Reversion of rights
We have this clause in the contract which is pretty standard among publishers – or used to be, when we set up the contract;
(ii) if the Work becomes out of print and is not available in any English language edition
sold by the Publisher or in any English language edition published under license from the
Publisher and the Publisher has not within six months of a written request from the Author
or the Author’s representatives put in hand a new edition or impression and published or
sublicensed the rights to publish the same within six months thereafter. Electronic
editions or “print on demand”
I agree, times have changed, we need a minimum quantity in there for the rights to be retained by the publisher, will put it in.
Return all rights without charge
With no restrictions? I think we have to put in a minimum number of sales that could trigger it, otherwise what’s to stop any author transferring any book across to another publisher at any time?
What about remaining stock, which could be split around USA, UK, Australia etc?
What about rights to reuse the PDF, cover, digital files?
Just asking.....
“liars” and “shower of bastards”
I really apologise for that – I found it on the autonomy site, and got them mixed up.
I don’t think I’ve contradicted myself, and apologise if I have.
“that six figure sum”
Breakdown of costs last year, as % of sales;
Editorial 8%
Design 9%
Print & shipping 25%
Ebooks 2%
Distribution 12%
Systems development, mostly on marketing 14%
Salaries & sundries (mostly sales) 10%
Marketing costs 5%
Royalties to authors 15%
Book sales weren’t falling
Sure, they’re roughly constant, and i expect always will be. What I meant was that the chances for new authors getting into the bricks and mortar shops get more difficult all the time. And the cost of doing so keeps going up. The returns come back quicker. Etc.
Nonsense (on most worthwhile, good books not being “commercial”).
I guess it depends on the definition of “commercial”. Roughly, we put it at anything over 1000 copies (in the print edition). Big publishers would put it a lot higher. I stand by the claim that most good books sell less than 1000 copies.
From the User manual- (the figures on individual titles are accepted industry statistics)
WHATS THE AVERAGE SALE OF A BOOK IN THE INDUSTRY?
Most people unfamiliar with the industry overestimate book sales by factors of ten. Estimates of the number of new titles published each year in English that sell over 5,000 copies vary from 1,000 through 5,000 to 25,000, depending on the criteria applied. Either way, out of a million or so new titles each year, that is not many. The average sale of all new titles has been variously estimated at 99 or 250 or 500 copies, depending on who you listen to, which year they’re talking about, and whether you include self-published titles or not. The number of new self-published titles in the USA alone rose from 32,000 in 2006 to 135,000 in 2007 and over 300,000 in 2009, but the average sale was 10 copies. In 2010, 2.5 million ISBNs (new book identifying numbers) were issued.
The sales are not evenly distributed, with a small number of "brand name" authors taking the lion's share. This is particularly so in fiction, where about 0.01% titles account for 50% of the sales, 0.1% account for around 80%, etc.
The average sale of properly-published books, outside the roster of top brand names, reduces each year. It is not the "fault" of publishers, that they can not or do not want to sell books. It is a straightforward equation between the number of readers (roughly static) and the number of titles (always increasing, and through online sites etc. all increasingly available – several million on sale at amazon, and the number of books Google is currently digitizing runs to 130 million, see http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2010/08/books-of-world-stand-up-and-be-counted.html.)
Looking at the latest Bookseller analysis of sales in 2008; in the kind of non-fiction specialist areas that we mostly publish in, a sale of 3,000 copies in, for example, "popular philosophy" (rather than academic philosophy, where good sales are in the hundreds), would easily get you into the top 20 titles in the UK in 2008, into the company of authors like Julian Baggini, Alain de Botton and Bertrand Russell (yes, he still sells). In the larger area of "popular science", a sale of 6,000 copies would get you into the same top 20 as Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking. In a smaller area like environment/green books, 500 copies gets you into the top 20*. Sales needed in the USA would be a little higher, but not in a different ballpark. Given the tens of thousands of new titles coming out in each of these areas each year, these achievements are rare. Its one reason why it makes sense for us (and you) to publish for all markets around the world, despite the extra costs of servicing more than one.
As a post from Scott Pack, publisher of The Friday Project imprint (Harper Collins), ex-head buyer of Waterstones (equivalent in the US of B&N and Borders together), said in a post Fall 2010- 1,000 readers for any book is bloody good these days. More below.
Fiction
The Man Booker prize for new fiction is the most important and prestigious in the English-speaking world. In 2007, when the shortlist was announced for that year, selected from the cream of thousands of new fiction titles that had been submitted, the sales of the selected titles had been, since publication in the previous 12 months;
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan; 101,137
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid; 1,519
Master Pip by Lloyd Jones; 880
The Gathering by Anne Enright (the eventual winner); 834
Darkmans by Nicola Barker; 499
Animal’s People by Indra Sinha; 231
All had enjoyed excellent reviews, and all had been bought out with substantial marketing and loads of hype by major publishers, and pushed heavily through the shops. Of course, after being shortlisted, their sales went up. But these kinds of figures are more characteristic of good book sales (and of really good books) than the millions you read about in the press. Sales in the low hundreds, or even dozens, are common in fiction. Six months hard work on the marketing and $10,000 spent might push it up from 100 to 150. It might, of course, do a lot better. But do not bank on it.
Note; be skeptical about bestseller lists. There are consultants who manipulate The New York Times bestseller lists and others, by hiring people to buy certain books at the right stores on the right day. Though I guess it does work, in that sales can be self-fulfilling – if it gets the notice of a bestseller, more people then stock and buy it. Manipulating social networks is easier still. See for instance the services on offer at http://www.fiverr.com/.
Non-fiction
It is not much different for non-fiction. Amusing piece recently at http://www.booktrade.info/i.php/23658.
Well known author, weekly article in two national newspapers, national BBC TV presenter, lots of articles and promotion, loads of 5 star reviews on Amazon, OK it is hardback, but just getting up to 1,000 copies.
*Heres an update on total trade sales in the UK for the first nine months of 2009 for the top 20 environmental/green books, both new titles and evergreen sellers; The Vanishing Face of Gaia by James Lovelock 10,702; Sustainable Energy by David MacKay 9,857; The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock 3,941; Waste; Uncovering the Global Food Scandal by Tristram Stuart 3,418; Heaven and Earth; Global Warming by Ian Plimer 2,756; The Transition Handbookby Bob Hopkins 2,730; Six Degrees by Mark Lynas 2,492; Silent Spring by Rachel Carson 1,585; The Hot Topic by Walker & King 1,420; Ecologic by Brian Clegg 1,307; Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman 1,222; An Appeal to Reason by Nigel Lawson 989; An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore 907; Change the World 9 to 5 748; Field Notes from a Catastrophe 500; The Meaning of the 21st Century by James Martin 443; Do Good Lies Have to Cost the Earth? by Smith & Simms 357; Save Cash and Save the Planet by Smith & Baird 341; ACME Climate Action 312. (Source; The Bookseller)
Ps; update in 2010
The trends listed above have increased dramatically over the last couple of years. The top selling environmental title in 2010 for instance was still The Vanishing Face of Gaia, but with sales now of 5,234. New titles published in 2010 are estimated to reach well over 1 million. Several hundred thousand of these are previously out of print titles bought back into stock through print-on-demand etc., but it all adds to the quantity that needs to be digested. At the same, shelf space in shops is reducing. In the Christian/religious trade in the UK for instance, the majority of shops that were around three years ago have gone into receivership (Wesley Owen, SPCK, and many independents). The picture is not dissimilar in the MBS trade, with the flagship shop, Watkins, disappearing (later reopening). In the general market, the Borders chain has closed. The same trends are apparent in the US. Some of these have been resuscitated, at cost to the creditors (ie; mainly publishers), who have to swallow the unpaid bills. But it all makes getting books onto shop shelves increasingly expensive, with shorter appearance times, and makes it all the more necessary to pursue other avenues for getting the word around.
For longer term trends; see for instance
http://www.thedominoproject.com/2011/09/want-to-buy-a-watch-patronage-scarcity-and-souvenirs.html
HOW MANY BOOKS DO YOU USUALLY SELL?
Our average so far is around 3,000 copies (over the life so far of the book). But with a couple of hundred thousandmore new titles getting published each year in English worldwide than the year before, it always gets more difficult.
Ps; it's an "average", not "median". And it follows "Pareto distribution", not a "bell-curve". ie; if you plot it across 1500 or so titles, there's few in 6 or 7 figures, more in 5, loads in 4 figures, but most new titles sell in hundreds.
Our bestseller is an inspirational/devotional, God Calling, with over 6 million, still going strong. At the other extreme we have a lot of titles that have sold in the low hundreds, or dozens. A few thousand copies is good for us, around one in ten gets up to five figures. We have several new titles over the last three years that have sold in tens of thousands, we have not had a recent one in the adult area that has sold in hundreds of thousands. We are usually factors of ten above self-published books, and factors of ten below Harry Potter. The figures we give on the website only go back a few years, since we had the Sales Figures page working.
With the majority of titles there is usually a correlation between how much the author uses the website and adds to it, and how well their books sell. Much more so, for instance, than if the author or we passed the work on to a freelance publicist, one who we don’t know and who works outside our systems. But the link is not an inevitable one.
About half our overall sales are in North America, most of the rest in the UK with a scattering elsewhere (Australia, South Africa etc.). For this reason we tend to use American English spelling and punctuation in books (as in this document), though this is not a hard-and-fast rule (more on this in Preparing the manuscript.
3 years later, you could probably halve those figures again, as far as sales through the bricks and mortar trade go.
Your subsidy publishing is providing a service which isn’t really required
Matter of opinion.
You don’t understand the limitations of Nielsen etc
I think I do, I look up several dozen titles on it a day, authors’ previous sales, sales of competing titles etc, and I know it’s not reliable for more than 10 years or so back, that it doesn’t include online sales, library sales, supermarkets etc., but for more recent sales across the till of bricks and mortar shops it is reliable.
similarly with e-publishers.
AbsoluteWrite doesn’t recommend publishers
My apologies, again, I thought it was linked to Preditors & Editors. I’m rushing this too fast, which is why I’m going to have to stop.
Cut misleading stuff out of your website
I’m not sure yet what is actually misleading. Too verbose, certainly, and maybe confused – but we don’t seem to get problems with authors we’re actually working with in the same kind of way, but will work on improving it.
Misrepresents how agents work
Didn’t mean to misrepresent them, just to describe our approach to them – we don’t negotiate with them, so don’t work in the same kind of way. it's not meant to be a general introduction to publishing, just to how we work, which is different.
You expect your authors to read and perhaps answer each other’s questions....
No. We expect them to read the answer that the person/moderator dedicated to that section of the forum puts up, who monitors it, (around a couple of dozen a day) and they’re free to look at anything else on the forum if they want to. Some authors do answer questions, because they feel involved, and want to, and authors do talk to each other (there’s an “author-to-author” section).
You’re wrong when yuo claim that most of the major publishers run a vanity division
Well; Random Penguin have the biggest, probably accounting for 70% or so of the vanity press market (including authorhouse, ilibris, Trafford, iuniverse etc). Harper Collins have Westbow press in their Thomas Nelson division. Simon & Schuster have Archway Press. That’s over half of all publishing, by sales. I don't think Hachette or Macmillan/Holtzbrinck (who include most of the others) have vanity arms. but beneath that top six, a lot of others do.
Do you provide developmental edits
Not as a general rule. It’s down to the individual publishers. What they think about the book, and what the readers think.
We provide copy editing and proof reading on every title, and we don’t charge for it.
You need to put that into your contract (excerpts/quotations)
I think it’s going to be simpler if we just take those sub rights out, they’re not significant for us.
I’ve worked in publishing for coming up to thirty years
Nearly 40 for me.
Part of the concern with running a royalty-model next to subsidy publishing is that people get their hopes up..
We encourage authors to shop around. And not to go for our model if it doesn’t suit them. But I don’t think, if you saw our reader reports (we do several on each new proposal, which the author can see) that we could be accused of raising hopes.
Could you give a couple of the most egregious examples, please
Sure. first, again, apologies for mixing up this site with the Preditors & Editors one. I generally don’t get onto author internet forums of any kind, I happened across preditors & Editors, then came across this one, and then got into Autonomy, and have mixed them up in my mind.
But the first publisher that is “highly recommended” in Preditors & Editors, looking through it alphabetically, is Adventure Books of Seattle. So I look at a sample dozen titles on Nielsen, and not one is in more than double figures. So they’re not making money out of selling books. But they do say –
Fees vary from about $350 for a simple proofread up to $3,500 for a complete packaging service. We custom-bid each job and fees often depend on the length of the book and other factors. There are no hidden fees, and in the case of book pa
So I suspect that’s where they’re getting their income from.
OK, that’s not “proof”, maybe they’re a brilliant press. and i don't see anything wrong with it anyway. Just doesn’t seem reasonable to me that they’re highly recommended and we’re down as a vanity press because we’re more upfront about it.
Because the non-vanity arm never shuffles people off to the vanity arm, the non-vanity arms are not listed as vanity presses on P&E
Not the impression I got from Dave Kuzminski, the P&E moderator-
We know there must be some publishers that have vanity branches in their house. When we see the proof that they exist, then we adjust our listings appropriately. You're more than welcome to pass along the URLs that prove some of what you've claimed. P&E has a small staff and relies heavily upon writers forwarding such information to it.
Essentially, P&E looks at subsidy as a form of vanity. Although you use subsidy on only a small percentage of what's accepted, it's much like being a "little bit pregnant" which is technically impossible. In other words, either you are or you aren't. As it now stands too many publishers are using that reasoning that it's only a small percenbt of their business so as to declare that they're not vanity and make the number of books they publish commercially appear larger than it is.
Though it might not be any consolation, P&E has applied the same reasoning and recommendation to large publishers that have delved into the opening of a vanity arm for their publishing house. Should P&E come across other publishers that do the same, they will be treated in the same manner. Harlequin Books is considered a vanity publisher by P&E.
Seems like he’s saying that any publisher with a vanity arm will be treated as a vanity press.
Again, my apologies for confusing some threads here. I don’t have the time for this...but reckoned an apology was owed. And thanks for pointing out some weaknesses. Which we’ll address. I think at bottom we have a difference of opinion as to how many titles can be “commercial”, and how “non-commercial” books should be treated.
We don’t want to split the business into “commercial” and “vanity”, because we don’t believe that quality and sales are synonymous, and, in practice, we treat all books pretty much equally, as far as editing and supply of info goes. And we market all of them. Some we try harder with on the marketing than others – there’s no point in trying to sell a new title by an author to the bricks and mortar trade if they’ve published several times before and the buyer can look up the sales record in a couple of seconds and they haven’t sold any.... which is why the emphasis varies from book to book. And if an author hasn’t sold before, or if they haven’t published before but we reckon sales are more likely to be in the low hundreds than the low thousands, then, sure, we might ask for a subsidy. Because we have a dozen people involved in bringing each new title to market, and they need to be paid.
And those people are mostly “authors” who have got involved in the business, so we try and balance what’s fair to them and what’s fair to new authors. There isn’t a huge central cost that’s pocketing what could go to authors – last year I earned more than anyone else, and that was £36,000 gross, before tax. With no expenses. I know that’s not relevant, I’m just trying to knock on the head that we’re a kind of rip-off vanity publisher that doesn’t care about quality and doesn’t care about selling books but pockets authors’ money.
I hope that my apologies here can be accepted, and we can go our separate ways without ill-feeling....
john