Yog-Sothoth

"Nor is it to be thought that man is either the oldest or the last of earth's masters, or that the common bulk of life and substances walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men somtimes know them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man's truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them. They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones where Their seal is engraven, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again."

Yog's Law

Money Flows Toward the Writer

Many years ago a story about me and my writing appeared in a local newspaper. No big thing -- small town newspapers print lots of such stories. Heck, they even report on birthday parties. But this story got me a phonecall from a gent who lives about forty miles south of me, in a depressed papermill town. He wanted to know how much it cost me to publish my books.

(Note: This isn't an uncommon question for published writers to get from beginning writers.)

I explained, naturally, that publishers paid me, not the other way around.

Then his story came out. It seems that he'd written a book, and copyrighted it at the Library of Congress. To his wonder and surprise, not long after an agent wrote to him, offering to represent him (for a small fee). Things progressed, he paid the fee every month, he paid additional fees for submitting his work to publishers. Then, one day, wonder! Joy! The agent wrote to say that he'd gotten a publishing offer. From Commonwealth.

From Commonweath! They were, at that time, advertising themselves as the fastest-growing publisher in Canada.

Commonwealth explained that, since first novels are hard to sell, that the author would have to share the cost of publication. The fellow who called me on the phone told me he'd mortgaged his house to raise the money.

Got that, everyone? Mortgaged his house in an economically depressed area, to pay a vanity press run by blatant scammers. Talk about believing in your work. Talk about betting the farm.

(You're probably wondering how a crooked agent goes about collecting a 15% commission on a vanity-published book. It's easy! Say the author pays $4,500. The agent figures that 15% is $675, and adds that to the fee. The author doesn't pay $4,500, he pays $5,175. Slick, right?)

I don't know if he lost his house -- but it's possible that he did. No one but the people running the scheme made money.

That radicalized me. Since then I've seen it as my duty to warn naive writers of the dangers of the fee-charging agents and the pay-to-play vanity presses. But how to do it? What simple meme could spread out in the new-writer community to serve as a tripwire? Answer: Yog's Law.

Money flows toward the writer.

No, that doesn't mean that the author should get paper and ink for free, or that he won't pay for postage. It does mean that when someone comes along and says, "Sure, kid, you can be a Published Author! It'll only cost you $300!" the writer will know that something's wrong. A fee is a fee is a fee, whether they call it a reading fee, a marketing fee, a promotion fee, or a cheese-and-crackers fee.

Is this perfect? No. Scammers have come up with some elaborate ways to avoid activating it. But it's still a good and useful tool, and will save a lot of grief. Any time an agent or publisher asks for money, the answer should be "No!"

Bottom-feeding, scum-sucking fee-charging "agents" and "publishers" cruise the Library of Congress listings for newly-copyrighted works and send out letters and flyers, some of them quite slick, in an attempt to lure the innocent and separate them from their cash. Just recall Yog's Law when you feel like reaching for your checkbook. It won't keep you from being sadder-but-wiser. It will keep you from being sadder-but-wiser-and-poorer.

Yog Sysop

James D. Macdonald has been a professional and semi-professional sysop since 1991, when he first took on the name and the role of "Yog Sysop" on GEnie's SFRT. By the end of his term there, the SFRT had grown over 300%, and 1,000 unique addresses per day were visiting with Yog. The SFRTs on GEnie in those days had about 40,000 unique visitors per year. There are still a goodly number of both fans and pros who know Macdonald only as "Yog." That's a name you'll find on his convention badges. You can learn more about Yog's life, and about his writing, at Doyle & Macdonald.

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