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[Publisher] Ravenous Romance

nkkingston

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Has anyone tried selling multiple short stories to them? I'm in an anthology, and obviously it's going to be a long time before enough royalties build up from that to make them worth paying. I was wondering if I could drum up a few stand alones whether it would be worth it, or whether I should save my time.
 

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So you wouldn't go with them again?
Probably not. If I did, it would be for the opportunity to work with some faboo editor I was mad about, and I would require some pretty serious revisions to the contract.


Has anyone tried selling multiple short stories to them? I'm in an anthology, and obviously it's going to be a long time before enough royalties build up from that to make them worth paying. I was wondering if I could drum up a few stand alones whether it would be worth it, or whether I should save my time.
If you sell them shorts, revise the contract so that you get paid at least once a year regardless of the amount.
 

jennontheisland

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Probably not. If I did, it would be for the opportunity to work with some faboo editor I was mad about, and I would require some pretty serious revisions to the contract.

If you sell them shorts, revise the contract so that you get paid at least once a year regardless of the amount.
Once a year? How high is their minimum pay out?
 

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$100 (I think; I don't have the original contract offer in front of me)
 

nkkingston

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I couldn't find a minimum on my anthology contract. If it's $100 per person, then no one's going to see any royalties!
 

Stacia Kane

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I couldn't find a minimum on my anthology contract. If it's $100 per person, then no one's going to see any royalties!


No offense, but doesn't that pretty much answer your above question? Why would you waste more of your stories on a house that can't sell them, instead of submitting them to a house that can?

A short story I co-wrote at EC (under a different seekrit pen name) earned me like $500 (and the cover price was like 3 bucks) in the first couple of months, and it's still earning after two years. It was included in a multi-author antho and I make decent money from that as well; and again, it's co-written so I'm only making half of the royalty I'd normally get.

Don't throw your stories away.
 

nkkingston

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I would be deeply surprised if it was $100 per contributor for an anthology, considering the advance was $10 per person. I need to go back through my contract - I couldn't find a set amount last time, but I may have just missed it. We earned out the advances in the first quarter, from what I understoof of the royalty statement, so we are earning royalties now at a reasonably tidy rate.

My line of thought was that a couple stories, sold individually rather than in anthologies, would increase the amount earned per month so that I'd hit the minimum pay-out much more regularly. The anthology basically has to sell a minimum of ten times as many copies as an individual story before anyone sees any royalities from it, since the royalties are split ten ways (well, nine plus editor, who gets a bigger share of the pie anyway). If I sell a couple of short stories too, then the portion of the anthology royalty should be added on top of their royalties, and I'd hit the minimum payment more quickly (and the anthology royalty wouldn't be languishing in RR's bank account instead of mine!). Obviously, the maths is a bit loose, since anthologies cost more than short stories, but you see what I'm getting at.
 

mlhernandez

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I would be deeply surprised if it was $100 per contributor for an anthology, considering the advance was $10 per person. I need to go back through my contract - I couldn't find a set amount last time, but I may have just missed it.

It's 9(a) in my contract for a short story in an antho. Considering I've earned about 40 cents of my $10 advance back for that antho published in January of 2009 I'm not holding my breath on a royalty check.

This one goes in my live and learn category
 

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It's 9(a) in my contract for a short story in an antho. Considering I've earned about 40 cents of my $10 advance back for that antho published in January of 2009 I'm not holding my breath on a royalty check.

This one goes in my live and learn category

eeek.
 

Sheryl Nantus

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It's 9(a) in my contract for a short story in an antho. Considering I've earned about 40 cents of my $10 advance back for that antho published in January of 2009 I'm not holding my breath on a royalty check.

This one goes in my live and learn category

off the top of my head...

that's sad.

:cry:
 

brainstorm77

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This makes me wonder what the sales are for their 'bestsellers'...
 

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I would be deeply surprised if it was $100 per contributor for an anthology, considering the advance was $10 per person. I need to go back through my contract - I couldn't find a set amount last time, but I may have just missed it. We earned out the advances in the first quarter, from what I understoof of the royalty statement, so we are earning royalties now at a reasonably tidy rate.

I don't know that I'd say earning out a ten dollar advance in 3 months is anywhere near a reasonably tidy rate. YMMV, of course.
 

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I couldn't find a minimum on my anthology contract. If it's $100 per person, then no one's going to see any royalties!

IIRC, mine was on the last page -- appended to the contract itself. It seems to be a "how we will pay you for all works covered by all contracts you may have with RR" kind of thing.
 

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Considering I've earned about 40 cents of my $10 advance back for that antho published in January of 2009 I'm not holding my breath on a royalty check.

This one goes in my live and learn category
Ditto. The only reason I've earned out the $10 advance is because they sold the print rights for the anthology to another publisher.

I love the editor of my antho and would be delighted to see my name on another ToC edited by her, but I reckon I can find other ways to do it other than work with RR.
 

nkkingston

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I've realised I'm actually looking at the second quarter the anthology was on sale for, not the first. This is the first time I've had to deal with royalties, since everything else I've done was a flat fee. My calculator is getting a good bit of work!

Off the top of my head, it's actually earnt out a minimum of $100, and probably much more than that - I don't know how much the editor got paid, or her larger cut of the royalties takes the place of an advance - and that's taking into account it's spent most of its time in one sale or another, dropping the price to a couple of dollars.

Per person, in the first six months of sale it earned out the original advance and there's just over $7 per contributor in the pot, waiting to hit that minimum payment threshold. Overall, the total royalty amount comes to over $300, after earning out however much the advances came to. I don't know how that ranks for an anthology - anecdotally, I've heard they usually make less than novels anyway - or specifically for an RR anthology. From what others have said here, I guess we've not done too badly. They haven't technically sold print or audio rights, though they have put a print version on Amazon via Lightning Source.

I've requested the statement for the quarter the book came out in to have a ponder over, and also asked about the minimum payout. In my editor's last email, it seemed to imply we'd be seeing royalties every quarter regardless of amount, but good old clause 9 (a) does specify $100. If it's $100 per person, the book needs to make $1800 before I see any of that since I don't have anything else to bolster that at RR. Hence the question about selling some more short stories!
 

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In my editor's last email, it seemed to imply we'd be seeing royalties every quarter regardless of amount, but good old clause 9 (a) does specify $100. If it's $100 per person, the book needs to make $1800 before I see any of that since I don't have anything else to bolster that at RR. Hence the question about selling some more short stories!

Check the wording of that clause carefully. Does it specify a minimum per author, or a minimum per author per contract? That is, if you sell five stories to RR, do they lump all the royalties into one pot when determining when to cut a check, or do they calculate a $100 minimum per story?
 

nkkingston

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Technically, under the terms of the contract I can't quote it directly here (the same goes for my Loose Id contract - I'm guessing this is a standard clause?). However, I figure I can paraphrase: it says that RR will pay royalty earnings under the terms of the contract within 30 days after the end of each quarter, and that if the royalties earned for any quarter are less than $100.00, RR can hold payment until the cumulative royalties exceed $100.00. Obviously it's in US dollars, and payment for third party sales won't take place until the third parties have paid RR. And that's about it.

I'm interpreting that as payment per author, rather than per work, but I guess it doesn't 100% specify. Does anyone have experience with multiple works at RR, who could confirm how it works?
 

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Check the wording of that clause carefully. Does it specify a minimum per author, or a minimum per author per contract? That is, if you sell five stories to RR, do they lump all the royalties into one pot when determining when to cut a check, or do they calculate a $100 minimum per story?
When I originally read mine, I took it to mean a minimum of $100 per author, with multiple contracts with that author lumped together for royalty payments. But I may have interpreted it wrong.

I did require them to revise my contract so that they paid me at least once a year no matter how much had accrued. Last week they sent a notice that all the authors in the antho would be getting cheques, and we didn't each earn $100, so either they standardised their system to reflect my requirement of minimum once-a-year payments, or they're not strictly enforcing that minimum. (If it were a threshold of $100 per book, to be split among the authors and editor, we'd have got a payment long before this as they sold the print rights for a tidy sum back around 9 months ago.)
 

Giant Baby

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Is anyone else getting an obnoxious number of emails from Ravenous Romance, filled with long strings of HTML and broken links (including the damn "unsubscribe" link- and yeah, I tried typing it all in by hand, but goes to a "page does not exist" message). I've emailed before about being removed from their mailing lists, but without luck.

Today (all to the same email address): 2:20pm, 2:20pm (again), 2:55pm, 3:00pm, 3:00pm (again).

I emailed them (AGAIN) at 3:11pm, asking them respectfully to knock it the hell off.

So, yeah. Another email ad for their "Tight Ends" antho arrived at 3:27pm, identical to all the others.

This happens every couple of days. I can roll with spam as well as the next girl, but I'd be interested to know if anyone else is having this problem. And also, I've pasted the bit with the broken "unsubscribe" link below. If anyone can make sense of the HTML, so I can just type an address in by hand that will bring me to an actual unsubscribe page, I will rep you for life.

:e2headban

<tr>
<td align=3D"center">
<font color=3D"#a5a5a5" face=3D"Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" siz=
e=3D"-2">This e-mail is provided as a service of Ravenous Romance. If you=
would like to unsubscribe, visit our <a style=3D"color:#a5a5a5;" href=3D=
"http://www.ravenousromance.com/index.php?option=3Dcom_acajoom&Itemid=3D&=
act=3Dunsubscribe&subscriber=3D363&cle=3D2c6bed7fa8b4986c1cb84b0386edb2e1=
&listid=3D3">
<font color=3D"#a5a5a5">Unsubscribe</font>
</a> page or reply to this e-mail with "unsubscribe" as the subje=
ct line.</font> </td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
 

Polenth

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This happens every couple of days. I can roll with spam as well as the next girl, but I'd be interested to know if anyone else is having this problem. And also, I've pasted the bit with the broken "unsubscribe" link below. If anyone can make sense of the HTML, so I can just type an address in by hand that will bring me to an actual unsubscribe page, I will rep you for life.

I don't think you're going to have any luck. I tried cleaning it up, but it just brings up "You are not authorised to view this resource."

When you say you sent emails, do you mean you sent emails using the RR contact email address, or a reply to the spam with 'unsubscribe' in the subject? If you haven't tried the automated unsubscribe email, that's worth a try.
 

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I haven't gotten spam from them this week, but their website (and by extension, their internet skillz generally) has been a hot mess as long as it's existed. Over this summer, there was a period of about a month when they apparently couldn't upload the covers for new books being released.

Then there was the hacking. And an apparent lack of a backup of the website. And more than a day to bring the site back up after hacking.

Then a few days ago -- maybe a couple weeks -- I got the emailed "book of the day" daily announcement, which I never signed up for, as far as I know (although it may have been required to get the first sample of their product, so maybe that's where they got my e-address), which I had previously (at least once, maybe twice) asked to be removed from. That was about a week ago, and I haven't received anything else from them since. Then again, I didn't get a confirmation of the unsubscribing either.
 

Giant Baby

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I don't think you're going to have any luck. I tried cleaning it up, but it just brings up "You are not authorised to view this resource."

When you say you sent emails, do you mean you sent emails using the RR contact email address, or a reply to the spam with 'unsubscribe' in the subject? If you haven't tried the automated unsubscribe email, that's worth a try.

Thanks for trying! Yeah, I've sent to their direct (customerservice@...) address from their website (which is also the address the spam is coming from). Like a dolt though, I did forget to re-title the subject of the email "UNSUBSCRIBE" this time. Perhaps I'll just send them a third email with the proper subject included.

Hell, it'd still be half the number they've sent me today.

I haven't gotten spam from them this week, but their website (and by extension, their internet skillz generally) has been a hot mess as long as it's existed. Over this summer, there was a period of about a month when they apparently couldn't upload the covers for new books being released.

Then there was the hacking. And an apparent lack of a backup of the website. And more than a day to bring the site back up after hacking.

Then a few days ago -- maybe a couple weeks -- I got the emailed "book of the day" daily announcement, which I never signed up for, as far as I know (although it may have been required to get the first sample of their product, so maybe that's where they got my e-address), which I had previously (at least once, maybe twice) asked to be removed from. That was about a week ago, and I haven't received anything else from them since. Then again, I didn't get a confirmation of the unsubscribing either.

Yeah, I didn't sign up, either. I also checked out what they were offering when they opened, there was a period of silence, and then the spam started a while back and I haven't been able to get rid of them since. When you asked to be romoved, did you use the customerservice@... address?

Why I always get 4-6 emails at a time, I haven't a clue.