Some authors never learn - 27th July 2010

I have had an interesting experience on submissions over the last few days, and although it revisits an earlier theme, that can’t be helped. It does illustrate the point again though.

We very clearly state our submission requirements on the web site, file type, font and spacing, but we also go that one step further by providing two other things. A Link for New Authors which attempts to protect the wide eyed and innocents from their own preconceptions. We also provide a sample contract which sets out the major terms of the publishing arrangements, very specifically in respect of copyright (a vital issue), the length of the contract, the requirements on the author (and, equally importantly on us) and the royalty payment rates and schedules. The Notes page also has a lot to say about payment schedules and royalty expectations too.

In the past I’ve come across authors who having received a contract for the first time, for a single short story seem to have a basic thought pattern along the lines of – there are over 8 billion people in the world, if only 1% of them buy my e-book at a price of $1.99 - I’ll be a dollar millionaire by next Christmas. Then they put their feet up, rub their hands in glee and sit back and wait for the money to come rolling through the door.

Oh dear ... Oh dear. The world doesn’t work like that.

Okay, maybe I’ve been a bit extreme there, but that mindset is very common among the writing group members who have decided to go down the eBook route, and almost universal among non group members. Don’t they ever listen when an established author comes along and gives a talk? Don’t they hear the author say, however successful they are, they find they are spending 50% or more of their time dong promotional work – which is taking them away from writing. Think about it, why is the author actually there – promotion!

The other major fallacy with the approach and mindset outlined above is of course that prediction of sales – the next eBook that sells 80,000,000 copies will almost certainly be the first, and it will not be written by a brand new unknown author.

Going back to the e-mails that prompted this discussion point – I received a submission query over the weekend, asking how much we would charge to convert this author’s book into an eBook. Again, didn’t read the submissions guidelines which rather clearly state we don’t charge the author. The author gave some details of the book and the fact it already had 182 online followers.

Hmm . . . Intriguing – if it already has “followers” – how? Clearly this works two ways, one if the author is serialising it on the web, will it be taken down and has the author already tapped their eBook market on a free distribution basis? So I wrote back, patiently, saying the submissions page lays out the process, as does the sample contract, we pay royalties etc, etc, and by the way you would be required to remove the current distribution on signing a contract which would of course be dependent on the quality of the manuscript. If you want to go ahead please....

Nice, polite, frank but not overly familiar...

So, what e-mail did I get back today?

What royalties do you pay? I can’t find them on the web site.

Before I responded I did allow myself 30 seconds to check – the details are there – exactly as I had said they were. My response is perhaps, slightly more curt than the previous one. There’s a reason for that. An author who cannot actually bother to read the details before submission and then asks a question we’ve deliberately pre-answered is wasting my time.

What don’t you want to do with your publisher or prospective publisher?

Exactly, not rocket-science is it? – DON’T WASTE THEIR TIME.

I’m just waiting for the next question – How much scope is there for negotiating these rates?

I’ve probably got 24 hours to politely phrase the response – I’ll revise them downward as far as you like! How low do you want to go? Zero?