Wow, what a great reply. I’m definitely going the PoD route.
If you publish a book through PoD and get a lot of sales with it, when you come up with the sequel to it, would it be easier to find a publishing house to take it and give it your treatment?
I ask because being in a Barnes and Noble or Borders would seem like a good idea, once you get successful sales. I do still occasionally buy in them to avoid having to get a $25 order for free shipping from Amazon.
ianzin, may I PM you to ask you more questions a little off topic?
Most PoD systems print books approx 5.5 * 8.5 inches compared to the usual paperback size of approx 4.25 x 6.75 inches, so, unless you want the text to sit in the middle of the page with a large white surround, the text will need reset. So that’s cost right there. And the book’s size won’t match the rest of the series anyway. And they won’t want to do a matching set because the rest are still available so someone buying the PoD editions of the ‘missing’ volumes will have the opposite problem you have!
I imagine an e-book might be the sensible way for a publisher to fill a gap in a series until a reprint comes out but, for the books you’re wanting, there may not actually be an electronic file of the text*, so that might be more effort than the publisher thinks it’s worth… (although I guess it’ll need done at some point in order to re-issue the book, which undercuts that point, I suppose!)
The only fiction author that comes to my mind immediately who made the step up from self-publishing to best seller lists is Matthew Reilly, the Australian thriller writer…
My understanding is that these percentages are about right. I was surprised Chuck went so high with his figure.
Ingram does list PoD books, but they won’t list your first novel. You have to have some continuity and size to be worthy. Even going through someone like the Independent Publishers Group requires having multiple titles. There may be exceptions but…
It’s a matter of control. Books are not sold to publishers, they are licensed to publishers under specific terms and conditions. One of them is that the rights to the book revert back to the author when it goes out of print. That way the author has control and can decide to try to sell it elsewhere or self-publish or whatever. If the publisher puts the book on PoD and dribbles out a copy or two every once in a while then it effectively owns the book in perpetuity. Authors have not been putting up with this nonsense and publishers mostly lose all battles to not declare books out of print. Whether authors then put out their own editions varies. Taking a book that is not in electronic form and redesigning it into a new volume is difficult and expensive and too much work for a lot of writers.
Don’t worry about it. It won’t happen. I’m not saying this to dampen your ardor. The stores won’t pay attention to you unless you start selling thousands of copies of your first book. That happens so rarely that I keep saying it’s like hitting the lottery. Don’t put hitting the lottery into your business plan.
And this is a business in every way. The IRS will certainly see it that way. Keep a record of every penny that goes out and a total inventory control system and bookkeeping over what comes in.
Right. While I was working at Borders, we bought 100 copies of a local San Jose authors book, had to get special permission, and was hard to to.
We self-published a D&D supplement many many years ago, sold out a run of 100 then another 1000. But at that time, D&D was hot, and a local gaming jobber took most of them.
Colibri, CalMeacham, InvisibleWombat, etc. Please let us know what titles you have published.
He may also have received an advance. It’s not unusual to get royalties for the first, say, 5,000 copies up front and most authors never expect to see anything else.
I took a creative writing class in college. The professor was excited because she haggled her latest book contract up to an advance on 10,000 copies. She didn’t share the rate, but said that she’d never gotten anything over the advance on previous books.
Still, ten cents per copy would not be an unreasonable royalty for some books, based on cover price, etc.
I self-published a series of four role-playing game books. We sold about 600 copies of the core book, which puts us in something like the top 60% most successful self-publishers in that industry. (We sold 600 because that’s how many we printed).
I remember meeting new publishers who had based all their budgets on a projection that they’d easily sell 2,000 copies without even working at it, and maybe 20,000 with a lot of work. Even the new versions of D&D are only selling around 100,000. I had to tell them that they’d easily sell 20 copies and might get to 2,000 with a lot of work.
People just have no concept of how few books are really sold.
I make about 20 cents per book sold (trade paperbacks). That’s at straight retail; the other channels (book clubs, discount chains, library market, etc.) have too many confusing and varied pricing and percentage schemes for me to keep track of.
I was quoting Shawna McCarthy’s percentages when she was at Asimov’s. Only a small number are laughably bad or completely unreadable. The vast majority is just mediocre – not horrible, but not even close to being publishable.
In other words, it’s a bell curve. Which would seem to make more sense as a distribution.
Fair point. I suppose it all comes down to what you mean by ‘an agent’ and ‘representing you’. These terms can mean many different things!
Here’s the sort of thing I was referring to. Here in London there are many people who work for themselves as ‘literary agents’. Maybe they’ve worked in publishing, and they know a few people in the trade. Let’s say John Hopeful submits a manuscript to Annie Agent. It’s not good, but it’s not utterly awful. There’s a slim chance someone might take a shine to it. Annie Agent has nothing to lose by saying ‘Yes, I’ll represent you’. It doesn’t cost her anything. Next time Annie is schmoozing with some of her publisher friends, 95% of the conversation is about serious projects, books with high potential and so on. Towards the end of the ‘working lunch’, she drops John’s MSS on the pile and says, ‘Here, take a look at this, see what you think. I thought I’d give you first refusal’. Publisher looks at it, isn’t interested. Annie does this twice more with other publisher friends, and that’s it. End of the line.
It hasn’t cost Annie anything. For her, it’s a potential upside with no potential loss. On the remote chance someone decides to publish the book, she takes her commission. If not, what does she care? And why give this chance to any other agent?
That’s pretty unusual for US agents. US publishers depend on agents to screen out bad manuscripts for them (especially nowadays). If an agent keep dropping that sort of manuscript on the editor’s desk, the agent’s reputation suffers. The agent is taken less seriously and the editors move to other agents whose manuscripts are worthy of their time.
The editors only work with agents who send them manuscripts that are publishable. They may not take a particular manuscript, but they know that it’s worth a look, and the rejection will be for a reason other than the quality of the submission. So the next time the agent mentions something, they know it has a fighting chance.
But it does cost her. What a good agent does is not waste a publisher’s time. The agency I worked for, which was London based, would never have punted something on the off chance. It’s all about reputation - the publishers listened to the agency because they knew what we came up with was the real deal in the vast majority of cases.
Unfortunately there’s a vast amount of crap and nonsense in the industry. You and I are non fiction writers, which is a completely different animal. In the fiction world writers are ripe for exploitation and disappointment. I’m afraid that I tend to agree with Exapno. If you are writing a novel then probably it is “unreadable drek”. If it is, in fact, brilliant, then getting a reputable publisher is like winning the lottery. You’re chances increase if you are ok, but marketable.
Do non-fiction numbers get boosted by things like textbooks which students are required to buy in college or use in lower grades? I am surprised they outsell novels. Or do textbooks not get counted as normal sales but are put in a special category?
Before addressing some specific points, let me make this really clear: fiction, nonfiction, and illustrated children’s books are three completely different worlds with different rules!
Take self-publishing, for example. My first self-published book was nonfiction, and sold over 1,000 copies. At first I sold virtually every one of those copies by hand at conferences and trade shows. Later I got a few colleges and a trade association bookstore to carry it. I paid an editor and a proofreader to review it and had the cover art done professionally. Registered my own ISBN, paid for the printing. Cost me about $8.00 a book and sold them for $24.95.
On the other hand, a local guy self-published a science fiction book through a POD (print on demand) vanity press. First problem: vanity presses have no editors or proofreaders and he didn’t pay one. The book is riddled with errors. Second problem: science fiction readers are used to mass-market paperbacks selling for $5 to $8. His was a 200-page trade-size paperback selling for $14. I tried, since he’s a local, but I couldn’t sell those things in my store. He’s trying to unload them on Amazon at a discount and his sales rank is still over 6,000,000.
Selling self-published fiction is TOUGH (and poetry is even harder).
I love that series! Let me know when yours is out. I’d like to see it.
Be careful. Amazon works on some books and not on others. My book I mentioned above that’s approaching 100,000 in sales only sells a few dozen a year on Amazon, and it’s ranked over 200,000.
Sometimes you have to overcome a lack of self-confidence and just DO IT. But if you’re self-publishing, “do it” means getting a copyeditor and a proofreader, not just printing that sucker warts and all.
Never, never, never self-edit. I don’t care if you’re Stephen King or Anne Rice. Have a professional edit the book. A traditional publishing house will provide an editor, a copyeditor, and a proofreader, all checking for different things. If you take pride in your work, make it good.
Some of the POD houses actually specialize in ebooks, and certain types of books (e.g., self-help, gaming guides…) will sell far more ebooks than print. Be wary of the system, though – piracy is rampant.
Actually, many of the POD publishers worth through Lightning Source and others, who have contracts with Ingram. My store can get most POD stuff from Ingram, although I get short-discounted and it’s non-returnable, so I rarely do.
Good point, Exapno. Let me amend my earlier statement. Some writers can operate without an editor, but NOBODY should operate without a proofreader and/or copyeditor. And when a POD house supplies an editor, you’re not getting what you think you’re getting!
All in all, ianzin, a good post, but you really made traditional publishing sound unrealistically bad. Yes, I’ve had books turned down several times, but I’ve also worked closely with my publishers on book covers, I’ve never had a print run that small, and I’ve never had a decision take more than a few months (I got a “yes” from one publisher in three weeks).
And with a traditional publisher, the rule says ALL money flows from the publisher to the author. You don’t pay for ISBNs, editing, proofreading, cover design, illustration, layout, indexing, printing, marketing, advertising, or anything else.
I negotiated a clause in my last contract saying that rights revert to me if the book goes out of print (this used to be standard, dammit). The acquisition editor smiled and said, “no problem.” After adding the clause, she said, “You realize it’s a moot point, right? If we ever decide to stop printing your book, we just switch to POD, double the price, and it’s still officially in print!”
I’m still waffling about the importance of staying anonymous here - especially since I’m a moderator. I’m reluctant to give out my real name.
I cheerfully admit that my outlook may be biased and less than perfectly neutral!
I personally haven’t suffered any pain from the publishing industry. But I know at least four friends who have gone the ‘trad’ route and have had one or more books published. All of them have reported horror stories than I am very pleased to have avoided, and their experiences have either informed my view or clouded it, depeding on your opinon!
I guess a lot of this comes down to subjective experience. Those who have had good experiences will have a shiny view of the industry, and the rest will not.
I’m surprised by what you say about money. My understanding is that the costs of all the things you cite (marketing etc.) are deducted from sales revenue before the author even sees a penny. If I’m wrong, I apologise.
I know for a fact what happened with one friend of mine who is a fairly successful published author. The pub ‘allocated’ a publicist to work for a set number of weeks on my friend’s book. My friend was v unimpressed with this publicist, who seemed useless: didn’t understand the book, was never available, seemed to be on a permanent lunch break, never achieved any worthwhile coverage, and when she talked about the book she got salient details wrong (like the subject matter). My friend didn’t want or need this ‘publicist’, but got no say in the matter. Later on, my friend got her itemised account, and this publicist’s fees were deducted from sales revenue, before my friend received her percentage. My friend was absolutely livid that she had had to ‘pay’ for this useless creature.