I FINISHED!!!!!! My first novel is complete!!!! I could have this puppy printed if anyone is interested in selling it. If … anyone … is … interested …
Hmmmmmmmmm.
OK, someone is interested. I’m interested. My wife is definitely interested. Quite a few of my friends are interested, at least in a passing sense. I’m sure my editor would like to get paid. My kids would certainly like to eat.
Holy shit! This is a job! This isn’t just a job, though, it’s my job!
Breath … just breath. Ok. Whew. That was close. Thank God—or the deity of your personal choice—that I realized this while I was writing the book. I have been prepared for this moment, I have been anxiously, eagerly awaiting this moment, AND I have been dreading this moment. Why? I’d be happy to explain.
Can a brother get a breakdown?
Let’s start where we should start, being prepared. I have been prepared, (I was a Boy Scout, after all). I went about “The Process” in a manner that I would consider to be professional from Day 1. From page 1, for that matter. I treated this as a business, because if I want to make a living from writing, this is my business. I’ve been a business man, I’ve been an executive, I’ve been a writer, and I’ve been a publisher. I did not come into this blindfolded. I know that printing costs money. I know that shelf space costs money. But, these are not necessarily factors in the modern literary business landscape. For those of us that are writing in this new, electronic literary landscape, Kindles, Nooks, iPads, and iPhones are the business, moving forward. This is an absolute truism. I should be able to take my electronic content, format it for each device, and sell it to a wide variety of the 26 people on my Facebook author page. And while that number is growing, and I am proud of it, selling 26 copies of my novel won’t pay for more than a stop or two at Chucky Cheese’s, and frankly, I don’t believe that’s why my editor added all of his hard work to mine. This is my business. Whether I’m selling hot dogs, or bowling shoes, or software, I need a marketing plan to expose my product to the marketplace that would be interested in purchasing it. Traditionally, that’s why publishers exist, or so we have been led to believe.
For those of you who are new to “The Process” of selling a novel, I’m going to let you in on some research and some experiences from early in this process. Publishers do not, I repeat, DO NOT, search for new writers. Publishers print books and pay to market said books. Only, they kind of don’t. If this is your first novel, the publisher will advance you some scratch to live on, theoretically anyway, will market your book, and pay to have it printed. 10,000 copies is generally considered the minimum break even point in this business for the publisher. After that, they may begrudgingly admit to making some money, depending on how much they ponied up to you in advance. For all of their help, on a $22 hard cover novel, you the writer will receive $2.20 on your first 10,000 sales, and $3.30 on all of your sales thereafter.
“Well that hardly seems fair,” you think to yourself, “but hey, on 10,000 sales, that’s like $22,000 that I didn’t have when the novel was just hanging out on my computer.”
Ah-ah-aaaah, (finger wave gesture is implied at this point). Not so fast, mi amigo, or amiga, as the case may be. You received a cash advance of—let’s be generous here—say $15,000. So you’re $22,000 is going to be used to pay the publisher back for advance money, leaving you with $7,000. Right?
Ah-ah-aaaah, (2nd finger wave implied). The publisher has paid something for marketing, or you wouldn’t have sold that first 10,000. Let’s say they paid $20,000. So your measly $7000 is gone, a Dios, muchachos. You’ve sold 10,000 books, and you’re still $13,000 in the hole. OK, OK. So I have to sell, um, carry the 0, uh, another 3,939 books to cover that at the whopping increase to 15% of the take on my book.
“On book number 13,940, I get some scratch, finally. Whew. I thought that’d never happen,” you say to yourself, cautiously.
Ah-ah-aaaah—(different finger used at his point entirely, and no, you can’t wave that one). The publisher, your publisher, the company that believes in you more than the others, has paid for printing, too. You guessed it, if you sell books, they don’t pay for that either. And then, there’s returns. If the publisher ships 20,000 of your books to Barnes and Noble nationwide, and the good folks at B & N decide that they need more shelf space for the 3012th Edition of the Joy of Cooking—so they’re sending 2,000 copies back to the publisher—you guessed it, you are paying for those, too. Even if B & N keeps 2,000 on their shelves nationwide because you’re still selling fairly well.
You’re probably asking yourself, “What the fuck?” right about now. Or, even if your a more positive person, you may be going, “Hey, I sold 20,000 books at $22, and if the retailer gets, say half, that leaves my friendly publisher with $11, minus the $3.30 he’s supposed to be paying me, that’s $7.70 times 20,000, that’s $154,000. No, it’s more, because they got $8.80 for the first 10,000. So that’s more like, uh, $165,000 … and if I’m successful, I’m paying for everything?”
Yes you are. And what’s worse, you are usually paid only semi-annually when they do pay you. And there’s a six-month “accounting period” where they bogart your money. So you will see your first income from sales about a year after you have sold you 20,000th book.
How encouraging is that?
Not trying to beat this to death, but, there’s another hitch in your get along that has to be dealt with. First. Publishers DO NOT read material that hasn’t been solicited by a literary agent. No, you can’t say your cousin from Alabama is a literary agent, either. Unless that’s true, in which case you’re more than one up on me at this point.
So I need an agent to represent me to publishers. I knew all of this coming in, too. And an agent gets 10% of what I take in.
“So, how hard can that be? They are working for me, right? So I sign one up that I trust and have a good vibe with.”
Ah-ah—alright, I know that this is annoying by now, but this is the literary business. To get an agent, you must submit a pro-forma query letter, often with a synopsis, and some chapters.
“Then, for the love of whoever, am I in?”
No, then you submit a manuscript.
The “hunting for an agent process” is where I am now, and it is not pleasant. Everyone is turned down. The successful writers are turned down dozens upon dozens of times. I saw a biography on Stephen King that said he was turned down 134 times on Carrie, and that book went on to sell a bazillion copies. So 133 business experts said he had no chance of selling a book that sold like crazy.
Happens every day.
I’ll do a whole blog on agents as I get into this more.
So that was just part of being prepared for the “business” end of things.
But being prepared also covers the moment I have dreaded. I dread this part of the process. All of what I’ve stated above is more than enough reason for you to understand why, and there’s more where that came from.
But I am approaching this as a business. I have started databases to track my agent contacts and have my query package pretty tight. I’m confident in the quality and content of my novel and the series. And that, leads me to the eagerness of this moment.
Writing something with so many levels, and emotions, and characters, and twists, and thinking up to five novels ahead on this series has been more gratifying than I can put into words. I’m proud of my novel, not so much as something I created, per se, but of its quality, independent of my involvement.
As I put the final touches on the final edit of THE LAST INTERROGATION, I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t kidding myself before I finished the final chapter.
I read the final two or three chapters of six different novels a few nights ago. They were from vastly different writers, all of which have sold well, many of which are considered classics. I saw patterns in all … all but one.
Still the best book I ever read.
Does THE LAST INTERROGATION stand up to a comparison with a book of that magnitude? I’m going to be open here, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, personally, I felt it was on par with my favorite book. If it hadn’t been, it would have been another rewrite. I owed myself and those who believe in me that much.
What were the other books I compared? I’m not going to go into those, but I felt it was more compelling than they were. It is my sincere hope that you will feel the same, though if you don’t, I still believe you will find it a great read.
I’m enthused and filled with trepidation at the same time.
I have my product, now my job is to sell it.
It’s all part of the process.
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