If you are trying to get on with a major publisher? You need to read this article. Yes, it is very long. But it is also very telling about what makes money, who gets good advances, and why.
No One Buys Books. By Elle Griffin. It’s from a Substack that has a lot about writing and publishing. Griffin waded through all the testimony and documents related to the trial concerning the proposed merger of Simon and Schuster with Penguin Random House*. Toward the end of the essay, the author observes that indie publishing is becoming more and more important, and that romance has gone almost entirely indie in terms of sales, a few big names aside. Some of the comments are also worth glancing at, although there are a lot of them. The price of trad-pub books, especially hard backs, comes up several times in the comments.
The article was mentioned in the comments on Margaret Ball’s article on Friday, focusing on a different problem: how few new books and authors support the whole trad-pub edifice. Not the political memoirs (aside from the Obamas, and I have a few ideas about who bought the books to read vs. bought to be seen with), not the thousands of mid-listers, but a very, very few super sellers, people like Stephen King or Danielle Steele or Nora Roberts. Possibly some of the upper mid-list like several paranormal romance authors or thriller writers as well, but not the vast bulk of contract authors.
Taken together, the lesson seems clear: indie is for income, trad pub for cachet, perhaps. Especially if you are a romance writer, indie is the place to be. Given the minimal return on effort for the rest of us, indie is also the way to go. The Big Five generally require exclusive rights to the book, the sequels, and the world of the story, plus you to have a social media presence of a certain size, plus residual rights, and a few other things. And you don’t get much of an advance, and you don’t know what your real sales are so trying to find out if you got paid properly is…challenging. Oh, and your agent is the one who gets paid first, and he or she or it takes 10-15% off the top, unless things have changed markedly in the last five years. But the author does the work. And you might have to hire your own copy editor, too. Don’t forget that some contracts (mostly YA, but that might be changing) also say that if your book becomes “problematic” or your social media presence does, the contract can be cancelled and you have to repay the advance.
Dean Wesley Smith said over and over that “Money flows to the author.” It appears that with traditional publishing, money trickles, perhaps, in the general direction of the author. Keep in mind, too, that agents are not copyright lawyers. Most contracts with major publishers are take-it-or-leave-it contracts**, so you don’t have room to challenge anything.
If you really, truly want to be picked up by a major publisher, one of the Big Five, you have to know what you are looking at. You might be one of the very, very few fortunate writers who strike gold. If so, G-d bless you and congratulations! But the odds are not in your favor. Be aware of that, be aware of trends in publishing, and be willing to wave farewell to your IP if the publisher cancels your contract or allows it to lapse but does not revert rights to you.
Image: Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay
*I keep trying to type “random penguin.” I blame Passive Guy and his commenters for corrupting me.
**Academic presses as well, although there might be more wiggle room there if you have some experience and an IP lawyer with you.
Mad Genius Club 
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