I think that the general public should realize that authors in Atlantic Canada are making as little as 25 cents off of every ($22.00) book sold – whether it be bestseller or not. How is it possible to make so little off of something that you created? I realize there are costs to the publication process – I can say for certain that the editors and publicists are not hurting, whether or not they are even good at their jobs. Especially since most authors are not privy to the information as to where the rest of the spending goes, and – if a publishing company receives a prestigious monetary award, the authors and illustrators see NONE of it. All we see are more flashy offices for the editors and marketers. —Not At A Loss For Words Anymore
This article appears in Mar 28 – Apr 3, 2013.
The alternative is Vanity Press; sell them out of the trunk of your car, but don’t tell the bookstore managers that you’ve already given free copies to every blood relative you have because that’s 90% of your market right out the window.
Let us know how that works for you.
I download free e-books, fuck that hardback buying shit – that monkey was on my back for 50+ years, spent literally thousands on those paper demons – thank you, technology for allowing me to carry 1000 books on an e-reader – fucking A!
And where the fuck did you get that figure. Further if that figure is true, which I doubt, then they’ve retained very crappy agents.
Lord knows we should be making it easier for the next Stephanie Meyer or E.L. James to share their artistic vision with the world. Especially if they are local…..
http://i.imgur.com/2q2rc.jpg
After reading Ann Marie Macdonald’s ‘Fall On Your Knees’, I wanted to fall on my knees, light a fucking match and torch that horrible, boring-as-shit book that was only a best seller because Oprah stuck her endorsement sticker on the cover. Most of the local authors I’ve read just aren’t very good. In some cases, 25 cents is probably too much.
Halifax, Warden of the North – still my favourite local book, well-written and hugely entertaining.
Vanity press – Ivan, I knew this guy who published his own terrible poetry book back in the 70s called ‘Gramme of Bruises’ – had 300 copies printed off, sold two and donated the other copies to charity shops. Here’s the kicker – you can still find this book on-line so I guess the author found his legacy after all.
ELL-OH-flippin-ELL. There is nothing worse than self-published poetry.
When I was Ass. Man. of a certain all-canajun booke shoppe down in Hysterical Properties, there used to be this old drunk would come in every summer flogging his collections of ‘true” maritime anecdotes – reworked newfie jokes and urban myths told by old sots propping up the bars in every Legion in the region.
“…so den, Lem looks around any yells – Who trew dat chicken at me?”
He used to arrange the shelves so that all of his crap was showing face out, a big no-no in bookstore ettiquette. I really enjoyed keeping his orders as small as possible >: )
Because printing, promoting, shipping, editing, and illustrating book covers is cheap OB. Go fuck yourself ya hippy piece of shit.
it’s cute how you’re writing this like you just discovered it was going on. Ah.. that takes me WAY back..
Hi, I work for one of Atlantic Canada’s biggest publishers. I could understand how you would be frustrated, and it makes me wonder what publisher you are dealing with, as we do not give authors royalties percentages anything near that low. Typically our authors make royalties somewhere in the ballpark of 10-15%, and our percentages climb higher when they sell over a certain amount.
While we do take a percentage, there are many additional costs than printing to consider. Such as distribution (shipping books to stores across Canada), large advertising buys, online and print marketing, POS displays, sales reps (who pitch your books to stores nationally), comp copies to national media, and to our designers and QA. The end result is the sales of many more copies and more profits for the author than a vanity press could otherwise provide.
Our companies’ marketers and editors are extremely hard-working and we hire them because of their expertise in their fields. For the same services they provide, you would be very hard-pressed to find experienced professionals willing to work for the budgets books typically possess. We work very hard to prove value to our authors and make every effort to assist them in any way we can.
Sorry I’m so long-winded, but I really love the company I work for. I hope that you find a better publisher that can give you a fairer deal than what you seem to be experiencing. Best of luck!
GrimBus or WhoreCrac?