Just wondered what people think about publication via this route?

I see a lot of people (in Facebook groups) getting very excited about having been accepted by one of these publishers - and of course, as long as it is a legitimate outfit (not a vanity press trying to pretend it's something different), that's great.

But the example I'm thinking of apparently only pays 40% of net profits - surely this can't really be making much money for anyone unless they're selling their novels by the e-cart load?

Just putting this out for discussion, by the way - I have no axe to grind either way, and am very willing to be educated by those who know more about it than me!

I've thought a lot about this, Astrea, and think it's the way things are going...

Often, from what I can gather, with the reputable e-publishers, the royalty rates are better than those with trad publishers who offer you an advance. Plus advances are getting smaller and smaller anyway...

i'd be disappointed not to get advance, but having said that, unless I got a deal with one of the big publishers, as opposed to an independent, I don't think it would make much difference.

I think the main thing is to make sure the e-publisher has a good track record with good writers and a good marketing plan. otherwise, you may as well do it yourself.

In principle, you ought to end up making the same amount of money - it just takes longer to get to you - could be a couple of years. Which, of course, means it's not sitting in your bank earning interest, nor saving you the interest on the credit card bill you won't have been able to pay off. There are costs built into being paid later, don't forget.

In practice, since advances are usually more than the book ends up earning, you may well not make as much.

And 40% sounds just dandy, compared to the 7½%/10% of a normal book deal ... till you realise that the latter figure is based on a fixed cover-price, the former on "net receipts" - how much the publishing company gets coming in. It's actually surprisingly difficult to compute that, because net receipts depend on the discount it's sold at to the reader, but also to the distributors and so on. But as a rule of thumb, the 25% of net receipts which is standard in a big publisher's e-book clause is the absolute bare minimum you should accept, and nearer 50% would better reflect the sort of revenues you'd be getting in equivalent sales of p-books.

And if the publishing company talks about 40% "of profits", rather than "of net receipts", don't touch them with a bargepole: because their profits depend on other things which you have no control over. As all accountants know, it's extremely easy for a company to massage away a profit, if it suits you to do so. Either they're so ignorant of publishing they don't know the difference, or they're scammy.

There's one more reason to think very, very hard indeed about a royalties-only deal, whoever's offering it. Especially with e-publishing, it's costing the publisher very little money up front, so they have very little investment to earn back. Sure, they'd like to make money on sales, but they don't have to in order to stay afloat.

In career terms, the real reason for wanting an advance - and being pleased if it's a big one - is not because it's nice to have money and you've earned it. It's because it's the publisher putting their money where their mouth is... and then having to work really hard to sell your book, in order to earn it back.

A royalties-only publisher may be relying on churning out vast numbers of titles very fast, for small sales, and make very little money on each one. That doesn't do much good for your sales track-record when a later publisher comes to look it up. Or they may just be incompetent and not know how to push a book properly.

There are times, of course, when a royalties-only deal will be the only way to make the sums add up: small poetry and short fic publishers and even some biggish ones often have contracts of this sort, and you may decide it's that contract or no contract, and go for it.

But please, please, please get it checked out by the Society of Authors first.

And bear in mind that in some ways such a publisher isn't doing almost anything that you couldn't do yourself, or with a decent self-publishing package from one of the reputable firms. And that way you don't get 40% of the profits, you get all of them.

And bear in mind that in some ways such a publisher isn't doing almost anything that you couldn't do yourself, or with a decent self-publishing package from one of the reputable firms. And that way you don't get 40% of the profits, you get all of them

Yes, exactly.

i try to be supportive of all my fb friends, and the deals they cut, but sometimes i'm mentally shaking my head, and thinking that they have sold themselves very short, with some of these companies that are springing up.

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although i'm sure plenty of people have mentally shaken their head at me, over the years

I just think every avenue should be exhausted, before going with a company that isn't necessarily the best deal around.

I'm doing my novel with Lucky Bat Books. I keep all royalties and rights. Lucky Bat make their money from services. I can't see what most of these royalty-paying publishing businesses are doing for their 40-60%. The rule with self-publishing - or publishing outside of the traditional model - is don't sign away percentages of royalties.

Therefore, I completely agree with Emma:

There's one more reason to think very, very hard indeed about a royalties-only deal, whoever's offering it. Especially with e-publishing, it's costing the publisher very little money up front, so they have very little investment to earn back. Sure, they'd like to make money on sales, but they don't have to in order to stay afloat.

I can't see what most of these royalty-paying publishing businesses are doing for their 40-60%.

Well, I suppose they're doing what you'd be paying for if you were self-publishing - copy-editing, design, formatting and so on. But as you say, Terry, when they're getting a percentage then effectively, you go on paying for that work forever.

Whereas if you self-publish, and pay flat fees for that work, you know exactly where you are. Still got to sell enough to cover them, of course. But that's why you're being your own publisher: it's you making the investment, and you in control of how/if you earn it back.

I think what would interest me, most, is there marketing and how they could make my e-book visible to potential buyers in a way that i, as an individual couldn't.

Harper Collins, for example, have recently brought out a new e-book imprint - you have their editors and marketing machine behind it, plus the possibility of an eventual print deal. That's the kind of e-book deal that would interest me (depending on royalty rates, etc).

One e-book imprint i looked at also helped its authors set up social media platforms etc. We're all pretty savvy on WW, i'd say, but there are writers around for whom that sort of help is invaluable.

So i think there is something to be said for e-book publishing deals, but imo, not all of them.

I think the clever thing would be to keep your e-book royalties (for all your books) yourself and negotiate yourself a 'print-only' contract with a publisher.

I just read of someone who did that and now can't find the link - sorry.

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PS I think it was PBS Media Round Up.

I don't know how much it's actually happening, but I know that there's was quite bit of talk ,when it first became clear that e-reading was going to become a significant slice of the market, that agents would increasingly negotiate print-only deals with conventional publishers, and keeping the e-book rights to sell to specialist e-book publishers - rather as they do now with translation rights and so on.

Whether that's happened, I don't know.

On the other hand, conventional publishers aren't stupid and are perfectly capable of coming up with a good answer to the agent's question of "Why, oh Long-standing P-Pub, should I sell you the e-book rights, rather than selling them to E-Special Books..."? And the answer might include the fact that for general fiction and trade non-fiction, E-publishers have a long way to go before they'll have the expertise in editorial/marketing/publicity that publishers have acquired over a century or two.

But for genres where say 50% of sales are already in e-book (I think WWer Helen Black said hers are something like that) - the highly commercial end of genres such as Romance and Crime and most of all SF/F are, it will no doubt eventually be the norm to publish e-book only. Publicity is neither here nor there, and editorial easily dealt with by a freelancer. Then there will be less and less for a publisher - conventional or e-specialist - to do except understand how the marketing works (NOT the same as publicity, of course) and the bulk of it will be self-published by the extremely business-like writers who have always operated at that end of the market.

I spent yesterday afternoon with someone who is very up to date with what's happening, publishing wise. She works with dozens of writers, covering the range from trad published to self-published, and all stops in-between. She was talking about the still-powerful desire many writers have to get published, despite the increasingly lousy contracts offered by the traditional world. For example, some writers are actually signing contracts now that give away rights to anything they will ever write under any name. That and a newish development where they also agree they can't write anything at all, e.g. blog posts, without the publisher approving it. She mentioned a very good writer that we both know, who has already established himself strongly in the short fiction market. Recently, he told her he wanted to try out traditional publishers for his first novel. She told him he was mad. He came back later to say he'd changed his mind because the contracts offered (and he did get offers, being a pretty big name) were terrible and none open to negotiation.

At the same time, self-publishing contains many unknowns, and it isn't at all obvious how those who succeed do so. On the other hand, you have total control over your work and all the time you need for it to find its market.

This may be a stupid question but what i really don't get is how anyone effectively markets a self-published book.

I mean, where on earth to you advertise, except amongst fellow writers and on your own blog/website?

I can't remember how, but someone was giving the example of two writers who self-pubbed at the same time, one did very little to advertise it, the other did exhaustive blog tours etc, and they both sold roughly the same amount of books.

What i find hard to grasp is how you make your self-pubbed work visible to your readers - and visible to enough readers to really make the whole venture worthwhile.

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as opposed to eg appearing in a publisher's catalogue

It's not a stupid question; it's probably THE question. My friend has a writer who's done very well with just one self-published book and no promotion at all. But she has others who haven't done much at all. Another's book did nothing for a long time then picked up, apparently finding its audience.

What appears to give you a better chance is:

Write a good book. Yes, one or two derivative self-published books have done very well (e.g. Amanda Hocking). But you probably stand more chance writing exactly what you want to write and doing it with quality. The novel I'm about to bring out crosses lots of genres and styles and, as my friend said, wouldn't stand a chance with trad publishing. But those qualites may be its strengths when doing it (mostly) myself.

Bring out novels in both e form and hard copy. It signals that you're professional and a lot of readers automatically assume (rightly or wrongly!) that you're a 'proper' writer if you do so.

If possible, bring out everything at once! This is the opposite to trad publishing but, according to my friend, is one of the best weapons the self-publisher has. Quantity appears to help - simply because it gives you more opportunities for people to find your work. Also, if readers like your book, they'll want to find more of your stuff and right now, not have to wait a year or two as with the trad route.

I think the clever thing would be to keep your e-book royalties (for all your books) yourself and negotiate yourself a 'print-only' contract with a publisher. I just read of someone who did that and now can't find the link - sorry.

I think it might have been Hugh Howey. He did manage to negotiate that, and the fact that the deal was described as "unprecedented" tells you how rare it is. He was also a pre-existing self-published e-book best seller.

I've heard something along similar lines,Terry - one author had several books out. She gave away one e-book for free, for a while, and the upshot was that she sold a lot more of her other books, as a result.

Yeah, i guess that is THE question and one that still makes me balk at self-publishing. i guess the best way to approach it is to think in the long-run, and see each self-pubbed book as a step up a long career ladder.