Scalzi's New Deal...

[Fishbowl Helmet]

Over here... kinda great news for the man.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Lucky man - I think! 13 books in 10 years sounds like quite a lot of pressure.

 

[DrMclony]

I'd put up with that pressure with glee Lucky chap.

 

[ratsy]

I saw this earlier and thought how it's amazing that someone in a professional sport gets that a year just for being slightly above average in most leagues, but a best-selling author gets 3.4 million for 13 books over 10 years!

I mean, I'd take it but...

 

[jastius]

That's 261582.46 per book..

I wonder... How many sales would that be in self publishing?
At a third back at a price point of 7.99 per novel
Three dollars a sale, that would be 87180 sales per book to get the same amount before taxes. 7265 sales a month..
(The three dollars is an averaging of discounted and sale price purchases along with full price purchases)

 

[Ray McCarthy]

professional sport

Akin to winning lottery.

 

[JaimeRetief]

After Redshirts?
Are the people at Tor mad?

 

[chopper]

no, i'd say that's a pretty solid deal, actually - and if you add in subsidiary rights sales, translations, audio etc etc etc, it looks like the figure is just the baseline. that's why there are agents and publishers - and Tor wouldn't be making the deal if they didn't believe it would be profitable for both sides.

and as a not-inconsiderable side point, this sort of thing is good for everybody else too: the more money Tor make from the deal, the more they get to risk on newer authors too.

(Redshirts was fun, not outstanding, but still fun)

 

[JaimeRetief]

(Redshirts was fun, not outstanding, but still fun)

Horrid characterizations, in what read like bad Star Trek fanfiction, with predictably terrible terrible worldbuilding and main plot.
And that was the actually readable part, the personal and professional self-aggrandizement later on was extremely annoying and added nothing to the "book".
Honestly, the stretched out main "plot" would have fitted better in a short story, one published on Archive of Our Own or fanfiction.net

 

[ratsy]

Here is a good post from Scalzi on the deal and what the money means .... View From a Hotel Window

I only discovered Scalzi's books last november and have read, Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony, Zoe's Tale, Agent to the Stars, Lock-in, and Red Shirts. So for a guy who has read seven of his books in a few months (didnt realize how many I'd read until I just made that list) I am sad to think i have to wait 10 years for 13 more!

Chopper, I agree that red shirts was fun too. It got weird but who cares...I was still entertained

 

[chopper]

I heard the Wil Wheaton audiobook rather than go for the actual print edition, so i suspect that Wil's delivery helped to both make it fun and gloss over some of the rough bits. The meta ending doesn't work quite as well as Galaxy Quest (also Star Trek fan-fic with deliberately bobbins secondary world-building) and did drag somewhat, but it was still a reasonable pastiche overall.

 

[jastius]

"red shirts" is supposed to be being adapted for a television series that is upcoming..
a fun little parody overall.


as for his deal.. overall i think he did good. he is an author, not a rock star. and for any author getting flat out as much as you would for busting your hump selling two hundred plus books a day, without having the headache of self marketing is wonderful.

sure sports stars get more. they have product endorsements and posters. when was the last time you saw stephen king or jk rowling slinging nikes or pepsi in an ad?

perhaps they are not celebrity beings but in turn authors at least can have a modicum of privacy. with this in mind, that the public does not get all cozy with you for the most part, its a good deal.

afterall you would have to crack the NY Times best seller list pretty high up to beat that paycheck. its a nice steady income.

the only caveat to my mind is having to develope that many books in a relatively short period of time. perhaps he has them mapped out though. a lot of writers have a big to do list.

good luck to him and heres wishing he can scrape a pile of it back from the IRS.

 

[ratsy]

Jastius, after reading his blog about it, I have a different view on the deal. After all, he states he is making mid-6 digit income a year from royalties and such on his current books...if i read that correct, he is making near $500,000 a year already, so this will only add to the pile and when he 'earns out' on the advances of all his books, he will keep a steady stream...plus foreign rights which are negotiated seperatly...media...all of that.

I think he will be sleeping on a pile of cash in a few years.

 

[Ursa major]

I think he will be sleeping on a pile of cash in a few years.

Unlikely.

In the Scalzi household, the cats are the ones that get to sleep on the piles of cash.

 

[JaimeRetief]

I heard the Wil Wheaton audiobook rather than go for the actual print edition, so i suspect that Wil's delivery helped to both make it fun and gloss over some of the rough bits. The meta ending doesn't work quite as well as Galaxy Quest (also Star Trek fan-fic with deliberately bobbins secondary world-building) and did drag somewhat, but it was still a reasonable pastiche overall.

Ugh, Crusher.
I and I thought that things could not get any worse

 

[JaimeRetief]

Unlikely.

In the Scalzi household, the cats are the ones that get to sleep on the piles of cash.

On a related note, I found a fairly interesting report on authors' earnings from Amazon.
http://authorearnings.com/report/the-report/
Quite the interesting read, here are a few of the more interesting graphs:

 

[chopper]

ah, Hugh Howey - he's an entirely different discussion, but like Scalzi, is another outlier in the statistics. i suppose his evangelism for Amazon balances out the trad-pub models.

i'm told that 105% of statistics can be made to say what you want them to say.

 

[JaimeRetief]

ah, Hugh Howey - he's an entirely different discussion, but like Scalzi, is another outlier in the statistics. i suppose his evangelism for Amazon balances out the trad-pub models.

I can't say that I enjoyed Howey either, Wool could not capture my attention beyond the first book.
Quite unoriginal worldbuilding and not that interesting haracterization, and the writing style was quite rough, the lack of professional editing would probably account for that however.

i'm told that 105% of statistics can be made to say what you want them to say.

Not really, if you are familiar with the subject matter at ahand the holes can become quite obvious.

 

[MWagner]

After Redshirts?
Are the people at Tor mad?

Didn't Redshirts make them a pile of money? Aren't Tor a business?

Looks like a popular blog really is an excellent launching pad for an author these days. I just hope it doesn't become a necessity.

 

[JaimeRetief]

Didn't Redshirts make them a pile of money? Aren't Tor a business?

I have no idea how many copies it managed to sell, but it was rather awful.
If it sold at all it did so because of Star Trek fanboys that have not dealt with the Trek withdrawal yet, and of course there are Scalzi's usual fans and those that will buy a book just for the name on the cover.