Home » Publish

Dear Publisher

This post, from Dan Holloway, originally appeared on his The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes blog on 1/20/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission. In it, Dan pokes a little fun at boilerplate query responses while revealing some salient truths about authorship and today's chilly trade publishing climate.

Thank you for sending me your contract for consideration. I am sure you will appreciate that talented authors receive many unsolicited contracts. Nonetheless, I am aware that a publisher like yourself relies upon discovering new talent in order to keep its lists fresh and win new readers, so I hope that you will not be too disappointed that in this case I am declining your kind offer. I wish you all the best in seeking exciting new talent elsewhere.

I understand that it is frustrating to receive a form rejection from an author, without any elaboration on specific areas to work on in your contract. I hope that the following general points may help you in your future submissions.

1. An author relies for their living upon a day job. They write, edit, and network in the evenings, at weekends, and in lunch hours and teabreaks. A publisher's advance, the largest incentive for an author to sign a contract, is not sufficient for them to give up their day job with any security.

2. Many talented, exciting authors write work that will not appeal to large readerships. Publishers need to sell large amounts of books. The result of this tension is that many of these authors will fail to recoup publishers' outlay within their first two books, and it will not be viable for publishers to keep them on board.

3. Without a publisher, a writer is under no such pressure, and will not be junked if their initial books "fail".

4. Should a writer achieve initial success wit ha publisher, they will be expected to produce similar works, and not explore or develop their talent.

5. Without a publisher there is no pressure to change, for a writer, the way they write in order to fit market needs.

6. Without a publisher there is the freedom to experiment, change genre at will, try, fail, try again, fail again, and devlop one's talent, voice, and potential to the full.

7. With a publisher a writer must concede control over cover design, the way their work is presented to the world.

8. The long cycle of the publishing industry means that the time from pen to audience inevitably freezes some of the initial energy and excitement of the creative process, leading to a less real and invigorating feedback process between writer and audience, and a less meaningful feedback loop.

9. With a publisher, a new writer loses editorial control. Not just total control of final cut, but control of which editor to use in the first place. An editor must have two qualities - the ability to be utterly ruthless; and absolute sympathy with an author's aims. An author needs to be free to select their own, trusted, editor.

10. Pricing - whilst unsigned, the author is free to set the price for all his books - and other merchandise. This includes setting the price at free should the author wish to do that with, for example, her ebooks. It also means the freedom to create and price special and limited editions of the work.

In conclusion, I am afraid that authors must consider not just their short-term but their long-term future. And whilst I am sure that your kind offer, were I to accept it, would put me in a financially more advantageous position one year from now, and possibly three years from now, compared to that if I reject it; I am afraid that the models I have run show that in five, ten, and twenty years - that is, over the course of my career - there is no financial advantage, and in many models financial disadvantage, in my accepting.

I wish you every success in your future publishing career.


Dan Holloway is an author and the founder of the Year Zero Writer's Collective. Learn more about the upcoming Year Zero live reading tour here.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

That's some real food for thought

Good work -- and a lot to chew on.  We work with many writers who should be going the independent route but can't quite see that for themselves.  I'll send them to this post to give them something more to think about.

Jon Bard

Managing Editor, Children's Book Insider, the Newsletter for Children's Writers

  • By Jon (not verified) at 01/27/2010 - 09:53
  • reply

This about sums it up

This about sums it up for me. These are many of the issues I looked at when deciding to go indie. Other things I looked at was the fact that trad published books get about 3 months on bookstore shelves to "prove themselves" before returns start coming back. That's not enough time to build an audience. An audience generally builds slowly and organically for an author, but lately there just isn't enough time. Unless you happen to get great marketing or already have a platform, you have a high risk of being a "one book author" and then you're in a worse position than you started because you are "damaged goods" after you've lost your trad publishing virginity.

Indie publishing lets you build your audience at your own pace without any pressure like you say.

Another big factor for me was the fact that mainstream publishers tend to want most authors to do most of their own promotion.  Most authors aren't getting very much marketing money for their books. Well if I'm doing all the work, why am I getting a teeny little piece of the pie?

But the biggest thing was what you said at the very end. It's that whole tortoise and the hare scenario. An author's career is built over many books, but MOST authors are always on the "midlist" with a trad publisher, and if they are putting out 1 book a year, "most" of them are not making a good living writing books.

However, as an indie... let's say it takes me 10 years and 10 books to build up a buying audience of 25,000 readers (which isn't unreasonable at all), well, going totally indie, you're making 6 figures in that 10th year.  How many trad published authors on the midlist are making 6 figures off one book a year? Not many.  Again, not saying this is going to happen for everyone or even that it will happen for me, but it isn't "unreasonable" to assume that in 10 years of book writing, and platform building, while ALL my backlist stays "in print" that I couldn't accomplish this.  And of course a portion of that money would go back into marketing and promotion, but still.  The money compounds for an indie every year as they grow their audience. It doesnt' compound nearly as much for a trad published author on the midlist.

From what I understand most midlist authors are selling around 25,000 copies (some probably a lot more) and they have bookstore presence.  No reason a good author with marketing skills can't amass that type of audience going it alone in a decade.  But my 25,000 readers will profit me much more than a trad published author's 25,000 readers because I make at least 4 times what the trad author makes per book, AND I get to count every single book-related expense off on my income taxes. (Not that trad authors can't do that, but there is more I get to count off because I pay ALL costs associated with the book.)

Z

taking time

Yes, the time thing is SO important. I find it rather ironic - no, actually, frustrating - that one of the great advantages of being independent is, as you say, that you get to build your audience naturally, over the course of a number of books and years; and yet so many  self-publishers are amongst the most impatient marketers around - they write a book, rush to "build a platform" - not really building it properly often, but pumping it up through socialbookmarking and follwer harvesting, leading to inflated figures (I so often see authors talk about the nuimber of READS they get on Scribd, as though that means ANYTHING), and then they give a massive push for their book, are gobsmacked when only 50 people tops buy it ("what about all my followers?"), declare self-publishing a waste of time, and give up.

Building a following takes time - it takes years, and a lot of creative output. But if you produce the right quality stuff, make quality contact with your readers (if you're on twitter, TALK to them; do live readings; don't just stumble and digg all your sites and get all excited because you sudden;y get lots of hits); and feed information to the media, you CAN get there. I wonder how many self-publishers who gave up would have made it if they'd persisted? I don't know, but I'm fairly sure that the vast numbers who give up contribute to teh seemingly disheartening stats on self-publishing sales - what I want to know is what's the average sales figure for a self-publisher's FIFTH book, not what the average of all books is.

LOL

Exactly! I was talking about this on my blog about how platform is built one reader at a time. The ONLY benefit you have with having a giant meaningless number behind you is that it makes you look cooler and more awesome than you are when other people who haven't heard of you stumble upon you. Sometimes popularity helps increase your popularity.  But other than that, 25,000 followers that you rushed to get following you to falsely inflate your "platform" is less beneficial to you than 400 true fans. Because a true fan LOVES your work. They'll buy it. They'll read it, they'll tell all their friends in all THEIR social networking applications, etc.  So it really has to be an organic person-by-person thing. And social networking means you have to ACTUALLY be social. Not just give status updates.  People almost never care what you say about yourself, they care when you acknowledge them and interact with them.

And... now i'm just now reading your second paragraph here hehehe. We are totally preaching at each other! woot woot! haha.  Another good way to connect is through podcasting your fiction. It may not be a live reading exactly, but it does add that personal touch for readers to connect with.

I get so tired of hearing about how no one truly succeeds self publishing because eventually they sell out to a major publisher if they do well on their own. And so the assumption is that self pub isn't sustainable as a business model. But I believe it is. I think most people just jump ship too soon and they don't do the math far enough down the line, which is why I've said before the only way I'd ever consider selling out is if the deal was BIG. (not saying I think that's going to happen, just saying otherwise the math doesn't add up right.)

And you ask an excellent question about "average for their fifth book." We're told over and over again by trad published authors that an author's career is built over many books, not just one. Well then WHY the double standard? Why do you have to be a publishing savant on your first book or "self pub doesn't work"? I mean huh? As for the normally touted 150 books sold on average for a self-pubbed book. WHAT are these people doing? (or more properly not doing). I can go out and stand in the parking lot at Walmart and sell 150 books over a couple of weekends. I think most people who self-pub are looking for the easy way out and they aren't driven and motivated enough to succeed, nor are they Type A enough to put out a truly quality product. Which drags the numbers down for the rest of us.

parking lots

Well there's an idea I hadn't thought of yet, standing in the parking lot at WalMart and hawking copies of 29 Jobs.

Now that the Jets and Giants seasons are over, I'll have some free Sundays.

Seriously, I'm going to try that.

Thanks.

jenn

I said that a bit

I said that a bit tongue-in-cheek as just an example. It may be against some rule or ordinance to solicit in a parking lot of a retail establishment without permission of that establishment, I don't know. I just know that 150 books isn't that hard to sell and especially given that a lot of these numbers are over a year's time. I mean what are you doing for a whole year that you can't sell 150 copies? (not you personally, general audience you)

 

Z