Author cuts and some random thoughts...

[Anne Lyle]

What if health gets in the way, for example, and you can't sit for hours at a time to write, or you can't write every day or even every week? What if you try really hard but you *can't* write a book a year, or you know there's no way you can, realistically? I feel it would seriously affect the quality of my work; I don't know about others. And unless you're a household name, I doubt publishers would want a book every two years...

Most publishers are willing to be flexible provided you behave professionally and keep them in the loop - I know Douglas Hulick is running about a year behind on his book, and of course Scott Lynch hasn't had anything new out for what, five years? owing to depression. Of course the better your first book does (c.f. Lynch) the more patient your publishers are likely to be.

If you can't keep up a book-a-year pace, it's not the end of the world. You could write two books and sell them both when you're done, or get a one-book deal with an option on a sequel (which you've already started during the contract process), or self-publish at your own pace - there's no one-size-fits-all solution any more...

 

[Kissmequick]

Deadlines - at least initially - are something your agent will negotiate for you too. If you *know* you can't write a book a year for whatever reason, then your agent and pub will negotiate for something you are happy with.

If life then throws you a curveball, well then, as long as you communicate with your pub rather than sit and hope, you should be fine. If you tell them as soon as it crops up, they can get around it (and if you sell well they will try very hard) If you tell them the week before you are due to hand in that, so sorry, you haven't had a chance to start the MS yet...that makes it more difficult for them to get around because they book things months in advance.


As long as you communicate, you shoudl be fine.

 

[Montero]

Rosemary Kirstein on her Steerswoman series is a very intermittent producer of books. More power to Daw that they keep putting out the series as it is available.

In terms of publishability - if you are getting a "thank you for sending it to us, it is not right for our list, best of luck elsewhere" - my understanding is that means "it is of publishable quality, just not to our taste/doesn't fit in with the type of books we publish and we are a brand which has to (broadly) meet certain expectations for our readers."

 

[ctg]

Some numbers to consider,

JKR is said to be earning around 15 percent royalties, but taken in the light of Leishas numbers,

£8.99 * 50 000 = £449 500
Leisha's original royalty on 8 percent equals 35 960 pounds
JKRowlings claimed 15 percent royalty equals 67 425 pounds
Some online publishers goes upto 50 percent and that equals 224 750 pounds
Uncle Compton's 92 percent stage on self-publishing equals 413 540 pounds

But taken in the account our recent numbers got from Scrafy's thread a self-publishing author at the beginning of the their literary life could be luckily looking to sell around 12 000 copies in first year.

So,
£8.99 * 12 000 = £107 880
Leisha 8% = £8630.4
JKR 15% = £16 182
Fifty-fifty = £53 940
Gary's 92% = £99 249.6

Therefore I would question why is it that the author gets shorted this day and age, when it's possible that they channel some of the profits to hire publicist services? And even if they drop the price to more comfortable £4.99 bracket, they wouldn't be absolute worse off, would they?

 

[Hex]

I happen to have attended a Secret Webinar on this recently. As far as I remember (from this and other sources), the suggestion was that although there are definite advantages to independent publishing, if you sign with a large publisher:

(1) You are likely to sell more books (because they'll buy the displays at the front of Waterstones and distribute very widely, ad actually most independently published books sell very few copies -- a hundred or so).
(2) You don't need to be responsible for marketing, cover design, foreign rights etc etc etc.
(3) Your book is validated to start with because you're selling with a big publisher.
(4) Most of them edit as well, so it'll come over as well-polished and shiny rather than a bit amateur (which I suspect most early career books -- even by super authors -- would seem without that editorial input).
(5) If you want to write rather than manage your book production team/ market yourself then you might be best going the traditional route.

 

[Anne Lyle]

What Hex says - a self-pubbed first novel by an unknown writer is going to have to be very lucky indeed to sell 12000 copies!

12 or 120 is a lot nearer the mark, unless the book

a) strikes a chord with your target demographic (i.e. it is "good" in the strictly commercial sense)

b) is very competitively priced, i.e. a lot less than 8.99 a copy. The sweet spot for self-pubbed novels seems to be 2.99, not 4.99.

Frankly, a freelance publicist is unlikely to be worth the money - they are going to struggle to get your self-pubbed book into bookshops, magazine review columns, etc, because these venues already have more titles coming at them than they can cope with, just from the trade publishers. Most of them will just charge you a hefty sum to do things you can do for yourself (set up a Facebook page) or things that are useless (spamming every book blogger on the planet regardless of their preferred genre).

 

[nubins]

Dont forget to tax that income

I read a blog post from a successful self published author (had also been published in the past), who had just signed with Amazon as their publisher. Ebook royalties are much higher than traditional book royalties and he was selling fairly modest numbers of books and making a second income of around £20,000-£25,000 a year (several books selling a few thousand copies each). He then had a couple of books that reached top seller status on amazon, which is when they approached him to act as his publisher.

This auther seemed to really really dislike the traditional publishers though. So I suspect some of what he said was a bit pinch of salt territory. His arguments were sound though - less book stores = less shelf space, less shelf space = more competition for the space = publishers taking less risk. His views were that publshers were offering less and less to new authors (their value) and so it just wasn't worth all the time and effort in finding one willing to take the chance on you. He also felt he got paid a lot more for doing it himself.

He ended up signing with Amazon because he still got high levels of royalty but they also actively promoted his older works, sometimes without even telling him what they were doing. He had logged in to check his status and seen one of his older books had shot up the charts and he didnt understand why. When he opened his Kindle he saw it being advertised, despite the book being 9 months old, he said he had never heard of publishers going over old works and re-publicising them like that and was very happy with it.

So.. there are ways to make mor emoney, but they require you to rise above the crowd of those self publishing I guess.

 

[Anne Lyle]

I read a blog post from a successful self published author (had also been published in the past), who had just signed with Amazon as their publisher. .

(my bold)

Self-publishing makes sense for established authors who know the ropes and have a backlist that they can either republish in ebook format or get re-promoted on the back of their Amazon deal.

Big difference between his situation and a complete newbie...

 

[nubins]

Yea, im not saying its right, I'm just pointing out the differences. I dont think he was a particularly succesful author before self publishing though, just that he was familiar with the process.

I wish I could remember his name as his blog posts were an interesting read as it basically charted his progress from just starting out with self publishing through to becoming a best selling self published author.