New answers tagged publishing
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It's done all the time, Charles Stross's first two Laundry Files "novels" were in fact collections of earlier short fiction, albeit somewhat edited. The reverse is also done, this is called serialisation where large works are broken into small sections for publication in magazines.
You do need to make sure your contractual obligations are compatible with ...
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You can't plagiarize yourself.
It's actually pretty common for writers to turn a short story (or several) into a novel. Your only issues are about copyright.
If you self-publish the stories, you of course retain the copyright. If you use a traditional publisher (including magazines, websites, etc), you will have a contract (if you do not have a written ...
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Consider Nightfall by Issac Asimov & Robert Silverberg.
The novel was published in 1990, but it was actually an expansion of a short story that Asimov originally wrote in 1941.
Unless you have a contract with a publisher that legally prevents it, you can do whatever you like with your own work.
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From the software world we have the phrase "Test early, and test often".
In the writing world this mindset works well with writing-circles and writing focused-social environments where you can begin digging into the good and bad of a piece as soon as possible.
It is not remotely wrong to begin a process of constructive criticism and feedback before you ...
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Ask the Hungarian
TL;DR
Unsurprisingly, this question has a mathematical solution based on the Hungarian algorithm.
I have not done the calculations, but I imagine that1 the typical answer is:
Always ask for feedback from the very beginning. Start with more feedback from the more willing/less skilled beta-readers early on. Save the feedback of less ...
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Liquid's excellent answer gives the right advice, but I wanted to add the fact that there's a good general rule that covers all such questions:
The more current something is, the quicker it goes stale (and the more dated it will seem in the future). This goes across all genres and even across art forms. If a story is ripped from the headlines, if a song ...
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There is no set time --this needs to be a personal determination. Getting criticism too early, or in the wrong frame of mind, or from the wrong person can potentially shut down your muse, or shunt your creativity away from the things that resonate the most with you. But if you never get criticism, you're likely to end up writing only for yourself, and if ...
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I'd say that you would do well to compile a list for yourself of the type of criticism that you are looking for. Because what you'll get, if you throw your work out to readers without a specific task for the reader, is everything ranging from people deciding not to read it alt all, people saying 'Looks great!' (and you suspect they didn't read it either), ...
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at what point to ask for constructive critisism.
It depends on how you write. Some people plot out their novels in great detail, every foreshadowing, plot turn and twist. They know their characters backward and forward, and everything that will change about them during the story. So when they are done with Chapter One, and have finished X drafts of it, ...
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You can ask people for advice/ constructive criticism at any stage of writing, but I would refrain from giving beta readers huge chunks of text at a time (like 40k words) unless they're professionals.
Usually, I divide my work into manageable units that kind of make sense on their own - chapters, short stories, etc, and ask people to give me feedback.
Ash'...
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Satire is best served hot.
In my opinion, you should try to publish it as soon as it's ready.
If you find an agent or a publishing company interested in the novel they'll give you their (probably very valid) inputs on how to market it and when it would be best to publish it. Chances are that they will have good insights on this, since it's their line of ...
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When you think the work is ready, probably sounds a bit daft but there is no hard and fast rule about when a piece is ready for review; you have to make a judgement call about putting it out to a beta-reader, or readers, to get feedback. It may also be useful to put a draft out to a beta-reader when you don't feel that it's ready but you do feel stuck, fresh ...
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I don't think there are standards. I would NOT include any personal information that doesn't add to your credibility in the main topics you write about.
In the modern world, I would not even include the town I live in; perhaps the State or region.
But if someone writes about homosexuals and is one, it lends credibility; if someone writes sci-fi and is an ...
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I'm not aware of any specific examples, but yes it's possible.
For your question about ISBNs, it's important to understand that the ISBN is an identifier to the publishing of the book (roughly the FRBR Manifestation). Reprintings don't typically get a new ISBN number, but changes in packaging (hardback vs. paperback vs. large print hardback) would.
(...
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Assuming you aren't self-publishing, all concerns about the font-size and typography belong to the final publisher (unless you're playing fancy games with fonts, which is rare, and probably not a good idea for most authors). Instead of worrying about pages, you should focus on word count. 50,000 is generally considered the bare minimum for a viable novel (...
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