A Publisher's Conversation with Authors: How to (Not) Lose a Contract with a Publisher

It is Tuesday. 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 shares some real-life cases (book titles and author names changed, of course) of authors and would-be published authors lost contracts, from before being offered one to even after a book was published. They can serve as warnings of what not to do and, in converse, what to do in trying to secure -- and keep -- a publishing contract.

Before being offered a contract (case: Developing School Discipline by Gordan Cruikshank):

• Arrogance. This attitude is perhaps the primary turn-off to an author being offered a contract even when the publisher is otherwise even very interested in the book. Remember, publisher and author working together to get a book out the door requires developing a good, working relationship. If you are certain that you know more than publisher (truly, you do not), you may poison the waters before you even start. In the case of Developing school Discipline, certainly GC knew more about the content than I did; authors almost always know more about the content than publishers -- it is not arrogance to make that assumption and to hold one's ground as an author on content. However, GC tried to tell me that he knew more about the book industry than I did -- and that was clearly not true. He would not back down when he stated that the self-published version of the book was a bestseller; it was not, and I know how to get fairly accurate information about how well a book has sold. He also insisted that his book review from a leading reviewer was outstanding. I have read thousands of book reviews--and it was really quite weak, merely repeating the book description. No hype at all. I imagine this was the only review he had ever seen from that source.
• Entitlement. Although he had self-published and taken the cream of the crop in sales, he now thought that his book was so good that he was entitled to having a publish pick up the pieces, put in the big dollars to go after the outlying sources and get the small sales. Although he had no contract--yet--he as treating the publisher as a servant. Not the way to get a contract, GC!
• Expectations. Here is where the rubber hits the road. His expectations were quite different from what a publisher would expect. He thought he was the star and the publisher was there to polish it. That kind of relationship is not going to work (well, perhaps for Hemingway, but not for someone with no reputation and no following like GC). 
• Result: no contract. There are much easier authors to work with. Why start out in an upside relationship? Not going to happen! (In any world I know, at least.) The author re-self-published the book, and sales appear to be okay but mediocre, along the lines of the first edition.

Before signing a contract (My Bird, My Friend by Joyce Moley):

• Greed. Joyce had written a delightful book, and we would have been happy to publish it. There were some leaps in action; those would have to be filled in. Still, we could have worked with her do that since the book, as it was, needed some developmental editing, which we were ready to do for her since she was someone we knew personally. (Networking is a great way to get a book contract if you have a good book.) This was to be a traditionally published book, and she was very lucky that we were going to absorb the costs of developmental editing because those costs can be very high. We prepared our traditional contract for her as a draft in a Word document. She rewrote the contract and added mutiple-city book tours, paid air transportation to get her two a dozen big cities across the country, along with the finest hotels. It is unclear how she thought someone with no recognizable and no previous books would sell enough books on book tours, which are generally not cost-effective, in our experience, when someone without national stature is doing them, to pay for all that star treatment. 
• Ignorance. Her ignorance was not her fault alone. She had an attorney friend who went online and looked up how famous authors handled book launches and wrote those clauses into the contract for her. Once they were there, she fully expected them to be agreed to. After all, her friend the attorney (note, NOT an intellectual property rights attorney but one working in labor law) said that she had a right to this treatment, so she thought we were trying to advantage of her with the terms of a pretty standard traditional contract. 
• Expectations. Knowing what kind of star treatment she expected without ever having published a book before, it was pretty clear that she was going to be a high-maintenance author. (Yes, Hemingway can get away with being a high-maintenance author; someone like JM cannot.)
• Result: contract withdrawn, rapidly. To date, that very delightful book has not been published, and now the author is not in the physical shape to do all that traveling, anyway. How sad that she left herself be derailed by an ignorant "friend" and delusions of stardom, resulting in mistrust of those who would bring her back into the real book publishing world!

Before final acceptance of the manuscript: (Learning to Love Again by Desiree Smith)

• Bait-and-switch/misguided. Like all publishers, we have a clause that says the final manuscript must be satisfactory to us, or the contract is now and void. While we have had manuscripts that had to be reworked a couple of times before we could accept them as final, Desiree's completely astonished us. She had sent some nice chapters, with good self-help ideas that we thought there would be readership for. It was pablum to some extent, but it was an easy, enjoyable read and there were some food chunks in the pablum. We could work with the book and bring it up to a higher level in the editing process. Imagine, then, our surprise when the final manuscript came in, not as a self-help book, but as a memoir, masquerading as a self-help book, and those pretty well written sample chapters were no rewritten, full of obscenities and language that would be considered adult-only, x-rated. That's not what we publish, and it would have taken a lot of word-swapping to make the book acceptable. When questioned about why it differed so much from the sample chapters she had sent, she said she thought we would not have given her a contract if we saw the final chapters prior to signing. Duh! But, how completely mind-blowing that she thought she could do this kind of bait and switch!
• Enamored with her own turns of phrase. We proposed that either we scrub the book or she scrub it. Again, to our surprise, she did not want to scrub it. She insisted that every single word she had written remain; in fact, she was opposed to any editing whatsoever.
• Expectations. for some reason, she thought that once she had a contract, she would be in full control. Well, contracts do not work that way. Both sides have to fulfill them. We were able to back out of the contract gently by telling her that if she wanted to publish with us, she had to scrub the book. If she did not want to scrub the book, we could simply void the contract. She chose to void.
• Result. The contract was voided. I have not seen the book in print, but that does not mean that DS did not self-publish and that the book is "out there" somewhere in all its glorious expression.
  

After the book has been published (Building Strong Classrooms by Sisko Jones):

• Disappointment. Sisko is not our author -- yet. We heard his story in what seems like a very factual rendition. He published with a nationally recognized publisher that he should have been grateful to have worked with. It was his first book, and it was recruited by an agent associated with the publisher. He had no idea how lucky he was (he does now). The first thing that happened was that the publisher was unable to get his visually complex text typeset in a timely fashion. Sisko really wanted the book for a conference where he was presenting, so he paid a freelance typesetter to do it -- to be fair, the publisher has some accountability here and should have reimbursed Sisko but did not. Then, Sisko had a visceral, negative reaction to the cover design. The publisher wanted the book so badly that the art department took Sisko's designs for a cover and used them even though, for sales purposes, their proposed cover would likely have been better than what Sisko ended up with. The final blow came when the publisher somehow in putting the freelancer's work into their typesetting system, accidentally lost a couple of sentences from the acknowledgments that were especially dear to Sisko and did not catch it. Sisko did -- after 1500 copies of the book had been printed. Extremely disappointed and emotionally triggered, Sisko let loose with very unkind (publisher said "abusive") words to the sales representative and to the editor in writing and several times on the phone. The cost of re-doing the books would have been considerable, and the relationship was clearly broken. The publisher offered to return all rights to Sisko if they could sell the 1500 copies they had printed, and Sisko agreed.
• Expectations. Sisko had expectations that did not match the ability of most publishers to meet. He expected that he publisher would typeset the book in a timely fashion (this was fair); he expected the publisher to come up with a cover that wowed him (this was not fair); and he thought that the publisher should willing to accept criticism (this would have been fair had he been able to give it in a professional tone). 
• Result. Sisko has been chastened by his earlier experience. He actually wrote a second edition of the book and self-published it but was not happy with being entirely on his own. He is now looking for another publisher for the third well-written with innovative content edition, and we just might give him a second chance. He has clearly learned his lesson.

Bottom line: Yes, it is possible to lose out on a publishing contract by your expectations and attitude. 

Lesson for today's Tuesday talk: Keep both expectations and attitude in check when negotiating a contract and throughout the life of the book. The publisher is your friend, supporter, and cheerleader. Keep that in mind, and adjusting attitude might be easier.

See more Publisher Conversations with authors HERE.

 Learn more about publishing from an acquisitions editor -- how to get your book proposal accepted, why proposals are turned down/accepted, and how to find the right publisher for your book. On special sale for $5 while inventory lasts at MSI Press webstore.

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 that 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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