Just a short post today on patience.
About 6 weeks ago we had an author throw up her hands and decide to walk away because three months after the contract we still hadn’t sent her any edits. Now, I can understand the frustration and even the resultant anger, but surely the appropriate response would be to send a (relatively) polite e-mail asking where your book was in the queue.
This lady didn’t and pulled her contract.
I made a new Facebook friend today (I use it as a networking rather than a social tool) and as always checked the bio. This particular author signed a contract two months ago with one of our larger eBook publishing rivals and is happy her book is slated for release in February 2011. That’s another 6 or 7 months away depending on whether it’s at the beginning or the end of the month.
We operate a policy of not giving a fixed schedule to enable us to remain flexible and we publish a book as soon as it’s ready. We’d rather do that that give an author a definite date, let them get all excited about it, even planning launch publicity etc. etc. and then two weeks before throw a month’s delay at them because “I’m sorry, the book before yours is taking longer to edit than anticipated”.
Either that or rush everything and end up with a sub-standard product that reflects badly on everyone and leaves the author with the taste of ashes after all that hard work.
It’s a difficult one, and with the pair of us having suffered both of the above scenarios, you can probably see why we chose the route we did.
I suppose we could always give a date so far out in the future no-one would complain. So, from now on your books will be published in September 2012............ LOL
Talk to you all again, next week.
Saturday, 31 July 2010
Friday, 30 July 2010
The Power of The Blog – Revisited 30th July 2010.
Maybe a blog is a very powerful tool indeed, or maybe it’s simply coincidence.
Conspiracy theorists beware, coincidence is a very powerful force in nature; just ask the originators of chaos theory! But I digress.
When I first started this blog I complained about the lack of sales information feeding through from some of the retailers and the length of time it takes them to report sales, information arriving months later.
Within a couple of days one of the retailers appeared to have taken notice and reported for the period up until the end of March. I thought that was progress and hence the tongue in cheek post to this blog the next day.
Now I wake up this morning to find a nice surprise. Our aggregator now shows the same retailer has reported sales for the following months, and two other previously reticent retailers have reported sales too.
I now have a very long and very detailed spreadsheet to go through and reconcile each individual sale against those already reported and since we’ve already finalised Quarter 2, post the newly received sales information into the current quarter.
That may sound unfair, but we have to report sales to our authors at fixed points in time and we have to cross check all those figures. We’ve already done that for Quarter 2 and if we abandoned that process and started all over again every time this happened – we’d never actually report. None of these retailers have actually reported up to the end of Quarter 2 as yet anyway. We don’t see another option.
Still it’s always good to see more sales figures and certainly two of the retailers have exceeded expectations. Mind you, it does seem to be short stories that are moving in volume. I wonder if that’s the commuter influence? You know, have a quick read on the train or bus into work. A 3,000 to 5,000 word story on an e-reader works a treat. Oops sorry about the pun there, it wasn’t intended.
Maybe that’s a marketing angle.
Buy four commuter length stories and get Friday’s free.
Wonder how easy that would be to set up on our web site?
Hmmm.............
Conspiracy theorists beware, coincidence is a very powerful force in nature; just ask the originators of chaos theory! But I digress.
When I first started this blog I complained about the lack of sales information feeding through from some of the retailers and the length of time it takes them to report sales, information arriving months later.
Within a couple of days one of the retailers appeared to have taken notice and reported for the period up until the end of March. I thought that was progress and hence the tongue in cheek post to this blog the next day.
Now I wake up this morning to find a nice surprise. Our aggregator now shows the same retailer has reported sales for the following months, and two other previously reticent retailers have reported sales too.
I now have a very long and very detailed spreadsheet to go through and reconcile each individual sale against those already reported and since we’ve already finalised Quarter 2, post the newly received sales information into the current quarter.
That may sound unfair, but we have to report sales to our authors at fixed points in time and we have to cross check all those figures. We’ve already done that for Quarter 2 and if we abandoned that process and started all over again every time this happened – we’d never actually report. None of these retailers have actually reported up to the end of Quarter 2 as yet anyway. We don’t see another option.
Still it’s always good to see more sales figures and certainly two of the retailers have exceeded expectations. Mind you, it does seem to be short stories that are moving in volume. I wonder if that’s the commuter influence? You know, have a quick read on the train or bus into work. A 3,000 to 5,000 word story on an e-reader works a treat. Oops sorry about the pun there, it wasn’t intended.
Maybe that’s a marketing angle.
Buy four commuter length stories and get Friday’s free.
Wonder how easy that would be to set up on our web site?
Hmmm.............
Thursday, 29 July 2010
Editing - 29th July 2010
The last post raised the question of editing again, in a rather round about way.
I can remember, not long after receiving my first contract as an author, by God did that feel good, the publisher had told me the edits were a couple of weeks away. I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I’d never been professionally edited before. So, on my next visit to my writing group, who were quite useful in many ways and I strongly recommend new authors get as much exposure to such groups as possible, I tentatively asked the question.
There were two published novelists among the group, and one self-published one. The self-published author hung his head and looked a bit sheepish; it was a few months later that I began to understand why. Of the other two, one went on to expound, at length, on just how important the working relationship between him and his editor was paramount. It had to be good, there needed to be two way communication and an understanding that both jobs, yours and your editor’s were vital before a book could be published.
The second author took an entirely different tone. In fact, if I stop to listen I can hear her quite plainly in the deepest echoes inside my skull.
“The editor is the Devil incarnate!”
“All they want to do is destroy your crafted prose with some fiddling for no reason!”
“Best thing to do is ignore them and tell them to b***er off!”
She was so vehement I was really taken aback, in fact the entire group, about fifteen if I remember correctly, were stunned into silence. A rare thing for that particular group.
I have never had cause to agree with her, and I have never yet knowingly met an author who thinks along the same lines and treats the editor as their enemy.
I’m not saying you need to show the editor zealous affection but a thank you doesn’t go amiss.
If you don’t really get this, then I suggest you try doing a story edit on someone else’s book for yourself. Not a critique, a proper story edit. List all the things that are wrong with the story, the logical fallacies, the times someone accidentally changes sides because they’ve used the wrong family, group, unit or even species, the way it only takes 2 hours to go from breakfast to supper on page 123. The list of possible issues is endless and has to be done at a more concentrated level than a writing group or WDC can. Now try adding in the copy edit at the same time – getting the commas in the right place, correcting the odd spelling or word use etc. etc.
Now try to do both of those things without attempting to rewrite the story in your own style.
It’s hard. In fact I find it so hard (my own grammatical limitations not withstanding) that I make a very poor editor. So would most authors, and probably so would my vociferous friend above.
I can remember, not long after receiving my first contract as an author, by God did that feel good, the publisher had told me the edits were a couple of weeks away. I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I’d never been professionally edited before. So, on my next visit to my writing group, who were quite useful in many ways and I strongly recommend new authors get as much exposure to such groups as possible, I tentatively asked the question.
There were two published novelists among the group, and one self-published one. The self-published author hung his head and looked a bit sheepish; it was a few months later that I began to understand why. Of the other two, one went on to expound, at length, on just how important the working relationship between him and his editor was paramount. It had to be good, there needed to be two way communication and an understanding that both jobs, yours and your editor’s were vital before a book could be published.
The second author took an entirely different tone. In fact, if I stop to listen I can hear her quite plainly in the deepest echoes inside my skull.
“The editor is the Devil incarnate!”
“All they want to do is destroy your crafted prose with some fiddling for no reason!”
“Best thing to do is ignore them and tell them to b***er off!”
She was so vehement I was really taken aback, in fact the entire group, about fifteen if I remember correctly, were stunned into silence. A rare thing for that particular group.
I have never had cause to agree with her, and I have never yet knowingly met an author who thinks along the same lines and treats the editor as their enemy.
I’m not saying you need to show the editor zealous affection but a thank you doesn’t go amiss.
If you don’t really get this, then I suggest you try doing a story edit on someone else’s book for yourself. Not a critique, a proper story edit. List all the things that are wrong with the story, the logical fallacies, the times someone accidentally changes sides because they’ve used the wrong family, group, unit or even species, the way it only takes 2 hours to go from breakfast to supper on page 123. The list of possible issues is endless and has to be done at a more concentrated level than a writing group or WDC can. Now try adding in the copy edit at the same time – getting the commas in the right place, correcting the odd spelling or word use etc. etc.
Now try to do both of those things without attempting to rewrite the story in your own style.
It’s hard. In fact I find it so hard (my own grammatical limitations not withstanding) that I make a very poor editor. So would most authors, and probably so would my vociferous friend above.
Wednesday, 28 July 2010
When is a Publishing Credit not a Publishing Credit? 28th July 2010
Sorry, to dwell on the subject of submissions, again but we’ve had another query in and this raises another point.
This author sent a very well written mini synopsis of his alternative history novel (very interesting as it’s my own main chosen field) and asked us if we would interested in the book. If so he would send us a couple of chapters. Yeah, right, you are right, he clearly hadn’t read the guidelines properly –whole manuscript does not mean a manuscript with holes!
He did, however provide a brief bio which if true would be a good marketing tool, let’s face it if the author has lived an interesting life then his book has more chance of being interesting. Not saying it has to be, but it’s more likely. At the bottom of the bio he states he’s a full time writer and has won many journalistic awards and has had four novels published previously.
Now, the journalism one is potential warning flag. The advantage authors with a journalistic background have is they know all about working with editors and working to deadlines. The disadvantage is they know all about working with editors and working to deadlines. Yes, that’s a deliberate repeat. They understand how to write factual pieces, and depending on the rag even faction pieces (i.e. fiction masquerading as fact – and I know I might well have insulted all journalists there – but it’s not meant, well not entirely).
I have worked with journalists turned fiction writer in the past and had great experiences, but I’ve also had massively bad experiences that way too. So it’s a warning flag but not a big one.
The second point is the main one here. He has had four novels previously published. Hmmm... Time to do some digging. Hello Amazon, how are you today? Good? So am I. How are you Google?
Two minutes later and his publishing track record is fully exposed. Amazon lists all four of his novels, and several collections of his articles. So far so good. It was time to dig a little deeper – and this exposes a very nice titbit of information. All of the above works were published by one company – one of the slightly less well known self publishing companies.
Now, I am in no way snobbish – we’re not big enough to be that way, and I have absolutely no quarrel with anyone who wants to go down the self-publishing route. But if you self-publish – can you really call yourself a published author in the accepted sense of the word within the publishing industry? Hell, I know some of the large publishers don’t regard someone who has been published by an indie publisher as being a published author – very snobby attitude.
If he had said he had previously self published his books, I would most certainly have given him brownie points for his honesty, and some more for his industry. Now, unfortunately for him, I will probably be reading his manuscript – if he submits it, with a slightly jaundiced eye.
The moral of the story is don’t try to pull the wool over a potential publisher’s eye by claiming to be more than you are. It doesn’t take long to stick a pin in the balloon of self-deceit – the web is all pervasive, and starting from behind in a race that is already very hard to win, is a handicap you don’t want.
So when exactly is an author published? When is it correct to claim a publishing credit? Over to you.
This author sent a very well written mini synopsis of his alternative history novel (very interesting as it’s my own main chosen field) and asked us if we would interested in the book. If so he would send us a couple of chapters. Yeah, right, you are right, he clearly hadn’t read the guidelines properly –whole manuscript does not mean a manuscript with holes!
He did, however provide a brief bio which if true would be a good marketing tool, let’s face it if the author has lived an interesting life then his book has more chance of being interesting. Not saying it has to be, but it’s more likely. At the bottom of the bio he states he’s a full time writer and has won many journalistic awards and has had four novels published previously.
Now, the journalism one is potential warning flag. The advantage authors with a journalistic background have is they know all about working with editors and working to deadlines. The disadvantage is they know all about working with editors and working to deadlines. Yes, that’s a deliberate repeat. They understand how to write factual pieces, and depending on the rag even faction pieces (i.e. fiction masquerading as fact – and I know I might well have insulted all journalists there – but it’s not meant, well not entirely).
I have worked with journalists turned fiction writer in the past and had great experiences, but I’ve also had massively bad experiences that way too. So it’s a warning flag but not a big one.
The second point is the main one here. He has had four novels previously published. Hmmm... Time to do some digging. Hello Amazon, how are you today? Good? So am I. How are you Google?
Two minutes later and his publishing track record is fully exposed. Amazon lists all four of his novels, and several collections of his articles. So far so good. It was time to dig a little deeper – and this exposes a very nice titbit of information. All of the above works were published by one company – one of the slightly less well known self publishing companies.
Now, I am in no way snobbish – we’re not big enough to be that way, and I have absolutely no quarrel with anyone who wants to go down the self-publishing route. But if you self-publish – can you really call yourself a published author in the accepted sense of the word within the publishing industry? Hell, I know some of the large publishers don’t regard someone who has been published by an indie publisher as being a published author – very snobby attitude.
If he had said he had previously self published his books, I would most certainly have given him brownie points for his honesty, and some more for his industry. Now, unfortunately for him, I will probably be reading his manuscript – if he submits it, with a slightly jaundiced eye.
The moral of the story is don’t try to pull the wool over a potential publisher’s eye by claiming to be more than you are. It doesn’t take long to stick a pin in the balloon of self-deceit – the web is all pervasive, and starting from behind in a race that is already very hard to win, is a handicap you don’t want.
So when exactly is an author published? When is it correct to claim a publishing credit? Over to you.
Tuesday, 27 July 2010
Some authors never learn - 27th July 2010
I have had an interesting experience on submissions over the last few days, and although it revisits an earlier theme, that can’t be helped. It does illustrate the point again though.
We very clearly state our submission requirements on the web site, file type, font and spacing, but we also go that one step further by providing two other things. A Link for New Authors which attempts to protect the wide eyed and innocents from their own preconceptions. We also provide a sample contract which sets out the major terms of the publishing arrangements, very specifically in respect of copyright (a vital issue), the length of the contract, the requirements on the author (and, equally importantly on us) and the royalty payment rates and schedules. The Notes page also has a lot to say about payment schedules and royalty expectations too.
In the past I’ve come across authors who having received a contract for the first time, for a single short story seem to have a basic thought pattern along the lines of – there are over 8 billion people in the world, if only 1% of them buy my e-book at a price of $1.99 - I’ll be a dollar millionaire by next Christmas. Then they put their feet up, rub their hands in glee and sit back and wait for the money to come rolling through the door.
Oh dear ... Oh dear. The world doesn’t work like that.
Okay, maybe I’ve been a bit extreme there, but that mindset is very common among the writing group members who have decided to go down the eBook route, and almost universal among non group members. Don’t they ever listen when an established author comes along and gives a talk? Don’t they hear the author say, however successful they are, they find they are spending 50% or more of their time dong promotional work – which is taking them away from writing. Think about it, why is the author actually there – promotion!
The other major fallacy with the approach and mindset outlined above is of course that prediction of sales – the next eBook that sells 80,000,000 copies will almost certainly be the first, and it will not be written by a brand new unknown author.
Going back to the e-mails that prompted this discussion point – I received a submission query over the weekend, asking how much we would charge to convert this author’s book into an eBook. Again, didn’t read the submissions guidelines which rather clearly state we don’t charge the author. The author gave some details of the book and the fact it already had 182 online followers.
Hmm . . . Intriguing – if it already has “followers” – how? Clearly this works two ways, one if the author is serialising it on the web, will it be taken down and has the author already tapped their eBook market on a free distribution basis? So I wrote back, patiently, saying the submissions page lays out the process, as does the sample contract, we pay royalties etc, etc, and by the way you would be required to remove the current distribution on signing a contract which would of course be dependent on the quality of the manuscript. If you want to go ahead please....
Nice, polite, frank but not overly familiar...
So, what e-mail did I get back today?
What royalties do you pay? I can’t find them on the web site.
Before I responded I did allow myself 30 seconds to check – the details are there – exactly as I had said they were. My response is perhaps, slightly more curt than the previous one. There’s a reason for that. An author who cannot actually bother to read the details before submission and then asks a question we’ve deliberately pre-answered is wasting my time.
What don’t you want to do with your publisher or prospective publisher?
Exactly, not rocket-science is it? – DON’T WASTE THEIR TIME.
I’m just waiting for the next question – How much scope is there for negotiating these rates?
I’ve probably got 24 hours to politely phrase the response – I’ll revise them downward as far as you like! How low do you want to go? Zero?
We very clearly state our submission requirements on the web site, file type, font and spacing, but we also go that one step further by providing two other things. A Link for New Authors which attempts to protect the wide eyed and innocents from their own preconceptions. We also provide a sample contract which sets out the major terms of the publishing arrangements, very specifically in respect of copyright (a vital issue), the length of the contract, the requirements on the author (and, equally importantly on us) and the royalty payment rates and schedules. The Notes page also has a lot to say about payment schedules and royalty expectations too.
In the past I’ve come across authors who having received a contract for the first time, for a single short story seem to have a basic thought pattern along the lines of – there are over 8 billion people in the world, if only 1% of them buy my e-book at a price of $1.99 - I’ll be a dollar millionaire by next Christmas. Then they put their feet up, rub their hands in glee and sit back and wait for the money to come rolling through the door.
Oh dear ... Oh dear. The world doesn’t work like that.
Okay, maybe I’ve been a bit extreme there, but that mindset is very common among the writing group members who have decided to go down the eBook route, and almost universal among non group members. Don’t they ever listen when an established author comes along and gives a talk? Don’t they hear the author say, however successful they are, they find they are spending 50% or more of their time dong promotional work – which is taking them away from writing. Think about it, why is the author actually there – promotion!
The other major fallacy with the approach and mindset outlined above is of course that prediction of sales – the next eBook that sells 80,000,000 copies will almost certainly be the first, and it will not be written by a brand new unknown author.
Going back to the e-mails that prompted this discussion point – I received a submission query over the weekend, asking how much we would charge to convert this author’s book into an eBook. Again, didn’t read the submissions guidelines which rather clearly state we don’t charge the author. The author gave some details of the book and the fact it already had 182 online followers.
Hmm . . . Intriguing – if it already has “followers” – how? Clearly this works two ways, one if the author is serialising it on the web, will it be taken down and has the author already tapped their eBook market on a free distribution basis? So I wrote back, patiently, saying the submissions page lays out the process, as does the sample contract, we pay royalties etc, etc, and by the way you would be required to remove the current distribution on signing a contract which would of course be dependent on the quality of the manuscript. If you want to go ahead please....
Nice, polite, frank but not overly familiar...
So, what e-mail did I get back today?
What royalties do you pay? I can’t find them on the web site.
Before I responded I did allow myself 30 seconds to check – the details are there – exactly as I had said they were. My response is perhaps, slightly more curt than the previous one. There’s a reason for that. An author who cannot actually bother to read the details before submission and then asks a question we’ve deliberately pre-answered is wasting my time.
What don’t you want to do with your publisher or prospective publisher?
Exactly, not rocket-science is it? – DON’T WASTE THEIR TIME.
I’m just waiting for the next question – How much scope is there for negotiating these rates?
I’ve probably got 24 hours to politely phrase the response – I’ll revise them downward as far as you like! How low do you want to go? Zero?
Monday, 26 July 2010
The week in review - 26th July 2010
Reading back through the blog for last week, I deliberately took Sunday off, it looks like I’m the big I am man, and I do everything for the company. Apart from the fact that would not be a good impression to give to people it would most definitely not be the truth.
Previous experience means I understand most facets of the business of getting a book from manuscript through to a production eBook or paperback. (We don’t at the moment do hardback print but we can and will once there is a definite demand demonstrated).
I have had experience of most parts of the publishing business so feel I can talk about them, but that does not mean it’s just me doing it all here. It doesn’t take long to expose my weaknesses as a copy editor, about five seconds if I’m having a good day. My main problem is being, as my editor describes me, comma averse. It’s difficult to correct someone else’s comma usage if you can’t get your own right.
Cover art is more usually a way to relax than a frustration, as is the web site development. That’s not to say handling an e-commerce suite doesn’t have its own frustrations – believe me it does. Still, at least I’m doing something I want to do, and that is definitely worthwhile, something far too many people can’t claim.
If anyone has a topic they’d like me to cover here, please do leave a comment, I’ll be happy to give my point of view – as long as it’s not on where to insert that pesky comma!
Previous experience means I understand most facets of the business of getting a book from manuscript through to a production eBook or paperback. (We don’t at the moment do hardback print but we can and will once there is a definite demand demonstrated).
I have had experience of most parts of the publishing business so feel I can talk about them, but that does not mean it’s just me doing it all here. It doesn’t take long to expose my weaknesses as a copy editor, about five seconds if I’m having a good day. My main problem is being, as my editor describes me, comma averse. It’s difficult to correct someone else’s comma usage if you can’t get your own right.
Cover art is more usually a way to relax than a frustration, as is the web site development. That’s not to say handling an e-commerce suite doesn’t have its own frustrations – believe me it does. Still, at least I’m doing something I want to do, and that is definitely worthwhile, something far too many people can’t claim.
If anyone has a topic they’d like me to cover here, please do leave a comment, I’ll be happy to give my point of view – as long as it’s not on where to insert that pesky comma!
Saturday, 24 July 2010
The Power of the Blog! 24th July 2010
Guess what? ... Nope, wrong, this blog pretty much wrote itself!
A mere five days ago, on my opening entry to this blog I complained about not getting sales figures, let alone revenue, through from the major e-book retailers.
They must have been reading my blog over in Lyndhurst, NJ and been stung into action by the force and obvious rightness of my criticism! Lo and behold, this morning I arose and opened my e-mail to find the sales figures from that particular bookstore had miraculously been updated all the way forward from 24th January through to 28th March! They’re now only a quarter behind.
Yee-hah! And all that jazz.
Were they good? Drum roll.....
The answer is it depends on who you are. From our point of view they were 40% up on the previous two months, and that can’t be bad. From the point of view of one of our authors, one of the two most prolific we have, it was very good news – you see, with the exception of one book, all of those extra sales were hers! For our other authors, not such good news. As a publisher you know that some books will outsell others by huge margins, and you may or may not judge them to be the best books, but there is no accounting for the public and their fickle reading desires. You can try to predict them, and we, of course, do that, every time we decide a particular submission is worth contracting.
Still, it’s a good thing none of our authors are the jealous type.
A mere five days ago, on my opening entry to this blog I complained about not getting sales figures, let alone revenue, through from the major e-book retailers.
They must have been reading my blog over in Lyndhurst, NJ and been stung into action by the force and obvious rightness of my criticism! Lo and behold, this morning I arose and opened my e-mail to find the sales figures from that particular bookstore had miraculously been updated all the way forward from 24th January through to 28th March! They’re now only a quarter behind.
Yee-hah! And all that jazz.
Were they good? Drum roll.....
The answer is it depends on who you are. From our point of view they were 40% up on the previous two months, and that can’t be bad. From the point of view of one of our authors, one of the two most prolific we have, it was very good news – you see, with the exception of one book, all of those extra sales were hers! For our other authors, not such good news. As a publisher you know that some books will outsell others by huge margins, and you may or may not judge them to be the best books, but there is no accounting for the public and their fickle reading desires. You can try to predict them, and we, of course, do that, every time we decide a particular submission is worth contracting.
Still, it’s a good thing none of our authors are the jealous type.
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