Category: Publishing

Posted in Backstory, Book covers, Publishing, Self-Publishing

Finding a home for the next book: Traditional or self-publishing is the question

Posted on by Patricia J. Parsons

Film StripI received an email yesterday from my editor at the University of Toronto Press with the news that we’re now embarking on the cover design for my new book.  Although this is good news (I had been wondering where we were in the process after I sent him the final edits back in January before I went on vacation, it got me thinking yet again about the traditional book publishing process .

This marks the ninth time (ten if you count a second edition) that I’ve been through this traditional publishing process where control is largely given over to the publisher.  The truth is that I’ve been more or less happy with the outcomes as I look at them winking at me from the top shelf above me; the process, however, has not been without considerable frustration.  I’ve also gone the self-publishing route three times now, and I’m kind of at a crossroads.  I have a new book ready to make the rounds – and have queried a couple of agents already – but I’m still wondering if I should do it myself.

This reflection on my publishing adventures resulted this time from my editor’s simple statement in his email: “…Time and budgetary restraints being what they are, we’re unable to ask our designers to come up with a cover completely from scratch. Rather, it falls to you (and to me)…” and then we’re to send this to the so-called designers.  It seems to me that a designer should be doing the designing, and if he or she isn’t doing the designing, what in the world is he or she being paid to do?

This might seem to you to be the moment in time when I make that decision to move to self-publishing for that next book, but I’m also reeling from yet another telephone call from iUniverse – an attempt to sell me yet more services thinly disguised as a wonderful opportunity for me.

Here’s what happened earlier this week.

At dinner time one evening (they are always at dinner time when I’m feeling just ready to punch the next telemarketer who calls despite being on the do-not-call list) the phone rang.  The caller was a “marketing specialist” or consultant or manager or some such thing; iUniverse seems to either have an enormous staff or massive turnover since this is the third or fourth such person to whom I have evidently been assigned.  Several incarnations ago I asked them not to call me with marketing ideas ever again.

Grace Note Cover PaperbackIf you’ve read my blog for a while, you know that my avocation is writing historical fiction – I do love that research and the need to shed everyday life to get into the head of characters from long-ago times and places.  Grace Note: In Hildegard’s Shadow was published by iUniverse a couple of years ago now.  It was selected as an Editor’s Choice book (meaning that since I’d paid to have it professionally edited and I didn’t sound like a moron it would get this stamp), and thereafter chosen as a “Rising Star” (not sure how high up the scale of non-moronic a book has to be to receive this elevation).   All of the editing etc. that was done made the book more polished and professional to be sure, but it did not come cheap.  And make no mistake, every time anyone called after that to extol the virtues of my book, they were indeed trying to sell me services.  This time it was that it is so good that it should be a movie.  Would you be interested in having it shown to Thruline Entertainment?

I told him to send me an email and hung up (I was more polite than that, but that’s the edited version of the story).

The email arrived in due course (read; immediately).  Here’s what he said in part:

I called in earlier today to inform you that your book, “Grace Note” can be adapted into a motion picture.

Hollywood Coverage: Your book has all the elements Hollywood wants — an exciting plot, well-developed characters and fresh content — yet there’s still a crucial piece you need in order to be taken seriously by established entertainment executives.

We would like to know if you’d be interested to have your books presented to our newly acquired partner, THRULINE Entertainment. THRULINE is a Hollywood production company and they are basically looking for good books to adapt into a movie.

The contract has just been sealed last August and basically we want to impress our new partner. We don’t want to provide them with a “just-an-ordinary” material. We are putting our best foot forward because we want to prolong this contract.

If you’re interested, your book just needs a Script coverage in order for us to present this to production companies and producers. That is the basic tool that they would look for instead of reading the whole book.

He then went on to tell me that the two-part script coverage would be done by a professional who has done this before etc.  What he did not tell me was the price or any reference to the fact that he wants to sell me a service, but I knew that this was precisely what was happening.  And indeed research on Thruline uncovers a company with self-described ties to the Hollywood machine that works with self-publishing companies to part authors from their money.  Well, they didn’t’ say it that way but I can read between the lines!

Of course, if your book is really adaptable as a movie, you can send it to an agent who does this kind of thing.  Options on books can and are taken from the book itself.  And doesn’t it make sense that someone who is actually interested in adapting your book might actually have to read the book?  Yes, script “coverages” are done, but really?  I actually had an earlier book optioned and learned that the vast majority of optioned books never even make it to treatment phase.

The iUniverse price for this script coverage is $859.00.

This is what I said in my response to the email:

Thanks for this.  Don‘t bother telephoning me.  I’m not paying upwards of $900 for any more service from iUniverse.  If you think the book is good enough to be sold to “Hollywood” then I think you should be willing to put up the money for a percentage on the back end.  Otherwise, we have nothing to talk about.  I’m an accomplished writer – I can do this myself.

I think it’s time iUniverse took a different tack when it comes to ‘services’ for writers.

But call he did.  This time I didn’t answer. So where does this story lead me?  Well, this morning as I checked my Twitter feed I came across a link to a blog post titled “Publishing 101 – Money” on The Passive Voice blog whose author considers whether or not the price of self-publishing is worth it.  She and I agree that it is, but it does seem to me that there is a limit to what one should reasonably spend.

Self-publishing requires an author to be a writer, editor, interior book designer, cover designer, marketer and promoter.  So is this so different from traditional publishing these days?

When an editor at a traditional publishing house tells me that he is “unable to ask [their] designers to come up with a cover completely from scratch…” it seems that the two publish models are getting closer together.

So, am I any closer to a decision about my next book’s home?  Not really.

Posted in Book publishers, Publishing, Self-Publishing

Self, main, hybrid, co-op: Publishing may be publishing but you have to follow the money

Posted on by Patricia J. Parsons

booksI’ve come to the conclusion that the single most important defining feature of each of the publishing models that I’ve personally tried, or that I’ve explored, comes down to one important question: Who is paying?

Way back when vanity publishing was that icky, underbelly of the publishing world (at least that’s how mainstream publishers and many I-wouldn’t-stoop-that-low self-described literary writers thought), the main defining feature of the genre, if you will, was the question of who pays.  And of course, as we all know, in vanity publishing the author pays.  So, if it is vain for a writer to pay for his or her work to be published, and self-publishing smacks of the same defining feature, they are one and the same – we’ve just sanitized our vocabulary for the sake of appearances.  And the truth is if you begin to protest that there is a difference: availability of editing blah blah blah, you’re really missing the point.

Good ideas, followed by good writing, followed by good editing, followed by good marketing is the formula for a really great piece of writing and getting it into the hands of readers who might appreciate it/learn from it/ be entertained by it.  There is no reason at all why this formula can’t work – and work well – regardless of who is paying.  It’s just publishing snobbery.  The problem of course remains that many indescribably bad books are published by mainstream/traditional publishing models where the manuscript is acquired by a publisher who pays for the publishing (there is no guarantee that the publisher knows a good book from a bad one, nor is there any guarantee that the editing will be done well); just as many unspeakably ghastly volumes are published by authors who are paying out of their own pockets.  The digital age with its consequent ease of publication is what has contributed to the sheer volume of bad books regardless of who is paying.  So, I got to thinking about this notion of following the money.

Last month The National Post’s Mark Medley published an article “Words from their sponsors: Can authors cash in on crowd-sourced funding sites?”[1]  In it he explores the vast new world of online crowd-sourcing for funds for a variety of projects zeroing in on writing.  I had been peripherally aware of the phenomenon – evidently even the saintly and storied Margaret Atwood has used crowd-sourced funds – but I had never really taken the time to look closely.  I think that if you are the funder, there may just be a lot of money to be made on the backs of people with hair-brained ideas who can persuade others to give them seed money.

In general, here’s how it works: you, the writer sign up for one of these funders online (indiegogo, for example), describe your project in a way that entices others to believe that it’s a project that should see the light of day, and wait for the money to flow in.  You then use the money to make it happen.  You can hire an editor (if you want), hire a book designer (if you want), hire a book publicist (if you want), and if you have enough money.  I suppose you could also offer the money to a traditional publisher to defray the cost of publication – but of course since that would be like marrying traditional publishers with the author-pays, vanity approach (there’s a word in academic publishing for that: co-publishing), you’ll probably get an icky I’d-never-touch-that-project kind of response – unless, of course, the project is fantastic and the publisher can see past the end of his or her metaphorical nose.  But there’s another kind of crowd-sourced funding publishing model that I found more fascinating.

I’m talking about the UK online funder Unbound.  Here’s how they work:

“… instead of waiting for [writers] to publish their work, Unbound allows you to listen to their ideas for what they’d like to write before they even start. If you like their idea, you can pledge to support it. If we hit the target number of supporters, the author can go ahead and start writing (if the target isn’t met you can either get your pledge refunded in full or switch your pledge to another Unbound project)…”[2]

When a selected project is funded, the writer then completes it and Unbound designs, edits and prints the book.  The funders get copies and even sometime lunch with the author.  So, the author doesn’t pay.  So it’s not vanity publishing and it’s not self-publishing.  It’s a new model.   In my view it’s an innovative idea that adds to the richness of the publishing approaches.  But does it make for better books?

In the end, I doubt very much that it is the publishing model that has much to do with the success of a book project.   It has more to do with a book that resonates with its readers that is somehow is able to connect with.   Just look at 50 Shades of Grey and its story.  When it comes to commercial success in book publishing, sometimes the writing is fantastic, and other times it’s epically flawed.

But it’s really the writer who is at the heart of it in any case.  If the author pays, what difference does it make?

Posted in Book publishers, Publishing, Self-Publishing

Are writers back in control? The electronic rights challenge

Posted on by Patricia J. Parsons

About two years ago I received an email from a former student who had stumbled upon one of my books – online.  The book was not published as an e-book.  Far from it.  In fact, when it was published in 2003, no one was even considering anything but the hold-in-your-hands, paper-between-covers kind of book.  However, it was a professional reference handbook that had continued to sell in dribs and drabs so was evidently still useful.  My student posed this question: Was I aware that it was available electronically through Questia?  I most assuredly was not.

The book I sold to a ‘traditional’ publisher after publishing the first edition myself. Then the publisher made it available on Questia without my knowledge.

I contacted the publisher (a large American textbook publisher that had since been acquired by a yet larger American textbook publisher) to try to find out how it got there, and why I wasn’t being compensated for its online use.  I got exactly nowhere.  And this is the story that came to my mind this morning as I read Simon Houpt’s article in the Globe and Mail.  He tells the story of the new e-book about (God forbid that we should need to know any more about her) Karla Homolka, accessory to brutal rape and murder a few years back.

Houpt describes the 14,000-word book Finding Karla that author and journalist Paula Todd decided to release as an e-book last week for a variety of reasons – the primary one was that since she found Homolka alive and well and living in Guadaloupe, she feared the story might be scooped by others on her trail.  Add onto this the idea that 14,000 words is more than a magazine feature and less than a “real” book and you have a writer seeking a new publishing model.  And no editor standing in front of you saying that 14,000 words are not enough.  Evidently readers beg to differ with those editors.

What’s interesting about this story is not the content of Todd’s book; rather it’s the story of how publishing models are changing.  I’ve talked about this previously, trying to figure out where all of this is heading.  But Houpt make an interestingly provocative observation of what might be happening: “…for the first time in decades, some of the power in publishing is shifting back to writers, who are trying to grab the electronic rights that publishers have been taking for granted…”[1]

It’s these electronic rights and the on-going difficulty we have with publishers who seem to think they have the right to be the sole beneficiaries of the material that we slaved over.  Of course, these days a contract is likely to contain reference to electronic usage (I await my contract from the University of Toronto Press as we speak and I’ll be looking for a fair division of rights), but it still seems that unless we take matters into our own hands, we are the last ones to be paid – rather than the first.

I still haven’t figured out what to do with things I’m working on – apart from the final revisions on the UTP manuscript.  Will I dive back into the traditional publishing model; or will I go right to Kindle?  I’m thinking about it!