Thank you. Of the many things I found offensive about Pershing’s article, I was most aghast at the very misleading idea that authors securing that first advance were well on their way to wealth and riches in this industry. A brand new writer just learning the ropes of this industry would be in for a world of disappointment if they swallowed that bull–and why wouldn’t they? This is coming from the president of RWA. It’s a reasonable assumption to make that she knows what she’s talking about in this case. How unfortunate it isn’t so.

Thank you so much for stripping this down past the us vs. them and the political speak to the hard realities of publishing and unforgiving accounting.

You know something? I’m almost glad someone else finally ponied up and admitted they haven’t made the prerequest golden egg’s worth of royalties. I know I haven’t, but when so many as saying they have and more than once, on more than one title it makes me wonder what I’m doing wrong, if what I’m writing is tripe… *sigh*

I’m not disappointed with my publishers, or my books, but saying that money is the only meter to grade by isn’t realistic. My publishers are sound, professional and legit. I’ve been with two who weren’t. Even when you ask around and research, you can ask the wrong people.

I agree education is the key. As far as RWA is concerned, they are lacking there. I was a member and treated like scum locally. The instant I said “3 books epublished” the entire shift in the room was obvious.

The realities are this is a bleak industry to make a career out of. I knew that when I started writing 5 years ago. I know I will most likely never make it to NY. Do I quit? No. But in the meantime, I will write, and make what I do while I can.

It’s articles like yours that have helped educate those that aren’t in the industry at all (i.e. my mother) about the difficulty and why I’m not at Borders yet. Thank you for expressing it so well, and eloquently.

On another note, back in the day, before I understood all the math involved, I didn’t understand why so many authors were happy with epubs like Samhain and EC. In hindsight I see the wisdom these authors had and probably my temperament is very similar.

I can’t deal with the kind of pressure I’d have on me from a NY pub constantly to keep my head above the water. I’ve got to work in my own way at my own pace and control the process.

Yep, I’m a control freak. But at least I know that about myself. Otherwise I could be like the Shannon Doherty of publishing, and nobody wants that.

But… if I wasn’t such a control freak I would definitely be the type of author to prefer publishing somewhere like Samhain instead of chasing NY. Not that there is anything wrong with chasing NY, there isn’t, it’s just… I don’t think it would make me happy.

http://mariannelacroix.blogspot.com/

80,000 word book with an advance of $2500 (standard kensington contract?) equals 3 cents per word approximately.

10,000 word short with no advance but received $300 in royalties for 2 months of esales equals 3 cents per word approximately.

And there are PLENTY of authors who make WAY more than $100 per month on a short story with an epub. I can crank out 10K in 2 weeks.

I would like to see more of these comparisons made.

It is so much easier to write a 20K novella and zip it off to an epublisher than to write an entire novel and get it published with a big NY house. In fact, you could crank out ten times as many short stories/novellas in the time it would take you to write a complete novel.

So, even if you never made $1000 off of ONE epublished thing (most likely shorter than 40K, right?), you probably have made quite a bit on ALL of your titles over a one year period.

It would be interesting to break down income at a ‘per word’ level to see how traditional compares to epublished.