Primaflora, I hope you’ll forgive me, as I’m sure the question I’m about to ask is simply the result of not knowing you better, but are you perchance royalty?
Thanks for the site tavalla!
I assume all contracts vary, but how do publishers pay their writers? I know in the form of a check… Prior to posting this thread I had always assumed it was by word count, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Is it by number of lines? As a novice (and assuming my work is published) what kind of pay should I expect to receive?
Short fiction and articles are paid by the word (hence the need for a larger count). For novels, you are paid an advance (a lump sum, usually half on signing the contract and the other half on delivering the final manuscript) against royalties.
Royalties are a cut of each book sold. Authors get 6-8% (for a paperback) or 10-15% (for a hard cover) – more if you have a good agent. Once the book “earns out” – sells enough copies to cover the advance payment – you get additional payments. It is rare for a first novel to earn out, but publishers factor this in and can make money even if the book doesn’t earn out.
What happens if the book doesn’t earn the advance? In theory, you should repay the publisher. In reality, that never happens. The advance is factored into the cost of the book, and it would take too much time and effort to get money back from the author, who probably has spent it anyway.
Bwahaha Knead! Sorry, usually when I am talking about writing I’m talking to people who know that I work with my SO. The ‘we’ refers to Mr Primaflora and me.
The SO and I have a book which has not earned out its advance and looks very unlikely to earn the advance out unless it is shortlisted in next year’s awards. It’s not a problem usually. There was one book the publisher pulped rather than put money into marketing it after he had made one too many bad decisions for his YA line. That hurt :(. That book certainly didn’t earn out its advance. We’ve also had publishers take royalties from one book and use them against the advance for another book. I maintain this is immoral and just plain sucks. Grrrrrrrrr.
WordPerfect allows you to save your manuscript under some Word formats, so that shouldn’t be a problem unless you’re using things like charts, tables and footnotes.
It would also depend on your editor’s and/or agent’s preferences, so I wouldn’t worry about it for now. Worse comes to worse, you can always save the file as an ASCII document and open it in Word. You may have to reformat your paragraphs to stick in the indents (“Tab all the paragraphs on a 100,000-word manuscript, oh boy!”)
Although I haven’t published a book yet, I have published one short-story that’s won a contest and a number of newspaper articles and book reviews. Writing the reviews (for a newspaper and sometimes picked up by the wire services) put me in contact with publicists and some editors at a number of major houses. I’ve visited writers conferences such as Bouchercon for mysteries, and the Harriet Austin Writers Conference in Athens, Ga. http://www.coe.uga.edu/torrance/hawc/
Writer’s Digest publishes each year a collection of announcements of conferences for the coming year. I would recommend checking them out. Here, you can meet writers, agents and editors. Make contacts (and some friends), and get a lot of advice, most of which will be along the lines of: you have to be a fool to do this.
I would also strongly recommend finding a writer’s group in your area so you can get some feedback on your prose. There have been a few threads on this sort of thing on the SDMB, so try the keyword search and see what comes up.
But after about 20 years of trying to write a book I like, it is a truism – for me anyway – that good books are not written; they’re rewritten.
And you have to finish the g–d— book before you should even think about trying to find an agent.
Good luck.
One correction: my story didn’t win the contest; it placed second.
My fingers were indulging in some wishful thinking . . .
Ok, assuming I finish my manuscript, what is the likelihood that an agent would pick up an untested novice writer? Is most of the hard work done once you pick up an agent (aside from writing the book that is.)?
Wrong question. You should be asking, what’s the liklihood of an agent wanting to pick up a publishable manuscript?
Obviously, pretty good.
The fact that you’re untested merely means you have to show something to the agent that makes him say, “I can sell this.” If so, he’ll take on a novice (assuming he’s taking on new clients at all – some agent lists are full).
If you had a track record, it’d be easier to convince the agent to read your work. But if you write a good query letter, that will do nearly as well.
So you should spend your time worrying about how you can make your manuscript better. If you do that, getting an agent is secondary.
No, but the agent now handles the marketing end. Also, an agent can submit more easily and get better feedback.
And, of course, you should be writing another book as soon as the agent takes your first on (and maybe even before).
And, remember the primary rule: Never, under any circumstances whatsoever, pay money to an agent.
Wow, you are so helpful! I can’t thank you enough!
But I’m afraid you sent me a mixed message (or maybe it was the way I read it…)
Should I be looking for an agent or sending out query letters to publishers?
As for the second book idea, I planned on doing that already, but I must admit that I have this fear where I’ve written one book, it’s published but goes nowhere and then the second book is dropped like a hot potato regardless of its quality.
To clarify, I meant that you shouldn’t worry about the marketing until you are absolutely sure your book is the best you can do, and has something exciting to offer.
Concentrate on the writing first. Get it right.
Then start thinking about marketing. There are pros and cons to whether you send to an agent or a publisher. My feeling is that you can do both. If the agent picks up your work, tell her “It’s currently at Publisher X.” Then your agent calls the editor involved and starts to help you immediately.
So? If it’s good enough, that just means you can sell it to another publisher. Also, a lot of publishers aren’t looking for every book to be a best seller. They’re happy to take on a talented writer whose first books break even, or even lose money, so long as they belive you have the potential to have a solid career.
Oh yeah? Thanks again Reality, I must say you’ve helped me immensely. I’ll get my ducks in a line once I’ve finished my manuscript and gone over it at least twice.
Not to kiss too much ass, but…
Have you ever thought of writing a book on helping novice writers? You seem to have an abundance of knowledge about the subject and it appears that you enjoy sharing. I mean maybe a website would be better, but still, I can’t thank you enough.