Hugh Howey's Blog, page 34

Paying Writers What they Deserve

Traditional Publishing is no Longer Fair or Sustainable. This was the sad but accurate headline in The Guardian this week. It followed a report on author income from the ALCS, the results of which led Nicola Solomon, head of the UK’s Society of Authors to declare:

Authors need fair remuneration if they are to keep writing and producing quality work. Publisher profits are holding up and, broadly, so are total book sales if you include ebooks, but authors are receiving less per book and less overall due mainly to the fact that they are only paid a small percentage of publishers’ net receipts on ebooks and because large advances have gone except for a handful of celebrity authors.

This comes right on the heels of The Daily Mail’s piece about Hillary Clinton’s latest book. The memoir has sold well by most measures, moving 161,000 copies in the first three weeks and 86,000 in week one, but the book has dropped in the charts, and it appears Simon & Schuster will take a loss due to the $14,000,000 advance paid to Hillary.

Forteen million dollars.

By publishing math, this advance was warranted. Her previous book sold well enough for the bean counters at S&S to come up with what seemed necessary to both retain Hillary and turn a profit. But this methodology flies in the face of recent rhetoric about the role publishers play in the protection of literature and the nurturing of “the writing life.”

With that sum of money, you could pay 500 writers $28,000 to enjoy a full year of the writing life. Or you could pay 250 writers $56,000 if they don’t understand how to squeak by as a starving artist. Not only that, Hillary Clinton doesn’t need another penny for as long as she lives. She didn’t need to be supported while she wrote the book. So how exactly are publishers the patrons of the literary arts? Nicola Soloman nails the problem with the current blockbuster model of entertainment: The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We shovel money at the outliers and drop everyone else.

I have no problem with the capitalist argument that Hillary deserves every penny of what she can command, or that Sylvia Day deserves 8 figures for her next trilogy. Both are hardworking people who bring a lot to the table, including the potential to make publishers a lot of money. But is this the system we want? If publishers deserve special treatment and protection from the law (there are some who think publishers should be allowed to collude or that the government should have purview over the health of bookstores), then why aren’t those same people suggesting modifications to how we pay authors?

There is nothing to say that the current system needs to be retained. One idea would be a salary cap, which is used in sports to increase competition between teams so that wealthy markets don’t dominate with bloated payrolls. What if publishers had to select their celebrity authors through an open draft? That way, everyone gets a fair allotment of big-name writers at some max price, rather than competing on outsized advances that funnel money away from those who actually need it? Before you balk, consider that sports franchises adopted a system of salary caps to save them from themselves. Overspending was threatening to topple entire leagues. Publishers need similar saving. They can’t be trusted with blank checks to do what’s right for culture, much less their own bottom lines. (Once they got over the revulsion of a draft, savvy publishers would see the great benefit to themselves.)

Another idea would be to mandate that for every advance over 6 figures, two authors who are going be dropped because of disappointing sales get a $40,000 lump sum in order to write one more book, regardless of whether or not that book is picked up. Every 6-figure increment means two more writers getting another lump sum. So if you are going to pay $500,000 for a book, it will really cost the publisher $900,000, and ten other authors get a year’s wage that they don’t have to pay back. These lucky writers would be selected at random from the pool of writers who were dropped over the past five years, so no playing favorites or pretending to drop someone you were going to otherwise pay. The publisher would then get first refusal on the book, perhaps. Publishers would have to think twice about outsized advances, and do some good when they simply can’t help themselves.

Does it seem crazy to punish publishers for paying more than $100,000 for a book? It shouldn’t, not if the purpose of a publisher is to support the writing life. How much should that life cost? The argument for publishers as the saviors of literature is that non-fiction, literary works, and “think” books only come through the system of advances. Even if those books take three to five years to research and write, should that ever amount to millions of dollars? Should advances exceed $100,000 per year? $50,000 per year? If so, why? And if no one can think of a reason, how come more people aren’t advocating publishers to spend their advance money more wisely?

If a book does well, certainly pay above and beyond the advance. I (and I believe many authors would probably join me here) would much rather see smaller advances and a higher share of profits. Or smaller advances and finite terms of license. Or both. Instead of giving me $500,000 and a paltry share of royalties, how about $50,000 and an even split of revenue? The tax advantages would be immense. Much better to be in a medium or small bracket for decades than pay 40% the year of your sudden windfall. And much easier to plan your finances and to save.

Not only that, a large advance can kill a writing career if a book doesn’t earn out. Plus, I’d love to know the money saved went to supporting my fellow writers. So why aren’t we advocating for changes like these? Why are we paying multi-millionaires millions of more dollars? I don’t think it has anything to do with the writing life that the Authors’ Guild espouses.

What about benefits? The full-time employees at major publishing houses have medical coverage and other perks like sick leave, paid vacation, maternity, etc. The authors who do the actual creating have none of that. Does that not strike you, dear reader, as unfair? If the reading public understood what most writers made a year, and how contracts are growing more pernicious over time, I believe they would be outraged. Most writers don’t even understand what’s happening and how their livelihood is being eroded.

Take “high discount” royalties, which is a smaller royalty paid on books sold in big-box discounters. These are becoming a larger share of book sales, and the pay is paltry. Or what about “basket accounting”, where you aren’t paid when a book earns out its advance because other books in the series haven’t earned out their advances? These clauses, along with non-competes and reversion terms, are increasingly harming artists in order to improve the publishers’ bottom line. Someone has to pay when a celebrity book tanks, afterall.

Here’s an idea I would love to see implemented on all print books: Beside the price of the book, right there on the jacket or back cover, print the amount the author makes when that copy is sold. Sure, it would be a rough guess, because of high discount and any bulk deals the bookstore secures, but you can get in the ballpark. Right beside this measly sum, include the author’s direct PayPal address. You don’t have to appeal for anything; just inform us, as readers, and let us know where to go to make things right.

When I finish a novel that I enjoy, I would love to be able to send the author my thanks with a few dollars. Enough to buy a coffee or a beer. Seeing that he or she earned $1.20 for the $15.00 I spent would be motivation enough. While you’re at it, include the amount that goes to the bookstore and the publisher. I think readers would be interested in seeing this, and I think authors would benefit greatly. For one thing, friends and family would stop expecting free books from their writer friends.

Some musicians have played around with a pay-what-you-want model, and book bundles often employ this as well. A slider shows you how much you are paying the artist out of the full amount. I’ve seen accounts of fans paying more when they can see how much is going to the artist. Why not add this feature to the book page at online retailers? Show me how little an author is making, and give me a place to leave a tip.

The reason we are generous to our server who brings us our coffee is that we know they aren’t making minimum wage. Newsflash: Neither are most authors. If I can give a waitress a few dollars for taking my order, topping up my water, and walking my breakfast to me, I think it isn’t ridiculous to suggest I give a little to someone who poured blood and sweat into their keyboards.

Why won’t this ever happen? Because publishers would have to admit that they pay their authors shit. And they would have to lower themselves to asking fans for help. Amanda Palmer has an excellent TED talk on how difficult it can be to ask fans for help. She also explains how necessary it can be, how honest, how liberating, and how bonding.

When I promote self-publishing, it’s because I know from the cumulative experiences of thousands of others along all paths that it provides a much higher chance of earning a living as an author. Not a high chance, but a higher chance. When I advocate for publishers to change their contracts and pay structures, it is because I care equally about all writers. I stand to gain nothing from this advocacy. It’s just what’s right. I would be just as loud and annoying about this if I were an avid reader who knew what I know.

So let’s be creative. Let’s be more open and honest about author pay. Let’s think of solutions to help foster great literature instead of applauding a system where the rich get richer and the poor get dumped on. This is a trend taking place across many forms of entertainment, from film to music, and we need to find solutions. While the news is sad, I applaud the Society of Authors and Nicola Solomon for saying what needs to be heard. Let’s just hope someone is listening. Or thinking of a fix.

Finding Your Story

I sometimes get stuck while writing a story or a novel, and it feels like writer’s block. But what’s really happening is that I’ve moved the story in the wrong direction, and some part of my brain is aware of this.

It’s spooky to admit that the conscious portion of our brain isn’t aware of what’s happening elsewhere in our noggins, but some really freaky experiments back this up. This is why, when the writing is going well, it feels more like reading or discovery than it does writing or creation. It feels as though the story could go no other way than the way we’re writing it. Like it existed before us.

When we get stuck, one way to “find” the right path for the story is to try a few paths. And if they don’t feel right, try something else. Set the last few chapters aside (paste them into a blank document). Resume writing from the last place you felt engaged with the story. Try something else this time.

Ever had the feeling you were forgetting something as you left the house? You walk around, wracking your brain, trying to figure out what it is. Exhausting every option, you decide your intuition is wrong. It isn’t until you’re half an hour away from the house that the missing thing percolates up to the conscious level. This is writing. You know what happens next. The challenge is remembering.

Exciting Press is Exciting

I’m going to tell you about an awesome club. And you can’t join. But that’s okay: You can start your own.

The club is a small publisher called Exciting Press. They call themselves a “nano press,” even smaller than a micro press. I highly recommend reading their FAQs. Maybe I’m a geek, but reading this gave me goosebumps. Especially the part where they say you don’t need a publisher these days. That honest admission says so much.

Exciting Press pays 70% net on e-book sales. And they only license your work for seven years. SEVEN YEARS! After that, they stop selling your work and give you your rights back. Unless you want to renew or renegotiate. It’s up to you. You own the rights.

Before you rush off with your manuscript, Exciting Press is closed to submissions right now. It’s the model I’m excited about.

Now, for those of you who self-publish, you might wonder what the point is. Why not get 70% of gross on your own? The way I see it is this: Nano presses are a way for the reluctant and wary to learn how self-publishing works. And with these royalty rates and limited terms of license, there practically no risk. A nano press becomes an agenting/editing service but with a 30% fee instead of a 15% fee. My agent has taken over many publishing duties for her clients. And I’ve met companies at publishing conferences that are setting up boutique publishing houses that blend these ideas.

A nano press can be run out of a living room or a basement. There is almost no overhead. All the advantages self-publishers have apply here as well: Books are permanently available; control over price; worldwide distribution; POD physical books; etc.

In fact, it occurs to me that my editor, David Gatewood, is involved in a nano press. He recently contacted me about a short story that I quietly published. I’m not sure how he found it, but he wanted to include it in an anthology. He helps curate and edit the work and presumably gets a cut of royalties. This isn’t his first anthology. If he gets enough of these going, he can enjoy the lasting trickles of royalties that authors see (and that editors deserve). Even better: David and company don’t take ownership of these stories. You still own the rights.

The potential here is dizzying. And then I realize that I have a nano press as well. The three anthologies I’m editing with John Joseph Adams work similarly. Is this the future of publishing? It used to be that successful authors, editors, or celebrities might get an imprint in a major New York house. Why won’t they simply start their own? Using KDP, they can get 70% of gross. They can then offer 50% or 70% of net. The low overhead allows them to offer what major publishers seem unable to when it comes to payment and ownership.

When someone pulls this off with advances thrown into the mix, that’ll be something. Most of the advantages of traditional publishing combined with most of the advances of self-publishing. Exciting times, yes?

Amazon Ups the Ante

When Amazon first spoke up about the stalled negotiations with Hachette, they proposed an author pool to support Hachette’s authors to be funded by both companies. Hachette refused.

According to a story breaking now, it appears Amazon has sweetened the deal by suggesting that Amazon and Hachette both forego all profits of any Hachette ebooks sold and allow that money to go directly to the author. 100% of it.

As a reader, I love this idea. Let my money go to the artists and come out of your pockets while the two of you duke it out.

It also sounds as if Hachette has been slow to negotiate at all. If all of this is true, it backs up everything we saw the last go around with Macmillan: Amazon getting the blame while publishers refuse to negotiate or use dirty tactics while hiding behind the outrage of their authors.

I really hope Hachette accepts this latest offer. If you want to encourage them to do so, sign our petition to Hachette, which asks them to stop fighting for low wages for authors and high prices for readers. Nearly 7,000 people have already signed.

C’mon, Hachette, do the right thing.

Interview with O’Reilly Media

Media Bias Against Self-Publishing

The ALCS just released a survey on authors’ earnings, and the news is bleak. The ALCS surveyed 2,454 participants, some of whom considered themselves professional writers. The number of these professional writers who make a full-time wage from their craft has dropped from 40% to 11.5%.

The survey looks at various types of writers (adult fiction, adult visual, academic, etc.), and it would be interesting to tease these apart to see which industries are being hit the hardest. One imagines any periodical writers who participated had bad news to share. One area of growth mentioned is digital income. In 2007 the same survey showed almost no income from digital. It’s now the third largest source of income.

The ALCS also mentions self-publishing. They say (emphasis mine):

Self-publishing is becoming an increasingly successful venture for writers. Just over 25% of writers have self-published a work, with a typical return on their investment of 40%. Unsurprisingly, 86% of those who had self-published said they would do so again.”

This is pretty amazing news. Too bad most people won’t get the news. Instead of reading the report, they’ll probably read a paper or blog that parses it. The Guardian also covered the ALCS report. They had this to say:

Self-publishing also comes under fire, he said – but this is “even less of a way of earning money from your writing if you’re any good than conventional publishing”.

This makes it sound like the ALCS report criticized self-publishing, when it did just the opposite. Instead of quoting the report (which the story is about), The Guardian quoted a random author expressing his unfounded opinion, an opinion that contradicts the very report in question. In fact, they quoted an author who distinguishes conventional publishing from self-publishing as the route better taken by those who are “any good.”

The Guardian journalist who wrote this article may not have read the survey they are reporting on. Or they may have read the survey and then decided to cover their opinion rather than the news. Either way, this person is clearly overpaid. Despite what the ALCS says.

Not mentioned is that the years covered by the survey are 2007 – 2013, years of extreme economic downturn. There’s no doubting that the writing profession has been hit hard. When any idiot can do a better job of reporting on his free blog than a professional journalist can at a major paper, the reasons for paying the latter dwindle. What I would love to see is the number of people who had to get a second job throughout the UK for the same period of time. Only then can we say something about the income of writers because of their profession rather than their geography.

In the US, millions of workers have had to transition to multiple jobs. It’s a heartbreaking reality. No one wants this. But confabulating it with the choice of profession without controlling for overall trends is disingenuous. Maybe we’ll find that the news for writers is even worse than it appears. Maybe most people in the UK suddenly found themselves making far more money between 2007 and 2013. Maybe those working part time at two jobs suddenly found a single, high-paying job during this stretch.

Hey, maybe a plucky journalist is currently digging for the answers, doing some real reporting. If they are, I have this to say to them: Get back to work. Your boss is gonna be pissed if he catches you writing.

Hachette’s Slides to Investors

This broke a while ago, but while looking for the link to this story to share with a media outlet, I saw how far down the search results it was with one set of keywords and how difficult it was to find in general. If you want to help spread awareness of what Hachette’s goal is in its negotiations with Amazon, please link to this Passive Voice story on your own blogs. Or link to the original in social media:

http://www.thepassivevoice.com/06/2014/lagarderes-investor-presentation/

Not many people are considering the idea that Hachette could be the side offering unreasonable terms to Amazon or negotiating in bad faith. And I saw almost no coverage of the Perseus acquisition as being harmful to competition in the book trade. Hachette gobbled up the largest remaining independent trade publisher and peeled off their distribution business to Ingram while folding the publishing side into what will undoubtedly become more Imprint Soup.

The truly amazing thing? The NYT (of which I’m a 7-day home subscriber and massive fan) covered the acquisition of Perseus from the angle of Amazon being the bad guy. No, really. Even though Hachette is quoted as saying the acquisition and negotiations are unrelated (their slides to investors suggest otherwise). Meanwhile, agents now have one fewer place to submit their manuscripts.

If, after seeing these slides, you want to petition Hachette to stop fighting for higher e-book prices and lower wages for authors, click here.

Douglas Preston and I Agree

A little background, because my writing career owes much to Douglas. When I completed my first novel, I sent it out to some authors whom I greatly admired. Douglas was one of them. He was also one of the two or three to generously give this debuting nobody some of his time. He read the first Molly Fyde book, and wrote a blurb that blew me away. Mostly because it said enough to let me know there was an 80% chance he read the thing.

It was my first big break, and it gave me a tremendous amount of confidence. I’ve always felt as though my writing career has been intertwined with his, but in the way a small thread wraps around a much thicker rope. (Not calling Douglas fat! He’s quite svelte. Just saying my career warps to his more than his to mine [obviously])

Yesterday, I had the impulse to reach out to Douglas. We’d only ever exchanged e-mails, but I thought we were friends in the way that when you’re at a rock concert and the lead singer drips sweat on you, you figure the two of you are best buddies forever. Turns out Douglas had emailed me four hours earlier to ask if we could chat. I feared he wanted his blurbs back.

We chatted today, and as I suspected, Douglas and I agree on far more than we disagree. We both want what’s best for writers. The confusion is on how to achieve that. I don’t know that I have any better answers than I did before. We would both probably write similar pleas a second time around. But we’d probably do even more to assume that the other side is seeing the world differently but with the same generous spirit. The only thing this solves is my cognitive dissonance when people I admire have differing opinions. I hope the same is true of Doug*.

*I can call him that. Totally saw him at a convention once. Looked like he was adjusting his sunglasses, but it was a wave.

Do Writers Need a Union?

SFWA (The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) is drawing heat in some quarters for endorsing Hachette’s side in the ongoing negotiations with Amazon. The move was made unilaterally and without the consultation of its members (of which I am one). Author Don Sakers posted on his blog that SFWA does not represent him, and I add my voice to Don’s.

On the website ThePassiveVoice, commenters bring up trade and labor disputes and organizations, and I think these and class warfare comments I’ve seen elsewhere are spot-on. Trade fiction and narrative nonfiction authors do not have any meaningful representation. There is no group busting balls on behalf of writers, and there are a lot of balls out there to be busted. Amazon, the Big 5, B&N, Apple, Google … no one is fighting these people for better terms and pay. The Writers’ Guild seems to exist to fight Amazon and stands for the rights of bookstores and major publishers.

I’d say the closest thing we have to a trade rep is Passive Guy himself (not sure what he would say to hear this. Maybe he’d want to slap me). His blog, his advocacy, his smarts, his law degree and decades of experience with contracts, his familiarity with self-publishing (not just from being part of a household that does it, but from his blog, which is like a reading room at a law firm, cardboard boxes everywhere), and last (and in someways certainly least) his admirable and immortalized role as the lone and oft-interrupted voice on That Panel.

The Passive Guy’s blog, forums like KBoards, all the private FB groups, all the writers’ blogs, and all the interconnected readers and writers via social media have reached a tipping point, I believe. When a third of all bestselling ebooks on the largest platform are self-published, that signals a groundswell of support over content. Threaten that content . . . and watch out. Hachette’s supporters seem to be threatening that content.

So what we’re seeing is a protest of a lot of little voices, and they add up. It’s what a union is supposed to do, to unite a bunch of smaller, weaker forces so they can negotiate with a single, larger force. Writers have never had this before. I’m not confident they have it now. There is excitement from some, but also a call from others to get back to work, that this doesn’t affect us. Protests pop up now and then, but they rarely sustain themselves. They fizzle.

Here’s the tricky thing, I’m learning: How can anyone represent so many disparate interests? I sympathize with unions and trade groups like never before, as people are emailing me to ask me what authors stand for. I can’t speak for writers. We stand for a lot of shit. Our stances contradict. I would never expect us to agree on anything, much less everything.

Our readers are probably the one thing I can say with confidence that we love and adore. Without them, we in this trade are whispering to ourselves. Starting from there, I might be comfortable saying that anyone who serves our readers and facilitates our getting together with them is better than anyone who abuses our readers and works to keep us apart. I would sign that charter, and I think most writers would.

When physical bookstores decided to ban Amazon imprint titles, thinking that attacking a tiny fraction of larger Amazon was worth decimating the individual authors, they fell into the coming-between-us camp. When 5 out of the then-Big-6 got together to raise prices on consumers, they fell into the coming-between-us-camp. When B&N refused to stock Simon & Schuster authors last year, and when they decided to manipulate their online bestseller lists, they fell into the coming-between-us-camp. These middlemen work to blockade. Whatever you think of Amazon’s faults, they have worked to unite storytellers with listeners and readers. They have done this like perhaps no other entity in history.

So when this division broke, there was of course a 1% element to this movement not unlike many other protests. A small group of elitists think the universe aligns with their ideals. The system that made them rich is to be preserved, and screw anyone who disagrees. When you gain power, you tend to use it to maintain power, not to empower others. Human history is littered with these stories. But all it takes is a few megaphones in the crowd and gathering bodies to show them the other side.

A few nights ago, an email popped into my inbox. It appeared a letter in support of Hachette had gone “viral.” I searched for this letter and could not find a copy, because it had not yet been released. The pro-traditional news source claiming virality seemed to have hopeful aspirations more than news coverage in mind. But the threat of this letter’s impending release sickened me. More of the one-sided debate from those with the most money and the most power, and what they are calling for will harm those with the least of both.

I reached out to a dozen or so others, and we cobbled together a messy open letter to explain many of the gross misrepresentations that have emerged during the Amazon/Hachette debate. A Google Doc buzzed with so many cursors, it was impossible to keep up with it all. We had a few hours to craft a response to what the other side had worked on for a week. Our hope was that any coverage of this debate would include both sides. That’s all we wanted. Maybe a few hundred people to say that we do not stand for this. We will not stand for this.

Right now, those voices number 4,792. Thank you if you are one of them.

Our open letter was posted on Change.org, because more people wanted to sign the Google doc than I could manage. What we needed was a petition. What we wrote was a letter to readers. We ended up with something of both. The testimonials are as heart-wrenching as some of those we saw on this thread and in this thread. And it’s not just writers chiming in. Readers have taken to social media to show their support. Many have signed what started as a letter to them and is now a letter from us. Change is messy, people.

My fear, however, is that nothing will change. Nothing will come of this. I think the power is in the hands of our opponents, because they own the media (actually, the media owns them. Several of the major publishers are owned by companies like CBS). They have the bigger names. They also have the support of a lot of mid-list writers who really want to make the jump up and win the respect of those above them. And there are a lot of readers who haven’t given indie books a chance and see us as ditherers and cranks.

So I don’t have my hopes up, which is rare for me. My unabashed optimism is on hiatus. What I do see is the potential, the response to be had if there’s the right spark. And it highlights for me the need for a trade organization that represents writers, an organization with a focus on those who NEED representation, not those at the very top.

Groups like the aforementioned SFWA have minimum requirements for membership. I think there should be maximum requirements for representation. That is, once your earnings hit a certain level, your rights are no longer the focus of the group. Those rights might align at times with the focus of the group, but it won’t be an active concern.

Why? Because labor unions shouldn’t exist to win raises for the managers and the foremen. They sometimes devolve into this, and that’s the beginning of the end of their usefulness. Our guild long ago subscribed to that philosophy. I like to think it happened unintentionally and innocently, bias building upon bias, closed rooms echoing, monocultures spreading. I think some of the people who have it all and are fighting for more aren’t bad people; they just aren’t exposed to enough dissenting opinions. Many of those fighting for Hachette have no clue what is happening in the publishing trenches right now. They’ve been in tents with generals for far too long. It’s a rare sage like Val McDermud who understands those two worlds and the current gulf between them.

I hope the outcome of this is at least awareness. There is a new world out there for creators and those who wish to be entertained. It can be a beautiful world, but it can also be a bleak world. Hollywood has been struggling with these same issues. Just this week, there was this depressing account of current trade representation in the film industry. Another movement of the 1%.

If you have a print copy of any of the self-published editions of the WOOL series, you may have noticed something strange on page 99 of each book. Doesn’t matter which book in the series, they all have as the page number: 99%. That’s the rest of us. Of course, another writer pointed out to me while we were crafting this open letter that he and I are now in the 1%, but I don’t think that’s true. We get to choose which side we stand on; our income doesn’t decide for us.

I have been called a shill for taking this side. I have been accused of being shrill. I’m a crank and a kook. A lot of us are. Anyone fighting for progress should wear these accusations with honor. It means you’re finally being heard. I means you’re now hitting a nerve.

4,792. That’s a lot of voices. I hear you. I don’t speak for you. No one does. I don’t want to speak for anyone but myself. And again, maybe no one else does.

But perhaps someone should.

Random Hippie Thought of the Day

We have a choice. We can choose to assume the worst in people, or we can choose to assume the best in people.

If we assume the worst in people, maybe we’ll be right most of the time. But when we’re wrong, we’ll devastate someone.

If we assume the best in people, maybe we’ll be right some of the time. And when we’re wrong, the worst outcome is that we’ll be naive.

Assuming the worst in people is a lot like capital punishment. It’s the belief that the damage caused by a few mistakes is worth the calculated good of hammering the rest.