Tate Publishing

victoriastrauss said:

I have several copies of Tate's author "investment" contract. Tate most definitely does take rights--specifically, "the exclusive license to print, publish, and sell the Author's Work in book form during the term of this agreement," and "the exclusive license to publish the Work in all languages and countries," and "the right to sub-license, produce, market, and sell in cooperation with the Author all support and ancillary items related to the Author's Work."

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Well, I was pretty sure they secured some rights in their contract. However, the wording on their website shows either a lack of professionalism or an intent to deceive, neither of which says good things about Tate.

brianm said:

Ryan Tate has another post in his blog about paying to be published.

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Gah!

Okay, he's crossed the line from merely clueless to outright lies. In my book, that makes him a scammer.

Shame on you, Mr. Tate.

I find that post very confusing.

Why shouldn't I go with a publisher who offers me a large (or even mediocre) advance? Sure, I don't see any more until the book earns out, but if it never does, I don't have to return a penny of the advance. Nor do I have to work my tail off to market my book.

Sorry, but I remain unconvinced.

To the lurkers:

An advance is paid to an author true. By paying the author the advance the publishing company is hoping that the number of books sold will repay the advance. Sometimes this happens, sometimes it doesn't. But if it doesn't the author DOES NOT have to pay the difference. It seems odd I know, but it is the way of the publishing world. You are paid the advance and it is yours. You are free to do whatever you like with the money. And you never EVER have to give it back.

brianm said:

The author never has to pay back the advance. Of course, you know that but you’re trying to make it seem like they have to because many new writers do not understand clearly what an advance is.

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This isn't the first place I've seen this misinformation (see AW's "Enspiren Press" thread. The idea seems to be fairly widespread, as if an "advance" was like getting a loan against next week's paycheck. Where does this gunch come from?

Deb Kinnard said:

Where does this gunch come from?

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Usually from publishers who want to convince new authors unfamiliar with the business that they're better off going with said publisher, instead of those big bad publishing meanies...

Wow, was that ignorance on the part of Mr. Tate or willful misinformation? Either one is pretty scary.

I've been saying all along that he's a snake oil salesman. If anyone has any doubts, I think the post on author advances should make it obvious.

brianm - if you liked Ryan's 13 October blog post, you'll love his 14 October post that seems to completely grasp what self publishing and POD publishing is. Frankly, it's a relief to see that only 4 people are signed up to regularly read his poorly informed opinion.

MM

From that blog comes this little gem.

This time last year several of my executive staff and I visited a large self-publisher in North Carolina, LULU Press, I was shocked to see that they don't even have one editor on staff. Now, they claim to be a do-it-yourself publisher, but editors should just be part of a publishers core staff.

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Shocked? I doubt it, Ryan. The only reason you placed this in your blog was to downplay LULU, a company that does have an excellent reputation for producing quality books at low prices.

A self-publishing entity retaining the services of an editor? To do what? Knit in the corner all day?

Furthermore, unlike Tate Publishing, LULU doesn't pretend to be anything other than what they are.

Mr. Tate seems unclear on the differences between self-publishing companies and vanity/subsidy publishers.

Or rather, he seems willfully unclear.

Hehe. I posted the following comment on that blog post and he thanked me and said "...authors rarely understand that in one way or another you always pay!"

Excellent post! Way to go explaining to would-be authors that if a publisher offers them a six-figure or seven-figure advance that the author is really paying for it because they won't see a single dime until they've sold enough books for the royalties to cover the advance. It's like the publishers treat the advance like it is an advance on royalties or something.

And a lot of authors don't know that even though the publisher is giving them a million dollars that they can put in the bank and keep even if their book doesn't sell at all, that eventually their book would need to sell enough for the royalties to exceed that advance if they want to see a cent more than the cool million they got as an advance.

That's an important distinction.

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I guess he couldn't read in between the lines and catch the sarcastic tone of the comment.

To be honest, I find your comment slightly confusing myself. It might bode well to return and reply and explain clearly what you meant, simply for the benefit of the few people reading his blog. I would hate to think that others reading your comment would not catch the sarcasm either and think therefore that what he said has merit. Still clearly the man has no clue, or worse, has a clue and is blatantly lying. Very very frustrating.

As long as bullshit baffles (some) brains you can expect an endless cascade of poop from the ethically challenged among us.

All we can do is continue wafting some fresh air in that direction and hope it prevents some from succumbing to the fumes.

Everyone on this forum has helped to educate me about marketing my book. Even though most of the posts seem somewhat one-sided concerning Tate Publishing, I used posts just like these in my comparison of sources to get my book published. I think the deciding factor was that Tate returns the author’s investment after selling a set number of issues. Another was the volume of books they offer on their website. It seemed like my chances of success would be greater with Tate, than a publisher that only offers a few titles.

priceless1 said:

Dan, do you mean to say that you still have a contract with Tate? If so, I have to wonder why. The book is dead, so what do you gain by maintaining your relationship with them?

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Since there is a business part of writing a book, how could my book be dead if I continue to cash royalty checks? I do want to thank you for all of your input about the business and the extra links that my name and my book have generated on search engines.

The cover issue was actually minor. For those that bothered to view the two versions of the cover, thank you very much. There is no reason why anyone would or should take the time to compare the two but I am honored that you would have enough passion about the subject to do that. One thing that no one seemed to notice, even though they did not have to, they did value my vision of what I wanted for a cover and did well to emulate it.

The only other issue I had with Tate, was getting them to advise me of how they were marketing my book. Not that they failed to market it as promised in the contract, only to respond to my requests about how that was done. Sometimes I should exercise some patience and realize the publishing industry does not turn on a dime.

Tate Publishing has fulfilled every part of their contract and more. They offered to help me during a troubling time in my life and they continue to offer any help they can. For those involved in this thread that will never take another view, go ahead, pick my post apart. I still think I made the right choice by going with Tate.

Dan

Dan Sterling Smith said:

The only other issue I had with Tate, was getting them to advise me of how they were marketing my book.

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Dan, since it's late in your experience with Tate, may I ask if you ever got an answer to this question?

Greetings Deb,

Yes, I had to go to Ryan but I did.

Dan

Dan Sterling Smith said:

For those involved in this thread that will never take another view, go ahead, pick my post apart. I still think I made the right choice by going with Tate.

Dan

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Dan, you signed with Tate after having done your research, including this thread in AW, and decided they were the best option for you. There's nothing wrong that and no one here will judge you for the decision you made. Additionally, I am quite confident everyone in AW wishes you only the very best of luck.

What's important is that you went into your relationship with Tate with your eyes wide open because you did your research. Perhaps some of the information you have gleaned from this thread will assist you in the future.

AW is a writers' forum and we always support each other. Don't forget that.

- brianm

Dan Sterling Smith said:

Sometimes I should exercise some patience and realize the publishing industry does not turn on a dime.

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It actually does, quite often. When I've asked for marketing reports, etc., from both large and small trade publishers, I've generally gotten them within a couple of days.

Like everyone else, I'm glad that you're happy with the service and support you're getting from Tate.

But it actually is standard practice in the publishing industry for authors to ask for marketing reports and publicity updates and to get that information quickly (within a business week in most cases). If anyone isn't getting that kind of turnaround from their publisher, then that's most likely an area in which there needs to be some improvement on the publisher's part.

I tried to post a couple of responses to Ryan Tate's blog postings, but he hasn't (yet?) approved them. Perhaps because I pointed out that he was wrong in many of his assumptions.

Anyway: he's now posted a comment to one of his posts in which he describes how an author was allegedly invoiced by Random House for the return of his advance, when his books failed to sell. Now, I know that this isn't true; you know that this isn't true; but some of the writers who read his blog might not know that. Pah.

Ryan Tate:
We signed an author Ken F. who had been with a division of Random House and one of his biggest frustrations was that he received a royalty advance, didn't sell enough books and actually received an invoice from them at the end of the first year for the amount of money he hadn't sold to cover his advance. While this is unfortunate, it does happen.

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I've never heard of this before. The only situation I've heard of in which advances are returned are when:

(a) the author decides not to submit a manuscript, e.g. earlier this year Robert Downey, Jnr returned an advance paid for the rights to his autobiography and declined to go ahead with it; and

(b) the publisher alleges that a submitted manuscript is not of a publishable quality and I've only heard of one example of this when Joan Collins was sued for the return of her advance on a novel, a case that she ended up winning in court.

I note that Ryan doesn't give the full name of the author and doesn't name the division of Random House. Without those details, I'd regard this "information" with some skepticism. However, even if a publishing house did decide to do something as outrageous as putting a clause into a contract allowing for clawback of an advance (and I think it would be all over the industry if they did) I would hazard the view that any agent worth his salt would ensure that it never made the signed version.

To give you a more personal example, my dad has had a number of non-fiction books (specifically, military history) published with small publishing houses. All of those publishing houses paid him an advance - not a huge amount of money, but several thousand pounds. One publishing house didn't do enough to market one of his books (their admission, incidentally), which meant that sales were more modest than expected and the book eventually remaindered yet, my dad kept his advance. Another publishing house paid him the advance for a book and then decided that they didn't want to go ahead with publication a month before the manuscript was due to be submitted - again, my dad kept the advance and in fact, they commissioned him to write another book, which he got paid a further advance on.

With all of my dad's books, he received royalty checks on top of his advance - again, not huge sums of money but never less than £100 per statement. And the publishers ensured that his books were for sale in specialist book shops (not available from specialist book shops) and in the branches of those UK national chains where they have military history sections - I still get a kick when I see one of his books in my local Waterstones.

Ryan Tate:
Some of you may be confusing a royalty advance with a signing bonus, a signing bonus can be negotiated anyway and usually is just that a bonus that doesn't have to be repaid.

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I've never heard of an author being paid a signing bonus before - anyone got any views?

In any event, yet again he's inferring that advances have to be repaid. They don't, Ryan. Stop suggesting that this is the norm.

MM

Old Hack said:

I tried to post a couple of responses to Ryan Tate's blog postings, but he hasn't (yet?) approved them. Perhaps because I pointed out that he was wrong in many of his assumptions.

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He allowed my first post through, but not the second or third, where I also pointed out how advances actually work. Three tries are enough. If I have any points to make, I'll make them here.

Momento Mori said:

I've never heard of an author being paid a signing bonus before - anyone got any views?

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I wonder if he's confusing the signing portion of the advance with the entire advance.

To repeat what didn't make it through Tate's moderation:

1. Advances are monies paid to the author.

2. These days, the publisher splits the sum into two or three payments, the most common division being on signing, on delivery&acceptance, and on publication. (Sometimes the publisher uses four payments, with one being on delivery of the outline.)

3. The author keeps the advance except in a few very rare, very extreme cases, such as failure to deliver the manuscript. These cases are spelled out clearly in the contract.

4. A good agent will vet the contract to make sure there aren't any weird gotchas, such as Ryan claims happened.

5. Getting an advance is not the same as paying a fee to the publisher.

6. Just to repeat, the author keeps the advance.

That Ryan Tate doesn't know how advances work is troubling enough. If he does know, and he's twisting and distorting and outright lying to make his case, it's even more troubling.

Originally Posted by priceless1
Dan, do you mean to say that you still have a contract with Tate? If so, I have to wonder why. The book is dead, so what do you gain by maintaining your relationship with them?

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Dan Sterling Smith said:

Since there is a business part of writing a book, how could my book be dead if I continue to cash royalty checks?

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Dan, as I said in my email to you when you asked my advice, when Tate returned half your money, I assumed this was a parting of the ways. I thought this because of your comment here:

Within one week, Tate removed my book from their website – it is still available from book vendors like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. – and sent me a check for $2000.

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This indicates that they are paying you off - which is great - and removing your book for sale, making it a dead title. So you can see the logic in my asking why you didn't sign their letter of rescission. That's how the industry works. They don't pay you off, ask you to sign a letter, you refuse, and they say, "Oh, jolly good. Well, fine, let's let bygones be bygones." I doubt they will continue to stock your book with the online warehouses. They'll sell what's left and pay you royalties for those, or those books will be returned, and you'll receive nothing.

Sometimes I should exercise some patience and realize the publishing industry does not turn on a dime.

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It depends on what you're talking about. When I used that phrase in my email, I was talking about the uphill battle you face by trying to sell a currently published book to another publisher. You didn't sign a letter of rescission, so you aren't free to shop the book. As I explained to you, editors won't touch it because there are no guarantees the current publisher will release the title. Why go through all that mess - and believe me, it is a mess - when there are so many great manuscripts out there?

The other problem with previously pubbed books is that they live forever in the online databases. Depending upon how the publisher listed the Out of Print book with Bowker, the book sometimes does exit the databases, but all those copies have to have sold out. It was in that vein I said the publishing industry doesn't turn on a dime.