Quick 'n' Dirty News

I promised myself that this blog wouldn’t be so Denise-centric this time around, but I feel I ought to mention that her paperback hit the same three bestseller lists (NYT, NPR, Indie) in its second week. She was home this past weekend, but left quickly after for the great Midwest. She’ll be back Friday.

Meanwhile, our agent was able to sell the ghostwriting project I was working on to a Big 5 publisher. So it looks like I’ll have a paying gig for 2014, after all. They’re excited, and so is our Author. It’s his first book and he’s really itching to get started. We’re shooting for a September 1 delivery date.

For me, that means hammering out just how I’ll arrange my schedule to incorporate interviews with the Author, writing and research time for his book, and of course writing time for my own projects. Nevertheless, knowing I have a project on deck means a lot, believe me. Sometimes I just look forward to the predictability of journalistic research and interviews.

They announced the winners of the 2014 Derringer Awards early this morning, and my shortlisted story, “Bloody Signorina,” was not among them. (It remains free here for the time being. I hope to publish it more formally soon, with an alternate ending and some other extras.)

Even so, being nominated has been a beautiful experience, and I’m happy to see the work of some of my new friends—among them longtime short story writer Robert Lopresti—among the winners.

Bummer—or not?

I just found out this week that one of the books I wrote for a ghostwriting client will not be issued in paperback. The publisher, a Big 5, just didn’t think the hardcover and e-book sales were good enough to warrant a paperback release.

I was bummed, but the client is taking it better than I am. You’d think that after the publisher paid six figures for this book that the least they could do is spring for a paperback. Everyone knows paperbacks sell better than hardcovers, right? And shouldn’t every book have the chance to reach its audience at the best possible price?

But I’m ignorant. This is not how a publisher thinks these days.

The agent brought me up to speed:

Since the hardcover sold so poorly, no bookstore that checks the title’s Bookscan numbers will want to carry the paperback in the store. The book’s just doomed from the start. BUT…yeah, many books do tend to find their audiences after a while, and maybe this one will. Potential readers will have two species to draw from—the high-priced hardcover or the cheap e-book. The e-book’s cheaper than than the paperback would be, anyway. And, added the agent, both Author and Writer should content themselves with this state of affairs because we will continue to earn the higher, hardcover royalty. (Typically, publishers pay 10% on hardcovers, 7% on paper, so when Authors transition from hardcover to paper, they’re taking a cut in pay in the hopes of greater volume.)

So yay for us.

Right?

What do you think?

My Author Earnings

A lot of writers are talking this week about Hugh Howey's AuthorEarnings.com website, which analyzes some data drawn from Amazon to make some interesting observations about the traditionally published versus the self-published world. Another component of the website is a questionnaire asking writers what they earn. I think it will yield some more cool data, the more authors plug in their info.

This comes on the heels of a recent survey conducted by Digital Book World, which found that most authors earn less than $1,000 a year. 

Both studies have their supporters and detractors. Both are shaping up to be controversial in their own ways. I’ve been thinking about releasing some of my own figures for a while now. I’m going to try to do that in this post.

It’s just a little tricky. I daresay the authors debating this stuff right now are predominantly fiction writers, whereas I’m a predominantly nonfiction writer with a background in journalism. Complicating the issue is that a lot of my books were ghostwritten for other people. In other words, I acted as the “Writer” for a more prominent “Author.” In fact, that’s exactly how the two parties are usually designated in the collaboration contracts. I’m the Writer. Some other person is the Author.

Nearly all of these contracts contain confidentiality agreements, so I’m not really at liberty to spell out who I wrote those books for, the money I was paid, what those books were about. So I’m going to be a little coy. But I’m going to try my best to give you the figures because I think they make an interesting counterpoint to what fiction authors are paid. Suffice to say, I’ve been earning more than $1,000 a year, but I’m writing a mix of my nonfiction books and other people’s books. And some of these deals mean that I am entitled to a share of those authors’ earnings for the life of  the book.

Bear in mind that I’ve been supporting myself as a freelance writer—writing newspaper and magazine articles, and books—since about 1997. Since about 2006, a large chunk of my income has come from writing books. The last two proposals I wrote earned the Author and me a gross advance of $100,000 or more. This in a time when advances are at an historical low. In some cases, I wrote these proposals and books alone or with my wife. While I think I’ve grown into a good proposal writer, I can’t ignore the fact that the Author’s platform, brand, prominence, and story almost always accounts for the size of the advance. That said, traditional publishers feel more confident about offering sizable advances when they love the proposal. It’s my job to make them fall in love with the Author’s story.

I have omitted the details of my wife Denise Kiernan’s bestselling book from this list. These are only books I have been a party to. The list is a mix of my own books, ghosting gigs (where I wrote the proposal that sold the book and received both a percentage of the royalties and advance), and work-for-hire projects where I just wrote the book for a flat fee.

Sometimes I wrote the proposal but the book didn’t sell and the Author stiffed me on the proposal fee. Many times I spend hours on the phone conferencing with a potential Author, only to have the project dry up and blow away. It’s just the nature of the business.

The clock on these books starts in 2002 and ends in 2014, with a ghost gig I’m about to undertake…

GHOST GIGS

* My first ghost gig: 2002. Big 5; work-for-hire, $25,000 flat fee, no royalties. Editor: “It’ll only take 5 months, tops.” It takes a year, and the demands on my time costs me lots of other freelance work.

* Sports book ghost gig: Sold via proposal. Big 5; 40% of advance and royalties. Our share to write book: $62,000.

* Nonfiction ghost gig: Sold via proposal. Big 5. 50% split of advance and royalties with Author. My share to write book: $50,000.

* Health book ghost gig: $5,000 to write the proposal for a book already written by the Author. No advance or royalties.

* Business book ghost gig: About to be sold via proposal. $10,000 proposal fee. Big 5. 40% share of advance/royalties; 42.5% if my proposal lands a deal in excess of $150,000. Guaranteed minimum: $40,000 to write book.

WORK-FOR-HIRE

* Adult nonfiction book: $3,000 advance, token (2%) royalties.

* Adult nonfiction book: $25,000 flat rate, no royalties.

* Adult nonfiction book: $50,000 flat rate, no royalties. Client: “This will take a few months.” It takes three years.

* Adult nonfiction book: $10,000 flat rate, no royalties.

* Adult nonfiction book: $7,500 advance, token (1%) royalties.

* Hollywood book gig: Big 5. $12,000 to write book. No royalties.

* Adult nonfiction museum book: Work-for-hire. $15,000 flat rate, no royalties.

* Nonfiction business book: $12,000 flat rate, no royalties.

"MY" BOOKS

* Kids’ book 1: Proposal. Advance of $2,250 each, to myself and a my co-author, with a standard paperback royalties split between both of us.

* Kids’  book 2: Sold on the basis of a proposal and a finished book. Big 5; $5,000 advance for me, standard hardcover royalties (5% and 5%) split with illustrator.

* Adult nonfiction book: Sold via proposal. Big 5; $40,000 advance, standard paperback royalties.

* Adult nonfiction book: Sold via proposal. $10,000 advance, standard hardcover royalties.

* Adult nonfiction book: Sold via proposal. $12,000 advance, standard hardcover royalties.

CONCLUSIONS

Actually, I’m not sure what conclusions you can draw from all this. In general, having gone through the fiction submission process, the advances on work-for-hire and ghost gigs tend to yield better advances, which is why I keep doing them.

Publishers tend to be willing to part with more money when they think the Author has a name or brand that will propel them into the media, or they think the subject is unusually compelling. That’s why some of these are in the mid-five figures. These figures also reflect my gross; subtract 15% agenting fees from all these figures. These payments were also paid in halves, thirds, and fourths. For at least three of these books, we have not yet received final payments because the paperback has not yet been published.

Would I like to be writing my own fiction? Sure, but in the same way that a lot of fiction writers have day jobs, my day job is writing books for other people.

For more on what ghostwriting entails, I’d refer you to this interview with agent Madeleine Morel. I have met Ms. Morel, a ghostwriting specialist, but she is not my agent.

Making Up for Zero Days

Since March I’ve been writing sporadically, and it’s been killing me. I keep a journal of my daily output and for much of spring and early summer it’s looked like this:

Since March I’ve been on the road a lot with Denise. I accompanied her on her book tour throughout the east and southeast, and while I’ve enjoyed every minute of it, I’m forced to admit that I wasn’t very productive at all. I’ve never gotten good at writing for myself while on the road.

In contrast, I’ve always been able to force myself to crank out client work and meet their deadlines while on the road. When it comes to my own stuff, I just tell myself I can skip a day. So while my ghostwriting clients can happily say their projects have moved forward—the scientists, the business dudes, the diet docs all got their proposals done this spring, yay for them—but on the Joe-fiction-writing front, this is the result: a long line of zeroes.

I started off great in January and managed to get about 75,000 words done on the new project before things went haywire. And when Denise hit the road solo in mid-June, I locked myself in the house and managed to write 35,000 words—Joe words, not client words—in a week. I now have a good rough draft on that book. It’s big, sloppy, and longwinded, but I’m ecstatic. It means I’ll be able to march through the next draft solidly knowing where I’m headed.

I’ve also decided to share this book with my agent and not automatically self-publish it. You can read that as a sign of how excited I am about this project. But bear in mind that I’m still at least one good draft away from sharing it with anyone. Since this is historical fiction, there’s a lot more research ahead.

If you think you might be interested in being a beta reader on this work, please let me know. The genre is historical fantasy, by which I mean that an element of magic has been inserted into a real-life historical setting. I’ll post again when I’m ready to share it.

By the way, here’s what I can say about any kind of historical fiction: don’t. Just don’t. You can barely write a sentence of your book unless you’ve researched a ton of stuff. Knowing how much I procrastinate, it’s a wonder I’ve gotten this far with this book.

I managed to write a decent short story this week, so I think I may have broken through the logjam. This week I’ll be starting the next book in The Mesmerist series while revising the historical fantasy. Should be good. Just don’t tell my ghosting clients, whose work may or may not be due this week.

* * *

In other news:

* It’s Fourth of July week here in the States. My most best-selling nonfiction book, Signing Their Lives Away, tells the story of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence. That book and its sequels have sold pretty well in historic site and museum gift shops. Learn more about them here. Follow the Facebook page here.

*  Back when we had more time on our hands, we did a line of Signer-themed Fourth of July T-shirts. Check them out here.

* Lastly, Google Reader was discontinued July 1. If you’ve been following this blog via that service, it’s time to migrate over to something like Feedly or what-have-you. All I ask is that you take me along with you. It’s been fun, hasn’t it? I haven’t been excessively annoying or needy, have I? Please take a moment to bookmark this page to your new reader, whatever it is.

Still here, still alive

Spooky ghost window of the house I visited last week.

Thought 1: Not to get all Scalzi on you, but I am actually here, alive and kicking, just with little to report. The personal writing seems to be going well, but I’m realizing that the two projects I’ve chosen to do next require some intense research. To prevent myself from freaking out completely, I’m telling myself that a) I tend to over-research and need to stop that right now, b) I can get by reading just a few nonfiction books, and c) those few books do not have to be read in their entirety since I’ll be going forth and immediately fictionalizing the hell out of those worlds anyway. All easy to say, hard to do. I’m also falling behind on the fun novels and stories I’ve been wanting to read for months. So be it.

***

Thought 2: You wanna laugh? Here’s a glimpse into the trad pub world, via my ghostwriting window. (See above.) I’ve been working for a year on a book that was slated to be pubbed late July 30. Understand that typically once that date is set, everything in the trad publisher’s world with respect to that book revolves around that date. That date is golden. Yes, they’ll tell you, we can change the date but you don’t want us to because it confuses retailers and contradicts what we put in the catalog, and so on.

So late Friday comes news from the publisher that they’re accelerating the pub date for this book. It’ll be in stores early June now, not late July. Virtually a two-month acceleration. Why? Because they just heard that the buyer for a large retail chain wants the books for sale on Father’s Day. Very strong father component in this book, they think. Which is actually freaking true.

Two questions: Why didn’t the the rest of us—myself included—figure that out a year ago when we started having endless conference calls about the book? And why is it suddenly so easy to pub a book early? I heard it took months, and every single month was precious, once set in stone. Why is another major memoir that my wife is ghosting going from final edit to press in two weeks?! (I know, that’s three questions; sue me.) Gee, I guess these guys can really get a book out when they put their minds to it.

***

Thought 3: Why is it that as soon as I got my sweet new standing desk apparatus all tricked out in the office do I suddenly develop a need to do all my work from the couch in the living room? Seriously, all my junk’s piled on the coffee table. And I show no sign of leaving. I’m camped out here, now. I’m staying. To hell with my health.

***

Thought 4: Finally took down the Christmas tree. Good. More room for me.

How I spent 2012

So: 2012 happened. The holidays were a blur and then the two of us were down and out with a cold and/or flu, so I didn’t have much time to write the obligatory Best Books of 2012 post, or even the obligatory Resolutions post. Truth this, I hate that stuff. Which is why I haven’t done it. 

Last year I compiled a list of things I did in 2011 that were somehow noteworthy. And while I was sick, I combed through my calendar and notebooks to see what I actually achieved in 2012. It’s a lot, but it’s still somehow disappointing, which I’ll explain shortly. I’m trying to keep this post short so I’ll just hit the highlights.

WORD COUNT: Near as I can figure, I cranked out 258,111 words on writing I hoped to sell as a book or e-book. This figure does not include journalistic work, which only amounted to about 2,000 words. Of the 258K figure, 80,000 represents a ghostwritten project that I wrote for someone else. (During a marathon writing period in February 2012, I wrote write 70,000 words of that nonfiction book in 21 days. I’m weirdly proud of that. Just wish I could do the same for my own work.) The rest of my 2012 output—the remaining 175K words—consisted of a novel, 13 short stories, and the start of a children’s book. 

SHORTS: That said, I wish I hadn’t wasted so much of my time on short stories. In some cases, I was writing them because I needed something to clear my head while I working on various ghostwriting and editing projects. Ghost projects often feel like they’re going to go on forever; writing short stories became a way to help me break up the monotony. Thanks to this habit, I got back into the groove of submitting those stories, and saw four of them accepted in some way in 2012. (Look for another 2012-written short to appear in AHMM this year.) Going forward, though, I don’t want to devote much time to shorts in 2013. I would have been able to finish a second novel if I had focused solely on novels and novellas.

FICTION: Early 2012 saw me proofing and polishing The Mesmerist. I pubbed that book in spring. I wrote most of Marshal of the Borgo in 2012, and polished Arm of Darkness, which pubbed a few weeks ago. Marshal will take some more time, maybe another month. Going forward in 2013, I’ll be working on two novels and at least one novella.

GHOST PROJECTS: I coaxed three of these projects into being this year. This is where the bulk of my income comes from, so I can’t ignore this sector. But it’s really hard to write books for other people. You’re constantly doing things by committee, consisting of your “author,” your editor, agent, publisher, and an army of production people. And when the publisher wants a memo on the “author’s” platform, guess who is expected to crank that out? By contrast, work-for-hire books are infinitely preferable, but by definition don’t come with a percentage of the royalties. If these ghostwritten books do well when they come out, I’m contractually owed a sizable cut of the royalties. So yeah, I may not talk about them in much detail on this site, but you better believe I’m rooting for them to succeed. I’m still in the trenches on three of these ghost books, and no doubt there will be more of these in the future. If I had a resolution in all this, I guess it would be to move beyond ghostwriting. Hence my commitment to self-publishing.

HOLLYWOOD: One of these ghost projects actually led to a bonafide Hollywood option, which was a hilarious process. Maybe they’ll actually get the thing made, but who knows. I regard it as something of a joke. More on this if it develops into anything beyond a signed piece of paper.

ATOMIC: I spent a lot of time traveling with Denise to collect last-minute research. And I spent a lot of time editing and proofing that book through each of its stages. Thankfully, her book is two months from pubbing. Good to see it off our plates. She’s now mired in the pre-pub marketing stuff trad publishers ask you to do.

BLOGS: I moved to the Tumblr platform, which has made it easier to interact with all three or four of you. I now have three blogs: Daggyland, Honor the Bookman (which focuses on book covers), and Reubenologist (which tells you at a glance why I’ll end up with a cardiac arrest one of these days). The last two are quasi-anonymous and they’re done more for fun than self-promotion.

That’s about it. 2012 was also about hanging with friends, getting a new deck, doing more gardening, eating and drinking tons of food, traveling to a few new places for work or fun, losing more old friends, and meeting quite a few new ones. All said, I think I’m really lucky to be able to support myself as a freelance writer. And I’m very grateful for those of you who’ve helped me pull it off.