Michael Allen - A Writer's Guide To Everything Important - The Omnibus Edition Of Seven Essential Guides For Fiction Writers

That is just one of the many joys which lie hidden in the small print of publishing contracts.

2.8 Waiting

So you’ve taken the plunge and signed. What next?

What comes next is, you wait. Again.

And wait, and wait and wait.

For you, selling your first book is a big deal. For the publisher, it’s just a piddling little contract, offered by a junior editor whose days in the firm may be numbered anyway, either because she’s not much good or because the firm has figured out a way to farm out the selection of manuscripts to freelances living in the country, and thus save costs on mid-Manhattan real estate. So you have to wait until the publisher can be bothered to actually schedule your book for publication.

A friend of mine, who in civilian life was a highly experienced and successful businessman, one sold a non-fiction book to the English firm of Faber & Faber. A year after the contract was signed he rang me up.

‘The contract calls for the book to be published within one year of the signing of the contract,’ he pointed out. ‘And so far we don’t even have a publication date scheduled, let alone books in bookshops. So they’re in breach of contract. What do I do now?’

‘Nothing,’ I told him. ‘Faber may be hopelessly inefficient by the standards of the people you normally deal with, but this kind of delay is common in publishing. Furthermore, they are what is laughingly called a prestigious publisher, and the book trade will take your book seriously when it finally does appear. So say nothing and smile gratefully when they get around to it to doing something. They have after all paid you a decent advance.’ (£15,000.)

In due course the book was indeed published and stayed in print for several years. But the time came when Faber felt they had got as much out of it as they could, and my friend was able to get his rights back. I was then able to approach another firm and sell the book to them.

On Faber’s final royalty statement there was an unearned balance of £11,000 showing against the original advance. Because publishers make mistakes all the time, you see. Sometimes they reject a book which goes on to become a smash hit, and sometimes they pay too much for a book.

Meanwhile, you are learning the same lesson as my friend, as you sit and twiddle your thumbs and fend off questions from your mother about when your book is going to appear.

2.9 Publication and after

And then… Publication day!

Fanfare of trumpets.

In your mind. There won’t actually be a fanfare. There won’t be a launch party in New York or London, attended by fashionable celebrities. Your local evening paper might do an interview with you, but that’s going to be about it.

Years ago, publishers used to send their really promising authors on a book tour. Your expenses would be paid while you went the rounds of various major cities and allowed yourself to be interviewed on radio, or even local TV; you would also do book signings in any shops which could be persuaded that you were an up-and-coming young star.

Not any more. Today it is much more likely that you will be asked to pay your own way in travel and hotel expenses, and it is just possible, if you agree to do that, that the publisher might arrange a few dates for you, if you ask nicely. This process of paying all your own expenses for a publicity tour will be described by your publisher as ‘investing in your career’. I call it stealing your money.

Up to this point, please remember, you’ve put in years of unpaid work; when you signed the contract you were paid a modest advance (not enough to live on), and now you’re expected to pay for your own publicity. It’s a great life being a writer.

But not every writer finds the present state of affairs satisfactory. Here’s an example: Elisabeth Naughton.

Elisabeth began her career in traditional publishing, working through well-known mass-market firms such as Dorchester and Sourcebooks. She was never a big seller: she was what’s known as a mid-list author; or even lower on the chain. Her contracts were, as she puts it, crappy, but hey – she was a published writer, OK? Respect! Prestige! Money! She had all the accolades of being a published author – her books were on bookstore shelves and in airports, she was getting rave reviews, she was a top seller in romance for Sourcebooks, and she even hit the USA Today bestsellers list.

But actually Elisabeth found that she was spending more money on promoting her books than she was earning in royalties. She used to go to romance readers’ conferences and mix with the fans, spending money on air fares and hotels. And she spent money on promotional materials.

In 2011, Elisabeth’s tax return showed negative income: in other words, her expenses as a writer amounted to more than she earned. So, after careful thought, she backed away from traditional publishing. She got her rights back from Dorchester and became an indie publisher. (Of which, more in Part 3.)

In 2012, as a self-publisher, she reported six figures on the positive side; in 2013 she was approaching the seven-figure mark. But remember – she wrote for ten years in the old-fashioned way without making a penny after expenses were taken into account.

2.10 The next book

Never mind. All that is ahead of you. For the moment you are full of the joys because you’ve finally made it. And you’re already thinking of the next book.

Book number 2 can be a problem. You may be short of ideas, and the more literary a writer you are, the more likely this is to be the case. If you’re a genre writer – romance or crime, let us say – your job is much easier because genres follow well established patterns.

But things can still go wrong

Your editor may move to another firm, which leaves you without an ally in the in-house political uproar. Nasty.

You may produce a masterpiece, in your own estimation, only to find that no one likes it.

Worse, your first book may be a big disappointment to everyone concerned, and everyone wishes that you would just get discouraged and give up. It’s so much easier, for a sensitive editor, than having to tell you that you just aren’t worth the trouble.

In 2008 Emily Gould sold a paperback original novel for $200,000. Less agent’s commission, less tax, less expenses. It seemed like a lot of money at the time. But the book sold around 8,000 copies, which was about a fifth of what was needed for it to break even. Result? ‘This essentially guarantees,’ says Emily, ‘that no one will ever pay me that kind of money to write a book again. It took me a while to realise that my book had failed. No one ever told me point-blank that it had.’

But that won’t happen to you, of course. It’s like car crashes and breast cancer. They always happen to someone else. So your next book will be a huge hit.

However, even if it is a huge hit, you are not out of the woods yet. On the very day when I wrote this section, the Guardian published an article about the hardships being experienced by some well known names in the UK book world. And the US is just the same.

The sub-heading tells the story: ‘The credit crunch and the internet are making writing as a career harder than it has been for a generation. Robert McCrum talks to award-winning authors who are struggling to make ends meet.’

Most of the writers interviewed in the Guardian piece stated that the change began to be felt somewhere around 2008. (Possible causes: banking collapse, start of the Kindle?) Joanna Kavenna summed up the situation as follows: ‘Being a writer stopped being the way it had been for ages – the way I expected it to be – and became something different.’ Tougher.

2.11 The development of your ‘career’