Sensing a trend…
Colleen Hoover, a fantastic author you should check out, just announced a print-only deal with Simon and Schuster. This is an even bigger development than my agreement, because it signals a trend rather than an anecdote. How long before other publishers realize they need to offer similar concessions to successful indies or miss out on ready profits? How long before established authors ask to retain digital rights for new books in popular series?
Interesting times. Feel free to pop by Colleen’s blog and leave your congrats. I did!
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Monique
(new)
Jan 23, 2013 03:55PM
I've read all her books, too. I was so happy when her books started to catch on. All this is great news for the gems of self-published authors.
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I am an author of knitting books and patterns, and you would be shocked with the sorts of offers we get. Sometimes it is less than $3,000 total buyout with no royalties...as well as designing all garments and writing the book, often providing artwork and diagrams, we are expected to design around 30-50 project samples...sometimes more for submission, and make all the samples as well as write the knitting patterns for around 30 projects. It can take up to at least 18 mths, and you cannot do it without a ''day job'' and there is often no hope for any improvement due to becoming well known, or better sales...it is a one off fee and that is it for anyone. If you say no, they take it elsewhere.
However, folk that are making a headway in fiction with publishers pave the way for us ''hobby craft'' non fiction authors struggling with book packagers and hoards of middle men making money out of our hard work. Most of us are making more money out of self publishing and selling PDFs of our single patterns than we could ever make with a mainstream deal....so publishers will have to wise up.
If there were more unions and guilds for non fiction authors, then excited naive newbie authors would not say yes to any rubbish deal just to be published, they would be advised what a fair fee was and we could all start asking for a proper wage for work done....rather than something that works out to be about 0.46 pennies per hour (or less) for each hour we put into our books.
