But now I’m just about done.  I’m sending preliminary copies to a few people to edit, mailing out final contracts, and tying up some loose ends.  So without further ado, I can now say the following with 100% certainty:

Release Date: Late February, and no later than February 29!

Price: $14.95

In all, there are 14 short stories, ten poems, and one illustration.  The youngest author is 13, the oldest author is 22, with the average at 17.  The longest story is 15 pages long; the shortest is 2.  Poems are usually around 20 lines.

The preliminary copies are 123, but that’s without the 101 Tips for Writers, Table of Contents, Copyright Page, Acknowledgments, and an introduction.  So the final should be 150 pages.  There are quotes, writing tips, random factoids, and even Bartemius.

Anyways…

I’m hoping the $14.95 price will enable a lot of people to buy the book.  That does not include shipping, which will probably be $5.  However, as this will be through Amazon, just buy another book for $10 and get free shipping.  So start saving your money now if necessary!

By the way, you will know when it’s available for sale.  Trust me.  There’ll be newsletters, announcements, postings, etc.  By the time I’m done, you’ll have to be living under a rock that is buried twenty miles deep to not know the Young Writers Journal is available.

So today I thought I would concentrate common mistakes people have made in submitting their work.

When submitting your work, follow the guidelines!  I suppose a lot of people simply don’t because they view it as a chore or something like that.  Well guess what?  Because you didn’t read the guidelines, I have to spend a lot more time reading over your work.  Those guidelines exist for a reason!

Fortunately, most people did, and what is funny to me is that I can predict based just on your age how much you followed the guidelines, and which ones you violated.  If you’re 13 through 16, you most likely followed all of them, but thought it would be cool to submit your work in a special font.  You know what the first thing I do is?  Make sure it’s in Times New Roman.

If you’re 17 through 20, you most likely didn’t follow the guidelines at all.  A few in this group did, but a great number look as if they just got the e-mail address then sent it in without bothering to read anything.  The font is good, but the header’s are non-existent, and sometimes they even forgot to put their name or a title on the thing.

And if you’re 20 and above, good for you!  You followed the guidelines to the letter!

This time around, Brad and I did not disqualify anyone based on whether or not they follow the guidelines.  However, next time, I will simply delete your work without even bothering to read a single word.

And trust me, if I am this annoyed with people not following the guidelines, just think of how annoyed a publisher would be.  My advice is to not do anything fancy; keep it simple and keep it to the letter.  If you’re enclosing a cover letter, make it short.  From my own experience, people don’t read more than two sentences of what you give them.  Here at YWS, I’ll even tell those who PM me with a long message to make it shorter.  The reasoning is because much of what people write in a cover letter or message is just fluff when all you want is the down and dirty of it.

So that’s sort of my rant for today!   But it’s not all negative; not nearly so.  While many are unable to read guidelines, everyone who I’m complaining about wrote excellent stories & poems, and there is no doubt in mind that at least a couple of them will eventually have novel published.  As I’ve said before, I think people are really going to be shocked at the quality of the Journal.

Yesterday, I got nothing done owing to one of my very good friend’s wedding.  It was actually very nice, and it gave me the opportunity to show off my dance moves to my girlfriend, who for some reason thinks I actually dance rather well.  I also managed to catch up with a lot of friends from college, and it was just a great day overall.  What made it even better is I’ve known both the bride and the groom since my freshman year of college, and it’s always nice to see two friends get married.

Then today I went to a Christmas party at an old friend of the family’s place.  The father was a classmate of my dad’s at the Naval Academy, and we were next door neighbors back when we all lived at the Submarine Training Base in Groton, Connecticut.  So it was really nice getting to see them, and I met a lot of other interesting people there as well.

So I have good reasons for not making much headway, but my goal is to contact everyone by tomorrow night.  After all, what better Christmas gift then getting a publishing agreement in your e-mail box?  Plus, I have nothing to do tomorrow except for some minor Christmas shopping (it’s now a tradition of mine to not finish my Christmas shopping until Christmas Eve), and midnight mass, which is at midnight.

And as I have said before, I think people will really be pleased with the overall quality of the Journal.  You’ve got science-fiction, romance, general fiction, and humor.  In a few days, I will also be posting some short excerpts, and perhaps even a poem or two.  The only part I am disappointed in is that more people didn’t submit artwork.  Adam_Atlantian did the cover, and Jennafina has a piece appearing, but we’ve got nothing else.   I wish there was more because I would love to match up each poem & story with a piece of artwork, but I suppose I didn’t publicize that part of the Journal too much.  Next time though, if you’re an artist, then submit your work!

I’m also getting a very good feeling about the Journal.  The anticipation among the membership at YWS is higher than I expected, and I have a good gut feeling about this.  While gut feelings don’t necessarily mean anything, I’ve found out many times in the past that my gut feeling was right.

Tomorrow though, I will have to put aside many hours to edit the stories.  With poems, you can forgive a misuse of punctuation as you can always argue that was the author’s intent.  But with stories, the punctuation & grammar must be spot on.  So while I end up only having to make 5 to 10 small changes per page, it takes me five minutes to read that one page.  Some of these stories are quite long, so it’s going to take a while.  I plan to just plop myself in front of the TV tomorrow with my lap top, plenty of diet Coke, some twinkies, and some Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends.   After all, I did my exercise today so technically I don’t have to exercise tomorrow (and indeed, it can be bad for you!).

My goal of course is to contact everyone by the end of tomorrow.  I’m sending the publishing agreements via e-mail.  For anyone over 18, they can sign it by merely typing their name into the document.  But for those under 18, I need a physical signature as I also need their parent’s signature.  So I expect not to have all the publishing agreements signed & completed for a few weeks, which is fine.  Of course, if you are receiving one, please send it back as soon as you can!

It is very exciting though to feel this thing coming together.  Six months ago, this was just an idea.  Now thanks to Brad and myself, it is becoming a reality.  The stories and poems are here, and now I just need to put them together in book format, which I am expecting to not be very difficult.

For those planning to buy a copy, it looks like one copy will cost between $19 and $19.50.  Of course, that price is very much subject to change once I start to get a better idea of the length of the book.  As before, it will be made available on Amazon.