The Writer’s Predicament

So I wrote “An Innocent Client.” I’ve already told you about Renni Browne, the freelance editor who had started her own company and who had published a book about self-editing for writers. She had a few contacts from her days working in the publishing industry in New York, and back in 2007, you had to have an agent to be successful in publishing. That has changed, but I’ll get into that later.

Renni started sending my manuscript to agents. Several of them said no, some politely, some not so politely. After the second round of rejections, I made some major structural changes to the novel and Renni sent it to Philip Spitzer. He loved it. He called me and said he wanted to auction it.

I’d never heard of Philip Spitzer, but I soon learned that he was one of the most experienced, and most respected, agents in the business. He represents Michael Connelly and James Lee Burke and dozens of other authors. He specialized in crime fiction. He didn’t want a written contract. I liked him immediately. His cut was fifteen percent of what I made, which is standard in the industry.

It just so happened that my timing was lousy. The publishing industry was in an uproar over the digital revolution, and especially over Amazon and their new Kindle device. The big houses were buying very little, taking a wait and see attitude toward the future. More than twenty publishers passed on “An Innocent Client.” One of them, however, an outfit called New American Library, offered $50,000 for a two book deal. I took it. Before NAL came on board, however, a few foreign publishers made offers. I took them, too.

It was then that I began to learn how publishers operate. The first thing I learned is that they operate at the speed of snail. Once the agents agreed to the terms of the deal, it took six weeks to (longer for the overseas publishers) just to get contracts. When I looked at the contracts, I realized I was entering a world where I would be exploited. Royalties due to the author were fifteen percent for hardback, fifteen percent for digital, ten percent for trade paperback and eight percent for mass market paperback. I’d been told by my editor at NAL that they were planning on releasing my books in mass market paperback, which meant I was going to be in the eight percent royalty bracket. If they sold the books for $7.99 (which they eventually did) I’d receive a whopping 64 cents per book. Out of that 64 cents, my agent would take 10 cents, leaving me with 54 cents. Come the end of the year, the government would take another 16 cents, give or take a penny. So I would be netting around 38 cents per copy sold. That sucks. That’s exploitation.

I also learned that the publishing company could do whatever they wanted with the cover and the content. They could promote the book if they wanted or they could blow off promoting the book if they wanted. They were obligated to send me “royalty statements” twice a year, one in July and one in January. There was absolutely no transparency in their accounting systems. I asked my agent how the printing and distribution process worked and his response was that he’d never had an author ask questions like that.

And the advance money? The fifty thousand? This is how they doled it out. Twelve thousand five hundred on signing the contract, $7,500 upon final acceptance of the manuscript, and $5,000 upon publication. It was the same payout on the second and third books. But once I signed the contract, it took them two months to write me a check and send it to my agent. The agent then took his cut and sent what was left to me.

Then I learned that it would be at least a year before the first novel actually hit the shelves in bookstores. A year. It took them a year to edit, print and distribute the book. With that kind of efficiency, it’s no wonder Amazon is drinking their milkshakes. “An Innocent Client” was released in November of 2008. I had absolutely no idea how many books I’d sold until I got my first royalty statement (which was nearly indecipherable) in July of 2009. The publishers won’t tell authors how many books they’re selling. They won’t tell the agents. It’s a big secret.

When “An Innocent Client” was released, I was happy with the cover and the layout and the fact that the novel was displayed fairly prominently in the Barnes and Noble stores. I was relatively happy that the first print run was 55,000, which is a strong number for a newbie. The novel got a great review in Publisher’s Weekly. It was quickly selected as a finalist for a Macavity Award in the “best debut mystery” category. (It ended up losing to “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.)  I was already finished with my second novel, “In Good Faith,” by that time and had signed a contract for “Injustice for All.” Things were going slowly, but they seemed to be going well.

And then my editor at New American Library, a very nice young lady named Kristen Weber, quit and moved to Los Angeles. Everything changed after that.