you keep good records you'll be fine the one I would say be very wary of some accountants try to classify book income as royalty income yes yeah she just be careful about that one okay royalties are meant for royalties paid from like owning a mine that you're renting to somebody and they're mining out stuff and you're getting royalties on the money they get out of it it isn't usually interpreted for authors who are getting royalties off their books royalty income is taxed very favorably toward you meaning it's you get a lot of things but it's a very it's it's a line that I'm not sure well I've never wanted to walk that line you would want to talk to your tax professional but I'm gonna give you a warning against that one okay do you agree with that don't you yeah okay that said I do know an author who spent thirty years taking it all as royalty income and the courts have ruled in favor of him because of the places where he is doing that have you ever been I've never been audited so what's that yeah but I mean if you have a good tax professional they'll do most of it if they've got all the records that are actually goes to them deals with them maybe ask you for some records and you don't even really have to be meeting with them or anything like that so that's another good reason to have a nice accountant so okay let's move on to fun or stuff not to imply this isn't fun but you are going to be very glad you have that all in your notes once you start publishing I'm sorry that we have to spend time doing this kind of stuff but I think it's important for you yeah yeah anyone you talk to whose story you consider putting in a book go get a really like I haven't I don't do historical fiction or things like that but if there's someone's story you're using get an ironclad document of what do you call it release dot an ironclad release form and I don't know one of those looks like but you could talk to people who do it that's gonna be really helpful for you okay once you get to a certain level of notoriety you can't avoid not getting sued I haven't been sued before JK Rowling gets sued all the time so there's some sort of level between me and her and she's won every lawsuit but but people yeah yeah what's that she also sues yeah so yeah there you go okay yeah I don't know oh yeah yeah there-there is like Genghis Khan's matters of record yes and this author really only got in trouble because the the children were publishing their memoir and they were able to prove in court that this and this is I heard this like third hand I know something happened but the details I'm giving you a third hand so just keep that in mind but that what happened supposedly is that children are releasing this book and they are able to prove in court that this guy's book using the story infringed on the thing they were producing that made their sales go down because it had already been used does that make sense like since they were able to prove in court its damages because of the thing they we're doing is why that it went poorly for this author my question kind of piggybacks a question are there certain people that are in the public domain that I don't know I assume that people of record you can I don't know what the law is on that Jane do you know yeah one one thing I do know you want to be very careful on is song lyrics don't put song lyrics in your books those are copyrighted unless you buy rights to them and a good copy either James Wright will know about this don't put song lyrics don't don't for instance you're probably going to be okay like people people historical people you're I'm sure you're fine on so anyone who's really really dead but for instance someone tried to do a biography thing of JRR tolkien and the Tolkien estate blocked it recently you can go look at that so that is some legal ground that's like mmm yeah and one other thing the difference let's talk very briefly about the different copyright and trademark coca-cola is a trademark it's not a copyright that means you can use the word coca-cola in your books there's no problem with that however if you write a book where coca-cola causes people to turn into zombies that's probably parody you'd probably be okay on that but if it's a book where it causes them just died or where you're saying coca-cola has this that I mentioned this I think I mentioned this that's you can be sued for for libel the liability which one's written libel yeah slanders yeah you can use cop trademark terms okay you can say I googled it you don't have to say he used a search end and if you want you can say you can say I googled it we went to McDonald's for dinner you don't have to say we went to McDowell's which you know you know but something like that you're okay doing just don't libel them by by implying untruths about them okay yeah anything negative could get you in trouble yeah yeah it is but it means they could still if you're saying anything negative they can sue you and you they would lose if you fight them but you'd rather not have to does that make sense that's that so I I agree with this one unless this point of your story is to expose the truth like something like Fast Food Nation or supersize me or something like this you can use truth as a defense that's the point of your story if you're doing that that's fine I would yeah does that that's just common sense but you're right truth is it as long as it's truthful you're okay okay all right query letters okay we've done this one query letters query letters are hard to write a lot of places you'll be submitting will ask for one of three things they want a query a synopsis or an outline most commonly I've seen query plus synopsis or outline or sample chapters plus schnapps us throughout life okay I always preferred to send to these if I could because any time I could get my prose in front of them I felt that my prose would stand on its own these things are different a query is one page okay usually a query is going to only be like two or three paragraphs and what it's going to do is you usually want to a few things to avoid a void rhetorical questions and avoid sounding like a movie trailer often when people write their queries they try to write their query as if it's the back of the book synopsis which does these things and that's why I mention them usually the editors are not wanting you know what if you couldn't you know they usually want to avoid those if you've got a good one you can use it but mostly you want it you want to start your query with a description of so these are kind of the avoid you don't want to sound like a movie trailer just let me let me tell you that you want to have one paragraph about you and one about this is about you slash backs and a one paragraph book summary so first paragraph my name is Brandon Sanderson I am a grad student when I was writing these a dreamin University studying writing I have sent you my epic fantasy novel titled elantris it is two hundred and forty thousand words long with a focus on an interesting magic system we talked at the world fantasy convention in Montreal I mentioned this book to you you sound very interested in it so I'm saying this is this is why I'm submitting or something like that or on your blog post you mentioned you know remember the personal connection you mentioned you like this or you know I like I have loved reading The Dresden Files I know that you are the editor on this on these books I'm in you know I've very impressed with them and I think have something of a similar writing style or flair this is why I've sent the book to you something like that brief explanation and you know facts about the book it is an urban fantasy with a strong female protagonist set in 1920s London something like that okay then your one sentence book summary these are hard because basically what you've got to do is you've got to boil your book down to one interesting thing that you can talk about don't try and tell the whole book try and talk about one interesting thing and imagine someone was walking along in the bookstore and they they're like what's your book about for Mistborn I always said my story was about a gang of thieves who decide to rob the Dark Lord and try and rip him off bribe his armies away from him and overthrow the Empire quick synopsis like that and then the second parent who has to be you know the the main protagonist is a 16 year old girl who's recruited into this team and trained to use the magic that they know how to use because they realize they're all too easily identifiable and they need a new face to act as their mole among the nobility and that's much that's it that's my book summary two sentences of something interesting with what the main kind of plot hook is and the mant what the what's interesting about the main character when something happens your protagonist pursues a goal but will he succeed when antagonist provides opposition yeah basically yep you don't want to give the whole book okay you want to get across just in one paragraph something cool avoid lots of new names okay you can name your protagonist but don't say in the world of Garth snap young diffa lamb is a aspiring fling flinger and he decides that to join the fling fling or group net yet I mean stay away stay you know we have so many cool names don't use those okay give yourself like one maybe two names all right stay away from them Jane yeah yeah yeah yeah you probably should you probably should yeah I always wrote them this way but yeah yeah that's a good point it's a good point so you can learn how to write a killer query letter online I can give you these little kind of advice the real thing that comes into it is try and boil your book down to one cool concept that you can explain to someone in one sentence the strange attractor will help you with this what is familiar and what is strange and how does the combination of the two of them make something interesting okay yeah do you mention the series nope no no no no no no no you can if you really feel like it say this is a standalone book but has serious potential don't scare the editor off with it this is the first book of my thirty book epic fantasy series and yeah I would just I would just say this is my book and you really your first book guys should have a good ending and should stand on its own don't be sending out anything that's that doesn't do that okay even if it's part of a series make that entity satisfying that's a big thing that I feel personally artistically you should be doing with your books particularly when it an author that nobody knows yet okay so practice this online practice taking there by reading online practice taking going to films with your friends and then afterwards say can we boil this down to the two or three sentence you know one sentence about a character one sentence about a conflict one sentence about a cool concept you know what what what in this movie would how would we pitch it if we were writing this or you do it with books that you all know what's the you know what's the pitch for Star Wars what's the pitch for Indiana Jones these sort of things and see if you can do it and that will help you you you it's gonna kill you because you can't put all the cool stuff in it that you want to but you have to do it anyway yeah it's a great way to get stories yeah yep yep and then then then turn it and make it your own yeah all right so synopsis outline people have different definitions on what these are usually this is like a one to two page and this is like a three to five page but see if you can figure out what their own definition is and if you can't find it use the like I would say the two to three pager for it's not sis or an outline okay and in this you can go more into depth this is just two pages of my story starts here here's what's interesting about this this is where the conflict goes yada yada yada and here's the cool climax do not leave out the cool climax editors don't want to be surprised editors want to know that your story has a good ending okay yes no it's good performance and offices and a chord outline and then just adjust them as you submit or you write I write one from scratch bad and this one the paragraph in here would become my pitch if I met editors and they actually asked for one like when you're at this con and you're talking yet about what they find exciting and all these things you say you know I have a book that you might want to read I send it to you most of the time they'll say yeah here's my card send me a sample chapters sometimes they will say yeah what's your book about that is when you pull out this thing that you have practiced saying to your friends a hundred times so you can get it off really fast don't make it sound like it's like you've said it a hundred times make it sound like it's exciting that you're just talking but really you want to go one paragraph and give them this thing okay be ready to fire that off when they ask for it when a reader you know you when your friends say I'm gonna maybe I'll read your book what's it about you want to be able to fire this one off okay when you get really good you'll have like four or five of them and you'll tailor them to the people person walking along that you know asking about your book the why a editor that you said Mistborn till you say it's about a 16 year old girl who the science fiction editor you say you know it's a high story where everyone has a different magical talent and they're gonna pull them all together to use and pull off this awesome heist to the fantasy editor you say you know the person who does a lot more fantasy you say imagine if they prophesied here who's supposed to save the world failed that is a rhetorical question but you know what if what if the hero failed so I broke my own rule there but what if the hero failed what if you know game this cast of plucky sidekicks and they win on this quest and then failed Dark Lord took over the world that one I usually do is like a three paragraph or someone's really interested and then I go into the gang of thieves and stuff and then things like that so you know you can have a few of them you can tailor depending on what the what the person you know likes alright now but you could I was terrible these back then I've only learned to do them now since I'm unpublished which you know is also kind of ironic alright movie deals we're gonna go very quickly through movie deals because by the time you're getting movie deals you should have an agent who can talk to you through all this basically to understand movie deals what you want to understand is people will usually come to you rather than you going to them I've only just been started to be able to go to people and say here's this cool project I'm going to put it up you know I'm gonna be shopping it around are you interested and things like that and I still don't get very far with that I was able to do that with Legion but Steelheart I still I had to have it published before they would even still buy the rights on it so usually you'll wait til they come to you what you're looking for is the body option we talked about options correct no didn't yeah we talked about options we talked about options they're going to option and license usually what option periods have been our eighteen months eighteen months twelve months so it's a contract that says on execution of the contract they pay you around this is a really rough figure ten percent of the final buyout price so Alcatraz was 500k it was at which 35 K so it wasn't quite the ten percent all right then eighteen months they get to sit on it and try and develop a film based on it so that you know the idea is that they kind of own the rights but they kind of don't they're optioning them you can't sell them to anyone else they have this time to try and get things going and things like that at the end of eighteen months they usually play the same amount again and then are at the end of that 18 months they usually play like a smaller amount for a smaller and that's what it was for Alcatraz 35 35 25 on Alcatraz these two went against the 500k if they ever made the movie they would pay me the remaining and the 25 didn't for whatever reason okay so this is how a movie deal works you get paid 35,000 or whatever like if you're if your movies going to be smaller budget it'll be smaller a lot of movie options like 7 or 10k or 15 yeah you get the rights back mm-hmm yep and they get any of these points can decide not to pay any more and just and just not re-upped at which point then you have selling if someone else yep no I don't think you can I don't think that you can depends on the contract but I believe you can I'm having real trouble getting the money out cuz this was my first one I'm like ooh now but I think on Legion on Legion it was less and Liege it was it was it was like 12 or something like that and then like 7 and 7 or something like that but then on Legion it was there was an episode payment if an episode gets made you make like 10 more for every episode or something like that it was some structure I don't know what the actual money was but that was for it that was a television deal so on that one the idea is that you don't get paid a lot unless it gets turned into a show and then they do 13 episodes and then suddenly you've made a lot right so so that's what you're looking for on that so basically this is the money you're going to get if they promise you anything more you're probably never going to see it alright if they burnish you a percentage of the profit movies don't make profit no movie in the history of movies has ever made a profit because what they call Hollywood accounting Google Hollywood accounting they'll talk about it on the ideas that they owe their investors all this money their investors being the parent corporation or things like that and since they can never pay them back everything they're owed guess what the money movie never makes any money this was spoofed in the in the the movie the producers which kind of did this play on this none of them know movie has ever made profit Hey nope nope this is nope this is why the the writer of Forrest Gump sued them because he was promised a percentage of the profit and the movie didn't make any profit go read up on that thing what happened with Peter Jackson I don't know the specifics so you can't really quote me on this but I understand what happened with him is newline was required to pay him a certain percentage of the money made off the DVD sales and so they made a dummy company and sold them the DVD rights for like a penny and probably not that but like you know a hundred thousand and then paid him his money based on that and then the dummy company went and sold it for thirty-five billion or whatever it is they made and he didn't get anything off of that that's why Peter Jackson was suing I don't know the details that's the scuttlebutt but that's you know yeah who knows if that's true or not but so you will not see any more money on that there are some some ways to get a little more money one is the screenwriting if you are good at screenwriting you can make it for your required to MIT that you write the first draft they will throw it away but they will pay you a certain screenwriting fee which is mandated by the writers guild in California if you do this you will have to join the Writers Guild the Union just be aware of that but then you will get the fee that they are required to pay you which is actually fairly substantial so another thing is you can do you can get a producer cutter if you get a producer credit they can you can they can be forced you know pay you whatever to be a producer and then your name gets listed as one of the producers and then they hope you never show up to use the chair they're required to have for you on the set or whatever but you can get that there's all sorts of things like this nobody gives a percentage of like the merchandising anymore ever since Lucas got him on that one but but you can fight over it and get like one half of 1% you can get bonuses if you say like if the movie makes according to varieties reporting it makes a hundred million dollars I am required to get this extra payment if it hits this threshold that you can do but don't try to do anything for profit and make profit okay when they sign this deal you are giving away the rights okay Hollywood won't buy it if you're not you are making a deal with hopefully very nice people who represent the devil not necessarily devil but maybe you know that means that you have no say in what they do you have no you will not be able to light merchandise a lot of your merchandise after that t-shirts and things you are selling to them the rights to do all of this they can make as many sequels as they want and they will pay you less and less for each of the sequels because the argument is once the film has been made and is making money it's no longer your success that is driving people to see the sequels it's the success of the original film so you will make less and less yeah book in the series yeah yep what's that yes you they won't buy it without the series unless you are really powerful JK Rowling might have been able to do that or something like that but yeah they're not going to buy this remember how Hollywood is Hollywood is a crapshoot they're trying to make some films the ones that flop are paid for by the ones that are successful if they can't then take the successful ones and make sequels after them off of them which are the sure things that's where they actually make money then they are not going to buy the rights it's not worth it to
