<\/p>\n
My business partner says ethics should top my list when marketing or
\npublishing my writing.\u00a0 I say, let’s allow for a little bit of
\ngrey about such things.\u00a0 Of all the professions out there, the one
\nthat gets the short end of the stick is writing.\u00a0 There’s room to
\nbe flexible as a writer, to get just a little bit ahead…to go for an
\nextra dollar or two. Don’t fool yourself, you won’t go from publication
\nto mansion.\u00a0 In business, it’s all about the extra dollar.
\nHell, in the writing business, it’s all about the extra penny.<\/p>\n
So if writing’s a business, what are some shady things you can do to get ahead without actually hurting anyone?<\/p>\n
Sign your books.<\/p>\n
Sign every copy of your book that you see in every bookstore.\u00a0 But
\nhere’s the thing – do it secretly.\u00a0 Slip in and slip out.
\nI’ve seen writers try to do this openly and make a big, arrogant show
\nabout it.\u00a0 You can pull that off at a little indie place but, take
\nit from a one time retail manager, it won’t work at the big
\nplaces.\u00a0 We know what you’re doing.\u00a0 We know what it’s really
\nabout.\u00a0 We’ll stop you.\u00a0 Why?<\/p>\n
The publisher will not accept returns if the books are mutilated or marked in any way<\/em>.\u00a0 Let’s put together a scenario, because most young writers I talk to are clueless about the whole retail thing:<\/p>\n In the publisher’s eyes, the bulk of book sales are not measured by how Let’s say Barnes and Noble buys five copies of your book.\u00a0 The So what if B&N only sells two books and they return the other three How could that have been different?\u00a0 Say you went to your local The two readers who buy the book get an unexpected signed copy. Meanwhile, the other three copies are just sitting there.\u00a0 B&N I’m told this isn’t ethical.\u00a0 But you’ve hurt no one. Amazon.<\/p>\n Shockingly, many (usually young) authors I know say that joining the There’s nothing unethical about selling your book through the The great thing about the Associates program is that anyone can sign Many authors these days are doing newsletters.\u00a0 Now, I know lots I don’t think that’s unethical at all, but writers get dodgy when I Opportunism.<\/p>\n Here’s a grey area for you:\u00a0 Sell everything.\u00a0 Galleys, rough I mention this to authors and, universally, they shout out that I’m the My publishing house sources for these Margin articles confess that Now, see, that’s unethical.<\/p>\n So if other people are making money off of your work and doing it with There are ethics and there are ethics<\/em>.\u00a0 Don’t steal or Publishers are sickly proud of their shady ethics.\u00a0 All I’m saying
\nmany individuals buy the book.\u00a0 Yes, of course, individuals
\ndetermine how many copies go out, but retail stores are stocking based
\non a presumed demand.\u00a0 If they sell ten books right away and it’s
\nhot, they may reorder 20, though maybe the buzz will die down and
\nthey’ll only sell eight copies from that reorder.\u00a0 However, the
\npublisher sees 30 sales altogether and that’s what they record.
\nThe money that goes to you, the writer, is determined by all of the
\nsales from the publisher side.\u00a0 They’re recording how many copies
\nthey sold to the retailer, not the readers.<\/p>\n
\npublisher sells the copies to them and, that’s it, that’s the
\nsale.\u00a0 The publisher is done.\u00a0 They’ve collected the money
\nfrom those five books.\u00a0 The money goes into the account and,
\neventually, that’s where your money comes from.\u00a0 Barnes and Noble
\nnow needs to resell the book to make their money back.\u00a0 The writer
\nmakes, whatever, a dollar a sale.\u00a0 So you made $5, but you’re not
\ngetting that right away.<\/p>\n
\nafter six months?\u00a0 The publisher refunds them and, all of a
\nsudden, the five dollars you could have made off of the initial sale
\nturns into two dollars, all because B&N needed more shelf space for
\nthe 29th Harry Potter book.<\/p>\n
\nbookstores, slipped past those wide-eyed, brain-dead clerks and slinked
\ninto the shelves to pick up all five copies of your book.\u00a0 Then,
\nreal Mission: Impossible<\/em> like, you quickly inscribed each book with a message and your autograph?\u00a0 Thanks for reading!\u00a0 Enjoy!<\/p>\n
\nThey’re thrilled.\u00a0 They think that they’ve found a secret signed
\ncopy and, for them, it’s like finding Atlantis.<\/p>\n
\ngoes to return them.\u00a0 They have a kid who flips through the books,
\nor maybe they get as far as the distributor or publisher (who also has
\na kid flipping through them), and the return is rejected because the
\nbooks are “marked.”\u00a0 So B&N is stuck with the three copies and
\nyour simple act of signing three books just earned you three dollars,
\nbased on this scenario.<\/p>\n
\nB&N will eventually put them on sale and, you know what?\u00a0 They
\ngot 40% off – maybe more – when they bought the books.\u00a0 (Oh, and a
\nquick side note – many publishers only give authors 20% off when they
\nbuy copies of their books directly.\u00a0 B&N ranks higher than the
\nguy who wrote the book?\u00a0 The author has to pay more than a
\nbookstore– plus shipping – for every additional copy. Now, is that
\nethical?)<\/p>\n
\nAmazon Associates program to sell their own book is unethical.
\nWhy does the word “unethical” even cross the lips of someone under
\n30?\u00a0 It’s enough to make me want to run away to the Mojave and
\nfarm rattlesnakes for a living.<\/p>\n
\nAssociates program.\u00a0 Amazon makes money, your publisher makes
\nmoney, you make money and the customer is happy.\u00a0 Where’s the
\nproblem?<\/p>\n
\nup.\u00a0 My ten year old cousin can sign up.\u00a0 You don’t even need
\na webpage, you can shoot links out via email.\u00a0 And here’s the fun
\nthing – you make money off of each sale.<\/p>\n
\nof folks who roll their eyes and say that they don’t have time to
\nmaintain a newsletter.\u00a0 Hey, that’s fine, but a monthly newsletter
\nis easy stuff:\u00a0 What are you doing this month?\u00a0 What are you
\nreading this month?\u00a0 What’s your latest book?\u00a0 The people who
\nsign up for your newsletter are fans.\u00a0 They don’t care what you
\nsay, you don’t have to write an essay.\u00a0 They’re glad to hear from
\nyou.\u00a0 They’re looking at links.\u00a0 Look here, and here, and
\nhere, and thank you. What if all those links are book suggestions
\nleading to Amazon?\u00a0 Your fans, by their very nature, will buy shit
\nlinked on your newsletter.\u00a0 Say your newsletter goes out to three
\nthousand people and only 300 preorder your book or buy the CD you’re
\nlistening to.\u00a0 You just made close to $300 (or more, in some
\ncases), simply for saying hello, please click here.<\/p>\n
\nbring it up.\u00a0 It seems to me, in my experience, that writers don’t
\nlike making money.<\/p>\n
\ndrafts, manuscripts, you name it.\u00a0 “Rough draft of X, by
\ninternationally bestselling author so and so.\u00a0 Own a piece of
\nliterary history, see the writing process at work.\u00a0 Opening bid:
\n$50.”<\/p>\n
\nson of Satan and I’m damned for all time.\u00a0 Well, hopefully, the
\nfollowing revelation will galvanize you and open up that dark writing
\nmind:\u00a0 It’ll happen anyway.\u00a0 It always happens.\u00a0 An
\nintern, or even the publisher themselves, will do it – and keep the
\nmoney.\u00a0 They’ll do it on Ebay, on one of the Amazons, or on
\ncountless private lists and chatrooms dedicated to a sort of “black
\nmarket” of rough drafts and galleys.\u00a0 I personally know of five
\ninterns and employees, all from medium to large publishing companies,
\nwho do this with every manuscript they can get their hands on.
\nPound away for the man all day while running dozens of auctions worth
\n$50 a pop.\u00a0 All of your work rescued from the recycle bin and sold
\ndirectly to your fans and spotty little collectors, with not a penny
\ngoing to you.<\/p>\n
\nthey, sometimes, sanction this and funnel the money back into the
\npublishing company.\u00a0 Maybe that Stephen King rough draft goes for
\n$5000, sold through a sneaky place nobody checks like Amazon.de, or
\ndirectly to collectors through private chatrooms.\u00a0 Then the
\npublisher takes the cash and never reports it to the author.\u00a0 It’s
\na behind the scenes publishing trick as old as the hills and it’s
\ncarried out at your expense.<\/p>\n
\nglee, why do you hesitate?\u00a0 You’re struggling while a 22 year old
\nintern makes $100 a copy off of the galley copy sitting on your
\neditor’s desk.\u00a0 You’re making a pittance off of each sale while
\nthe publisher is in for the kill, operating or, at the very least,
\naware of a sinister black market that leaves you in the cold.<\/p>\n
\nplagiarize, sure, but do go into business.\u00a0 You – the author – are
\nthe product, and everyone around you, from your friends to your editor
\nand their boss, are going to make a killing off of you the first chance
\nthey get.\u00a0 Meanwhile, you aren’t selling yourself?\u00a0 You
\nshould be, because that same editor, or agent, or whoever will throw
\nopen the trap door beneath your feet as soon as your engine
\nstutters.\u00a0 While you fade to out of print obscurity, they’re
\nwalking away with the bulk of the money.<\/p>\n
\nis fight fire with fire.\u00a0 Newsletters, websites, forums, home spun
\nlocal news stories.\u00a0 Hell, posters on phone poles and yard signs
\ncan even come into play.\u00a0 Usually those are reserved for the
\nenergetic and insane, but you get the drift.\u00a0 The equivalent of a
\nvideo store clerk is getting rich off of your work while you’re blowing
\nyour advance on your credit card debt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[352],"tags":[353,127],"class_list":["post-2468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gsarchive","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2468"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2847,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2468\/revisions\/2847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}