Avoiding Scams and Bad Publishers

 Here’s an excellent article from former agent Nathan Bransford on the various scams and nonsense authors are dealing with right now.  

https://nathanbransford.com/blog/2026/08/know-your-rights-as-an-author 

The Best and Worst Career Advice

What are the best and worst choices you can make as you start your career?  Here are my suggestions for both.  

Best: Good writing teachers.  Many of them are found online.  A hands-on teacher can teach specific craft skills and can hone your craft far faster than plugging along by yourself.  If they were available back in ancient times before the internet, I could have cut over 10 years from my writing journey.  

Second Best:  Learning about the business side of writing so you can move forward safely in this sea of piranhas.  I recommend Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "Business Musings."  

https://kriswrites.com/category/business-musings/   

I've not been a member for years, but RWA, SFWA, and MWA used to offer lots of great info on the business aspects of a career.  Ask around to see if they still do.   

Worst:  Self-publishing before your craft is competent.  If that first and second book are dreck, no one will buy the next book.  The rush of self-publishing also blinds some writers to the need to keep learning craft so they don't bother to keep learning and continue to publish dreck.  

Second Worst: Being so eager to publish that you hurt or end your career by picking the wrong agent or publisher, then signing a contract that will destroy your future.  Also, don’t throw all your creative eggs into one media aggregator like Amazon Kindle who can casually destroy your career with a software algorithm glitch. Business knowledge is power, folks. 

When to Copyright Your Novel

QUESTION:  When should I copyright my novel?

According to US copyright law, your book was copyrighted the moment you put something on the page.  

If, however, you want to file an official copyright with the US Copyright Office, the answer is different for your publishing choices.  

If you want to be published by a traditional publisher, aka the conglomerates mainly in NYC, you shouldn’t do an official copyright because it makes you look like an amateur.  And, if they buy it, it will most likely will be copyrighted again because it will have been changed drastically in rewrites.  In most cases, the publisher will do the copyright for you.  Check your contract on this question and make dang sure the copyright is in YOUR name. 

Some small publishers expect their authors to file their own copyright.  Do this as soon as you have the published version of your novel. It can be done before the book reaches the shelves.

If you are self-publishing, copyright it as soon as you have the final version of your book.  An official copyright is a good thing because you won’t be able to sue someone for plagiarism or downright theft in an American court without that official copyright notice.

Here’s a link to the Copyright Registration form. 

https://www.copyright.gov/registration/

 

Mundania Has Closed

One of the oldest epublishers which bought out Hard Shell and Awe-struck has closed down with barely a whimper.  I've heard nothing of this, and I'm an author.  

If you are a Mundania author, go to the home page and make a screenshot of their announcement returning all rights, ASAP.  The website may disappear any time, and this will be the only way to prove you have your rights back.

http://mundania.com

Feel free to pass this information along to anyone you think would be interested.  

****

On a personal note, I’m shocked but not shocked.  My first book, TIME AFTER TIME, was published by Hard Shell just over 20 years ago.  Then STAR-CROSSED, my most successful book with piles of awards, followed just over one year later.  

Over the years, my sales have gone down to almost nothing because so many books come out every day that earlier books get buried like a pebble in an avalanche.  Those of us who aren’t actively publishing several times a year don’t have a frontlist to promote our backlist so that doesn’t help either. Sad but true.  

Even then, for the first time in my career, two of my books have disappeared.  I’m still pondering whether I want to bring these books back or let them die.  If I do republish them, it will be through self-publishing since I’d just be delaying the inevitable at another small publisher.

Small publishing, particularly epublishing, is a hard business to be in, today.

The day that Amazon opened up publishing to individual authors, small publishers like Mundania began to bleed authors and income because the main thing they offered for those who didn't fit the traditional conglomerate publishing mold was access to readers.  Everything else like covers, editing, etc., could be bought.  

Add to that the ability of self-publishers to change with marketing trends at lightning speed which no publisher can duplicate, and it's amazing that the few good small publishers are still here.

On top of the changes in the business killing publishers, there's sheer attrition.  Most small publishers are run by individuals, not corporations, so age, finances, family issues, etc., can kill them, and almost every one of these who didn’t go bankrupt died because of personal reasons.  We live in a changing world.

Educating the Reader

BOOK BIZ 101: EDUCATING THE READER

Readers are passionate about their books, and some, bless them, are ravenous in their reading.

Unfortunately, many don’t understand enough about the business of publishing so they end up hurting the authors and the publishers which means fewer favorite authors and publishers.  

It’s up to authors to educate them for both their sakes.  Here are some suggestions.

First and foremost, readers, publishers, and authors are an ecosystem, and money is the food that keeps that ecosystem alive.  

If you financially starve any part of the system, the whole system can fail.

These days, with the advent of self-publishing, some authors are their publishers, but the ecosystem is primarily the same.  

WAYS TO HELP AUTHORS:

•If you can't find a book, ask the bookstore to special order it for you.  If enough people do this, they'll order the author's next book.  This also helps the bookstores stay in business.

•Pre-ordering a book before the publication date tells the publisher and the bookseller that this book will be popular, and they may buy/print more copies. Many authors consider this tip the number one way for readers to help an author’s career.

•Don’t pass around new books to friends.  A bookstore and the publisher can only tell how popular a book is by the number of copies sold.  If you share your one book with six friends, the publisher and the bookstore won't know this.  Get those six friends to buy the book themselves.  The only exception to this rule is the first book of a series after a few books have been published.  If you get friends addicted to a series you love so they will buy the rest of the series, you will help keep that series alive.  

•Buy the book new, not used.  If you buy the book used, you won't be counted as a reader by the publisher who only knows about new book sales.  Neither the publisher nor the author gets paid when a used book is sold so money is being syphoned away from the producers of books. 

•E-books cannot be sold used because of copyright laws.  Nor can they be borrowed except from a library or a closed system like Kindle.  Authors/publishers have to agree that their book can be loaned.  

•Don't take a paper book to the used bookstore until it is no longer on the bookstore shelves.  Two to three months from the time you buy it is a good rule of thumb.  

•Paperback books without their covers are stolen books.   Tell the person at the flea market or used bookstore that it's illegal to sell and show them the legal note to this effect at the front of the book.  If you continue to see books like this sold, send a letter to the publisher or use their website to tell them.

•If you see an electronic version of a copyrighted novel available for free at some website or on a newsgroup, contact the publisher or author immediately and tell them.  Not only is this illegal, but it is the financial murder of your favorite authors and the end of the kind of books you love.  

•Even if you are financially forced to buy used or to borrow books from the library or friends, you can still help the author.  Write reviews.  Tell friends.  Reviews and word of mouth sell books.  

NOTE:  If you have other ideas, please share them in the comments.  

Are Professional Writers an Endangered Species?

Over the years, I’ve used the metaphor of unpublished writers being minnows in a sea of sharks or bunnies surrounded by wolves to describe the dangers of the predators of author dreams.  

I’ve talked about the vanity publishers who scam writers of cash by giving them the illusion of being published although the books are so high-priced that family members won’t buy them, let alone the average reader.  And bookstores won’t stock them because they recognize the vanity publisher’s name so they are leery of the quality. 

I’ve warned about “agents” who ask for reading fees or business fees but never sell any books, or agents who embezzle author funds.

Published authors have had their own dangers and problems to deal with.  

The larger publishers do no promotion for most of their authors but expect the author to do so at their own expense and time.  They ask, “Are you on Facebook and Twitter and post daily?  Do you maintain your blog and website?  Have you attended the major reader and writer conventions?  Have you given interviews?  And, by the way, did you finish those two books in your series in only six months?”

Publishers have cut the number of editors down so much that the editors no longer have  time to edit, and the books show it with glaring mistakes so the smart author must spend her own money on a freelance editor or appear to be an illiterate idiot.

In the last weeks, other news has leaked out about the publishing industry that makes me worried that being a professional writer who can support herself as a writer is fast becoming a dream or a nightmare for those who have been able to support themselves.

In my “Links of Interest” last week, I listed a blog article by Kristine Rusch about how her ebook sales numbers on her royalty statements were much lower than those she saw from her own sources for sales numbers.  

http://kriswrites.com/2011/04/13/the-business-rusch-royalty-statements/

In a followup to this, she has received numerous conformations of the same wide difference in royalty statement to reality comparisons from other professional writers who write for the Big Six publishing conglomerates.  

The authors also see wide variations in sales numbers on paper books.

http://kriswrites.com/2011/04/20/the-business-rusch-royalty-statements-update/

Discrepancies on such a huge scale where the publishers are padding their bottom line at the expense of their writers is completely disheartening for those struggling to build a career in this business.

Published authors are also being attacked by some readers and those who profit from pirates.  Ebook theft is rampant with numerous pirate download sites.  The owners of these sites make money through advertising because of their high traffic, and some sites go so far as to sell stolen ebooks.  The author doesn’t receive a penny of all this profit.

eBay sellers now offer collections of stolen ebooks on CD, and eBay does nothing to stop it while profiting from it.  Authors who are trying to stop this are ignored.

Often, the publisher will do nothing, and it’s up to the author to find the pirate sites and go through all the legal hoops in an attempt to get the books removed.  If they do so, the book will be uploaded again in a matter of hours so the author must start all over again.  

Is the professional author an endangered species?  

My disheartened answer is yes.

Writing More Than One Genre

QUESTION: My first novel was science fiction romance, and I'm trying to sell it right now, but I've got this great idea for an urban fantasy. Should I change genres?

First, are you reading both genres? If you're not reading a genre widely, you shouldn't be writing it. That clever idea may be a dead cliche, and you won't know it if you aren't reading what's being sold.

If you are reading both, here's the rest of the answer.

Realistically, most of us don't sell our first book or our second so trying out different genres will help you find your strengths as a writer as well as your weaknesses.

Having a second genre we're good at also leaves us less a victim of the shifts in trends. For example, many historical romance authors who couldn't write anything else lost their careers when the market shifted away from historicals.

From a professional perspective, the advantage of writing the second novel in a different genre or subgenre is that you can market both books at the same time to different editors. Selling a book is sloooooow.

However, the difficulty with being a published author who wanders genres is that you tend to lose fan base every time you switch, and you have the double effort of attracting new fans in that new genre.

Many editors and agents don't want an author who keeps flitting among genre because they are harder to sell successfully.

A successful author, these days, builds their fan base with each new book and builds their income by selling their new fans the back list. This is particularly true for those who write a series or who publish with small press and epublishers.

The authors who successfully write in different genres start in one genre, build a strong fan base with five to seven books then start a second kind of book. They do a book in each genre once a year.

As examples, think Charlaine Harris with her Sookie Stackhouse novels and her GRAVE series, Jim Butcher with DRESDEN FILES and his traditional fantasies, or Amanda Quick/Jayne Ann Krentz/Jayne Castle with her Arcane novels in the past, present, and far future.

These authors' book series aren't drastically different, either. Many readers are comfortable reading urban fantasy and straight fantasy, or contemporary paranormal mystery and urban fantasy with strong mystery elements so both types of books keep the same core fan base.

SCHEDULE NOTE: My apology that today's blog was late, but I'm dealing with a family emergency. Wednesday's link collection may be late, as well.

A New Exception to eBook Copyright

On July 26th, The Librarian of Congress announced new exceptions to copyright laws. These exceptions involved, among others, allowing fair use, access for the blind, and other exceptions with motion pictures on DVD, iPhones, computer programs, video games, and ebooks.

Here is what the press statement said about ebooks:

1. Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format.

The complete statement specifies that this may only be done for access for the blind, not for those with normal vision.

What this means is that publishers must offer one version of an ebook that allows text-to-speech (TTS) to read the book aloud, or the blind user can legally remove the security software (DRM) from the ebook in order to use TTS.

On the surface, this ruling seems harmless, and it is the same ruling made three years ago, but it begs a major question.

As I mentioned in my article on TTS and the Kindle 2 controversy, (link below), TTS hasn't been defined as a right or a part of a right through a lawsuit or some other legal means. Right now, no one can say with legal certainty that TTS is a right on its own, a part of the audio rights, or part of the ebook rights.

This exception to copyright infers that TTS is part of the ebook rights since the publisher must allow TTS or allow DRM be broken, but does an inference define TTS as an ebook right?

I doubt the publishing industry or The Library of Congress will be in any hurry to clarify matters since TTS has little value at the moment.

The inference also gives publishers some justification for claiming TTS as part of the ebook rights they have acquired with the real possibility that TTS may prove to be a valuable right when TTS technology improves to the point that it sounds like a human reading. Writers of older contracts will have given away this valuable right for free because it wasn't included in ebook rights negotiations.

The only possible opponent I see to preventing TTS from becoming a part of ebook rights is a group like the Authors Guild who fought with Amazon over this issue with the Kindle 2.

This may prove interesting.

To read the complete Librarian of Congress press release, go here:

http://www.teleread.com/2010/07/26/full-press-release-on-dmca-exemptions/

To read his complete statement, go here:

http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2010/RM-2008-8.pdf

My article on TTS and the Kindle 2 controversy:

http://mbyerly.blogspot.com/2009/02/authors-guild-versus-amazon-kindle-2.html

Joe Konrath and the Fallacy of Victimless Book Piracy

Mystery writer Joe Konrath has become another major writer who doesn't fear ebook piracy and who thinks pirates help more than hurt. .A Newbie's Guide to Publishing: Piracy... Again

I just adore very successful writers who come out in favor of piracy or make it a victimless crime because it hasn't hurt them. Of course, it's not hurt them enough to notice because they have so many other ways to sell their books, unlike most other authors.

Think of it this way. Someone steals $1000 from a wealthy person. It doesn't really hurt them. Someone steals $1000 from someone on welfare. The poor person will probably end up homeless.

Think of it this way. Very successful authors who publish through the large conglomerates (New York based publishers owned by conglomerates, i.e. most of the publishers of books you see in bookstores) have diversified risk. That means lots of book titles in many formats-- paper (hard cover, trade, and massmarket), ebook, audio, and possibly media rights (TV, movies, graphic novels, etc.). Those paper books are available in most brick and mortar stores. The new book title as well as the backlist is available in paper on those bookstore shelves.

Most other authors with the conglomerate publishers are very lucky to have one book on those shelves for a very short time, and with the possible exception of the ebook, there are no other media rights sold. Other authors have no paper books on those shelves and must rely on online sales for their paper books, if they have a paper version, and their ebook version.

Most newer authors with the conglomerate presses get a very small advance, unlike the $100,000+ for a three-book deal Konrath has talked about for his books. Depending on the genre, etc., the advance runs from under $3,000 to $10,000 with his agent taking a 15% chunk. It will probably be the only money the author will ever see on that book. The author will be expected to use at least 10 to 25% for promotion.

If the first book doesn't sell well enough, the publisher will not buy the next book of that author. End of career or a major restart with a new name for the author.

Those authors with indie press and ebook publishers get no advance. Their books are only available online, usually as ebooks or more expensive trade paperbacks. They must bear the promotion expenses as well as the incredible amount of time needed to get their names out to the reading public since they don't have the platform of a major publisher.

Some have done quite well because they produce numerous books a year, those books are high quality and similar in kind, and the book is a popular genre like erotica. Everyone else struggles to come out even after the expenses of the website, etc.

Few will make minimum wage for their time, not including the years it took to develop publishable craft and the months it took to write the book. They continue on with the hope that they will be able to make a good living eventually. Most never will.

Most authors cannot continue to write if there is no profit after a period of time. The only exception is the hobby writer who has a second income through a financially successful spouse or who is able to hold down a full-time job as well as writing two or three novels a year and spending many hours promoting them in their "spare" time.

With their diversified list of books, types of media, and sales sites, the average conglomerate publisher can take a loss, perceived or real, on ebook sales. The average small press or ebook publisher goes out of business because they aren't so diversified and ebook sales plummet.

It's hard to believe that piracy doesn't hurt when an epublishers' entire list is available for free all over the Internet, there's no income from any other source because the books are only available as ebooks, and the money isn't coming in.

It's hard to say piracy doesn't hurt when an ebook has thousands of pirated downloads all over the web, and the author can't take her family out to McD's with her quarterly royalty check, and the only thing the author gets from all that "free" promotion of pirated earlier books is that her next new book will hit the pirate lists even faster than the last did.

Some of the most successful indie ebook published authors of the last years are some of the biggest foes of pirates because they are watching their own profits dropping while the market is expanding.

I belong to lots of lists where some of these small publishers and authors hang out, and many are hemorrhaging to death. Authors are becoming dispirited that their "fans" show so little respect for them by stealing their work, and their income continues to fall. It's getting harder and harder to justify spending hundreds of hours of their lives in a profession they are losing money at. Publishers are watching the steady march toward bankruptcy and are fighting to stay in business.

What does this mean to the reader? Those authors who are making lots of money will continue to publish. You will continue to see the big names in the bookstores and online. The conglomerate publishers will continue to publish lots of books for much fewer authors. That means fewer choices of the types of paper books available.

The small presses and epublishers where future conglomerate stars are developing a following and the types of books that aren't mainstream are being published will disappear so you'd better develop a taste for the authors on the bestseller lists, and only those authors, because everyone else will disappear.

Ebook piracy a victimless crime? Maybe for a few authors like Konrath, but not for the rest of us.

For information on authors who are being hurt by piracy, I suggest the group Authors Without Yachts, http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/30255.Authors_Without_Yachts_AWaY_ .

For information on copyright and epublishing, I suggest my blog articles on the subject. Click on the "copyright" label to the left to find them.

Word Count and Manuscript Format

New York publishers all expect a standard page format for manuscripts.  

Why is this important information for you to know before you start sending your book out?

If you start out in the "official" format, you will have a better idea of the book's word length.  

Word length in publishing is figured out by page, not by the exact number of words in your document.  

In "official" format, each page equals 250 words whether there is white space or not.  If you want your novel to be 100,000 words long, divide 100,000 by 250 to find out the number of pages needed.  If you've written 130 pages and want to know how many words you've written, mulitiple 130 by 250.

Here's how to format.

Font: Courier New in 12 point

Margins:  1 inch borders on all sides

Double spacing

25 lines per page excluding the header

Two spaces after each period

For the header, include your last name/MANUSCRIPT NAME at the left margin and the page number at the right margin. (Some publishers prefer this differently so check their guidelines before sending your manuscript.)

To indicate breaks between scenes, either double space twice, or double space, type three asterisks* * * or pound symbols # # # with spaces between them, center them, then another double space.

 If you use Word, don't type the three symbols fast because Word considers that instructions to do something weird to your formating.  

I prefer to use the three symbols because that makes it easier to tell scene breaks when the scene ends at the bottom or top of a page.

For each new chapter, drop down 4 inches, then type the chapter heading in caps-- CHAPTER TWO, center that, then double space to begin the text.

Some word processing programs make it pretty darn difficult to get the format perfect, particularly the 25 lines per page. If you have one of these programs, I use iPage which is one of them, it’s better to fiddle with the top and bottom margins and the line spacing so you have the 25 pages than to have the other format elements perfect.

EPUBLISHERS

Most epublishers want the literal word count, not the NY publisher formatted word count.  Sometimes, they'll tell you so on their site; sometimes, they won't.

Epublishers who don't have a print line tend not to be so hung up on word count because the word count doesn't matter as much.

Paper publishers, however, have to figure in the cost of paper as well as maintaining a certain size of book.  

These days, to cut expenses, most of the big paper publishers don't want a book over 100,000 words from an unpublished or midlist author.