Publishing Monday: Getting to yes, part two

The first part of this Publishing Monday post generated some great comments. It seems we all have our publishing sagas, some which made us feel more vulnerable than we would like. (Such appears to be the nature of the author’s path, alas!) This comment especially touched me:

For writing that you have poured your heart and sweat into, and believed in 100%, how did you get past the rejections and not let it undermine your belief in your creativity? How do you push past the doubts and remain optimistic that you will find someone who does appreciate what you have to offer?”

Let me parse this. First off, there have been no projects that I believed in 100% — maybe 99%. I’m too aware that every book I create can be improved, or has some chink in its armor. I always wish I could do a better job as an artist and author or designer. Other times, these vulnerabilities are beyond my control. Even when you get a “yes” from a publisher, things can go wrong. I once had a book published the week of 9/11 — and promptly go out of print. (Clearly it wasn’t the right time for gifty illustrated books.) Another instance: A publisher fired their entire sales staff just as my publication was about to go on the market. Publishing imprints go in and out of fashion, as do entire market segments. It’s never personal, though it affects us personally.

That written, there have been projects that I loved beyond 100% (if such a thing is possible), and had dashed hopes. Sometimes these hopes may have been commercial — hey, I’m still waiting for my New York Times Bestseller. Other times my frustrated aspirations have been artistic. There’s always a certain amount of heartbreak when a book goes to press, wishing that I could have done more, been better. But that’s just the nature of the beast.

As for the doubts that arise from rejections, you try to make them work for you. Believe it or not, rejections and doubts can be our friends, if we treat them kindly; they can coexist with optimism. The trick is not to be deterred from moving forward. Since no piece of work is ever 100% for me, my willingness to continually evaluate my work helps me remain optimistic. I’m not one to sit around and wait to be discovered, if you know what I mean.

To illustrate this, let me give you a story of one publishing “yes.” My novel, The Lover’s Path, was the product of a decade’s labor. Toward the end of this period, I began to work with a literary agent, who patiently guided me through structuring and refining my book. It was an exhaustive process, with more manuscript revisions than I can recall.

You can imagine how happy I was when my agent finally declared the book ready for submission. She sent it out to about a dozen publishers. Within a week, she called to say that my book would be going to committee at several of them. (At most houses, going to committee means that a book is being bumped up the chain on the acquisitions process.) Hopefully one of them would come through with an offer. I was elated and ready to pop out the champagne.

But an offer didn’t arrive. We did another round of submissions. Again, more interest — then more rejection letters. (I’ll go into the reasons for rejection in next week’s post.) I was heartbroken, dejected and beyond, after so much hard work.

Believe me, I considered giving up, even changing careers. But I didn’t. Instead, I called my agent. “I think it’s clear that my book is not as compelling as we hoped,” I said. “I’d rather pull it off the market to rework it, and try again later.”

It took me about a year, but I did revamp my book, taking into consideration all those rejections and the doubts they expressed. This time, The Lover’s Path sold to Harry N. Abrams Books for a nice advance. It was a happy ending to a decade-long saga.

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Next week, I’ll give you another publishing “yes” story, but one with an easier and happier trajectory. And to show you that not every book I work on ends with acceptance, I’ll even throw in a tale of unrequited woe. Yup, I’ve got unsold manuscripts rotting away in deep storage, though I often end up dusting them off and reworking them into new life at a later date.

I had intended to tie up everything neatly today about getting to yes. But I can see that there’s still at least another week’s worth of material! Again, if you have any questions or comments, I’ll do my best to address them in my next Publishing Monday.

Another announcement: This spring, we’re going to be offering workshops at my studio-gallery on publishing and putting together book proposals for picture, gift, and art publications. Spaces will be extremely limited. I’ll be unveiling our offerings later this week. In the meantime if you’re interested in learning more, please send an e-mail to kris [at] kriswaldherr dot com.

• Filed under events, lover's path, publishing, publishing 101, studio and gallery | 3 Responses

Publishing Monday: Getting to yes, part one

Wow, last week’s Publishing Monday on whether self-publishing is the new slush pile hit a chord with people. Clearly, there are some strong opinions out there about self-publishing, unsolicited submissions, and the difficulties of getting publishing at an established publishing house. While it was never my intention to highlight the difficulties of getting a publisher — we all know that — I think that sharing my experience slogging through a major New York publisher’s slush pile may have brought this reality home too acutely for some.

Let me go on the record: I think self-publishing is an amazing opportunity for authors to take control of their creative future. On top of that, sometimes books are better off self-published for numerous reasons. Heck, I’ve self-published myself as well as helped friends self-publish. Numerous famous authors have self-published through the years: Mark Twain, Beatrix Potter, even Tolstoy.

To reiterate just a few of the reasons for self-publishing:

1. The author wants to retain financial and creative control.

2. The author has a book with a niche market too small for traditional publishing.

3. The author wants to publish the book immediately. It may be for time-specific event (as in my case). Or the author just doesn’t want to wait around years to get published. (It can take a minimum of a year from signing the book contract to seeing the book on bookstore shelves. And that’s even with print on demand technology: Publishers still have to put out sales catalogs months ahead of a book’s publication date.)

4. The author has been unable to find a traditional publisher.

From an informal survey, it’s usually reason #4 which propels authors into self-publishing. While some are happy to move onto this entrepeneural path, others are pained — they wanted that big yes from a big publisher. Like it or not, the big yes awards the following:

1. A path into bookstores. Many bookstores won’t feature self-published books, though this is changing to a certain extent.

2. Publicity. Big publishing is connected to major media. Many major media venues won’t review self-published books.

3. Marketing. Big publishing has marketing cojones — from paying for bookstore co-op placement to connections to book clubs and beyond.

4. Most importantly of all, the outside editorial badge of approval. To get that yes from a major publisher, they have to really believe your book is worthy of publication. It may be the quality of your work. (Self explanatory.) Or the quality of the money-making possibilities. (Bad celebrity self-help books come to mind.)

It’s not easy getting a book accepted by a major publisher — but it is possible. I’ve been published now for twenty years. During this time, I’ve received enough rejection slips to easily wallpaper a room in my house. Short version: I know how hard it is to get published. But I also know that it can be done.

In my next Publishing Monday, I’ll share with you some of my personal experiences in “getting to yes.” In the meantime, if you have any specific questions on this topic, I invite you to leave them in the comments. I’ll do my best to address them!

• Filed under publishing, publishing 101 | 5 Responses

Publishing Monday: How a book really gets published

Thanks to all of you who commented this weekend for the grand conclusion of my month of blogging! I loved hearing from you all — gave me a very warm, fuzzy feeling inside.

Though I won’t be blogging everyday this week, I do have some special treats planned for you all. Aside from my usual posting, I’ll be announcing the winners of the January Blogathon raffle Wednesday. On Creativity Friday, Corrine Kenner (yup, the tarotist Corrine Kenner!) will be stepping in with a guest blog about the connection between creativity, writing and tarot. We’ll also be raffling off a hot-off-the-press copy of her newest book, Tarot for Writers. Fun!

As for today’s Publishing Monday, here’s a very, very funny video, courtesy of the Macmillan digital team. Enjoy!

My favorite part:

To: Great Editor
Vampire Novel — Hot!!!!!”

• Filed under be-mused, publishing, publishing 101, the art world | 5 Responses

Publishing Monday: alternative publishing models

To be fair, my recent posts on book advances (read them here and here) offered only one way authors can make money from their books. (Yes, there’s also self publishing and print on demand, but that’s an entirely different ball of wax.) Someone recently commented that his small-sized publisher did not offer him an advance; instead, he was given a bigger royalty rate in liu of. Well, turns out that big publishers are trying on this alternative publishing model for size.

HarperCollins recently started a new imprint, Harper Studio. Their mission statement:

HarperStudio is committed to partnering with authors to publish books in a way that is effective, creative, and sustainable. We believe books are a vital part of our culture. We believe traditional publishing models are broken and are experimenting with new ones. We believe in embracing technology. We believe the future is now.”

Sounds good, right? But what does this really mean? Here’s an explanation, courtesy of Publisher’s Weekly: Harper Studio offers low advances in exchange for profit sharing (ie, higher royalties). They also hope to achieve greater profits through lower book returns from retailers, preferably by selling through with a nonreturnable policy. (Bear in mind that by “low advances”, Harper Studio means no more than $100,000 per book, which is still a fairly healthy chunk o’ change.)

At Harper Studio, they’ve been able to achieve the first part of that equation, by convincing authors to accept their alternate financial structure. However, many of the authors they signed are already established or have celebrity cred, such as Emeril Lagasse and Toni Morrison. Clearly, there’s an advantage for Emeril and Co. to accept a bigger slice of the pie in exchange for a smaller amuse bouche (to belabor the metaphor). With their already built in platform, folks will buy their books, so there’s little risk involved. As for the second part of their strategy, Harper Studio is struggling with establishing a nonreturnable book policy. In compromise, they plan to offer retailers a choice of going returnable or nonreturnable, with steeper wholesale discounts offered to those who choose nonreturnable.

Harper Studio’s business model is still an anomaly. It will be interesting to see if other big houses follow suit in 2009. What do you think? Is this the shape of things to come? Or an experiment doomed to go south?

As we wait to find out, here’s a road map of the current publishing industry, courtesy of Soybits.* This graphic representation features publishing trends of 2008 to show how publishers, authors, booksellers, readers, bloggers, and new platforms like the Kindle and iPhone shook things up.

Fascinating stuff. Plus I’m a sucker for anything which references a London Underground map.

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* Though the map is in English and Spanish, it’s easy to follow. Thanks to HarperStudio’s 26th Floor blog for the link. BTW, it’s a great blog for anyone interested in publishing and books.

• Filed under publishing, publishing 101 | 3 Responses

Publishing Monday, part deux: Book advances — what’s the deal?

How much should a book advance be? Traditional publishing wisdom states that advances should cover what a book is expected to earn in author royalties for the book’s first year of publication. An example: Let’s say your publisher expects to sell 10,000 copies of your book in a year; book retails at $10; author royalty is 10%. Your advance would be $10,000 then. Right?

Not necessarily — especially when it comes to celebrities such as Laura Bush.

In my last Publishing Monday post, I covered Laura Bush’s $8 million plus advance for her as-yet-to-be-written memoirs. This post provoked a general outcry of disdain over the amount of money involved since (1) it’s unlikely that Laura will earn out and (2) so many authors feel rudely underpaid.

Shari wrote, “Eight million, huh!… It pays to be a celebrity.” Yup, it paid for Laura Bush. But I don’t envy celebrities, though I do envy book advances of that size. In response to my estimate that it would take 2 to 3 million copies sold to make the deal fiscally sound, Christina commented, “I hadn’t even realized they’d need to sell that many copies of Laura’s memoirs to earn out. WOW.”

Yup, book advances, especially celebrity book advances, are a hot button issue. When I first began my publishing career, I truly believed that all book advances would be negotiated in the method described at the start of this post. (For the sake of this post, let’s call this method the TBAC, for Traditional Book Advance Calculation.) But, as I’ve learned, the publishing world often doesn’t work that way. Like any situation where there’s supply and demand, advances can get pushed beyond what they can reasonably earn out — or dive to less than fair.

Overpaying doesn’t just happen with celebrities. Literary world excitement over a new author can also drive up book deals to stratospheric heights, especially if it goes to auction. (Believe it or not, there are benefits for publishers in overpaying an advance, some which I laid out in my previous Publishing Monday.)

And what about the average author? What can they expect for a first book advance?

Like with celebrity book advances, there are no hard and fast rules: they can range from nada to multi-million dollar figures. Much depends on the following:

1. The book’s publisher. A smaller publisher will usually have smaller pockets to pay out from. Smaller pockets = less room to absorb unearned advances. Larger publishers can often afford to be more generous, and have bigger distribution networks to make sure that book becomes profitable.

2. The book’s market. A book skewed toward a specialized (ie: smaller) market is simply going to sell less copies than a book with a larger market potential. Less potential books sold = smaller advance.

3. Author platform. Though it’s not the same thing, platform bears some similarities to market, and a good platform can translate into market. Laura Bush has one heck of a platform, which Scribner is hoping becomes market share. However, the good news is that you don’t have to be First Lady to have a platform (though it does help to be a celebrity). Are you an expert in your field? Sought after as a speaker? Have a syndicated radio or television show? Take into consideration that platforms often come from unexpected venues. For example, humorist Sharon Glassman’s involvement with Operation Santa led to her having a book published about her experience by Warner Books.

Once you have a publisher interested, what’s the best way to negotiate a fair book advance? If you’re unhappy with what they’re offering, use the TBAC as a starting point. To get a basis for your TBAC, read Publishers Weekly, Galleycat, or Publisher’s Lunch to learn what similar books are selling for. Consult the Authors Guild or SCBWI for children’s books. Get feedback from other authors. My experience is that publishers often offer lowball figures to first time authors; they’ll usually negotiate to a certain extent.

Finally, a good literary agent can most likely get you a better deal than you’d obtain on your own. They’re experts in what the market bears, and what a particular publisher will pay. Even if they didn’t place your manuscript with your publisher, this expertise alone is well worth their 15% commission.

Next week on Publishing Monday, I’ll write about other ways authors are making money from publishers outside of the TBAC. Yup, alternative publishing models!

• Filed under blogs we read, publishing, publishing 101 | 4 Responses