Who owns your book? A message for the New Year
Who owns your book? That sounds like a nice, simple question, so here are four answers to choose from.
Who owns your book – the trad answer
The essence of a publishing contract is simple. You sell your book in exchange for (a) an advance and (b) sales-based royalties. But the first four words of that sentence are the really significant ones, the ones that count more than anything else in the contract. You sell your book.
The publisher, not you, will determine the cover, blurb, marketing plans and sales strategy. They will probably make a polite effort to keep you in the loop and not unhappy, but that’s about it. All the final decisions will be made by someone other than you. You can yell, cajole, persuade and reason – but the decisions lie elsewhere.
Furthermore, suppose that, as is increasingly common, you sell World rights or World English rights. (For example, let’s say you are a British author selling World rights to a British publisher. That publisher would publish the book in the UK, but then sell the rights to other territories to publishers operating in those territories. “World English” means the same thing, but in relation only to sales in the English language, so that translation rights are excluded.)
Once you’ve sold World rights, those rights are there for your publisher to exploit, not you. You will not get consulted about sales strategy. You won’t learn much about what is or isn’t happening with your book. Yes, deals will be presented to you for your approval, but only in a “take it, or leave it” way. There’s no meaningful choice on offer.
In short, once you sell a book to a trad publisher, it is not your book. Don’t be unhappy about that – it’s the culmination of everything that you wanted – but don’t be under any illusions as to what is happening.
Who owns your book – the indie answer
If you’re an indie author, of course, the answer is stunningly different – and utterly simple: You own the book.
No ifs, not buts.
You can change the cover at any time. You can (and will) change pricing whenever you want. You can change your distributors. You can move in and out of different formats as you please.
It’s your book.
Who owns your book – the book’s answer
The first two answers talk about your book as a product and in terms of commercial exploitation. And, OK, that’s important, but it doesn’t really get to any interesting artistic truth.
But think about this.
Let’s say you embark on your manuscript with a particular set of goals. Perhaps you want to write a modern country-house style murder mystery. You want to imitate the crystal elegance of an Agatha Christie plot, but brought into the modern day.
Fine. You need an investigator, of course, so perhaps you choose a former Paratrooper with combat experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. That combat experience has shattered him in some ways, but has also left him with something like higher sight in matters of murder and human conflict. He’s an excellent choice of detective. Terrific.
Now you, the author, have really only one task, which is to write the best book that you can.
Your choice of hero brings a challenge: do you honour the emotional complexity of his character? Or do you attempt to properly imitate those great Agatha Christie novels that elevate the puzzle way over any real psychological depth for the detective?
It’s a no-brainer.
When your manuscript comes into conflict with your original goals, you need to change those goals. The manuscript has to win every time. Yes, you are authoring your manuscript, but you are also constantly listening to it. What does it want? What does it need from you?
In this sense, your manuscript isn’t owned by anyone at all. It owns itself. It knows its mind. Your only task is to bend low and listen closely. Then do what you’re told.
Most relationships wouldn’t work well like that, but the author-manuscript relationship really thrives. Not only does the manuscript get better that way, but you have more joy in the writing. More belief.
Who owns your book – an answer for January
But it’s January, the season of winter damps and New Year’s resolutions.
Sp the hell with publishers. The hell with self-publishing. And (whisper it softly) the hell with what your manuscript wants.
This is your year. It’s your book. Don’t be bossed around by what publishers want, or might want. Don’t be bossed around by what the Amazon algorithms are said to want. Don’t be bossed around by these damn emails or by any advice from the wise heads of Jericho.
Write.
You’ve got nothing to work with until you have words on a page. That first draft is just hauling a block of stone into your studio. The editing is where you start to carve it.
Jane Smiley says, “Every first draft is perfect because all the first draft has to do is exist. It’s perfect in its existence. The only way it could be imperfect would be to NOT exist.”
So let it exist. Make it exist. Your task for the year.
Attaboy. Attagirl.
Eighteen months ago I had a series of ideas scribbled on tatty bits of paper in a drawer. The scourge that is Covid gave me four hours of commuting back in the day – and I decided to use them. Three books ready to go* so far. Four outlined and partly plotted, two more coalescing out of a mysterious place that seems to pour the ideas into your head so fast you can’t write them down. But that first book was the one, the work that was the most important – not because it’s the best. Because it was the first to get finished. From then something changed. Sure struggles remain. I have sat staring at the same page for days on end wondering how to proceed. But that first one. It was the one that gave the proof I could do it.
If you have aspirations to be a writer – stick with it. It does not have to be perfect. Have faith and keep going. You set the words out because you have a desire to see them on the page. To communicate and create. For others to read and enjoy.
The interesting thing is, as we are starting to learn to live with Covid and things begin to return to some normality, I find myself writing at night, in bed, on a Sunday morning, even in the bath. It’s like a switch has been turned on. The first book unlocked it all. I’m pretty sure it will do that for everyone.
*Submit your work for editorial review when you are done. I should say I am not paid by Jericho, but they matched me with people who helped take the stuff I had written down and fashion it into something much better than I could have done alone. ‘Beware change of POV’!? When I saw it, it was a revelation. ‘Show don’t tell!’ Obvious, but I just didn’t know. ‘Too many adverbs’ Ah, now you point it out, it does look silly, I could go on. It’s a bit bruising. And yet among all this sobering dissection of your pride and joy, you also get this: ‘vibrant prose’, ‘compelling’, ‘excited to see the novel in print’, ‘I’d love to buy a copy’. That last one gets me. I am no Harry Bingham (not yet anyway), but if I sold one copy and that person enjoyed reading it, well, it would have been worth it. So get your first book done, you owe it to yourself.
Love this and needed to read it today. “Jane Smiley says, “Every first draft is perfect because all the first draft has to do is exist. It’s perfect in its existence. The only way it could be imperfect would be to NOT exist.”
Exactly right! My first drafts exist and it feels wonderful to have something to shape and improve.
Here’s to 2022 and letting the manuscript exist!
Doing something I’ve always wanted to do. Off today to a cabin for weeks of warmth, solitude, and writing through the last ravines of the middle section and out into the sunny uplands of the denouement. The further I creep forward, the louder my characters get. And it’s not any kind of writer’s retreat. Don’t think I could cope with that.
Looking forward to year 2 of membership and letting the manuscript exist! This is an American question about the intriguing Christmas Pudding Ice Cream…what is caster sugar and pot double cream?? Possibly turbinado sugar and heavy whipping cream?
Caster sugar is a finely ground sugar, but it’s not ground to a powder like icing sugar. I’m fairly sure that double cream is the same as heavy cream.
Thank you, Janet!
Harry. I always love your posts.
I have a book nearing finalisation.
It has been edited by an ex long-term senior editor at Penguin who strikes me as bring somewhat jaded by her experiences there..
She keeps warning me that as a new author, and based on the candour in my writing, none of the big five will pick it up (in her view).
Now this missive from you.
I am inwardly laughing at the prospect of engsging with the big five. They won’t know what’s hit them!
I have 40 years in business including 10 years as a partnef in the world’s biggest Professional Services firm. I am VERY experienced in business contracts and I’d back myself to run rings around them.
There is NO WAY I’d accept only 20% of the wholesale price nor sell the ms.
I might choose my moment to negotiate those points, but I am a BLOODY GOOD negotiator.
And… if there is no deal, it is NO BIG DEAL to me. (Perhaps a massive lost deal to them.)
NOR will I sign up to Amazon or similar without proper due diligence of them and the contract..
I have 20 years experience of leading a team developing, selling, maintaining, supporting complex software.
BRING IT ON!!
“I’m ready my Lord”
♥️🌿