![]() I get that you’ve got to wear all the hats when you self publish. I’m gonna get some haters here among the self-publishers. I honestly don’t think my primary editor has an opinion one way or another about my work, but he supervises some ruthless people who regularly send me hate mail filled with massive markups. ![]() If all you want is someone who adores your words, hire your mom as your editor and self publish. If prying the best (re: most sellable) book from you means they bash you around a little, good for them. ![]() Not every editor you deal with will love your workĪnd that’s okay. It took more than a year and many discussions with lawyers to get paid and I still haven’t a clue how many copies they actually printed and sold. I only discovered it because a Japanese workbook publisher I had sold the piece to alerted me to it. I found this out the hard way a few years ago when it came to my attention that a large educational workbook publisher (here in America) had been using an article of mine in multiple editions of workbooks for several years. Not every traditional publisher is scrupulous Where there used to be clauses that ensured that writers were paid for any use of their materials, publishers now often sneak in broad rights allowing them to use and sell your work without further compensation, including words like “any and all future technologies, either now known, or unknown.” Entering into a publishing contract now without a lawyer familiar with them on your side is probably a mistake. Publishing contracts are not what they used to be You shouldn’t go into it with blinders on. My goal is simply to share a few of the pitfalls of publishing books through the traditional route. That would be kinda STOOPID, don’t you think? We have a good relationship that has lasted considerably longer than many writer/publisher arrangements. I’m really not out to dump all over my own publisher. That means that my original contracts (which were actual paper) are probably buried in a tomb with the Arc of the Covenant, so the new people might have been unaware of the terms. In their defense, the imprint (what a publishing trade name is called) has been sold from one publishing house to another. It seems like simple math, but over the last three decades that Melissa and I have had titles with this particular publishing house, I have had numerous math-related conversations with the book counters. Traditional publishing contracts pay authors a percentage of each book sold, often with that percentage rising in increments as more copies are sold. Not really worth whining about it as long as I get paid, right? You’d be surprised how hard it can be to get paid correctly I eventually forgave them and we recently released the fourth edition of that book. Imagine if John Grisham’s second novel had had James Grisham on the cover. Maybe someday when I’m famous for writing something other than guidebooks, the few copies of the book still floating around with Melissa Crow on the cover will be valuable. You’d think they might have known who I was by then, huh?
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