Episode 3: Development Deals

August 29, 2021

The Writers Triangle

00:00 / 00:31:44

Hello all my beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of moth you want to be. Today we’re going to be talking about development deals because development deals are really confusing for a lot of people who haven’t heard of them and don’t know what they are, and they feel like they’re a lesser deal than a straight offer. And they’re not a lesser deal for me. I feel like a development deal in a way is kind of better than a straight deal because a straight deal is when you take your manuscript as is, we do an edit, you get two weeks to proof the edit, send it back, and you’ve got your date. And there’s nothing to do in between when you get your date and you turn your manuscript and then you get your date but basically to wait, and some people are waiting until 2023 to be published, and some people are waiting till 2024 to be published. It just depends on what the book is. We have some slots available… We might have one spot available, possibly two in 2022, but I doubt it kind of thing.

So a development deal is when we get a manuscript and it’s missing something crucial, it doesn’t have enough world-building, or it’s just missing continuity, or I don’t like the flow or someone else doesn’t like the flow. And that’s why we have more than one person look at it, is because I feel like one person’s opinion is not enough to say yes or no on a book, unless that person is super passionate and has a clear vision for that book. I still think other eyes need to look on it because we all have our own biases and it’s going to be a range of people who are looking at and reading the books. So the developmental deal is you work with an editor. And I usually… We have two bottlenecks at the company, and the first bottleneck is me, and the second bottleneck is Rasta.

And the reason for that being is a lot of our editors and a lot of our beta readers and beta reviewers have all had really negative experiences working directly with authors, so they don’t want the authors to even know their name. And I completely respect that, and I don’t mind authors knowing my name. I’ve been a public figure for most of my life, so it doesn’t bother me as much, I think, and I’m used to it, and the different types of interactions that can happen. Oh my goodness, I’m so yawny today. I think I’m always yawny. I don’t know, I think maybe talking makes me yawn a lot. So the first choke point, me, is that I deal with… I’m the one who deals with the developmental deals, and Rasta’s the one that when you have regular contract that you deal with, because you go into production at that point.

But sometimes I handle the production because we may be dealing with the new artists. So basically if we’re dealing with a new artist or if we’re dealing with a new narrator or a new vendor, I deal with it because I understand the intricacies of it and I’m the more seasoned hand and more experienced. And with the development contract, it’s 50 pages every two weeks is basically the pace, and we go over it and we talk about, “Okay, this is what I would like to see. This is what it is. This is what I would like it to change to. And these are the tweaks that I would like.” And sometimes those are my notes. Sometimes those are the notes from a different team member or a different editor, but there’s a whole team of people, a whole group of… Between three to five people on the development deals that are looking at your work and trying to give you the best advice possible to publish with us.

And I want to emphasize to publish with us, because I think every publisher is completely different in the way they handle it. So I don’t think the big five are doing developmental deals anymore because they don’t need to. Sorry for the yawns. I hope those can be edited out. I have an editor that does my sound editing, and thank you for crunching it and making me sound better than I would otherwise. So basically what happens is you send that 50 pages, and then in between 24 to 72 hours, you get the feedback. And for the most part, when people turn in their pages, it’s like, “This is amazing. This is awesome. I really love what you’ve done with it.” Every now and then it’s, “Can you tweak this a little bit?” And they’re usually really small tweaks.

But the developmental deal is that for somebody who believes that their book is the best representation of their artistic vision, because it’s usually massive changes. And I think the biggest changes that we’ve asked for and developmental deals is a reduction of word count. We have several books that have come in at 100,000 words, and that wouldn’t be a big deal if we didn’t do audio books. But audio books are extremely expensive to produce and worth every single yen or penny, wherever you’re at. Every bit that we pay for them, they’re absolutely worth it. We’re really, really lucky that our two primary narrators so far have not run out of time. They’ve always been able to do our books and I’m just like, “You guys are going to get so busy and leave us behind,” because I already see them growing in popularity, and I understand, and we do have other resources, but doing an audio book is hugely time-consuming as well as expensive.

So in looking at a developmental deal, at 100,000 words, you’re adding a thousand dollars to the cost of the book, the cost of the audio book. So I asked people when it comes in at 100,000, no matter how excellent those 100,000 words are, I’m going to ask for a 20,000 reduction. For me, the sweet spot for us is 85,000 words for just everything. That’s the upper limit. And we have books that are 90,000 words. So we have books that are 96,000 words. And those books needed to be those lengths. So you have to convince me that it needs to be that length of it’s over 85,000 words. But even our authors that are doing more than one book with us are coming under the new word count heading because something we’ve done is we’re almost doubling the amount of books that we published from this year to next year. So we have to look at the budget and we have to look at how can we be fair to everyone we’re publishing and stay in budget?

So those developmental deals, I know that a major difference from the contract, the deal contract that’s not developmental, the non-developmental contract, is that you don’t get a signing bonus on the day that you sign the contract. Instead, you get your signing bonus when you deliver the manuscript. And the reason for that being is I don’t want anyone to ever have to be in the position of returning their advance. And everybody gets an advance, a moderate advance. I won’t say a specific number because I have no idea when you’re listening to this, and I have no idea what our advance is at that time. You might be listening to it in real time as it comes out, or you might be listening to it five years in the future, and I just don’t feel comfortable putting that detail out in the ether.

But we divide it into two separate advances. So with the immediate signing contract, yes, you’re signed, you get your publishing date, your date of publication, and you get your signing bonus. And then when your book comes out, you get your release bonus. With a development deal, you get a date that your manuscript is due by, rather than a publication date. And what I do is I say, if you get the manuscript to us on this date, this will be your publication date. And I hold that date for you, trusting that you’re going to get your manuscript to me on the date that you say so. And for me, I’m completely comfortable with that and completely happy with it and that’s good.

And on the other side of it is by not giving a signing bonus, if for whatever reason the author doesn’t make the manuscript date, they never have to be in a position of paying us back money. Because that’s what I never want an author to have to do. I don’t want an author to ever have to give us money. And if I give you an advance for the manuscript that you don’t get me, I’m going to want that money back. And when we start these relationships, we don’t really know the person. I research authors as best as I can, but doing research is not the same as getting to know someone at all, and getting to know their personality and their work style and their workflow and all of that.

And doing developmental deals is nail biting for us as a publisher. I can’t speak for the entire team, but I can speak for me. I am on edge. I am on edge. We have four manuscripts right now, currently, that are in development, and I am on edge because we have a schedule out until the 24th. And I don’t know if we’re going to have all of the books that I intend to have for 2022, and that’s a scary place to be in because I don’t want to open submissions scrambling around looking for a book. I feel like if it doesn’t happen, it’s not meant to be and we’re just not going to put out what I hope to put out next year kind of thing. So again, not saying a number, because don’t know when you’re listening to this, and also I like to keep my goals private, and then I never fail publicly.

And I don’t view putting out the number of books that I want to put out as a pass or fail, because I did close submissions and we have a few invitations out there. And one of the invitations is a developmental deal for a publication in 2022. It may be that they decide that they don’t want to go that route, that they decide that they would like to publish with another press or do something different, and that’s completely fine that the authors can do that. It kind of hurts to lose a book because they didn’t want a developmental deal, and then to see them go to a different press and wait two years to be published. And I’m like, “What did that press give you?” I want to ask them, so nosy. What did they give you? Are they publishing you as is? Is that what it was? Or was it the advance? What was it?

And it always makes me curious why people say no to being developed because you have a team of professional expert publishers focused on making your book the best it can be to bring it to market. Why wouldn’t you want that? I would love that. Please validate me. Can you imagine every 50 pages you get validation because we always find something positive to say. And think about it, when you turn in 50 pages and someone’s like, “Oh my God, these are the best 50 pages I’ve ever read in my life. This is so amazing.” And that’s the kind of feedback we’re giving to a lot of our developmental deals. The last batch of 50 pages I got from one of them, I was like, “I am blown away by the world building, the character building, the flow. Just everything is so epic,” was a word that came to mind for me. And I was like, “This is just so amazing. And I am falling so much in love with this book.”

And I would think, “Don’t you want that in your publisher?” Don’t you, as an author… I don’t know. I think it’d be cooler if y’all hit us up on @CinnabarMothPub on Twitter and let me know. Do you not want the passion… Because it’s a temperamental thing. For me, I don’t like backhanded, effusive praise. Was like, “Oh my gosh, thank you so much. You’re so amazing.” And then when it comes time to do the deal, they’re like, “I’m not sure.” I’m like, “But you were sending me love sonnets before I offered you the deal,” and I told you what the deal was going to be, because I don’t send out the contract… I tell you what the contract will be before sending the contract.

So that’s another layer of confusion for me. If I asked you, “Do you want a developmental contract? This will be the date that you’re going to be published. This will be your advance when you turn in the manuscript. This is the date the manuscript’s due,” I always wonder, what is the, “I need to think about this.” I don’t know what gives people pause when they see the contract. And I don’t know if it’s inexperience with contracts. I know one person we had a little bit of a miscommunication… Actually several of our authors had never seen a developmental contract, had never heard of a developmental contract and didn’t know it was a thing and they were overwhelmed by it and kind of just shut down because it was so strange and new.

And it’s exactly the same as our regular deal contract, except for one paragraph. It’s literally one paragraph difference. So one paragraph and three lines. So three lines at the beginning and then one paragraph in section five. And I don’t know. I don’t know. I love the developmental deal. And I think I’m probably being really selfish in that because I love mentoring and I so love seeing someone get it in my mind. They had a missing piece and we found that missing piece, and now this book is amazing to me and amazing to our team. And that’s just so exciting for me. To be a part of that, it’s such a rush to see the creative process up close and so intimately and to work with the writer so intimately. The bond and the relationship that’s forged, the level of communication that’s involved. It’s such an intimate process. And as I’m describing it, I’m like, “I’m excited, and I love this.” And I think…

I don’t think that would be everybody’s cup of tea. I don’t know. I think I’m getting people who are like, “I don’t know about this. I need to think about it.” Because it’s 50 pages every two weeks and it’s make these changes. It’s that cut and dry. And I always say what the changes would be. Because I never want an author to go into a deal with us or an agreement with us without fully understanding what it is we’re offering them, because we have so many author friends who are just measurable in their contracts. And I’ve said this before. I just really don’t want that for any of our authors. I want our authors to be as happy as possible, and I want them to feel like they’re at the press they’re meant to be at, and I want them to feel connected and I want them to feel cared about and cherished. And I think maybe all of that emotional connection that I’m wanting could be off-putting. I could see that. I could see it being off-putting.

Like, “No, I don’t want to email you every two weeks with 50 pages and hear your opinion.” And like, “No, I don’t want to make any of the changes you’re telling me to make.” And no, “I don’t want to be published a year from now because it takes six months.” With my smoking the house down pedal to the metal to get a book out comfortably, it takes about nine months to launch a book for everything that the book needs, which I’ll talk about on a different episode. So yeah, I guess I kind of get it now. So I find that interesting… I found this in the podcast on The Musicks in Japan as well, the podcast I do with my husband, that in doing the podcast, I get to learn myself, learn about myself so much more. And also I get to learn more about whatever I’m talking about. If that makes sense?

Because I’m a very verbal person in terms of my thinking sometimes. Or writing it, and I feel like that communication is so enriching for me and gives me so much, but I could see on the flip side, it might be super stressful to have to turn out those pages and super stressful to be positive when getting negative feedback and getting positive feedback. And I guess I can kind of relate because I’m earning my PhD right now, so I’m on submission… Every two weeks I submit a piece of my PhD and then I wait for two weeks to get feedback from it, and that’s why our feedback time, because those two weeks I’m in purgatory, but I have to keep working. And then when I get the changes back, some of the changes are really upsetting to me, but I have to just be like, “Okay, cool. Yeah, I’ll do that.”

But sometimes I can get a little salty in responding to the comments and then of course I delete the saltiness and just write, “Thank you. Great. I hope I made this clearer.” But sometimes it’s really hard for me because I worked really hard on it and I thought I nailed it and I thought I was delivering exactly what was wanted and exactly what was being asked of me, and to be really far off the mark is devastating because it’s so much time, so many hours of my life. And I work. Like most of our authors, I have a full-time job and I’m writing this, basically… Wow, basically I’m in a developmental deal. And I’m not enjoying it. I’m not enjoying it at all. So I guess if I compare it to my PhD, it takes a certain kind of temperament, I guess. So yeah, okay. I get it now. I can see that.

I try to make it as painless as possible with the quick turnaround on feedback and appreciation and always doing something positive. My chair does the same thing. Super positive, always has something nice to say, but sometimes it’ll be like a wall of nice and one little comment or one question and it’s just… I don’t know. It can just hit me so wrong. So, okay. I see you. I see you. And I appreciate you. Everyone who’s agreed to a development deal, I’m newly humbled and honored by you accepting that deal. Thank you so much for the trust and respect and just… I don’t know. I think of it as love, but I know it’s not love because it’s strangers. So maybe openness to the process and flexibility and kindness and humility on your part. So every author who’s ever taken a developmental deal with us, thank you so much, and seriously from the bottom of my heart, newly humbled.

There’s another kind of developmental deal, and I’m so sorry for everyone that’s in the first kind, and I hope hearing about the second kind it doesn’t make you upset. Sometimes we’ll have a preexisting relationship with a writer that we know the quality of their writing, and they announced that they’re going to write a book and I pounce. I’m not going to lie. I say all the time on Twitter, I have an addiction. I closed our submissions and then I sent out invitation to a couple of authors to be published in 2022 because I just fell in love with their writing. I’m just so really in… I love a good book. I love a good story. So we have a couple of authors whose books aren’t finished yet, but I just fell in love with the idea.

And one author that we’re working with that we haven’t signed yet, they just sent us an idea, and the relationship I have with them preexists the publishing dynamic. So I feel like I have a personal connection with them and… I don’t know, their idea just sounds really cool, and I said, “I can’t promise anything, but if you get me 50 pages, I can tell you whether or not I’d want to do a development deal with you.” And bless their heart, they tried to send me a different book. And I was like, “Everybody in the office revolted. Everybody is like, ‘No, we have fallen in love with this other idea that you said that you don’t feel like writing right now, and we’re not even going to read this idea you sent us until you give us the one you promise, because we’re just so thirsty for that idea. It was just such a unique and funny and interesting idea.'”

So it’s tough, right? It’s hard because you get the one deal where it’s just all passion and light… Like there’s another another author that I hope takes a developmental deal with us that I… It’s not that back and forth changing and tweaking things because they are just tight. The writing is just tight. I wish that I could write the way they do. I am such in awe of them. They write fast. The storytelling’s tight, the grammar is tight. We have two authors that are like that, that are just like, “Wow, you are turning out a book so much faster than I could.” Writing is such a painful process for me, and not one I enjoy. Which is why I’m a publisher and not an author, even though I have two short stories in one anthology. I’ll be honest, I wrote those two stories because I wanted to make sure we hit our page count. And then we exceeded what I thought. But I was like… In the beginning they were trickling in so slowly, to cope with my anxiety about it, I turned out a story.

So I can write… I guess I can write fast, but I don’t enjoy it. And then when the story’s out there, I don’t care about the story. I don’t care if anyone reads it. And that’s something that I love about all of our authors. The fact they care that someone reads their work. They care about the reviews and all of that. I don’t. I’m like, “Give me one star, give me five stars, I don’t care. It’s not changing my life. It’s doing nothing, because I’m not going to write anything else.” And I think reading the stories and getting to know the authors and especially in the developmental deal authors, I really get to know them, even if it’s a book that I’m not changing anything, it’s still that 50 page every two weeks dynamic.

And that’s more to do with having it be… I do everyone out of sync with my PhD, so I have time to read and give feedback, but also have time to work on my PhD if that makes sense, and time to do all of my other duties as head of marketing. So I do a lot of reading every day. Every day. And I really enjoy it. And I do a lot of communication with authors every day. And I really enjoy that as well. And I really enjoyed the mentoring, but I understand that being mentored is not for everyone. I understand that it’s not fun. I’m being mentored right now and I’m not enjoying it, and I honestly have one of the most amazing mentors and chairs to go through the PhD process with, just a genuinely generous person who has an honest fan of me as a writer. So I have everything that I’m giving… Everything I’m getting is basically what I’m giving and what I’m getting is not enough.

So I could see that the developmental deal might just not be enough for some writers. Mind blown. I blew my mind coming to that conclusion. So I started off with like, “This is great. Everyone should do it. It’s awesome. To being like, “Wow, okay. I could see how for some people that would be really fun and for others not so much.” And then I could see for some where it wouldn’t be fun, but it’s bearable, because I find my PhD isn’t fun, but it’s bearable and doable and… Because I want the thing at the end so bad. So I guess the first book doing a developmental deal, that if you have a book that you’ve been shopping around for years, just wanting someone to say yes and being willing to do a developmental deal just because you want that yes so bad, that’s kind of where I’m at. I just want my PhD so bad I’m doing a developmental deal.

So yeah. I’m more understanding now of the people who said no. Interesting. So that was it for this week. I know I say next week. That’s because The Musicks in Japan, our weekly podcast, so it’s a half and a half, we’ll talk to you next week kind of thing. But this is actually I will talk to you next month because we do author interviews in between my little publishing tidbits. So thank you so much for tuning in. I completely value your time and energy and focus and love it if you hit us up on… If this episode has caused you to have any questions or curiosity, you can send us an email at info@cinnabarmoth.com, or you can hit us up @CinnabarMothPub on Twitter.

Like I said every week, I’m completely transparent and I don’t want to hide anything. Thank you my beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of moth you want to be, and like I say every week, you can be a butterfly, but I’m not Mariah Carey. I don’t know if I’m going to keep that line, but I’m enjoying it for now. And I will talk to you next month. Wow. Make sure to check out the author interview that drops in two weeks. I don’t know which author it’s going to be because I completely spaced it, but thanks a bunch and talk to you next month. Bye.