Michael Sullivan - Hollow World

But getting back to the writing of Hollow World , from a logical point of view, I shouldn’t have written it. I knew it would be a tough sell to publishers, and it may never find an audience. But I don’t care. I love the way the book came out and if the only people who ever love it are my wife and myself, well then that’s enough for me.

After reading the book my agent told me she loved it (okay so that’s three, but in some respects she is paid to love my work), and then she said what I already knew, which is it will be a hard sell. If she could get an offer, it wouldn’t be for much. No new news there. She sent the book to Orbit. My editor echoed Teri’s opinion…“Great book. No market. We’ll have to pass…and oh, by the way, why isn’t Michael working on the next fantasy series?”

In many ways the rejection was a relief. I had been wanting to do some self-publishing for a while. This isn’t to say I’m turning my back on traditional publishing…remember I’m a believer in dualities. And while much of the publishing landscape is waging a religious war between traditional and self-publishing, I probably understand better than most (because I’ve done both) that there are pros and cons to each. Truth be told, I had every intention on self-publishing The Riyria Chronicles but Orbit’s offer was more than I thought I could make through self-publishing, so I signed a contract for it.

So anyway, I had gotten it into my head that I would self-publish Hollow World , but there was a miscommunication and my agent had submitted the book to another publisher after Orbit passed it over. They loved it (that’s what, four now?), and made a nice five-figure offer. Robin ran the numbers, and determined that I could still earn more with Hollow World through self-publishing so I turned it down.

For those that don’t know, I originally self-published the first five books of The Riyria Revelations and then later the series was sold to Orbit. While our self-published books were quality products, they were also produced on a shoestring budget. I did all the covers, Robin was the main editor, and we paid a few hundred dollars to freelance copy editors. We’ve always had the philosophy that if you are going to self-publish a book, you need to have a product equal to what New York is releasing.

Having published The Riyria Revelations and The Riyria Chronicles traditionally, we had experienced the “New York” process. We wanted to use the same professionals that had worked on those projects (see the acknowledgements for full details), and so we discarded the shoestring approach to have Hollow World produced just as if it had come out of New York. We estimated needing about $6,000 for cover art and editing. Having seen several authors successfully use Kickstarter, it seemed like a good way to raise cash to fund the startup costs.

We made launched the Kickstarter with a goal of $3,000. The thought being that we would contribute half the money and the readership the other half. Plus I thought $3,000 was a reachable goal but $6,000 would be a stretch. If the funding failed, it wouldn’t be the end of the world, we could always get a small business loan or take the money out of our nest egg, but I didn’t want to have the failure around my neck like an albatross. It turns out that my fear wasn’t warranted as the generous Kickstarter supporters gave $30,857. I can’t say enough good things about the people who funded the project—more about them in the acknowledgements.

So Hollow World was going to be released, but there were still a few problems. I have had great success in the audio book world and I wanted my fans who “listen” to the book to be able to get Hollow World as well. Usually audio books are sold by the publisher as a subsidiary right (keeping 50% in the process…ouch!) but I had no publisher. Luckily my audio book publisher read and loved Hollow World (what’s that, five now?) and were willing to sign it even without a big-publisher attached. What’s more they gave me four times the money as for The Riyria Revelations and I get 100% of the royalty earned rather than splitting with a traditional publisher. Double win!

Signing the audio book rights got my wife to thinking. Our problem with traditional publishers were that they brought no added value to ebooks and took three times the money. But when it comes to print, they actually have tremendous value. They get the books in to bookstores and libraries, and their share of profits is much more reasonable than the standard division with ebooks. Plus, the rights revert much more cleanly when dealing with just print. Once all the books are sold, you are indeed “out of print” and the rights revert. What we really needed was a print-only deal.

If you’ve ever been to an online forum where self-published writers talk to one another you hear this a lot: “I’ll never sell my ebook book rights, but if a publisher wants the print rights, I’d sell those.” This is great line to throw out, but unless you are REALLY ingrained in publishing you don’t realize just how ludicrous a statement this is. Publishers don’t work this way. They know that the biggest share is going to come from ebooks and they aren’t willing to settle for just half that pie. They want it all and that means all the contracts are for combined print, ebook, and usually audio as well.

There have only been a few print-only deals, and all of them from authors with a huge number of sales. The first was Bella Andre in October 2012 (just a year ago) when Harlequin paid her seven figures. In December 2012 Hugh Howey got one from Simon & Schuster. Then in January 2013 Colleen Hoover (another huge-selling romance author) got a print-only deal from Atria (imprint of Simon & Schuster). The only other print-only deals I know about were done by Brandon Sanderson who kept the ebook rights to two novellas: The Emperor’s Soul and Legion .

The problem is that each of these authors are New York Times bestsellers. They either have sold in excess of one million books, or have exceeded 500,000 + a major film option (Hugh Howey). I’m NOT in their league. So the chance of me getting a print-only deal weren’t good.

My wife has a saying, “You never know until you try.” She knew about Laurie McLean and her new agency Foreword Literary because she represents Tee Morris and Pip Ballantine, two excellent writers who we’ve become friends with over the years. Laurie’s background is in public relations and she started Foreword with an interesting mission. The following is from her website: “We blend the tried-and-true methods of traditional publishing with the brash new opportunities engendered by digital publishing, emerging technologies, and an evolving author-agent relationship.” It sounded like exactly what we were looking for.

Robin talked to Laurie about managing the print-only, movie and foreign language rights. While two of those rights are still being worked, Laurie did land a print-only deal. Tachyon Publications, who is the same publisher who did Brandon’s print-only deal for The Emperor’s Soul will be doing a print-only deal for Hollow World . This is great because readers who love print have problems getting access to self-published titles. They are generally not in bookstores and libraries, but because Tachyon is a traditional publisher with an extensive distribution network, these hurdles will be easily jumped. They sold tens of thousands copies of Brandon’s novella, and while my name is not as big as Sanderson’s, Robin and I are going to do everything in our power to show Tachyon, and publishing in general, that more print-only deals need to be signed…and not just with the mega-sellers.

So there you have it, a little about how the book came to be. Some may find this boring, but a lot of aspiring authors should find the changes in the industry worth learning about. I do hope you enjoyed Hollow World . While it was originally written as a standalone novel I have thought about many more stories that could be told about Ellis and Pax and the world in which they live. As I said, writing Hollow World was a gamble and I’d like to be a bit smarter about any future projects in this world. So if you liked it, and want more, please drop me a line at or better yet, take a few minutes to answer this poll. If enough people indicate they want more, I’d like nothing better than to oblige.