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John Hunt Publishing / O Books / Perfect Edge

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Life-of-copyright contracts are the norm for large publishers. They're less common in the small press world, but they do exist.

They're not a problem as long as there's an out-of-print/rights reversion clause that provides precise guidelines for taking books out of print

Kaitie quoted this from their website in her comment a couple of places above yours, Victoria:

We do not put books out of print. Once the information is out on the databases it will be there in some form forever, hard to change, and queries on the book’s availability or on permissions could still be coming through in 20 years time, creating work.

My bold.

Once you sign with them you're stuck with them.
 

john hunt

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thanks for the comments. In sequence, working backwards chronologically, think I'm covering everything here...sorry if I'm dropping anything....

Once you sign with them you’re stuck with them
In theory, yes. It used to be standard publishing practice (until the book went out of print), and in traditional publishing still is. It hasn’t been much of an issue, across 1500 or so authors in ten years, I think it’s cropped up 3 times;

1.Seven years ago we published Douglas Arone, “The Theorem”. We didn’t ask for a subsidy. We sold 697 copies in the next 12 months. Then he asked for the rights back. We gave them back. Didn’t hear of him or from him again until last year when he started a vendetta against us, cybersquatting on our name.

2.Over the last year we’ve had two other authors who have asked to terminate the contract, and we’ve agreed terms with them (them buying back remaining stock etc).

We recognize that with changes over the last few years, self-publishing more common etc, we need to come up with something different, and have been talking about it. It will be along the lines of the author being able to take the rights back if there’s a minimum sale over 12 months as suggested. It's not that we've been setting out to cheat authors, just that the contract has been that way for 10 years, it was standard at the time, and it's never been a significant enough issue to push to the top of the agenda.

Is there any evidence that Hunt can successfully market subrights? If not, they shouldn’t claim them.
From the contract; the subrights we ask for-

7. Subsidiary rights
(a) During the term of this Agreement and in the territories and languages the subject of this Agreement the Publisher shall control the following volume and subsidiary rights in the Work and the Author hereby grants to the Publisher such rights in the Work, in so far as such rights are not granted here, and the Publisher shall pay to the Author the percentage of 60% of the Publisher’s royalty receipts, after deduction of any third party agents’ fees and any withholding tax where applicable, from any sale, exploitation or license of such rights.
This applies to:
Book Club (on a separate royalty basis); Overseas Editions in English (eg; India) (if
published by another publisher on a separate royalty basis): Translation (if published in translation by another publisher on a separate royalty basis): Serial Rights (i.e. the right to publish one or more extracts from the Work in successive issues of periodical or newspaper: Quotation and Extract Rights: Anthology Rights: Digest Rights (i.e. the right to publish an abridgement of the complete Work in a single issue of a journal, periodical or newspaper, in full or shortened form): One-Shot Periodical Rights (i.e. the right to publish the complete Work in a single issue of a journal, periodical or newspaper): SubLicensed Paperback Rights: Hardback Reprint Rights (i.e. the right to publish a straight reprint of the complete Work, without notes or annotations, in hard covers): Educational Reprint Rights (i.e. the right to publish an educational edition of the Work, with notes and/or other educational apparatus, in hard or soft covers): Large Print Rights (i.e. the
right to publish a straight reprint of the complete Work in large type, primarily for readers with visual handicaps, in hard or soft covers).
This Agreement does not include any film rights, or merchandising rights, or apply to anything other than the text of the book and any illustrations or design or embellishments involved in the formatting of the book.


On translation rights, we sign one or two contracts with other publishers each week, and an overseas English edition in India once every few weeks. We don’t ask for audio, film or TV, because we don’t work in those areas. The others, like serial rights, educational, large print and so on – they’re historically there, very rare for them to crop up, would be happy to drop them (actually, there's some point in the user manual in relation to articles where we say;

If anyone requests you for permission to use an excerpt from the book, or a quotation, there is no need to check with us, just say "yes, the publisher agrees". We do not get into correspondence and form-filling on this. If they want to pay up to £100/$100, which is rare enough, just agree and take the money, whatever the contract says, the paperwork involved in processing it from our side and then splitting it with you etc.. is not really worth it.


The author has the option on accepting the contract to sign for only English language worldwide and not for foreign languages. We can only do English language worldwide (rather than UK & Commonwealth rights or N american rights only) because our systems are set up to make them available through distributors worldwide.

Selling marketing services and anything beyond copy editing has to be bought.
that's overstating it. We put PR and marketing into every title, along with sales/distribution. We allocate a publicist to each title, and they put more work in every time it sells 500 copies.

There’s a limit to how much marketing/PR we can do initially. There’s an option for authors to buy more if they want to, because a few do. Some used to go to outside companies, some of whom we also used to use, and we thought we could do a better job at a much lower price. And if work is done outside, it doesn't feedback into our database, so the info doesn't get circulated.

If a publisher offers even one subsidy contract the entire press is a vanity press.
Depends on what your legal definition of a publisher is. The preditors &editors applies this logic to companies like Harlequin that have a vanity press division, unaware that most of the major publishers do.

Shouldn’t the author have a person they can contact?
The author contacts an author forum. The forum is split into sections, answered by the editor/designer/marketing person whoever. It’s simpler/quicker/more efficient than having one person as a contact point who can’t possibly answer all the queries relating to every area and just has to ask someone else.

The fact that this publisher seems to expect authors to buy upwards of 500 copies of their own books
We don’t. There’s no such expectation. But we do publish authors who sell their own books – they’re doing workshops, seminars, trade fairs, and so if they want to buy in that quantity (some do) we give them a higher discount.

Royalties on net/gross
Just to clarify; the royalties we pay are on the gross income we receive from the shops. We don’t deduct anything from that (like distribution costs, sales costs etc). We describe it as net because it’s not on the retail price.

LindaJeanne-
Thank you. We’re going to have to work at making this more digestible, in the way you suggest.

If you could be clearer, and more accurate in your statements and your logic, this might not so time-consuming for you. And it would certainly be fairer to writers who work with you, and who might work with you in the future
Will try. I don’t think we have the kind of problem with writers we work with in the kind of way this site suggests, maybe because they follow a step by step process, where it’s spelt out more easily (we have several dozen notification emails that go out automatically at different stages of the contract/editorial/production/marketing process, that refer to relevant bits of it). We get plenty of comments along the lines of how quick and easy the publishing process has been (usually readers reports and a contract offer within a week or so of a proposal, and finished text and cover
files within two months of finished manuscript).

Perhaps we should just take that whole damn user manual off the website – we were just trying to be open about it from the word go. It certainly needs rewriting for clarity, it’s kind of grown like topsy over the years, but then it covers a lot of ground, and we aim to have all arrangements "open" rather than coming to different private agreements with different authors. (We actually work more as a cooperative with authors, believe it or not, and the large bulk of the commissioning/editing/marketing/PR is done by people who started out with us as authors and have grown up with the business/helped in developing it).

I’m still struggling to see where we’ve been misleading.

You’re seriously underestimating your audience here, John
Maybe, apologies for that. I probably got off on the wrong foot at the beginning with a polite query to Dave K of the Preditors & Editors site as to why we were categorized as a vanity publisher. I accept his logic, but on the same basis most of the big publishers are vanity publishers (in that they own most of the vanity publishing business), which he wouldn’t believe.

And the more I look into this, the more wierd it all gets, in terms of the gulf between how we're described here, the accusations, the background knowledge they're coming from, and what we think we're doing.
David K's own books for instance are available to the trade, but no shop in N America has ever ordered a copy. So what does he know about the costs of getting books to the trade?

I started looking through the website’s recommendations and warnings, beginning with “A”, and publishers that are strongly recommended are obviously vanity publishers – you take a dozen sample titles at random and none have gone into three figures through the trade, but they do offer other services which will be where they make their money.

And others who are described as vanity publishers obviously aren’t (unless you accept his criterion that if a publisher owns a vanity press that it’s a vanity publisher).

I took a sample criticism on this thread, from someone who wouldn’t touch us with a bargepole, because we ask for a subsidy on some books and theirs doesn’t, but then their publisher (Samhain) hasn’t even sent out info to the trade, there’s no information available about their books on Nielsen, not even in N America, let alone worldwide. But the publisher is recommended on the Preditors & Editors site.

it's easy not to ask for a subsidy if you don't do much for the book - our costs in making books available worldwide through all distributors and marketing them are of a different order.

Why do it at all....why not just reject those books because they aren’t marketable...
This will probably go down in a storm of derision, but it's because we like the books. I believe most authors, and some publishers, aren’t motivated just by the money. In fiction, it’s probably different, but that’s just around half the market overall (and under 5% of our sales). In non-fiction, it’s often more to do with peer review/jobs (as in academic publishing, entirely, and all of it subsidized in one form or another, if only by high prices which the tax payer pays for via the libraries), or an extension of work (management/business books) or as support to a career (MBS, counselling, psychology, and so on) or, simply, for personal reward (it’s “something I had to do”). I published a book myself, it sold about 1,200 copies, I was really disappointed by that, but it doesn’t mean it’s something I regret doing, on the contrary.

if you truly equate publishing with marketability, then we're just on different planets.

Why not set it up the way it works with other publishers and have an imprint specifically designed for subsidy books...
We’ve thought about it, seriously. (And it’s the publishers of the imprints who decide whether they offer subsidized titles or not, some don’t). But i don’t think, in real life, this equation of intrinsic value with commercial sales is helpful. If you go to Penguin and get shuffled off to AuthorHouse, or to Simon & Schuster and are passed along to Archway, or to Hay House and then Balbao, and so on, you’re not really being published, you’re just paying to make whatever you’ve written available (maybe). There’s no quality controls, and you’re damned forever as having as self-published.

But most worthwhile, good books, are not “commercial”. And are getting less so every year as shop shelf space reduces (about 50% over the last 10 years, and another 50% probably over the next 10) and the number of new titles increases by another couple of hundred thousand a year.

So I think there has to be an alternative, for good authors who aren't necessarily going to meet the 10/20,000+ minimum hurdles of the big publishers to stay in print, where everyone involved is honest about what it’s likely to sell, what the costs are, who can afford what.

In our case, we have a tiny central overhead, we don’t pocket money (we made about £30,000 net last year, lost that much the year before), our hourly rates are low, but it’s “author to author” as far as the work goes, rather than “author to corporation”. Our aim is to keep the "publisher cost" part of it as low as we can. So we don't seek the bigger authors and the brand names, and we don't pay advances, and we encourage authors to go elsewhere if that's what they want. but we do work hard at selling the authors we have, physical and online, and invest a six figure sum back into the business each year to improve communication and marketing and networking, which is why they keep coming back to us and recommending more to come. (We don't advertize, and we don't solicit by email, IO haven't approached a potential new author in the last 8 years, it's all by recommendation).

I'm not asking anyone on this site to publish with us. Please stay away. I just felt I owed it to our authors to try and change some perceptions, and they're going to find (do find) some of these kind of comments offensive ("liars", "shower of bastards" etc..), because you're talking about them. Our publishers (and editors, marketing/PR people) are authors. They're not shareholders. And it's not that they don't have experience - they have stacks more than the average whizz-kid in their 30s that you'll find in the big houses. And a much better appreciation of the industry than many of the comments here might suggest that the contributors have.

I'm going to have to edge out from here on. Sorry, but it's taking too much time. I hope, at best, you'll just ignore us.
john
 

LindaJeanne

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Depends on what your legal definition of a publisher is. The preditors &editors applies this logic to companies like Harlequin that have a vanity press division, unaware that most of the major publishers do.

This isn't an oversight on P&E's part. They are fully aware of the other vanity arms.

Most big publishers with a vanity arm keep them completely separate. An author knows whether they are submitting to the trade publishing arm (where they will either be accepted or rejected, not asked for a subsidy) or the subsidy arm (where they know they will be published on a subsidy basis.)

Harlequin blurred this line: authors submitting books to the trade publishing arm were being offered subsidy contracts instead. This was seen as a HUGE conflict of interest.

If you go to Penguin and get shuffled off to AuthorHouse, or to Simon & Schuster and are passed along to Archway, or to Hay House and then Balbao, and so on, you’re not really being published, you’re just paying to make whatever you’ve written available (maybe). There’s no quality controls, and you’re damned forever as having as self-published.
But if you submit to Penguin, you WON'T be offered an AuthorHouse contract instead.
If you submit to S&S, you WON'T be offered an Archway contract instead.

Because the non-vanity arm never shuffles people off to the vanity arm, the non-vanity arems are not listed as vanity presses on P&E.

Edited to Add: you've mentioned several times "recommended" presses on P&E that are "obviously vanity presses". Could you give a couple of the most egregious examples, please? This would help keep us on the same page regarding your observations.
 
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john hunt:
In theory, yes. It used to be standard publishing practice (until the book went out of print), and in traditional publishing still is. It hasn’t been much of an issue, across 1500 or so authors in ten years, I think it’s cropped up 3 times;

It's great that this isn't an issue for you guys. It would go a long way to addressing concerns about this if you added some drafting into the contract to make clear the procedure by which authors can get that copyright back (i.e. that you will return all rights without charge within [45] days following receipt of written notice from an author requesting the return of the same).

john hunt:
If a publisher offers even one subsidy contract the entire press is a vanity press.
Depends on what your legal definition of a publisher is. The preditors &editors applies this logic to companies like Harlequin that have a vanity press division, unaware that most of the major publishers do.

I'll echo what Linda said here and also point out that Harlequin got an awful lot of bad publicity for doing what it did.

john hunt:
if you truly equate publishing with marketability, then we're just on different planets.

The problem is that if authors take you up on your subsidy model, they are already put into the red with (with respect) little chance of ever making that bad. If all an author wants is a physical bound book in their hand to give to relatives then there are cheaper methods out there than a subsidy model. Part of the concern with running a royalty-model next to subsidy publishing is that people get their hopes up on one and then don't shop around with the subsidy model (or worse, stop querying altogether). That's not a good deal for authors.

john hunt:
If you go to Penguin and get shuffled off to AuthorHouse, or to Simon & Schuster and are passed along to Archway, or to Hay House and then Balbao, and so on, you’re not really being published, you’re just paying to make whatever you’ve written available (maybe). There’s no quality controls, and you’re damned forever as having as self-published.

But the big publishers don't do that. You, however, do.

I'm sorry that you've decided to back out, but I do hope you take on board the points made here.

MM
 

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Once you sign with them you’re stuck with them
In theory, yes. It used to be standard publishing practice (until the book went out of print), and in traditional publishing still is. It hasn’t been much of an issue, across 1500 or so authors in ten years, I think it’s cropped up 3 times;

I've worked in publishing for coming up to thirty years and in all that time it's been standard for the publishers I've worked for to include reversion clauses in their contracts, and to detail at what point the books they publish will go out of print.

You, however, stated upstream that you do not put books out of print: so there is no clear mechanism in place under which the rights to the books you publish would ever revert to their authors.

You might agree to revert those rights when asked but without such clauses in your contracts, you're under no obligation to do so, which isn't good for writers who sign with you.

It's not that we've been setting out to cheat authors, just that the contract has been that way for 10 years, it was standard at the time, and it's never been a significant enough issue to push to the top of the agenda.

For what it's worth, I don't think you're setting out to cheat authors. But good intentions don't always end in good results, I'm afraid.

If anyone requests you for permission to use an excerpt from the book, or a quotation, there is no need to check with us, just say "yes, the publisher agrees". We do not get into correspondence and form-filling on this. If they want to pay up to £100/$100, which is rare enough, just agree and take the money, whatever the contract says, the paperwork involved in processing it from our side and then splitting it with you etc.. is not really worth it.
You need to put that into your contract. It would make things much clearer for all concerned.

Selling marketing services and anything beyond copy editing has to be bought.
that's overstating it. We put PR and marketing into every title, along with sales/distribution. We allocate a publicist to each title, and they put more work in every time it sells 500 copies.

Do you provide developmental edits on the books you publish, or do your authors have to pay for this? Do you provide proof reading?

If a publisher offers even one subsidy contract the entire press is a vanity press.
Depends on what your legal definition of a publisher is. The preditors &editors applies this logic to companies like Harlequin that have a vanity press division, unaware that most of the major publishers do.

Victoria already pointed out that you're wrong when you claim that most of the major publishers run a vanity division.

Shouldn’t the author have a person they can contact?
The author contacts an author forum.

You expect your authors to read and perhaps answer each other's questions about your publishing processes? That sounds like a recipe for trouble to me.

If you could be clearer, and more accurate in your statements and your logic, this might not so time-consuming for you. And it would certainly be fairer to writers who work with you, and who might work with you in the future
Will try. I don’t think we have the kind of problem with writers we work with in the kind of way this site suggests, maybe because they follow a step by step process, where it’s spelt out more easily (we have several dozen notification emails that go out automatically at different stages of the contract/editorial/production/marketing process, that refer to relevant bits of it). We get plenty of comments along the lines of how quick and easy the publishing process has been (usually readers reports and a contract offer within a week or so of a proposal, and finished text and cover
files within two months of finished manuscript).

That's all very nice: but the author's guide on your website is hugely misleading about the workings of several aspects of the publishing process and it misrepresents how agents work. If writers trust you and follow your guidelines they're not going to make the best decisions for themselves or their work, no matter how good your processes are or how efficiently you stream your work through them.

Perhaps we should just take that whole damn user manual off the website – we were just trying to be open about it from the word go. It certainly needs rewriting for clarity, it’s kind of grown like topsy over the years, but then it covers a lot of ground, and we aim to have all arrangements "open" rather than coming to different private agreements with different authors.

I think you need to rewrite it. Take out the misleading stuff. Make it clearer and more concise. Then it'll be a useful document.

You’re seriously underestimating your audience here, John
Maybe, apologies for that. I probably got off on the wrong foot at the beginning with a polite query to Dave K of the Preditors & Editors site as to why we were categorized as a vanity publisher.

This isn't Preditors and Editors, though, so I don't know why you took your frustrations with that site out on us.

And the more I look into this, the more wierd it all gets, in terms of the gulf between how we're described here, the accusations, the background knowledge they're coming from, and what we think we're doing.

Like I said before, there's often a gap between good intentions and what actually happens.

In my view if you cut the misleading stuff out of your website and stop charging writers for publication, you'll be closer to realising your good intentions.

David K's own books for instance are available to the trade, but no shop in N America has ever ordered a copy. So what does he know about the costs of getting books to the trade?

This thread is about John Hunt Publishing. Dave's sales have nothing to do with it, and it seems somewhat snide of you to mention them like this.

I also fail to understand how you can be confident that no shop in North America has ever ordered any copies of Dave's books.

I started looking through the website’s recommendations and warnings, beginning with “A”, and publishers that are strongly recommended are obviously vanity publishers – you take a dozen sample titles at random and none have gone into three figures through the trade, but they do offer other services which will be where they make their money.

AbsoluteWrite doesn't recommend any publishers, so I'm not sure what you're referring to here. Could you clarify, please?

I took a sample criticism on this thread, from someone who wouldn’t touch us with a bargepole, because we ask for a subsidy on some books and theirs doesn’t, but then their publisher (Samhain) hasn’t even sent out info to the trade, there’s no information available about their books on Nielsen, not even in N America, let alone worldwide. But the publisher is recommended on the Preditors & Editors site.

It's cheap to try to distract attention from your publishing house by criticising others.

And it appears to me that you don't understand the limitations of Nielsen, or the workings of e-publishers.

it's easy not to ask for a subsidy if you don't do much for the book - our costs in making books available worldwide through all distributors and marketing them are of a different order.

It's also easy not to ask for a subsidy if you do a lot for the books you publish. Because then they find their readers and sell in good quantity.

But most worthwhile, good books, are not “commercial”.

Nonsense.

And are getting less so every year as shop shelf space reduces (about 50% over the last 10 years, and another 50% probably over the next 10) and the number of new titles increases by another couple of hundred thousand a year.

As the numbers of physical bookshops have decreased, online retailers have stepped into the gap. Last I looked, book sales weren't falling overall.

So I think there has to be an alternative, for good authors who aren't necessarily going to meet the 10/20,000+ minimum hurdles of the big publishers to stay in print, where everyone involved is honest about what it’s likely to sell, what the costs are, who can afford what.

There are all sorts of alternatives. Publishing with smaller presses is one; self publishing is another. Your subsidy publishing is providing a service which really isn't required.

we made about £30,000 net last year, lost that much the year before [...] and invest a six figure sum back into the business each year to improve communication and marketing and networking

If you made about £30k last year and lost the same amount the year before, where did you find that six figure sum to invest back into the business?

I'm not asking anyone on this site to publish with us. Please stay away. I just felt I owed it to our authors to try and change some perceptions, and they're going to find (do find) some of these kind of comments offensive ("liars", "shower of bastards" etc..), because you're talking about them.

I've just searched this thread for "liars" and "shower of bastards" and the only place they appear is in your comment. You owe us an apology for that.

Our publishers (and editors, marketing/PR people) are authors. They're not shareholders. And it's not that they don't have experience - they have stacks more than the average whizz-kid in their 30s that you'll find in the big houses. And a much better appreciation of the industry than many of the comments here might suggest that the contributors have.

Being a writer doesn't provide the experience required to be a good publisher, editor or marketing person. And while some of AW's members don't have publishing experience a great many of us do, and will correct any misconceptions that we see, no matter who they come from.

John, you've contradicted yourself several times here, you've made claims about publishing which aren't true, and you've unfairly accused us of calling you names. Your posts are rambling and confusing, your contract is not good for writers, and you offer vanity publishing.

None of this makes John Hunt Publishing, or any of its many imprints, a good choice for writers, no matter how good your intentions are.
 

victoriastrauss

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Once you sign with them you’re stuck with them In theory, yes. It used to be standard publishing practice (until the book went out of print), and in traditional publishing still is.
No. Two observations here.

First:

Once upon a time, when print was the only form in which books were available, "out of print" had an easy, literal definition: a book went out of print when it ceased to be physically available for sale. Because publishers had to pay money to warehouse books, it wasn't in their interest to keep low-selling books sitting around indefinitely. There were thus economic incentives driving the out-of-print declaration, and it was likely that a book would go out of print within a few years, allowing the author to revert rights.

Also, back then, primary rights weren't easy to re-sell and had little value for most authors. So reverting rights wasn't terribly pressing--not the way things are today, when authors can do all kinds of things with previously-published books.

All in all, therefore, a life-of-copyright contract that left the out-of-print declaration entirely to the publisher's discretion was not really a problem. Could it be abused? Sure. But for most authors in most cases, what would now be considered overly vague reversion language was sufficient.

Second:

Times have changed. We have ebooks. We have self-publishing options. We have digitally-based small presses. Backlist has always been the bread-and-butter for publishers--but suddenly it's valuable for authors. Authors need to be able to revert their rights when their books stop selling, so they can do something else with them.

At the same time, the rise of digital gives publishers a powerful incentive never to return those rights. It costs very little to keep an ebook in circulation, and this, together with POD, allows publishers to leverage the long tail, even for books that sell just a few copies a year.

Authors, therefore, need more precise reversion clauses, ensuring that they can demand their rights back if sales fall below a stated minimum. These days, agents routinely insert such language into reversion clauses, if those clauses don't have the language already. Authors who are negotiating their own contracts can often do the same.

In traditional publishing, therefore, it's increasingly the norm for reversion clauses not to be vague, not to leave the out-of-print decision to the publisher's discretion, and to set precise parameters enabling authors to regain the rights to low-selling books.

That's why it is always a red flag to find a vague reversion clause in a publisher's contract, or a contract in which the publisher doesn't even allow for reversion unless they choose.

- Victoria
 

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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
 

LindaJeanne

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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 don't think anyone here has suggested that you are -- no one (here) has indicated a belief that you have anything but the best of intentions. But we've seen so many ways that even the best intentions can go wrong for authors, hence our concerns.
 

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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 don't think anyone here has suggested that you are -- no one (here) has indicated a belief that you have anything but the best of intentions. But we've seen so many ways that even the best intentions can go wrong for authors, hence our concerns.

I've suggested both of those things.

Here's why: A press that offers subsidy contracts right beside non-subsidy contracts is a vanity press. We've seen tons of presses that make that kind of offer, and usually they've offered something like one non-subsidy contract (so they can't be accused of false advertising) while all the rest are subsidy. These presses make their money from their own authors, not readers. Another name for "subsidy press" is "vanity press."

A press that releases unedited books doesn't care about quality. Period. End of sentence. This press states that if the author doesn't pay for editing it doesn't happen. Unless they're making all authors pay for editing (which throws them right back into vanity territory), they don't care about quality.

Perhaps this isn't what they do and it isn't what they mean. But until they clear up those two points they fail the walks-like-a-duck talks-like-duck test.
 

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ps;in the first paragraph, I missed out in copying the bit at the end-
"...editions do not constitute as being in print unless by
agreement with the Author."

but , sure, recognize that we need a minimum sales level to keep rights, will do that.

sorry if I've taken the wrong tone, I only have a few minutes a day on this, and get mixed up with different sites....
john
 

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the James D Macdonald post;

this is just getting really tedious. I've said before, the proportion of our revenues from author subsidy is somewhere around 3%. One out of four titles last year that we published had a subsidy element. We get several readers reports on every proposal (after it's gone through the first rejection hurdle). Every title, whether subsidized or not, is edited and proof read, and marketed.

This press states that if the author doesn't pay for editing it doesn't happen.

I just don't know where this comes from.

the % of revenues that we spend on different elements (editing, sales, overheads etc) is in an post i did earlier today, further up the page.

all the best with your publishing in the future.

john
 

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all the best with your publishing in the future.

And all the best with yours.

If subsidy plays so small a part in your business, why not drop it and remove all doubt?

This press states that if the author doesn't pay for editing it doesn't happen.

I just don't know where this comes from.
That comes from here: http://www.zero-books.net/index.php?id=66&i=9&a=125&p=6

Editorial services
A. Light edit; all manuscripts that we accept for publication are copy edited. This is making the style internally consistent, checking grammar and spelling. There is no charge for this on any book.
The following are optional. The contract offer is not subject to any of these arrangements being agreed.
B. Heavy edit; enforce style manual, check citation accuracy, query writing, rewrite for sense, make appropriate for market, grammar, spelling, file clean-up £8/$14 per 1000 words.

C. Heavy Edit (as above) with additonal writing advice £12/$21 per 1000 words
D. Structural/developmental edit; £30/$50 per 1000 words.
E. Rewriting/ghost writing – on request, starting from £60/$100 per 1000 words.
F. Indexing; £6/$10 per 1000 words.
G. Readers reports; all submitted proposals get Readers Reports and a yes/no decision. For a 300-500 word evaluation prior to submitting a proposal, £50/$80. For a longer evaluation of the manuscript, with suggestions for improvement, 3000-5000 words, £200/$320.
H. One-to-one Mentoring on manuscript and writing skills;
option a; 4 hours per month via email over 3 months; £300/$500, payable in advance.
option b; 4 hours per month via email over 3 months, plus 1 hour tutorial via skype messaging or phone; £450/$700, payable in advance.
Both extendable.
We pitch our costs at under half the going commercial rate; see for instance the Editorial Freelancers Association price list at http://www.the-efa.org/res/rates.php
That is your "User Manual," is it not?
 

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I've seen several things here that still seem contradictory to me. For instance, John, you stated on your site that books don't go out of print, and then you said the same here, your reasoning being that you need the few sales pulled in over decades in order to support the company. Basically, you were aiming for the long tail, as Victoria put it. The way you said it implied that this isn't something you do, but now you say that your books do go out of print.

I'm not saying that's a direct contradiction, just that to me it seems you're giving two different bits of information. What I would like to know is what percentage of your books are taken out of print, especially considering you have said earlier on that you have books that only sell a few dozen copies. I also think that if you are allowing books to go out of print, it might be beneficial to change the all-inclusive sort of language used before that basically said "Our books don't go out of print." That's a pretty absolute statement.

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.

Again, as you said before that you choose subsidy publishing for books you don't consider commercial, and as you've stated commercial as "expected to sell over 1000 copies," there is absolutely no reason an author should ever go to you for subsidy publishing as that author will not get their money back. You're talking thousands of dollars here that authors will never see again.

And honestly, I have a hard time seeing altruism in a system devised to take all money from authors while setting them up with a false hope that their book might make them money. When you say "you will get paid after 1000 copies have sold," and then you admit that you don't expect them to sell that many, you are setting the bar high enough that authors conceivably can't make money. If this as truly altruistic, why not get rid of the bar entirely? Why not allow authors to make royalties on anything they sell? You've already taken money from them. Why not allow them to make as much of it back as they can by at least giving them royalties on whatever they do sell?

I've said before, the proportion of our revenues from author subsidy is somewhere around 3%. One out of four titles last year that we published had a subsidy element.

Then why not eliminate that element? Here's what doesn't quite make sense to me. 25% of your authors have some sort of subsidy, meaning they have paid you at minimum $1200 to be published. If those books are selling enough copies to be making you plenty of money to the point that the money from the authors is only 3%, why not simply not take the money in the first place?

I would like to know something: Are you counting the money you get by not paying authors royalties for the first 1000 in your 3%?
 

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this is just getting really tedious.

That's because no matter how badly you don't want to think of yourself as a subsidy press, and no matter how strongly you have convinced yourself that you are not one, it does not change the objective fact that some of the authors who submit to you are offered a subsidy contract instead of a regular commercial contract.
 

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I would like to know something: Are you counting the money you get by not paying authors royalties for the first 1000 in your 3%?
I would also be interested in knowing the answer to this.
 

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This press states that if the author doesn't pay for editing it doesn't happen.

I don't know where this comes from....


That comes from here:
A. Light edit; all manuscripts that we accept for publication are copy edited. This is making the style internally consistent, checking grammar and spelling. There is no charge for this on any book.
The following are optional.


OK,. Yes, there are optional things, we wouldn't ghost write a book at our expense - wouldn't get through the selection process anyway, wouldn't get through if it needed heavy editing. but we copy edit and proof read every title (and do reader reports, AI sheets, blurb, marketing, etc), at no expense to the author.

Could make that clearer just by deleting all that stuff. We've very occasionally, like one out of a hundred proposals, said "this could work if it has a one-to-one edit, which we can't give it our cost, because it's still not likely to sell in huge numbers", but it's so rare, will get rid of that section.

but now you say that your books do go out of print.
sorry, where did i say that? We don't put books out of print (and we don't use POD).

You've already taken money from them. Why not allow them to make as much of it back as they can by at least giving them royalties on whatever they do sell?
I don't think we raise their hopes falsely, we give estimates of sales in the readers reports. But yes, that's a fair point. Been aware of it. We're going to start royalties on the print edition from the first sale.

Then why not eliminate that element? Here's what doesn't quite make sense to me. 25% of your authors have some sort of subsidy, meaning they have paid you at minimum $1200 to be published. If those books are selling enough copies to be making you plenty of money to the point that the money from the authors is only 3%, why not simply not take the money in the first place?

I would like to know something: Are you counting the money you get by not paying authors royalties for the first 1000 in your 3%?
To reply to these points collectively;
No. 3% is the direct element of author subsidy in the figures,those %s are figures from the accounts, not "we've saved ourselves y because we didn't pay x". And we don't have the time/staff/inclination to be creative with accounting.

Actually, the average for titles with a subsidy is more like $800 (50,000 words at x $16 per 1000 words).

it was 25% last year; overall, across the list, it's more like 5%, or less (we only introduced author subsidies the year before last).

If those books are selling enough copies to be making you plenty of money
they don't - it goes some way to defraying direct costs of editing/design and chipping into sales/marketing/info costs.

why not simply not take the money in the first place?
Fair point. Maybe we should scrap the whole subsidy side of things. Some imprints don't use it. We'ld publish fewer titles. We wouldn't publish some that are good books, worth publishing, but are not likely to reach 1000 copies. (And i see a lot of sales figures, across the industry, and there are a lot of very worthwhile books that don't make 1000 copies).

it would make life easier. "Yes we'll publish" or "no we won't". I just happen to think that the divide between traditional publishing -"publisher does everything/all the work and takes all the risk" and self-publishing -"author does everything by him/herself" is an unnecessary, artificial one, that isn't going to stand the test of time. it's recent - the last few years, as far as self-publishing goes, and there are going to be (are already) a lot of new models around.

We're plumping for one that offers proper publishing all along the line for authors who aren't necessarily going to sell in thousands (though we can handle those perfectly well, and do).

Part of that, is down to leverage, admittedly - the more authors we have, the more of a community we can develop - see http://www.moon-books.net/ for instance for pagan books. But mostly, it's just down to whether the readers and publisher like the book, and how many they think it could sell, and how far we can chance our arm.
john
 

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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?
Either a sales minimum (for instance, fewer than 100 copies sold over 12 consecutive months) or a royalty minimum (for instance, less than $50 in royalties due in each of two consecutive royalty periods).
What about remaining stock, which could be split around USA, UK, Australia etc?
Do you actually do print runs? If so, you can offer remaining stock to authors at manufacturing cost, and sell whatever is left over to remainders dealers.
What about rights to reuse the PDF, cover, digital files?
Publishers typically keep the rights to cover art, interior artwork and design, and the book's interior formatting. All other rights are returned to the author.

Some publishers try to claim that they have copyright on any editing they did (i.e., if the author re-publishes, s/he can only use the original draft). But there's case law to the contrary, so this claim probably would not stand up in court.

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.
ALL of these lowball estimates include self-published titles. You mention a million new titles issued per year; that's roughly accurate, but only around 250,000 of those are trade published. Or else the figures represent one year's sales, rather than sales over the whole lifetime of a book.

If you factor out the self-pubbed titles so that you're looking only at trade published books, and consider cumulative sales rather than sales in just the first year of release, the numbers look very different. These kinds of numbers are put about as propaganda by people who are eager to discredit trade publishing.

Are there niche-subject and literary fiction and academic press books that sell in tiny numbers? Sure. And for any individual writer, there's no such thing as an "average" sale--only the sales the writer actually makes. But comparing apples to apples, without sneaking any oranges in there, that "500 average" figure for trade-published books is bunkum.

- Victoria
 

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The usual place that legitimate publishers get the subsidies for worthy books that they expect will sell in low numbers is from the profit they make on worthy books that have already sold in high numbers.

Copyediting, while necessary, is not the same as editing.
 

john hunt

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either a sales minimum
those figures are what i was thinking of, will put it in hand.

do you actually do print runs
yes, we don't do POD.
So it's a bit more complicated than offering stock to authors, because it's liable to be spread around the world in different warehouses, and not worth the freight cost of shipping it around. But we'll figure something out.

typically keep...
Yes, I know, but if the authors want to re-issue or sell on, there's no point in reinventing the wheel - we'll figure something out for that.

trade-published books
Don't mean to knock it - all our titles are available to the trade around the world. And we actually visit main accounts. Perhaps i should take that paragraph out, and stick to the actual trade figures for individual titles that are given there.

from the profit they make on worthy books that have already sold in high numbers
sure.
We could stop publishing any new titles, or keep it down to half a dozen a year, and be better off, financially. But in principle, I don't feel it's right for good selling titles to be subsidizing poor selling titles. I think the author of a good selling title should get the maximum, and we're working to develop that, which is why we started off with 50% on ebooks.

Copy editing is not the same as editing
Um, yes, I know that. it's down to the publisher. Sometimes I edit a book myself, takes a couple of weeks solid, sometimes publishers do, but it's not something we can guarantee on every title.
john
 

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But in principle, I don't feel it's right for good selling titles to be subsidizing poor selling titles. I think the author of a good selling title should get the maximum, and we're working to develop that, which is why we started off with 50% on ebooks.

The money to subsidize the less-commercial books doesn't come from the royalties of the higher-selling books. The author still gets every contracted-for penny.

The subsidy comes from the publisher's profits.

Here's how I'm reading this last exchange:

Publisher: I love this book! It's worthy!

Me: Do you love it enough to spend your own money on it?

Publisher: No.

Small presses can and do find ways to publish books of which they only expect to sell 500 copies and still make a profit. I suggest you find a way to emulate them that does not include the authors digging out their checkbooks.
 

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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.

I can't tell you how P&E designate publishers to get a Highly Recommended stamp from them, but the Not Recommended process is laid out on the website.

The reason Adventure Books of Seattle is not marked down as a vanity press is because they don't charge for publishing.

That bit you've quoted there is (according to the website) from the Editing Service run by the bloke who owns ABOS - a completely separate thing from the publishing. It can be seen as a conflict of interest to advertise your editing service on your publishing website, but I can think of plenty of companies who do.


I also think you need to stop quoting sales figures from 5 years ago for a country your sales are not limited to.
 

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the subsidy comes from the publishers profits
Sure, I understand that.

But the profits come from the sales of the stronger-selling titles. So, in effect, the stronger titles are subsidizing the weaker ones.

The stronger the author "brand name", the higher % royalties they want, so the less the publisher can invest in new authors - fewer of them.

Just seems to me there must be an alternative (and yes, I know there's self-publishing etc). Where strong selling authors get what's due to them, without having to subsidize weaker/newer ones, where a publishing business is run, basically, on the idea that the author "owns" all the income, and so rather than 90/10 in favor of the publisher, it's 90/10 in favor of the author.

Which is why our total "publisher" cost, including all salaries, overheads, rent, accounts, bank interest, postage, and so on....is kept to 10% or under. Everything else - whether payments to editors, designers, printers, royalties, whatever...goes into the books.

How best spread that around/finance it/how many books to publish/how best to market them/which formats etc...that's up for discussion. But we need 10% to operate on.

Your "reading of this last exchange"
Yes, you're right. If we just published every book we "liked", which we thought was "worthy", we'ld be broke by Christmas.

I know it's possible "to sell 500 copies and still make a small profit", and we could do that. I don't think it's possible though if you're going to do the editing/proofing/cover, and make them available physically in several different warehouses worldwide, and try and sell them to the trade, and promote them.

You then have to make some choices, like "this will be ebook only"; or, "we'll do a print edition as well, and we'll promote it through networking, and we'll make it available POD, but we won't try and sell it to the trade".

As things stand at the moment, for an average book that sells 500 copies, we'll have printed 1000-1500. Free copies to the author, to distributors, to reviewers, spare stock, and, most of all, returns from the shops (which have to be pulped -which also costs- because it costs more to sort them and get them back onto warehouse shelves than to print more when needed).

from the Editing Service run by the bloke who owns ABOS - a completely separate thing from the publishing
I didn't realize that from looking at their website. I just clicked on one of their tabs, got that information, there was nothing about it being completely separate from the publishing.

Got to stress - every title we publish has a dozen people allocated to it, publisher, editor, readers, copy editor, proof reader, PR person, and others in sales/marketing. On the editorial side, we copy edit and proof read every title. Looks to me from the ABOS site as if to get that kind of service you had to buy it. Maybe I misread it.

the distinctions between how they present this info and how we do seem like hairsplitting...we're more upfront about it, sure.

"stop quoting sales figures from 5 years ago"
At the time, I thought those figures (on sales of the Man Booker shortlist etc) were a useful thing to put into the user manual, to bring a level of reality to authors' expectations. We're always optimistic, but we try to manage expectations. Sure, we should probably update them with more recent figures - they will be worse, as far as average trade sales go (bricks and mortar), and there are pointers to that in paragraphs like

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 Handbook by 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.


So yes, it needs updating, question of time/effort/where to spend it...

john
 

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Sure, we should probably update them with more recent figures - they will be worse, as far as average trade sales go (bricks and mortar), and there are pointers to that in paragraphs like:

Heres an update on total trade sales in the UK for the first nine months of 2009 for the top 20 environmental/green books, ...
Again, that's very selective: one sub-genre of books, in one country, over a nine-month period, four years ago. No indication of the degree to which this applies across sub-genres and across the English-speaking world.


Perhaps if you made clearer what the benefit is to the author to publish to pay an $800+ subsidy to publish with you? If their goal is to get their book read by lots of people, then offering a subsidy contract indicates you don't believe you are able to do that for them. If their goal is to have a copy of their book in their hand, and to be able to give to friends and relatives -- there are more cost effective means.

Also, since readers have no way of knowing which books were subsidy and which were not, you're tarring all your authors with the subsidy brush. Having printed at one of your imprints doesn't necessarily mean they didn't pay to publish their book, even if they didn't.
 

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Strong selling authors do get what's due to them because they make royalties on every sale, the same as the publisher. In fact, on a sliding scale. They're making money with every book sold and the only way they don't get what's due is if they aren't paid royalties.

It's understood as an author that you're getting a percentage, and part of the percentage goes to the company to cover expenses and the work that everyone else put in. After awhile it's all just gravy to both parties.

I see a bigger problem with paying big selling authors more and low-selling authors not at all. When a low selling author has to pay and then has no guarantee of making up the costs, that actually hurts them. They are putting work out there that they spent a lot of time and effort on and getting nothing in return. The only way they get anything is if they somehow manage to sell so many copies that they start making royalties (in this model) and that they sell enough that they recoup the costs they spent as well.

That's an awful lot of work to be doing for negative income. Authors who sell well have already received a profit. They aren't hurting as long as royalty rates are fair and standard (on gross helps with this).
 

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from the Editing Service run by the bloke who owns ABOS - a completely separate thing from the publishing
I didn't realize that from looking at their website. I just clicked on one of their tabs, got that information, there was nothing about it being completely separate from the publishing.

Got to stress - every title we publish has a dozen people allocated to it, publisher, editor, readers, copy editor, proof reader, PR person, and others in sales/marketing. On the editorial side, we copy edit and proof read every title. Looks to me from the ABOS site as if to get that kind of service you had to buy it. Maybe I misread it.

You did. Stop trying to suggest a publisher does something they don't unless you are prepared to spend more than 8 seconds reading the website. All it does is make you look bad.


Their subs page clearly lays out their terms. Please can you point me at the bit on the ABOS site where it suggests you have to buy the editing The part you quoted is on a page titled "Services". Before you ask what the difference between their full book package service and your vanity publishing is, observe who is in charge of the ISBN.






"stop quoting sales figures from 5 years ago"
At the time, I thought those figures (on sales of the Man Booker shortlist etc) were a useful thing to put into the user manual, to bring a level of reality to authors' expectations. We're always optimistic, but we try to manage expectations. Sure, we should probably update them with more recent figures - they will be worse, as far as average trade sales go (bricks and mortar), and there are pointers to that in paragraphs like

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 Handbook by 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.

It would only be useful to quote the sales stats of the Booker winners if you were selling books to the same market, and I don't think quoting the sales stats from an arbitrary period is useful at all.

This is a spreadsheet from the guardian showing the sales data from 1998 to 2013 for all the Booker winners. One of them hasn't made the 1000 units, but that's the first winner, PH Newby, from 1969. I'd be amazed if they hadn't made 1000 units during the 30 years not covered by the spreadsheet data.