It’s interesting the effect this kind of a blog has on people who are; not exactly close, but closer than most.
One of my authors asked me for clarification of something over the weekend, and started off by asking me not to regard it as a silly question and put it on here! It wasn’t a silly question and was probably something that should have been explained to her before. Still it gives me the chance to explain the, for want of a better term, “money cycle” that dominates the publishing industry. After all if you write to get published – then aside from the ego trip that “I’m a published author” brings - you actually want to get paid for your hard work.
The “money cycle”, is based on quarterly accounting. Quarter 1 runs from January to March, Quarter 2 from April to June, 3 from July to September and of course 4 from October through December. If you are selling academic books (to students and or colleges and schools) then Quarter 3 is usually your peak. If you are selling general books and fiction then Quarters 1 and 4 are almost always bigger than 2 and 3 unless of course you have a bestseller on your hands.
The retailers report sales to the wholesalers/distributors/aggregators on a quarterly basis, in arrears, and if you’ve been reading this blog you a while now, you will know exactly how far in arrears some can be. At some point, anything up to 45-60 days after reporting these sales these intermediaries are paid. At some point after that they then pay the publisher. Once all the monies have been collected in the publisher pays out royalties on those sales to the individual authors.
Some retailers deal directly with the publishers and this cuts out the middle step, some, and here the advent of the internet is a big step forward, actually report the sales as they happen, but not all do so, and the bigger they are the less likely this is.
Publishers tend to be committed to reporting all sales (reported to them by this time) to their authors during the month after the quarter ends. We use a 14-21 day cut-off, others vary from this. Any sales for the quarter received after this cut-off point are perforce included in the following quarter. If you think about it, there isn’t any other way of doing it – the quarter has to be closed before payments can be made.
At some point from 30 to 45 (and occasionally 60) days after the quarter end the actual payments start to come in and eventually at the end of this cycle, usually in the 45-60 day period the royalty payments will be made.
I hope this provides a detailed answer to some of the questions about the process and that all important “money cycle”.
Monday, 9 August 2010
Saturday, 7 August 2010
Short and Sweet - 7th August 2010.
Sorry, not going to be on long today.
Too busy reformatting excerpts as per the blog from a couple of days ago and working with a couple of authors to produce the smaller version of the their blurbs one particular website insists on.
As a result won’t be really producing a blog today.
Have a fun weekend and I’ll catch you Monday.
Too busy reformatting excerpts as per the blog from a couple of days ago and working with a couple of authors to produce the smaller version of the their blurbs one particular website insists on.
As a result won’t be really producing a blog today.
Have a fun weekend and I’ll catch you Monday.
Friday, 6 August 2010
I Give Up - 6th August 2010
Honestly I really feel like it sometime. Prospective authors, indeed even a published author, just will not read the submissions instructions. This must be the fourth or even fifth post about this subject and it’s still happening.
We changed our instructions a couple of days ago to ask non-fiction authors to send a query first and fiction authors to send the full manuscript.
In the last twenty-four hours, I’ve had three queries in. Two from fiction writers, who are going to get a very simple response – send the s**ding manuscript and we’ll happily consider it.
One of them sent a detailed chapter by chapter synopsis of her book as an attachment. The b***dy thing was 15,500 words long! What do the submission instructions say – “A short (but not chapter by chapter) synopsis should also be included.” Am I going to read a detailed chapter by chapter synopsis when I’ve specifically said I don’t want one, and when I’m going to have to read the whole manuscript if she sends it? What do you think?
The second one sent us a query looking for a literary agent. Not a good start, but I did respond by pointing out we were a publisher and needed the whole manuscript according to our guidelines. He responded to this e-mail by sending a Microsoft Works file. Despite having been referred back to the submissions guidelines that state “Format your COMPLETE manuscript as a Microsoft Word document (version 2003 or lower), or as an RTF file.” I ask you, what is the point? As far as I’m aware, and I could actually be wrong, Works does not support Track Changes, which is the most important tool we use within the word processor when editing. So his WPS file is useless to us. I suppose I could spend time looking for a file converter or uploading a trial version of Works and reading it that way. To what effect? We actually can’t be sure he could process his edits should we actually accept his novel(s).
There is one similarity between these two people. They are both entitled to use the word “Doctor” in front of their names. Personally I always thought to earn that you needed an education.
The third query, was correct as far as queries go, it was for a non-fiction piece. So far so good. I read the letter, which was actually very well written and specific to us rather than a blanket one with a growing sense of frustration. Again the submission guidelines state “We do NOT publish self-help, social or political commentary, nor diet books.” Guess what – this was a social/political commentary on the state of “our country today.” Hmmm . . . Now like most nationalities, Americans can be nation centric in their world view, not a problem, it’s a tendency we all have, but this was a letter personally crafted for us and the web site home page clearly states we come from New Zealand and England. Last time I looked we haven’t yet become the 53rd, 54th and 55th states of the US. (New Zealand would qualify as two states, North and South Island – and I know there’s not 52 currently – is there?).
Small wonder, I sometimes feel like giving up. Oh, for the simple life of an author once more...
Jeez now I’m getting nostalgic.....
We changed our instructions a couple of days ago to ask non-fiction authors to send a query first and fiction authors to send the full manuscript.
In the last twenty-four hours, I’ve had three queries in. Two from fiction writers, who are going to get a very simple response – send the s**ding manuscript and we’ll happily consider it.
One of them sent a detailed chapter by chapter synopsis of her book as an attachment. The b***dy thing was 15,500 words long! What do the submission instructions say – “A short (but not chapter by chapter) synopsis should also be included.” Am I going to read a detailed chapter by chapter synopsis when I’ve specifically said I don’t want one, and when I’m going to have to read the whole manuscript if she sends it? What do you think?
The second one sent us a query looking for a literary agent. Not a good start, but I did respond by pointing out we were a publisher and needed the whole manuscript according to our guidelines. He responded to this e-mail by sending a Microsoft Works file. Despite having been referred back to the submissions guidelines that state “Format your COMPLETE manuscript as a Microsoft Word document (version 2003 or lower), or as an RTF file.” I ask you, what is the point? As far as I’m aware, and I could actually be wrong, Works does not support Track Changes, which is the most important tool we use within the word processor when editing. So his WPS file is useless to us. I suppose I could spend time looking for a file converter or uploading a trial version of Works and reading it that way. To what effect? We actually can’t be sure he could process his edits should we actually accept his novel(s).
There is one similarity between these two people. They are both entitled to use the word “Doctor” in front of their names. Personally I always thought to earn that you needed an education.
The third query, was correct as far as queries go, it was for a non-fiction piece. So far so good. I read the letter, which was actually very well written and specific to us rather than a blanket one with a growing sense of frustration. Again the submission guidelines state “We do NOT publish self-help, social or political commentary, nor diet books.” Guess what – this was a social/political commentary on the state of “our country today.” Hmmm . . . Now like most nationalities, Americans can be nation centric in their world view, not a problem, it’s a tendency we all have, but this was a letter personally crafted for us and the web site home page clearly states we come from New Zealand and England. Last time I looked we haven’t yet become the 53rd, 54th and 55th states of the US. (New Zealand would qualify as two states, North and South Island – and I know there’s not 52 currently – is there?).
Small wonder, I sometimes feel like giving up. Oh, for the simple life of an author once more...
Jeez now I’m getting nostalgic.....
Thursday, 5 August 2010
Retailers and Formatting - 5th August 2010
I’ve definitely reaching a limit with some retailers.
We sent out our newsletter to our authors, asking them to check on their own books on each of the sites (we were good, gave them a list and told them how the books got there) and two of our authors have responded inside 24hours. That’s great but where are the rest of you? LOL – Don’t’ mean it – I’ll give you another 24hours at least!
A couple of the retailers introduced tagword/keyword searches since we loaded our earlier books with them , while another one has changed their category structure. One of them doesn’t allow a blurb of more than 400 characters and I wasn’t certain I was compressing all existing blurbs to fit on this site. Rather than just simply checking ourselves, we decided to involve the authors as well – after all they know their books better than anyone.
All relatively simple issues to resolve and indeed we’ve already turned up a couple of books that need some minor adjustments.
What has got my back up a little (and NOT with the author who spotted it) is would appear one of the sites has changed how it formats the excerpts for a book – not the blurb – the excerpts. This is usually done on a copy and paste basis from the finished manuscript. When you do this it looks perfectly fine in the maintenance form on their site, albeit in Courier font. Now when you transfer it to the live system it loses the entire paragraph formatting and runs everything together. It looks horrible!
I don’t know if I missed this point when we first uploaded to them (everything gets checked out very carefully on the first book loaded) – I’m pretty sure this wasn’t the case a year ago, so I can only guess they changed their handler on the web site. Not making excuses, even if they changed it since it’s still my bad.
The worst of it is, it would be this particular site. There are two issues. Firstly, for their own reasons, and unlike everyone else the excerpt is attached to a format of a book, not the overall book. So, as we have each book on there in four formats – I have to redo the excerpt four times! Thank god for cut and paste. Secondly, you change things on their “maintenance” system and it isn’t uploaded to the “live” system until about 2am Eastern Standard Time.
So I’ve had to make the change 4 times, and I now have to wait for 24 hours to check if its right, if it isn’t then a wrong version will be visible to the world for 24hours and I can’t do anything about it. If its right, and I sincerely hope it is, then I’ve got to update 57 other books, each of them 4 times.
Oh what fun.........?
We sent out our newsletter to our authors, asking them to check on their own books on each of the sites (we were good, gave them a list and told them how the books got there) and two of our authors have responded inside 24hours. That’s great but where are the rest of you? LOL – Don’t’ mean it – I’ll give you another 24hours at least!
A couple of the retailers introduced tagword/keyword searches since we loaded our earlier books with them , while another one has changed their category structure. One of them doesn’t allow a blurb of more than 400 characters and I wasn’t certain I was compressing all existing blurbs to fit on this site. Rather than just simply checking ourselves, we decided to involve the authors as well – after all they know their books better than anyone.
All relatively simple issues to resolve and indeed we’ve already turned up a couple of books that need some minor adjustments.
What has got my back up a little (and NOT with the author who spotted it) is would appear one of the sites has changed how it formats the excerpts for a book – not the blurb – the excerpts. This is usually done on a copy and paste basis from the finished manuscript. When you do this it looks perfectly fine in the maintenance form on their site, albeit in Courier font. Now when you transfer it to the live system it loses the entire paragraph formatting and runs everything together. It looks horrible!
I don’t know if I missed this point when we first uploaded to them (everything gets checked out very carefully on the first book loaded) – I’m pretty sure this wasn’t the case a year ago, so I can only guess they changed their handler on the web site. Not making excuses, even if they changed it since it’s still my bad.
The worst of it is, it would be this particular site. There are two issues. Firstly, for their own reasons, and unlike everyone else the excerpt is attached to a format of a book, not the overall book. So, as we have each book on there in four formats – I have to redo the excerpt four times! Thank god for cut and paste. Secondly, you change things on their “maintenance” system and it isn’t uploaded to the “live” system until about 2am Eastern Standard Time.
So I’ve had to make the change 4 times, and I now have to wait for 24 hours to check if its right, if it isn’t then a wrong version will be visible to the world for 24hours and I can’t do anything about it. If its right, and I sincerely hope it is, then I’ve got to update 57 other books, each of them 4 times.
Oh what fun.........?
Wednesday, 4 August 2010
The Art of Story Structure - 4th August 2010
A submission decision this morning (that’s evening for my business partner on the other side of the world) brought back to mind an experience last year. For a while I taught a creative writing class for a local historical project, but the course folded for lack of numbers.
One of the topics I chose for discussion was story construction, and how things have changed over the years. I read out the opening two paragraphs of To Kill a Mocking Bird and pointed out this material went on, with little change, and no action for several pages. I will very quickly add, this book is one of my all time favourites, and justly deserves its place in the pantheon of seminal twentieth century American literature, and I reread it every two or three years and still get a great deal of pleasure from it, finding new or forgotten details.
The question was – would this book still get published today if presented with this self same structure unchanged? Remember, this was from an untried author. The answer to that question is probably not. These days, the long leisurely scene setting introduction for a book is only going to work for established authors, those whose print runs can run into millions.
It never ceases to amaze me that would be authors respond to criticism of their opening sequences by saying things like “James Patterson gets away with so I can too” or “that’s how Catherine Cookson does it” or the even stranger one “I wrote it like Charlotte Bronte did in Jane Eyre”.
The simple fact is, the world of professional publishing is a nightmare for a new author. You have to get someone to read your book. When they’re very busy, it’ll get thrown on the slush pile and maybe picked up again at some point in the future. If you’re lucky someone might read the first couple of pages and make a decision. A FINAL DECISION based on the first two pages. So which way do you think the decision will go if you haven’t engaged the reader’s attention in those first two pages? In fact, in some of the bigger houses, they may only read the first two paragraphs.
If all you’ve done is describe your lead character, or the picturesque country house, or ranch, or spend those two pages over a lovingly crafted piece that sets the historical period – what are your chances?
Slim to none spring to mind.
Once you are well enough established to be a Patterson or a Cookson then you can do it. If you want to write like a Bronte for an exercise, or a discussion piece or for a group or magazine competition then fine. That’s perfectly acceptable, and often a worthwhile exercise in its own right.
If you want if professionally published – now that’s a different story.
I’m afraid you have to follow the rules and introduce some action into the story very quickly. By action, I don’t mean the bang of a gun or the shriek of a victim, the crash of a car or the boom of an explosion, or even the bodice ripping. Action is simply something happening, or more accurately, something interesting happening.
Howe hard can that be? ... LOL
One of the topics I chose for discussion was story construction, and how things have changed over the years. I read out the opening two paragraphs of To Kill a Mocking Bird and pointed out this material went on, with little change, and no action for several pages. I will very quickly add, this book is one of my all time favourites, and justly deserves its place in the pantheon of seminal twentieth century American literature, and I reread it every two or three years and still get a great deal of pleasure from it, finding new or forgotten details.
The question was – would this book still get published today if presented with this self same structure unchanged? Remember, this was from an untried author. The answer to that question is probably not. These days, the long leisurely scene setting introduction for a book is only going to work for established authors, those whose print runs can run into millions.
It never ceases to amaze me that would be authors respond to criticism of their opening sequences by saying things like “James Patterson gets away with so I can too” or “that’s how Catherine Cookson does it” or the even stranger one “I wrote it like Charlotte Bronte did in Jane Eyre”.
The simple fact is, the world of professional publishing is a nightmare for a new author. You have to get someone to read your book. When they’re very busy, it’ll get thrown on the slush pile and maybe picked up again at some point in the future. If you’re lucky someone might read the first couple of pages and make a decision. A FINAL DECISION based on the first two pages. So which way do you think the decision will go if you haven’t engaged the reader’s attention in those first two pages? In fact, in some of the bigger houses, they may only read the first two paragraphs.
If all you’ve done is describe your lead character, or the picturesque country house, or ranch, or spend those two pages over a lovingly crafted piece that sets the historical period – what are your chances?
Slim to none spring to mind.
Once you are well enough established to be a Patterson or a Cookson then you can do it. If you want to write like a Bronte for an exercise, or a discussion piece or for a group or magazine competition then fine. That’s perfectly acceptable, and often a worthwhile exercise in its own right.
If you want if professionally published – now that’s a different story.
I’m afraid you have to follow the rules and introduce some action into the story very quickly. By action, I don’t mean the bang of a gun or the shriek of a victim, the crash of a car or the boom of an explosion, or even the bodice ripping. Action is simply something happening, or more accurately, something interesting happening.
Howe hard can that be? ... LOL
Tuesday, 3 August 2010
Submission No No - 3rd August 2010
I think I’ll return to the submissions topic today after an event yesterday which is worth adding to your “things not to do list”.
We received a submission through from the Far East. I’m not going to comment on the quality of the language used, I have nothing but admiration for people who are prepared to write in a second language. My problem with it was the way it was submitted.
Firstly it was sent as an RTF file rather than a DOC. Now, this isn’t a problem usually, but an RTF file us larger than a DOC file especially if it contains images (it’s a technical thing to do with the way images compress apparently). In this instance the author had included an image of their embroidered cover for their book. Not only had they included it, but they’d included it three times.
As a result the e-mail was over 11Mb in size which can be a problem for some e-mail systems which do not allow attachments that large.
Still haven’t got to the meat of the problem. This author was clearly anxious to ensure their e-mail was seen and read by the right person or people, so they harvested every e-mail off the web site and sent it to every single one. So I ended up with five copies of the manuscript! The author even sent it to the feedback e-mail address!
Now, if a publisher has a submissions address on their web site, and asks you to send submissions to it, then it is clearly going to go to the right person (or people). If you send it in this brute force method, what will you actually achieve – other than to potentially p**s off the staff at the publishers. If you’ve p**ssed them off – what chance has your manuscript got? A better one or a worse one?
You do the math. . .
Simple isn’t it – do what it says on the submissions page. Nothing more and nothing less.
The manuscript was rejected, and we’ve changed our submissions page instructions. What was the reason given? We don’t publish self-help books. True, but it was only one count out of three.
See I can be polite. . .
We received a submission through from the Far East. I’m not going to comment on the quality of the language used, I have nothing but admiration for people who are prepared to write in a second language. My problem with it was the way it was submitted.
Firstly it was sent as an RTF file rather than a DOC. Now, this isn’t a problem usually, but an RTF file us larger than a DOC file especially if it contains images (it’s a technical thing to do with the way images compress apparently). In this instance the author had included an image of their embroidered cover for their book. Not only had they included it, but they’d included it three times.
As a result the e-mail was over 11Mb in size which can be a problem for some e-mail systems which do not allow attachments that large.
Still haven’t got to the meat of the problem. This author was clearly anxious to ensure their e-mail was seen and read by the right person or people, so they harvested every e-mail off the web site and sent it to every single one. So I ended up with five copies of the manuscript! The author even sent it to the feedback e-mail address!
Now, if a publisher has a submissions address on their web site, and asks you to send submissions to it, then it is clearly going to go to the right person (or people). If you send it in this brute force method, what will you actually achieve – other than to potentially p**s off the staff at the publishers. If you’ve p**ssed them off – what chance has your manuscript got? A better one or a worse one?
You do the math. . .
Simple isn’t it – do what it says on the submissions page. Nothing more and nothing less.
The manuscript was rejected, and we’ve changed our submissions page instructions. What was the reason given? We don’t publish self-help books. True, but it was only one count out of three.
See I can be polite. . .
Monday, 2 August 2010
Copyright - 2nd August 2010
Before I go much further with this blog I thought I should touch on the ticklish subject of copyright. This can cause so much confusion for a novice author that I thought a simple set of guidelines would be worth setting out.
I’m not just talking about the author’s copyright in their work, I’m also talking about the way an author can unwittingly use copyrighted material inside their manuscript. An author’s copyright is straight forward enough. If you wrote it, then the copyright is yours, and subsequently your estate’s until 50 years after your death. (I’m talking most countries here, there are variations around the world, but this is the normal accepted term).
A publishing contract will normally expect you to assign the publishing rights to the book to the publisher, for a set period of time, usually with a rolling period after this. By rolling period I mean after the initial period either party can terminate the contract on a rolling notice period. Usually the contract asks the author to assign publishing rights for the media being published, electronic, print etc, etc. Some publishers insist on all rights, including for example film, video, TV and radio rights. Personally I regard this as bad practice and would never recommend an author signs such a contract.
Your copyright, though, is something that you should cuddle to your chest and not let go of. If a contract assigns the publisher the copyright, even for a limited time – RUN A MILE IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION.
Don’t forget though, if you assign the publishing rights, especially the electronic ones, then you as the author have a duty too – don’t put the book up in total on your own web site for people to read for free, don’t put it on writing.com either – extracts are fine but check with your publisher how much they consider acceptable. You signed a CONTRACT remember.
The other side of copyright is the unwitting use of other people’s copyrighted material. For example, some authors put nice quotations at the top of each section or chapter, and many novices follow suit. You must attribute these quotations to the correct place. Quoting Shakespeare for example is fine because the author is clearly long deceased. Or even the bible – you would think.
Ah... Not so. In either case. Simply put, where did you get the quotation from? If it was a modern version of the book, it may be a new translation from the original (don’t forget Shakespeare didn’t write in modern English) and as a result your quotation might be subject to the copyright held by the translator or his/her assignees. The same can just as easily be held true for a version of the bible, and some are produced specifically for particular churches who then hold the copyright.
How about quoting song lyrics? Same holds true, only the copyright length is different here. You want to have your (modern) character singing along to a particular tune to set the mood or establish the period, and his/her taste in music and personality. Oops. Copyright. Suddenly you have an editor breathing down your neck telling you to change something you consider essential to your character development. How about a mystery thriller where the perpetrator is caught by his tendency to hum a particular song as he goes about his work? Similar. Oops.
Now, suppose I receive a well written story, that has say, 50 chapters, each with a different quotation, which is littered with song lyrics as it’s about a cover band. Then, on the coach between gigs, the lead guitarist is reading the latest Tracy Quan (strange reading tastes for a rock singer but hey, I didn’t say it was a he) and reads the juicer pieces out to the rest of the band.
May sound extreme, but I did receive a submission similar to this. It got rejected, on the basis of take out the copyright stuff, and rewrite around it, then resubmit.
As yet I’ve heard nothing back.....
You have been warned....
I’m not just talking about the author’s copyright in their work, I’m also talking about the way an author can unwittingly use copyrighted material inside their manuscript. An author’s copyright is straight forward enough. If you wrote it, then the copyright is yours, and subsequently your estate’s until 50 years after your death. (I’m talking most countries here, there are variations around the world, but this is the normal accepted term).
A publishing contract will normally expect you to assign the publishing rights to the book to the publisher, for a set period of time, usually with a rolling period after this. By rolling period I mean after the initial period either party can terminate the contract on a rolling notice period. Usually the contract asks the author to assign publishing rights for the media being published, electronic, print etc, etc. Some publishers insist on all rights, including for example film, video, TV and radio rights. Personally I regard this as bad practice and would never recommend an author signs such a contract.
Your copyright, though, is something that you should cuddle to your chest and not let go of. If a contract assigns the publisher the copyright, even for a limited time – RUN A MILE IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION.
Don’t forget though, if you assign the publishing rights, especially the electronic ones, then you as the author have a duty too – don’t put the book up in total on your own web site for people to read for free, don’t put it on writing.com either – extracts are fine but check with your publisher how much they consider acceptable. You signed a CONTRACT remember.
The other side of copyright is the unwitting use of other people’s copyrighted material. For example, some authors put nice quotations at the top of each section or chapter, and many novices follow suit. You must attribute these quotations to the correct place. Quoting Shakespeare for example is fine because the author is clearly long deceased. Or even the bible – you would think.
Ah... Not so. In either case. Simply put, where did you get the quotation from? If it was a modern version of the book, it may be a new translation from the original (don’t forget Shakespeare didn’t write in modern English) and as a result your quotation might be subject to the copyright held by the translator or his/her assignees. The same can just as easily be held true for a version of the bible, and some are produced specifically for particular churches who then hold the copyright.
How about quoting song lyrics? Same holds true, only the copyright length is different here. You want to have your (modern) character singing along to a particular tune to set the mood or establish the period, and his/her taste in music and personality. Oops. Copyright. Suddenly you have an editor breathing down your neck telling you to change something you consider essential to your character development. How about a mystery thriller where the perpetrator is caught by his tendency to hum a particular song as he goes about his work? Similar. Oops.
Now, suppose I receive a well written story, that has say, 50 chapters, each with a different quotation, which is littered with song lyrics as it’s about a cover band. Then, on the coach between gigs, the lead guitarist is reading the latest Tracy Quan (strange reading tastes for a rock singer but hey, I didn’t say it was a he) and reads the juicer pieces out to the rest of the band.
May sound extreme, but I did receive a submission similar to this. It got rejected, on the basis of take out the copyright stuff, and rewrite around it, then resubmit.
As yet I’ve heard nothing back.....
You have been warned....
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