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STATUS: Was all set to potentially launch something cool on Friday and lo and behold, ice storm in Seattle. Trust me, this makes sense because we are based in Denver but our tech person, who manages all things digital, is in Seattle. She had no electricity or internet for 3 days. Shudders.
What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? FREE by Graffiti6
Last week, the Vice President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America reached out to SFWA members about Dorchester Publishing.
Dorchester's probationary period is scheduled to end on January 31, 2012 and SFWA would like to evaluate their progress in meeting the benchmarks SFWA set for them.
By their request, members could contact them with any information that the Board should consider.
Well, let me tell you, I was happy to oblige. I wrote a letter clearly outlining my stance that that Dorchester should remain on probation or be delisted altogether based on not making any progress whatsoever on benchmark 1: That it fulfills its contractual and financial obligations to the authors it has already published, including full and accurate accounting of royalties per contract, with scheduled payment of any royalties outstanding.
Despite repeated requests for updated accountings and the thousands of dollars still owed in back royalties to NLA authors who used to be with Dorchester, we've received excuses, delays, and no good faith efforts to resolve their obligations.
And I have no problem making my sentiment on the situation public.
12 Comments on Should Dorchester Remain on Probation? Yes., last added: 1/27/2012
I can't imagine how hard and frustrating that must be for you and your clients. Knowing you can put in so much hard work, only to not get paid is the worst.
I didn't know that SFWA puts publishers on probation. I've learned something valuable today besides avoiding Dorchster.
I hadn't heard of any publisher being on probation before either. Sounds like these guys need to stay that way, for sure!
Marian Crane said, on 1/23/2012 4:52:00 PM
I've known to avoid them for a couple of years now, but it's refreshing to see an agent be so open about the reasons why Dorchester should be delisted from SFWA.
Gee, another reason why I'm looking at agency representation before I submit work directly to e-publishers. I can't be on top of every controversy, but a great agency will know far more.
The path to publishness isn't exactly covered with rose petals and scented with potpourri. There's work involved...a lot of it. It's sad that good faith was put into this company and they are refusing to reciprocate good business manners and proper recompense as they should.
I interned at Dorchester before moving over to Random House children's, so whenever I hear about all this craziness...Wow. I agree with your stance, Kristin. If tDorchester is still not fulfilling their obligations, they should remain on probation.
http://bklovin.blogspot.com/
Anonymous said, on 1/24/2012 8:18:00 AM
I'm curious how many lawsuits are pending against them, or other legal means. If I were a roofer who never got paid for a job by the homeowner, I would at a minimum file a lien against their home and possibly consider small claims court.
Are the Dorchester authors just being quiet about what they are doing, or is everyone settling for writing angry letters?
SFWA has put at least one publisher on probation before, Night Shade Books. They quickly got their act together, and the probation was dropped. Night Shade is, in my opinion, now a top rate outfit publishing some of the best fantasy around and was number 2 on my list of publishers to read in 2012. Too bad Dorchester is not responding in a like manner.
STATUS: Leaving the office at 5 p.m. That never happens!
What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? YOU AND I by Wilco
In good news, we've now gone through all our Random House statements from the spring with a fine tooth comb and I'm delighted to report that RH is not doing a wholesale change to their electronic book royalty rate on existing contracts; there was simply an error that was resolved promptly.
Contracts that have the royalty rate of 25% of retail will still have 25% of retail. Now, I have heard that they want to change any 15% of retail to 25% of net (which is actually to an author's advantage per my previous blog entry) but I have not personally seen that so as far as I'm concerned, that's simply a rumor for now.
As RH royalty statements are my fav in the biz and because they always resolve issues quickly, I'm back to happy.
8 Comments on Random House Gets A Clean Bill Of Health, last added: 8/8/2011
Yay for being back to happy! I wish there were a standard for royalty statements. It seems each publisher does it differently, which makes me tear my hair out. Thanks for keeping us informed!
With all of the disconcerting news about pub-houses changing their business models in a way that hurts the author, it's great to see one of the big houses play fair.
So gald to hear that RH is supporting the authors with their decisions. With so many of us exploring epublications it's great to have experts like you and RH ensuring we still have options!
Status: Most of today I felt like I still had BEA brain. And the Brenda Novak Auction is ending tonight!
What’s Playing on the XM or iPod right now? ROSEALIA by Better Than Ezra
Many weeks before several authors started making headlines about their choice to self-publish, my author Courtney Milan, with my blessing and support (not that she needed it!), had already made that decision. She walked away from an offer on the table from her publisher Harlequin. There were several reasons for this decision but it will come as no surprise that it mainly hinged on the electronic royalty rate that had been offered. It’s no industry secret that Harlequin is well below what has become the “industry standard.” And it’s also not a secret what I think about Publishers’ current industry standard of 25% of net.
What was secret is that Courtney didn’t announce it—until now. Today she launched this new publishing direction with a novella entitled UNLOCKED in her Turner Brothers series that began with Unveiled & Unclaimed which will release in September.
In four short days, I can already tell you two important things about this digital revolution.
1. Pricing is everything. Pricing a title appropriately will move a great number of books in a short period of time.
2. Publishers are under-reporting electronic book sales in any given period on the royalty statements we are seeing.
STATUS: Yesterday Angie and I were reviewing one client’s statement and to sum it up. What a hot mess.
What’s playing on the iPod or the XM radio right now? SWAY by Dean Martin
Love of royalty statements.
Yep, it’s that time of year again. April and October are NLA’s biggest royalty periods which means that the month of May and November are consumed by hours reviewing those statements.
So, in an effort to empower authors about their statements (because I promise you that a lot of agents don’t spend nearly the time they should on reviewing them), here’s another tidbit to file away in your knowledge bank.
If your publisher holds World rights and is selling your titles abroad, it’s important to track where the projects are sold to and when they will be released.
Why? Because if you don’t know that info, how do you know when the monies are supposed to appear on your royalty statements? Also, do you have a copy of the licensing agreement and the latest foreign royalty statement from the territory in question?
Most agents insert a clause in the contract allowing the author to receive such info—usually upon request. Without it, it’s impossible to review a statement for accuracy. What, you gonna just take the Publisher’s word for it?
Considering the number of errors we see in EVERY royalty period, that’s a lot to take on faith.
And here’s another facet to this. If Publisher has World, did they sell UK rights to separate publisher or was it done by a sister house in England? If a sister house, then UK royalties are specified in the US contract and should show on the US statement.
You don’t want to know how many times this information as just been plain missing from the statement or just wrong.
Knowledge is power and as an author, you have a right to a copy of those licensing agreements so ask for them. I would say that in the last several years, NLA has recovered well over $100,000 in missing royalties—money clients would never have received if we hadn’t pestered Publishers about info missing from the statements. In fact just last week, a client got $8000 because we argued that the wrong royalty rate was being used to calculate certain sales listed on the statement.And per the contract, we were right and they paid up. But if we hadn’t pointed it out…
Well, that’s a lot of money to leave on the table.
STATUS: Not really liking how dark it gets so early.
What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? LIGHT MY CANDLE from the Soundtrack RENT
Yesterday I highlighted the top 3 culprits regarding errors in royalty statements. So what happens if errors are found?
It’s pretty simple. We call our main contact in the royalties department. Since rarely an accounting period passes without some error being found on any one of the hundred + statements we receive, we talk to the royalty managers pretty often. First name basis actually.
We usually call first to discuss the errors and then follow up with an email so there is a paper trail. In all our instances, the royalties contact has corrected the errors promptly and regenerated the statements so we have correct ones for our files.
We make notes in the client's royalties file so we can track past issues and be on the look-out for future issues (as sometimes it's the same error that keeps reoccurring). Do I think the errors deliberate? For the big publishers, no. For some of the indie smaller publishers, it depends on the company.
Now there are definitely other things Publishers have done that haven’t been above board (as there have been lawsuits etc) that could impact royalty statements but they weren’t issues on the royalty statements themselves per se.
I would also entitle it "why you need an agent," with the childish addition of "3rd." As in 3rd comment. Someday I'll be able to throw down a "1st!".
Ben Sadler said, on 11/19/2010 9:31:00 AM
I have only been following your blog since I moved to Denver.(3 months ago)So even if you have talked about this before I find it incredibly Interesting. I agree with previous posts regardless of wither or not you have blogged on a topic before. If it is on your mind let us know. At the very least it is a reminder that the issue is still relevant.
Thanks for this, Kristin. Have you heard of authors' royalties being jerked around by Amazon? I had a free Kindle DL offer and Amazon told my publicist it generated GOBS of actual sales. The report was very specific in number of copies sold. Come royalty time, Amazon backpedaled and then wouldn't let anybody see the actual numbers. Besides mad, I was perplexed as to why this happened. Surely folks paying 9.99 for a DL aren't returning for a refund? I learned I'm not the only author in my company with this problem. Just wondered if it's common or not. Thx, Linda S. Clare The Fence My Father Built, a novel from Abingdon Press.
STATUS: It can’t be 2:30 in the afternoon already.
What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? NEVER, NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP by Barry White
One of the issues of writing a blog for so long (since 2006 for me) is that I often forget what topics I’ve covered and what I haven’t. And sure, I could scroll through some of my tags but I’m too lazy. *grin*
April/October is our biggest royalty period. It’s when we receive the most statements. So right now I have quite a pile on my desk so it’s first and foremost in my mind. And for one major publisher, their October statements always come the first week in November.
So after reviewing the umpteenth one today, whether I’ve already discussed this or not, I wanted to highlight the top 3 culprits regarding errors in royalty statements that I’m seeing:
1. Returns at a price point that didn’t exist with the original published edition. If a book was published for let’s say $13.99, then returns have to be at $13.99. Any other number is a clear error.
2. The wrong percentage recorded for electronic books This can happen in a variety of ways. Perhaps the royalty is supposed to be on retail price and it’s showing on net or it’s just the wrong percentage altogether.
3. A royalty escalator has kicked in but the statements don’t reflect it. In deals, there are often royalty escalators at certain break points. For example, for an adult hardcover, a standard is 10% to 5000, 12.5% to 10,000 and 15% thereafter. The royalty statement might have an error putting all copies at 10% but let’s say 6000 copies have sold so 1000 of those copies should be at the 12.5% level.
Publishers have heard of computers, right? This really shouldn't happen, especially the last two examples you cite.
I work in IT software development, and I can tell you that it isn't that hard to set rules to automatically assign a particular value once a certain quantity is reached. All they have to do is set it up once, and each time they run the statement, it will go into the database and count the quantity sold, subtract the returns, and apply the royalty amount based on the rule you showed.
This isn't hard stuff, and I'm not even a programmer. Why do they have so many errors? If my company delivered software that had frequent, basic errors, we'd be out of business in a flash.
Anonymous said, on 11/17/2010 2:01:00 PM
@Anonymous: Some of the pay databases used are as old as I am.
Technology is getting to a point where companies have to either abandon their old systems or build their own software to continue interfacing with their older systems. I have seen a publisher go the latter route (black screen, green text, Jobs in a garage kind of old).
I can imagine how it's hard to keep track. But, even if it's something you've mentioned before, it's good to read about it a second time.
Just curious: Have you blogged about internships within literary agencies? I haven't found any on your site. I haven't really found much about it on any agent's blog, actually.
(And I'd love to intern somewhere. This is why I'm curious. But, I don't really know where to begin.)
Maybe it would make a good topic? :-) *fingers crossed*
Even if software is automated with rules, it's still subject to human error, which is the root cause of 50% of IT problems. A user must still go in and define the initial rules based on the contract. If someone was in a hurry and left off the 12.5% and 15% rules, then the software doesn't know that things are anything but the 10%. And yes - each entry in the database would have to be manually configured, since each contract may be different.
I agree with Catherine - since the terms are different for each contract, someone has to enter them for each contract. This also means that bugs in the software are harder to catch - because they will only appear in certain circumstances for certain contracts. That said, I suspect I could write a better system!
Wordver: wenemi (1. Enemy as defined by tiny adorable things. 2. Slang for "when am I". For example, "wenemi gonna finish dis freakin novel?")
So what do you do when you see these errors? And is this something that most agents look for?
Anonymous said, on 11/18/2010 12:13:00 AM
Q: Aren't some of these "mistakes" made accidentally on purpose? (like @ the grocery chain where you don't get the sale price cuz it's not scanned in).
I've heard they tend to make these "mistakes" in the publisher's favor and then hope the writer is too "creative" or clueless to notice. Glad some agents like you pay attention to the important details.
It seems like the software, in this case, should be written with default values in mind. If 10, 12.5, and 15 percent are the default percentages at those breakpoints, and it's actually unusual to vary from those norms, then the software should default to having those values set. It would cut down on the number of errors, but not eliminate them. The next step would be to improve their process to highlight portions of a new entry that vary from the norm (e.g. different percentages or breakpoints).
STATUS: So excited! Leaving the office before 6! However, I’m just going to take Chutney for a walk and then continue working tonight as I need to read client material.
What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? POCKET FULLOF SUNSHINE by Natasha Bedingfield
Today I was reviewing a royalty statement from a book that had been recently released. In other words, this was the first statement for the title that we had seen.
In looking at the statement, I noticed that there wasn’t a single electronic book sold in the six-month accounting period this statement encompassed.
Red flag! And you don’t even have to be a rocket scientist (or a literary agent for that matter!) to be able to look at the statement and realize that if an electronic book is available but sales are not showing on the statement, something has gone awry.
Now in this instant, the problem was easily solved. The book released right at the end of the six-month accounting period (so in late December) and the ebook didn’t release until 2 weeks later (in January) so there was no way for ebooks to show on this statement. Problem solved.
However, I bring this up because I’ve seen this issue on other statements and the above situation was not the issue.
The issue ended up being this: the ebook ISBN was not tied to the print title of the book and thus the publishing house royalty system was recording ebook sales with that ISBN but it wasn’t linked to anything. There was no way for the computer to know what author to attach it to.
The only way the problem was solved was by me ringing up the editor to get the ISBNs for the ebooks and then ringing up the royalty department to say, look, there’s an issue here. You need to tie these ISBNs to the statement for these titles. Then have the publishing house regenerate the royalty statements.
So even though you trust your agent, it’s still good idea to read your royalty statements and see if they make sense. Lots of royalty statements can come in certain months (like April/October) and heck, everyone is human and something could be accidentally overlooked. Be your own best advocate.
11 Comments on Ebook Royalty Glitch, last added: 5/14/2010
Wow, thanks for sharing. It's scary to think about what happens to all that money if no one ever connects the dots... good thing you know about all of this, though!
The challenge is the dual-nature of product families. They're an obvious means of tracking workload/workflow and are used for that purpose, not just tracking various platforms used to distribute a book.
In the past, product families generally kept to themselves. Book people worked on books. Media people worked on media and never would the two cross. Now it's become a Venn diagram and we have to cope with seeing irrelevant (to us) records in our product families. Why are all these dead tree things clogging up my orderly 1s and 0s books?
So what happened? We changed the product families! Get those dead trees out of there. They're confusing the computers, they're confusing the workers. Keep to your side of the pool! (How many analogies can I mix in here?) Of course, this completely defeated the purpose of having a product family and we grudgingly accepted this new change in thinking.
Still, this is a new process for the industry and we make mistakes. ...often.
Some of the ebook distributors are slow about reporting numbers and paying royalties. Several of my publishers have complained about Fictionwise, and it's only gotten worse since B&N bought them out.
STATUS: Remember when I said we were reading a lot? Yeah, that was before the Olympics began. Bad Kristin but I can’t tear myself away from the TV in the evenings!
What’s playing on the iPod right now? HOLDING BACK THE YEARS by Simply Red
As you know from a previous post, I’m not all that enthusiastic about this move by Publishers to switch an eBook royalty rate based on retail price to a royalty percentage based on net amount received.
As I ranted about this topic previously, my issue is the lack of transparency on the statement. It’s impossible to track actual amount received by the publisher unless you can get more detailed accounting info
So what have we been doing? Asking Publishers to included language in the agreement that contractually obligates them to provide more accounting information upon request. The only way to verify the accuracy of the Publisher’s stated amount received is to get info such as a list of customers purchasing and disseminating the electronic product, the business model used (wholesale or agency commission or maybe something not even invented yet), the actual retail price, the discount, any deductions made to establish the Amount Received figure from which the royalty calculation will be based.
And I could go on.
Notice that yet again, the onus is on the author/agent to go out of their way to request this information. It won’t necessarily or automatically be stated on the statement.
If we are having such a revolution in publishing over the electronic book, is it too much to ask that publishers have a revolution regarding the info provided on a statement? You got to change the system anyway to account for these new royalty structures. Why not make the whole reporting process more transparent. Heck, why can’t all this info be readily available online and the author can access it at anytime.
Re: your status: Ha! That's a relief to read, actually. I was a little worried that my query had gotten swallowed by cyberspace or something. But I've ignored my fair share of work to watch figure skating, so I salute you, madam.
Thank you for these posts by the way, seriously. I was totally ignorant of all these little contractual things, and now I have a better idea of what I'm (hopefully) getting into.
Knowledge regarding complex issues such as this (at least I think they're complex!) is yet another reason why agents are a necessity for an author.
Also, I'm right there with you on the Olympics thing. I rarely watch television, but it's been on every night for the last week -- and the figure skating isn't even over yet. :)
There are so many changes in the publishing industry right now- I'm glad you're doing these posts to keep us writers in the loop.
On an unrelated note, I just started Hester by Paula Reed. I'll admit that The Scarlet Letter wasn't my favorite read in high school (maybe I should pick it up again), but I'm loving Reed's book! I hope it's as good as Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet!
Man, this makes me cringe! Thanks for putting this out there and letting the world know your grief. As a writer, it really feels good to learn all this stuff up front--before you even have an agent--so you know what kind of world you're walking into.
It has been my experience that royalty statement have been complicated almost as a standard in the business. So are contracts. It would be wonderful if both were simplified and made more accessible to authors and agents.
Holy Crow. First off, good tunes as nearly always. Secondly, this is fascinating info. The only problem with more transparency is that the companies will just have to be even sneakier!
I think with transparency becoming more popular in big business, my health insurance company included, wouldn't this be important for publishers? Or do they not see the need since the author/agent is still dependent on them for distribution of books?
Jimmy Ng
Anonymous said, on 2/26/2010 5:03:00 PM
If it's too hard for the publishing house to stuff your manuscript into a SASE and drop it in their outgoing mail basket, do you really think they're going to go through all the trouble of putting accounting info on line?
Yes, it would be beneficial to writers and agents, but when have publishers ever considered the needs of writers over their own needs?
STATUS: Interestingly enough, I’ve got more film interest for one of my clients. This will be the fourth of fifth deal we’ve done in this year alone. Go film!
What’s playing on the iPod right now? HOLDING BACK THE YEARS by Simply Red
Just this month I received a royalty statement that only had the following info on it:
Total copies in print Copies printed during period Copies shipped during period Total copies paid during the reporting period [note: because royalties are based on net—not retail price—which is sometimes true for smaller independent houses) Total copies returned during the reporting period Net amount earned during period.
That’s it. That’s all that is on the statement.
So right off, we have some legwork we are going to have to do in order to review this statement. Lots of info missing.
Not to mention, I’m going to have to create a whole separate excel spreadsheet so I can track earn-out. On this royalty statement, the advance paid isn’t listed. So it’s going to be up to the agency to track it so we know when the title has earned out because that info isn’t on the statement.
Also a problem? All sales are lumped together in “total copies paid during the reporting period.” That means there is no break-down of format (as in hardcover, trade paperback, electronic). We didn’t grant translation, audio, or other rights so that won’t be an issue (as we’ll sell separately) but I want to know how many of those sales are eBooks. This statement won’t remotely tell me that. And let’s not even get started about high discount, special sales, export, etc.
Do you see what else is missing? No mention of reserves held. Now maybe this publisher isn’t holding any but I won’t know that unless I ask. Some publishers do hold a reserve but don’t list that info on the statement. If that’s the case, we’ll have to make a note to always ask separately.
And the list goes on. For me, less is not more.
7 Comments on Nuts & Bolts: Royalty Statements: Lack Of Detail, last added: 10/22/2009
It's fun to see how publishing as a whole is similar to most other industries. There are companies that excel, and are always ahead of the ball and reliable. Most of the business follow similar, basic procedure. And then there are the few organizations that make your job much more difficult with questionable practices and reporting.
Good luck with deciphering and breaking down that statement!
Glad to see that lack of detail on a statement is something that even authors with agents have to deal with from time to time...
Nicole Chardenet said, on 10/21/2009 8:09:00 AM
One wonders if, while the publishing biz struggles to remodel and reinvent itself to compete in the 21st century, if they can't also address how ridiculously complicated and time-consuming paying an author royalties is.
I've never understood my statements. Every time I get one I stare at in until I need an aspirin then file it away in a box. I like to think of them like cryogenically preserved bodies waiting for the day when I know how to bring life to them. Until then... pass the aspirin.
I suppose I could understand if the writer and agent didn't have a great relationship to begin with, and in that case, perhaps a change might be beneficial. Short of that, it just seems rude to bail on someone like that. Maybe it's because I'm a good midwestern girl too, but unless someone has really wronged you, or you've given them a chance to do their best and they've obviously slacked off, it's just not nice to do that. I'm sure some would say 'nice, schmice' when they're worried about their careers, but does it really do them that much good to switch to another agent when the market is to blame? Seems like it could cause word to get around that they're fickle or difficult to work with, which would only make it harder to advance. Sigh. Some people just don't think ahead very well...
By the way, been reading the blog for a while now, and finally bothered to get an account so I could post :-) Thanks for all the info, especially nuts and bolts things like royalty statements, which no one explains. If I am eventually published, I feel like I'll have a much firmer grasp on this sort of stuff!
STATUS: Mondays are usual frantic but today was quiet. I’ll take it. I’ve got two submissions that need to go out by Friday.
What’s playing on the iPod right now? THE CHAIN by Fleetwood Mac
I began with Random House’s statement because it has a lot of detail, but even RH doesn’t have sales by accounts on their statements.
So what is that? It’s the breakdown of sales for your book via the different accounts such as Barnes & Noble, Borders, Amazon, Indies, book fairs (such as Scholastic) etc.
And the answer is no, royalty statements do not contain that information. However, I’ve certainly requested that information when tracking sales for a certain titles. Editors have also volunteered giving that information when a title is doing particular well and we want to chart where the majority of the sales are coming from. Or, equally important, getting on an account who hasn’t bought in for a title—especially when that book is doing well and it’s in their best interest to carry the title.
As hard as it is to believe (especially looking back now), it took Hyperion more than a year to get Borders to seriously buy-in Ally Carter’s YA novel I’d Tell You I Love You But Then I’d Have To Kill You. I know, in retrospect, seems pretty short-sighted of them to take so long. But Borders only had so much room for new YA titles and so Hyperion had to hound them about how good the sales numbers were to make them pay attention to this debut title.
Obviously now they are staunch supporters of the Gallagher Girls series but the break-down showed us what we needed to do.
We actually also use the breakdowns to see which Independent bookstores are really supporting the series and guess where Ally went on her book tour? A very good use of the breakdowns I’d say.
3 Comments on Nuts & Bolts: Royalty Statements: Sales By Accounts, last added: 10/20/2009
Why don't the publishers offer this type of information up front? It certainly must be in their accounting database. Seems to be more secretive than necessary, especially since it affects your accounting to the client, right?
As a database programmer I agree with the above statement. I'm sure they have the information. I guess it's getting them to share it that's the hard part.
I'm sure when we go to e-Statements that we will see all that information more readily available.
That type of breakdown requires one more page for them to print and mail, and it also might cost them TIME because more agents will start bugging them with why aren't we in Borders questions.
What’s playing on the iPod right now? POOR UNFORTUNATE SOULS by Little Mermaid soundtrack.
When talking about royalty statement, first off you need to know that not all statements from different houses are created equal.
Today I’m going to begin by talking about the Random House Statements. They are my favorite. The statements are at least four pages long (sometimes longer depending on formats sold) and always contain all the information I need to evaluate if the statement is accurate.
Now this is not to suggest that every other publishing house has terrible statements. That’s not true. They just sometimes don’t contain all the info needed and then we have to request the extra info we need. All the houses, in general, are great at giving you the reconciliation to print info on request—but you have to request it. With RH, it’s all there.
Love that. (Tomorrow I’ll explain reconciliation to print, what it means, and why it’s important to have it when evaluating the accuracy of royalty statements.)
But for now, back to the Random House statement.
Page 1: For RH, this is the royalty summary sheet and also highlights the ending royalty period. Then the page looks something like this (depending on what rights were sold to the publisher and how many formats have been exploited—by format I mean hardcover, paperback, audio etc.)
There would be four columns for the formats listed: Current Copies, Current Earnings, Cumulative Copies, Cumulative Earnings
Hardcover Trade paperback Mass market Audio Electronic book
Then of course the above columns would be filled with numbers. The rest of the remaining sheets in the statement are to show detail for this summary sheet so you can see sales broken down by the individual ISBN numbers for the various formats.
So the next page or pages will have six columns: Market, Royalty Rate or external market, royalty per Unit or net receipts, current copies, cumulative copies, cumulative earnings.
Then of course all these columns would be filled it with numbers.
But the next page is my favorite at RH—the Print Summary (this is all the reconciliation to print info that’s so necessary to review statements). Three columns for all this info.
Description, Current Copies, Cumulative Copies
Shipments Returns Reserves released Reserves held No Charge
Total reportable sales
Printings Returns to stock Scrapped from stock Adjustments Internal Summarization Inventory
Total Shipments
Then we have the Sales Summary by Market with four columns:
Market, Gross Copies, Return copies, Net copies US Canada Export Spcl disct No Charge Total
Then we have Rate of Movement by Month with three columns
Month, Shipments, Returns Oct Nov Dec Jan
As agents, we stay on top of print runs done, how many copies in print, what is Bookscan reporting. Does the info we have match up to what the statement is telling us? If not, we are going to have a lot of questions.
In order to grab the columns, I was looking at a statement where only North American rights were sold to the publisher. (In other words, translation was not given to the publisher and the agency kept them to sell separately.) If the publisher has World rights, then that detail will also show on the royalty statement.
That’s all I’ve got time for today. More tomorrow!
7 Comments on Nuts & Bolts: Royalty Statements: A Look At Random House, last added: 10/16/2009
My first book will be out next month and I guess at points in the future I will eventually get a royalty statement. Now, I will have an idea of what to look for and what to expect and what questions to ask.
From the honest publishers' perspective, there's a very good reason to shorten statements, and simplify them.
Many (definitely NOT all and certainly present company is excepted) authors and agents are not mathematically inclined. The more information those poor souls get, the more opportunities they have to get confused.
This can cause truly astonishing amounts of work as the royalty accountants or editors have to try to figure out, first, if this is a good question, or if the other person is truly clueless, then, where the other person went wrong, and hardest of all, how to explain the situation so that they "get" it. This last can take many tries and a lot of time. And aspirin, coffee or alcohol.
Wow! I love your attention to detail in going over those statements. I would find them interesting and would probably analyze them to death, but I can also see where it would be good to have an experienced agent to interpret them and to spot errors. I'm loving your blog!(And I am now stuck on POOR UNFORTUNATE SOULS.)
I hate to ask the obvious, but do authors also get a copy of the royalty statement from the publishing house? And do they have any responsibilities concerning these statements? Should they be doing anything with these numbers?
STATUS: Cross-eyed from reviewing statements all day.
What’s playing on the iPod right now? OUT OF AFRICA by John Barry
So I have to admit that it’s been a while since I did some nuts and bolts type blog entries. Personally, I find them a little tedious as I LIVE the nuts and bolts of publishing every day. But I don’t want to forget that a good majority of my blog readers have not been published yet and may actually be endlessly fascinated by some nuts and bolts blog entries.
Either that or I’ll bore y’all to tears. Both are equally possible.
Since I’ve been yammering away about royalty statements all week, let’s dig in to this topic. I’ll have to start off a little light because it’s just now occurring to me that this might make a couple of interesting posts and I’m typing this from home (rather than from work where I would actually be looking at a royalty statement).
Obviously I can’t share specifics about any given statement (as that is client confidential) but I can certainly tell you about what is generally on royalty statements (or is missing) and what information agents end up digging for.
So flex your fingers and kick off your shoes; we are diving back into some Agenting 101 entries that I’ll need to bookmark on the sidebar.
Because it’s a little late in the day (and I really need to finish up a client manuscript read), let’s start with something simple.
The accounting period.
This is a lovely and archaic system that publishing houses have in place despite all our digital technology. I imagine that at one time, this sort of accounting period made sense. In today’s world, it’s a relic and I wish it was like a dinosaur and would become extinct.
The traditional NYC Publishing houses do reporting in 6-month increments. For ease of explaining, imagine a royalty period that begins January 1, 2009 and ends on June 30, 2009.
Six months.
Then the publishing houses, and this cracks me up, get four months (oh you read that right—4 months) to generate and mail that royalty statement (with a check if monies are owed). Why four months is necessary in this day and age is rather a mystery. Or maybe not a mystery. Publishing houses want to hold on to your money for as long as possible. (As an aside, I love Holt Uncensored and Pat Holt’s idea of revolutionizing the royalty system by making online royalty accounting available for authors). Brilliant—but then there would be no reason for taking four months to mail you the statements.
But I digress. So if you have a royalty accounting period that ends on June 30, 2009, the author is going to have a royalty reporting period of April/October (October for the June-ending statement and April for the December-ending statement).
All information on the statement will be for sales (in all formats) from that six-month period. So when you get the statement, you're already months behind in knowing current numbers.
Got that?
23 Comments on Nuts & Bolts: Royalty Statements: Accounting Periods, last added: 10/12/2009
The 4 months aren't because they need the time to create the statements, although there are complexities there, that you might not know about.
The time is because bookstores take 90 to 120 days to pay, in good times, and more in bad. So the 4 months means that the company is just getting paid for the sales made at the end of the royalty period.
And electronic systems or no, given the wide ranging royalty provisions in author contracts, the ancillary accounting that needs to be done (indexing payments, comp copies and other inventory numbers hunted up, and so on and on) and the truly bizarro things that can happen with payments of subrights, special sales, and so forth, it is still a real PITA to do royalty statements.
And there's another reason why it can take a while to crunch those numbers: humans who know the books and the sales have to sign off on each one. Computers have no sense of whether something is reasonable or not, they'll happily fly right past some really odd things.
Traditional publishers should wake up to the fact that they could probably publish many wannabes for nothing. That is no advance and no royalties--just a name on the cover. And agents could charge those same authors to represent them, and they'd pay, and everyone would be happy. You can do anything you want to wannabes.
Such is the plight of a worm with bird dreams.
Anonymous said, on 10/8/2009 9:21:00 PM
The key sentence in the above is "sales at the end of the royalty period" take time to come in.
Money flows to a business all year, it's not like you have to pay the author with the money from their particular sales.
It's natural for a company to want to put off paying its creditors until its debtors have paid up (but most can't do that completely) and yes, the various weirdnesses of publishing contracts must be complex to track and account for but I'm pretty sure that the publishing houses are paying all their other creditors on a more regular basis throughout the year or they wouldn't be in business. Why should authors be at the bottom of the creditor list? Especially when most of the money, for the period will have been collected and the royalty amount is only a small percentage of what the publisher earns from the book.
Six months plus four months probably made sense when reporting was all done manually and you had to wait for the booksellers to send information and collate everything but you'd think with computers and barcodes and all these things, you could at least get quarterly reporting happening. More work for the publishing company though which might be a large portion of the reason besides them not being able to hang onto cash as long.
As long as bookstores have the option of returning books, I can see a reason for publishing companies to want to delay. That is probably better for the author. That means that if the author gets paid, he gets to keep the money. For the books BookSurge prints, they don't accept returns, so they provide online statements showing each book sold and hold much the publisher will receive on each. The money doesn't show up for about a month, but that has more to do with reducing the number of transactions than anything else.
Anonymous said, on 10/9/2009 7:50:00 AM
I'm looking forward to my very first royalty statement this month. Will it show a breakdown of sales? Like, X with Barnes & Noble, Y with Independents, Q with libraries? I'm just really curious about what you can learn from these statements. I hope I'm not overanticipating. :D
Anonymous said, on 10/9/2009 9:12:00 AM
Anonymous, I've been told that some publishers *cough*Random House*cough* give that breakdown, but most like mine do not.
i sent a submission of the first 30 pages to kristin nelson but i included the summary of my book even thou she said not to :S just got confused bc she asked for the original query letter and tht included the summary :/ did i ruin my chances?
And then there's e-publishers and zero inventory print publishers. Most do at least quarterly statements/payments. Some did monthly, but unless they are also the vendors that is getting more and more difficult!
Online vendors/distributors have sorta/kinda merged. This should make it simpler, right? Nope.
First the publisher has to get the information. What sold? The bigger the distributor/vendor the longer it takes to find out particularly for small publishers.
And payment? Depends. Electronic payments may not include statement. Check payments may just include something like ebooks. Huh? which ones? how many?
Sometimes the payment comes first, sometimes later. If we are lucky it all comes in before we are scheduled to send out royalty statements and payment to the authors.
Then there's the list versus net stuff. I've stubbornly held to list as basis but that has meant passing up some venues that would have ended up our losing on every sale.
Anon, I haven't looked at Kristin's guidelines in awhile, but I believe what she doesn't like/want is a synopsis. That's the 2-5 page description of your book that includes the beginning, middle and end.
Your query letter should always have a "summary", as in, 2-3 paragraphs that tease the book and tell us what its about. It intrigues the agent and makes them want to read more. If your query gives away the ending, you need to rewrite it.
There is a publisher out there (harper collins, i think?) that is experimenting with what you're talking about-- a no advance publication deal.
There are several key issues with the idea that traditional publishers should go to a no-advance method. The way you describe it the author would pay an agent to be their agent upfront-- which right off the bat would cuase A LOT Of issues, because it opens it up WIDE for scammers to collect money, claim to sub books, and get rich doing nothing. It's ALREADY a problem and every single advice book out there tells writers to NEVER PAY A DIME. So imagine if that was the business model and writers were supposed to pay upfront.
Secondly, bookstores only have so much shelf space. Every year, a huge percentage of novels are skipped by the chains. In my debut author group (YA and MG writers) I'd say about half were skipped in one chain and 1/4 of them were not picked up by EITHER.
Flood the market iwth more books, and you're going to see that percentage increase. The publisehrs and teh authors don't win if no one can get the books into stores becuase there's simply too many of them. Chains are selective.
Lastly, the advance is only a small part of the publisher's investment. They have to pay the editors, the cover designers, the copy editor, the typesetter, etc. Then they have to pay to print ARCs and pay a publicist to push them. Then the cost of printing the books, shipping them out--and if it doesn't sell, shipping them back--etc.
it doesn't matter what they pay you, they've still got a substantial monetary investment.
So while your theory sounds nice from an author's perspective, I'm not sure it would work very well.
Mandy Prada & Prejudice (YA) www.mandyhubbard.com
Anonymous said, on 10/9/2009 3:46:00 PM
Gordon, if all you want it to have a printed book with your name on it, there are plenty of ways to do that. And if all you want is for "someone to read it", then hand it to your mother, or to your best friend, or post it on a website. As a published author, I want people to BUY my books; I don't actually care any more whether they read them or not. The publisher also doesn't really, in its heart of corporate hearts, care whether people read the book, only whether they BUY it. BTW, traditional publishers already KNOW wannabes would do it for free.
Um, as for paying when it's due, may I remind you that the vast majority of all royalties ever owed on a trade book are paid as an advance--before any sales are made, and any royalties are due.
For those who think authors are badly treated, I suggest you look further into the economics of publishing fiction or trade non-fiction. Look at the the discounts they have to give, and the typical expenses of launching a mid- to lower-level trade book, let alone a big one. You might be surprised at what's happening behind the curtain.
Anonymous said, on 10/10/2009 10:35:00 AM
If it makes you feel better, they pull that kind of crap with their employees too. Not my current house, but my previous house started holding our yearly performance bonuses from January to the end of March because people were complaining that they weren't receiving their reviews before they got their checks. This three month grace period was to allow managers to hold these reviews more promptly. Never mind that the managers had to turn in their final review and bonus tally in September, so whether you had your review in January or April made no never mind. They back-dated the bonus based on monies that included the three month delay, creating an illusion of generosity when really, they got to pocket the interest for those three months without actually improving anything for the employees.
My last year with the company, and one of the reasons I left, the formula they used for the backdating was flawed and they embezzled half a million dollars from their employees.
Wouldn't the book industry benefit greatly from a royalties-per-use model? It seems ridiculous that a publisher/author would only get paid once when the book is sold. After that, it gets sold again and again by used book vendors and the author never sees a dime of that. Netflix has worked with movie production houses to work on this model and it allows an author to get paid more fairly.
I bring this up because I work for a book rental company - BookSwim.com and on top of that am an author (while not a very good one). Currently we purchase our inventory once them rent it over and over again without having to pay the authors or publishers anything. To be honest, while this works in our favor in the long-run, we have been seeking publishers that are willing to work on a rev-share model.
To bring this back to relevance - What is great about such platforms is that they require a huge amount of tech integration and 100% clarity. Unlike book stores where inventory can be returned, must be audited, etc, with a rev-share model you get instant access to "uses" numbers that can easily be calculated into revenue.
STATUS: Halloween is going to be here before we know it. I’m not sure I’m ready for it to be the holiday season soon.
What’s playing on the iPod right now? UNDER PRESSURE by Queen (with David Bowie)
Or to quote Malcolm Gladwell, we may have reached the tipping point. As I mentioned earlier this week, October is a big royalty statement month here at the agency. All the publishing houses have different royalty reporting periods but the good majority of statements come in February/August, and April/October. In the last week, we’ve received a ton of statements.
And it’s always a happy time because with statements comes money.
But that’s beside the point. What I wanted to highlight tonight was that I’m reading a ton of statements from different houses, different authors, and different genres.
I’m noticing one big change. The amount of eBooks being sold in any given accounting period has risen dramatically.
I’ve been watching this for years. Four years ago, any author that sold more than 50 books in the electronic form (in one accounting period) was blowing it away and mostly I’d only see high numbers from our SF&F authors.
Now I’m looking at titles selling 500 to 1000 copies (and certainly sometimes more) in electronic form regardless of the genre. Even this time last year the numbers were not running nearly this high.
The tectonic shift is happening and it’s all clearly spelled out on paper—although one has to wonder how long those paper statements will last…
26 Comments on Tectonic Shift, last added: 10/9/2009
I'm unpublished in the traditional sense and have sold over 400 novels in the last two months on Amazon Kindle without any website, blog, or marketing strategy, etc., without really trying.
Interesting times (in the Chinese curse sense). I think e-book piracy is really going to be the new big publishing problem.
When considering a book in my publishing house eBook potential is beginning to play a major role in our decisions. I imagine the Irish market is a few years behind the US and even the UK, (we are only now experimenting with eBooks) but anything due in 2011 is now being discussed with smaller print runs and eBook development in mind.
I bought a Kindle almost as soon as they came on the market (Of course, I was two months on a waiting list to get it.). Now, when I talk about Kindle readers, people think I'm selling them, but I'm not, I'm just totally sold on them.
You have to understand the consumer forces at work:
1. The books are cheaper. 2. Every book, just about, is available to you while your in the bathtub--no bookstore can do that. 3. It's physically easier to read a text-based book on a kindle than from any other kind of binding.
So much so is this the case that the hardback book I bought and paid for by Megan Crewe (Give up the Ghost) I have stopped reading because it's just too much of a hastle to read compared to reading a book off the Kindle. If her book comes out on Kindle, I'll probably buy it again in Kindle format and read it then. That is the power of Kindle over books.
Right now, I have four self-published/independent published samples of ghost story novels on my Kindle that I want to look at. If one keeps me interested through the sample, I'll download and pay for the book. They're all selling for less than four bucks.
Barnes and Noble isn't carrying those books! I couldn't get them any other way. Oh, B&N has the latest James Patterson/ghostwriter corporate-produced novel. But Kindle is where the potential literature is.
There are over 300,000 titles on Kindle. No bookstore carries that many different titles. Stephen King has written a novela called UR that is only available on Kindle.
There are other e-readers coming onto the market, but they don't have amazon's bookstore power behind them. Nonetheless, I welcome them if they can do something worthwhile, and I'll check them out. But unless they're using the e-ink screen technology, forget it.
Cheaper publishing. No returns. Cheaper books to the consumer. Easier buying. Easier storage. Easier reading. Almost no environmental impact. More privacy. I can carry thousands of books. More selection. A chance to sample before buying. I can search for titles like this:
Fiction--Horror--Ghosts (800 titles)--list by publication date (access to the most recent works in the world)
Try doing that in a bookstore.
And to authors: You don't have to die with the world never even getting a chance to read what you wrote. Self-publishing to Kindle is free. No printing costs; no distribution costs. 65% to Amazon 35% wired to your bank account for each book sold.
One day, they'll drop the price of a kindle from $299 to who knows, $50. Then everyone will have one. I bought mine when they were $399, and I had to wait two months to get it.
Think about what that means in terms of consumer demand.
Oh, and don't be surprised if you don't see them everywhere around. Only readers are buying them. Most people aren't readers. But then, only readers are buying books.
Based on what Kristin has posted and the author above this post who published to Kindle, I am going to get Caretakers of Eternity ready for publication to Kindle.
I was and still am an independent publisher (though I've been inactive for a while), so I know what needs to be done. I have a publisher's account with Kindle, and I understand how to work with DTP (the Digital Text Platform they use).
So, maybe my next novel will find an agent and a traditional publisher, but this one is going to Kindle. I'm going to use it to learn the ropes.
Maybe the more important skill for an author in the future will not be how to smooch pasty buttockes, and network using their own money to travel, but rather how to format a book using DTP. Maybe in the future readers will have access to quality literature again. Maybe, there will be a million-dollar prize one day that rivals the Nobel Prize or Pulitzer prize, or National Book Award, and it will only be for e-books.
Kristin, Do you think this is a good turn of events? I'd love for you to do a post on this. (BTW: Heading to Denver today - meeting w/Bella & Karen C. for lunch tomorrow. If you can join us, call Bella.)
I am actually very excited for this ebook movement. I've been reading ebooks for about five years now. It started in college, as a way to sneak my romance novels without my studious roommates any the wiser :) Now I have a kindle and still download some ebooks to my computer. It's so nice to have these books at my fingertips at all times.
What concerns me are sites like scribd.com, where entire books are available for the public to read for free. I don't understand how that site is allowed to operate, with such blatant disregard for copyright laws. Yesterday I was searching for reviews on The Book Thief. I've heard great things about the book, but still haven't read it. Well, google had a link to srcibd.com, where the whole book was available to read! I ran off to Amazon and bought the book, because I felt a little tainted for even opening the site with the pirated version :)
My big question about this new turn of events is are these new ebook sales a gain for the author, or simply the same people who would have bought the book in print now buying it electronically? Is it a trade off or a gain in readership?
Frankly, I don't really care how people read my books, so long as they read (and pay) for them :D
I'm a voracious reader with a small library started in my home. However, I'm quickly running out of space. Last year I bought a kindle and LOVE it. Most of the books I buy now are ebooks. This is for several reasons:
1) I don't have to worry about where to store another physical book
2) I can order it from anywhere, at anytime, and start reading immediately
3) I can carry around over a hundred books on my kindle without pulling any muscles in my back due to excessive weight
4) It's better on the environment
With that said, there are some books I purchased originally as e-books but after reading them, I bought a hard copy as well. This tends to happen with non-fiction books in which I want to be able to quickly browse through a book to find a specific section or two. That's not easy to do on the kindle. Plus I find hard copies better if you want to grab something and look up a reference quickly.
I realize there's still a lot around e-books that needs to be finalized, but I do believe that it will become a strong presence in publishing in the coming years.
I think the comparison people make to the music industry is a valid one. They tried to fight the on-line availability of music for years before finally working out the legalities and accepting this new avenue.
Will piracy be an issue? Of course. Certain types of people will steal whether it's a paperback, e-book, or audio CD. The movie industry still has cases of illegal copies. It will never go away. It's simply a matter of formalizing acceptable laws and doing your best to enforce them.
I guess I straddle this fence. I am e-published through Samhain Publishing, and sold over 400 copies of my latest release in the first month alone.
eBooks have many, many advantages. As for me, I will continue to strive for print. I love will always have a love affair with print, though, especially the two I have with my name on them. ^_^ There's nothing like the smell of a new book, the feel of the pages, the weight of it in my hands.
So, I'll still publish with Samhain as long as they'll have me, but I am still on the agent hunt for a print house to settle into as well.
I've been reading these comments with great interest. I've self-released three books (two novels and a collection of humorous essays) on Kindle and it's been a wild and joyful ride. The experience has exceeded my expectations in every way. The sales have been outstanding, but even better than that is the validation in the form of rave reviews, reader emails, and blog comments.
I originally went the traditional route--agented submissions with near misses, great comments from editors etc. I appreciated the efforts on my behalf, but ultimately it didn't lead to a sale. Now my work is out there getting read and entertaining people. And every month Amazon makes a deposit into my account. I can do as little or as much promotion as I want, and I can see the sales in real time. I'd still love to be published traditionally, but even if that never happens, I count myself lucky to have had this option.
If anyone is interested, my books are titled:
A SCATTERED LIFE EASILY AMUSED LIES I TOLD MY CHILDREN
I still love print books and my local bookstore and library, but I honestly think ebooks are the wave of the future.
I love holding a book to read and although I love technology I'm not so keen to read from a computer screen. I get too much of that during the day time already... but I really the time has probably come that we shift to e-books more and save trees. I just wish someone would make an e-book that looked and felt like a paperback.
I just know we can't fit another book in this house. Not that that will stop us from buying them. But I really don't want to be an old lady living with books and magazines stacked five feet high on every horizontal space.
Which is where we're heading.
I need ebooks to save us from ourselves. I don't see any other solution.
I'm one of those who is still torn about the eBook vs. traditional book.
I hardly buy books now as it is (I generally get all my reading material from the library). However I do know that the company I used to work for partnered with Sony Reader to make library books available on it. That was the major thing for me--I have to be able to get books through the library. If I like it well enough, I'll buy it :) Hubby and I have started talking about purchasing an eReader for Christmas. I suspect though he'll end up using it more than me :P
I think books will always be around in the traditional sense, but it makes me wonder--how will authors do book signings? You can't sign an eBook :P At least not yet!
I would love to hear more about this, specifically, how would an agent/publishing house view a work that has been "self-published" to the kindle. Example, Bob the Writer published a phenomenal book on the Kindle that sells 1000 copies digitally over 6 months and is well received by its reviewers. Bob, however, knows that his book is only reaching a small portion of the market because very few people have e-readers. If Bob were to send his query letter, and you loved the story, but then he told you it had already sold 1000 copies. Would you tell him sorry it's too late for this one or would you help him sell the print rights? How does Amazons self-publishing 65/35 split compare to what you could get from a traditional publishing house for digital rights? I agree with Gordon above that e-Readers may well be the future of publishing. It also seems like it could be a HUGE financial bonanza to authors well-known authors. Hopefully piracy doesn't crush the future of publishing the way it has music or movies.
I keep trying to avoid it... Who wants to read a book online? Plus plagiarism is a terrible consequence. I'm worried for us writers!
I want my book to be published in PRINT because I want to see the words on the pages and hold the book in my hands and smell the beautiful scent of fresh print as I rifle through the pages... If I wanted to see it electronically, I'd just pull it up on my computer. Yeesh.
Hear that? It's the angels singing your name. E is here to stay.
Madison, every book will eventually be e-published as well as print. You want your readers to be able to access your story the way they want to-it's all about the reader. So, while YOU may not like e, maybe the person who wants to buy your book will only BUY e. And, if you don't have it (in it's many formats), you lose a sale.
And e-readers are awesome.
Anonymous said, on 10/6/2009 3:27:00 PM
Here's a bookseller's pov, if you're looking for one:
Bookstores are certainly getting into the e-book market. Borders started retailing an e-book reader years ago, and Barnes & Noble (bn.com) entered the e-book market a couple of months ago with the largest library of available e-books in the market-- I think it was 700,000 at the beginning and they're rapidly expanding it-- which can be downloaded onto laptops, Blackberrys and iPhones-- no e-reader necessary. So they're not ignoring the shift.
And it is a shift. Ask the booksellers. Some of us are starting to think about job security for the first time in our long and hitherto delightful careers. I don't think the demand for printed books will ever entirely disappear, but I do think that it's possible we have seen the glory days of the 'book superstore.' We may be on the other side of the trajectory now, where bookstores will start to get smaller again. Print runs will be smaller, prices will go up, fewer titles will be carried in the stores while more will become special-order only, and booksellers will become even more efficient at getting your book from the warehouse to your house very quickly. Those are my predictions, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see!
Now that e-books are being sold which do not require the customer to invest in an expensive e-book reader, I think that the single greatest challenge to e-books is the threat of piracy. It will be a technology competition, essentially, but I hope (and suspect) that eventually it will become difficult enough to pirate and distribute texts that at least losses due to piracy won't be much more than current losses due to shoplifting.
I'd also love to hear the answers to Cam Snow's questions.
This is so fascinating to me, and as an aspiring author I think about how it changes my approach to marketing my work. I still want to go through the traditional route of agent to mainstream publisher. I just believe in that system for a lot of reasons, but even then the who ebook thing changes the game. How does this changes things in terms of marketing? Obviously ebook readers don't choose their book by browsing through the bookstore. What are effective ways to promote books when they're not attractively displayed on the shelf?
I haven't jumped ship to go buy an ereader. But I'm getting there. I'm waiting for the Apple device!
Get ready for the changes in publishing. Kristin was right; it's tectonic in scope.
I want to remind you all about one thing. Reading from a Kindle is not like reading from a computer or an Iphone, or anything else. It uses an e-ink technology screen (which is why they were originally hard to get a hold of). It is more like reading from paper. In fact, you have to have light to read it. It's not backlit like a computer screen.
It's more like a computerized etch-a-sketch, if you remember that particular toy.
Reading from a computer screen will never work for book length material. It has to be e-ink technology, like the Kindle or the Sony Reader. Unfortunately, the Sony Reader doesn't have access to Kindle Books.
Kindle also has a larger version of itself for use with textbooks and newspapers, but it's close to 500 dollars.
This shift is inevitable. Books, at least fiction novels, will go to e-books like Kindle. This is a moment in history similar to the invention of the printing press. You'll either be part of it from the ground floor, or you'll wish you had.
Anonymous said, on 10/6/2009 10:43:00 PM
Liesl, I agree with you 105%-- going the traditional route of agent and publisher is far and away the best way to ensure that your book is the best book that it can be before it hits the shelves, as well as the best way to develop a good relationship with your publisher and guide your career as a writer. Even with ebook technology, I don't forsee that changing at any time in the near future. Thank God for agents and editors! :-)
Gordon, I agree that many people will want that technology, and I think that's the way the entire industry is heading, but I think as far as getting the public used to the idea of an eBook, starting people off on their laptops is a great way to go. The current generation of readers needs to be sold on eBooks, and affordability and accessibility is the way to do that. The generation that is currently in primary and secondary education probably won't need to be sold on the technology as much (provided it's within their price range, which as you said above, it should be before too long.)
Thank you Meredith, and you bring up a good point. Most self-published books on Kindle that I look at through downloading a sample, are not worthy of publication. Leaving the writing aside (because I see as much crap that way in B&N as I do through self-pub) it's the quality of the publishing that makes me reject the sample.
Right now, most of the self-publishers don't know how to use the DTP system very well to format their text. I won't read a book on Kindle that isn't properly formatted and published that way.
The major publishers seem to know how to use it. And I don't know what's so hard given that Kindle puts out all the instructions for doing so, but a lot of the self-pubs have no cover image, the margins are wrong, there's no table of contents, no publishing information, no author information, that sort of thing.
To be quite honest, minor grammar issues don't bother me that much if the rest of the formatting and publishing is good.
As for the writing? You know whether it's worth reading from the first page or two of the sample. And a lot of books now, even published by the majors don't get any editorial attention to speak of. I've heard this time and again.
If one is going to self-publish, they really need to learn what it means to be an independent publisher. Most won't do that, and so agents and publishing houses will persist.
Wow I didn't know all that about the Kindle, Gordon. Thank you!
Eva: I have nothing against e-book readers or about being e-published! If that's the only way for me to be published, I will gladly do it! It's just my dream to hold my book in my hands (as I described above).
Interesting, isn't it? We want a book for the immortality it brings. Because that's what a book symbolizes, even when it sells 200 copies and the rest are returned and remaindered.
Yet the way books are published, the paper in them probably won't last a hundred years. So what about digital?
One thing is for sure: if digital goes away, the functioning of human society as we know it will have gone away, and no one's books will matter anymore at that point.
Digital requires electricity and computer technology. The only way that's going to end is if civilization ends.
Books, however, after they are remaindered, and after you die and your kids throw them all out, do tend to rot over time. And have you seen the paper most books are printed on now? I think newspaper, while thinner, is actually of higher quality.
The story is what really counts. There are good stories and bad ones. Only the good survive. Then only the the ones that can transcend generational changes really last.
You should care about the story, Megan, not about the medium in which it is published. If the story is good, it will last.
STATUS: Finished up a contract today. Oh man, that always feels so good to get the final draft out to the author to sign. Contracts are by far the most time-consuming part of an agent’s job.
What’s playing on the iPod right now? PROUD MARY by Tina Turner
As agents, we are constantly learning. Even old veterans had to learn the ins and outs of eBook royalties over the last decade.
And even still they are tricky. Every publisher has their own structure (which is a bit annoying) but there you have it. Also, there are two basic ways to pay e-royalties.
Some publishers do a straight percentage of retail price of the work (standard is 15%). But some publishers do the royalty based on net amount received. Not quite the same thing. Standard for net amount is 25%.
So you have to check the language. You might look at a contract and see 15% and think it’s all groovy. But 15% of net amount received is not the industry standard.
See what I mean?
Then there are some publishers who refuse to do “standard.” You have to know who they are and take it into consideration before granting a book. Sure, the percentage of e-royalties is miniscule compared to overall sales of a book in print formats but who knows what the future might bring so you have to at least think about it.
Some publishers allow language that if the industry e-royalty rates go up in the coming years, you can go back and re-negotiate it in the contract. I’m all about that and get it in my contracts whenever I can.
Right now, after looking at my incoming royalty statements, it’s very clear to me that the best sales for eBooks are still in SF&F. No surprise there as SF&F readers tend to be tech savvy and early adapters.
It will be very interesting to see how this sales percentage grows over the next decade when tech savvy young’uns start becoming book buyers (or so we hope they do!).
22 Comments on eBook Royalties, last added: 10/4/2008
This is why authors need agents. None of that made any sense to me. My ears (or I guess I should say, my eyes) perked up when I read SF&F, however, because the second 'F' is the genre I'm working on. That's interesting to note that eBooks are more popular for Science Fiction and Fantasy readers. I never knew that.
I'm glad I discovered your site, you're making my life so much easier. It's like one stop shopping. A Super WalMart of information. Now if you could just take care of my grocery list I'd never have to leave my computer. :) Thanks again, Kasie
Cool post. One of the main reasons I'd like to have an agent is because the line I'm targeting has a contract that I've heard is not quite up-to-date on e-book royalties. They're a huge publisher, respectable in every way, but a little slow in this area (I've heard). So an agent definitely comes in handy. I was wondering what the percentages were. Thanks!
I've been wondering about this. I buy new books exclusively as eBooks. It's been gratifying to watch the availability of books increase across genres. I think eBooks are on the brink of exploding (in a good way!) with readers built for iPhones. I'd like to see an industry platform standard, similar to mp3 for music.
This made me wonder... how many of the books you sell have ebooks made of them, and who gets to decide what format? (I have an ulterior motive; I desperately want Demon's Lexicon to come out for the Kindle...)
Hi, Kristin! Just wondering, could you give an example of language that allows renegotiation of e-royalty rates should industry standard go up? How would the clause be phrased?
To spyscribbler, I don't think agents handle contracts with EC since (as far as I know) EC doesn't pay advances, so this post probably doesn't apply to EC contracts.
While most writers don't seem to know about this (I sure didn't), there's a subset of e-books which covers tech-reference books: the subscription model.
Because technology passes by in an eye-blink, it gets real hard, real fast, to find a physical copy of a book on a retail shelf. And you don't really need the physical copy; typically you're after one fact -- one solution, one way to accomplish a particular "something."
O'Reilly, for example, calls their e-subscription library Safari. The subscription gets you access to all the books they've e-pubbed (which is all, I think, for the last maybe 10 years?).
My royalties statements from my tech books' publishers almost never see a bump in physical copies sold. But even 6-10 years later, they still bring in a little of money from e-subscriptions.
I sent the following questions to two other agents with a suggestion they comment on their blogs. So far, nothing has been said. Here they are:
This [reduced royalties on Kindle books specifically] raised a question in my mind about how you are thinking now regarding your own income effect as well as your clients' interests when Kindle books are sold for less [royalties are still based on percentage, therefore less]. Do you truly believe volume will make up the difference? Will there be diminishing returns to writers so that the quality suffers because writers withdraw their work or will it be a counter balance to the number of titles and therefore increase quality? Will writers refuse to sell their ebook rights unless royalties are lifted on ebook formats [share the wealth of the reduced overheads]? What do your crystal balls foretell?
Right, I was boggling with Spyscribbler. o_O My publisher's standard royalty rate is 35% for e-books sold through their site, and 25% for books sold through third parties like Amazon or Fictionwise. I'd turn down a 15% royalty on an e-book contract flat. If you're talking about NY publishers, though, they've always had lower royalties (although of course they make it up on volume.)
NY-only also explains why F&SF is the biggest selling e-book genre. If you count all the small presses, romance and erotica blows everyone else away. I imagine Tor's freebies have racked up some impressive numbers, but, well, they're freebies. :) Who's actually selling bazillions of e-books on the NY side?
I think I'd have to argue that the best ebook sales are probably in erotic romance. Unless you are talking about straight NY print pubs with ebook releases?
So then we'd have to say that *romance* readers are the ones who really started the trend and adapted to new technologies. Go romance!
"Sure, the percentage of e-royalties is miniscule compared to overall sales of a book in print formats but who knows what the future might bring so you have to at least think about it."
Wow, so true. And something I wouldn't have thought about. Bring it on, ebooks.
I'm talkin' out of my pea brain here, so correct me if I'm wrong.
In my experience, Net of ANYTHING, is tantamount to ZERO to the author. If possible, always negotiate for GROSS. And that's GROSS on your project, (book/whatever), considered alone. Negotiate not to mix your book/whatever in with the rest of the company's business. Why? Because, if you've negotiated for NET and the company shows an overall loss - believe me, the accountants are looking for every loss so the company can write off all it's expenses against taxes - (but your project book/whatever made money), you get NET of a loss-which is NOTHING. I think, this is how JAMES GARNER got ZERO residuals from the very successful ROCKFORD FILES. And how Forest Gump made $600 plus dollars, yet the studio showed a net loss for the year. However, If you've negotiated for your royalties to be based on GROSS and for you book/whatever to show all it's accounting, (expenses, sales, profit and loss, etc), on it's own sheet... Guess what, it's harder for the company to hide $$$ that's accrued to your book/whatever. Your project may still show a loss, hence no royalties, but the accounting is much more straight forward.
Perhaps my pea brain is toodling down an imaginary road here?
Epublishers have to pay for the cost of editing, covers, Internet infrastructure, etc., which the major publishers have already paid for for the paper books. Epublisher royalties run between 35 to 50 percent, and the big publishers give 15 percent as well as using the ebook as "in print" to hold on to the rights for the paper book forever.
Is there anything wrong with this picture?
When ebook publishers started becoming successful, the traditionally published authors screamed like virgins at an orgy because they thought epublishing would harm their careers and incomes. What a joke. By accepting 15% as "standard," they may be harming the epublished.
Anonymous said, on 10/2/2008 2:48:00 PM
LOL! If you want to know who the early adopters are, try talking with people who have been in the epub business for 10 or more years. SF&F is not where the big sales have been coming from.
Another good reason to have an agent covering you.
:)
Anonymous said, on 10/3/2008 9:03:00 AM
There's a lot of misinformation in this comment thread.
1. "Net" in this case means "net" of what the publisher receives for the sale of the book. Say cover price is $10. that's what Barnes & Noble (or Amazon, or Fictionwise, or corner drug store, etc.) gets for sale of book. But they bought it off the publisher for $5 (or less, but let's make math easy). If you are paid on cover price @ 15% royalties, you get $1.50. If you are paid in net 25%, you get $1.25. NOT as good a deal.
That's why it behooves authors NOT to sign "% of net" contracts, especially with the way distributors are pushing against publishers to get lower prices.
2. I'm with two of the biggest publishing houses in the world -- the kind with the big buildings in Manhattan -- and I've never signed a contract with 15% e book royalties. This "standard" is one I'm not familiar with. Mine are much higher (though not as high as epublishers offer -- the trade off is the advances and the tens of thousands of sales through distribution)
3. I don't know any traditionally print published authors who whined at what epublishers had accomplished. Most didn't even see it as the same business (the way a steakhouse doesn't really care if a smoothie shop opens next door), and those who did were excited about the prospect of viable epublishing. I, for one, applauded the GOOD epublishers business model and the way it helped push ebooks into the mainstream.
4. What is this rumor about Kindle royalties being lower? My kindle royalties are the exact same as my ebook royalties in ANY format. My publisher does not split hairs as to which electronic format my book is sold in.
5. The agent here is very obviously discussing HER experience with the electronic versions of the books sold by HER clients at primarily print publishers. What does she sell? Romance, sci-fi, chick lit, and YA. Of these, which has the highest ebook sales? Sci fi. Everyone knows that the *epublishers* making bank are doing so in erotica. I don't think this agent even handles erotica.
My guess is also that erotica sells far more than SF&F in the e-book arena.
Kindle royalties, depending on your contract, may be calculated on the "net" payment to the publisher (as discussed earlier). I don't know for sure, but does Amazon take out a hefty chunk for a publisher to sell via Kindle? For contracts based on "gross", there would be no difference to the author.
Was discussing the future of bookstores on a SF&F magazine forum recently. Will be interesting to see if any of those thoughts (downloadable e-books in the store while you suck down a latte in the lounge, for example) come to light.
STATUS: I can see the glass of my desktop. This is the first time in about a month that I’ve reduced the piles enough to have a clear surface. Now I’m off to do client reading like mad because I’m a little behind.
What’s playing on the iPod right now? WHEN LOVE COMES TO TOWN by U2 and B.B. King
When I first read the news, I immediately thought of Vanguard and the new imprint model Roger Cooper is exploring over there at The Perseus Books Group.
This, too, is an advance-less imprint with some big differences. Basically Vanguard focuses mostly on fiction and working with PR-savvy authors who already have an established name and fan base. Instead of an advance, Roger allocates a budget of 50 to 100k (or an agreed upon amount) for marketing and promotion and then there is a 50/50 split with the author in profits.
It’s an alternative for name authors looking for a different publishing model.
For the new HarperCollins imprint, it’s not clear where the focus will be but I hear the emphasis is on nonfiction. So far I haven’t heard mention whether the monies will be used instead on marketing/promotion as in the Vanguard model. The press release only mentioned a focus on the internet marketing and not buying-in co-op space in the stores.
So my thoughts (off the cuff and will probably evolve as I hear and read about how those first authors do with this imprint):
1. I can see this working for established authors with clear name recognition. Not sure I can see the advantage for a debut writer unless he/she has a large platform.
2. One of the biggest issues in publishing is how long it takes to publish. Since most books take 12 months to hit the shelves (and sometimes 18 or 24), this is a huge concern. I’d like to see an advantage in speed for this imprint—to forgo the advance to get books out in a timely manner (which can be a huge leg-up for nonfiction titles).
3. Connected to this is accounting periods. With this new publishing model, I’d like to see a revamping in the accounting/royalty statement period. Currently, publishers release statements twice a year and thus hold author monies/earnings for that time span. Since there is no advance paid, I’d like to see more regular royalty statements so authors do not have to wait unduly for their earnings from this imprint (as they haven’t had any other book monies to live off of in the meantime). Otherwise an author could be waiting up to a year, a year and 6 months, or whatever before seeing any return on their investment in writing/publishing the book. Since we are shifting the publishing paradigm…
4. Will there be monies allocated to marketing/promotion? Will there be a dedicated marketing person or publicist?
I’m sure tomorrow I’ll think of five other things to add here…
8 Comments on HarperCollins New Imprint, last added: 4/9/2008
The discussion I've seen so far among writers has not been very positive.
There is a lot of fear about this being either: (1) an experiment which ends up failing (2) a success for the publisher but not the author, which will prompt spreading of this business model and harm authors over the long run
Gary B. Phillips said, on 4/8/2008 6:34:00 PM
What does this mean for agents such as yourself? I understand that the author may get a 50/50 split, but how does the author's agent get paid? Do they just take their 10-20% from the 50/50 split?
karen wester newton said, on 4/8/2008 6:38:00 PM
Thanks for explaining this more thoroughly. All the blogs I saw just said "no advances and no returned books."
Marva said, on 4/8/2008 7:24:00 PM
Looks a lot like they're cutting agents out of the equation. I've also seen thoughts that the profit split is very Hollywood. That is, jimmying the books for zero profit. Hmm. So, how much does an author make? Zero. How much does an agent make? 15% of Zero.
Lorelei said, on 4/8/2008 8:29:00 PM
Years ago Robert Silverberg agreed to a similar deal. He would take a smaller advance and the publisher would allocate the money to marketing the book. He later sued and discovered that no extra money was spent on marketing his book. Someone should ask him what he thinks about this special deal for "established" authors.
Richard White said, on 4/8/2008 10:27:00 PM
As an friend of mine commented earlier: You know the publisher is getting paid up front, the editor is getting paid up front, the cover artists, the copyeditors, the marketing department.
The only one not getting paid up front in this scenario is the person actually producing the work - the author.
wplasvegas said, on 4/8/2008 11:29:00 PM
So lemme get dis straight. I fin de lan. I grow de pot. I smuggle it cross de border... den I gib it all to you for noteeng, an at de en of de bizness yeer, you gonna gib me one haf ob all de profitt you got leff?
I don teenk so.
Shez said, on 4/9/2008 3:50:00 AM
I agreed last year to a deal with no advance. Reasons were: a very tight publishing deadline (and I already had a manuscript that fit their series), it was a educational publisher with a good track record in doing things differently with what they published, the editor was a total dream to work with (big plus as I was dealing with another problematic editor at the time). What has happened since? My agent was not happy as he had no input into the contract (it was take it or leave it). The second five of the series, of which mine was one, was supposed to be published by 31 March (now they tell me they don't know the expected release date). And the promise of further opportunities to submit manuscripts has not eventuated. The thing that aggravates me the most? They haven't stuck to their original publication date. So I have to wait and wait and wait, and am now wondering if the first five bomb, maybe the second five will be cancelled. So no advance, no book, nothing. The one thing an advance does is give you money up front for what you have laboured over. Even if the book doesn't come out, you haven't completely lost. With no advance, you are relying completely on the publisher to follow through and do what they say. Huh. Never do that again.
STATUS: A new company has moved into the office suite next door and they are holding a wine & cheese party in about 10 minutes (who could resist?). I have to say I’m intrigued by the company. They work with corporations and architects to purchase art for lobbies, office decoration, etc. Sounds a bit cool I must say.
What’s playing on the iPod right now? WAR OF MAN by Neil Young
Statements come in Feb/Aug, March/Sept, April/Oct, May/Nov, June/December. We can pretty much count on at least one statement to arrive for just about every month of the year. Feb/Aug and April/Oct being the most common royalty periods.
I spent today reviewing royalty statements—which can make you cross-eyed by the end of the day as publishing houses like to cram a lot of information onto one sheet.
So what exactly does this entail?
Several steps to be exact. We have a large excel spreadsheet that tracks each project and when we can expect statements. A reminder in our Time & Chaos program also pops up with links to our cheat sheets (which is the royalty structure of a publishing contract at a glance).
If it’s a first time statement, one just needs to verify that everything is correct on the sheet. The advanced paid, the royalty structure, and whether the sales match approximately to what we have down for the initial print run and any sales numbers gathered throughout the year.
If there has been a previous statement, then we do a comparison, track the sales we have listed in our notes to what is on the statements, as well as following up to make sure that if a subsidiary right has been sold or a book club sold into, then the advance and record of that is on the statement as well. The cheat sheets are invaluable for this.
Then there are the issues that might arise and so would need conversations with the royalty department. For example, one of our statements (before the book was released) had a deduction of $2 on it so now the author owes more than the advance against royalties.
Obviously that’s not right and needs to be corrected and a new statement generated.
If there are real discrepancies, then a closer, more intense review is in order. Many agents (if they don’t have an in-house person) will work with a royalty review service that has expertise in doing a closer audit of the statements (for a percentage fee of the recoverable—which the agent pays—not the author).
And yes, incorrect royalty statements can happen frequently so an agent needs to be diligent with the record keeping about each project.
Here's the fun part of the week. Several authors have just earned out beyond their advances so they get "surprise" money in the mail and smiles all around.
8 Comments on Royalty Statement Time, last added: 4/4/2008
If I were one of your clients I wouldn't want you disclosing this kind of information. When I get money is my business, not the blogosphere's. Anyone who reads this blog can now surmise that the people on your client roster are getting paid this week. I'm just saying.
Marion Gropen said, on 4/3/2008 6:21:00 PM
Anonymous at 4:54 -- EVERYONE in publishing knows when royalties are paid, and an anyone outside it can find out in about 10 minutes of searching.
It's really not a violation of anyone's privacy. Really.
Merry Monteleone said, on 4/3/2008 6:23:00 PM
anon,
"Statements come in Feb/Aug, March/Sept, April/Oct, May/Nov, June/December"
Anyone in the blogosphere can only surmise that authors who have earned out their advance might be receiving royalties in any of the above ten months... I don't think that's too much information to disclose on a blog. No specific author or work was mentioned and no monetary amount was disclosed.
karen wester newton said, on 4/3/2008 6:25:00 PM
Kristin-- I hope you had some good cheese because I think poster #1, the ubiquitous Anonymous, just supplied the whine.
Jennifer L. Griffith said, on 4/3/2008 7:26:00 PM
"Earning out" is always good.
Congratulations to those who are in for a surprise!
Anonymous said, on 4/3/2008 8:22:00 PM
Harper Collins has just announced that one of their imprints will no longer pay any advances. They're planning on promoting these books on the internet so they won't pay for bookstores' prime shelf space, either. It's in the Wall Street Journal.
Sign of the times?
Nancy Beck said, on 4/4/2008 11:37:00 AM
Congrats to those who've earned out! :-)
Anonymous said, on 4/4/2008 2:13:00 PM
shrieking harridans. anon#1 was not rude. anon#1 has a valid point. kristin publishes her client list and hawks their wares on her webpage- as she should, as a business person with a vested interest in her clients' success- and discussing how they are paid could be considered by an invasion of their privacy. you all jumped poor, innocent anon#1 with no reason. shame on you. apologize to the nice anon, who only stated a humble, mild opinion.
if i were a douche, i'd be over to linnea's blog with impertinent questions like, 'did you get your check yet? did your advance get paid out? how much was your royalty check for?'
there is such a thing as privacy. respect it.
Deb said, on 4/4/2008 4:30:00 PM
I wish Harper Collins new venture every success. Small presses do these things all the time and get paltry sales to show for it. What makes people think they can do the same thing over and over and hope for a different result?
Twill said, on 4/5/2008 12:16:00 PM
Anonymous 1:13 -
(1) The information she gave was not specific to any one author. Therefore, it is not private in any sense. Very generic, in fact.
(2) If you are one of her authors, and think it was invading *your* privacy, then you have a right to complain. To her. Privately. If you then choose to take it public or part ways with her over this, then that is your choice, although I doubt you'd be picked up after displaying a personality disorder of this magnitude.
(3) If you are *not* one of her authors, then you have *no* right to complain about her publishing this general information. None. You see, her authors have the right to decide what's personal and private of theirs. You don't. Not one bit. Unless you are one of her authors.
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I can't imagine how hard and frustrating that must be for you and your clients. Knowing you can put in so much hard work, only to not get paid is the worst.
I didn't know that SFWA puts publishers on probation. I've learned something valuable today besides avoiding Dorchster.
I hadn't heard of any publisher being on probation before either. Sounds like these guys need to stay that way, for sure!
I've known to avoid them for a couple of years now, but it's refreshing to see an agent be so open about the reasons why Dorchester should be delisted from SFWA.
Gee, another reason why I'm looking at agency representation before I submit work directly to e-publishers. I can't be on top of every controversy, but a great agency will know far more.
Thanks for voicing your concerns, Kristin.
At what point can/will anyone take Dorchester to court?
The path to publishness isn't exactly covered with rose petals and scented with potpourri. There's work involved...a lot of it. It's sad that good faith was put into this company and they are refusing to reciprocate good business manners and proper recompense as they should.
Pretty serious stuff there. Thanks for the warning, Kristin.
I would NOT like to be one of those authors not getting paid properly right now...
I interned at Dorchester before moving over to Random House children's, so whenever I hear about all this craziness...Wow. I agree with your stance, Kristin. If tDorchester is still not fulfilling their obligations, they should remain on probation.
http://bklovin.blogspot.com/
I'm curious how many lawsuits are pending against them, or other legal means. If I were a roofer who never got paid for a job by the homeowner, I would at a minimum file a lien against their home and possibly consider small claims court.
Are the Dorchester authors just being quiet about what they are doing, or is everyone settling for writing angry letters?
Thank you for your personal update. This isn't good news but I'm glad we know it.
M. and Trisha,
SFWA has put at least one publisher on probation before, Night Shade Books. They quickly got their act together, and the probation was dropped. Night Shade is, in my opinion, now a top rate outfit publishing some of the best fantasy around and was number 2 on my list of publishers to read in 2012. Too bad Dorchester is not responding in a like manner.
This sad tale is just another piece of evidence why authors in the modern age need to abandon publishers for being the tyrant dinosaurs they are.