Episode 52: You’ve Signed a Book Deal, Now What?

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Hello, my beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of moth you want to be welcome to the writers triangle, a podcast about publishing and all things books. Today we’re going to be talking about what to expect after you sign your contract and you are going to be published and you have your publication date, like how that even comes about how getting a contract and a publication date. And what all of the hurry up and wait is after after publishing, because that’s what it is. For authors, I feel like it’s a lot of a lot of hurry up and wait, because you have the the excitement.

K
Okay, I have just signed my contract, I now have a publication date I know in my book is going to be coming out. And I want to backtrack a little bit because I feel like when we talk about publishing, we don’t talk enough about how the advances decided and how the negotiation to sign a book happens. When you after you query, a lot of people kind of end up feeling like the crank process was you’re being thrown into the abyss. And that’s not actually what happens. I can speak for the press and the other presses that we’ve had conversations with that it’s pretty much the same. And we also have some acquisition editors that that handled the stockpiles for some of the big four. And we all agree that it’s the same process for us at at no matter what level of publishing you’re doing. And that processes when you get the query letter, most of the time, the query letter does not match the book that’s being promoted it. So it’s kind of like, okay, did I like this person and the way that they handled the query, or did it feel heavy handed to even know whether or not you’re going to read the sample that sent. And if people are accepting queries, but not accepting sample chapters with the queries, that’s a, that’s them looking for a specific book and not wanting to miss out. And so wanting to be queried, but you have to really be on their taste, but whatever they’re looking for, to get them to request a partial read nodes that are open, accepting queries with a partial read. Those are the people who are seriously out there looking for new books to publish, we read the partial read, I like my partial read to be about three chapters. Once I do a full read request, I like to give the date when I can give any book a full read, if I read the first three chapters, but I liked the author’s approach, I liked their query, I love the first three chapters, like loved something about the first three chapters, anything about them, I will either say yes, I want a full read, I will kick it back and ask for an edit of those three chapters. If you are in the kickback for an edit, that can be up to a six month exchange, before we even get to the full read. And I tried to make it less than that for for an author, if I have an author that’s in the edit and resubmit, I always try to kick them to the front of my reading list. If I ask you for an edit, and you’re cool about it, and you say yes, and get that edit to me, I try to read it within a week or two out of respect for how much energy you’re putting in getting published with us, and how much energy you’re putting into having a book be my point of view and something I feel comfortable publishing. And I want to really respect that, that energy. And if you keep doing that you can edit, we can do the process back and forth. And you will get published with us. If we go through the whole book. That way, I never string an author along if they can get a tight, three chapters in that new tone of voice than I asked for the next three chapters in that new tone of voice. And if they get six chapters to me, and the new tone of voice or whatever it is, I’m asking for I do sign them and give them a release date. So the second time I kick it back for an edit and resubmit. I’m very specific about when the book would be edited, when we would be able to give them a deal what the deal would be an all of the details of that deal. So they can make a good decision about whether or not where the press for them when in terms of what we offer. So that’s the edit and resubmit. I advise every author that if you’re getting that kind of feedback that you should actually do the edit that they’re requesting, if you want to publish with that press or if you want to land that agent, when in my conversation with with agents, I do roundtables and talks and I receive newsletters and information that only publishers are privy to. And part of that is we’re able to have conversations with agents that are really frank and honest. A most agents are not doing an edit and resubmit if it’s not on our case, but they’re just saying no. And sadly that usually ends up with them not responding at all. I encourage agents to respond like are you kidding me. And I’m like, Yes, pick a day, pick one day a month, where you just spend that entire day, emailing authors and letting them know where they spam, I promise you, it will boost your stats on everything that’s tracking that and make you a sweetheart among authors. They’re screaming into a best. And I’m always pro authors, agents get really fed up with me. I’m like, I don’t care. I’m going to champion authors, because I talk to them. And it’s just to me, it’s so heartbreaking. And I’ll be honest, I’m married to an author. So I saw firsthand what my husband went through. And I just don’t think that anybody should be treated that way. I don’t think anybody should ever submit and not hear back. And if, if you have submitted to cinnabar, moth, and I haven’t gotten back to Najmi, if you haven’t, if you submitted something to me to read, and I haven’t gotten back to you in 60 days, and two months, nudged me, because it’s true that some things just get looked over, I’ll look at it, I’ll open it. Some things I’m not proud of. But I’ve read light and didn’t get back to the author, because I was so busy that day, and it was on my to do list, and it just slipped through the cracks. And I’ve lost books that way, where I was just too slow to respond because of just spacing. So I’m giving you permission 60 days out, nudge me, I promised you that it’s probably slipped my mind. And I apologize for that, because I really do love authors. So that’s the you know, submit and agents aren’t doing that. So if an agent tells you to edit, and resubmit, do it because that agent is going to be passionate about getting you the best deal possible for your book, it’s really worth it if you really want to work with that author. So it always comes down to it the edit and resubmit to be how badly you want to work with whoever you’re resubmitting, to kind of thing. And with us, you don’t get an edit, you don’t get a second request for edit and resubmit unless we’re we’re telling you what the deal would be if we do decide to sign in, we have a deadline for when we would be making that decision. And we’re really transparent. I don’t believe that mystery serves any purpose. And in the publishing. Let’s say that you’ve gotten to the point where it’s a full read, it’s a yes. And we send the contract. We don’t negotiate on the contract we send the contract is the contract. And the advance is the advance we’re not going to negotiate there’s no wiggle room. And there have been people ask that I’m sorry, your offers not high enough for us. And I completely respect and author’s decision to hold out for more money

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if if they believe that they’re worth more money than than what they’re getting. What I encourage authors to do is if I liked your work, and I sent you a contract, and you said no, I want to hold out for more money and a year has gone by and you still haven’t sold your book, absolutely resubmit to us. I do not take offense if somebody wants. If somebody’s hustling. To get the best deal possible, you should absolutely look for the deal that is most exciting for you. And if our offer is not the deal that’s most exciting for you, let’s say you go with an agent and your agent doesn’t end up selling your book and you want to move on from their representation and seek out other things that’s great. Or if your agent hears about our deal, and they’re like that’s the best deal we can get you tell your agent, absolutely. Shoot us an email because if I liked your book, then I’m going to like your book now. I’m not going to change my mind, as long as you were polite and said No, thank you, I’ve decided to go with someone else. That’s completely 100%. Okay. And it’s also completely 100%, okay to hold on to your book forever until you get the girl of your dreams, because I think an author’s heart should sing. Once they’re signed, I think that should be an exciting day worthy of celebration and something that they’re really, really happy with. For us, once you find the book. It really is just a lot of waiting time after that Signing Day. And I’m sorry for that. And it can be up to a full year of just waiting for your book to come out. And I apologize for that. It. It just it is what it is. If you’re a thriving press, you should not be reading books that you’re polishing this year. Once you’re out of your first year of being a press. From my perspective, you should rereading books that are coming down the pike, and all of your books for this year, especially because we’re looking at September of 2022. If you’re reading a book you’re publishing in December, I hope you’re a new press, because that’s really putting yourself under the gun. And I have so much empathy for you. And I hope that you’re able to trust yourself and trust your authors and go ahead and put that manuscript request out and go ahead and get those you know, a year in advance to give yourself a year to get a book to publication. There’s so many opportunities that come with that year that you can get in terms of You know, turning it in for reviews in terms of the cover process, there’s just some so many opportunities, if you have that year lead time for a book, but we’re coming into maturity. And I think that’s going to be the case starting from 2023. For us, I think, now, currently off the top of my head, we’re eight or nine months ahead. I think this month, we’re getting books that we’re publishing next year, I want to I know we’re not getting any all of the books are out and have a cover and everything that are coming out in 2022. And we’re working on our 2023 calendar. What that means for 2023 authors is that we have read their book in 2022. And they have signed with us probably in 2021, or 2022. As soon as you sign if you haven’t already, you know that you when you sign you get your pub date, you get the goal for your pub date. If all things work out perfectly, if there’s some edits to do, and all of that you have your pub date, as soon as you know, provided the editing process goes well, because the publisher is going to give your book and edit, you’re going to review that edit, so on and so forth. With that happens, you’ve got those 12 months, right? Even if it’s a month, even if you’re just now thinking about writing a book, start building yourself a platform, get a website, there are a lot of free hosting things that are out there, get your domain name, you know, all of these things cost money, if you have a website, you have to pay the website fee. When you have a website, you have to pay for the domain name. And so the first thing to start is what do you want your your website to be. And it might surprise you that your name is already taken if you have a common name. And I’m going to use my husband as an example, bless his heart. His name is Chad music. And I would not think that that is a common name. But it is it’s super common. There are hundreds and hundreds of Chad musics out there. So we were very, very lucky in the fact that he many many years ago, purchase Chad music as a domain name, but he uses his website for other things. He doesn’t use it for his writing, much to my chagrin.

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He’s one of the most low key of of our authors when it comes to when it comes to promotion, he really doesn’t do anything to promote his books. And that’s because it’s a secondary career, it’s more of I think more of a hobby for him, because he does have a career that takes most of his time. And that’s okay, we don’t require that our authors be dedicated to promoting their books. But if you want to promote your book, and you do want to make writing your career, use that time between publication to build your platform in the beginning, if you don’t want to be on social media, that’s fine. I just wanted to talk briefly about having an author’s website, because I do think that’s something that all authors should spend that year getting together the look and everything that they want. So that they can take advantage of other opportunities. And so that they can use their first publication, their first contract to see if they can sell their other work based on the fact that they are now a published author, because the the industry really receives published offers published authors differently than authors who are unpublished. And y’all know I love first time authors, you know, I absolutely, I just, I don’t know, it’s just, there’s so much excitement that comes with that. And I’ve talked about this a bunch, I’m not going to go into that again. So everything is pretty much on hold in terms of what your the process your book is, is going to until it has its editing date. So you get a publishing date, once you have your publishing date, then the press at least our press give starts to look at the calendar after we sign a book. And we’ve we’re at the place where Okay, we have the final manuscript. And whether or not we pay an advance on the date of contract signing depends on whether or not we have a manuscript. I do not pay in advance until I get a manuscript. Because I don’t want to be suing authors. That’s not something I want to do at all. I don’t want to be a bad thing for authors. And life happened. We’ve had two authors that because of life circumstances, they couldn’t meet their contract. And it was really simple. I just reached out to them. I said, hey, you’ve missed a couple of deadlines. How are things going? They came back with? I’m sorry, I I’m not going to be able to finish this manuscript I thought it was. I said, Cool. We’ll just let the contract go. If you ever finished the book, let me read it. I’m still a huge fan. And we hope you consider us if you finish the manuscript and it’s a very positive thing and that’s because no money has exchanged changed hands. And so for me, if I don’t have a final manuscript manuscript, I haven’t sent any money that also allows me to have there are some manuscripts I kind of keep rumbling around that we quite maybe didn’t have a space for. And they said, okay, cool two, a 2025 date, and I pulled them forward. And that’s why I like being booked to 2025. And that’s why it’s in your interest to sign a contract. Because we’ve had three authors that were not supposed to be published until 2025, that have had their dates moved up, because other authors weren’t able to finish their books on time. And so a couple of authors who just absolutely were not going to end up publishing those works, another author needed and needed an extension, we have that built in flexibility, because I want to take care of, of our authors, and I want to make sure their mental health is good, I want to make sure that they’re healthy, and they’re able to get everything to press. So when we have the final manuscript and an advance is paid, once that advance is paid, you’re on the editing schedule. That’s how it works for us. That’s not how it works for all presses, some presses will pay before they get the full manuscript. And some presses pay on the date that the manuscript is received like us, and it just varies wildly. And you’ll have to see what what each individual process deal with once the final manuscript is, is delivered, get on the editing schedule. And we generally give our authors two weeks to review a manuscript. So how the editing goes is that we send it to the editor, they do the final copy, edit, and then they send it back with changes track. So the author can see all of the edits that the editor made, and can agree or disagree with them. And we give our authors to between two and three weeks, usually, it’s closer to two weeks to go through all of the edits and say whether or not they agree with the Edit, and for any edit they don’t agree with, we ask that they leave a comment by that edit, and say why they don’t agree with it. And then we usually go with the author, unless there’s something that is has to do with convention, or what the time in the way publishing is today. Once that’s done, then the book goes from the editor wants the final edits received, it goes to the typesetter. Once the book is while the book is being typeset, I send out a cover art form to the author. And this is generally probably about I want to say between four and five months before the book is published, that we’re going through this process because we’d like to finish the cover process to be at least four months before the book goes out for different editing things that we’re able to do not editing, different promotional things that we can do, if we have a three, we have between five and three months lead time on on the book being done. So I send the the cover art,

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we have a cover art form that I send out to all of our authors, it just makes it easier for the artists that we work with. And we generally have one or two artists that do all of our all of our covers, because I really like building relationships, and having long term relationships with people that are intimate. And also having diversity and all of that I we really have diverse artists and I really, really love all of our artists, if you’re understand who our cover artists are, you can check them out on our talent page at cinnabar moth.com. We have all of our authors and all of our talents listed on our website, because we do like to promote them. So while the book is being typeset, we get the cover art form back and sometimes I have some conversations back and forth with with the author. So that process, I send the cover art, again, two weeks is kind of my go to you on what I like to give authors. And when they send it back. If there’s any questions or anything that’s unclear in the cover art form, I will have a conversation with them about that and go back and forth. To make sure I have a really clear understanding of what they’re going for and what they want. Then I send that to the artist and the artist, two weeks has two weeks to do it usually does a two week turnaround on the mock up. And what the mock up of of the cover is it’s really rough black and white sketches with some notation. So it’s not anywhere near what the final cover is going to look like. It’s just to give you a general idea. Our artists that we work with, we asked for for mock ups based on how they interpret what they received on the cover art form. At this time, then we send it back to the author and it goes back and forth until the author is happy with the mock up. Once the author picks the mock up, we go into final cover phase before during tie During the typeset phase, I also ask the authors to send in the back blurb, which is what you read on the back cover of a book that’s called the back blurb. It’s about 250 words roughly. And I also asked them to send a tagline, which that goes to the editor as well, and the editor tweaks that changes it to make sure it meets all of our requirements. All of this contributes to how impacts how the cover is made. Once we have the final image for the front cover, we send that to the author for them to approve it. And then the typesetter has finished typesetting the book and sends, we have specific templates, templates that our books have to go into for hardcover, and paperback as well as their specific templates for audiobooks, and ebooks. Once the cover is in all of those templates, then we also send the back blur to the artists and the back the cover artists puts the ISBN and the barcode on it, the ISBN is how it’s tracked for whatever version of the book it is, all of our books have a paperback hardback ebook. And suddenly, they have for i Four ISBN, and they get it ASI N, or the fourth one is the audio book. We don’t do audio books for all of our books anymore, we do have a couple of series that have audio books, because the first book in that series, we got audio books, the reason that we stopped doing audio books, it was really difficult to find, to get it within our price point the audiobooks within our price point and within our timeline, because we do have such a strict and rigid requirement for when we get the audio for those. So the audio book, editing and all of that is a different system. And we just found that that it was easier for us as a press to keep everyone happy and and mentally emotionally.

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Feeling good about the publication process, the team was just like, you know, audiobooks are really challenging for us. And it also puts a lot of stress on the author because it requires a lot more work from the author to have an audio book made at least in the system that that we were using, and that might have been on us. And for that I apologize. So after we get the cover, everything kicks into high gear, and that’s when all of the promotion really starts of the book. Because it’s really hard to promote a book without a cover, you can’t send it to reviewers, there’s really nothing that that can be done. That can be seen behind the scenes, what we’re working on is we do purchase ad spaces, and ad space for some periodicals have to be purchased a full calendar year before you turn on the artwork. So we look at all of our and that’s another reason why we have to have our schedule a year in advance and know what books we’re actually bringing to market because we purchase ad spaces based on that. And we try to get all of our ad purchases done early in the year, we try to be done purchasing ads in February, because a lot of the systems that we purchase it we get special discounts based on associations we belong to, and they have very limited spacing. So you purchase all of the ads that we want for the year. And any ads that can’t be purchased in the first you know, quarter of the year, we do have them on our calendar to purchase them, we’d like to be done with ADD purchasing at the very latest for the calendar year to be done with that around June. Because that kicks off our award season. And we’re wanting to switch to a different, different focus. And we’re wanting to start getting everything together for the different awards that we’re going to place the books in. And every single book that we published, is put up for several awards, how many awards a book is that we put a book forward for really depends on the genre of the book, and the right fit for for the award, because you want to make sure that the book is the right fit. All of this is stuff that really happens behind the scenes. And when we purchase a book, we’re thinking about the entire life experience of the book with us. And so that’s where thinking, you know, 510 years down the road, what are we doing this book? How are we promoting this book. So when you’re looking at that promotion by early in the year, that’s something authors are unaware of and that authors don’t experience. But our team, our marketing team, we do think about all of our books that we have, that we published previously, all the books that we have upcoming in the calendar year that we’re looking at, and on down down the road. We have books that are not we’re publishing through 2020 Seven, we don’t have any books on the calendar past 2027. Because we don’t want authors waiting that long. And so we try to not have authors wait more than two or three years at the most for publication, we feel more comfortable with capping it out at a two year wait for publication.

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So all of this goes on behind the scenes and the author’s unaware of it. The author’s experience in that space from signing the contract, up until about four or five months before the book comes out, is radio silence. They don’t hear anything from the press. And we try to communicate with our authors on social media and engage with them on social media. But there’s nothing to do. And that’s why I think it’s an important to know what the marketing plan for your book is. And I invite authors to contact us and talk to us, we have a marketing plan for every book that we purchase. And I’m completely transparent. And if you want to know what our basic marketing plan is, you can check out our episode on marketing. And that basically is what we do for every book like think checking out our episode on marketing and checking out our episode on book tours, we did two different episodes on that will give you an idea of I want to say about 90% of what we do. There is that 10% outlier that are for specialty books I think I didn’t go into because it is genre specific. Let me know down in the comments, if you would like a more detailed marketing plan based on a specific genre, we have if you have a genre, we have a book in that genre trust. So and if even if we don’t have a book in that genre, if you hit me with the new genre, I will immediately start looking at how to market that genre, because more than likely we will get a book in that genre or a piece of writing in that genre. So it’s for me, that’s why I think it’s a lot of hurry up and wait, because it’s really exciting that it’s about a month long process. From the time that I read your final manuscript to the longest back and forth, we’ve had from me reading a fan of final night, the final manuscript and signing an author has been a month. And for me, I’m, I’m really proud of that timeline. It’s something that that feels really good and really positive. But I’m very happy about and so, but if you look at that snapshot, right, I signed them. And if their book is coming out, let’s say 12 months from the date of signing, the not minimum is going to be a five to six months, five to six months of waiting, with nothing going on. And that’s why I encourage authors to ask what’s the marketing plan, because here’s the thing, if the press that you’re signing with doesn’t have a marketing plan, then you know that you have to market your own book. And you can use that time to make your marketing plan. If they do have a marketing plan, you can see if there’s something that you can contribute, I invite authors to be proactive. For me as a red flag, if somebody wants to sign you and they can’t talk marketing. For me, if I was an author, that would make me uncomfortable, because I would feel like okay, I’m going to be 100% responsible for that. And if they aren’t even thinking about it to where they can’t say, we expect you to market your book, or this is what we’re doing, even if their marketing plan is to promote you on social media, that is still a marketing plan. And I do not fault any press, if that’s their marketing plan. I also don’t hold presses responsible for marketing books. I like to do it because I think it’s burnt to have an author spin their advance on marketing. I think it’s great if authors are in a place where they can invest that into their books, I just don’t want to expect that. I think the the main thing to keep in mind when once you sign up is to have realistic expectations. There’s a little bit of bad news that I want to share that I’ve talked about before, only 80% of all books published across all types of publishing. This includes the big four and this includes self publishing, only 80%

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and only 20%. Rather 80% of the books do sell fewer than 100 copies. And that’s in their first year of publication 80% of all books published across all types of publication and their first year of publication, so less than 100 books. I’m really proud of the fact that all of our books do better than that. That makes me really happy for our authors out there in the top 20% And it it heartbreaking, that number is heartbreaking, but having realistic expectations, this is where the advance comes in. The advance of your book for most authors is all you will ever make off of your book, whatever the advances, that’s it. And that’s why I advise authors to really make sure that you’re happy with your advance and you’re happy with your publisher. Because probably, unless, you know, you’re looking at 10 years from now, what you’re going to make 80% of authors will not actually they, they looked at it, and something like 95% of authors never earn out their advance on any of their books. So there is a 5% of authors who are making getting residuals from, from their their book that haven’t earned out their advance. So when you’re getting your advance, and you’re looking at your relationship with your press, look, understand that, that that’s probably what you’re you’re going to make unless you’re looking taking the long view, usually most books, you know, you’re looking at that 80% Never aren’t out there advance. You know, that’s, that’s a tough one. And hopefully, hopefully, our authors don’t experience that we do have one book that aren’t out, it’s fat, it’s advanced already. That, you know, we’re looking at that. And that’s an incredible thing as a new press to have. So having realistic expectations about publishing your book is a must, you know, most authors live off their their back catalogue sales that aren’t getting in advance, they’re living off of off of what their books are coming in to those who aren’t doing in advance and the other authors are living off of off of other supplemental things that they’re doing. And they’re getting that once a year advanced because we only published one book a year, per author. And it may be really rare, or we might get two books in a year from from any given author because of the publication schedule that we have. But most authors are getting one advance a year from us. So being able to afford being an author is something really to think long and hard about how to position yourself so that you can write so that you can get that place. If making a living off your writing is the goal. And if that’s the goal, having a social media platform, being proactive, check out our episode on marketing, check out our episode on book tours, and check out our episode on speaking engagements and start thinking about what you can do to supplement what the press is doing. Because when I’m talking about this 80 and 90% of authors, I’m talking about authors in the big four that are on those morning talk shows that are there are some best sellers that are not earning out there advance. And having a best seller when you look at the breakdown on book sells, I advise you to to do your homework on that I think I might do an episode on book sales. Even best sellers are not earning out there advance because you have to look at once the advance is paid back. And I can’t I think I should do a whole episode on this because book sales are so complicated. Let me sell to libraries, we make no money. I don’t know why they call it a sell. That’s just it’s not a sale. It’s there’s no advanced there. And then the how much we get for an audio book is different how much we get for and an ebook is different. How much for paperback how much for hardback it’s type of book and who sold it, because everybody has their everybody negotiates a different price for how much the retailer makes. So who’s getting rich off best sellers, retailers are making the money off of off of best sellers. It’s not a press, a press does not get rich off a best seller and neither does an author, unfortunately, I think let me know if you want an episode describing the different types of book sales and how much money we make off of each type of book sale, I will not reveal any specific authors advance. And I will not reveal any specific details about any book of ours. Because that’s their story to tell if they want that out in the world.

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I do believe that everybody’s not comfortable talking about money. I’m really comfortable talking about money. So I’m comfortable talking about how much money the press makes for each different type of sale. And this is all presses not just us. And I think you know, if you have a library card, you can get this information. So I don’t feel like I’m telling tales out of school. Let me know if that would be interesting for you. And if so, you know, leave it down in the comments. Or you can hit us up at Media at cinnabar moth.com. And I’ll absolutely do an episode on not anything you want to know about publishing, let me know and I’m more than happy to talk about it. And while you’re thinking about that, go ahead and hit the like button and subscribe and hit the notifications bell so you get notified every time we drop a new episode. And I want to thank all of our beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of moth you want to be for listening and you don’t have to be a moth you can be a butterfly but I’m not Mariah Carey and I’m not trying to bite her rhyme talk to you soon bye