I should make a FAQ for publishers who want to help me “go legit.” It would be funny, I bet.
Recently, I had some contact with a medium-sized press that wanted to take one of my older titles and re-print it “for a much bigger audience.” They were very courteous and seemed well-intentioned, but there were more than a few stumbling blocks to overcome. One was a request for a promotion plan. This appears to be standard fare in the publishing biz, and the lack of a solid plan appears to irritate editors. Let me tell you, it irritates me even more.
So to all prospective publishers looking to scoop up a popular self-published or web fiction property, here is what you need to ask yourselves: what are YOUR promotion plans? How much are you going to spend, where is it being spent, and what are the expected results? I want to see a solid plan that I can sink my teeth into, or I’m going to have doubts that you can deliver. Get that together, and THEN contact me.
See, I already market well to my audience. When I release something new, it’s well covered. Your job is to spread the word further than I can do myself. If you want ME to do that, then it assumes I CAN. If I CAN, then I have to ask why I would need you involved at all. So I can get a smaller royalty? I think you miss the key element of “value proposition”… the, uh, “value” part. And please, don’t suggest I spend my own advance on it. I’m not your marketing department. If you need help in that area, I have a rate card I can send you.
That's the primary reason why our distribution deal for WSM fell apart. It got to the point where I said, “Even if you're not going to do ANYTHING significant, that's actually fine, but you need to at least communicate that to us.”
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Does it have to be a radical change of direction to sweeten the deal? I mean, if you are self-pubbing a book and someone offers you a movie deal, is that a yay! or a nay! thing… because that would at least be a new type of distribution. Or if Starbucks (or whomever) approached you and said they'd like exclusive rights to publish and sell something you had written, at least it's an avenue of distribution to which you otherwise wouldn't have access.
When I say you, I mean anyone who is experiencing success with self-promotion. When I say Starbucks, I mean any bricks and mortar that is not specifically a bookstore.
Well, one real-world example: a bunch of my books will soon be on this great site that offers a superb product that I wouldn't be able to do on my own. Different market entirely. Their value is that they're giving me something new, and it's worth the cut in profit for me.
Straight-up publishers have to compete with my self-publishing infrastructure, which is actually quite good. It's a question of dollars and cents, really… if they're saying “we'll do pretty much what you do, but we're more legitimate”, AND they want me to invest in marketing, then they're borderline insane. If they will guarantee me good positioning in book stores around the country, with reviews in the NYT and Publisher's Weekly… well, then they're adding some value. But suggesting that access to the NYT and PW is entirely up to me, and it's on MY dime… honestly, I have enough on my plate. They need to earn their keep SOMEHOW…
Yeah, it's a pain isn't it? You need to know where the division of effort lies. For RollBots, in Canada, we've had to do all the marketing ourselves, because the broadcaster just wasn't interested in promoting their own show. In the US, 4Kids has done an AMAZING job getting the word out, to the point where we're one of the top shows on Saturday mornings in our demo. The trick is, in Canada, we didn't realize we were on our own until a few months had passed… if we'd known, we could have planned something much better. You just need to KNOW that you have to do the extra work, so you don't waste time.
WSM seems to be doing really well though. That's just a function of it being mesmerizing, tho…
If they say they can help you go legit, it undercuts your implicit statement that you are already legit.
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This post makes me feel ill. “You've done the creative work. And it's working. You're marketing well. We like that, because then we don't have to do it. But, um, we'd like to profit off all of your work. So, how about it?” Disgusting.
This post makes me feel ill. “You've done the creative work. And it's working. You're marketing well. We like that, because then we don't have to do it. But, um, we'd like to profit off all of your work. So, how about it?” Disgusting.