Oh dear.<\/p>\n
Every now and then I get an email which is just so annoyingly familiar I want to scream.<\/p>\n
In this case, a wonderful human \u2013 one of you, a Jericho client \u2013 wins a literary prize. The prize is for unpublished manuscripts and the major element of the prize is a publishing deal with an up and coming new publisher.<\/p>\n
We will call our wonderful human Jacaranda Cappucino, or Jax for short. In my imagination, Jax is a woman with abundant black hair and always dramatic headgear. Today, she is wearing a red fedora with a pair of pheasant feathers in midnight blue.<\/p>\n
And \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n I advised Jax to get an agent, but for various reasons, she didn\u2019t \u2013 including the fact that the competition rules were restrictive, so there wouldn\u2019t be much room for contract negotiation, so in theory not much need of an agent.<\/p>\n And \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n The competition rules were displayed on a website, but after the winner was announced, the website was changed and the rules were no longer posted and Jax could not longer see the rules by which she was bound.<\/p>\n And \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n By the time I spoke to Jax about agents, she had actually been introduced to some, one of whom turned her down rather cattily. (And, jeepers, turn someone down if you will, but why cattily<\/em>? So she didn\u2019t feel great about agents, and I get why.<\/p>\n And \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n The book was published. Yay! Jax began work on the next. That next book needed a new contract. She pushed back on reversion rights and got language that she wanted in there. (Yay #2, and well done, Jax.) She also wanted the publisher to modify its language on optioning the next book. (So a lot of contracts mean that the publisher of your contracted book has a right of first refusal over the next book you write. That can be a venomous and destructive little clause, so you need to be careful with it.) The publisher would not modify its option language, but it was worth a go.<\/p>\n And \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n Around this time, more agents were in touch with Jax. One agent talked to Jax and said, don\u2019t worry about the option \u2013 if this publisher doesn\u2019t take your next book, I can always place it elsewhere. They then apparently, and without consulting Jax first, rang the publisher and told them more or less the opposite.<\/p>\n And \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n The book sold. It sold well. Or at least the publisher told Jax that they were \u2018thrilled\u2019 with sales. That was their word: thrilled. And thrilled is good, right? Except that after three months of working with Jax on Book #2, the publisher told her abruptly that they wouldn\u2019t be publishing it after all. The publisher \u201cstruggled terribly to tell me this and preceded it by saying he wished I had an agent.\u201d<\/p>\n And \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n Look: Jax is doing the right thing. She\u2019s writing another book. She\u2019s been published once. She\u2019ll do it again.<\/p>\n But also:<\/strong><\/p>\n Why does this industry have to be so damn ungenerous to its authors? Why can\u2019t its people simply be truthful? If you win a competition, why not make sure that the winner has a copy of its rules. If you\u2019re an agent rejecting an author, why not do so without cattiness? \u00a0If you\u2019re an agent, don\u2019t say one thing to the author and another to the publisher. If you\u2019re the publisher and you are pleased with sales of book #1 but cautious about book #2, why not say exactly that to the author<\/em>\u00a0<\/u>and explain why?<\/p>\n The key here is the industry\u2019s problematic \u2018niceness\u2019. The publisher \u2018struggled terribly\u2019 to give the author bad news. Don\u2019t struggle. An investment banker doesn\u2019t struggle. A market gardener doesn\u2019t struggle. A plumber doesn\u2019t struggle. Just tell the truth. And do so without personal charge.<\/p>\n This shouldn\u2019t be hard, right? And yet stories like Jax\u2019s are all too common.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not you. It\u2019s them.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Oh dear. Every now and then I get an email which is just so annoyingly familiar I want to scream. In this case, a wonderful human \u2013 one of you, a Jericho client \u2013 wins a literary prize. The prize is for unpublished manuscripts and the major element of the prize is a publishing deal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":6716,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-harrys-friday-email"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n