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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Posted in Business of writing, Markets, Publishers

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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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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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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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Dean Wesley Smith’s essay “Can’t Make Money in Fiction”

Posted on December 18, 2009 | Comments Off

I don’t want to steal Dean Wesley Smith’s thunder, so all I’m going to say is that if you want to get a better understanding of money and fiction writing, go read his essay on “Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing:  Can’t Make Money in Fiction.” He does a great job explaining why it is possible to make a living as a fiction writer.

And if you disagree with him, go add a comment to his post.  He loves a good argument.

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Posted in Business of writing, Copyright

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The Unpredictability of Book Sales

Posted on December 8, 2009 | Comments Off

While browsing at a bookstore on Sunday, I found a copy of Audrey Niffenegger’s HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY shoved carelessly between two picture books in the children’s section.   The sight of it got me thinking about how unpredictable book sales can be.

Just this past March, Niffenegger got an advance of $5 million for HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY (here’s the New York Times article on the sale).   Then I saw an article in late October by Kate Ward in Entertainment Weekly about “Bookselling Blues.” Here’s the quote:

Some books are outright flops, not to put too fine a point on it. Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger’s follow-up to The Time Traveler‘s Wife, has sold only 38,823 copies; the new Mitch Albom book, Have a Little Faith, is at 148,974 copies. But despite numbers like these, the industry remains hopeful.

We won’t know until late January and February how book sales did this holiday season.  Sometimes a book starts off slow, then builds momentum, so perhaps HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY will follow that path.   I’ll be checking out the sales numbers for 2009 to find out how various big-name authors did.  How much effect will the recession have?

But it’s always disconcerting to realize that one can get a huge advance, such as the $8 million Charles Frazier got for his second novel, and then have the book do poorly in sales despite having a large marketing budget from a NYC publisher.  Sure, the money is nice (needs to be carefully invested though), but having a book undersell is no fun, especially when it’s time to try and sell the next manuscript.  These days bad Bookscan numbers follow an author around like a bad credit rating.

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Posted in Business of writing

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