Part 1 of this series shared three critical issues to ask any publisher before signing with them:
- Marketing – how would the publisher get word of my book out to potential readers?
- Distribution – how would the publisher get my book into potential readers’ hands?
- Career Development – what would the publisher do to help me become a better author?
This post deals with publisher #5, another British based publisher who wanted/wants to be everybody’s friend but doesn’t want to run a business. You can be friends with your publisher and in the end you’re in business together…especially if everybody’s goal is to make money!
Start with the good: Publisher #5 accepted a fantasy piece I’d been sending around since 1987 for one of their anthologies.
(yep, I’m old, and the story, Morningsong is probably older than most people reading this post)
Not only did they accept it, they wrote back it was such a beautiful, wonderful, and moving piece of fiction they passed it around the office so everyone could give it a read.
And they wanted more. Did I have anything else? Their anthology series came out roughly every quarter, so please send what you have.
I sent The Little Flower (A Tale of the Woods). They took it.
I sent The Lonely Oak (A Tale of the Woods). They took it.
I sent Don Quitamo Sails. They took it.
I sent and sent and sent. They loved everything I sent. They invited me to become a regular contributor.
A regular venue for my work?
Well, Duh!, sure, of course, sign me up.
Publisher #5 and I began working together pre-Covid. They had a regular live pub crawl (remember, they’re UK based) meeting with their local authors every Thursdays after work. Covid hit and they decided to move the pub crawls to Zoom.
Not needing to limit attendance to local authors, they invited me to attend.
Wow, a chance to meet other authors? A chance to ask direct questions to editors and publishers re what they like, what they don’t, what works and what doesn’t?
As I wrote above, sign me up.
I loved it.
And it’s also when things began going sour.
1. Where’s the publisher/editor?
Slowly, at first only perceptible in retrospect, then increasingly obviously so, sometimes the publisher/editor didn’t attend for about a month and nobody’d heard from them.
“Has anybody heard from [the publisher/editor]?”
No one had. One of the authors who was/is also the publisher/editor’s friend offered dismissively, “Sometimes [the publisher/editor] goes dark.”
“Dark? How do you mean?”
She gets involved in other projects or her own writing.
“But the publishing schedule is slipping. Nobody’s heard anything? No phone calls? No emails? No TXTs?”
Zip, nada, zilch.
This, it turned out, was typical.
Absences ended with a vengeance. The editor/publisher’s showed up and told everyone four more volumes of the anthology were planned, two more books were being published, they were going to a con, had a table, everyone should come by, zippity doo and diddly da!
Anybody with psych or counseling training getting a red flag here?
I did!
And I also let it go because anthologies were being published, other books were being published, and (the big one) nobody seemed bothered by it. Perhaps this was standard operating procedure for them?
Again, my background haunted me. I’d worked with UK firms from London to Aberdeen to Dublin and they’d always performed…well…like businesses and regardless of size.
Okay, give it time. See if a pattern develops.
It did.
And it wasn’t very good.
Over a five year period, the shortest darkness was three months, the longest was somewhere around nine.
This was no way to run a business.
By the way and before continuing with item #2, it’s worth noting the live pub crawl, as far as I know, is dead. I and some of the other non-local authors still get together via Zoom on Thursdays. We talk publishing, writing, craft, politics, and pretty much everything you’d expect from a pub crawl, except on we do it on Zoom. Interested in taking part? Let me know and I’ll get you in.
2. We’ll fund you, and there are some requirements to the funding.
The publishing house, like any small business, periodically ran into funding issues. Bills weren’t being paid, authors weren’t getting their royalties on time, and many times they mentioned how tight things were.
They also mentioned their business partner (the web and art person) was unreliable. They didn’t update the site regularly, they didn’t respond to emails, txts, phone calls…
I was tempted to ask, “What? You don’t like it when it happens to you?”
Instead I set up a private Zoom session. “Tell me what’s going on.”
They did. Money was tight.
“Okay, Susan (wife/partner/Princess) and I are doing well. We can fund you for a eighteen months so you can grow as a business if you’d like.”
They were thrilled.
“Do you have a business plan in place? Something we can look at in case we have suggestions?”
Umm…a what?
“Do you a profit/loss record for, oh, how about the last five years?”
They did, but it was private and confidential. They couldn’t possibly share it.
Can you say “storm clouds on the horizon”?
“Okay, how much do you think you’ll need to get you through a year?”
They suggested approximately 5,000$US.
“For the year?”
Yes.
The storm clouds got closer and darker.
“We’re estimating you’ll need about 20,000$US/month.”
They had no idea what to do with that kind of money. “How about marketing, replacing the unreliable partner with employees who’ll do the job when told to do the job, a staff to take much of the low level stuff off your back, plus pay you a salary, pay your authors on time, make the publishing house your complete focus (at least until it’s self-sustaining), pay your bills regularly, you know, the things regular businesses do.”
They wanted me to take an active role. Meaning they wanted me run the business.
“No, this is your business. We don’t want a role of any kind except oversight. We’ll meet weekly to start to make sure everything’s working as it should and handle emergencies beyond your control or experience. Once we’re sure the business is going well, it’ll be monthly, then quarterly, then we’ll decide if the publishing house can make it on its own or needs another round of funding. Okay?”
Well, no, it wasn’t. They didn’t want the money under those conditions.
“As you wish,” and secretly we were relieved. It became increasingly obvious this was a major shit show in the making, and it got progressively worse as time went on.
Next week, “How do we get more authors involved?” and other flags down on the play.
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