Nobody Wants to Talk About Money, So Let’s Do It!

Posted on by Saundra

Congratulations, you just sold your first book! You’re getting an advance! You’re going to be published! Royalties are a thing now! Everything has changed!

Slow your roll, scribe. I’m here to talk about the thing nobody wants to talk about, and that’s money. More accurately, how you should approach the money you’re going to make as a writer.

Now, I’m going to guess that you’re getting an advance of some kind. It may be tiny; it may be huge. I’m guessing for 98% of you reading, it’s a number staggeringly less than a million dollars. Half a mil. In fact, I’d say for  98% of you reading, it’s 100k or less. (Any Stephen Kings and JK Rowlings can go get their money advice elsewhere.)

In any case, it’s still a chunk of change. It’s exciting. And it’s dangerous.

Quick background: you’re not going to get your advance all at once, you’re going to have to pay your own taxes out of it, and that’s the only money you’ll see unless your sales are good enough to pay your publisher back for said advance (maybe 30% of you will be so lucky.) This means for most authors, that advance is the only cash you’ll see for the book you just sold.

This is probably the hardest thing in the world to actually do, but it’s going to save your (financial) life: unless you signed a million dollar contract– and that’s literally a million, not figuratively– you now need to proceed as if absolutely nothing has changed in your financial life.

Do not quit your job.

Do not run up your credit cards.

Do not take out a mortgage or a loan.

Because here’s the deal. Let’s say that you got a fairly standard contract that pays 1/3 on signing, 1/3 on Delivery & Acceptance of your revised manuscript, and 1/3 on publication. In your head, you may be creating a timeline. By X date, I should have Y dollars– therefore, I can do Z, Q, and T now.

Don’t.

No matter how tempting it is to think about it that way, never, ever, ever rely on a timeline and budget as if that money will roll in as scheduled. I know you’ve just made your first deal and you’re super, super excited, but here’s the deal. That payment you get “on signing” is literal: they’ll release it after you signed the contract.

This doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I know of no author who has gotten their vetted, fully-negotiated, ready-to-sign contract in fewer than three months. I know many, many authors who got the contract six months later. Nine months later. In fact, I know a handful of authors who didn’t get their contract fully signed and ironed out until after their book was published.

No, I’m not kidding. Yes, this does really happen. If your editor is particularly speedy, chances are you will get your first set of notes before you get your contract. You may well be working on your book under your handshake deal, and this is a weird but normal part of publishing.

But you’re still not getting your “signing” portion of your advance until you actually sign the contract. Nor will they be releasing any of the payments outlined in your deal until, you guessed it, you signed the contract.

So that’s the signing part of your advance. You probably won’t be getting it for at least three months. At least.

But the D&A part, that’s pretty controllable, right? Nope. It doesn’t matter if you’re the bestest, fastest revisor in the universe: you can’t do your revisions until you get your editor’s notes. Your book is not the only manuscript on your editor’s desk.

There are many editors who send speedy notes: I’ve had them in as few as six weeks. However, I’ve also waited more than a year for an initial ed letter. You get them when you get them– and the D&A payment will not be coming until you finish all your revisions.

Most books will have at least two rounds of revisions, and at least one round of line edits before they are officially delivered. This process tends to take around three months— but again, it will depend on how quickly you can turn around your notes, and how quickly your editor turns her side as well.

Sometimes, revisions don’t go as well as you might hope. They can take substantially longer while you and your editor wrangle the manuscript into submission. Sometimes, you and your editor don’t see eye-to-eye on revisions. There can be extended negotiations at this point. Your editor may seek out feedback from other people in their imprint– and those people, too, have other things to do first.

I know people who spent the better part of years in revisions before they finally got the manuscript to D&A. I also know people who never managed it to their editor’s satisfaction– manuscripts have been passed off to other editors, bought back, and cancelled at this point.

I don’t tell you these things to scare you. I tell you this because if you bought a house assuming that you would be able to make X payment by Y date because of Reasons, you may end up in deep mortgage trouble. If you ran up your credit cards, anticipating being able to pay them down, you may end up in default. 

But let’s say that your revisions roll along fine, everything is D&A, everybody’s happy, you have a release date, YAY! Surely now you can count on the publication portion of your advance coming in on time, right?

Nope. Books get pushed back on the schedule– maybe B&N hated the cover and your publisher wants to make a new one to get a better initial order. Or perhaps another book dropped on your editor’s schedule that is time-sensitive (for example, I had a friend whose book got bumped an entire year because their editor acquired a book during an election year, written by a candidate– that book had an expiration date, so it had to go out first.)

There could be delays anywhere along the line– your editor leaves, your publisher reorganizes, someone realizes that your book would sell better in X market if Y conditions were met, another, similar book didn’t do well and the publisher needs to change their strategy on yours…

The fact is, the publication date isn’t written in stone, but sometimes the season is. Rather than bump your book to the next month or the month after, sometimes they bump you to the next season. More often than not, that has been my experience: if you were supposed to be Spring 2016, and you get bumped, your book is now Spring 2017. That adds an entire year to your wait for your publication advance.

Here’s a short list of other things that can happen to delay any part of the process:

  • There’s something wrong with your contract; it has to be fixed before anyone will agree to sign it.
  • There’s something so wrong with your contract that you have to walk away from the deal.
  • There’s something so wrong with your contract that your publisher walks away from the deal.
  • Your editor leaves before you get your notes and your book is assigned a new editor. Clock starts over.
  • Your editor leaves and takes your book to the new house– that’s an epic butt-ton of paperwork, and resets the publication clock like whoa.
  • You and your editor do not see eye to eye on your revisions, and this needs to be negotiated.
  • You realize that revising is a lot more intensive than you anticipated, and it takes you longer to complete than intended.
  • Your editor finishes revisions with you, then leaves– your book is orphaned and has to wait for another editor to be assigned for the rest of the publication process.
  • Your book gets bumped.
  • Your book gets cancelled.
  • Your imprint folds.
  • Your publisher restructures your imprint out of existence.
  • Your publisher merges with another, and now your book is in limbo until all the dust settles.
  • Your publisher and a major online retailer get in a fight and your book is delayed until it can actually be sold online.
  • Your agent turns out to be a scumbag who has mismanaged all of the author money coming into the agency, and disappears with your cash.
  • Your publisher turns out to be a scumbag who has overpromised and now is going to under-deliver.
  • You are not a scumbag but after going through revisions, you realize that you can’t do this, and you need to walk away before you lose your mind.
  • You have a family crisis and you’re unable to meet your deadlines as originally planned.
  • Some completely bizarre, random, fuxxed up shiz that I can’t even make up because reality is too weird to predict.

I tell you none of this to scare you. I tell you this because publishing is strange and uncertain. Pre-spending your advance before you have the cash in hand will get you into trouble every single time. It’s easy to make plans when everything is new, and everyone is optimistic, but you shouldn’t.

Just as you should never assume you will ever sell another book, you should never assume that you’ll get your advance until the cash is actually in hand. Don’t make big purchases and plan to pay them off later. Don’t change your lifestyle in a major and meaningful way. Treat your advances as if they’re surprises, every single time.

Oh, and even if you do sell another book (and you will, because you’re awesome) don’t count on definitely selling another book for the same advance that you sold the last one. Your advances can, and probably will, vary by project. The only way you can know for sure that the advance on the next book is the same as the first is if you snag a multiple book contract.

You just sold a book and that’s amazing. The advance is pretty freaking keen. But don’t buy financial trouble now by spending money that is yet to come. If there’s one thing that makes this very tough business even tougher, it’s trying to do it while you drown in debt you didn’t realize you’d have.

Treat your advances like the lottery: you won! You might get to win more than once! But don’t count on that money until it’s in your hot little hands. Trust me on this one; this isn’t a lesson you want to learn the hard way.

You’re Not Going to Spend a Lot Marketing This Book

Posted on by Saundra

So, I’m reading this absurd article on all the things you need to spend money on to market your own book. Oh noz, you have to pay a zillion dollars for a website, for a mailing list, for copy and editing for your website, wtf? I’m not even going to link to article because, seriously, WTF?

Here’s the deal. If you’re willing to put the time in yourself, you can do almost all of your book marketing for free. It may be worth it to you to pay for someone else to do everything- and if you’re in a position to do that, awesome! Go for it! But if you’re not, or if you’d prefer to have strict control over everything, here’s a brief guide to doing it yourself.

Blog/Website: More and more people are using Blog software to host their entire websites. WordPress is fantastically flexible, free and your URL can be an easily memorable yourname.wordpress.com. WordPress has about a zillion free themes so you can customize like whoa, and because it’s an integrated service, it shares your links on other blogs like yours to drive traffic. FOR FREE.

Blogger is another free host and software package that’s easy to use and customize for your needs. And you know what drives even more traffic to websites? Twitter. ALSO FREE.

Graphics: Graphics for your website, your bookmarks, your postcards whatnot- you can create them yourself for free, from the bottom up. Download a copy of GIMP image manipulation software, and play with it.

It’s not hard, and if you’re not design-oriented, download templates from a print shop, look at examples of other people’s bookmarks, and figure out the elements that you like from there.

Printing: If you have a really great printer at home, you can do your own business cards. You probably should pay a printer to make your bookmarks and postcards though. They’re not terribly expensive, especially if you buy in bulk.

Copywriting and Editing: This was possibly the stupidest point in the article. We’re WRITERS. Write your own copy for free- after all, you know your own bio and book better than anybody- and edit it yourself. Have a friend look it over for typos. Post.

Email Marketing: 1) If by e-mail marketing, they mean spamming a bunch of people, don’t do that. It’s annoying. 2) If by e-mail marketing, they mean create a mailing list for your readers– Google Groups and Yahoo! Groups are both functional, easy to use, and free to set up, use and moderate.

Review Copies: An unavoidable expense- even if you get a buttload of author copies, you still have to pay postage.

Publicity: You can post a press release for free on Free Press Release or PRLog, but don’t spend money on pay sites. Why? Because online press releases are an excellent way to beef your Google ranking and that’s about it. You know what else will beef your Google rating? Updating your blog frequently.

Learning: Oh hey look! This is where- if I were trying to make money off of you- I would ask you to send me money so I can send you all of my SPECIAL marketing tips that aren’t available anywhere else. Me, though, I’m going to give you links to my free marketing advice that you can use anytime you want at absolutely no charge to you.

Administrative: If you’re popular enough to need an assistant, you probably don’t need any marketing advice.

I know I sound a bit cranky, but it makes me crazy, crazy, crazy to see people imply that authors can’t possibly do any of this themselves, that authors should spend their entire advance and pawn their cars and firstborn children to promote their books.

It’s ridiculous, and it’s wrong. Yes, as authors, we do have to pay for our own promotion, but we do NOT have to pay for all of it. As you see listed here, you don’t even have to pay for most of it, if you’re willing to invest the time.

Or, more simply- please don’t let somebody selling marketing materials convince you that you need to buy marketing materials.

This is Not the End; It’s the Middle

Posted on by Saundra

Right now, my computer backdrop is a simple white-on-black sign that says “I would quit, but I still have people to prove wrong.”

It’s the same thing as persistence, except with some spite in there for good measure. I’ve been a working writer since I was 19; I’m now 40. I’ve gotten one residual check in all that time. None of my books have earned out.

However, I’m further along than a lot of writers. I’m debt-free. I put a down payment on a house with an advance. I’ve seen actors say my words like they were living them. There’s a shelf in my office that has nothing on it but my books. Mine, mine, mine. I got to edit an amazing anthology; I’ve been privileged to write for others’.

Right now, I’m between contracts. I’m splashing around helplessly in the YA contraction, trying to figure out what I love writing that will also sell. My family’s income will probably halve this year, and two books of my heart that went nowhere later, I’m frustrated. Depressed. Demoralized.

Now would be a good time to quit. Get a nice office job and stop playing with imaginary friends. I’m an adult, after all. I got to go to the show. I could stop while I’m ahead, I suppose.

But you know what? I collected rejection letters on my wall until I sold my first novel. I had 1200 I took down and burned in 2007. Not because the hard part was over. It wasn’t– but I moved on to the next phase.

Now I’m a midlist author with little name recognition and no major awards under my belt. I have minor awards and great nominations, but no starred reviews, no royalty checks. No bestseller lists or book challenges or reviews in magazines my grandparents would have read. I’m not as good as I could be. I have voice and place, but man, I need to work out this whole plot thing to reach the next level.

I retired from screenwriting (my day job) in 2011, but I just finished writing a new movie to pay the bills. I’ve picked up write for hire pieces. Short fiction is once again something I’m writing and trying to sell. I sent my agent a list 15 miles long of non-fiction subjects about which I would love to write for hire for tween and teen audiences, if somebody’s buying.

Here I am, back to collecting rejection letters and plastering them on my wall. It’s a new wall, the rejections are different. Scrambling with all that to pay the bills, I’m still working on a new book. I think it’s a worthy one. It won’t shut up and leave me alone. So can’t stop. I won’t stop. I’m not done.

I still have people to prove wrong.

~*~*~

(I originally posted part of this on Metafilter in response to Kameron Hurley’s On Persistence, and the Long Con of Being a Successful Writer)

How to Build a Mailing List: A Simple Guide to Data Mining

Posted on by Saundra

While authors may enjoy the art half of our industry, the business half can be confusing and overwhelming. For example, we could use a great mailing list, but where do you get the list?

The free way is called data mining, and anyone with some time, and an Internet connection, can do it! (And though this guide is written with the published author in mind, the same techniques can be used to build any kind of mailing list- agent searches, job searches, club searches- you name it, you can data mine it!

The most important part of data mining is figuring out what you need to know. You need to look at your book and determine who wants to read this, and who will help those people read it.

Sure, we’d all like to think everybody, but unless you have the funds for 30 million postcards, you might want to focus your efforts.

For my book, for example, I can break down the information I will need like this:

  • YA novel = I want to target independent booksellers who specialize in YA or children’s books.
  • YA novel = I want to target middle and high schoolers. Best way to get to them? Middle school and high school librarians.
  • YA novel about ghosts = I want to target independent booksellers who specialize in horror or genre novels.
  • YA novel set in Louisiana = I want to target independent booksellers in Louisiana.
  • Author lives in Indiana = I want to target independent booksellers and YA librarians in Indiana.

These are your basic categories- type of book (can be more than one category,) demographic of book, setting of book, author region. Now that you’ve narrowed your data requirements down from “every single person in the world” to, say, librarians in (your state), it’s time to fire up Google.

Here’s the beauty of the Internet- chances are, somebody more fastidious than you has already collected the information you need in ONE place. You just have to find it. Some of the best Google tools are simple searches. Start macro, and go micro- choose the broadest possible search terms first, then refine. For example:

indiana libraries returns PublicLibraries.com, which just so happens to have lists of EVERY SINGLE PUBLIC LIBRARY in the United States, arranged by state, with links to each library website.

Bingo!

Bookmark your state page, open a word processor, and get to work data mining. Start at the top of the page, and go to the first library website. Copy and paste the name and address of the library into your open word processor. Then, click around the site to see if you can find the name of the director, or the specific librarian you need. Try

  • ABOUT US
  • CONTACT US

Because these two sections are where you’re most likely to find a staff list with titles. And yes- this will take a long time. I like to do batches of 50, then switch off to another task so I don’t start making errors.

For each targeted area, you’re going to repeat that process, and you have to refine your search terms each time.

Sometimes, you have to go micro to macro- more specific to less specific. For example, “indiana independent booksellers” gives lots of great information returns, but you’ll discover that the IndieBound website is hard to use for this because it wants you to search booksellers by zip code. That’s great if you want to find one store, but not if you want to find all of them in a given region.

So if I go macro with just “independent booksellers”, not only do I find great resources like the Southern Independent Booksellers, Great Lakes Independent Booksellers = regional bookseller groups that often have their own awards, and other resources- but I also find American Booksellers Association– and their search page lets you search by state. Get to pasting!

This works for any major groupings of information you need. Try “school districts indianapolis” (replacing Indy with your town, of course!) to get a list of all the school districts in your region. Then go micro by searching for “[name of school district]“.

You’ll usually find a centralized page for the entire district, which then gives you links to each school in the district. Target appropriately- again, you’ll often want to use ABOUT US or CONTACT US to find out who runs the media center.

TIPS AND TRICKS

Can’t Find Staff Information for Schools or Libraries?

1) See if they have a blog. Most people use a variation on their name when they’re making blog entries- is the YA librarian posting as Saundra? Then check her e-mail address to get her last name. In the US, school and library e-mail addresses are packed with information:

smitchell@akron.lib.in.us

S. Mitchell at Akron Public Library, Indiana, United States

smitchell@msdlt.k12.in.us

S. Mitchell at Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township, K-12 Schools, Indiana, US

2) Check the activity calendar- sometimes they’ll have contact information there that isn’t elsewhere on the site.

3) Check out the gallery- sometimes, there will be pictures of library events, nicely labeled with people’s names!

FURTHER REFINING YOUR SEARCH RESULTS

If getting more specific with your search terms isn’t helping, try using modifiers. Did you know you can use quotation marks, and plus and minus signs in Google to refine your search terms?

shadowed summer = A regular search, this returns information about my book, but also poetry with those words in it, anything about summer, anything about shadows- it’s kind of a mess. So I can refine my search like this:

“Shadowed Summer” = using quotes tells Google to search for that phrase exactly. Now all my search terms are either about my book, or they’re probably poetry that features the words “shadowed summer” in the lines.

“Shadowed Summer” -poem = Using the minus sign tells Google to EXCLUDE anything that includes the following term in the search. Now I’m finding anything that has “Shadowed Summer” in exactly that order, plus Google is now removing any searches that are specifically about poetry.

“Shadowed Summer” +”Saundra Mitchell” = Using the plus sign tells Google that you want search results for your initial search term that ALSO include the additional search term. Now I will only get results for “Shadowed Summer” that also include my name on the page.

You can use multiple + and -, but Google, like anything else, works best when you refine, rather than overspecify.

 

WEIGH YOUR SOURCES

Sure, there’s all kinds of information on the web, but some sites are more accurate than others. Weigh your sources when you search for information- a dated government website listing all the libraries in your region is probably more accurate than an undated Geocities website made by an unknown author.

If a website seems sketchy, or incomplete, check the information there against other sources. It’s especially important to have accurate contact information- you want to send your postcards to the librarian in charge of youth services now, not the one who retired in 1998!

 

ACCEPT LIMITATIONS

Sometimes, you just cannot find the name of the librarian in charge at a particular institution. Sometimes, you can only manage a last name. Or an initial. Or nothing at all. And that’s okay.

You can still contact an organization by phone or by e-mail to request specific information. And, some pages have Instant Chat help- just type your question, and get an answer in real time.

Don’t waste a lot of time searching when you could resolve your question with one phone call, IM or e-mail. Take a quick look at CONTACT US, ABOUT US, the blog, the pictures, and if you can’t find the info you need, send an e-mail and move on.

 

STAY ORGANIZED

You will end up with multiple files but fewer headaches if you organize like information with like information. One file for regional booksellers. One file for school libraries. Etc., etc., etc..

I like to keep my lists in an Excel spreadsheet. That way, I can mail merge from Word to make mailing labels, I can sort by certain qualities (all libraries in Kentucky, for example, or everything within a specific zip code, etcetera.)

One way  to organize your mailings is to print your labels on a sheet of plain paper, then on the sheet of labels. Staple these together, so when you remove a label, you can see the address through the backing paper. When the whole page is empty, you can see which addresses have already been mailed.

And… those are the basics of data mining: tighten your focus, macro to micro, refine, refine, refine.

That’s all there is to it- now all you need is time and patience. And cocola. Cocola makes everything better. ^_^