All Romance E-Books and Why You Should Be Act Like A Publisher
Way back in the archives, I talked about topics like copyright, the publishing industry and thinking about your words as assets in the future.
For a good few years, I wrote and sold short stories as a hobby. It was much later that I thought, “You know… this is serious business.”
In fact, it was when some friends of mine got into trouble. They were romance writers, and they had been published by Ellora’s Cave. Ellora’s Cave was one of the first romance/erotica e-book publishers and made a ton of money. At one point, they were selling 200,000 books a month.
Even if those books were all priced at $2.99 (they weren’t) that’s a huge amount of money.
Anyway, some of my friends lost a lot of money when it turned out the Ellora’s Cave owner decided that paying out royalties wasn’t necessary, but massive homes were. At least that seems to be the sum of it.
From what I’m aware, Ellora’s Cave went down in a blaze of suspicious legal troubles and left debts (aka money owed to the producers of the books) to the tune of $15 million.
That’s when I thought, “Jesus there’s money in e-publishing” and “how hard can it be to be in the publishing business if this is the sort of rubbish that occurs?”
Anyway, that’s enough for the trip down memory lane.
Let’s talk about another incident that occurred to some poor romance writers recently… before we do, I’m going to tell you why this is all important.
Publishers, Distributors, Agents and Your Role as Creator and Business Mogul
Let’s say you want to write material for a living. You like sitting in front of a computer and generating value with just your fingertips on the keyboard.
So do I. It’s pretty good as far as careers go. There’s no danger, no physical labour and you get to have tea breaks whenever you want.
Most writers don’t understand the value of what they produce. It is not the pixels on the screen or the ink on the page. It’s the words, sure, but it’s the intellectual property. When you record a thought, you own that thought until you sell that right. Keep that in mind. I’ll come back to it in the next section.
There are plenty of people who want a piece of the pie you’ve created. If you’re talking about books, then there are publishers, agents and distributors. There are management companies and those weird “Pay to have your book published” people. If you’re talking about online stuff, there are people who want exclusive rights to put their name on stuff you’ve authored as well as the all-out criminals that think that if you can access it online, then it’s “public domain.”
All of these people want a piece of your pie. Sometimes, it’s beneficial to let them have it… for instance, Amazon take a 30% cut on book sales in exchange for distributing your book to everyone. That’s worth it.
Sometimes, agents want a 15% cut of everything you ever write plus creative control over what you write plus the ability to turn down your work, control your work and have sole custody of all the financial records your writing creates; all in exchange for passing your book on to a publisher.
I’d argue that’s rarely worth it.
Why Your Copyright Rights Are Important
Your writing can earn you money for the rest of your life… It can also earn you money for 70 years after your death. This will get important as you age and you have beautiful little children you want to provide for.
If you write and create a lot of work, you have a never-ending supply of intellectual property that can generate income for years upon years.
When you talk about people who want a piece of the pie, you should never think in terms of, “I get a $5000 advance!” or “These guys do really great book covers” or “This agent knows J.K. Rowling’s 2nd Cousin so I might get a movie deal and a book deal!” or, “But this site will get me in front of one million horny housewives that want to read my erotica shorts!”
You must think in terms of “They want a piece of this glorious everlasting stream of intellectual property that otherwise pays my retirement and gets passed on to my kids.” In the face of that, whilst I won’t say, “All publishers and agents are evil” I will state the obvious: You should think very carefully about what you’re exchanging those rights for.
“But Jamie, if I want my book in stores, I don’t have a choice! What about selling my freelance articles? Surely nobody will pay!”
You have more options than you think. Most distributors want nothing to do with your rights. Amazon take their cut and that’s it (provided you use your own ISBNs.) Same with all online retailers. You can go direct to distributors, despite what online idiots say. You just have to be smart.
For freelance writing, you don’t have to sell exclusive and completely-transferred rights.
Those rights are yours. Don’t give them up cheaply or easily.
The All Romance Ebook Saga
Let’s go back to the romance thing.
There was a distributor of romance books. (It’s not always romance, but they sure do have some shady characters and cowboys running around.) It was a site called All Romance Ebooks.
Everything was swimming for them and the ecosystem they supported. They sold books in return for their cut (40%.) They worked with publishers, sold advertising as well – and hey, it’s an online store so what could go wrong?
Then over the Christmas period 2016, All Romance Ebooks sent out an email to some of the people that had their books for sale there:
“Hey guys… yeah, sorry, we made a loss. We’re stopping this whole thing now – oh, and by the way – there’s no money to pay you. Sorry about that.
If you want, we can give you 10% of what we owe you. That’s fair – we’d hate to have to go bankrupt, after all.
So yeah, let us know if you want that money. Oh, and for those that publish through us, we might have to sell the rights to your books to whoever buys them off us. Finally, we’re still taking advertising orders and other stuff, so if you want to give us more money that you’re not getting anything for, that’s cool too!”
I paraphrased, but that was the gist of the email.
The situation is a god-damned nightmare. Being owed money is horrid and being owed money you’re never getting back is worse. Finally, I can’t imagine what it’s like to have someone sell your intellectual property into the ownership of someone else. Insanity.
All this while the company were still taking money left, right and centre.
Why You Should Be Your Own Publisher – Or Heavily Vet Publishers
Publishing and online business are both filled with people who’ll cut and run with your money.
They’re both also filled with legitimate companies that have their interests at heart without regard for your interests. There’s nothing illegal or even immoral about that, but you have to be careful.
When you retain all of your rights, you can control these things. When you go a step further and act like the companies you’re trying to avoid being screwed by, you build resiliency into your efforts.
For instance, I’ve never sold a full-length book to a publisher. I probably won’t. Why? Because I get to control the when, where, how and all the other little details of its release. I also get to keep all of the money from that intellectual property for the length of the copyright.
If one distributor goes down – even if it’s Amazon, my books still belong to me. I can put them up for sale elsewhere. So to can I can refit them if they need a more current cover in five years. I can ensure I keep up with the latest technology so the books don’t go out of print.
If you self-publish, you can be as professional as any other publishing company. In fact you can do better. You control your input, output and the whole chain of command from conception to delivery.
Most importantly for the anti-socials, you don’t need to deal with people that want a slice of your work and do a worse job than you can do yourself.
Final Thoughts: Also… Opportunities
This article wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t also point out that when people say, “If writing were that easy, everyone could do it!” and “Barrier to entry” nonsense.
You’re competing against people who – against all belief – couldn’t keep an online store afloat even where other people provided the product, the customers and paid for advertising!
The publishing industry is undergoing a massive shift where inept gatekeepers and possibly fraudulent charlatans are being replaced by open-source systems of opportunity, and if you’ve got a brain, computer and the will to write something, then everything once reserved for those gatekeepers can be yours.
It all starts with an understanding of what you provide (intellectual property,) how you provide it (you license it to people) and how else you can keep control whilst still making money from that intellectual property.