Today was kind of a bear, mainly because the replacement for the dead printer came and required entirely too much time to install, plus I had to run the old printer over to FedEx so that I don't get charged for a new one.
Still, I was able to input all the corrections, and I send out advance review copies. Tomorrow--the large-print edition!
M. Louisa Locke has another one of her rare-but-excellent posts up, in which she talks about why she's doing what she's doing. I feel like I've been fairly risk-adverse with my career as well. But you reach a certain age, and it starts to feel like it's now or never, right? (OK, fine, I've actually reached that age more than once.)
She writes:
When I experiment with a new price point or a free promotion and then analyze the outcome, I am engaged in an intellectual exercise that, to a degree, counteracts even a negative sales result. In my mind, my book hasn’t failed and I haven’t failed; the experiment has failed and I have learned something from it.
And it's interesting to me, because I'm rather obviously not a natural at marketing. And yet, here I am with a marketing plan (yes, marketing AND planning! Together! Me! It's shocking), and I'm not freaked out, because it's going to be an opportunity to learn.
I've already learned a lot: Last year was a big one for learning about production. I learned about positioning a book correctly for its audience. And this year I've learned that marketing strategies that don't make me want to hang myself do, in fact, exist.
Like they say, education is the one thing they can never take from you (unless they hit you on the head really, really hard). And lucky me, I enjoy learning. Which is good, because I still have a lot to find out!
I had the kid yesterday, so no progress was made, but today I finished reading over the layout. I'll input the corrections tomorrow, and then start sending it out!
Passive Guy wrote a nice little post today in response to a question about an earlier link to a post by Ann Voss Peterson over at Joe Konrath's blog about Harlequin's horrible, horrible contracts. Definitely the initial post is worth reading--the terms she describes are so bad that someone asked PG (who is a lawyer) if there's any kind of protection for authors when they sign contracts.
The answer? NO. If you sign a contract with a publisher (or an agent, for that matter), "the laws governing business contracts assume that each party to such contracts will watch out for themselves."
Got that? You are business partners. That means that 1. whether you like it or not, you are a businessperson, running a business, and 2. you and your publisher are on equal footing, even if your publisher has an enormous legal department and you'd be hard-pressed to afford the type of lawyer who advertises on bus benches. There's nothing in there about how you can ignore all that business stuff because it is too complicated and you are too artsy. Even if you're signing with a publisher to avoid learning about all that business-y crap--the law does not care.
PG goes on:
When you sign up for a new Mastercard with your bank, you are wearing your consumer hat and can assume you have some protections against unfair and deceptive contract practices. When you sign a publishing or agency agreement, you have no consumer hat on and you should not assume a “standard” contract will be fair or equitable for you. You should also not assume you will be able to easily get out of that contract if you later find it to be unfair.
Note that the publisher has no special legal obligation to take care of you. They are under no obligation to make sure you get a fair share or to be sure you can earn enough to make a living from your books.
In fact, Donna Fasano commented:
While attending an RWA conference, a friend of mine stood up and asked a panel of HQ editors and other ‘suits’ how they expected their authors to live on the paltry wages they paid. Their blunt answer, “We don’t.” They said they warn authors not to quit their day jobs; they tell them not to expect to earn a living as a writer. They stress that this is a hobby, not a career.
Isn't that sweet? Once again, writers aren't supposed to make money. The people who publish their writing are--you don't see any of those suits forgoing their paychecks, do you?
I read through, corrected, and input corrections for about half the layout. Whoo!
Well, at least I have the corrected layout all printed, but I didn't sleep last night--sometimes this happens. I tried to caffeinate up, but when I looked at the first page of Trust I just couldn't process it. So I decided to read someone else's book, but that's not going so well, either. I think I'm just going to watch TV and go to bed early....
You know, I keep reading variations of the above sentiment. Your first book is going to suck. New writers don't know a damned thing. Write your first novel, sweat blood over it, and then throw it away! For God's sake, don't expose anyone to your first book--think of the children! It's radioactive! The first novel ALWAYS SUCKS!!!
Le sigh.
This is one of those pieces of advice where I can totally see why the people giving it think they are being helpful. The problem with it is that it's not true and is basically meaningless to boot.
Now, you might look at me and say, Why would you think this? I mean, I wrote professionally for the better part of two decades before publishing Trang. I even ditched my first novel: I wrote the first draft in the summer of 1999, went back to it a few years later (I had to finish my degree and earn a living), tried to polish it up, read Of Human Bondage, and promptly trashed it. I mean, trashed it--I have no idea if I have a copy of it anywhere any more, and given that I've had two computers crash in the meantime, I probably don't. And I don't care: There was absolutely nothing I had to say in my novel that Of Human Bondage hadn't already said.
The problem is, I wrote a story in high school about a young lady who accidentally "falls" into a fairy dimension and has to, among other things, fight off a vampire, because it turns out that vampires are really a kind of fairy--all while dressed in only her underwear. It won a prestigious national award.
So...did that story suck?
Before I ever even attempted to finish that novel that was merely drafted in 1999, I wrote a Firefly fanfic novel. Now if you ask me, I think that story could have been made much better--I knew I was never going to get paid for it, so it's just a first draft, and my first drafts are never as good as my final drafts.
But because we Browncoats wanted to know if there were going to be official Firefly novels (and because a friend of mine was really nagging me about getting serious about this novel-writing thing--she is thanked in Trang), I submitted it to the publisher of the Buffy novels. I got back a truly lovely rejection letter praising my novel very generously but noting that, at that time, they hadn't gotten the right to the Firefly novels. (Later on they did, but no Firefly novels were forthcoming--what's up with that, Joss?) You know, come to think of it, that first letter set the tone for every rejection I ever got.
So...did that story suck?
Toss in the fact that many writers clearly degenerate over time. They get bored with their own books or they get sufficiently "prestigious" that no one is allowed to fix their horrible, horrible writing or they get super-lazy because they'll get paid no matter how awful their stuff is.
And even the most talented authors write stuff that sucks. Let's put it this way: The Bad Hemingway awards exist because, while there is nothing quite as good as good Hemingway, there is also nothing quite as bad as bad Hemingway. (I know this is true, because I've read it. Apparently Hemingway asked someone to be sure to destroy his bad, never-published crap after he died, but when that happened, the "friend" decided to publish it all instead. The moral of the story? Burn it yourself, or use computers that crash.) If it didn't bother William Faulkner to publish Sanctuary, I don't know why on Earth publishing something that might suck should bother you. Authors tend to be judged by their highs, not their lows.
We're not even getting into the question of, What sucks? I thought the Twilight series sucked (not just the first book, but because it really wimps out at the end, the whole series), but there's at least $160 million saying that I'm wrong. You shouldn't even get me started again on Ayn Rand or John Updike, but both are considered classics in some circles (you know, like RAPIST circles).
The "Your first novel SUCKS!!! Burn it NOW!!!!!" is not that different from the advice, "Put a poem in a drawer for 10 years before looking at it again" (which is cited on Rusch's blog as advice that shouldn't be taken literally, but you shouldn't attempt to access that blog right now): It's an attempt to force a writer to attain a goal that can be reached by other means.
What is that goal? You need to apply the same standards to your own writing that you would apply to someone else's.
In other words, your novel--be it the first or the hundredth--needs to be something you wouldn't mind reading if someone else wrote it. That's really all that matters.
As they say: You can't make everybody happy, so you might as well make yourself happy. The problem with the notion that your first novel MUST suck (which has got to be news to the kid who wrote Eragon--you know, I had no idea that book was self-published first. Awesome) is that it feeds into the belief system that you are a tiny, little, worthless, talentless piece of crap who should not dare to attempt to brave the big, bad system of publishing that is filled with people who know SO much more than you do. It feeds the Three Ps, and it encourages you to do: NOTHING.
And there is nothing so risky as doing nothing. Buying lottery tickets is better than doing nothing, and trust me, I have never bought a lottery ticket. Doing nothing, especially as a writer, will unequivocally result in failure--100% of the time.
I've mentioned that I'm a fan of Joss Whedon's work, so I've been keeping an eye on the reviews for The Avengers, since I'm probably going to break habit and actually go see it in the theater. For the most part, critics seem to like it, but a rather notable exception occurred yesterday in The Wall Street Journal.
That reviewer clearly did not enjoy the movie, and he singles out a slow first act as a problem. But he puts "an asterisk" onto his lack of enjoyment and goes on to note (emphasis added):
Now, about that asterisk. I saw "The Avengers" in 3-D at a screening in Hollywood at the ArcLight, a multiplex known for excellent projection. As soon as the opening credits hit the screen it was obvious that something was wrong; the images were dim and badly out of register. I should have known that the problem was a dead battery in my glasses, since the same thing had happened—in a different theater—during last year's disastrous screening of "Clash of the Titans." Instead, I sat there stewing with frustration, and assuming the projection was to blame, since a couple of friends who'd come with me were having the same problem. One of them went out to complain, but nothing happened. A few minutes later he went out again and returned with replacement glasses for himself, his wife and me. Someone had told him the glasses were the culprit, but those batteries were dead too.
The third try did the trick; he passed out three pairs of glasses that worked. By then, though, I'd been distracted for most of the first act, and felt more empathy than I would have preferred for Bruce Banner's problems with anger management. That's the main reason I'm recounting this here. The technical screw-up was so upsetting that it may have skewed my judgment about the movie as a whole. I think I settled down, but I can't be sure, and I can't omit mention of the problem from my review.
The other reason has to do with the status of theatrical exhibitors as the weakest link in the 3-D process. (Some theaters have already been caught reducing light levels on the screen to extend the life of expensive projector lamps.) What happened to me and others at the ArcLight the other night was the height of absurdity. Here we were watching a production that cost somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter-billion dollars. Yet our enjoyment was compromised by button batteries that can't cost more than a buck a pop. And we were an invited audience, privileged to see an advance screening, not moviegoers paying hefty premiums for their 3-D experience. I shudder to think what they see.
Your book. Your book is the quarter-billion dollar movie extravaganza--because, let's face it, the time and energy and money required by book production is but a small fraction of the time, energy, and lost revenue required to write the freaking thing in the first place.
The one-dollar button battery? That's your copy editing and your book formatting and layout.
When done well, these things cannot make someone enjoy something they wouldn't enjoy anyway--this critic may have disliked Avengers even more if he had been able to actually see the first act. This makes less-experienced writers believe that these things are trivial and don't matter. The problem is, when these things are done poorly, they can turn a potential fan into someone who goes, "Meh, I didn't really enjoy it."
You want people to get "swept up in the story"? PONY UP FOR GOOD BUTTON BATTERIES, ok?
Sorry, I forgot to post this yesterday: I finished inputting the copy editor's corrections, yay. Again the lack of big layout errors made the process go much faster. But then I tried to print out the corrected manuscript, and my printer died. Like, it's really, really dead. It's less than a year old and still under warranty, so they're sending me a replacement. Today I'm going to my sister's house to print out the rest of it, although I won't be getting much done because, you know, I'll be at my sister's house. Still, I should be able to get it read one more time pretty quickly, and then I'll send out advance review copies and start laying out the large-print edition.
If you haven't heard, Kris Rusch has given permission for people to re-post her hacked post. Also, she thinks it might just be malware, not a targeted hacking--more on that here. Anyway, I'm going to re-post it because I think it's important; if you want to re-post it, too, she is requesting that you include the copyright notice at the end.
Here it is:
Welcome to one of my other websites. This one is for my mystery persona Paladin, from my Spade/Paladin short stories. She has a website in the stories, and I thought it would be cool to have the website online. It’s currently the least active of my sites, so I figured it was perfect for what I needed today.
Someone hacked my website. Ye Olde Website Guru and I are repairing the damage but it will take some time. The hacker timed the hack to coincide with the posting of my Business Rusch column. Since the hack happened 12 hours after I originally posted the column, I’m assuming that the hacker doesn’t like what I wrote, and is trying to shut me down. Aaaaah. Poor hacker. Can’t argue on logic, merits, or with words, so must use brute force to make his/her/its point. Poor thing.
Since someone didn’t want you to see this post, I figure I’d better get it up ASAP. Obviously there’s something here someone objects to–which makes it a bit more valuable than usual.
Here’s the post, which I am reloading from my word file, so that I don’t embed any malicious code here. I’m even leaving off the atrocious artwork (which we’re redesigning) just to make sure nothing got corrupted from there.
The post directs you to a few links from my website. Obviously, those are inactive at the moment. Sorry about that. I hope you get something out of this post.
I’m also shutting off comments here, just to prevent another short-term hack. Also, I don’t want to transfer them over. If you have comments, send them via e-mail and when the site comes back up, I’ll post them. Mark them “comment” in the header of the e-mail. Thanks!
The Business Rusch: Royalty Statement Update 2012
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Over a year ago, I wrote a blog post about the fact that my e-book royalties from a couple of my traditional publishers looked wrong. Significantly wrong. After I posted that blog, dozens of writers contacted me with similar information. More disturbingly, some of these writers had evidence that their paper book royalties were also significantly wrong.
Writers contacted their writers’ organizations. Agents got the news. Everyone in the industry, it seemed, read those blogs, and many of the writers/agents/organizations vowed to do something. And some of them did.
I hoped to do an update within a few weeks after the initial post. I thought my update would come no later than summer of 2011.
I had no idea the update would take a year, and what I can tell you is—
Bupkis. Nada. Nothing. Zip. Zilch.
That doesn’t mean that nothing happened. I personally spoke to the heads of two different writers’ organizations who promised to look into this. I spoke to half a dozen attorneys active in the publishing field who were, as I mentioned in those posts, unsurprised. I spoke to a lot of agents, via e-mail and in person, and I spoke to even more writers.
The writers have kept me informed. It seems, from the information I’m still getting, that nothing has changed. The publishers that last year used a formula to calculate e-book royalties (rather than report actual sales) still use the formula to calculate e-book royalties this year.
I just got one such royalty statement in April from one of those companies and my e-book sales from them for six months were a laughable ten per novel. My worst selling e-books, with awful covers, have sold more than that. Significantly more.
To this day, writers continue to notify their writers’ organizations, and if those organizations are doing anything, no one has bothered to tell me. Not that they have to. I’m only a member of one writers’ organizations, and I know for fact that one is doing nothing.
But the heads of the organizations I spoke to haven’t kept me apprised. I see nothing in the industry news about writers’ organizations approaching/auditing/dealing with the problems with royalty statements. Sometimes these things take place behind the scenes, and I understand that. So, if your organization is taking action, please do let me know so that I can update the folks here.
The attorneys I spoke to are handling cases, but most of those cases are individual cases. An attorney represents a single writer with a complaint about royalties. Several of those cases got settled out of court. Others are still pending or are “in review.” I keep hearing noises about class actions, but so far, I haven’t seen any of them, nor has anyone notified me.
The agents disappointed me the most. Dean personally called an agent friend of ours whose agency handles two of the biggest stars in the writing firmament. That agent (having previously read my blog) promised the agency was aware of the problem and was “handling it.”
Two weeks later, I got an e-mail from a writer with that agency asking me if I knew about the new e-book addendum to all of her contracts that the agency had sent out. The agency had sent the addendum with a “sign immediately” letter. I hadn’t heard any of this. I asked to see the letter and the addendum.
This writer was disturbed that the addendum was generic. It had arrived on her desk—get this—without her name or the name of the book typed in. She was supposed to fill out the contract number, the book’s title, her name, and all that pertinent information.
I had her send me her original contracts, which she did. The addendum destroyed her excellent e-book rights in that contract, substituting better terms for the publisher. Said publisher handled both of that agency’s bright writing stars.
So I contacted other friends with that agency. They had all received the addendum. Most had just signed the addendum without comparing it to the original contract, trusting their agent who was (after all) supposed to protect them.
Wrong-o. The agency, it turned out, had made a deal with the publisher. The publisher would correct the royalties for the big names if agency sent out the addendum to every contract it had negotiated with that contract. The publisher and the agency both knew that not all writers would sign the addendum, but the publisher (and probably the agency) also knew that a good percentage of the writers would sign without reading it.
In other words, the publisher took the money it was originally paying to small fish and paid it to the big fish—with the small fish’s permission.
Yes, I’m furious about this, but not at the publisher. I’m mad at the authors who signed, but mostly, I’m mad at the agency that made this deal. This agency had a chance to make a good decision for all of its clients. Instead, it opted to make a good deal for only its big names.
Do I know for a fact that this is what happened? Yeah, I do. Can I prove it? No. Which is why I won’t tell you the name of the agency, nor the name of the bestsellers involved. (Who, I’m sure, have no idea what was done in their names.)
On a business level what the agency did makes sense. The agency pocketed millions in future commissions without costing itself a dime on the other side, since most of the writers who signed the addendum probably hadn’t earned out their advances, and probably never would.
On an ethical level it pisses me off. You’ll note that my language about agents has gotten harsher over the past year, and this single incident had something to do with it. Other incidents later added fuel to the fire, but they’re not relevant here. I’ll deal with them in a future post.
Yes, there are good agents in the world. Some work for unethical agencies. Some work for themselves. I still work with an agent who is also a lawyer, and is probably more ethical than I am.
But there are yahoos in the agenting business who make the slimy used car salesmen from 1970s films look like action heroes. But, as I said, that’s a future post.
I have a lot of information from writers, most of which is in private correspondence, none of which I can share, that leads me to believe that this particular agency isn’t the only one that used my blog on royalty statements to benefit their bestsellers and hurt their midlist writers. But again, I can’t prove it.
So I’m sad to report that nothing has changed from last year on the royalty statement front.
Except…
The reason I was so excited about the Department of Justice lawsuit against the five publishers wasn’t because of the anti-trust issues (which do exist on a variety of levels in publishing, in my opinion), but because the DOJ accountants will dig, and dig, and dig into the records of these traditional publishers, particularly one company named in the suit that’s got truly egregious business practices.
Those practices will change, if only because the DOJ’s forensic accountants will request information that the current accounting systems in most publishing houses do not track. The accounting system in all five of these houses will get overhauled, and brought into the 21st century, and that will benefit writers. It will be an accidental benefit, but it will occur.
The audits alone will unearth a lot of problems. I know that some writers were skeptical that the auditors would look for problems in the royalty statements, but all that shows is a lack of understanding of how forensic accounting works. In the weeks since the DOJ suit, I’ve contacted several accountants, including two forensic accountants, and they all agree that every pebble, every grain of sand, will be inspected because the best way to hide funds in an accounting audit is to move them to a part of the accounting system not being audited.
So when an organization like the DOJ audits, they get a blanket warrant to look at all of the accounting, not just the files in question. Yes, that’s a massive task. Yes, it will take years. But the change is gonna come.
From the outside.
Those of you in Europe might be seeing some of that change as well, since similar lawsuits are going on in Europe.
I do know that several writers from European countries, New Zealand, and Australia have written to me about similar problems in their royalty statements. The unifying factor in those statements is the companies involved. Again, you’d recognize the names because they’ve been in the news lately…dealing with lawsuits.
Ironically for me, those two blog posts benefitted me greatly. I had been struggling to get my rights back from one publisher (who is the biggest problem publisher), and the week I posted the blog, I got contacted by my former editor there, who told me that my rights would come back to me ASAP. Because, the former editor told me (as a friend), things had changed since Thursday (the day I post my blog), and I would get everything I needed.
In other words, let’s get the troublemaker out of the house now. Fine with me.
Later, I discovered some problems with a former agency. I pointed out the problems in a letter, and those problems got solved immediately. I have several friends who’ve been dealing with similar things from that agency, and they can’t even get a return e-mail. I know that the quick response I got is because of this blog.
I also know that many writers used the blog posts from last year to negotiate more accountability from their publishers for future royalties. That’s a real plus. Whether or not it happens is another matter because I noted something else in this round of royalty statements.
Actually, that’s not fair. My agent caught it first. I need to give credit where credit is due, and since so many folks believe I bash agents, let me say again that my current agent is quite good, quite sharp, and quite ethical.
My agent noticed that the royalty statements from one of my publishers were basket accounted on the statement itself. Which is odd, considering there is no clause in any of the contracts I have with that company that allows for basket accounting.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with basket accounting, this is what it means:
A writer signs a contract with Publisher A for three books. The contract is a three-book contract. One contract, three books. Got that?
Okay, a contract with a basket-accounting clause allows the publisher to put all three books in the same accounting “basket” as if the books are one entity. So let’s say that book one does poorly, book two does better, and book three blows out of the water.
If book three earns royalties, those royalties go toward paying off the advances on books one and two.
Like this:
Advance for book one: $10,000
Advance for book two: $10,000
Advance for book three: $10,000
Book one only earned back $5,000 toward its advance. Book two only earned $6,000 toward its advance.
Book three earned $12,000—paying off its advance, with a $2,000 profit.
In a standard contract without basket accounting, the writer would have received the $2,000 as a royalty payment.
But with basket accounting, the writer receives nothing. That accounting looks like this:
Advance on contract 1: $30,000
Earnings on contract 1: $23,000
Amount still owed before the advance earns out: $7,000
Instead of getting $2,000, the writer looks at the contract and realizes she still has $7,000 before earning out.
Without basket accounting, she would have to earn $5,000 to earn out Book 1, and $4,000 to earn out Book 2, but Book 3 would be paying her cold hard cash.
Got the difference?
Now, let’s go back to my royalty statement. It covered three books. All three books had three different one-book contracts, signed years apart. You can’t have basket accounting without a basket (or more than one book), but I checked to see if sneaky lawyers had inserted a clause that I missed which allowed the publisher to basket account any books with that publisher that the publisher chose.
Nope.
I got a royalty statement with all of my advances basket accounted because…well, because. The royalty statement doesn’t follow the contract(s) at all.
Accounting error? No. These books had be added separately. Accounting program error (meaning once my name was added, did the program automatically basket account)? Maybe.
But I’ve suspected for nearly three years now that this company (not one of the big traditional publishers, but a smaller [still large] company) has been having serious financial problems. The company has played all kinds of games with my checks, with payments, with fulfilling promises that cost money.
This is just another one of those problems.
My agent caught it because he reads royalty statements. He mentioned it when he forwarded the statements. I would have caught it as well because I read royalty statements. Every single one. And I compare them to the previous statement. And often, I compare them to the contract.
Is this “error” a function of the modern publishing environment? No, not like e-book royalties, which we’ll get back to in a moment. I’m sure publishers have played this kind of trick since time immemorial. Royalty statements are fascinating for what they don’t say rather than for what they say.
For example, on this particular (messed up) royalty statement, e-books are listed as one item, without any identification. The e-books should be listed separately (according to ISBN) because Amazon has its own edition, as does Apple, as does B&N. Just like publishers must track the hardcover, trade paper, and mass market editions under different ISBNs, they should track e-books the same way.
The publisher that made the “error” with my books had no identifying number, and only one line for e-books. Does that mean that this figure included all e-books, from the Amazon edition to the B&N edition to the Apple edition? Or is this publisher, which has trouble getting its books on various sites (go figure), is only tracking Amazon? From the numbers, it would seem so. Because the numbers are somewhat lower than books in the same series that I have on Amazon, but nowhere near the numbers of the books in the same series if you add in Apple and B&N.
I can’t track this because the royalty statement has given me no way to track it. I would have to run an audit on the company. I’m not sure I want to do that because it would take my time, and I’m moving forward.
That’s the dilemma for writers. Do we take on our publishers individually? Because—for the most part—our agents aren’t doing it. The big agencies, the ones who actually have the clout and the numbers to defend their clients, are doing what they can for their big clients and leaving the rest in the dust.
Writers’ organizations seem to be silent on this. And honestly, it’s tough for an organization to take on a massive audit. It’s tough financially and it’s tough politically. I know one writer who headed a writer’s organization a few decades ago. She spearheaded an audit of major publishers, and it cost her her writing career. Not many heads of organizations have the stomach for that.
As for intellectual property attorneys (or any attorney for that matter), very few handle class actions. Most handle cases individually for individual clients. I know of several writers who’ve gone to attorneys and have gotten settlements from publishers. The problem here is that these settlements only benefit one writer, who often must sign a confidentiality agreement so he can’t even talk about what benefit he got from that agreement.
One company that I know of has revamped its royalty statements. They appear to be clearer. The original novel that I have with that company isn’t selling real well as an e-book, and that makes complete sense since the e-book costs damn near $20. (Ridiculous.) The other books that I have with that company, collaborations and tie-ins, seem to be accurately reported, although I have no way to know. I do appreciate that this company has now separated out every single e-book venue into its own category (B&N, Amazon, Apple) via ISBN, and I can actually see the sales breakdown.
So that’s a positive (I think). Some of the smaller companies have accurate statements as well—or at least, statements that match or improve upon the sales figures I’m seeing on indie projects.
This is all a long answer to a very simple question: What’s happened on the royalty statement front in the past year?
A lot less than I had hoped.
So here’s what you traditionally published writers can do. Track your royalty statements. Compare them to your contracts. Make sure the companies are reporting what they should be reporting.
If you’re combining indie and traditional, like I am, make sure the numbers are in the same ballpark. Make sure your traditional Amazon numbers are around the same numbers you get for your indie titles. If they aren’t, look at one thing first: Price. I expect sales to be much lower on that ridiculous $20 e-book. If your e-books through your traditional publisher are $15 or more, then sales will be down. If the e-books from your traditional publisher are priced around $10 or less, then they should be somewhat close in sales to your indie titles. (Or, if traditional publishers are doing the promotion they claim to do, the sales should be better.)
What to do if they’re not close at all? I have no idea. I still think there’s a benefit to contacting your writers’ organizations. Maybe if the organization keeps getting reports of badly done royalty statements, someone will take action.
If you want to hire an attorney or an auditor, remember doing that will cost both time and money. If you’re a bestseller, you might want to consider it. If you’re a midlist writer, it’s probably not worth the time and effort you’ll put in.
But do yourself a favor. Read those royalty statements. If you think they’re bad, then don’t sign a new contract with that publisher. Go somewhere else with your next book.
I wish I could give you better advice. I wish the big agencies actually tried to use their clout for good instead of their own personal profits. I wish the writers’ organizations had done something.
As usual, it’s up to individual writers.
Don’t let anyone screw you. You might not be able to fight the bad accounting on past books, but make sure you don’t allow it to happen on future books.
That means that you negotiate good contracts, you make sure your royalty statements match those contracts, and you don’t sign with a company that puts out royalty statements that don’t reflect your book deal.
I’m quite happy that I walked away from the publisher I mentioned above years ago. I did so because I didn’t like the treatment I got from the financial and production side. The editor was—as editors often are—great. Everything else at the company sucked.
The royalty statement was just confirmation of a good decision for me.
I hope you make good decisions going forward.
Remember: read your royalty statements.
Good luck.
I need to thank everyone who commented, e-mailed, donated, and called because of last week’s post. When I wrote it, all I meant to do was discuss how we all go through tough times and how we, as writers, need to recognize when we’ve hit a wall. It seems I hit a nerve. I forget sometimes that most writers work in a complete vacuum, with no writer friends, no one except family, who much as they care, don’t always understand.
So if you haven’t read last week’s post, take a peek [link]. More importantly, look at the comments for great advice and some wonderful sharing. I appreciate them—and how much they expanded, added, and improved what I had to say. Thanks for that, everyone.
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“The Business Rusch: “Royalty Statement Update 2012,” copyright © 2012 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
If you didn't know, Kristine Kathryn Rusch's blog got hacked (don't try to go there, it tries to give you viruses). So, she's put her latest post up here. (ETA: And now that site isn't working. The post is available here and here, and if the problems keep on happening, it's going to be available a hell of a lot of other places as well. EATA: Including here.)
And it's a doozy! She's talking about royalty statements, because she's one of the folks who realized last year that her e-book royalty reporting must be hugely off (of course I can't link back to her old posts right now, but since she's selling self-published stuff as well, she's got an idea of how much she should sell, and they're saying she's only selling a fraction of that). So everybody got upset.
And guess what one agency did? (I'm going to quote at length, in case she gets hacked again):
The agents disappointed me the most. Dean personally called an agent friend of ours whose agency handles two of the biggest stars in the writing firmament. That agent (having previously read my blog) promised the agency was aware of the problem and was “handling it.”
Two weeks later, I got an e-mail from a writer with that agency asking me if I knew about the new e-book addendum to all of her contracts that the agency had sent out. The agency had sent the addendum with a “sign immediately” letter. I hadn’t heard any of this. I asked to see the letter and the addendum.
This writer was disturbed that the addendum was generic. It had arrived on her desk—get this—without her name or the name of the book typed in. She was supposed to fill out the contract number, the book’s title, her name, and all that pertinent information.
I had her send me her original contracts, which she did. The addendum destroyed her excellent e-book rights in that contract, substituting better terms for the publisher. Said publisher handled both of that agency’s bright writing stars.
So I contacted other friends with that agency. They had all received the addendum. Most had just signed the addendum without comparing it to the original contract, trusting their agent who was (after all) supposed to protect them.
Wrong-o. The agency, it turned out, had made a deal with the publisher. The publisher would correct the royalties for the big names if agency sent out the addendum to every contract it had negotiated with that contract. The publisher and the agency both knew that not all writers would sign the addendum, but the publisher (and probably the agency) also knew that a good percentage of the writers would sign without reading it.
In other words, the publisher took the money it was originally paying to small fish and paid it to the big fish—with the small fish’s permission.
Yes, I’m furious about this, but not at the publisher. I’m mad at the authors who signed, but mostly, I’m mad at the agency that made this deal. This agency had a chance to make a good decision for all of its clients. Instead, it opted to make a good deal for only its big names.
Just infuriating!
It's a pretty well-established fact in economics circles that agents and the people they work for don't actually have financial interests that are in perfect alignment. In publishing, that gap is more like a yawning chasm--an agency needs to protect its relationships with publishers and its bestselling authors. Everyone else (as you see!) can go take a hike--and that especially includes new and unknown writers.
Oh, and NOW you can't see the whole post at the new address! Infuriating!
I have input the corrections up to page 198--the book is 375 pages long, so that's a good chunk, and honestly if I do any more today my eyes are going to fall out.
It is going much faster than last time because I made fewer mistakes with the layout. Art mistakes screw everything up, so they take forever to fix. I was careful about widows and didn't use chapter ornaments, so the mistakes are literally small things (like missing words) that don't ruin everything from that point forward. I also carefully checked the things I screwed up a lot on last time, like "Five-Eighths," before sending the layout to the copy editor, but then I managed to spell Gingko's name "Ginko" for about half the book, so it didn't help much. There's only so much you can do with me....
Anyway, let's hear it for progress up the learning curve--on the whole it is taking a lot less time to lay out Trust than it did Trang, in no small part because I'm doing it just one time, not two-and-a-half.
What else? I ordered the con flyers. As I suspected, four-color flyers are pricey, but I want them to look professional, so.... Eventually I should try to figure out something that looks nice but is cheap to produce.
11th Hour was really good at that sort of thing. She could come up with stuff that was striking and very detailed:
But if it was a situation where people would just be running stuff off on a copy machine, 11th Hour would do something like:
That's actually six separate little posters there. (All this is from her fan art Web site, which I'm glad to see is still being kept up.)
So I need to study those suckers and try to figure out a way to do something similar for Trang and Trust....
Yesterday's thing with Amanda Hocking resulted in a lot of discussion about success and failure, and what constitutes each. And I have to say, one of the things that is nice about self-publishing is that you yourself get to determine what is a success and what is a failure.
Obviously, there's a dark side to this: If you're a delusional narcissist, then you can spend an absurd amount of money, get absolutely no results, and be completely pleased by it all. (I'm not kidding: I met a woman once who, when she found out I worked in publishing, told me about this guy who had paid to have a novel ghost-written. He was up front about the fact that, no, he didn't actually write it, he had paid someone else to write it, and the book sucked. Yet he was totally proud of himself.)
Let's say that you're not crazy, and instead you're a reasonably good writer who has produced a reasonably good book. But your editor jumps ship, and your work is abandoned. Or, you sold a publisher a vampire romance, and they decide that vampire romances aren't hot any more, so they're not going to print it, but they're not going to give you your rights back. Or they go bankrupt and the rights to your work are seized as an asset. Or your book just doesn't sell a huge amount in that three-month window, so your name is mud. Or, or, or, or, or, or.
My point is, it's really easy to get pegged as a failure in traditional publishing. It can happen for any reason, or for no reason at all, and the person who was championing you at the beginning of the month can be dumping you at the end of it. That's mainly because of the lottery aspect of it all--chances are you're a losing ticket, so people are primed to ditch you and move on to someone else.
What's nice about self-publishing is that you can be a success with sales that in traditional publishing would be considered a failure. You can also be a success with a time frame that is unacceptable in traditional publishing--trust me, traditionally-published authors don't get to decide to hold off on marketing until they have more books out. In self-publishing, there are do-overs--you can fix the cover and the description and even take down the book and rewrite and put it up again under a different name if you are so inclined. There's no one else deciding when to give up on your book--that's up to you.
Since you don't get punished for "failure," you can earn what you earn--you don't have to make X amount of money or your career is over. It's easier with self-publishing to get to the point where you can write books for a living, but if you don't, so what? I was talking to one writer who doesn't make nearly enough to earn a living, but who puts all the money earned from self-publishing into a vacation fund--voila, instant motivation! And instant success!
So, I input the copy editor's corrections for only the first two chapters (which I put up here) because I wanted to finish that guest post. It should appear on To Read or Not To Read on May 17th. Shockingly, it's about cussing--specifically the cussing in the Trang books and why it's there. Sadly, this is a topic I've been meaning to blog about for a while....
The contractor is coming at the crack of dawn tomorrow to fix stuff on the house--hopefully I'll drink enough coffee to be appropriately wired to input corrections.
A few months ago, Lindsay Buroker was offered a publishing contract with an Amazon imprint, and she turned it down in favor of continuing to self publish. And I really liked her thought process, because she was very logical and methodical, giving a lot of thought to what she was doing now, how she felt about it, and whether or not she'd be able to keep doing what was working for her if she got a contract. She wasn't impulsive or irrational or all "zOMG! It's Amazon! I'll sign whatever they give me without even thinking about it!" She took a long look at her situation, she thought hard about it, and she did what was appropriate for her.
And I thought about blogging about that, but then I thought, well, everyone knows I'm favor of self-publishing, it will just look like I'm congratulating someone for making a decision I agree with, as opposed to liking the thought process behind that decision.
Today, however, PV posted something about Amanda Hocking that raised the question of whether or not Hocking was happy with her experience with a traditional publisher. And Hocking dropped by to clarify that, yes, she's quite happy.
But unlike some people who seem to think that they (and all writers) are indistinguishable from their publisher, she notes that 1. she's still making good money self-publishing, so she can tell her publisher to piss off whenever she pleases, 2. her publisher is going to treat her very well because it's going to be a public-relations disaster if they don't. It's what impressed me when she first made the decision to sign with a publisher--she's very clear-eyed (I'll make less money, but I'll reach a bigger audience; there's risk, but it's manageable) and hard-nosed (I'll still have the revenue stream from self-publishing), which is what she needs to be.
And you know, once again, I'm liking the thought process. For starters, there is one--it's not this automatic assumption that she can't write a good book without a publisher or that she needs a publisher to take care of her or that This Is Just How It Is Done and You Don't Even Need To Think About It.
Just like Buroker, Hocking took a long look at her situation, thought hard about it, and did what was appropriate for her. And even though the two of them came to completely different conclusions, I can't argue with either one, because each of them did what was right for her--and neither thinks someone else is going to take care of them.
Here they are, on a nice new page: /trust/
If you see any typos, lemme know!
Trust is back from the copy editor! Huzzah!
I'm going to make the release date June--hopefully I'll get it out before then, but I figure it's better to have it out a little ahead of schedule than behind....
Books-a-Million is probably going to go private. That, if you don't know, is Not A Good Sign. It doesn't necessarily mean impending bankruptcy, but it means that the company isn't of enough interest to the investing public to make it worthwhile to have it listed on a stock market.
I do think that independent bookstores can find a specialized niche (in fact, if they haven't already, they probably went under a long time ago). But the chains...not so much. Their pitch was always low prices and large selection, and Amazon just cleans their clock on that.
And does it matter? Well, watch this video about the Romantic Times conference to the very end. (I know, I'm making you look at scantily-clad male models. That is because I am a sadist!) They talk about one publisher that was making 30% of their sales from Borders when it went under. Everyone despaired, but they wound up making that money back in e-sales in one day.
I don't know if you've noticed, but my domain name has never been quite properly mapped to this Web site. Everywhere you go, marysisson.com follows you, never actually changing as you move from page to page, or even when you leave the site altogether.
And I fixed it! I actually fixed a technical problem dealing with Web stuff. And in so doing, I appear to have fixed the issue of having content appear on a subdomain of the hosting company (which, as it turns out, just looks bad, it doesn't affect Google searches).
Speaking of domains and stuff, in addition to dropping prices, my Web host is now offering a free custom domain name, so yeah, things just keep getting cheaper. (I can't switch mine over and get a refund on what I paid, but if I want to use a pen name that leads here, that will be free.) I realize that, were I more Web-savvy, I could save even more money by moving to a different host (people seem to like site5), but Squarespace required zero expertise to get started, and zero expertise was what I had....
Tom Simon, who wrote that hilarious history of publishing, quoted me in his blog. It's actually a comment I left at the Passive Voice (of course--well, it makes me feel better about the times I've quoted my own comments from PV).
Anyway, it's pithy, it's what I think, and it impressed Tom, so I'll quote myself again here. This was in response to someone saying that she was getting lots of contrary advice about self-publishing vs. traditional publishing and had no idea what to do.