I’ve been ghostwriting so long that I often feel like I’m living inside the sausage factory that is modern American publishing. Unless you’ve spent time inside the machine, you are likely to think that it’s a really big deal to get a book deal. It can be, but if you spent any time with authors you’ll quickly find that most of them hate the way their publisher handled their last book. Not enough promotion. Not enough support. Not enough…anything.

A few months ago, I told the story of the most egregious example of publisher-fail I’d ever seen. And this was for a book that the publisher paid six figures for. It’s generally acknowledged (or assumed) that the more a publisher pays to acquire the rights to a book, the more they will invest in promotion, to better be able to recoup their investment.

Well, this example blows that theory to pieces. These companies make so much money that they can afford sometimes to cut their losses. To spin it another way: if they’re willing to dump a book that they’ve paid $100K for, how do you think they’ll treat books for which they paid $5K, $10K, $20K? (Most first-time novelists are not typically paid much more than that for their books.)

You can find my article over at SleuthSayers. It’s written in the form of a fable, entitled:

You Should Totally Tweet About This!

The title is an approximate quote of the marketing person, who offered this lame advice to my author on our first and only conference call. I was so disgusted that I had to fight the temptation to hang up loudly.

What made matters worse was that the author had a big ego. He’d been bragging to his friends for ages that he had a massive front list book deal. And when it all came crashing down, he had to suck it up and move on. (His book does not appear on this site, because I was a deep-ghost on that project.) I felt bad for him, but the lesson stuck with me ever since, and has strongly influenced my decision to indie-publish my fiction.

Photo at top by me.