An uproar is ensuing over Harlequin, ebook rights, and royalties for ebooks. I’m not getting into all the specifics of it as you can find that elsewhere. What I want to talk about is the entire issue in terms of whether it’s smart business.
First, the reality is writers will sign away their first-born in order to get published. I don’t know the legalities of signing away future unknown mediums for a book. Seems kind of flaky, but if the language was in the contract, well . . .
Second, while I’m certainly riding the crest of the indie author wave, selling over 1,500 ebooks a day, let’s also pause and look at reality. I’m doing that because I have over 40 titles that were traditionally published. Which means they were vetted, edited, published and bought by readers. I also have cover quotes from writers who I’ve met over the years, particularly teaching at the Maui conference. I have bestseller status from various books that were traditionally published along with reviews from PW, Kirkus, Library Journal, etc. that I can use to promote the books.
That said, what many writers are forgetting is that a publisher does make an investment in an author. Not just the advance, but the entire process. Running my own publishing company I’m very aware of the overhead involved. Editing, distribution, etc. The start-up costs of the company itself. Those are some of the unseen investments that most of us tend to forget in the battle for backlist.
What HQ is doing is a business reality. They own the rights, they want to make money off the rights. I get that.
While it is the reality, the more important question is: Is It Smart?
The answer is NO.
Publishers are still way too focused on distributing books to their consignment outlets. I phrase that very carefully because bookstores are not retail stores, they are consignment stores. Same with books in Sam’s, Costco, your local supermarket. If the book doesn’t sell, it’s back on the publisher.
eBooks are a very different beast. With eBooks the store doesn’t matter. It’s the author-reader relationship that is key. By offering such pathetic royalty rates on those ebooks, what HQ is doing is discouraging authors from promoting. While the email indicated the royalty is an increase, it’s based on net, and doing the math, doesn’t seem like much of an increase, especially since the author would have to have access to HQ’s income stream to determine what they are making, rather than copies sold. At Who Dares Wins Publishing we give 50% royalty on net, a voluntary increase from our original contract rate of 40% because we simply thought it was fair. And smart business.
A few months ago on this blog, I wrote that I’d pay Random House reverse royalties if they would give me the e-rights to my Area 51 titles. This was ignored. I kept badgering RH and eventually they just said, fine, take your rights. In essence implying they weren’t important to them. Today, Area 51 is in the top ten in science fiction in both US and UK Kindle. Along with my first Atlantis book. In England, only George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones is ahead of me in science fiction. So much for these books being worthless. An editor at RH told me they could hardly promote their frontlist never mind their backlist.
Which is my point. No one cares about a book more than the author. They are the best possible promoters and with social media they have the means to do it. But it has to be worth it to them to do so, which is why I suggested the reverse royalty. I would have paid RH 25% of all sales just to have the rights. At the time I knew they would make more money with me promoting and selling than they were currently doing just tossing the books out there. I think HQ needs to consider this for their backlist. Would you rather make more off of less copies, or less off of many, many more copies? Right now I sell more e-copies of Area 51 in a day than RH did in six months. Do the math.
Which brings me to the non-compete clause that’s also supposed to be in new contracts (update on this– there’s no indication this clause will be included, so I jumped the gun on that– my apologies). If authors sell more books under their name that they self-publish, won’t more of the books you have from them sell also? I now have a commanding presence on Amazon Kindle with four titles in three different genres in the top 1,000 overall and twelve titles on the bestseller lists in their specific genres. That’s worth something.
Frankly, as we move into an entirely new distribution system, publishers are still treating authors the way they did when they had a stranglehold on distribution. As if the author is not an important part of the process. That’s ignoring the fact that the key to promotion and sales is the author-reader relationship. Not the author-publisher-bookstore-reader relationship. In case no one’s noticed, many bookstores are going under. Since the publisher is hand in hand with them, they won’t be far behind unless they radically change their outlook and treat authors and readers like they used to treat bookstores.
Until publishers start treating authors as part of a team and equals, rather than easily replaceable parts, it’s a downward spiral. More and more authors will simply bypass publishers. Publishers need to take a hard look at the backlist rights they are clinging to and instead of squeezing every dime out of it, see how they can make it flourish and grow with the aid of the authors.
In the Green Berets we also operated as a team. The Special Forces A-Team is most successful team in the world. I suggest publishers start building A-Teams with their authors.
Filed under: Publishing Options Tagged: Amazon Kindle, Backlist, Bob Mayer, Book Writing, business, E-book, ePublishing, Future, Library Journal, Publishing, Random House, Royalties, Self-Publishing, The Future of Publishing, Writer Resources, Writers Resources, writing
