Tag Archives: Money

Barry Eisler Turned Down $500,000 Deal to Indie Publish

Posted on March 21, 2011 | Comments Off

In case you haven’t already heard the gossip, thriller writer Barry Eisler has turned down a $500,000 advance from a traditional publisher so that he can indie publish his next 2 books instead.  You can read his interview with J. A. Konrath about the reasons here.

In the end, it looks like it came down to having much more money and control in self-publishing that tipped the decision for him to go indie. He’ll be able to make a heck of a lot more revenue over ten years by indie publishing than in the deal he was offered. And he’ll be able to get the first book published now instead of having to wait until Spring 2012.

Dean Wesley Smith has a thoughtful analysis on the Eisler & Konrath interview on his website. Reading Eisler’s blog post, followed by Dean’s, will give one a great crash course on money matters in publishing.

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Posted in Business of writing, Contracts, Markets, Publishers

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The Borders Bankruptcy Number Crunching

Posted on February 21, 2011 | Comments Off

C. E. Petit is crunching the numbers over at his website right now about the Borders bankruptcy and how it may impact publishers as creditors in the Chapter 11 proceedings.  Go read his posts from yesterday (Feb. 20) and today, great stuff.

This is a wise time to learn about the financial health of any publisher you have contracts for novels with that are still in print, or if you are planning to sign a contract in the near future with a publisher.

If the publisher is part of a publicly traded conglomerate on the stock exchange (and you know the name or ticker symbol) you can easily look at the SEC filings at 
http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/webusers.htm
The quarterly (10-Q) and annual filing with the SEC is where the good stuff can be found, like how much cash they have on hand (Cash and Cash Reserves), cash flow, and their debts. You’ll want to take your time and read back as far as the database will allow you to get a good feel for what is going on in a particular company.

As for private publishing companies, if your library has access to Hoover’s (http://www.hoovers.com/), you might be able to get some info on their finances from there.

Also, another resource to turn to for help in doing financial research on a publishing company is your nearest Reference Librarian. Librarians are a wonderful resource for this sort of research.

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Posted in Business of writing, Markets, Publishers

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Robin Sullivan’s “Write to Publish” Website

Posted on February 18, 2011 | Comments Off

For those thinking about electronic and POD self-publishing, make sure to check out Robin Sullivan’s “Write to Publish” website. She’s been sharing her pricing experiments as well as her learned lessons about the business side of publishing. Her article comparing Lightning Source to Createspace is a huge help in getting a handle on the actual print-on-demand costs.

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Please Go Read “Bad Decisions and the Midlist Writer”

Posted on January 27, 2011 | Comments Off

With the major changes happening in publishing right now, anyone not reading The Business Rusch is missing out on great weekly blog posts on this business.  Kristine Kathyrn Rusch is a successful award-winning fiction writer, as well as a former editor and publisher.

This week’s topic is “Bad Decisions and the Midlist Writer,” and is a must read for anyone who wants to make a living as a fiction writer.  With the technology and distribution changes that are happening right now, wonderful opportunities are opening up for fiction writers like in the era of the pulps.

However, when there’s more money to be made means that the sharks and scammers are coming out in force.

Here’s a short excerpt from her post:

Right now, established writers are standing on the starting line of a brand new gold rush.  Unfortunately, writers as a class are stupid about business.  Those who understand business have already cut in front of the writers and have set up shop.

So what do I mean exactly?  Why am I worried about this?

Here’s the hard truth: for the first time in my lifetime, a midlist writer can make bestseller money without having a bestseller and without writing 6 or 8 or 10 books per year.  The rise of e-books, the availability of print-on-demand publishing, and the growing use of internet bookstores like Amazon make it possible to sell backlist titles that could earn a writer tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of dollars per year.

Seriously, read the entire post here. Following her advice could save a writer, as well as his or her family after the writer’s death, significant sums of money over the coming decades.

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Posted in Agents, Business of writing, Contracts, Markets, Publishers

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The insanity of the “I just wanna write fiction AND get published” mindset

Posted on September 26, 2010 | Comments Off

I have no problem with someone saying, “I just wanna write.”   Creating art for art’s sake is a wonderful thing to do.

What drives me nuts is when someone says “I just wanna write fiction AND get published.”  That’s just crazy.  Because publishing is a business, and if someone wants to play the publishing business game, they’d better learn the rules of the business.  Otherwise, just slap a “I’LL BE IN TROUBLE” label on their back and be done with it.  Because one of the following WILL happen (let’s alternate between genders):

1) The writer will fall prey financially to a scam agent, a scam editor, scam contests, or scam publisher because she couldn’t be bothered to learn the business.  Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of dollars will disappear into the black hole of scams.

2) The writer will be gouged in pricing by a subsidy or vanity press because he couldn’t be bothered to research actual publishing costs and methods.  Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of dollars will be lost.

3) The writer will run into legal problems because she couldn’t be bothered to learn about publishing contracts so she could understand what she was signing.   If she’s really unlucky, she could find herself stuck in court for years.

3) The writer will be taken by surprise when his publisher goes out of business, sticking his books with that publisher in bankruptcy limbo.  He couldn’t be bothered to keep track of the financial health of his publisher.

4) The writer will be in financial trouble when she discovers her agent or publisher has been cooking the books.  She couldn’t be bothered to learn how to read a royalty statement, add important clauses to her publishing contracts to protect her interests, or how to track her own money.

5) The writer will run into serious career trouble when his agent dies, gets sick, dumps him, or leaves agenting as a career.  He couldn’t be bothered to learn the business of how to sell manuscripts to editors.

6) The writer will be surprised when her publisher drops her, because she couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to the print run numbers.

7) The writer will run into cash flow problems, because he couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to the out-of-print, e-book royalty rates, subsidiary rights, and reversion rights clauses in his contracts.

One thing I’ve noticed again and again at conferences is that the fiction writers I’ve met who’ve survived in the publishing business for 15+ years pay attention to the business side of publishing.  A writer can get away with ignoring the business side (if she or he is lucky) for maybe 7-12 years.  But statistically speaking, sooner or later a rough patch will happen, and the writers who survive to publish again are those who pay attention to the business side.

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Posted in Business of writing, Contracts, Markets, Psychology of writing, Scams

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More Interesting Links on the Writing Business

Posted on July 25, 2010 | Comments Off

Here’s more interesting links I’ve found or been told about…

1) Fascinating article by the LA Times on the legal slugfest going on about THE SHACK.  Get a load of this mess:

It wasn’t until Hachette came around that Windblown Media and Young even put their publishing agreement in writing….

The dueling lawsuits have left Hachette in an awkward position. If they pay Young additional royalties, Windblown might file suit to reverse that decision. But if they continue to pay Windblown according to the terms of the original contract, Young might also press on with additional litigation.

In the first quarter of 2010 alone, “The Shack” earned nearly $1 million in royalties, with more money accruing daily. So on May 11, Hachette filed its own lawsuit in federal court, stating in its filing that “as a result of disputes that have arisen … [Hachette has] a real and reasonable fear that distributing the funds would expose Hachette to multiple claims and liabilities.”

It’s well worth it to take the time to read the entire article.

Moral of the story–learn the business basics of publishing, and make sure you have a written contract with your business partners, or this could be YOU.

2) Maureen Johnson has written a Manifesto on her blog that is worth reading since it raises the question of how far to go in marketing oneself as a writer.  Here’s a small snippet (go read the whole thing):

I hear this almost everywhere I go where there are people talking about social media, and I feel that it is time that I rise up against it. In fact, I did, right there and then. I grabbed the microphone from her grasp and said, “I am not a brand.”

3) Toni McGee Causey’s “How Do You Know When to Quit?” deals with the question  most writers ask themselves at least once during their journey.

4) And there’s a handy tip on contract negotiations with publishers in this article by Marjorie Kehe, “How Greg Morteson Outsmarted His Publishers.”

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Posted in Business of writing, Contracts, Editors, Psychology of writing, Publishers

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Interesting links on the writing business

Posted on July 10, 2010 | Comments Off

Check out Douglas Smith’s Foreign Markets for selling speculative short stories.  This is a unique list of non-English markets.  Make sure to read his guidelines if you decide to submit to these markets.

There’s a fascinating article about how literary agent Andrew Wylie runs his business, written by Craig Lambert at Harvard Magazine.

And Cory Doctorow has an update on his self-publishing experiment (and he continues to share the income and expense numbers), at Publisher’s Weekly as “New York, Meet Silicon Valley.”

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Posted in Agents, Business of writing, Markets, Publishers

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Go read “Literary Scandal: The Agent Who Disappeared”

Posted on July 2, 2010 | 1 Comment

If you missed Claire Howorth’s “Literary Scandal: The Agent Who Disappeared,” go read the article when you get a chance.   Here’s the summary about Harriet Wasserman:

One of the top literary agents in New York who represented Saul Bellow and others disappeared amid allegations of missing royalties. Now her former client Ted Mooney has a new book out and is going it alone, reports Claire Howorth.

Consider the article a crash course in the warning signs to watch out for in a literary agent.  There are terrific honest agents out there; but publishing is a business, and like any other business there are times someone may try to steal money from you.  For example:

Some of the writers began to notice that royalties were not being passed from the agency to them, though the various publishers had been cutting the proper checks, and someone had been cashing them….

Others fared worse. The New York Post reported the lawsuit when it was filed in Manhattan Supreme Court three years ago this month; two children’s book writers, Walter Dean Myers and Emily Arnold McCully, alleged they were out a collective $120,000-plus.

I’d like to point out that none of the writers stolen from have yet to get any of their money back.   Three years have already gone by since the lawsuit was filed; who the heck knows how much longer the plaintiffs will be waiting.

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Posted in Agents, Business of writing, Scams

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J. A. Konrath on Ebooks

Posted on May 27, 2010 | Comments Off

Unless you don’t follow publishing news, I’m sure you’ve heard about J. A. Konrath signing a major deal with AmazonEncore. I advise reading about it at his blog since Publisher’s Weekly got some of the basic facts wrong .

Also, he’s well-known in e-publishing circles because of his candor in blogging his actual sales numbers on the Kindle since he started self-publishing there. There’s been a lot of handy information on his blog since he’s experimented with different approaches–like better book covers and changes in pricing–and I know he gathered it up for THE NEWBIE’S GUIDE TO PUBLISHING. I’ve downloaded it, and will try to find time to read it this summer to review here.

He’s getting swamped with emails from writers asking questions about e-publishing, so he just did a blog on “Top Ebook Questions.” I think it’s a good place to start exploring this new revenue stream for writers.

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Posted in Business of writing, Contracts, Copyright, Markets, Publishers

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Dean Wesley Smith on the myth “only 300 writers make a living.”

Posted on May 19, 2010 | Comments Off

If you haven’t heard about it already, go check out Dean Wesley Smith’s latest post on the myth that “only 300 writers make a living writing fiction.”

That one never made sense when one looked closely at the numbers in Publisher’s Weekly or dug around a bit in the industry. Do all fiction writers make a living? No. But more do than 300.

Dean has been a fiction writer, editor, and publisher over the decades, which makes it fascinating to watch him crunch the numbers to stomp all over this myth.

And make sure to read all the comments over the next week or two, should be good stuff as various people weigh in.

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Posted in Business of writing, Markets

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