Who’s Your Audience

When asked the question of “who do you write for,” many authors respond with writing for themselves. While it’s… almost true, in a way, it doesn’t really work. If you’re writing for yourself, and only yourself, it’s journaling. While journaling is wonderful, helpful, and positive, most of us are hoping to publish our writing, and if that’s the case we need to think about our audience early on. Who do we want to read our book?

Don’t just say “everybody”.

Your genre will help you start narrowing down your readership because different demographics will read different material. If you’re writing a non-fiction about farming, chances are your target demographic isn’t going to be children (unless it’s a children’s book). There are some resources out there which can give you more information about who your readers are for your genre, but some of it is going to be guesswork on your part until you develop an understanding of your particular market.

The reason you need to think about this is because knowing who you’re writing for will both give you a clear vision as you write. If you’re writing for schoolchildren, for example, you’ll need to know what level of vocabulary to employ and what content you’re going to write. That isn’t to say you should limit your writing necessarily, but you should keep this kind of thing in mind because it’ll matter for your sales. Out-of-the-box stuff does sell sometimes, but that is either luck or careful marketing and hard work by the author. More often than not it’s a combination of both.

This also matters for your other marketing, like your blog. Who do you want your audience to be for that? For example: my audience here is for writers and editors other than my new Friday blog series which is more autobiographical. If you’re writing a blog as an author and your goal is to build your audience, you are probably going to be writing about things that interest your book’s readers. If you aren’t sure how to do that, just recognize that your readers want to get to know you. That means write about your passions, your life, your writing… they want to know all of it. The content of your blog is another post, though.

How To Write Without Inspiration

We’ve all felt it. That dreaded, slow, sticky sensation when our inspiration and excitement for a project drains away like the tide, leaving us beached on the unforgiving shores of reality. Yeah, I know, I’m waxing poetic, but we all really do know that feeling. As Jack London infamously said, “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” So many writers spend their lives and time waiting for their muse to whisper to them, but that’s just now how it works.

Like any art, writing requires dedication and practice. I can’t count the number of times that I, as a child, whined about having to practice violin. I didn’t feel like it. I didn’t want to. I just wanted to go play video games. I still want to go play video games. Some things don’t change. But I practiced and dedicated my time to it even if I didn’t “feel like it”. Twenty (mumble) years later, I still play. I know creating something new is a little different than practicing someone else’s piece, but art is art in some ways.

So when that “I dun wanna” feeling slinks in, you confront it. Waiting around for inspiration or for feeling ready means you won’t finish anything. If you lose energy on a project or lose passion you’re probably at the middle. Or you’re editing. But if you want to finish something and have it stick? You need to ride that out. Keep working on it. Dedicate your time and make yourself write, make yourself work.

The shelves and streets are littered with half-finished manuscripts waiting on “inspiration to strike”. If we’re honest with ourselves, we probably have more of them on our hard drives than we want to admit. I have ‘em too. I think every writer has projects they’ve hit walls in and abandoned to deal with “later”. The problem with that is, so often, “later” never comes when you wait around on something as ephemeral as inspiration. Instead, you need to put in the long, hard hours pushing through it.

The good news is that if you push through that “UGH” feeling, one of two things will happen: you will finish the manuscript and have that sense of accomplishment or inspiration will return before you finish. Either way, you’ll hit your end point. Don’t worry about what you write being terrible; every first draft is crap. Every. Single. One. That’s from every author everywhere of all experience levels. The first draft is crap. That’s what editing is for. But you’ll never write a book if you don’t trudge on through the feelings of, “I hate this and wanna play video games.”

But this all sounds like work! Well duh. I wish I could give you an easy answer—a placebo you could take or apply and have it work. There isn’t an easy answer or a sneaky way out. All we have is the reality that we need to keep moving forward. Either you have it in you to do that or… well there you go. Like so many things in life, you have to plant your feet, duck your head, and keep on keepin’ on.

You Can’t Eat Exposure

Freelancers, artists, and creatives have this nasty situation where the world thinks we aren’t worth paying because we are “just” artists. I could rant about that for thousands of words, but let’s suffice to say that is utterly and completely absurd. Yes. It’s so absurd it warrants two adverbs. Worse yet, many folks seem to think it’s okay to pay us in the ever-elusive “exposure”.

Let me start by saying sometimes doing something just for exposure (like having a giveaway or free weekend or sale) isn’t entirely bad. However, if you are busting your backside for “exposure” then there’s something very wrong with that situation. I think I speak for all artists when I say we deserve to be paid. That isn’t to say I think everyone deserves equal pay or that everyone deserves to be hired, but if we are doing work then it’s not wrong to expect payment. Folks who pull fries out of the oil at McDonald’s get paid, but artists who spend years honing their craft and work for hours, weeks, or months often are told we don’t deserve to be paid.

Increasingly, blogs and e-zines, and other such media tell us they’ll “get our name out there”. But I can’t eat that. While I sometimes will still submit a story that I’m not being paid for (particularly if it’s to a large outlet), I can’t eat that so-called exposure. Now, if that exposure translated into sales of my services, books, artwork (insert-your-own-art-here), then that would be worth something, but so often this so-called exposure translates into precisely nothing.

So how do we deal with this? The first step is to realize your own worth. If you are freelancing (in any capacity) you need to do a cost analysis. That means looking at your costs of living. Sit down and write up how much you need to make per month to survive. Hopefully you have a “day job” to help, at least in the beginning, because you’re going to need it. Once you have that magic number of how much you need to make per month you start looking at how much work you can do per month and start examining other people’s pay rates. Not all workers deserve equal pay, so make sure you are charging what’s proper for your skill level. Are you a beginning editor? Chances are you aren’t going to be charging what I charge. I don’t charge what people who’ve been in the industry a decade charge, either. This process of setting up your pay rates and so on sounds an awful lot like running a business, and (surprise) that’s exactly what it is.

This attitude that creatives aren’t worth much isn’t limited to the writing world. Unfortunately, the arts have grown less and less respected over time. Understanding the power and importance of the arts is a dying thought pattern. I have a friend who is a musician. He’s played for decades, and he’s one of the finest guitarists I know. These days, when he books a gig, he’s often told, “Well, I can get a five-piece band for that price!” The price he’s quoting isn’t high. It’s enough to cover gas, his equipment, wear and tear on his car, plus a little extra for him. That’s not asking for more than a business-savvy wage. But a five-piece “band” with no experience, no credentials, and crappy gear can show up and crank out atrocious music for that same price, so he’s been turned down despite his resume, skills, and knowledge. It’s just not right.

So how do you survive in a world that thinks what you do isn’t worth a whole lot? That’s something we’re all working through, let me tell you. I’m still trying to figure that one out, but when I do I’ll write a book and make millions. (Cue evil laughter here.) What I can say is it’s worth it—it’s very worth it. Our world would be nothing without art, and if art is in your spirit, don’t deny it. What I can tell you, is you probably will need a “day job” for at least awhile.

It’s hard to make a living in this world using the arts when people don’t consider them as valuable. That’s a sad, sorry state of affairs I don’t know how to fix, but it’s a reality for most of us. I won’t tell you it’s impossible to make a break because it’s not. It’s not impossible. I have friends who have made a fair amount and support their rent or supplement their income. It is possible. I know folks who write and edit and make a living doing it. Don’t be discouraged. Just recognize the reality and soldier on.

Asking “Stupid” Questions

I’m not going to lie and say there’s no such thing as a stupid question. There are definitely stupid questions. “Where are my sunglasses?” when I’m wearing them is a stupid question I ask with more frequency than I’d like to admit. However, when it comes to writing there are fewer “stupid questions” than we’d think.

I’m in an awesome editors’ group on Facebook, and as of about half an hour ago someone asked the question of whether or not it’d be a good idea to have newbie editors create their own group (in addition to the main group) to support each other and not have to be afraid of asking silly questions. Just about all the editors in the group balked at the idea of relegating new editors to a corner, though it sparked an interesting discussion about the merit of “stupid questions” or “noob questions”.

What came out of the discussion didn’t surprise me, but it reinforced why I’m a member of the group: just ask the question. There’s this stigma around asking questions because we’re afraid of being viewed as less qualified or less intelligent because we have to ask other people for information. That’s an inaccurate belief structure and a damaging one.

As creatives, we (editors included) are prone to crippling self-doubt and impostor syndrome where we think we aren’t as good as we say we are and feel like we’re full of crap. While it’s good to have an ego check and consider that we aren’t all mega-geniuses who know everything, we aren’t complete morons, either. Asking questions pokes that little voice that says “you aren’t all that great” and sometimes turns it into a full-blown choir. However, the people reading those questions aren’t the ones singing that line. They’re usually thinking, “Oh, I’ve been there. Here’s how I dealt with it.”

As an editor, I act as a teacher for many of my clients. I’ve worked with many first-time authors who don’t quite know what the three-act structure is or exactly how to identify and slaughter passive voice. I’ve heard many questions, and I’ve asked even more. I have someone I consider my mentor, and I have guides who answer questions when I have them. That’s the secret: there’s always someone better than you to ask questions of. Your questions will change as you go along, but you’ll always have them, and it’s okay to ask.

To be honest, I think the only “wrong” question is the one unasked. There are definitely times when the answer is going to be “you’re not ready for that yet”, but asking the question isn’t a mark against you in some ethereal ledger where we keep our opinions of others. Even if the question is something we already know (or should know). I can’t count the number of times where I’ve been editing at 3am and just can’t decide where to put the damn comma. I’ve had to ask other writers or editors. Of course, that’s about the time I realize I need to put down the pen and go to bed (or have another cup of tea…).

In addition to you not crippling yourself by not asking questions, sometimes answering the question is a learning experience for another person. I’ve developed new understanding and ways of explaining things when I’ve taught people because I’ve had to. The act of teaching someone else does a great deal for one’s own learning, and that’s something you can take to the bank with you. When you begin teaching you immediately realize how little you know and start learning because, by gum, you aren’t going to leave your students in the lurch. By asking me tough questions (or even simple ones) my students are doing me a huge favor.

So, the real bones of the matter is, you aren’t an impostor for asking questions. You aren’t an idiot. You aren’t a moron. Anyone who treats you as lesser because you asked a question has an ego problem and isn’t probably a great teacher anyway. Just keep asking and learning. It’ll do you more good than it doesn’t. And ignore that chorus in the back of your head–you’ve got this. Keep at it.

 

Making Your Own Luck

So many times in writing groups I see people asking how others make money in the writing industry. There are all these people talking about luck and, while luck does play a certain role in publishing, it’s not the primary determiner of success. The primary determiner of success in modern publishing is the author.

This is good news, even if it is scary news. The good part is that we have more complete control of our fortune and fame than ever before. The bad part is most of us don’t know what the heck to do with that control. I can’t tell you the number of self-made author websites that make 1990’s Geocities websites look professional grade or marketing campaigns that make me cringe a little harder every time I see them.

Making your own luck, in part, means you need to realize that you aren’t supposed to go this alone. Whether you’re self-publishing or traditionally publishing, you’ll have a team of people to back you. If you’re self-publishing, you pick the team whereas with a traditional publisher the team picks you. Either way, you have a group of experts backing you to support your work and help you make your own luck.

Part of making your own luck also means spending a lot of time educating yourself. You need to learn what publishers are looking for, how they select manuscripts, what agents and readers want… The fact that someone picks up your book isn’t a function of the astrology of the day; most of the time it’s because they saw something in it they wanted or liked.

If you want to be picked up by a big publisher there’s a function of luck in that decision, absolutely. However, that luck is partially self-generated by creating a professional, polished manuscript with a solid query to go with it. Yes, it’s sometimes a roll of the dice to some extent whether your query will be read by the people you’re sending it to, but as someone who has worked in acquisitions, luck didn’t determine acceptance. If the query followed guidelines, was interesting, and showed professionalism it got them in the door.

Heck, my company just picked up a short story collection (something I typically don’t do) because the person sending the query impressed my acquisitions editor enough to take a look at the content. I have no regrets about picking up the author, either. The writing is polished, the stories thrilling, and I look forward to sharing them with the world. That wasn’t luck–that was the author doing things right. Yes, they rolled the dice about whether or not we’d pick up a short story collection despite our guidelines, but everything else was them creating their own “luck”.

I can assume, my reading friends, that you have seen the pattern by now! A lot of people like to rely on “luck” because it absolves them of the responsibility of making sure what they’re doing is what they should be. They can send out a hundred queries, sigh, wring their hands, and blame Lady Luck for their lack of response. Or they can read their query and realize that sending neon green-on-pink was probably not a good font choice and the flagrant typos made it impossible to read.

The other part of this good news is since you don’t have to rely on wearing your lucky underwear backwards while chanting hymns to Fortuna, you can take control of most of the elements of your piece’s success through hard work, dedication, and study. I realize this might not be the shortcut a lot of people are looking for, but there just isn’t one. Write well, query well, be professional. Those are your keys.

You can do this. Get to it.

(Note: Yes, that is a tabletop RPG character sheet at the top of this post. But no, that one’s not mine. 😉 I’m not actually sure what system that is, to be honest. Gold star to whoever tells me!)

How to “Fire” a Freelancer

I had a friend post a very frustrated and sad status on Facebook yesterday about an editing client who refused to pay her for services rendered despite being contractually obligated to. They claimed they “weren’t happy” with the edits, without explaining why they found them unsatisfactory. I have had nightmare clients like that in the past, and I wanted to bring that behavior to the foreground.

This isn’t just about writing, either, it’s about business in general, a subject many people struggle with. I took business courses in college (a lot of them), but I often forget that many folks don’t have the benefit of growing up in that environment or receiving a good education on business practices themselves.

As a publisher and editor, good business is something I need to keep my focus on. I need to make sure my authors, clients, and customers are all receiving the best possible behavior from me. I need to make sure I treat them fairly and well, even if that means muzzling myself when I want to bark at them. This also means, when I am purchasing professional services (editing, cover design, whatever it is) I must also behave professionally.

So what do you do if the work you’ve hired someone to do is unsatisfactory? What do you do when you are done working with someone because of whatever reason? Maybe they haven’t paid, maybe the two of you just don’t work well together as a team. Regardless of why, you need to tell the person why. In polite, but complete detail. In addition to that, there are a few more things you should remember when “firing” someone.

1. The person you’re trying to part ways with might surprise you and fix the problem or apologize and revisit their behavior. This is rare, but it does happen.
2. You do not receive a reputation of hopping between professionals for what they will probably perceive as no good reason.
3. Unless there has been a gross breach, don’t share their name around. There are times when I have shared the name of a particularly dangerous client with other editors to warn them of the person’s unhealthy nature. Don’t complain about people by name, though. And particularly not in public.
4. Be honest. If the reason is that you just don’t get along with them as a person that’s actually okay. You don’t need to invent reasons.
5. Pay what you owe. Work like editing, ghostwriting, etc. is not a product you can return to the store; it’s time rather than physical product. Unless the editor has dropped the ball so egregiously that they should be hit with a catfish, don’t try and get out of paying what you owe them. This is also why many editors insist on payment before product delivery. Many of us have clients who squawk and squeal about our work (even if it is on point and correct) and try to weasel out of paying us. “I just don’t like it” is not a valid reason to avoid payment.
6. Be respectful. Even if your freelancer (or, conversely, client) is driving you up a tree, be unfailingly respectful to them. This will go a lot further for you than slinging mud and becoming rude. That kind of behavior will reflect poorly on you for a very long time while polite but firm language isn’t going to come back to bite you as hard or as certainly.

Having to part ways with someone is tough. There’s no getting around the fact that you’re going to be upsetting someone because that’s just how life goes. However, the more polite, honest, and up front you are about it, the easier the whole process becomes.

 

The Myth of “Writer’s Block”

Stick with me. I know the title might have your blood up because you’re stuck on your project, but I promise I’m trying to help. Take a deep breath and keep reading. We’re in this together.

The term “writer’s block” is loosely used to identify a state in which a writer isn’t writing. There are whole books and forums dedicated to writer’s block and how to overcome it, and I shake my head at them often. Why? Because I don’t think writer’s block exists in the format many people ascribe to. Yes, we can hit dry spells or periods in our life where writing becomes difficult, and every word on the page feels like crap and we want to cry. That’s valid. That’s real, but the problem isn’t this ephemeral idea of writer’s block.

The problem I have with the term is this: it’s too vague. People run into problems writing (or creating in general) for a  million unique reasons, so lumping all those reasons under one umbrella that doesn’t give real advice on how to deal with your specific problems doesn’t do you justice, and it won’t help you figure out what’s really causing you trouble. Following that line of logic: if you don’t know (or try to discern) the cause of your trouble then how can you fix it?

So, if it’s not writer’s block, what is it?

That is a valid question. If we tackle the monster and tell writer’s block to go to its corner, we can dig into the reasons we are struggling. I know my most frequent issue is burnout. Given that I am an editor, I spend my days up to my eyeballs in other people’s work providing triage. I love my job, don’t get me wrong, but I spend most of my creative energy and work on other people’s material. When I boot up my Word processor, set my tea on my desk, and slap my headphones into place I stare at my screen, and nothing happens. Creative burnout often steals my mental energy for writing. That’s not ephemeral, it’s fact.

When you sit down and stare at the screen what happens in your head? Is it because you feel you’ve written yourself into a corner and don’t know how to get out of it? Is it because you don’t know what the next step is? Is it because your mind is on whether or not you filed your reports for tomorrow (“Leave the puce.”)? There are so many reasons you might not be writing that it’s overwhelming. We then put those reasons into a bin and call it “writer’s block” without pulling it apart to determine the underlying cause.

To me, calling it such a generic term is like going to a veterinarian for help with a sick pet and just telling them you have a mammal when they ask what kind of pet you own. It’s such a vague term that has no useful information that you may as well have stayed home. Once you identify the kind of mammal you own, the symptoms you’re seeing, and looked for the cause you can come up with a treatment. It’s much the same with writing.

But nothing works, and I just don’t wanna!

In that case you need to ask yourself if you’re really a writer. There are times when we all hit a brick wall, but are you just using “writer’s block” as an excuse to get out of writing? Let’s be honest, we all get lazy sometimes and just don’t feel like it. Or we’re too burned out from life to sit at the keys. That’s okay to admit. Life sometimes steals our creative energy or just our energy and holds it hostage. There’s nothing wrong with saying so. Also, there are plenty of days where, when the work is done, we put on our fuzzy pajamas and binge-watch Netflix for the night because we just can’t be arsed.

The key is that you shouldn’t let those fuzzy-PJ’s-Netflix nights define your creativity. If you’re spending more time away from the keys than a them, then you should either evaluate whether you want to be a writer or not, or admit that maybe now isn’t the right time. I remember just after my father died I couldn’t manage everything and write, so I set my personal writing aside for a few months while I sorted everything else out. I still wanted to write, but I had other priorities. Now, I have a mentor who has written a minimum of 1k words a day for the last forty years without missing a day. To the point where he told nurses in the hospital to hold surgery off so he could finish his piece. I’m not kidding. That’s dedication, and I hold that man in awe. However, I’m not him, and I recognize that.

Ultimately, so-called writer’s block has a source rather than some nebulously defined state of being where your fingers don’t work the keys. It always does. Rather than using such a thin and trite (not to mention unhelpful) description of your struggle, just say the truth: “I don’t know what to do next.” “I am too tired from working too many hours today.” “I think I’ve written myself into a corner.” Those problems have solutions. They aren’t some kind of amorphous monster we can’t defeat. Whatever struggle you’re having has an answer. I promise. Just keep on keeping on, and search for those answers. Ask for help if you need to. Shoot me a message and tell me your woes, and I’ll do what I can to help. Lay it out to a friend or a writing group. It’s there.

You can do this.

photo credit: blackwingsbox via photopin (license)

That Moment

I am about halfway into about my millionth edit on my upcoming novel, and I am tearing out my hair. Why am I tearing out my hair? Well, several reasons, but a large part of it is frustration with myself.

I am five drafts into this novel. Five. I finished it during NaNoWriMo in 2014, did a bunch of polishing and then set it aside for a year. After that, I rewrote it again and set it aside for another few months. Now I’m looking at it yet again, and I keep running into errors that make me want to scream, throw in my writing towel, and take up knitting. (I’m atrocious at knitting. Ask my mom.)

As an editor, I’m plagued by pervasive doubt that my writing isn’t good enough (and it’s not). I constantly feel like I should know better and that I am somehow a hack who knows nothing despite many happy clients, many successful editing contracts, and several published stories floating around the ether. We all get the feeling that we’re barking up the wrong tree and want to run away to join the circus. Even professionals get it.

What makes us different, what makes writers stand out, is we live in that moment and push through it. I’m continuing to edit, and at the end of this last pass I know this book will look great. Of course, I’ll be living in self-doubt while my editor (yes, I have one) reads it and gives me her opinion. But I am still writing. I’m not going to quit, no matter how much I scream and yell and throw temper tantrums at my keyboard.

We keep going.

The moment we choose to keep writing and push that self-doubt and pain aside is our defining one. Sure, we’re scared. We are all scared. Every creative on the planet is scared (or they should be if they aren’t). I’ve been playing violin for twenty-six years, and I still get nervous every time I step onto the stage to perform. Heck, I don’t even like playing where anyone can hear me. But I still do it.

We keep going.

Being scared is okay. Being frustrated, upset, and angry is okay. What’s not okay is letting that rule us. Is stopping just because we have this lingering doubt that we’ll never get it. The open secret that all of us feel that exact same way probably doesn’t surprise you, but it does mean you’re never alone. As one of my heroes, Kristin Lamb, says in her blog: We Are Not Alone. It’s one of her battle cries, and it’s one I want to see echoed across the net. Make it your battle cry when you slump over the keys, crying and scared because you sent a query off to yet another agent. Make it your roar of triumph when that acceptance letter comes in. Make it your whimper when that crippling moment of I’m a fraud sets in. You are not alone.

We. Keep. Going. 

Every word we type, every story we daydream, every character who springs to life in our heads when we’re staring out the window on the bus, this affirms what we are. We are storytellers. Don’t forget that feeling when you first discover your next story. When it blooms to life in your chest and you can’t stop thinking about it. You wander around all day, and everyone looks at you like you’re in love. And you are. You’re in love with writing, with the creative process. Remember that high, that sense of invincibility. Let it carry you through the moments when all you want is to crawl into bed and pretend you’re a slug.

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams.

(Ode by Shaughnessy)

Subsidiary Rights–A Rebuttal

To speak as a publisher for a moment, I want to talk about rights here. A lot oauthors want those thrown out because they think they deserve complete ownership and financial gain should the book end up as a movie/TV series/comic book etc. because it’s their intellectual property. This is only half true.

If you are going with a traditional publisher we want (and earn) a portion of these rights for several reasons, but I’m really going to focus on one. During the course of this post, I am going to assume you are working with a legitimate publisher, not an author mill, and are working with a publisher who is taking proper care of their authors to the best of their ability.

Publishers want those rights because we earn a cut of that pie.

While authors often think they do the lion’s share of the work just by writing the manuscript (the work doesn’t end with “the end”), the publisher does the lion’s share of the financial investment, if not all of it. If you go traditional, the publisher pays for everything, and properly producing a book costs literal thousands of dollars. Keep in mind, we professional editors like to be paid for our time, and those costs are typically over $50/hr. The length of the book and how clean it is when it arrives determine that cost.

Then, we have to pay for the cover art which may also include paying for rights to stock photos, fonts, or paying for artwork to be created from scratch. This is not a cheap process if you want good quality artwork. Poor quality artwork is cheap, but having a cover that will sell a book is worth the investment. While there are good artists who aren’t “cheap”, it is still a pricey venture.

We also have to pay for typesetting and marketing (which can end up more expensive than anything else) as well as our overhead of doing business in general: taxes, keeping lights on, website hosting, health insurance for employees if we are big enough, legal advice for contracts, electricity, internet, and about a billion other things both large and small. We also like to eat, so paying ourselves is important. All of those things go into the cost of creating your book. Were I to calculate the average cost of properly producing a book, I would come up with around $10,000 (or more for marketing) in resources. Yes. That is PER BOOK. I am not factoring into that the overhead costs of operating a business because those differ per publisher and depending on the business model.

In a traditional publishing arrangement, the author pays no penny of that, though that is why we generally provide royalty rates of about 15-20% because all of our overheads come right out of that 80%. To be honest, I haven’t drawn a paycheck yet from my company, though we are in the black in the bank. Our authors have been provided payment for their books, but none of the staff have been paid a cent because we are putting the rest of that 80% straight back into the production of other books to try and create a strong platform for all our authors.

There is a strong business reason for that, starting with the old adage “you have to spend money to make money.” Startup businesses oftentimes end up in the red because the spending comes before the making, and the making often doesn’t happen. To show that, I’m going to give you real numbers based on a book. I am going to use real costs and percentages here, though I’m rounding up the paper cost by a penny.

Books Sold: 100
List Price: $16
5″x8″, 300 pages, Createspace Physical Copy

Gross Income: $1,600
Author Income 15%: $240
Amazon Royalties (unsure percentage; calculated on their site): $515
Marketing: $400
Remaining: $445

That remaining $445 has to pay  the editors (who have often invested $1,500 worth of time or more), typesetter, and managerial staff. So we are often looking at four people, so if we give each of them $50.00 which would only pay for about an hour of an editor’s time, we are left with $245 to go toward taxes, cost of our internet hosting ($75/year), ISBN numbers ($200/for 10), subscriptions to various professional organizations we use to market books, and maybe to pay ourselves. Maybe. The money, as you may notice, goes FAST when you start adding in the cost of doing business.

At this point, you are looking at an author who has invested time and experience in writing the book – something I very much respect – and a publisher who has invested a great deal of money. In a traditional publishing arrangement, the ending “who has done more for the book” ends up being about 50/50, which is exactly how we split the sale of movie/comic/etc. rights. The company who has done so much work for this book deserves a portion of that kind of money for themselves because they darn well earned it. Particularly since the vast majority of books DO NOT EARN OUT THEIR PRODUCTION COSTS. Many books fail to sell more than the hundred copies to friends and family. Even if we sold three-hundred books, that wouldn’t even pay for the cost of typesetting, editing, and cover design.

This trend of demonizing publishers annoys me. While I cannot, and will not, speak up for the business practices of fly-by-night operations or companies who treat their authors without respect, the rest of us who aren’t like that deserve and earn our portion of the proceeds.

Giving Up Rights

I have been seeing a lot of misconceptions about contracts in the writing community lately, and I thought I might take a stab at pulling back the veil. One of the things I keep seeing is writers upset that contracts favor the publishing company and not the author. While the publishing company shouldn’t be predatory, the contract should favor the publisher. Before you close this blog in a fit of rage, let me explain why.

Writers are protective of their work, and that’s understandable, commendable, and a good thing. However, when you approach a traditional publisher you need to realize a few things. The first is that when you are traditionally publishing you must understand that you will be giving up some things. This is a reality – a contract must involve both sides giving something up and gaining something, and that is something many writers appear to forget. You give up certain rights to the work in exchange for the support of a traditional publisher. Assuming you are working with a good publisher you are going to be gaining more than you are losing.

Also it seems to be a trend that writers think that publishers should be a service to authors. That’s not how the business works. A publisher is in business to make money and benefit themselves. That’s the crux of the matter – they aren’t in it for you. While they may be altruistic and work to the good of the author they are looking to pay their people, make a profit, and continue working. That means they are going to write contracts to their advantage. That, however, is also because in this deal they are assuming the most financial risk.

Despite the fact that writing the book is an integral part of the process, the writer does not need to pay the overhead involved in publishing it. That’s squarely on the shoulders of the publisher. They pay for editing, typesetting, marketing, distribution, printing, ISBN numbers, cover art, and a hundred other things besides. They are investing a lot of money into this book, and they would like a return on their investment. They don’t want to break even, they want to make a profit. Does that sound mean? In some ways, but if they have half a dozen employees involved in the project they need to pay them, they need to pay the author their royalty, they need to pay for their location, their website, and all the other pieces of doing business. Unlike the author, they have overhead to cover that isn’t even directly related to the book. If they are big enough they have to pay for employee health insurance, retirement packages, taxes, and all sorts of other fees that writers never encounter.

Many writers hate the idea of giving up rights to their book. They argue that publishers don’t deserve subsidiary rights, that they shouldn’t get a penny more than they “deserve”. Unfortunately those people don’t take into account that the publisher, if they are doing their job right, is going to be both the launch pad for their book as well as their partner. The work of writing may be on the author, but the publisher is at least a 50% partner, if not more, in the actual work of publishing.

I don’t mean to make this sound like authors shouldn’t be cautious about giving away their rights. You should, and you should really consider everything you are giving up. But you can’t expect the publisher to foot the bill for everything and then eat scraps from the table of the sales. That’s not really how things work  nor would it be fair.

Assuming your book does amazingly in sales and you skyrocket up to fame don’t they deserve a part of that? If you get a movie deal or people want to translate it internationally, your publisher has been an intimate part of that experience and is the reason you have gotten where you are. Without that help you would either have had to learn how to do all of that yourself or paid others to do it. If you have approached a traditional publisher I assume that’s not what you wanted to do, so you have already made that decision. In that case, doesn’t the person, or group of people, who worked so hard to get you where you are deserve some form of remuneration? I would say it’s only fair.

Of course, all of this is assuming you have a reputable and legitimate publisher who isn’t taking you for all you’re worth and treating you like nonsense. I can’t account for that.