Pinhead Publishers Should Be Afraid According To Konrath

GregB said:

Media tie-in writers probably have similar stories to tell.

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But aren't media tie-ins typically work for hire? In which case the writer gets paid a flat fee, not an advance plus royalties, so this situation wouldn't apply.

I read the Harlequin author's post on FB and was appalled at how little she made but...not entirely surprised. It's been known and talked about for years how little they pay but, people still keep trying to publish with them because of their reputation as a romance publisher. I knew going into the writing biz that I wasn't going to make money and...I've never been surprised!

Carlene - who's published nine novels, so far and still can't afford a purple Lamborghini!

Scribhneoir said:

But aren't media tie-ins typically work for hire? In which case the writer gets paid a flat fee, not an advance plus royalties, so this situation wouldn't apply.

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"Work for hire" just means the author doesn't own the rights. Some work-for-hire contracts will still pay royalties. I expect most of them pay some kind of royalty, but I'm sure there are tie-in writers here who have broader experience in the field than I do.

Jamiekswriter said:

The other thing I noticed is she did get a nice advance on every single one of her books. @ $6,500 per book. So on the high end she's made $162,500 on her 25 books. Are her royalty rates shitty -- hell yes. Still $162,500 up front/guaranteed isn't something I'd call "disgusting". How many self pub books make $6,500 out of the gate?

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About advances: Lynn Viehl said that authors only really pocket a fraction of them.

My advance for Twilight Fall was $50,000.00, a third of which I did not get paid until the book physically hit the shelf — this is now a common practice by publishers, to withhold a portion of the advance until date of publication. Of that $50K, my agent received $7,500.00 as her 15% (which she earns, believe me) the goverment received roughly $15,000.00, and $1594.27 went to cover my expenses (office supplies, blog giveaways, shipping, promotion, etc.) After expenses and everyone else was paid, I netted about $26K of my $50K advance for this book, which is believe it or not very good — most authors are lucky if they can make 10% profit on any book.

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Emphasis mine.

The thing about self-publishing is that one doesn't have to sell as many copies because of the royalties. Yes, the majority of self-pubbers only sell to their mother and their dog, but the majority of authors who try for trade pubs sell nothing because they got left in the slush.

I think it would be interesting to see how much a debut author who got an agent, but not a publishing deal, would net self-publishing a non-niche book.

ETA: I just remembered we have a case here on the forum: Dawn Rae Miller. She's selling pretty well. I wonder how much she nets even after paying her agent and for all the expenses/promotion. Oh, and taxes too.

I also think that many of the comments there tend to forget that HQ's contract isn't industry standard; it's HQ standard.

GregB said:

"Work for hire" just means the author doesn't own the rights. Some work-for-hire contracts will still pay royalties. I expect most of them pay some kind of royalty, but I'm sure there are tie-in writers here who have broader experience in the field than I do.

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I got 2% royalties on the cover price for Mortal Kombat (the movie tie-in). The advance was pretty nice too (way more than the $6,500 mentioned above). That's a pretty lousy royalty rate, but that book sold a ton of copies, so it all came out to Not Bad for Twenty Days' Work.

An awful lot of Work-For-Hire is flat fee. But a lot of it also includes profit participation.

They might merge posts, as rather late in the day I put up links to the Konrath blog over in the Romance forum.

One of the things on my bucket list has been to sell HQN an Intrigue.

After reading the blog, I've since changed my mind. One of my friends (a NYT bestseller) did a couple of HQN titles, and our mutual agent has to put on her steel-toed boots and wave a club to pry out all the royalties owed.

After that debacle with their vanity publishing arm a couple years back a lot of writers are giving HQN the hairy eyeball. My friend--who got calls to do a few more books (she's a fast writer)--said thanks but no thanks. The money is not that good.

Yes, a 6,500.00 advance is great to a debut writer, but not when it's divided up by a check on signing, a check on acceptance, a check at MS turn in, a check on approval, and check upon release day. Spread that out over a 12-16 month period and you better write fast or hang on to that day job.

I think HQN has very good advice on their website on the craft of writing, but they're no longer an option for my bucket list with those piss-poor royalties. Yes, the book will certainly pay out, but I know danged well I can do better through my own tiny little imprint via Kindle, Nook & Createspace sales.

Mr. Konrath's attitude aside, I'm glad that this guest blog came on my radar. Ms. Peterson's experience with that publisher is an eye-opener.

As for giving one of her titles away for free--that's a common ploy in e-book sales, their version of a loss leader.

Put a title up for free (or at a low price like .99) for a few days and you get a truckload of people downloading a copy. Your sales rank shoots up.

If they LIKE that book, they will come back for more and pay to have them. Their rankings also shoot up.

Today I note that one of Amanda Hocking's Kindle titles is free (not the print book) and its sequel is selling for 2.99. She will make 2.09 on the 2nd title, and its sales will get enough of a boost to justify the "free" book.

Her 2nd title is in 8th place in the Kindle store and has over 100 reviews, most of them positive.

At present, my latest release from a Big Six house is hovering near the 400,000 mark in sales rankings, has one review (5 star, thankfully!) and I get a whole .64 in royalties. My ebook sales are sluggish because I think they're too highly priced. My royalty for them (after my agent's cut) will be pretty thin.

OTOH, my two self-pubbed Kindle titles get me 2.79 a pop and are earning more in one year than my *12* titles with the publisher.

Oh, yeah, this blog gave me a LOT to think about.

I won't recommend a debut writer go stampeding straight to Kindle--most first novels just aren't ready--but I can understand why they do.

Gillhoughly said:

As for giving one of her titles away for free--that's a common ploy in e-book sales, their version of a loss leader.

Put a title up for free (or at a low price like .99) for a few days and you get a truckload of people downloading a copy. Your sales rank shoots up.

If they LIKE that book, they will come back for more and pay to have them. Their rankings also shoot up.

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I know, and it's probably a thread derail, but it's getting crazy with the "free" out there and I'm a bit concerned books are headed the way of newspapers, magazines, and other media. On any given day, Amazon shoppers have thousands of free titles to choose from and Amazon is pretty good at showing you the good ones. It may work well for individual writers but still work in the aggregate to pull prices down even further.

At what point does "I'll wait till it's free" become a book-shopping strategy like "I'll wait for the paperback"?

/derail

GregB said:

At what point does "I'll wait till it's free" become a book-shopping strategy like "I'll wait for the paperback"?

/derail

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They've had that forever -- only it's "I'll wait to get it from the library."

Bottom line, I'll scoop up free ebooks all day long as long as I'm remotely interested. I won't pay $9.99 for 50 shades of gray, but I'll be the first one downloading Jim Butchers' new Dresden novel or GRRM's Winds of Winter for full price.

GregB said:

At what point does "I'll wait till it's free" become a book-shopping strategy like "I'll wait for the paperback"?

/derail

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I know the romance blogs post lists of discounted and free books daily.

Helping you derail.

amergina said:

To be fair, this is true of most every type of income--that is, the government takes a chunk. You get a net, not a gross.

I certainly don't see all of my salary. I, too, get a net amount after taxes, SSI payments, etc.

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But 10% seems awfully low, doesn't it?

Actually, It does seem awfully low. Can I ask folks who know if this is true?

I netted about $26K of my $50K advance for this book, which is believe it or not very good — most authors are lucky if they can make 10% profit on any book.

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Jamiekswriter said:

They've had that forever -- only it's "I'll wait to get it from the library."

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I haven't checked a book out of the library in twenty years, but I'm happy to pay zero on the site where I shop for books anyway. So the big difference, it seems to me, is that thousands of free books everyday reaches people who would otherwise be spending money on books. People like me.

Bottom line, I'll scoop up free ebooks all day long as long as I'm remotely interested. I won't pay $9.99 for 50 shades of gray, but I'll be the first one downloading Jim Butchers' new Dresden novel or GRRM's Winds of Winter for full price.

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I agree with that. Butcher and Martin probably don't have anything to worry about. And the NYT may be one of the only newspapers with a strong enough brand that people will pay for its content. That likely doesn't help all the newspapers that have to give it away for free and/or go out of business.

GregB said:

I haven't checked a book out of the library in twenty years,

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OMG they've done wonders with Inter Library Loan. You can get *anything*. All the librarians know me and greet me like I'm Norm Peterson when I walk into the library.

I've gotten comic books (Walking Dead Compendium) to a book on how to knit dogs. Books I never wanted to buy but wanted to read or at least flip through in the comfort of my own home. I've also got TV shows/DVDs from them. The Legend of the Seeker series that was based on Terry Goodkind's novels and a bunch of BBC stuff.

Get thee to the library! Plus you can borrow books on your ereader!

/end PSA library rant & derail

superluminal said:

But 10% seems awfully low, doesn't it?

Actually, It does seem awfully low. Can I ask folks who know if this is true?

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You will get more than 10% of your advance no matter how you crunch the numbers. Quoting a number such as 10%, which simply isn't true, makes me suggest a lot of her numbers are exaggerated for effect.

Advances are typically paid out in 3 installments. (Sometimes 2, sometimes 4. Contract will specify.) Assuming you meet the terms the contract specifies for payout, you WILL get 100% of the advance -- just divided into installments.

Now, from that 100%, you will pay 15% to your agent, if you have one, and you will pay taxes and Social Security at whatever tax percentage you pay. If you don't make much overall in a year, you won't pay as much as someone who makes more.

Advances these days are *frequently* $5K - $10K. That's going to net you $1K - $2K per payment (if divided into 3 installments). No, it isn't much.

To derail even more--library checkouts are GOOD for your favorite writers.

Librarians note the demand on a title, then are certain to buy that writer's next book. I'm grateful for that!

But libraries are not likely to order any of my ebooks. They can order a Createspace title, but may balk since it's self-published. They'll welcome a donation, of course, but I'm in no financial position to be generous.

Back to the topic, sort of.

What publishers are dealing with now is similar to when paperback editions first appeared in the 1930s. You could buy a book for .25 at a drugstore rack. Such books were convenient to obtain and cheap compared to the hardcovers selling for 2-5 dollars. At the height of the Depression, some people were earning a dollar a day--if they were lucky enough to have a job.

The big houses and the critics sneered at the cheap paperbacks--which were a huge success despite their disapproval. Those early paperbacks drove genre writing, so if you'd rather read a mystery or science fiction instead of something literary, it was the start of a golden age.

However, those paperbacks were pro-edited. The only slush pile was at the publisher, though plenty of bloody awful books were bought by them.



Yes, we now have tons of cheap, even free, slush on Kindle & Nook, and some of it is so bad that "free" is still too high a price for it.

But it's here, it's part of the publishing landscape now, and it's not going to go away however much we sneer.

What WE do if we should take the indy route is workshop our books within an inch of our lives, get feedback, edit, rewrite, edit some more and see to it that it is as good if not better than the commercial efforts in the stores. (But we do that anyway if we want to sell to a commercial house.)

Or as Konrath puts it, "Don't write shit."

Okay, I'm off to hopefully NOT write shit.


.

Jamesaritchie said:

As fearful as publishers should be, readers should be even more scared. One thing that hasn't changed about self-publishing is that 99.9% of it sucks. It's functionally illiterate.

It will work for a few, but using Konrath as your guide will probably bury any potential career before it even gets started.

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Dammit, James, I do hate it when you say something in exact agreement with what I was about to say.

And say it better.

caw

rainsmom said:

You will get more than 10% of your advance no matter how you crunch the numbers. Quoting a number such as 10%, which simply isn't true, makes me suggest a lot of her numbers are exaggerated for effect.

Advances are typically paid out in 3 installments. (Sometimes 2, sometimes 4. Contract will specify.) Assuming you meet the terms the contract specifies for payout, you WILL get 100% of the advance -- just divided into installments.

Now, from that 100%, you will pay 15% to your agent, if you have one, and you will pay taxes and Social Security at whatever tax percentage you pay. If you don't make much overall in a year, you won't pay as much as someone who makes more.

Advances these days are *frequently* $5K - $10K. That's going to net you $1K - $2K per payment (if divided into 3 installments). No, it isn't much.

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But don't forget Viehl also says "$1594.27 went to cover my expenses (office supplies, blog giveaways, shipping, promotion, etc.)."

Is that a more-or-less fixed promotion cost for many authors? I know in romance, commercial authors are kinda expected to go to the RT and RWA conventions and do giveaways and all that.

Could an author net a low percentage if that cost is subtracted from a low advance? Perhaps not 10% low, but 20% if the advance is 5K.

Yes they are.

However, I get an advance and I get royalties on my books. I just don't own the characters that I get to write about.

Even my worst paying job has put some groceries on the table or paid for a vacation.

Scribhneoir said:

But aren't media tie-ins typically work for hire? In which case the writer gets paid a flat fee, not an advance plus royalties, so this situation wouldn't apply.

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superluminal said:

But don't forget Viehl also says "$1594.27 went to cover my expenses (office supplies, blog giveaways, shipping, promotion, etc.)."

Is that a more-or-less fixed promotion cost for many authors? I know in romance, commercial authors are kinda expected to go to the RT and RWA conventions and do giveaways and all that.

Could an author net a low percentage if that cost is subtracted from a low advance? Perhaps not 10% low, but 20% if the advance is 5K.

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Thanks for reminding me -- I meant to talk about that.

What you spend on expenses, promotion, etc. is entirely up to you. Period. Amen. Can you spend your entire advance and more? Sure! But you don't have to.

There are a million sites and blogs and books about self-marketing of books. YOU decide what your budget is, and YOU figure out what will work for you. Is it money out of your pocket? Yes. But, if it's effective, you'll money because of it. (In this case, you'll sell more, which means you'll earn out, which means you'll earn royalities.)

Some publishers *do* still provide a promotional budget, even for first-time authors, including those who got a low advance. You want to work with your contact there to find out what they are doing and what you can do to compliment their strategy. Again, though, you don't have to spend a dime on promotion. If you don't think it will result in enough sales to make it worth your while, then, honestly, you'd be foolish to do it! If you do think it would increase sales, then, well, you'd be foolish not to, wouldn't you?

brainstorm77 said:

http://jakonrath.blogspot.ca/2012/05/harlequin-fail.html?spref=fb

Check that out.

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Holy crap. It is really sad to realize that my piddly little experiment in self-publishing is bringing me more money than some of Ann's HQN titles are earning for her.

Good for her for switching to self-pub. This is one of the relatively few cases where it's a smart move. The author has her fans built up and they will follow her wherever she goes.

Libbie said:

Holy crap. It is really sad to realize that my piddly little experiment in self-publishing is bringing me more money than some of Ann's HQN titles are earning for her.

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Don't forget, though, that Ann has received an advance, and that all her titles have earned out. She might be earning an average which is substantially less per copy sold than you are, but have you matched her overall sales and earnings?

I published my first novel with Harlequin's Intrigue line in August of 2000. My twenty-fifth was released in November, 2011.

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All Harlequin series authors know that US retail royalties are going to be lower than industry standard going in. We also know that Harlequin pays rather low advances. My largest and most current advance was only $6,500 per book

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(Note that if she'd earned an advance of just $3k per book her total advances would have amounted to $75k)

ALL of my books have earned out and then some.

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Let me share with you the numbers of a book I wrote that was first published in January, 2002, still one of my favorites. My life-to-date statement says this bookhas sold 179,057 copies so far, and it has earned $20,375.22.

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Note that she's talking about a single book here, out of twenty five which she's had published by Harlequin. If all her books have earned out and continued to sell at a level which brings her just $10k, she'd so far have earned $250,000 from her writing.

Not that I'm trying to pick holes here: I agree the royalty rates suggested in the original article are awful but some of the figures are presented in a somewhat confusing way, and Harlequin's ways of working are unlike those of most other publishers, which does seem to have been ignored both in the original article and in this thread here.

I hope she does very well indeed with her self-publishing endeavours.

superluminal said:

But don't forget Viehl also says "$1594.27 went to cover my expenses (office supplies, blog giveaways, shipping, promotion, etc.)."

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Um, but you can claim those back against your tax (and a load of other stuff too!) Or you can here anyway.

From my advance:

15% to my agent. However, he earned that much, and more.

I will probably pay about 25% tax. All my expenses, promo, printing, conferences, new bits for my PC, giveaways, hell even a proportion of my lighting and heating, I can claim back against my tax bill as they are the expenses of my 'business'. So that isn't on top of my tax bill, It's reducing my tax bill.

So, minimum, I should net 60% of my advance. Given my FIL is an accountant (and knows every damn thing I can claim for against tax), it may be more

I think it's awful the raw deal Peterson got out of Harlequin. It certainly gives me pause and it will make me look a little harder at that publisher.

I did learn something out of the rahrah self-publish part of JK's words.

2. Give out-of-print titles back to your authors. I just had a long conversation with a friend of mine (not Ann) whose publisher won't give him his rights back because they state even though they no longer sell the paper copies, they are still selling them in ebook format. WTF? If that's the case, why does every contract have an out of print clause? Show me an ebook that has ever gone out of print! I offered to pay my buddy's legal fees when he sues the hell out of those assholes, because he'll set the precedent that frees us all.

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This is a good point and I know it's probably a little more complicated than that. It will go on my list of talking-points with an agent in a contract when I finally sign on with a publisher. *note a certain degree of confidence that I will one day be at that stage!*

Not to confuse the issue with facts, but HQN books also have a very strange lifecycle...

Every month a certain number of books come out - you see them slapped onto the racks at your local Walmart or bookstore. Those books rotate out EVERY MONTH for new ones. There's no lonely books lying around for months waiting to be picked up. The majority of sales have to be made within that first month before the title rotates out of the cycle and goes back to the warehouse.

Other books can sit on the shelves to form a backlist. You'd be hardpressed to find any HQN books beyond their release date, other than in ebook form. The lifecycle is very short and while sales are huge via book clubs and the like, the books come and go a lot faster than the average published novel.

I can find copies of my novel on bookstore shelves months, years after it was published. Can't say the same of HQN series titles...

just a thought.