The Truth About Publishing – 11

Lesson 10. Why you don’t want a tiny advance either.

A tiny advance is a vote of little confidence in your work; it means the publisher isn’t risking much on you, and therefore won’t need to spend a lot of money on marketing. The marketing budget for your book is, generally, related to the size of the advance.

On the other hand, you have the opportunity, by your own clever marketing initiatives, to have a significant impact on sales. If the publisher is hoping to sell 4,000 copies and you can get that up to 6,000, they’ll be very impressed. Publishers love authors who work hard to sell their books, and you’ll get a better deal next time, and more promotion.

But book marketing is a minefield, I hear you say. And fiction is much harder to promote than non-fiction. Where do I begin? And if I go to all the time and effort, how do I know it’s working? Help!

For an overview about traditional methods of book promotion, see this article on my web site. http://www.ian-irvine.com/promotion.html. It’s a little dated now, because it doesn’t cover social media, however a future post will.

In the meantime, this article talks about my first steps into social media book promotion. http://ripping-ozzie-reads.com/2011/07/30/ian-irvines-adventures-using-facebook/

And for a great site devoted to the topic of book marketing, with a host of useful articles and tips, I recommend Dana Lynn Smith’s The Savvy Book Marketer, http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/

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The Truth About Publishing – 10

Lesson 9: Why you don’t want a huge advance

We all dream about the million dollar advance but if you’re unknown you’re probably better off with a moderate one. Huge advances create huge expectations and as an unknown author there’s a good chance your sales won’t meet the stratospheric expectations that go with the advance, in which case you’re probably doomed. Booksellers unwittingly destroy writers’ careers every day. Once booksellers get a whiff of declining sales, they’ll start returning your books, and if they’re not in the bookshops no one will be able to buy them. Then, because your first book flopped the bookshops won’t order many of the second (if there is one), guaranteeing that it’ll sell far less than the first.

Here’s how it works. Let’s say the publisher gives you a $50,000 advance for your first book, thus expecting it to sell at least 40,000 copies. But for some unknown reason it doesn’t catch on and, despite lots of expensive marketing, only sells 10,000 copies. Your publisher has lost money big time, and so have the booksellers – they’ve had all that shelf space occupied by books that didn’t earn anything, and now they have to pay to ship them back to the publisher for a credit.

Both the publisher and the booksellers now see you as a loser, and it will be extremely difficult for your agent to sell your second book to that publisher – or to another publisher, for that matter. Through Nielsen Bookscan, the whole industry has access to your sales figures. If another publisher should pick up your second book, you’ll be lucky to get a $10,000 advance and orders will be much lower.

How much lower? Suppose you have a 3-book deal and your first book bombed as described above, only selling 10,000 copies. Well, you say to yourself, the bookshops know they can sell that many, and maybe the second book will do better.

Fatally wrong. Because the booksellers did so much dough on the first book, they won’t order anything like 10,000 of the second. They won’t even order half that number. If orders total 4,000 copies you’ll be lucky. And they’ll be shelved spine out, where they’re almost invisible. Sales will be 2,000, at the most – a horrifying plunge from the 40,000 everyone was expecting just one book ago.

And for the third book? The same, only less so. Booksellers don’t mean to destroy writers’ careers, but that’s the effect of their collective buying decisions, and this is how it happens.

Looking at the alternative, suppose your publisher advances you $10,000 for your first book. If it sells 6,000 copies they’re in the money. If it reprints a few times and sells 15,000 copies they’ll love you and offer a much bigger advance for your second book. The bookshops will increase their orders and display your books prominently; there’ll be a small buzz about you in the industry and readers will remember your name and look out for your next book. Exceed booksellers’ expectations two or three times and you’re a rising star.

Postscript: Here are some of the most notable bombs of recent times. http://nymag.com/news/media/50279/index7.html

Charles Frazier, whose first book Cold Mountain was a monster hit, was paid $8 million for his next book. It only sold a few hundred thousand and the publisher lost $5.5 million on the advance.

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The Truth About Publishing – 9

Lesson 8: Understanding your advance

Every new book represents a risk to the publisher, who is gambling tens of thousands of dollars that it will sell enough copies to earn a profit. As much as a third of all books published lose money, while another third only cover their costs or earn a small profit. Books by unknown authors present the greatest risk, because they have no following. Therefore, publishers have to keep costs down by offering small advances.

An advance is money paid to the author in return for the right to publish his or her book, before any books have been sold. Ie, it’s advanced against future royalties, and the author doesn’t receive any money from sales of the book until the advance has been earned back by royalties from sales. The advance is seldom more than half to two-thirds of what the publisher expects the book to earn in royalties. This is insurance in case the book sells badly. For example, say the book retails for $20 (plus tax), the author’s royalty rate is 10% and the publisher expects to sell 5,000 copies. If it does, the book will earn the author $20 X 0.10 X 5,000, i.e. $10,000 in royalties. With this expectation, the publisher would normally offer an advance of between $5,000 and $7,000 and the balance would be paid in royalties at a later date.

Nonetheless, a high proportion of books flop and don’t earn back their advances. In any year, the major global publishers will each have millions of dollars in unearned advances on their balance sheets, and eventually these losses have to be written off. If losses are too high for too long, the publisher will go out of business. Therefore, advances have to be kept to a minimum.

Most book advances in Australia, the UK and the US are less than $10,000. Surprisingly, average advances in the UK and US aren’t significanty higher than here, despite the much bigger markets. Why not? There are far more titles published, there’s much more competition and, in the case of the US, more fragmented markets.

If you’re writing children’s fiction, advances are typically lower, partly because kid’s books sell for a lower price and partly because, since Harry Potter, everyone’s writing children’s fiction and the competition has driven advances down. Partly offsetting that, those few books that do sell well can stay in print for a long time.

For literary fiction, which may get the reviews and the awards but doesn’t sell well, expect advances to be lower again: maybe only $1,000 – $3,000. Not much for the year or two you’ve spent writing the book.

When you finally get the advance, don’t spend it on something wasteful like food, clothing or rent. You’re going to need every penny to promote your book, because the chances are that no one else will. I’ll cover this topic in a future lesson.

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500 BOOKS TO BE WON IN 300 DAYS - WEEK 30

I've been running this weekly competition on my Facebook fan page all year, and it'll run into 2012. Each week all year I've been giving away three of my trilogies and quartets, signed, except for two breaks where I've given away greater prizes.

Total number of books won so far: 348.

To enter, go here, http://www.facebook.com/ianirvine.author, Like my page then enter from the Promos tab.

For the next few weeks I'll be giving away 3 copies of my brand new book, Vengeance, each week.

I'm even more shamefully late and slow than usual for this comp, for which I humbly apologise.

WEEK 30 QUESTION – name the character in a book (any book) who has most moved you or changed your life in some way, and say why you were moved or how your life was changed.

FIRST PRIZE - The View from the Mirror Audiobooks on MP3 CD
SECOND PRIZE - The Song of the Tears Trilogy, signed
THIRD PRIZE - The Grim and Grimmer quartet, signed.

Winners
Week 30 (20 entries). Winner, Emma Billing, Second, Jennifer Francis, Third, Kayla-Lynn Yetman. Honourable Mentions, Grey Dw, Roxanne Cole, Mitchell de Vries. Get 3 HMs and you also win.

Congratulations, everyone.

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The Truth About Publishing – 8

Lesson 7: Wow, you’ve actually been offered a contract

As a beginning writer, if a respectable publisher offers you a book contract, sign it. The chance may not come again. As a novice, you’re not worth much to a publisher, so you have little power to negotiate. If you demand a lot of changes to a contract, or cause interminable delays, the publisher may withdraw the offer and go to the next writer on their list. A writer who causes trouble before the contract is signed is bound to be an even bigger pain afterwards. 

By all means ask your agent about the contract before you sign, then take her advice. Be wary about taking the contract to your lawyer. Some superstar authors use a lawyer because it’s cheaper than paying an agent 15% of millions, but it doesn’t work for novices. Few lawyers know anything about book contracts or the realities of publishing. If they get involved, they could lose you the contract then bill you for more than the advance you didn’t get.

If you haven’t got an agent, get one now; it’s easy once you have an offer from a publisher. Though publishers are hard-headed businessmen, they tend to think of new authors as amateurs who should be grateful to be published at all. It’s good to be assertive, though if you’re equally hard-headed they may see you as aggressive and difficult to deal with, which is counterproductive to a good working relationship. Let your agent do the hard-headed stuff while you be the nice, creative one who is giving them the product they require to stay in business, and everyone’s happy.

Agents normally take 15% but she’ll earn back her commission in contract concessions, a higher advance and, for established authors, deals you would never have gained by yourself. Therefore she costs you nothing. Once she’s done a deal for you, she’s entitled to her percentage of all income earned from that deal for as long as it lasts, even if you subsequently change agents. For foreign rights or special deals (eg movie rights – as if!), she’ll work through other agents who also get a percentage.

Once you’ve got an agent, never talk directly to your publishers or editors about contractual matters. You could disastrously undermine negotiations your agent is having with them, eg your agent is negotiating hard for a $20,000 advance and you’ve just told your editor you’d be happy with $10,000. Bad move!

Tomorrow – understanding your advance.

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The Truth About Publishing – 7

Lesson 6: Get advice – from professionals

Is my writing any good? My friends and family loved it, yet publishers keep rejecting my manuscripts and won’t say why. Or worse, they don’t respond at all. What’s the matter? Why won’t they tell me anything? What am I supposed to do now?

There are a number of reasons why publishers won’t tell you why they’ve rejected your manuscript. The main one: they don’t have the time to provide detailed analysis on the thousands of manuscripts that flood in each year. But also, a number of writers (clearly, suffering from a death wish) have threatened to sue publishers for giving candid advice about the quality of the manuscript, and it’s simply not worth the effort.

So, you need advice. But amateurs, no matter how well-meaning, cannot provide the kind of feedback you need to identify the flaws in your writing and fix them. Only professionals can. If you’re continually being rejected, seek them out. Look for people with experience in the genre you’re writing in. Suitable professionals include:

• Experienced fiction editors. There are plenty of freelance editors around who have had experience in major publishing houses. To find them, Google “freelance editor fiction”. The state branches of the Australian Society of Editors (and its international equivalents) also have freelance editor registers.
• Manuscript assessment services. An incomplete listing for Australia can be found here: http://austlitagentsassoc.com.au/contacts.html#editors. For other countries, Google the keywords. But beware, there are sharks in the water, so check their bona fides carefully.
• The various state writers’ centres provide writing courses and events where you can meet professional writers and other writers like yourself, attend seminars, obtain advice and mentorships, and identify manuscript assessment services:

1. ACT Writers Centre: www.actwriters.org.au
2. New South Wales Writers’ Centre: www.nswwriterscentre.org.au
3. Northern Territory Writers’ Centre: www.ntwriters.com.au
4. Queensland Writers Centre: www.qwc.asn.au
5. South Australian Writers’ Centre: www.sawc.org.au
6. Victoria Writers’ Centre: www.vwc.org.au
7. Western Australian Writers Centre: www.fawwa.iinet.net.au/wawc.htm

• Writers’ groups. These can be useful, in some circumstances. They can also be damaging, depending on the people who are in them. Check them out and see if they’re for you.
• Literary agents occasionally provide advice on a manuscript, though normally only to writers in their stable. Beware of any agent who offers to provide advice for a fee.
• Published writers. Rarely, you might prevail on a published writer to take a look at the beginning of your manuscript, though realistically, the demands on writers these days are greater than ever and few can spare the time. I certainly can’t.

When a professional gives you advice on your manuscript, act on it. A high proportion of writers can’t or won’t act on the advice they’re given. This is great! It means they’ll never be published and it thins the herd for you, gentle reader, who will act on your professional advice to the letter.

My next post deals with what to do when you are offered a contract.

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Louise Cusack on Manuscript Development

Manuscript development – most writers need it, but few know anything about it. Who better to talk about the topic than Louise Cusack, award-winning Australian author of romantic adventures set in lost worlds who has also run her own manuscript development business for the past 8 years. Her novella in the anthology Magic, Mystery, Voodoo and the Holy Grail won the PRISM award for fantasy/romance. Louise's romantic fantasy trilogy, Shadow Through Time, published by Simon & Schuster some years back, will be released by Pan McMillan's Momentum Books eBook imprint early in 2012. Ta, Lou –

Thanks for inviting me to talk about manuscript development, Ian. It’s a subject close to my heart. I started my writing career almost twenty years ago trying to write romance novels. I belonged to a critique group and each month we’d comment on each other’s stories. At the time I thought it was very helpful, but in retrospect it was more a case of the blind leading the blind! We were all talented, but none of us knew much about the craft of writing, and as a for-instance, we didn’t know what viewpoint (point of view) was, and as a consequence we were head-hopping all over the place. Luckily one of our group entered a competition where she got feedback and bit by bit we picked up scraps of craft along the way, at a workshop here or from a how-to article there, and over the course of the next eight years my writing reached publication standard – http://ifyoumustwrite.com/published-books/ and the trilogy was published by Simon & Schuster.

To be honest I don’t recommend that journey. It takes way too long. Of course new writers need to write as much as they can - it’s like playing scales if you want to be a concert pianist - but you have to hit the right keys! If you’re consistently making the same mistakes in your writing and not learning to do any better, you can waste valuable time creating stories that will never see the light of day.

In contrast, I’ve seen what good advice can achieve when given at the right time. Eight years ago the EnVision workshops started with myself and three other published speculative fiction authors working with emerging writers for a week to help them hone their manuscripts. Pre the workshop we did manuscript assessments on the novels our assigned writers had submitted, then on Day One of our week together we’d hand the assessment over with a list of editing tasks. That first day was often a turbulent one, with many participants receiving professional feedback on their stories for the first time. Tissues and chocolate were close at hand! But over the course of the week the writers would perform the editing tasks and each day we’d catch up with them to give feedback, helping them overcome the individual craft issues each needed to address.

We worked hard to ensure that by the end of the week each writer was crystal clear on what their strengths and weaknesses were, and how they could move forward with their writing, and I’m thrilled to say that I saw some writers two years in a row and the leap forward in their writing was amazing. EnVision ran for three years, then it stopped, but it was long enough for word to get around that having an industry professional give you feedback on how to fix your novel was invaluable. At that point I was hooked. I loved helping authors achieve their dreams, so for a time I conducted manuscript assessments under the auspices of EnVision, then I branched out and started my own business, alongside my own writing.

I’ve done hundreds of assessments now and have helped three novelists along the way to publication, as well as steering many writers towards competition wins. I also teach writing workshops and mentor writers so I can have that face-to-face connection. As for the critique group I started in, you’ll be happy to know that we’re all published now and still meet several times a year to offer each other emotional support, rather than critique.

So can manuscript assessment help you get published? I certainly think it’s a short cut for those who have problems with their stories that they can’t see. But one thing it’s not is a quick-fix for lazy writers. An assessor doesn’t ‘edit’ the manuscript. Instead they tell you what isn’t working and how to fix it, but you need to do the work yourself. So it’s really only an option for those with the passion and determination to keep editing, to keep believing in themselves and to persist.

Because the honest truth is that those four virtues: passion, determination, self-belief and persistence are far more important than any advice an assessor could give you. But having said that, if you’re still interested, check me out here: http://ifyoumustwrite.com/manuscript-development/, and look out for my Shadow Through Time fantasy trilogy which is scheduled for an eBook release in early 2012 with Momentum Books.

Happy writing!

Thanks Louise. I particularly like your point about editing, because so many beginning writers think that they just have to hammer out the story draft and an editor will fix it. This NEVER happens. Good advice is invaluable, but it’s always up to the author to learn the craft of self-editing. Without it, you’ll never get published.

Momentum Books is a brand new imprint from Pan MacMillan. Until their official website goes live, you can find out about them here: http://www.momentumbooks.com.au/Momentum%20Press%20Release.htm

• For more about me and my books: http://www.ian-irvine.com/
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