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, also mentioned in A Tale of Six Publishers – Part 5.1 and Part 5.2, who failed on all the above. A British based publisher, publisher #5 wanted 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!
Part 5.1 covered the publisher
- disappearing for extended periods of time and not responding to emails, txts, or phonecalls from anyone
- wanting funding but not wanting any of the responsibilities which go with acquiring funding.
Part 5.2 covered the publisher
- wanting to get more authors on their roster but not willing to take on the responsibilities of interacting with authors who want to know things like where’s the royalties, why aren’t I published, where the hell are you and how come I can’t get any answers from anybody
- not getting back in touch with interested authors even after initial discussions are positive on both sides
This post finishes the tale of Publisher #5. Enjoy.
5. We don’t want your help marketing your book.
One thing which still eludes me is book marketing.
I understand it, recognize its necessity, and it’s not something I want to be good at because my time is best spent as an author, not as a marketer.
No problem, they said. “We published your book, we’ll market your book. We’ve already put money aside for it.”
Wow. Thanks. How much would a successful Amazon marketing campaign cost?
They showed me examples from their other titles (beware of cherry picking fallacies, folks. their measure of success was/is greatly different from mine).
Tell you what I’ll do, I’ll hire you to do everything you just showed me and walked me through. I don’t want to do it, you already know how to do it, I’ll pay you to do it. Continue doing what you would normally, and I’ll pay you something extra – you tell me how much – to put some extra time into marketing my work.
“No, we can’t do that.”
Because…?
“Because no, we can’t do that.”
I realized months later what they couldn’t do is be held accountable. Taking responsibility, as mentioned in previous publisher #5 posts, was equivalent to driving a redwood through Dracula’s heart to them.
6. We want you to tutor writers to help them improve their craft
I was thrilled and flattered. I am so craft focused (in case you never noticed) and being offered a chance to share what I’ve learned through individual, private trainings, group trainings, for-pay critique sessions, in discussions with well-known authors and big name publishers?
I’d love to do it. What are you going to charge?
“We don’t want to charge them. We want to give this to them for free. To help them.”
Umm, sorry, no. I don’t do free. I will work with people who show a sincere interest and promise at greatly reduced prices and everybody’s going to pay something. This is something I learned from many years of business: People are happy to pay for something they recognize has value. If somebody wants something, they’ll pay to get it.
“Oh, no. We couldn’t charge.”
You want me to give of my time, my experience, my education, the last two of which I’ve paid dearly for, without compensation?
Yes! Wouldn’t that be Brilliant?
NO! As mentioned previously, I realized greatly after the fact that charging, to them, meant being held accountable, and they could never allow that.
7. I want you to co-author a book with me!
Imagine a publisher who a) likes your work and publishes it (when they do publish) asking you to co-author a book with them.
I was flattered.
Especially when they told me they’d considered several others and when somebody mentioned me it was a no-brainer.
“It’s a book for people dealing with the new publishing industry.”
I came in first among others because of my background in both business and psychotherapeutics. We set up a weekly meeting schedule, each meeting lasting 1-2 hours.
Okay. What’s the title going to be? A working title is fine.
They had no idea what to call it.
Okay, tell me more about who the book’s for.
They wanted a book for writers who want to write but are intimidated, who don’t feel like they’ll ever be a success, who are afraid to share their work, who are afraid to approach a publisher, basically writers suffering from impostor syndrome.
Okay, I’ve worked with lots of people who deal with that and similar issues.
I listened to them talk about how they wanted a book to help newbie writers. We talked about our separate contributions: She’d presented author/publisher concerns, I’d offer business and therapy solutions/suggestions.
How about we call it The Author’s New Clothes?
Shebang Sheboomie! Brilliant, they said.
Okay, so far we’re talking generalities. What exactly do you want the book to cover?
Well…ummm…we’re not sure.
O…kay…let’s put together a table of contents. We can use that as a guide, give ourselves an idea of what we definitely want in versus what we definitely want out. You put together what you definitely want in there, what you definitely want out, I’ll do the same, and we can compare notes.
Brilliant , they said.
Except they never produced an outline. “We’ll just go with yours. It covers everything.”
O…..kay….. Let’s start writing and go over what we’re offering. Before co-authoring chapters, let’s each write a short foreword explaining why we’re doing this and why we’re doing it with each other.
Brilliant , they said.
Except they never came up with a foreword.
Or content.
Or a paragraph explaining “why we’re doing this.”
Oh, they had lots of things they wanted to discuss…because they suffered from numbing, crippling, paralyzing impostor syndrome themselves.
It became obvious about two months in the publisher wanted help with her own issues, and (as is often the case) not being able to face her own issues transferred them to an unknown “audience” of writers who suffered the same thing whom she could help.
Through me.
I told her I was giving her therapy sessions for free, told her we either focused on the book or she start paying me for my time, and I never heard from her again.
7. Broken promises, cancelled contracts
After my fiascos with publishers #3 and #4, and in the honeymoon days of working with publisher #5, I reached out to them asking if they’d like to handle all my books (I had two published at the time and five or six more planned for the next two years).
Brilliant , they said.
We did some planning, we signed a contract, we went back and forth about covers, about story order in my Tales Told ‘Round Celestial Campfires anthology, we did this, we did that, …
And after more than a year of silence, I decided to contact some attorneys.
That got a response, and after all the smiles and nodding heads and paperwork passed back and forth in our honeymoon days, publisher #5 backed out.
Without any explanations. When pressed, publisher #5 said promises where never made.
Funny, sure looks like they were in the email exchanges where she agreed to my requests…
And this is when I backed away completely.
Publisher #5 folded, last I heard
The anthologies they published are no longer available. I’m guessing the same is true for the books they published. I got the rights back to the one book of mine they published (thank god!) and it’s now in the quite capable hands of the last publisher in this series.
Next week, going way up north to find Publisher #6.