What It's Like to Be Screwed By Your Publisher

Hi All! I'm very excited about this platform. My friend Therese in Norway is (slightly) (very) obsessed with tech and sorts through articles and videos on new technology. I'm the lucky recipient of those countless hours of sifting because she led me to you.

When I first perused Steemit, what I found the most compelling was the truth. It's a space to speak your truth, and get rewarded for that honesty. I plan on writing articles on how to get a (good) literary agent, how to sell a book to a major publisher, how to get free hotels, and many more life hacks. I mainly have learned these hacks from Tim Ferriss (you should listen to his podcasts if you're not familiar with him).

Tonight I'm writing about what it's like to deal with a major publisher (for my first book called The Flower Chef) because I'm getting royalty screwed (get the pun?;) Like many people, getting published by one of the big 5 publishers in the world is a feat. It was great for my ego and made my parents proud. But that's where it ends.

Here's how it works with my publisher (Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group). I should note that I don't ever plan on publishing another book with them under these terms, so I don't really care what they think if they were ever to read this.

You're given an advance to create the book, which is negotiated by your literary agent. They don't accept cold submissions, so you need an agent to send out your book proposal. Nearly every publisher (there are many imprints under the umbrella of the parent publishing group focused on various topics and areas) rejected the book for 2 reasons: 1) There was a successful book out there called The Flower Recipe Book, which they said was a fluke 2) They said there was no market (this is actual absurdity because of the billions of dollars spent in the floral industry, crafts, and DIY/pinterest/blogs).

When my editor bought the book I was ecstatic. They give you the advance in 3 chunks-- upon signing, upon acceptance of the manuscript, and after it's published. With my publisher the author is responsible for everything-- the photography, styling, and anything else that it took to make the book a book. I used the money from the first and second portion of the advance to pay for this.

After studying Tim Ferriss's marketing plan for his second book, I came up with a 12 month marketing plan. It took five years to get the book published and I wanted to put everything I had into getting it out there. Everyone knows the publisher doesn't do a lot of marketing and PR, and I was okay with that. I made sure the book got into the hands of bloggers and influencers, at conferences, and on social media.

However, the publisher is responsible for sales and distribution. That is their job. They make 90% of the profits. Let me say that again-- yes, 90% of the profits. My book retails for $28 so I make about $2.50 a book (my agent then gets 15% of that $2.50). My intention was to create a book with really good content that would help and inspire millions of others. Upon release, Amazon Books (their editor picks the top books based solely on merit, which is nice, especially in the world we live in) named the book the #1 New Release, #1 Spring Book, and one of the Top Books of 2016 So Far.

Now I'm only stating these accolades for the fact that unbiasedly, the book got great critical reviews. Here's the messed up part-- the book is nowhere to be found. Nowhere!

The publisher has, say, 500 titles. Their sales department chooses which books they're going to promote to stores and really push (you know-- YouTubers that are famous for... showing which clothes they bought at the store... or reality stars memoirs that contribute nothing to the well being of society... I digress).

Now being that my book got good reviews off the bat, I would've thought that Sales would think it's a book worth pushing. But for whatever reason, they didn't. Because the book isn't in stores. Keep in mind, Amazon only accounts for about 30% of all of the sales.

So when I get an email about low book sales, I started to investigate and called various Barnes and Noble bookstores. The managers said they'd put the book on their main tables but couldn't because they only had one copy (tucked away on the fourth floor on a bottom shelf). That was an a-ha moment that I was getting screwed. When I addressed this with the publisher, they stated they did buy shelf space (a lie) and that they couldn't help which books their accounts bought (a lie). My response is, "You can't tell me book sales are low when people can't buy a book that can't be bought." Am I taking crazy pills here?!

I tried everything and got all sorts of excuses. My agent couldn't figure out what was going on at their end. She said, very sensitively (insert sarcasm), " You should just let it go. Sometimes books don't do what you want them to do". That's not what you want to hear when you've spent five years of your life working to get something made.

I took a couple of months to let myself be. I listened to a lot of Eckart Tolle, Teal Swan, and Tony Robbins. I got back to my path, my next steps, and coming to terms with disappointment. I thought I had my path laid out for after publishing. But it didn't turn out how I planned.

So this past week I wanted to know about the royalties. Like the music industry, the publisher makes back the advance money before I get paid any royalties. I was told it was based on the book price, however it's based on my royalty rate.

Which means... I need to sell 18,000 books before I get paid anything. Here's the real kicker! They only printed 10,000 copies, and of that, some were giveaways, with the rest are sitting in a warehouse somewhere because they're not even in stores.

My agent's assistant told me that "slow and steady wins the race", but wait a minute-- you're screwing me so bad right now that I ought to say thank you for getting such a good f*ck. I'm not good at math, but I'm pretty sure that if I need to sell 18,000 copies, but only 10,000 are in print-- well, that seems pretty impossible to me. I will never get why they won't push a book they paid to have made and stand to make 90% of the profits from. Again, crazy pills.

Would I do it all over again? Would I write an acclaimed book that isn't being sold anywhere? It's hard to answer. It could very well sell millions, but that won't change this experience in present time. It will make for a good TED talk though.

My lessons to you are this: If you're writing any kind of fiction book or non-fiction without photos, self-publish it. Why let someone else keep the 90%? If you're going to create content and work so hard on all aspects, you should make most of the money (sounds kind of familiar, huh?;) You all know this to be true. The only reason I went this route was because the kind of book I wanted to make was extremely expensive to produce. If you do go this route, please negotiate a higher royalty rate and really know their sales plan. They told me it'd go out to stores like Anthropologie, but they lied.

Although I'm already jaded by the publishing industry first book in, I still want to do others. It's satisfying to have a piece of work out for the world to use. I would either go with an indie publishing house (it used to be they didn't have as much distributing power) or self-publish the next one. If you're a celebrity, then going with a big top 5 publisher is a 180 experience than mine. You'll have rows of book shelf space bought for you, you'll have a book tour (I created my own book tour which was intense and rewarding for its own reasons), you'll have... sales distribution.

I hope I didn't come off too negative. I don't want sympathy or am not asking for pity. I just want you to know what it's like because for a lot of people, publishing a book is on their bucket list. Again, there's a lot of ego involved with that. While I had a lot of creative control over the book, I have absolutely none when it comes to the sales part. I would want you to have control over every aspect.

I'd love to hear what you'd like to know more about-- getting an agent, starting a business, or travel tips. You can call me the Jane-Of-All-Trades-Master-Of-None if you'd like.

Thank you for reading this, and I hope to connect with you soon.

-CC