Hi Everyone,
It's been a long time since my last post and at that time I had said that I would get back to you all in May. Well the time has finally come and I'm back to chat and provide some feedback and hopefully effectively address some of your concerns.
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Based on feedback from our accountant and attorney, there was a significant change made to the publishing contract. Mainly that the discussion of royalties payments though accurate we're too confusing for the layman. Taking into account that the vast majority of our authors negotiate their own contracts with us directly without the use of an agent of attorney it is imperative that the terms of the contract be as clean and directly understandable as possible.
With that the royalties is now worded based on the actual Gross Revenues of the book's sales. The actual amount and accounting is the same but allows for a far simpler means for our authors to understand how we account and pay royalties.
***Let me be clear the royalty is 25% of Gross Sales on eBooks and Print and 50% of revenues received on Licensed Rights.***
It was also clarified that we pay royalties in May and November of each year, this was a point among some, that may not have been as clearly discussed as I had intended it to be.
Additionally we have employed the use of a Negotiation Worksheet to streamline the contracting phase which is simple for the author to understand and fill out for themselves - effectively negotiating the most requested to be changed items on their own - we will of course review and negotiate all clauses in the contract if the author requests to do do.
The Worksheet does include all areas of Granted Rights which I know has been fiercely discussed on this thread for some time.
We have NOT gone back to paying advances, and I doubt that we will ever pay advances again. I am aware that this is an area of contention, but we're moving beyond this for now and dealing with other areas in TZPP's production and logistics that need fixing.
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We are paying out royalties this month and this will be completed (that is, the last checks sent) by the end of June - I know that there was some questions on whether we would actually make our Royalty payments when and as due, this is happening and all of the authors, artists, and staff will be able to attest to this as having happened by the end of June when the last check are mailed out.
Full Disclosure: As many of you know, TZPP's operations are personally funded by myself, which unfortunately has resulted in a small debt being owed to one Artist and several Authors from the last two Anthologies, due to an unexpected personal financial hardship through the last half of 2013. Additionally, author book copies for several authors have not yet been shipped. I have sent emails to those involved and all are aware that book copies will be shipped out after Royalties have been paid and in order of Date of Publication.
Now I know that many of you will comment on that fact that this is considered highly unprofessional or that this "would never happen at a large publisher" and I realize that both comments and thinking are valid. But please also take note that, we are upfront about where we are, and I am taking the necessary actions to correct the situations.
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I do want to jump into the conversation that managed to steam through 2 pages of the thread - Club Z.
Club Z is a tool that we use mainly for marketing. The people who are reading here, do provide feedback but are not influencing our decision to acquire or not. Club Z members are only being shown work that one of the Editors has decided they want to pick up. Often the Author will be given filtered or unfiltered commentary from the panels review of the book, but if the work is actually picked up, usually only marketing and the Editor actually see the commentary, and the editor will take that commentary into account when they go through the conceptual edits of the book. This is a tool for the Editor in that it can help to provide a second set of eyes from people who ARE NOT in the industry either as beta readers or interns or first readers - they are actual book buyers.
They were never meant to be "qualified" to edit a book, but simply to read it and tell us what they thought.
This is also a marketing tool - if they like the book, they can directly help us promote the book to the people in their sphere of influence.
These people all sign very strict NDAs and are very well aware of their responsibilities to safeguard the MSs they are given access to review - some of which are already signed, and others that are not yet signed.
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Growth prospects is obviously an area of discussion that has finally come up, and I would like to address that.
I'll reiterate that we are here and after 4 years we are still here. Our first regular publications did not actually begin until November 2013. Because we do operate on several imprints I view growth by the imprint, not necessarily by the company as a whole. This far Zharmae and Luthando Coeur have had regular publications between 1-3 titles per month. The other imprints will begin seeing publication regularly with 1-2 titles per month beginning in June 2014.
We have used this last quarter to fix problems in the actual production process which should provide a generally smoother experience for authors as well as company watchers. One area that I am personally actively developing is the Marketing Department which is an area that we have struggled with, partly due to not having certain assets available to us, but also due to using the first half of his year to train, and experiment with certain activities in marketing that did not yield the intended result but which did yield some other very interesting data that we plan on implementing.
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I've said this before (at least in my head) Zharmae is not for everyone. Those who do work with us, are generally happy with their experience with us, those who are not, have regular access to me and they do let their consternation and concerns be very well known.
I think there are more issues and concerns that you all may have, I will be back in a little while and will reply to any direct questions that are asked or me.
Otherwise, I'm glad to see such an lively conversation as always.
Best,
Travis