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S4.E6 - Getting Paid as an Author after Publication
138 Plays10 days ago
It's all numbers and percentages this week as Naomi and Melissa walk us through the financial breakdown of publishing a novel from the authors point of view.
- Naomi Gibson, author of Every Line of You, Game Over Girl
- Melissa Welliver, author of The Undying Tower, My Love Life and the Apocalypse, Soulmates and Other Ways to Die
- Jamie Greenwood, creator & host of the Write and Wrong Podcast
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Transcript
Introduction to Toxic Characters
00:00:00
Speaker
Do you reckon Christian Grey is a different character? Whoa! You had it here first. I actually finished it. After every episode was like, oh my gosh, I'm so angry at these toxic characters. Like, she'll have more food in my mouth, press next episode. Because I loved it, but obviously I hate it. This is so much fun. Because this is my Malfoy Hermione family. Yes! She shouldn't have done that. I'm trying to make Neville happen. It's too wholesome.
Debating Review Difficulty Levels
00:00:29
Speaker
two host i like my so So first question then, one star review, do you guys want an easy one, a tricky one or a nearly impossible one? I'm terrible, so I don't think it really matters. I'm terrible. Should we do a harder one? we've We've done easy and intermediate and as a team, we got both of them.
00:00:53
Speaker
Are sure? I think you're missing my room.
00:00:58
Speaker
um and Okay. yeah I warn you, these ones are like basically zero context.
Guessing Game with Book Reviews
00:01:06
Speaker
This will just reveal what we think about books. So it'll be some awful phrase and we'll be like, is it this? No. Why would you think that? Here's one from a book that I 100% know that you guys will be familiar with. Okay. Yeah, that's a good way to do it. Too much sex and violence for me.
00:01:22
Speaker
he Oh, I was going to make a joke about Naomi's book, but I won't. there is a lot of sex my i i don't know Is that going to be a fantasy book? Is it Game of Thrones? I guess you could say that. Oh, because I was going to go like Sarah J Maas, but that's very fantasy. It's not Game of Thrones, I know.
00:01:47
Speaker
I think people might get upset if you called it a fantasy book. I will. It's not obviously... hun people People always have this debate about hunger games, but we've done hunger games so much, can't be that.
00:01:58
Speaker
It's not that much sex in Hunger Games. Or is it any? No, it's true. There's no one. That's true. Although I feel like this is a post from somebody who, like, if they read Sarah J Maas, they might die. Do you know what I mean? It's an old book. I'll tell you that. It's an old book. It's not a hot modern book. How old is old? It's pretty old. Oh, is it like a ah Brave New World? Older. Oh, because that has actually a lot of sex and violence in it. I was quite shocked. Is it like Shakespeare?
00:02:28
Speaker
Oh, Shakespeare. Oh, that was a good guess. Um, even older. Oh gosh. Even older. Oh, um, the Odyssey. yeah pipe ah
00:02:42
Speaker
that is a review of the bible i mean they're not wrong in it that's pretty funny they're not wrong yeah she'd have like a parental warning on it can't believe my first guest was sarah j mass and it ended up being with the bible the bible yeah game with rose no because
00:03:02
Speaker
Okay, onto the onto the realo the real part of the
Main Topic: Financial Aspects of Publishing
00:03:06
Speaker
episode. This week we are talking numbers. We are going into the financials, um advances, royalties, and all the rest. I would say, and I i posted this in our chat earlier, the main things I think I wanted to touch on, and we can always add to this and and kind of go on tangents of this, is advances, royalties, territories, film and TV options, and ah PLR, which is um which is to do with libraries, lending books. um So obvious place to start, advances.
00:03:39
Speaker
ah for um' Just in case anyone listening isn't sure entirely what an advance is, Melissa, tell us what an advance is. ah This is going to be one of those episodes where I'm supposed to know these answers, but even now, I'm not i'm pretty sure I know what an advance is though. So an advance is an advance essentially on the wages, aka the royalties, you will earn on your book. So in the simplest terms, people see six-figure advance.
00:04:08
Speaker
And that means like, I've just been given ยฃ100,000 for my book. And that's not quite how it is. So an advance will be, ah so for my first book, I got given ยฃ8,000 and I have to earn the ยฃ8,000 back in royalties before I earn any more money. So it's an advance on my royalties. Is that helpful?
00:04:29
Speaker
Yeah. but There are more questions than answers. It's good to, I think a lot of people went kind of outside of publishing don't realise that the advance is like rolled into the royalties. So like yeah like you say, you do have to earn out your advance, which means you have to earn enough royalties to match the value of the advance. So it's not like you'll give, it's not like a bonus. It's not like an actual thing. But there are bonuses and contracts which we can talk about.
00:04:58
Speaker
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. yeah does that should we we Should we talk about that in that ah with along with advances? It kind of makes it sense, I guess. Yeah, it can do. yeah Because there's also with advances is um you don't get it all at once, right? And presumably this is contract to contract. But in both of your kind of experiences with this, what what what was the breakdown and like split of your advances? Mine was... And so mine was a two book deal and both advances are split into three. So I got, and um, on, when I signed my contract, I got a chunk of, I got the first chunk of both, of both advances. So, um, on, on signing the contract. And so they give you the book to the first part of book two in advance. Um, when you sign your contract and then my second,
00:05:57
Speaker
bit was when my manuscript was officially accepted by the publisher so we had done the development edit and we had done line edits I think and so I got it just before copy and then the third chunk of my advance is on publication day. There was a clause in my contract that said you and you can get the third part of your advance either on publication day or a year after and your manuscript is officially accepted. So I think that is to protect the author and if if publication keeps getting bumped, because obviously you're not going to get paid until publication day. So and it did come to the point where, because I got bumped twice where I was itching to trigger that clause, but we decided um to stay friendly.
00:06:48
Speaker
not
00:06:52
Speaker
how How was the split weighted in terms of percentages? Was it like a a third, a third, a third for each stage? It was. That was exactly it. Yeah. Okay. Was that the same for you, Melissa?
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah, that was exactly the same. So it was, yeah, third on signing. And when we say on signing, by the way, you can, we've talked about this in a previous episode because you sometimes wait in a while for your contract. Yeah. I believe, but I could be totally wrong on this, that the agent bills on your behalf. So they're like your billing department. They bill the publisher for that signing.
00:07:26
Speaker
advance. Hey, people some people call it signing bonus again, it's not bonus. ah It's your pay. ah That signing advance the moment you sign the contract, which is usually why they fight quite hard to get the contract through as quickly as possible. What they're fighting obviously for the contract to be correct and stuff, they really want it ah through as quickly as possible so they can build for that. So yeah, it's exactly a third And then, of course, remember, so you get 9,000 pounds because it's easy you math, right? Because of terrible math. So, you know, you've got 3,000 pounds for signing, 3,000 pounds for handing in the manuscript, ah which is technically when you finished line editing the manuscript, it's considered sort of semi complete. And then 3,000 pounds on publication day, for instance, again,
00:08:07
Speaker
it might be slightly before or after depending on when you bill for it. um And then that has to go of course through your agent and your agent takes 15% of that. So they also take 15% of your future royalties. So for negotiating the contract, for finding you, the ah publisher for fighting on your behalf all the time, they take 15%.
Bonuses in Publishing Contracts
00:08:25
Speaker
So immediately that knocks out a few hundred quid out of the money coming to you. And then of course it comes to you and you've got to set aside some for tax. So you're not actually getting 3000 pounds,
00:08:35
Speaker
getting closer to ยฃ2,000. You might be waiting two years for publication, so it's not as much money as you might think. It's a nice on top of whatever you may be earning if you're in full-time employment, but it's not as much money as you might think.
00:08:49
Speaker
Yeah, but then I know that there are some authors and usually ones that are more established with several books already published is they like a smaller advance because obviously if you then sell a lot of copies you're straight into the royalties and you're going to earn more faster potentially if you know that the book is going to sell well.
00:09:10
Speaker
Yes, that's the main thing, though, is making sure they say on a lot of things I read that the biggest indicator of marketing budget is based on your advance. So you would hope if you're already no name, then yeah, you're probably going to sell into roads quicker. And speaking on bonuses and getting into royalties quicker. So for instance, a lot of people I know have a bonus of and if they sell 10,000 copies in the first two years, they get a 3,000 pound bonus. And that is not against royalties. That is just free money.
00:09:39
Speaker
And also at that point, their ah percentage might go up on royalty. So they might be on 7.5%, but it'll go up to 10% at 10,000 copies. That's actually quite a common one I know a lot of my friends have in their contract. And I am sad to say, not many of them even realised it was in their contract because they did not get to 10,000 copies in two years. So they didn't necessarily even realise it was there, although I'm sure they were to obviously that age and will have told them initially. and So that's an example of a bonus. Yeah.
00:10:06
Speaker
ah But that's, I assume the figure that's put in place there by the publisher is they're not expecting, they might not be expecting the book to sell that money, which is why they they put in a clause so they're like, if this does blow up and it goes crazy, we're going to pay you more in royalties.
00:10:22
Speaker
me Yeah, there is a clause. Surely not.
00:10:28
Speaker
I mean, it's a business. maybe Hypothetically speaking. um But no, I also think, to be fair, on the other side of the fence, I suppose they're also rewarding you for doing well. um so And it is a nice reward. It would be a nice amount of money because again, at 10,000 copies,
00:10:45
Speaker
You're not raking in loads and loads in royalties. You know, what are those average numbers? a few It's less than a pound a book. So you're not raking it in at 10,000 copies. So it would be nice to get the 3,000 pound bonus as an example. I think that's what's worth pointing out here actually is that and for people who are listening who don't know how it works. So when you're out earning your advance, you're out earning it with your royalty rates. So let's say your cover price is 8.99.
00:11:10
Speaker
and you sell a book for $8.99. $8.99 does not go against your advance. It's your royalty percentage. So if your royalty percentage is like 8%, that's like 70p. That's what goes against your advance to out-earn it. So and that's why it's really, really tricky to out-earn in advance because every time a book sells, you're only getting 70p against your advance.
00:11:35
Speaker
yeah Yeah. And just on the publishers setting a certain amount before you kind of get your bonus and that can go up. That's also probably based on where their profit margin is. So at a certain point, they're probably like, we've made the profit that we were hoping for. So we're happy to increase the amount that you get in the in this profit share.
00:11:58
Speaker
I would imagine, say, yeah they've got i've probably got a figure in mind that they know what went into it. Yeah, exactly. yeah yeah Because in advance, it's essentially a gamble from the publisher. They're basically saying, we're going to pay the upfront cost yeah so that you can try and basic so that you can create this book and we can hopefully sell more than it cost us to to do the upfront cost.
00:12:20
Speaker
Yeah. I think it's also worth mentioning that any bonus you earn, you also have to out-earn. I didn't realize that. So I got a bonus um of ยฃ2,500 for and selling to five territories. And I didn't realize that I had to out-earn that. So that actually made my advance higher. Oh, yikes. Oh, wait. Can you explain that? Yeah. Okay. So my initial advance was 12,500.
00:12:49
Speaker
and And in my contract, there was a clause saying we'll give you an extra ยฃ2,500 if you sell to five or more territories and as a bonus. So I was like, woohoo. And then I didn't expect to trigger it. um And then when I did sell to five five territories, you know, actually she went on sell to 11, but I didn't get any more than that.
00:13:07
Speaker
and So when I sold to Five Territories, Joe immediately billed them for the the bonus, and I got that through. But that actually meant my advance was now ยฃ15,000, and I had to out-earn that as well. Okay, before you started getting the royalties. Yeah, so it meant that my threshold for royalties was higher. So it's great that I got ยฃ2,500, but it meant that and my advance was now higher.
00:13:34
Speaker
oh I see. But you don't, you don't lose money on that, right? You just get it in a delay, in like a chunk as opposed to delayed. Yeah, no, they just gave me it. That was pretty cool. yes Yeah, yeah. I didn't have to wait. No, I didn't have to wait for a real estate one or anything. And for that book, I was pretty, I was pretty confident that I would about earn anyway, because I sold to over 11 territories. But and so I wasn't that worried about it. But I can see why getting a bonus actually is a bit of a double edged sword.
00:14:05
Speaker
Yeah. And I've spoken to authors who actively, and like I say, this will be an established author who has like a pretty big back catalogue and they know that they have enough fans that they'll buy their next book. But I've spoken to authors who have said that they will try
Realities of Publishing Deals
00:14:21
Speaker
to get a very small advance with a book because they know that they're going to be straight. that They know they're going to get a lot from the royalties. And yeah you need to be established for a publisher to even consider doing that really.
00:14:34
Speaker
Yeah, because it feels very backward. And there's this, somebody showed me this really recently. And it says at the bottom who it's by. So there's a traditionally published author named Hannah Lee, H-A-N-A space L-E-E. And she made this really good ah web app called When Do I Earn Out?
00:14:52
Speaker
And it shows people, I actually show it to people who ask me this question as opposed to necessarily writers. So as an example, it has a calculator and it tells you all this information. And so it has like it filled in when you log in. So it says like, if your advance is like $30,000, it's in dollars, but pounds, it's the same.
00:15:08
Speaker
um And then your hardcover list is $27.99, which you would only get in the dollars, let's be honest. And maybe the paperback list is $60.99. So let's say in the UK, it's like usually $14.99 or something. So you've got ยฃ30,000, which is really good advance. And then paperbacks usually $8.99, right?
00:15:26
Speaker
And your e-book's usually about $4.99, let's say. um So if you had that advance and you're on like 7.5% royalties, yada, yada, yada, you'd have to sell to get back your 30,000 pounds. And in order to move forward with royalties, you'd have to sell 20,000 hardcovers. In that time, the publisher will earn 120,000 pounds gross revenue. you have to sell 44,000 paperback copies and the publisher will earn 200,000 in gross revenue, or you could sell 34,000 ebook copies and the publisher will earn 120,000. By the way, the ebook one, usually ebook royalties are quite high. They're somewhere between 25 and 50% depending on the publisher. So actually quite often you are support, I know it's Amazon, I know, but
00:16:13
Speaker
you're supporting the author quite a lot by buying an ebook, even if it's a lower price, because they actually get more towards their royalties. Now, those are simple numbers, because of course, you'll get a mix of those, you wouldn't just sell just ebook or just paperback, blah, blah, blah. and But that gives you an idea of the, trust me, House always wins, the publisher is not, I think a lot of people get very stressed, like the publishers lost so much money on me. It's like, well, have they?
00:16:36
Speaker
money on you and that's the same by the way it' They want to make money. So that's fine. But please don't worry that the publisher has like, it's very upset with you because you were a bad investment. They've made money back. It's fine. They know when they give you the advance.
00:16:49
Speaker
The whole model is based around them basically picking up a spread of authors and and hoping that more of them will be profitable than than not. yeah Yeah, exactly. Pay for the rest. yeah yeah it's not you know If you're an author that doesn't sell very well, you are not the first by any stretch of the imagination and it's no one's angry at you or it's not an indictment necessarily on you.
00:17:12
Speaker
um Before we jump off advances, I did want to quickly mention, since we're talking about digital stuff, this is good. So we're talking about largely about traditional publishing. um Obviously, if you self-publish, no one's going to give you an advance except yourself. ah But a lot of the newer, um some of the digital first publishers, ah their model is not to give an advance.
00:17:37
Speaker
Um, but you will, um, have a higher share of the royalties. So it's sort of somewhere, but it's almost somewhere between self publishing tried publishing cause you'll get high share of royalties, but you will still have the backing of a team. So someone like Booker Cho does this, like you won't get a, an advance from Booker Cho, but they'll work very hard.
00:17:56
Speaker
the money that like they kind of haven't spent on the advance I think goes into a lot into that kind of like marketing plan and and like how they get the word out about your book. um So it's worth worth noting um if if anyone listening was sort of wondering about how those digital first publishers work and how it ah It's not traditional publishing, but it's how like a kind of um and i say like a and can some of the newer establishments within publishing, how those work when they ah than when they do the no advance contract. um And then of course, because we this is in theory about tropes, this podcast.
00:18:33
Speaker
The trope of advances, I think, ah is that if you go online, go on the bookseller, just go on the news headlines, you will almost exclusively read about six and seven figure deals. ah And it's easy to forget that these are these are newsworthy because they are unusual.
00:18:55
Speaker
And most advances are far, far less than that. ah It largely depends on, obviously there's no like set figures for this. It's as much or as little as the publisher deems. And that can be about you and like whether you have a built-in following as a person. Also, what genre you're writing in, what age group you're writing in.
00:19:16
Speaker
I would say for children's, and Melissa might have a better gauge on this, I would say a debut children's author, you're looking at between 2,000 and 15,000. Probably. Advanced. As in how much advanced the publisher's going to offer. And 15 would be high.
00:19:38
Speaker
yeah fifteen it be Yeah, like I'm in a lot of um writing groups. It also depends if it's like a one or two book deal. So I was on a one book deal. Sometimes if you're in a two book deal, sometimes you can end up with slightly less than you would get for two books, quote unquote. But other times it's a slightly bigger chunk of money upfront because you get both your signing bonuses at the same time. So that can be better um because you're signing for both books at the same time and then everything else is staggered as per normal. Yeah.
00:20:05
Speaker
Yeah, so I think from the groups I speak in, yes, that's pretty common. and Unless, it's not just celebrities that might get more money. and There is has been a couple of things in my groups where people who were established elsewhere, so it was like an established crime writer. and She was writing children's books,
00:20:21
Speaker
books, not getting into children's books. They thought that's where the money was. They were wanting to move into children's space. In fact, they'd always wanted to write in the children's space, but that's just not how it had gone. And they were quite shocked at a low amount their friend had been offered. And that low amount, I think, was around about ยฃ20,000.
00:20:36
Speaker
And the rest of us were like, gee whiz, I'd love a slice of that pie. And yeah, she was quite surprised to hear the rest of us hadn't got. But this is the problem, I think, because we don't talk about it. Yeah, it gets more difficult. So I try and be a bit more open, but especially in like, you know, group chat settings, it can be a bit awkward to really get it. But yeah, because we don't talk about it, it does sometimes feel like this big secret, you're not allowed to tell anyone. And there's a lot, I think there's a bit of shame around it, which is stupid. I think there's shame. Yeah, like, oh, this person, you know, like you join your day group and there's always going to be a six-figure person in your debut group. Of course there is, because it's like, oh, it's the 2023 Kid Lift debut group. Like, can't wait to meet everyone. You go in and there's a really nice person who's just signed a six-figure deal and you've got ยฃ5,000 for your one book deal and you're thinking, oh God, like, I'm so embarrassed. I must be so much worse at writing than them. And it's not that at all, honestly.
00:21:30
Speaker
it's It sucks that there's a fiscal value attached to talent and it's just nothing to do with your talent, it's to do with the industry. It's to do it's actually much more about the commercial ah potential of it than the quality yeah or originality of the of the story.
00:21:48
Speaker
Yeah, no, 100%. And also, they're often wrong, like there are loads of six-figure deals that do not earn out. And obviously, if they are giving you the advance, they are hoping you will earn out, like they may not be expecting it. I've heard the numbers are really low for authors actually earn out their advance, it's quite unusual. But they're expecting you to at least get near to it or whatever it may be, especially if they've offered you a lot of money. They are expecting it to do well. And there are loads of, but I think, Maz Evans tweeted the other day, and it's Frankfurt Book Fair when we're recording this. And she said, it's really awful sometimes when you're feeling really down about your writing, you're reading about all these six and seven figure deals that they save up to say at Frankfurt Book Fair. And it's all over your timeline.
00:22:28
Speaker
And she said, the two of my books that have done the best and sold the most copies had very modest advances. And so it absolutely happens all the other way around. In fact, I think quite often because, you know, publishers, if they knew exactly what would sell and exactly what would be the next big thing, they'd be even richer than they already are.
Book Auctions and Marketing Strategies
00:22:46
Speaker
They also wouldn't spread their bets as much. and Exactly. Yeah, exactly. They would know exactly what they're looking for. They'd be able to tell agents, this is what I'm looking for, bla blah, blah, blah.
00:22:56
Speaker
Yeah. I was thinking of children, adults, like you say with your friend, the crime writer, that range is going to be higher. um Yes. Like yeah your top end of that range will probably be for a debut. You could get 20, 30,000 and that wouldn't be that unusual. I but i would guess. No, I agree.
00:23:15
Speaker
like we say, there is there is no set amount, this is all estimations, it's all subjective, it's all down to, there's so many variables involved with it, and largely just whether the publisher thinks that it will be a good return on investment. Yeah, I think it's worth knowing that generally, a publishing house is going to lowball you because you know, they don't want to pay you that much money in reality. yeah Because it's a business deal. Yeah, exactly. they They want to try and put it out as cheaply as they can to maximize their returns. So they're not going to give you a massive advance. and And I think the ones that you need to hear about the six, seven figure deals, they're kind of like, you know, when you hear about a plane crashing, it's so rare that everyone reports on it. And that it's a little bit like that. And that that they are when whenever you publish a book, it
00:24:06
Speaker
there is a potential that it could be a six-figure book, but you don't hear about them. they're not They're not as common as what I'm trying to say as like, no you know, you're lucky to get five figures, you know. it's ten i think I think now, and if I got another ยฃ12,500 advance, I would be really, really chuffed because the industry, this is really hard at the moment. And I've spoken to editors and agents about this, they also tend to use those
00:24:38
Speaker
um the six-figure book deals, they're part of the marketing campaign. They kind of, they often delay the announcement until one of the book fairs. yeah but They're not pretending that they signed it at the book fair, but they're also not correcting anyone who thinks, wow, it was this was signed at a book fair where in reality it was probably signed months prior.
00:24:59
Speaker
yeah and Yeah. and And part of that being the marketing is that it can be, it's like, they're not hiding it, but it's like, it can trick your brain into into thinking, wow, a six figure deal. But if you see someone's like signed a six figure deal, that's for like, um, that could be a hundred K, right?
00:25:18
Speaker
yeah Six figures is an enormous range. The difference between 100K and 999,000 is yeah astronomical. um That could be a 10-book deal, 100K. And then when you think about it and you're like, okay, so what that's 10K a book.
00:25:34
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And then that's the same with pre-empts. So you see pre-empt and you assume someone's got loads of money, but actually a lot of pre-empts. So this is the weird thing about pre-empt. So pre-empt is done when a publisher thinks that that book, they're worried that book will go to auction. And so they want to get it off the table.
00:25:52
Speaker
So they're not going to offer like a thousand pounds as a preempt because they want it and they think it's going to do well. But they'll offer something enticing enough that they'll say, well, if it goes to auction, this is off the table. And auction, of course, is a huge risk. Who knows? You know, at the time, all of my books that have been on submission were picked up by one publisher and one publisher only. The other publishers didn't want it. That one publisher was really excited about it. You know, they've always been, but but the other publishers weren't.
00:26:19
Speaker
So it is a risk, of course, and but it doesn't mean it's six figures either. I know loads of but my friends who have pre-empts and they weren't six figures, but they can say, oh, we can say it's a pre-empt in the announcement yeah because, you know, they came in very quickly in only a week and they really wanted to get that book off the table. And then there's also the fact, of course, that if someone else wants it, that can sometimes push up into an auction. So I know somebody else that went on submission with their book into foreign territory and they got an offer and the offer was like I think like 3,000 euros a book or something and then they said okay everyone else final ah offers and I've had that before I've sold places and they said final offers and nobody else offers and that's pretty normal and then in about an hour before the end of the day someone else offered so then it was best final offers the next day and it ended up going for nearly 100k I think for three months. So it was just because everyone else wanted it
00:27:12
Speaker
Like publishers even admit themselves that they're terrible FOMO. Yeah, they want it. I want it. You know, yeah so it can, of course, cause a frenzy. And so that is good stuff about going into an auction. But that first, I think possibly the first publisher even ended up with it. But as Naomi was saying, they weren't offering a lot to stop. yeah And then suddenly it was worth more. And it's definitely made me more appreciative of when I'm paying people, I'll be honest. like i'm like I shouldn't really just be trying to fleece this person who's given me their time and commitment for everything.
Impact of Foreign Sales on Advances
00:27:41
Speaker
I should really be paying them for their talents and their expertise, because that's how I would like to be treated. It's definitely made me think about things differently.
00:27:49
Speaker
yeah Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about territories. um This is another thing where I think people just, I think from the outside looking in, people do have an understanding of advances, probably from films, ah mostly. But I think territories is something that you, only people in the industry are familiar with what this is. Naomi, do you want to tell us a bit about what territories are, what it means and how you get them?
00:28:17
Speaker
Mm, yes.
00:28:21
Speaker
11 territories. So when you sell your book, ah when your agent sells your book for you, she'll probably sell rights, okay? um So my agent sold my book for world rights. That means that when Chicken House picked it up, they bought the right to sell it on to any territory they liked in the world.
00:28:43
Speaker
um And that is exactly what they try and do because they take a piece of the pie whenever they do make a foreign territory sale. So it's in their interest to try and push it because they're going to make money pretty much um for free. So when when they go to and book fairs like Frankfurt and the other one, Vlogna, they'll push it at people publishing houses like in Spain or in France. And they'll say, we've got this really cool book. It's this concept. We think it's going to do really, really well.
00:29:13
Speaker
um Would you like to buy it? And they say, yes, we would. We would like to offer this much. And so my advance was for the UK was 12,500. And every line of view sold to 11 territories. And for the US, I think I got $10,000. And then Germany, I got 13,000 euros for France. Interesting Germany was more.
00:29:41
Speaker
Yeah, they don't like to over there.
00:29:45
Speaker
ah France went to auction, which is pretty exciting. um But it was only 7,000 euros, but it's still cool to see that they went to auction. That's so interesting. This is what you're saying. Auction sounds so sparkly and is sparkly.
00:29:58
Speaker
but Germany was actually a pre-empt, Germany was 13,000 euros pre-empt, France 7,000 auction, Russia I think was like 1,500 US dollars, um and then I think everywhere else was kind of like between 1 and 3,000 euros.
00:30:15
Speaker
and And so what happens is all of those advances add up and and push you out of your UK advance. So you don't see any of that money until you are out of your yeah UK advance. So the publisher has it basically keeps it.
00:30:31
Speaker
and and and puts it against a u s advance ah your UK advance. so let's say yes so I was ยฃ12,500. If I had earned ยฃ4,000 advance in another country, i wouldn't that would basically mean id I'll earn ยฃ4,000 of my yeah UK advance. and so I wouldn't really see that money. It would go against it.
00:30:51
Speaker
helped me earn out. And that is why foreign territory sales are so important for authors, because that is the clearest cut way that you can out earn in advance. um Because if you're earning 70p on a cover of price sale, that you know you've got to sell so many copies to push you out of a decent advance. Whereas with a foreign territory sale, you you've just got so much It just, it just bumps you up straight away. So ah before, before every line of you was even published, I knew that I would out earn and I knew I'd be earning royalty straight away. And it was i'm what's worth knowing.
00:31:26
Speaker
and is that the foreign territory advances are often split up as well. So a lot of them were split into two. So I got some on publication and some for signing, some for um changes made to the manuscript. you know and it's it's a lot it's the similarly split up so they stagger it so and ah so even though I had so my book came out in 2021 and I was still getting foreign territory sales money through like until like up to my last world payment because and some of the books got delayed in other countries
00:32:04
Speaker
And so I don't get paid until those books are published in those countries. And so that means that even though I knew that I had like 10,000 pounds coming, I wasn't going to get it until that book was published and I had to wait like two years for it. Okay. And those, and like you say, those are like scattered about like none of them all in sync on the same timetable.
00:32:24
Speaker
No, exactly. it's then It's great because you know that there's money coming, but it's so infuriating that you you can't have it. Yeah, the delays are the issue, aren't they? And not knowing your money's coming, because already, which I suppose we'll get on to, but you're already only being paid twice a year for your royalties. And then I've had the exact same thing where, you know, I've had a royalty statement, I've been like, oh, that's not how much I got in that territory.
00:32:49
Speaker
why has more not come off my advance? And I thought I'd be closer to royalties. And then it's explained to me, Oh, no, it's because that's only the signing for that territory. So that's always come off. And it's not that you'll never get the money. But for instance, if you imagine that all came off at once, and you're straight into royalties, you're getting your royalty money quicker, and you're getting paid.
00:33:07
Speaker
your advance quicker. So that's why I've always heard this um saying online where it's like the race to five books because it is so difficult until you get multiple books with multiple random little deals coming in because you're paid so sporadically throughout the year that it's quite difficult to make enough money to live off or indeed just to get the next book written really, even if you're working. Because even if you're on paper earning enough money for for your life to start to support yourself,
00:33:35
Speaker
Yeah. Like if that's all back loaded to the end of the year, yeah what are you doing for the first half of the year? Yeah. Yeah. It's really difficult. And it's annoying because so you only get paid you only get royalties twice a year and and mine comes through in March and ah November. and And I knew that a book was published. and so So I think the November statement covers January to July. And I knew that a book was published like the first of August.
00:34:05
Speaker
And I wasn't going to see that money until like the following royalty statement. So it'ss you can you can be waiting like the best part of the year for it. It's so frustrating. yeah And obviously, if you're still in your advance, then you're not getting anything for royalties. And then after your advance, it's approximately 70p-ish per sale. It's so bad. Yeah, it is about 60p. Every six months. Check my calculator again. Yeah. 67p according to my calculator, where according to my contract terms, yeah.
00:34:39
Speaker
And bearing in mind, your novel after launch is, unless there's like a special occasion or like an the anniversary thing, your novel is not really getting marketing from the publisher.
00:34:53
Speaker
No. from that no any yeah it's it's some hu
00:34:59
Speaker
It's really horrible. It's tricky yeah it's amazing really as well. I feel like I'm hearing more and more, but this is completely anecdotal, but I'm hearing more and more six-figure deals not really getting any marketing when I talk to the person like what's actually happening. When I say no marketing, of course they'll run some Facebook ads or Instagram. i I probably get some Facebook ads or Instagram ads and then or Amazon ads, whatever they may be. And yeah, they they are, but you know, putting it in the catalogue and it's going to the publishers to look at the catalogue. But that catalogue's got possibly, I mean, depending on how big your publisher is, like but that catalogue could have 300 books in it.
00:35:36
Speaker
they're pushing right now. And half of those books will be either celebrity books or books that got seven-figure deals. And yeah, I feel like more and more the new six-figure deal is a seven-figure deal. I feel like I'm hearing. Yeah, which is crazy. Yeah. And I'm not saying it's not the same for everyone. I'm sure it's not happening across the board, but I certainly heard not as much marketing as I would assume for quite a lot of money.
00:35:58
Speaker
oh no I guess that that is kind of just the way the world is going now as well where like numbers are just bigger than they used to be. Yeah. So what, you know, see, I mean, six figure deals used to be one in a million, like 20, 30 years ago. Now you'll get a couple every month.
00:36:17
Speaker
And then the one in the million is the seven figure deal now. And you're like, wow, that's, yeah, I think that's it. Yeah. Especially since the big boom from tick tock, I feel like it's a lot of tick tocky type books are getting these big deals. And as I say, there's a lot this week that I've been reading. Yeah, same with Frankfurt in it. That's why. Yep. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.
00:36:40
Speaker
I'm just looking at my last royalty statement if you're interested. Yeah, do it. So, okay, so on one of my titles, I sold 2,109 copies in a six month period.
00:36:54
Speaker
in a six month period. That's good. And it is good. It's very good. That's why I'm bragging about it. and
00:37:02
Speaker
And I own 1,189 pounds. In six months. In six months, ah which is really bloody good. that ah Just on pure copies alone, that's probably um one of my highest world statements.
00:37:17
Speaker
Yeah, that's it. And that's just extra. Now you're out of royalties because you've earned out. That's your money, correct? Just me and Joe. take As opposed to just floating numbers knocking off your increased debt. Yeah, exactly. That's it.
00:37:36
Speaker
um Do you guys, ah talking about you know the marketing period around launch, that's it really, that's your marketing. Obviously, authors will always be promoting their stuff in the kind of modern publishing landscape. you You were almost expected to do a lot more of your own ah publicity.
00:37:56
Speaker
As time goes on, do is is there a decline in the sales of books? Like the second year, do you sell more than the third year and then more than the fourth year? Or did does it kind of hit a plateau where you're like at this point that people are kind of consistently picking up this book and you've kind of leveled out the average sales per year?
00:38:16
Speaker
Hmm. I think it can, it can go down. So as an example, you're getting, you know, every six months, one of these statements. And depending on where you're published in the year, it could be a full other year before you find out how much you sold in your debut year. So if I'm published April to April, but I'm getting statements about Jan to July and then July to December. And I'm getting those statements 90 days after the last sales day. and It's quite a lot in the future before you're even learning what your first year of sales looks like.
Book Returns and Financial Implications
00:38:46
Speaker
And the other thing to remember is some people I think get quite panicky because before it plateaus, there is, it feels like a complete straight off a cliff, especially for your debut, where you have all of these pre-orders and also on your royalty statement, it's not a Nielsen index, the Nielsen index, people don't know.
00:39:02
Speaker
is sales through a till, like people buying your book. Whereas these sales are like things like to Amazon, to Waterstones, um selling to bookshops, basically. So you have this thing on your statement, which says, you know, like, wow, in the first month, in the first day of my book being out, I sold like 5000 copies, I'm going to be rich, I'm going to be so famous, I'm probably going to be on the best sell list. And then you get the next royalty statement, and they've maybe bought like 300 copies.
00:39:31
Speaker
or even returned, which is terrifying. And you think, what what's going on? I keep seeing it everywhere. And it's not, it's not that like, don't panic. It's just because obviously your biggest sales point, unless you take off and become a huge bestseller, it's always going to be your first week because that's when they've spent months and months. And they've not just sold it in that week. That's just when they say it's been sold from.
00:39:51
Speaker
It's been sold over 12 months in meetings and people picking up and giving them deals, all that kind of stuff. So it's completely different. and Returns, if no people don't know what they are, that is when, and so I still cannot get a firm grip on exactly what the rule is, because I feel like it changes all the time. But essentially bookshops can return books to the publisher if they are undamaged, aka unsigned. So that's why but people go in and sign their books quite a lot. As long as they're like undamaged, pretty much indefinitely, it used to be six months,
00:40:20
Speaker
Then someone who owns a bookshop told me, no, you can just send them back whenever. So if your book if they buy into their bookshop 20 copies of your book because your publisher's really bigged it up and then it just hasn't sold very well, you can the other 15 copies you have, you can just keep one and return the other 14 for a full refund. And that goes on your royalty statement as technically a minus number, which is terrifying. Now, what's funny is you'd never actually liable for the minus number when you're not in royalties yet. It just changes how high or how low, how much of your advance you have to work off.
00:40:52
Speaker
But before that, I'm sorry, after that, if you are into royalties, then it but it doesn't, it's not like you owe the 300 quid. If you have a period where they return a few of your books, and it's like minus 50 pounds or something on your royalty statement is the overall outcome, because maybe you sold a few those few return, you don't owe the publisher, you don't have to pay the publisher 50 pounds. Like that's not how it works.
00:41:13
Speaker
But it's just generally showing you and the layout. So yeah, it can be a bit scary because before there's a plateau, there was a huge drop off. And that could be like a year later, you find that out and it's terrifying. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like the opening box office for movies though, right? Obviously that's almost always going to be the biggest week or weekend, because and that's why they track it. And it's because the your most excited audience is also all going to, you know, the people who are most enthusiastic about getting the book, the movie, the whatever it is, they're obviously all going to buy it or go to do the thing as soon as it comes out.
00:41:50
Speaker
But they already now they already have the thing, or they've done the thing, or they've bought it. They're not going to buy it again. The people most excited about it are all going to get it at once, which is why. no matter what the It's the same for everything. it's like You see it in video games as well. People will go on the Steam charts and look at what the player counts are for a game, and they're like, oh, this game's dead like two months after it came out. I'm like, yeah, of course it is because everyone played it.
00:42:12
Speaker
ah yeah Yeah, exactly. It's not really a good metric to measure off. So again, it's something that you don't get warned about. um ah my My very nice agent did warn me a bit, too you know, when we get the second, I like to ask for the world statements because I like to see how far out we are. But a lot of the time,
00:42:27
Speaker
You may not even be shown the Realty statements if you've not earned out. So I asked and yeah I think when she sent me my second one, she said, now don't don't panic. There are ah some returns. Now, thank God, because I actually talked to people about money stuff. like I knew there would be some returns, so I wasn't too panicked about it. But yeah, it must be so scary if you don't know. like Not only is it not 5000 copies anymore, there's some returns.
00:42:49
Speaker
I didn't know that returns went on your royalty statement. Yeah, you can see it. I don't know exactly how it works actual money-wise. And also, of course, I'm not talking about thousands of pounds. Returns very often, unless you've really offended somebody and got yourself cancelled somehow, and all the books are coming back. And that's probably an entirely different situation where you need a lawyer. and It's usually only, by the time it's actually added up, because remember, they're returning it, but not at 8.99 RRP. They're returning it at what they bought it at. So it's usually only about, you know, tens of pounds.
00:43:17
Speaker
It's nothing crazy. There's usually a return of maybe 30 books or something. yeah That seems like a lot. I don't think it's right that that should go on a real statement because that's nothing to do with with you. like Why should the author be charged for a return? like that scott The returns thing is so crazy anyway. like Can you imagine any other product that you can just return at any time?
00:43:42
Speaker
It's just stupid. It really doesn't make any sense.
00:43:49
Speaker
I understand. Like it's like waterstones are like, okay, we don't have enough shell space. We're going to send these books back. Like I get it. But at the same time, that's nothing to do with the author. Yeah. It's also the reason why. They already feel shit. Exactly. It's also the reason why I know, none I know that they, I can always say, so here's a bit of marketing, which sounds more impressive than it is. So I can say,
00:44:09
Speaker
Oh yeah, my book was stocks in Asda and they sold out. The reason I can say that is because Asda bought it at such a cheap price that they had to sign something saying they won't return them. Right, okay. So it was very cheap in Astor, it was like ยฃ4 in Astor. Oh, so is that why publishers really love those sales, because they're non-returnable? Yes, because they're permanent sales. So even though they're making less, they might buy more in bulk, and it's a permanent sale, so they're not going to send them back.
Self-Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing
00:44:34
Speaker
So they're like book boxes as well then, they're non-returnable, aren't they? Yeah, and anything where it's like, you know, when you see, I'd love to do this, it's like a bucket listing, when people put up a little video of going into the printers because they've got like a an indie edition with a sprayed edge and they get to sign them all. Well, they're not going back, they're signed. They're trying to face the books. So it's like, that would be good too, right?
00:44:58
Speaker
yeah While we're on royalties and stuff, um I did want to touch on, and I don't know the most about this, I've had some episodes I'm right and wrong talking to self-published authors, but I know that the if you self-publish, you are going to get a much better split on royalties. And there's like, I think Amazon offers two different percentage ranges. The higher one is 70%, which is so massive compared to what you would get as a traditionally published author. But and you have to to get that bracket, you have to have a certain amount of criteria that to fill.
00:45:38
Speaker
But they will do any book that doesn't fulfill that criteria and you get 35% royalties on that. And then the Kindle Unlimited thing um for anyone wondering how this works for self-published authors is if you I don't know what the what the process is on if you have to be invited or if you just sign yourself up to... You don't need to be invited. Okay, so you just sign yourself up to Kindle Unlimited and they have the KDP fund, which is like a global fund and it basically pays out authors whose books are on Kindle Unlimited based on the number of pages of their books that have been read.
00:46:18
Speaker
yeah yeah so Yeah, you get a percentage of the pie based on how many. So yeah, if there's like 10 authors that month, don't know why that would happen. And, and you know, one author had um a thousand pages read, but between the other nine, they only had like a thousand between the nine of them. Then the author that had a thousand pages, they would get 50% of all the revenue made through Kindle limited reading that month. That's how it works.
00:46:44
Speaker
which is a sort of meritocracy based distribution. It is, yeah. It's an interesting one. I know again, it's evil Amazon, but they do have a couple of interesting meritocracy based things like that.
00:46:56
Speaker
make a difference to them how it's distributed. But it's nice for you if you if you know that you're you know, you're in a group of other like 100 other authors on Kindle limited that month that you have been people are actually picking up your book and people are actually reading your book and sticking with it. That's obviously you get rewarded for that too. You are getting rewarded for writing a ah story that people are interested in in reading.
00:47:20
Speaker
Yeah. Plus the data is priceless. Like for instance, at Neomood love this. So you can check, which is the funniest bit, you can go on and you can see that one person read one or two pages of your book and then did not read anymore. And then you realize that they gave up.
00:47:36
Speaker
that's why but You can see that on Kindle Unlimited. There's so much data, you can look by the day, by the hour, you can see how many people read which types of pages. yeah is The data is crazy on that. I don't know how much of that is... I mean, I assume it's excessive depending on how large the publisher is. They probably are monitoring these things, but certainly not information passed to us, for better or worse.
00:47:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And speaking to, it was Barry Cunningham who was on very successful self published author. And he was saying he he uses those metrics, those metrics he loves because he was traditionally published before. But he loves that because he he said he it means he can really experiment with the kinds of marketing that works and what doesn't like he can go on a podcast.
00:48:20
Speaker
And then if that has, you know, he'll check throughout the week to see if that's given him a bump in sales. And then he knows, okay, that was a good thing to do. I should do more things like that. Or vice versa. It's not Barry Cunningham. He's called Barry and I've forgotten. that I'm all, I'm all glued up now.
00:48:48
Speaker
but he's good. He knows what he's doing. The yeah the that but but the ability to to like have your metrics. yeah It makes a big difference. you For you to be able to like act accordingly and like change your...
Public Lending Right Explained
00:49:03
Speaker
With authors basically being handed the reins to a lot of their own marketing in the kind of modern landscape. so I just got back from that. Makes a huge difference. Melissa, are you listening to yourself?
00:49:16
Speaker
and I thought my phone was on silent and then realised it wasn't and then it was on silent and I set it off silent and then it was just as it got kind of loaded so I was talking up myself. it's funny It was just me being a granny for 10 seconds, don't worry everyone.
00:49:32
Speaker
I found it. Correction. Barry Hutcherson, AKA J.D. Kirk is his nom de plume. Yes, very successful self-published author. Barry Cunningham, ah very publishing very successful CEO of Chicken House Publishing.
00:49:52
Speaker
Yeah, just two very successful Barrys. yeah um Well, we got we we still lost last few things to cover. That's to PLR, which is something I had no clue about. You guys kind of educated me on this. yeah um Melissa, what is PLR and how does it work?
00:50:11
Speaker
So there are two times in the calendar, that's very exciting because it is literally zero work. You can't do any flipping social media nonsense to boost it, blah, blah, blah. And it's completely free money. And they are PLR, which is public lending, right? And AL, and I can remember CS or SC, but it's the um author licensing and collection society, so I guess it's CS. and So Pilar is libraries. So people often say like, oh, I can't afford this book. And I'm like, well, good news, buddy. The library is free and we should support it. And then, you know, of course, I think in why time is going to the library, it's like, I get paid, get paid every time I go to the library. Interestingly, is a little bit like KDP. um It's not easily explained and it changes every year. But essentially you get paid
00:51:04
Speaker
roughly 10 to 30 p per borrow depending on how many borrows there are in the year because it's in the same way as KDP it's kind of percentage wise skewed and that is capped which I think is really good actually so obviously someone like Richard Osman is making his full, I think it's capped around ยฃ6,000. Again, that changes slightly year on year. um So he'll make that easily. He'll probably make that in the first week of January, like easy. He's made he's made the cap. But and the rest of us um obviously are not necessarily doing that. And it means that we're not bankrupting libraries because he would probably make quite a lot of money. And also then his borrows are kind of frozen. So the rest of us get some pieces of the pie.
00:51:43
Speaker
which is quite nice. So there is that money and usually even like my books, which barely get any borrows, but you can go on and see how many borrowers are getting and whereabouts they are. And I don't know exactly how they measure it, I assume just because it's a digitized system. um You know, I've got maybe a hundred pounds or so from people borrowing my books, which is really nice. And then A-L-C-S is um It's a bit hard to explain. It's basically whenever anybody needs to license your book to use. So whether they're photocopying it, whether it be for a classroom situation, maybe they're writing a paper on it, something like that. Plus, um apparently it also includes because I was thinking, who on earth is reading my silly dystopian rom coms and writing papers on it? This doesn't make any sense, because I definitely get some money from there. And it also includes some countries that are not in our PLR system, but are signed up to the author's collection licensing society.
00:52:35
Speaker
So you sometimes get some foreign borrows via them. So I usually make about a hundred pounds there as well. There's just free money that comes in, it's like March, Feb type time. um And it's really nice because you get a little email and it says why you're getting the money and people have been actually trying to read your book. And it's it's just, real i I really like it. like It's very wholesome.
00:52:57
Speaker
It's a very wholesome time on social media, which not really, it's very rare that that happens, but it's actually quite wholesome to nip on and see everyone saying, yay, like I made a hundred pounds. And as I say, it's not like anyone's getting six figures from PLR. ah So it's actually yeah quite nice. I like it. The fact that it's capped. Yeah, that's such a good idea. It's nice. Yeah. Yep. Makes it fair.
00:53:17
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, also probably because libraries don't have that much funding and they, yeah. I mean, I hear it's did i do difficult because there are some people that say, and I have heard, you know, because obviously no system's perfect, and that there are certain genres of books where they do better in libraries and don't do very well in sales and would prefer obviously not to be capped. So one I hear, for instance, is picture books. Parents will borrow lots of picture books in the library because obviously they're very quick to read and their kids will want something else.
00:53:45
Speaker
And also they are quite expensive, especially if they're a board book or something for a very short, but they they are expensive to produce. So quite often they're borrowed from libraries. So I think those people are sometimes like, I cap out really quick and then I'm not really selling any copies. And I think there's some other genres around that as well, but no system is perfect. And for the whole, I think it's pretty good system. I also worry if there wasn't a cap on it that people would find a way to abuse and manipulate it.
00:54:12
Speaker
Yup. Mm. Agree. People being publishers. I'm just kidding. People being bad people, obviously. i yeah like I'm shocked that, I don't know if you guys have heard this, but like driving tests are currently being bought up and scalped by companies online. It's crazy. Really? Yeah, because I hear it's so expensive to get one. And the yeah, there's none around. because they've all been brought up and they're all being scalped. So you have to go to like a third party company who have like bought all of the tests for the next two years. And then they'll basically like give you one when you want one, but for 10 times the price. That is so shit. It is shit. Yeah. Yeah. but what like If you fail.
00:54:57
Speaker
he got into So like, so if people are doing that with, you know, I'm sure there would be a way to abuse the library system, which we don't
Film and TV Options for Books
00:55:04
Speaker
want. We want to keep libraries safe. Um, and to the last point I wanted to talk about, um, was film and TV options, which we touched on, did we touch on that or am I, we were talking about it before the podcast. Um, but Naomi, tell us about film and TV options and your experience with that and and kind of what it means as an author.
00:55:29
Speaker
Um, I love film and TV options because it's just free money. Um, so both of my books are sold for film and TV, um, which I'm really, really lucky about the first one sold because, um, the first one, every line of view sold to Heyday, who co-produced, um, Harry Potter or the Harry Potter films with, um, with Warner brothers. So that was bloody exciting. Um,
00:55:57
Speaker
ah so I think that happened because obviously Chicken House had ties to J.K. Rowling and so they knew Hay Day pretty well and they pitched it and Hay Day picked it up. and And what happens is they buy the rights to develop your book into a script So mine was 18 months and and what happens is over those 18 months is they'll try and develop a script and then they'll try and sell that script to a network. So in my contract, and it it it was like, we think this is going to be a TV thing. and We think they're going to be, we're could we're going to pitch eight episodes at half an hour. We're going to develop script.
00:56:35
Speaker
probably presumably for the pilot and try and sell it. And if it sold to a production network, he then took it um to production and got a cast and developed a pilot, and I would then get paid a lot of money.
00:56:49
Speaker
ah um And then what happens is ah if the 18 months expire and it doesn't sell, they can either and not buy it again, or if they think that they're close to a sale, they'll renew it, and you'll get another bunch of money for free. and Game of a Girl, so so for every line of view, the optional apps, so the 18 months came and went, they think they developed a script, I think they developed several, but they couldn't sell it to a network. So and the optional apps, no one else has picked it up.
00:57:20
Speaker
For Game Over Girl, and again, someone has bought that a company called Noble Heart. They're based in NYC. I don't actually know how they found my book, and but Chicken House did not pitch it to them. They found me. and So I don't, I still have yet to figure that out, but and that sold about a year ago for 18 months. So I'm still in that contract at the moment. and And presumably they have developed a script and I'm trying to push it to a bunch of production networks.
00:57:50
Speaker
and If it sells, again, and I will have quit my job money. i Absolutely would. ah For TV and if it sells for a film, and I don't need to worry about money for like a couple of years. Take a year off. Yeah. Okay. So you, so because the, every line of you, that 18 months or or what it was, and do you have the rights again? Yeah. So the rights are reverted to me. okay And so we can sell them again if we want to.
00:58:26
Speaker
Okay, is that something that? You are you and like Joe your agent are actively doing or is that something that's just like there and you might get approached about it all? And it's a really good question. I don't know You're not actively trying to sell them i'm not each other so oh Joe might be j might be you never know but um, I I think she probably does because and so it's the reason my my contract was chicken house took so long to hash out was because Joe wanted to keep the TV rights because she's so good at selling them. And then they are they ended up splitting them semi contract and has like an addendum to it with Joe. But anyway, um, so so yeah, I think she she probably does try and sell them every now and again. and Because why not? Because ah someone picks them up for 18 months, you get a bunch of money just
00:59:16
Speaker
for not doing anything, you know, it makes sense, they're quite lucrative. And then if if it if it does happen that you can, that they make it to production, you you will be able to quit your job. So it makes sense to try and sell anything. Yeah. And it wo I imagine if that's something that Jo likes to do, she probably does it with all of her authors. And then it's probably that she goes to a meeting and says, right, here's all of the yeah TV rights that I have, like, I can tell you about each of them.
00:59:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's probably probably how it goes. Yeah. Okay. That's really interesting. Melissa, have you had film TV options? So mine stayed with my agent um because apparently they always do that. They always keep them. And I'm with a big agency. So I'm with Peter Fraser in Dunlop. So they have like a film and TV department. So they have lots of employees. So to be honest, in a way, it's kept quite at arm's length from me. um Not on purpose. If I ask, they'll tell me.
01:00:13
Speaker
But it's, ah you know, every now and then it'll be something, something, oh, yes. And with this new one, we'll look at film and TV rights and ah be passed over to insert name here. And I'm thinking I don't actually know who that is. And it's probably just because but she doesn't realize because she talks to these people all the time, that I don't know who that is. um But yeah, so there's there's a separate department and they kind of deal with ah film and TV. I've never had anything. Then again, my stuff is, oh God, like saying obviously obviously it's quite expensive to make. and Obviously it's not because it's bad and doesn't want to be made in TV or film. It's obviously because it's expensive, ah but it would be quite expensive to make a lot of these actually. um My books are quite high. So I find this plane falling out the sky and
01:00:57
Speaker
to landscapes of post-apocalyptic destruction. So that probably is not useful. In fact, I have been told that that would be quite expensive. So yeah, nope, never been optioned for anything. Would love to be if anyone's listening. Would you like to option my books? They're available.
01:01:15
Speaker
ah Yeah, so I've never been in that side of it, um but it does sound, I think it sounds so cool. Like, oh my gosh, just free money. It's terrible. I'm not even thinking about like, all I think about is like, oh yeah, I'll never get made. If it gets picked up, like, oh yeah, but it's not gonna get made. The point is the free money. Yeah, absolutely. It's really fast, isn't it? I've never even, it's never even occurred to me that one of them would get made, but it has occurred to me the thought that it might get picked up for some free money.
01:01:41
Speaker
yeah because that's how my brain works, clearly. My understanding of it is that it's rare to sell the rights and it's even rarer for it to actually make it to production, but it does happen and when it happens, it is so lucrative. Sick. Sick. Yeah. Obviously, unless it's like a breakout bestseller, in which case the rights will sell immediately and production will probably begin quite quickly as well. I mean, we just had the announcement that Yellow Face has gone into production. Yeah. That came out what, last year? I'm surprised it took so long. so No, i don't I don't know. I think if you think publishing moves slow, I think TV is even slower. I think TV does like to... I think TV and movies, they love to announce stuff. They love to let people know really far in advance.
01:02:32
Speaker
Yeah, and also don't sometimes like you have read about loads of books where it's like the TV rights have already been picked up before the books even out. Yeah. Or the film rights. or Yeah. That happened to me with every line of view. The TV rights sold before it was even published. yeah Sometimes before the books were even written, I'm sure I read that Girl on the Train went before the book was written and she was like pitching it and still working on it. Oh really? Wow. I'm sure it was Girl on the Train, but sorry Paul Hawkins if it wasn't. and I've definitely heard of that happening before that literally on a pitch sometimes, especially if it's like an established author.
01:03:07
Speaker
Yeah, like the New Hunger Games. Yeah, like the New Hunger Games. Surely that's it. I don't know. Suzanne Collins doesn't reply to my text, so I don't know whether she's already written the book. Yeah, you try, you try. I don't know if she'd already written the book when she sold it. I don't know if she just pitch dicks. Obviously it would get picked up on a pitch. And by the way, I have no problem with that because it annoys me sometimes that you have to do all this work with no money. So it's fine. I don't mind her.
01:03:31
Speaker
selling it on a pitch. But obviously then it was announced to us, I don't know how much of it was written then, it was announced that they're doing the film kind of in tandem. So I believe, is this right? The book's coming out next during the film's coming out the year after? I think that's right. That's the aim. I think it's like six months or something. Yeah, that makes sense. So yeah, I think obviously they're being made in tandem. Are they being written in tandem? I don't know. She has had writing credits on some of the other ones. I'm not sure. But yeah, however that would work. That sounds good too. I'll have some of that actually.
Conclusion and Media Reflections
01:03:59
Speaker
Yeah, I'll do one of those.
01:04:01
Speaker
I bet it's great for the author. like She's going to do so well off that because she'll get the book comes out, obviously big marketing campaign, that she'll sell a lot of copies, then the movie will come out and that will absolutely pump book sales again. Yeah.
01:04:18
Speaker
yeah so not mean yeah yeah Hard to say. Filming TV options, what an exciting and crazy world. But as yeah as an author, and I guess this is more towards Naomi, that's not really anything to do with you. like you just get the information is Has the information just been relayed to you by Jo? And you were like, okay, cool. um Yeah, so Jo rang me, ah well, were for both of them, um and she explained what what happened. and the ah So for Hay Day,
01:04:47
Speaker
and that I could have insisted that I write it. um if i If I was a script writer, I could have said, I want to write this. And and I believe you can um argue in a clause that says we'll give your script first refusal. So you you develop your script, and then Hay Day can choose whether or not to pick to to go with that, or they'll get their in house writers to to do that thing. And so you can be involved if you want to. And if you are a script writer, I believe you can argue in that clause. However, I have never written a script. And I thought, no, no, let's leave this to the professionals. Yeah. So for me, it was just like a free money. You know what I mean?
01:05:29
Speaker
Um, for game over girl, uh, I don't think I even got offered that. I think they just, I think Joe knew that what I said in the past still stood. So, um, we didn't even talk about writing the script. So yeah. So she just messaged you. Sorry. I don't know if I really was just like, it's not like you are, you spoke to anyone or you did any meetings or anything like that. It's right. And she just messages you and says, we sold the TV option.
01:05:56
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So she just called me and I got copied in on a couple of emails, I think with the Heyday crew and with the Noble heart crew. Um, but I just, I've never actually spoken to anybody. A couple of people followed me on Twitter. Yeah. okay Someone from Netflix followed me on Twitter. That's like the scream I would scrum. Yeah. That was cool. But that's about it really.
01:06:19
Speaker
That was cool, but still no sign of any kind of show. No. And, you know, I never got an update. I like, I never, the 18 months lapsed and I was like, so do they want it again? And then I remember asking Barry, like, I was like, is this something that we're going to look to continue doing? And he was like, I'll ring heyday. And then I got an email like a couple of weeks later going. um Basically they tried um with the script, but they couldn't make it work and nobody wanted to pick it up. So it got and dropped.
01:06:48
Speaker
like People that I've spoken to who who who have like um either either are scriptwriters and write for a television film or authors who have like looked into it have said that like if you think it's hard to get your manuscript in front of like a publisher, it's even harder to get it in front of like a streaming service.
01:07:10
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I think company games are actually where the realm is, if you can get it in front of a game publishing house. Yeah, book adaptations I think are on the dip, and everything is just video games, into because the audience is even more built in, yeah I think.
01:07:30
Speaker
but biggest, maybe biggest flop of the year borderlands. So potentially that that might take a, that might slow down a bit. We'll see. Who knows? um But that about wraps up what I want to talk about. Was there anything else that you guys wanted to to bring up or you think is ah isn't talked about enough about financials?
01:07:50
Speaker
No, I think we covered it. Yeah, I think we did have knocked this case wide open. now talk about fan out Everyone talk it. I think it's like it feels like an advice moment. If I had to give advice to somebody, it would be like don't be afraid to talk to your close inner circle of trusted writing friends about money if you need to. Please do not feel stressed that you have to keep everything a complete secret. What I found funny is about this.
01:08:17
Speaker
as we don't say how much money is. But then if it's a six or seven figure deal, it's like, boom, Jamie Greenwood just sold this book for significant seven figure deals. We know exactly how much money you've told us, like part of the marketing. And then it feels like, oh, but it's because, you know, if you say it's not much money, it's because your book is crap.
01:08:36
Speaker
And it's just not true. no So I would say if you want to talk to somebody about it, like for goodness sake, yeah, obviously I'm not suggesting going on. I know there was that publishing paid me hashtag on Twitter as it was a couple years ago. And that was useful. And of course it's really aimed at, it was aimed at the six and seven figure people to say, you know, let's look at the disparities between different, yeah like say, I think minority groups or different genders and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
01:08:59
Speaker
But I do think it is important if you want to talk about it, talk to somebody like you know that you trust and you you can talk about numbers with people. Yeah. And done like, I mean, it's ah easier said than done, but it's like, try not to be embarrassed that like your advance is less than someone else in your ah debut groups advance yes because it, it doesn't necessarily, it doesn't mean anything no in terms of like how well the book will be received and you know, how how many copies you'll sell and things like that.
01:09:30
Speaker
Yeah. Or as Naomi was saying, there isn't a number on talent. That's not what's happening. It's not that they're better than you. That's not, that absolutely is not what's happening. know Yeah. Anyway, numbers, fun. yeah Let's wrap things up. You guys watching anything new, reading anything new? I watched and The Midnight Club. I've been ill recently. Yeah. And I loved it. I thought it was I know. I got to the end of season one. I was like, woo hoo. And season two, oh.
01:10:01
Speaker
but with a horrible name. Yeah, I really liked it. I thought it was really good. Oh, good job. Okay. Okay. i tried We tried watching Sweet Pea. Oh, yeah. What's it like? Because I like Ella Purnell. I do like her. i Probably because I was coming into it off the back of Fallout. And also based on the trailing, I was expecting it to be a dark comedy. Yeah. That's what it says. It is much more dark.
01:10:30
Speaker
i I wouldn't really call it a comedy. Okay, right. Is it like kind of irony? you know It's just like, I don't know, we watched episode one. There was a specific moment, which I think me and Gabby were both just like, I think we're not going to watch any more of this. And it wasn't. And I also realized that I'm desensitized to so many things now because it wasn't even the shocking like, bit at the end of the episode. It was about three quarters of the way through the episode. I'm trying not to give spoilers though, because it's a new series. Um, it wasn't even, you know, the bit when she goes full Patrick Bateman, but yeah, I was like, God, I've watched too many shows like The Boys. The thing that I didn't like was not, i suppose was not the like, this is the shocking moment.
01:11:18
Speaker
yeah Yeah, Lassie's of the Boys was one for that year. every season of The Boys. his one play Except maybe season one. it seems the ones like It's bad, it's not our bad. It's not boys bad. Season one of The Boys. But like now that i've worked now that I'm so deep in The Boys, nothing can really... I don't know, it's so difficult to shock me with like crazy stuff.
01:11:43
Speaker
yeah but there was something in this yeah i thought you were like no i i felt like that about the gentleman did you yeah the gentleman is nothing compared to the boys no okay we watched episode one of the gentleman and it was just like When he dresses up as a chicken and has to dance and stuff, I was just like so overcome with shame for him. I was like, I can't i can't carry this on. It's just making me feel things too, too closely. I can't do it. Yeah. So forget about the boy's name. You just don't watch that. Yeah, baby don't go anywhere near the boys.
01:12:19
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, sweet gentle Naomi.
01:12:24
Speaker
I'll sweet some a child cope with a lot of other stuff but just that for some reason really got to me yeah no that just washed that's water off her duck's back for me um amazing what a weird place to end the episode yeah
01:12:45
Speaker
Thanks for putting up with our nonsense for another episode. To stay tuned to everything we're