A Publisher's Conversation with Authors: Collaboration in Sheep's Clothing

 

1.     It is Tuesday. Time to tall turkey. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side.

Today's topic takes a detour from the usual format of this column in order to share an experience as a warning to other publishers and to authors -- a great get-rich scheme for the company doing the offering and stay-poor scheme for authors, presented as a collaboration. I almost got trapped by this one and there are some takeaways I have learned (and should have known) that could be warning bells for others.  

Months ago, I was contacted by ORIM, a legitimate company, offering to collaborate on marketing of some of our e-books. It was a very fair offer: we would put up the e-books, ORIM would market them on their many platforms. We would split the difference in very fair ways between what the books had been earning and what they began to earn with ORIM assistance. Unfortunately, before we could even sign a contract, ORIM had a change in Board of Directors, and the new board moved in a different direction. That happens; nothing wrong with that.

However, recently along came another company, eBooks2go, offering to collaborate in a similar way. I spoke to two people in the leadership of the company. In both cases, I said I would be interested only in a deal equivalent to ORIM's: no-cost, revenue-sharing, with MSI Press offering the books and this company offering the multiple platforms. Hunky dory, they said. Send us the list of books ORIM had selected for such a collaboration, they said. I sent the list. A couple of weeks later, they said, handy-dandy, we will get back to you about our campaigns. Campaigns? What happened to platforms? Then after another 10 days, I got from them an offer a variety of, yes, campaigns, costing MSI Press $400-$1000 to do the kinds of marketing we already do. So, let's see, at the lower end, they invest essentially nothing and get $400. We pay $400 and may get essentially nothing in return. So +$400 to them, -$400 to us. I don't think so! But let's consider that their campaigns were relatively effective. To earn our $400 back, assuming an average $4/book sales price (that's a little high for our books) on the Kindle platform, which scoops up 50% for Amazon, the campaign would have to sell 200 books from one campaign effort just to break even. Possible, but based on industry trends and our experience, not likely -- and we could do the same or better campaign for about $40 in-house. Hm...ever think, no brainer?

In the end, this looked like a bait-and-switch operation to me. I thought that the representatives clearly understood the kind of collaboration I was looking for, repeating my words to me every time I uttered them. Did they really misunderstand, or did they think I was too stupid, too naive, or too avaricious to overlook the change in terms? I guessed the latter, so I informed them in writing that I was none of those things. If they would like to follow up on our original verbal agreements of no-cost, shared-revenue "campaigns" (if that is what they wanted to call them), we could explore the matter further, I offered. They went silent 

The bottom line is that what someone says is not necessarily what someone will do. Check out what you get in writing from what you got in verbal negotiations. Never sign anything without a VERY CLOSE look. Trusting in advance is dangerous in the publishing world. Too many scammers out there (not that this was a scam; the campaign would have occurred, but it was a good deal only for the company). There is also another group of "service" providers who assume that authors are naive--and new authors generally are. So, author, if you do not have a publisher by your side, be cautious.

Lesson for today's Tuesday talk: READ before agreeing even if your co-negotiator has verbally agreed to everything--and hold potential "collaborators" to collaborating with you, not selling you a service.

Read more posts about publishing HERE.

The Tuesday talks reflect real discussions between the management of MSI Press LLC and our own authors or those would-be authors who come through our doors but don't make the cut--yet. If you have a topic you would like addressed, leave the question in the comment section. Chances are, in our 18 years of publishing first-time and experiences authors, we have had a conversation with one of our authors that we can share with you.

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