I\u2019m disgusted by many of my fellow small presses. Running a small press is difficult and expensive. It\u2019s also a calling. You start a small press because you want to champion literature. Now, every book is a gamble. It\u2019s a gamble if you\u2019re running Random House! But they can survive a failure. A small press could be broken by a failure. I\u2019ve run mine for 20 years and am only now comfortable enough with the earnings to cautiously take the pistol away from my temple.
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But I\u2019ve learned quite a bit in those 20 years. I\u2019ve learned that, if you want to be passionate about literature, you need to make sacrifices and be serious about your passion. The role of the small press is to take fine work and mount it as a book available to the masses. Over the last two decades, I\u2019ve built and built on this. Each book I publish follows a traditional, old school publishing schedule. It may take a year from signing the contract to releasing the book, and that year is spent editing the manuscript, printing galleys to go out to reviewers, and developing a cohesive and effective marketing platform. The result is that I beat the sales expectations of a small press. Whereas most small presses can expect to measure book sales in the hundreds, I\u2019ve started to measure them in the thousands. For about 10% of my titles, they\u2019re clocking into the tens of thousands. Extraordinary shit that I should be proud of. It was a hard road getting to this point\u2026 But it was a road. Anyone can follow the path. There were no happy accidents along the way. In fact, there were just bad accidents. <\/p>\n
The formula, besides being patient and developing a book over the course of a year (a mark self-publishers and most small presses miss every time) is that I treat my authors as if they are ambassadors of my publishing company. I encourage them to be engaged with their books and their readers. I try to let them know that I\u2019m dying for them and always will be dying for them and all they have to do is work with me to try and sell as many copies as possible to people other than their parents. With about half of my authors, this has worked beautifully. Everyone beats the street, keeps their books alive, and shit is really doing well. I\u2019m quitting my hideous day job in part because I can afford to do so thanks to my idiotic small press which shares office space with the spiders in a corner of my garage.<\/p>\n
One thing that\u2019s made forward momentum possible is that the technology of manufacturing and marketing books has changed dramatically. It used to be you had to do a standard offset print run for each book \u2013 print 500, 750, or 1000 copies or more at once and ship them off to a distributor or warehouse (or your basement). Marketing involved trade ads, sending shit out to bookstores, and the traditional stuff. Banners and popup bullshit. All in, a book project would end up costing close to ,000. If you were cheap. <\/p>\n
But now Print-on-demand style printing has caught up with everyone. Publishers can create a \u201cdigital short run\u201d that\u2019s usually between 25-250 copies on demand at a very low and reasonable cost. Thanks to social media, marketing is more grassroots-oriented (and free) these days. Where once a book project cost ,000, if you were cheap, now the same book project costs 00, if you\u2019re being generous. <\/p>\n
And, yet, as the price of mounting a book project goes down, and as doors open to give small presses a real fighting chance to make scads of money, it\u2019s become a trend for many small presses to rob desperate debut authors blind. A few years ago, I started to unofficially provide consulting services for debut authors trying to demystify their contracts with small presses, pointing out the red flags and explaining their rights. Again and again and again, I saw clauses that would result in the publisher stealing all of the royalties and the author never seeing a dime. The below is an example. And, for the record, it does not count towards the 10,000 words! I\u2019ll discuss the problems with each clause:<\/p>\n
EXPENSES AGAINST ROYALTIES<\/p>\n
8. The expenses directly associated with the commercial exploitation of the Work shall be recoupable by the Publisher against the Author Royalties.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
We start off terribly. The \u201ccommercial exploitation\u201d of the work is\u2026selling it. So the author\u2019s royalties are docked for everything involved in selling the book. We\u2019re talking monthly warehouse fees, general inventory fees, shipping fees, any costs associated with having someone maintain the social media and webpage, web hosting fees, travel fees for those conventions and the convention fees\u2026.and on and on. This is so vaguely worded, they could say they spent $10,000 on the book on the \u201ccommercial exploitation\u201d alone. <\/p>\n
Except for the $1,000 Author\u2019s cash advance, no payments of Author Royalties will become payable to the Author until the following expenses have been fully recouped by the Publisher:<\/p>\n
a. The reasonable, out-of-pocket cost for any changes or additions made by the Author to the typeset proofs other than to correct factual or typographical errors. Costs associated with printer\u2019s errors or correction of the Publisher\u2019s errors are expressly excluded, and<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is actually fine. By the time the book is typeset it\u2019s, presumably, been through copyediting and there\u2019s been a robust back and forth discussion where the author and the publisher should have caught all the dumb shit. So this is watching out for the publisher in case a stupid author says \u201cI want to remove that chapter where I wax poetic about my sister\u2019s vagina.\u201d<\/p>\n
b. The reasonable, out-of-pocket Production and Marketing Costs, up to a maximum of Five Thousand Dollars (US $5,000.00) (the \u201cProduction and Marketing Cap\u201d).<\/p>\n
\u201cProduction and Marketing Costs\u201d include but are not limited to: Printing, public relations, marketing, advertising, promotional materials, web promotion, art work, editing, copy editing, tour stipends paid for or reimbursed to the Author for book signing and any other tour stipends, e-book, ISBN fees and all professional fees paid to publicist, attorneys, accountants or other professionals in connection with this contract.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Hoooooly shit<\/em>, you dirty, cheating, child-raping motherfuckers. Stop. Right. There. The author does not<\/em> pay for printing. Why should they? The whole point of a publisher is that the publisher is taking a risk on a book and producing it. If you\u2019re charging me for printing, I can just self-publish with Amazon. Why do I need you? Likewise for public relations, marketing, and promo! You assholes are paying me a 15-20% royalty! You\u2019re getting at least 80%<\/em> of the profits. Why should I be paying you for your efforts to earn those profits? <\/p>\n
They\u2019re even charging the author for ISBNs! They\u2019re literally charging the author for every single aspect<\/em> of producing a book. Why, then, would any sane author have anything to do with this? <\/p>\n
Oh, but they do\u2026 <\/p>\n
Now, a word on royalties and book costs. It\u2019s a funny money business. So let\u2019s say you publish a book with a $15.00 list price. This book typically sells to vendors (like Amazon and your local book store) at a 50% discount. So the vendor pays the publisher $7.50 per unit. Now, most contracts offer a royalty on the publisher\u2019s net earnings. So let\u2019s say, on average, that a $15 book costs $2.50 to produce. That now gets the net earnings per sale to $5. <\/p>\n
Of that $5, let\u2019s say the average typical royalty is 20%. I\u2019m simplifying some things to get to that number, royalties can be complicated. But, on average, it\u2019s fair to go with that percentage.<\/p>\n
20% of $5 = $1. That\u2019s what the author takes home for each book sale.<\/p>\n
So, let\u2019s look at those contract terms above. To sell your book, the publisher says they\u2019re going to spend at least $5000 dollars. Let\u2019s call it $7500 when you factor in whateverthefuck that first part above is talking about. <\/p>\n
That means, before you see a single penny in royalties, you need to sell 7500 books.<\/p>\n
Remember above when I said most small presses measure sales in the hundreds? And that my small press, after 20 years of building a massive platform and reputation, measures sales in the thousands? <\/p>\n
Authors want to work with small presses. It gives them freedom, flexibility, and that special attention. Like going to a groovy small college where you make friends with the professor. But what actually happens is that small presses are stealing the author\u2019s work and making a quick profit. That extra $1 per book adds up if you do sell 500-1000 books. And if you do get a hit on your hands and sell 7500 books, you\u2019ve made your 80% fortune AND the authors 20% cut. LOL! I\u2019ll send you a postcard from Bermuda, dummy! <\/p>\n
And let\u2019s not forget that the actual cost of the book was not $7500. Many of these small presses cut every corner they can. The actual cost of the book for the small press will be between $1000-$2500. So the small press that issued that contract above would make their money back with, at most, 500 books sold. So that means that every sale over 500 copies is pure profit. And, still, the author is out in the cold till sales hit the impossible figure of 7500.<\/p>\n
Of course, the small press who issued that contract will defend themselves by saying, oh, well, of course it won\u2019t cost $7500. We\u2019d never charge that high. This is just in case. Just to cover the bases.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t care if they dock the author $1000 in royalties for production and marketing costs — this is wrong.<\/em> It\u2019s criminal. And if you trust any publisher to be honest about the costs, I\u2019ve got a bridge to sell you. DM me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m disgusted by many of my fellow small presses. Running a small press is difficult and expensive. It\u2019s also a calling. You start a small press because you want to champion literature. Now, every book is a gamble. It\u2019s a …<\/p>\n