John Hunt Publishing / O Books / Perfect Edge

I give up, John.

You're running a vanity press. You and I both know it.

Go with God.

I understand that everyone here has the best of intentions but please can we remain somewhat...patient?

It's quite possible that there's a misunderstanding on both sides, and that's being completely generous.

I wouldn't touch this vanity press (or any other vanity press) with a 10 meter pole and that's being completely generous.

Fanatic_Dreamer said:

I understand that everyone here has the best of intentions but please can we remain somewhat...patient?

It's quite possible that there's a misunderstanding on both sides, and that's being completely generous.

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I've spent several days giving Mr. Hunt the benefit of the doubt, thinking that maybe he really is trying to do the right thing and not actively trying to be deceptive. The last several answers have changed my mind.

Fanatic_Dreamer said:

I understand that everyone here has the best of intentions but please can we remain somewhat...patient?

It's quite possible that there's a misunderstanding on both sides, and that's being completely generous.

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Question: have you read the entire thread, or just the last couple of pages?

I've read everything, I'm just saying that people can infer what they wish to from the answers he gave.

I'm not on his side, but there's honestly no point in going back and forth and back and forth. He's given his answers, you've guys have pointed out why they're faulty. I'm sure there's more than enough information for people to either:

(A) want to risk it and give him a try
or
(B) run in the other direction

I already formed my opinion by reading the first two pages. Prolonging the whole thing just makes both sides look incredibly petty.

Fanatic_Dreamer said:

I've read everything, I'm just saying that people can infer what they wish to from the answers he gave.

I'm not on his side, but there's honestly no point in going back and forth and back and forth. He's given his answers, you've guys have pointed out why they're faulty. I'm sure there's more than enough information for people to either:

(A) want to risk it and give him a try
or
(B) run in the other direction

I already formed my opinion by reading the first two pages. Prolonging the whole thing just makes both sides look incredibly petty.

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The conversation hasn't been artificially prolonged, though, and I think it's been useful. For example, in the last few pages we've seen that Mr Hunt's figures are not reliable, and that he contradicts himself in order to make points.

I think it's helpful for us to see these things. If the conversation had stopped earlier, we'd not have known this.

However, I understand that you're uncomfortable with this, and that's absolutely fine. Not everyone has the same level of tolerance for difficult discussions. You're welcome to use the "report post" button whenever you consider conversations out-of-line: it's the exclamation mark inside the red triangle. The moderators will get your report and do all they can to sort things out, but if you don't report problematic posts we might not be aware of them.

Got to laugh at that one. I’ve put six figure sums into the business, I’m not rich, it meant mortgaging the house, and I earned last year £36000 for something like an 80 hr week, and I was the highest paid person around here. So, OK, maybe that’s profiteering.

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I'm not going to go into how much you earn and this one is an observation - if you prefer not to discuss it any further I'm sure nobody will think anything of it.

You've mentioned your paycheck twice and both times it sounds as though your income is based on the profits the company makes. That's not a good thing: you should get a wage for the job you are doing, profit happens after that. If the business does not earn enough for you to have a wage, you have a problem.


You may also be interested in looking up And Other Stories. They are a not for profit publisher who have a unusual business model - you buy a subscription to their books and they also get Arts Council funding. Their mission is to publish books which are worth publishing. They've done pretty well so far - they were the original publishers of Deborah Levy's Swimming Home (original print run 300). You may find it interesting since you are keen to publish books of literary merit.

May I ask you something.

Take a hypothetical publishing organization, let’s call it PublishersPlace, or PP. It could be a company, or could be non-profit.

It starts with the assumption that it keeps 10% of the revenues, 90% goes to the authors.

It’s split into a number of genre imprints.

Authors put up sample work, proposals, wip, manuscripts, whatever, onto the website, either for comment by any other authors, or on a more private page for readers reports. Anyone, in theory, can apply to be a reader (or editor, or proof reader), but the value of the reports is ranked by the authors, and they can choose up to three readers, who are paid by PP.

The publisher, or moderator, of that imprint/genre (paid by PP), decides whether the manuscript is of sufficient quality to publish, with copy editing, (or if it could be with developmental editing), or not, and if it is, puts in a rough sales estimate for the first 12 months, depending on later routes chosen (ebook only, or print+ marketing etc). If it is good enough quality, the author is invited to choose an editor (prices could vary, depending on the editor), and pays them by Pay Pal through the website.

Then the author has a number of routes, which can be picked up or dropped at any time. In every case, they retain all rights to the manuscript. Monthly sales are available for the author to see, and payment is made by PP monthly on all sales.

Ebook only; author either produces the ebook themselves, or there’s a conversion cost. It’s made available everywhere, and 90% of the revenues go to the author.

Print; if a print edition is wanted, the author pays for the design and proof reading (choosing them from other author comments), through the website and then orders the copies they want through the website, to go to whichever warehouse/country, and pays by Paypal through the website, at print cost. 90% of the revenues go to the author, less 15% or so for warehouse and handling.

Marketing; PP has, say, 200,000+ FB followers etc around the imprints for social networking, and a database of 100,000 media and retail contacts, blog sites, magazines etc available to the author (who can also add and comment on each one), organized and searchable by subject, locality, and degree of importance (the number of activities that have been done with that contact).

The author can do the marketing themselves, or they can pick to do one area for themselves (like social networking) and ask PP to sell to the trade, in whichever or all countries, for a deduction of a further 10% from revenues (which would bring their “royalty” share to 65%), with a minimum set (say $1000). There are options for further marketing/PR campaigns, and for selling sub rights.

Options can be changed; eg – have sales handled by PP for a minimum period, say 12 months, at the cost of 10%, but then dropped.

The process itself is all done by clicking on buttons/boxes. One to two months from start to finish, depending on route chosen. There are forums for contact and for author-to-author.

Would PP be a vanity publisher? I don’t think so, because of the quality controls. A subsidy publisher?

Lack of quality control doesn't automatically make a vanity publisher. The fact that the author pays money makes it a vanity publisher. In this case, authors are paying for editing before the book is published, so yes, it would be a vanity/subsidy publisher.

And it would also still be a bad idea for the author because an author with a truly publishable book will often be able to find a publisher for it, who would then provide all the things a normal publisher would for free (including editing) and then pay them up front as well.

What you describes sounds like a mix between a publisher and a display site, and I honestly don't think I'd see any benefit to it at all. You'd have a hard time finding readers willing to do all the up front reading (sorting the slush pile isn't fun, and not something readers should be asked to do), and having 200,000 people on Facebook sounds like a nice fantasy based on what I've seen of other display sites.

An author is best off going with a publisher who pays them, and pays for everything regarding the book, and has the proper leverage to get their book on shelves of bookstores and has the marketing prowess to attract fans to digital copies as well.

We've seen all kinds of people coming here trying to change a system that they think is broken. The system we have right now isn't that bad. Sure, it could be improved and it has it's faults, but there are alternatives right now for authors. Anything that requires an author to pay anything is automatically a worse choice for the author. And most of the publishers we've had come in with new ideas for how things should work, they don't usually last very long.

A vanity publisher is one which earns money by selling things to the authors it publishes. Like you do, John.

While your hypothetical publisher might be interesting, it has little to do with the conversation here. It's just another of your attempts to prove that you're not a vanity publisher by splitting non-existant hairs.

If you charge writers for publication then you're a vanity publisher, no matter what else you do.

A publisher which paid its authors 90% of its revenue while retaining only 10% for itself wouldn't be able to survive without charging extortionate amounts for the books it sells, or by making money some other way--such as charging those authors for services. Doing so doesn't make such a publisher more ethical, or more open, or more keen to publish books of merit than trade publishers who pay advances and don't charge their authors for publication: it just makes the publisher less dependent upon publishing the best books it can as well as it can, because it knows it's going to earn money from its authors even if the books it publishes don't sell a single copy.

That's not a better way to do things. It's exploiting the authors' desire to be published without offering them anything significant in return.

I had a very long post written, and I've killed it.

I'm not going to quote this line-by-line, but I will say that, as an author, if I'm going to be responsible for any of the options you lay out (except some of the marketing, perhaps) I'm going to publish it myself. Why would I want to do all that work and have it come out under someone else's name as publisher?

If you want to provide a la carte services for authors who self-publish, that's one thing, but to ask authors to pay for any or all of those services is a conflict of interest.

As Katie pointed out, the genesis of that idea looks very much like a display site. And if I get to choose readers, what's to stop me from getting some of my good friends to sign up as readers, then selecting them to vet my manuscript?

Why do you ask authors to format (or pay to have formatted) an ebook (or lay out a print book), then send it to you to publish? That book has YOUR name on it as publisher, and I guarantee you that readers will blame YOU for any problems with layout, production, and editing. You're going to have a tough time convincing readers that you weren't responsible for those problems.

A book publisher is like any other business. If you can't capitalize your startup, maybe you shouldn't be doing it.

Again, if I'm going to have to pay to do any of the above, I'll do it myself because I understand it's a business and I'll take ALL of the risk and the rewards, thank you.

john hunt said:

Would PP be a vanity publisher? I don’t think so, because of the quality controls. A subsidy publisher?

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As kaitie said, lack of quality control doesn't automatically make a vanity publisher. Nor does the existence of quality control make a non-vanity publisher. Almost all vanity publishers exercise some form of control. It may be just a quota system to make sure they don't get backlogged, or a policy of excluding mss. over a certain word count, or an auto-reject of books that don't fit their chosen market segment or that violate their sex and violence guidelines. Some actually do have a something closer to genuine quality control, in order to screen out the really awful stuff--but even if they do, it's nothing like as rigorous as that of a real publisher. You can't afford to be too picky when your primary profit comes from authors' fees.

"Subsidy" is a nicer way of saying "vanity." Otherwise there's no difference (despite what vanities that want you to call them subsidies may claim).

- Victoria

Here's a thing that would make me nervous, were I an author considering this publisher:

Mr. Hunt has been in the publishing business for several decades, including, if I read one of his earlier posts correctly, spending time with a house that was either an imprint or a distributee of one of the Big Six. Which indicates he should understand how that particular side of the industry operates.

On one hand, if he's considering some of the suggestions being made here, that's good for his authors (especially if the changes are actually implemented).

On the other, it's a bit unnerving seeing someone with as much experience as he has sounding almost indistinguishable from other, new-to-publishing posters who come to BR&BC to defend their fledgling companies' practices without a clear idea of how trade/commercial publishing works.

John, let me ask you something. What editing do all of your manuscripts receive (regardless of which tier they're accepted at) that the author does not have to pay for? Please note, I'm asking only about editing, not marketing. A simple yes (meaning, yes, we do this in all our edits whether we are paid to or not) or no (we do not do this or only do it if we are paid to) answer to these will suffice:

Spelling and grammar? Yes/No.
Larger technical issues, like run-on sentences and cliches? Yes/No.
Pointing out inconsistencies in characterisation e.g. character A's actions in scene X make no sense in light of what he's claimed his motivations to be in scene Y? Yes/no.
Pointing out plot holes? Yes/No.
Pointing out repetition in phrasing? Yes/No.
Identifying areas where the narrative could be tightened up, e.g. scenes which are out of place or unnecessary? Yes/No.
Proofing once all of the edits suggested have been done? Yes/No.

Ditto what everyone else has said. It's vanity pure and simple and it's interesting that Mr Hunt's thinking automatically goes to business models based on charging.

I'm at the stage where I'm wondering whether Mr Hunt is just pathologically opposed to the idea of paying advanced. It seems to be the one point that he's unwilling to address, which is a shame because it's actually the one thing that would really go a long way to addressing concerns about the press (well that and dropping the subsidised element).

john hunt:
Then the author has a number of routes, which can be picked up or dropped at any time. In every case, they retain all rights to the manuscript. Monthly sales are available for the author to see, and payment is made by PP monthly on all sales.

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I don't see how the author can retain all rights. For starters, PP needs some kind of right to publish and then there's the fact that by going with PP, the author will lose first publishing rights, which are the most important.

MM

Momento Mori said:

I'm at the stage where I'm wondering whether Mr Hunt is just pathologically opposed to the idea of paying advanced. It seems to be the one point that he's unwilling to address, which is a shame because it's actually the one thing that would really go a long way to addressing concerns about the press (well that and dropping the subsidised element).

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Plenty of small presses don't pay advances, and I can deal with that, as long as I know that royalties are decent, how they're calculated, and that the press will pay up.

Also, if I'm paying a publisher for those services, what incentive do they have to go out and make sure my book gets into the hands of readers? A publisher makes their money off of book sales, not off of author fees.

JulieB:
Plenty of small presses don't pay advances, and I can deal with that, as long as I know that royalties are decent, how they're calculated, and that the press will pay up.

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Yeah, ordinarily I could deal with that too on the same basis, but in this situation Mr Harper keeps complaining about the better selling authors "subsidising" the poor selling ones and the best way of addressing that is to pay an advance - a point that he has consistently failed to address. Even if it's only a nominal advance of a hundred or so, it's at least something for the author.

MM

a few points;

an author with a truly publishable book will often be able to find a publisher for it, who would then provide all the things a normal publisher would for free

Sure, great. I'm not suggesting we suit everyone, and 95% of the titles on our list have had no author subsidies of any kind. It's just something we've started over the last couple of years (not on all imprints) on books which we like, but figure that the sales aren't likely to cover costs.

And then pay them up front as well
And
I’m at the stage where I’m wondering whether Mr Hunt is just pathologically opposed to the idea of paying advances. It seems to be the one point that he’s unwilling to address.

Not pathologically opposed to it, just that we don't do it in practice any more (we used to), and I hadn't meant to omit addressing it, and the reasoning is covered in our User Guide (which is on the internet)

CAN I NEGOTIATE AN ADVANCE?
Sorry, we don’t pay advances (that’s common in academic and specialist publishing, unusual in larger trade houses and mass market publishing – though things are changing).
There are several reasons;
• We work to fast schedules, with usually two to three months between initial proposal and finished files, with printed books available the following month and a publication date of three months later. So it's a modest time-lag between contract and royalties.
• It’s a gamble. Over half of all books don’t recover in royalties the advance paid for them (some sources say it’s more like 90%). We’re in the publishing business, not speculative finance
• We can’t start making exceptions for different authors, undermines co-operative principles, and it would be impossible to figure out an average advance that could be sensibly applied to all books.
If an advance is important to you, there are plenty of other publishers who pay them.

You’ld have a hard time finding readers willing to do all the upfront reading

No, we already have them. Every submission gets looked at, about half get turned down immediately (by the publisher), the others go through to the next stage, then some more get turned down, then some go through to readers reports, we have a couple of dozen readers, allocated to different imprints, our problem is not finding readers, but limiting the numbers.

Having 200,000 people on FB sounds like a nice fantasy

Sure, It was hypothetical. But it’s not impossible… We invest a lot in the systems every month, particularly on marketing. We started on FB with the first imprints last year. The take-up depends on the individual publishers, how OK with FB and stuff they are, some like it, other’s don’t, and prefer to concentrate on shop events etc.

The first one we started with last summer was on Moon Books (paganism; a niche market, not a big bookshop category, it's a sub section of a subsection of the BISAC bookstore category codes), last summer, and that now has 9,000 or so FB friends. There’s regular stuff happening there, book ideas, book giveaways etc, it sells books, brings in new authors.

The next one we started a few months ago was Zero Books (politics, philosophy, culture) that’s heading up to 5000.

So given the rate of progress, and as we develop it across other imprints, I don’t think that kind of figure is totally unrealistic.

The other elements of the idea aren’t fantasy either. True, we only have 35,000 contacts categorized by subject, locality etc at the moment, with all activities listed, which authors can see, and add to, but it’s growing fast. Can’t sort them by priority order yet, but will have that by the summer.

We show authors monthly sales, don’t pay them monthly yet because it’s too time-consuming to do wire transfers across the list every month, but that should be sorted next year, etc.

Has the proper leverage to get their book on shelves on bookstores

I think we do reasonably well in getting into the specialist trade (our chairman Etan Ilfeld, is the owner of the major bookstore in the UK in our main subject market). If you’re talking about national chains like B&N in the US or Waterstones in the UK – it’s more variable. If an author doesn’t already have a track record of sales, it is really, really hard to get books in there, and for new authors (however much marketing you put into it) returns from B&N are often up in the 90% kind of range (and we have to pulp them). The majority of our titles are fairly niche, specialist ones, and don’t fit well in national chains. And with the % of books sold through bookstores now heading down to 50%, it makes sense to look more at different ways.

They don’t usually last very long

Sure. And I understand the bit about “most of the publishers we’ve had come in with new ideas for how things should work, they don’t usually last very long”. We’re very much “work in progress", experimenting, but it pays for itself along the way. We’re just looking for the best way of doing things, as the market changes.

A vanity publisher is one which earns money by selling things to the authors it publishers. Like you do, John.

I’m sure i’ve said this before, it’s about 3% of our revenues. Prior to a couple of years ago, close to zero. Some imprints are higher than that, some don’t ask authors for money.

A publisher which paid its authors 90% of its revenue while retaining only 10% for itself wouldn’t be able to survive without charging extortionate amounts for the books it sells...

But we operate on 10% anyway, apart from the amount we invest into software/systems, which is another 15%. The other 75% goes to printers, editors, designers, distributors, and authors. And our retail prices are competitive.

I’m just not sure that trying to do everything for every book, one-size-fits-all, is a sensible long-term solution. It penalizes many books/authors that have a more specialist/limited market. Why not let the author pick the options, and deduct the relevant % that’s saved from the income. Had one author recently for instance who said he didn’t want a print edition of his book, because he would earn nearly 10 times more per copy with an ebook at the same retail price with a 50% royalty, than 10% on the print book discounted by 50% to the trade.

The idea behind the hypothetical company would be that the author chose the service/format they wanted, pays for it direct where/when they wanted it, and the company would only get its 10% if the book did sell.

What’s to stop me getting some of my good friends to sin up as readers

That's where the selection/quality process comes in.

I guarantee you that readers will blame YOU for any problems

Sure, we get that now anyway, That’s what the 10% retained is there for, to keep the quality.

If you can’t capitalize your start up, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it.

It’s not actually a start up. And we're well enough capitalized. And we don't have bank borrowings, so there's no interest charges in the equation. It's more a question of "this is a good book, but it's market is likely to be in the low hundreds, how can we fund it?". (And if you think there aren't lots of really good books around that only sell in hundreds, or manuscripts that have the potential to do that but aren't likely to do more, then...dunno what to say....other than we're not looking at the same trade figures).

You can’t afford to be too picky when your primary profit comes from authors fees

As before, it’s a very small % of revenues, and that goes to offsetting direct costs, not profit. There are single titles where we earn more on foreign sub rights than all the author fees we get put together.

Spending time with a house that was either an imprint of the big six....without a clear idea of how trade/commercial publishing works...

Fair enough. I worked for a number of years as the MD of the UK subsidiary of Zondervan, a US publisher, owned by Harper Collins, but most of my working life has been spent dealing with overseas publishers, so, yes, my knowledge of the N American/UK book trade is limited. when I started, it was relatively easy - bookshops were the only outlets, you had a team of sales representatives who went calling on them, a couple of ads in relevant magazines/papers, and so on....

What editing do all your manuscripts receive that the author does not have to pay for?

Doing it to our house style. So copy editing (spelling and grammar, run on sentences, clichés, repetition) and proof reading, yes. Inconsistencies in characterization, plot holes, tightening up narrative, not necessarily, though that would normally be covered in the reader reports, and the extent of the different publisher’s involvement then varies.

but in this situation Mr Harper keeps complaining about the better selling authors

I didn’t mean to complain about better selling authors subsidizing the poor selling ones, just meant that it seems an odd way to run a business if you look at it from the outside, or from the perspective of the better-selling authors.

I’ve heard it said many times in trade publishing (OK, haven’t got a particular source for it, unlike for the sales figures, but it sounds right), that out of an average 10 titles, there are a few duds, sales-wise. A few will wash their face, cost-wise. A couple will do reasonably. And one, title x, will take off. It’s those title xs that drive the advances, the bookshop sales, etc.

The reason in traditional publishing royalties are in the 10% or 15% kind of range (the average across all books sold in the trade in the US/UK is 10.7% of receipts) is because to get that title x the publisher has the cost of bringing 10 to market, funding the advances and the returns across all of them, etc..

The world is changing, electronic point of sale which gives booksellers access to all sales figures on every author so you can't bluff them, digital, online, less than half the number of bookstores there were 20 years ago, etc. Everyone’s looking at different ways of doing things. (Penguin didn’t spend $120 million (which represents a heck of a lot of decent advances) on buying AuthorHouse last year to get hold of the thousands of new titles every month selling in two figures).

Over the last couple of centuries books have variously been driven/led by printers, booksellers, more recently in the last century by publishers, and in the last few decades increasingly modified by literary agents. In the next century, it will probably be driven by authors. I’m not saying the current system is “broken”, just that there are alternatives rapidly growing in significance. The model of “advance payment and flood the bookshop market with copies” is going to apply to proportionately fewer authors. The model for most is going to be more along the lines of royalties in the 50-90% range, starting off in selected markets, certain formats, spreading as the sales warrant it. How best to organize that, is the question.

You may also be interested in looking up And Other Stories. They are a not for profit publisher who have a unusual business model - you buy a subscription to their books and they also get Arts Council funding.

I’m familiar with them. Looks like a throwback to me. “We can’t make these books work financially, so lets get the taxpayer to fund it”. I thought that was the kind of thing you were against (ie; subsidies - why is it so much better/proper/ethical if the taxpayer provides them rather than the author?).

Plenty of small presses don't pay advances, and I can deal with that, as long as I know that royalties are decent, how they're calculated, and that the press will pay up.

I think our royalty payments to authors are about twice the average of small presses, and competitive with the big publishers. If we didn't pay up, consistently, across 1500 authors the internet would be deluged with complaints.

john

Times like this I wish I didn't have work in ten minutes.

Two points to address: 1) If it really is 95%, that's only because your new model hasn't had time to catch up. Your website states 75% aren't, and 25% of your current books are subsidy. There's a big difference there, and that's one of those cases we were mentioning that makes it sound as if you're actively trying to deceive.

2) The argument that 50% of advances don't make money for the publisher has been argued here before. If I recall, the point was that while 50% may not earn out for the author, publishers still make money on the vast majority of titles because advances are based on what authors are expected to make in royalties. In other words, an author might not sell enough copies to make royalties on the book, but the publisher often sells enough to cover their costs, including the costs of the advance.

This is how I understand it. I could be wrong, but someone will correct me if I am. If an author is getting 10% royalties and is paid an advance of $5000, that means the author is expected to sell $50,000 worth of books. If that author sells $40,000 worth instead, he/she doesn't earn out the advance because he/she has only earned $4000 in royalties, but the publisher has still brought in $35,000 when you account for having paid the advance. When you say an author hasn't earned out the advance, it doesn't mean the book hasn't managed to bring in that much total, just that their royalties aren't yet equal to that amount.

And, for what it's worth, the advance is still the better deal for the author because in the previous example, the author received $5,000 instead of the $4000 the books sold. That was money up front that never has to be paid back. If the book doesn't sell, the author still has been paid for the work, which is partly what is meant when we say the publisher takes the risk, not the author.

Someone please correct me if I'm understanding this wrong.

john hunt said:

You may also be interested in looking up And Other Stories. They are a not for profit publisher who have a unusual business model - you buy a subscription to their books and they also get Arts Council funding.

I’m familiar with them. Looks like a throwback to me. “We can’t make these books work financially, so lets get the taxpayer to fund it”. I thought that was the kind of thing you were against (ie; subsidies - why is it so much better/proper/ethical if the taxpayer provides them rather than the author?).

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I'm not against vanity publishing and there are still plenty of people for whom it's a good choice. Let's say a local history society has produced a book and doesn't have the skills/time/inclination to self publish it: vanity publishing could be a good choice for them.

Nor am I against the creation of non-commercial products.

I am very much *for* the creation of art free from the constrictions of commercial sensibilities, but know there isn't a publisher alive who would pay me to write a conceptual book.

It's better if the taxpayer provides them rather than the author, because there are few authors who are in a position to provide them. It's more ethical for the taxpayer to provide them because the system is then accountable for the choices it makes in the way you, say, are not (the only good thing to come out of the arts cuts is that we will never see a film like Lesbian Vampire Killers made ever again.) It is more "proper" because the money is used for a clearly specified purpose (the definition of merit being specified), not commercial gain.

Please stop being so petulant. While you charge authors, you are a vanity press. It's not a bad thing but you do need to demonstrate why you are a good choice for somebody.

1. I'm not trying to deceive. I think the 75/25% ratio I mentioned was for titles published in the last year, and the website states that.

on average in any 10 contracts we offer one level at 1, five at level 2, three at level 3, and one at level 4. A higher proportion of levels 3 and 4 are turned down, so the number of titles we publish with a subsidy is less than that. In 2012 it was one title out of four. That proportion is likely to rise as we publish more, and ebook sales (where there's a 50% royalty) becomes more significant.

Across the list as a whole, it's more like 95%+ non-subsidy. We only introduced subsidy on some titles a couple of years ago.

In this case I was responding to the many comments on the site that we make all our money on author subsidies. Which is not true - it's a small fraction. The idea that we should reverse this, and not ask for subsidies, and publish fewer titles, is currently looking very attractive, given the level of hostility to it. Personally, I'm divided - we'ld be better off financially, in the short term, if we cut down on the number of titles and didn't ask for author subsidies, but i don't think it's a solution for, say, 10 years ahead, as far as most authors go - I think they'll want to start with all the income, and buy in what they want.

Whether the model will change one way or another - I don't know, that's why I'm on here.

And, for what it's worth, the advance is still the better deal for the author because in the previous example, the author received $5,000 instead of the $4000 the books sold. That was money up front that never has to be paid back. If the book doesn't sell, the author still has been paid for the work, which is partly what is meant when we say the publisher takes the risk, not the author.

Yes, that looks right. Though the publisher will have to write off that missing $1000 in the accounts.

Yes, it's a good deal for the author, if the sales don't cover the royalties. And the publisher may still well cover the costs, (depends on how much there was to write off in the advance).

But that, somewhere down the line, comes from the pocket of other authors. It doesn't come from the shareholders' pockets. It comes from lower royalties across the board.

My apologies for getting off on the wrong foot here, and maybe I still am. It's only over the last month I've got onto these forums. I get Absolutewrite and Authonomy mixed up. Can't remember which is which. I've just posted on that one, below.


http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=114181

This publisher is a vanity and should be avoided at all costs.

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Some time ago I submitted a book to a John Hunt imprint, within 24h I had been turned down for a contract (so they don't publish just anyone) but I was given substantial feedback and criticism on my work, their readers had obviously looked at it in depth and pointed out a lot of mistakes I was making. This was a welcome and refreshing contrast to the usual three month wait for a brief 'no, thank you,' or sometimes not even that.
Based on their response I have been able to put right the mistakes I didn't know I was making, and now I even get the occasional positive comment on my writing.
To that end I have nothing but praise and gratitude for John Hunt publishing

Posted: 03/03/2013 21:48:46

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publisheratjohnhunt
first registered 01.02.13
last online 46 mins ago

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thanks for the comment Hannah.

Yes, there's a debate going on at AbsoluteWrite. I've just put up a post there.

As far as I can figure, there's one author out of the 1,500 or so we've published who's been seriously unhappy, and writing against us on the internet. We published him 7 years ago, sold 697 copies, he asked for the rights back the next year, we gave them back and took the hit on the cost, didn't hear of him or from him for another 6 years, till he started a campaign against us.

I'm not sure how many authors we've published more than once, but it's probably getting up to the hundreds, some of them half a dozen times and more.

There are a handful who have gone on to bigger publishers. And it's usually been along the lines of "John, I've been approached by xyz who wants my next book, they've offered me a £5/10k advance, can you match this", to which I reply "that's great, delighted for you, sorry we can't, we don't pay advances to any author, all the best". And a couple of them have come back later for subsequent books.

And sure, of course there are previously unknown authors who get book deals. Great for them.

There's a lot this kind of comment around, particularly on the AbsoluteWrite site-

"This publisher is a vanity and should be avoided at all costs"

And all I can say to that really, is that it's from authors we've never worked with, and haven't submitted a proposal, and don't know anything about us.

The question is whether any element of subsidy from the author is ever justified. Or, more broadly, how to split the revenues - should it be the publisher takes 90%, leaving the author 10%, or should it be the author taking 90%, and then the publisher has to demonstrate/prove their reasoning to take further cuts from that? Whether that's a deduction from the 90% for specific things like making books available in a warehouse in Australia (where we lose on every copy sold, because of external/internal distances), or for more developmental editing at author's cost because though we like the book there's a lot of work that needs to be done, and the editor needs paying, and if you did for that every decent book it's not going to work, etc. that's the long term question for me.

I've got to cut down the time I'm spending on this, sorry, not ducking questions or avoiding them, it's just the time...and i get AbsoluteWrite and Authonomy confused as to who or me has said what on which. If you don't mind, I'll copy this exchange to the Absolute Write site, because it's all part of the same thing, and the broader issues have been raised there.
john


Posted: 04/03/2013 13:36:20




/I]

Publishing is a business. It doesn't work like any other business on the planet, I'll grant you that. Now, if I pay a publisher a subsidy to publish my book, I'm a partner in business with that publisher. Knowing that there are no guarantees for sales levels, how do I know I stand a chance of making my investment back? Does this publisher have solid numbers to show how their books do?

How am I sure the book will get distributed to all channels I need and that the publisher is doing its job on that front? How do I know I'm getting the level of cover design that I'm paying for?

If I pay them, they have my money. What is their incentive to do the job right? Will they hold my work hostage for more money to do the job right?

I know someone who paid serious money to a publisher for cover design, while the elements and the layout were okay, the designer apparently had no clue about how the ink coverage would work on the cover stock. It was a muddy mess, and they demanded more money to fix their mistakes. They had no incentive to do it right the first time because they had their money from the author. I've also seen subsidy publishers charge an author thousands and do nothing more than make the book available as POD on Amazon. The author spends hundreds or thousands more buying overpriced books for resale, buying ads, and so on with very little hope of breaking even.

It's a business for authors just as much as it's a business for publishers. We creatives love what we do, but we have to pay the bills just like everyone else.

Maybe you're different, but you'll need to prove that your business model works. We've seen too many authors get taken in by folks calling themselves subsidy publishers. This is why we ask tough questions.

john hunt said:

The question is whether any element of subsidy from the author is ever justified. Or, more broadly, how to split the revenues - should it be the publisher takes 90%, leaving the author 10%, or should it be the author taking 90%, and then the publisher has to demonstrate/prove their reasoning to take further cuts from that? Whether that's a deduction from the 90% for specific things like making books available in a warehouse in Australia (where we lose on every copy sold, because of external/internal distances), or for more developmental editing at author's cost because though we like the book there's a lot of work that needs to be done, and the editor needs paying, and if you did for that every decent book it's not going to work, etc. that's the long term question for me.

john

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The thing is, you aren't giving authors 90%. And even if you were, if you charged up front, I doubt I'd recommend your publishing company. Or, if that 90% was only offered to top sellers, I wouldn't recommend your company. But the fact is you're trying to make it sound as if this example justifies the way you do business, and that's a fallacy. This isn't about some fictional business, even if that's the business model you hope to eventually maintain.

This is about the way you do business right now, in the present. That also means your 95% doesn't hold water because we're talking about contracts you're offering now. That means 25% are subsidy, and to say otherwise is misleading.

The fact is, your publishing company is a subsidy/vanity publisher. It requires some authors to pay thousands for services and a very low likelihood of ever making any of that money back. Your company might be a great choice for those who don't publish subsidy, but the subsidy element puts a cloud over the rest of your company because there is no way to know that it isn't being abused--and subsidy usually is abused.

You are free to disagree, but from an author's perspective, your publishing company is not a good idea. You will still have people submitting, so I doubt this will hurt your business any, but what it might do is help a few authors not to make a poor choice.

ETA: If you get Authonomy and Absolute Write mixed up, there's an easy way to fix it. Double check before you post. I do it all the time.

john hunt said:

I think we do reasonably well in getting into the specialist trade (our chairman Etan Ilfeld, is the owner of the major bookstore in the UK in our main subject market). If you’re talking about national chains like B&N in the US or Waterstones in the UK – it’s more variable. If an author doesn’t already have a track record of sales, it is really, really hard to get books in there, and for new authors (however much marketing you put into it) returns from B&N are often up in the 90% kind of range (and we have to pulp them).

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Several of my friends have had their debut novels published in the last couple of years. All of them have had their books on the shelves at Waterstones and B&N; as far as I'm aware, not one has experienced anything like 90% returns; and why are you pulping all your returns?

If you're getting 90% of your books returned to you then you need to get a new sales manager; and if you're publishing anything other than mmpbs you really shouldn't be pulping so many. There's no need for it at all.

The majority of our titles are fairly niche, specialist ones, and don’t fit well in national chains. And with the % of books sold through bookstores now heading down to 50%, it makes sense to look more at different ways.

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Online retailers might be taking the lion's share of sales now, but around 40% of those online sales happen after a book is first seen and selected in a physical bookshop. Don't turn your back on that on-shelf presence: it still has a big part to play in selling your books.

A vanity publisher is one which earns money by selling things to the authors it publishers. Like you do, John.

I’m sure i’ve said this before, it’s about 3% of our revenues. Prior to a couple of years ago, close to zero. Some imprints are higher than that, some don’t ask authors for money.

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It doesn't matter what percentage of your revenues come from charging writers for publication: so long as you make those charges you are a vanity publisher.

A publisher which paid its authors 90% of its revenue while retaining only 10% for itself wouldn’t be able to survive without charging extortionate amounts for the books it sells...

But we operate on 10% anyway, apart from the amount we invest into software/systems, which is another 15%. The other 75% goes to printers, editors, designers, distributors, and authors. And our retail prices are competitive.

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I was referring there to your comment in which you stated,

john hunt said:

May I ask you something.

Take a hypothetical publishing organization, let’s call it PublishersPlace, or PP. It could be a company, or could be non-profit.

It starts with the assumption that it keeps 10% of the revenues, 90% goes to the authors.

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My bold.

My point was that a publisher has expenses, and if it has to cover all of those out of just 10% of its turnover it's going to fail.

I’m just not sure that trying to do everything for every book, one-size-fits-all, is a sensible long-term solution.

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It works pretty well for the Big Six.

I’ve heard it said many times in trade publishing (OK, haven’t got a particular source for it, unlike for the sales figures, but it sounds right), that out of an average 10 titles, there are a few duds, sales-wise. A few will wash their face, cost-wise. A couple will do reasonably. And one, title x, will take off. It’s those title xs that drive the advances, the bookshop sales, etc.

The reason in traditional publishing royalties are in the 10% or 15% kind of range (the average across all books sold in the trade in the US/UK is 10.7% of receipts) is because to get that title x the publisher has the cost of bringing 10 to market, funding the advances and the returns across all of them, etc..

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Where I've worked (HarperCollins, HarperSanfrancisco, Chronicle Books, Ebury, etc) every single book is expected to turn a profit. Not every one does, of course: but I'd guess that about 70% of them do, even though only about 30% of them earn out.

The level of royalties paid has nothing to do with one book in ten having to support all the other nine books which don't do so well: they're set where they are because once the publisher has paid for editing, design, typesetting, sales and marketing it's a reasonable share of what's left.

The model for most is going to be more along the lines of royalties in the 50-90% range, starting off in selected markets, certain formats, spreading as the sales warrant it. How best to organize that, is the question.

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And we're back to authors being paid 90% royalties. Try to keep consistent, John.