We believe an author’s writing should make them money, not cost them money. Before we detail our compensation model, let’s talk a little about what we are, and what we are not. Then we will review the three main types of “legitimate” publishing arrangements in the industry.
We are not a vanity press. There are many, probably thousands of publishing houses that will publish your work for a fee. These are known in the industry as “vanity” presses. They will publish your book, but you will pay a pretty penny for it, and probably be stuck with a box of paperbacks gathering mildew in your garage. We do not consider vanity presses to be legitimate, and don’t include them in the list of legitimate publishing options below.
Financial Compensation: It is impossible to predict what compensation arrangement we will have with a given author. Every book and every author are different, and bring different things to the table. What is important for you to know, is that it is not standard for the author to pay out of pocket costs to produce a book under our model. It is standard for the author to cover a significant portion of on-going marketing costs.
1. The Traditional publishing model. The “big 4” publishing houses have the broadest market reach by far. They consistently produce high quality books that are edited well, designed well, and are optimized for selling in the market. There is a prestige associated with being published by a big house that you just cannot get anywhere else.
Access to the big houses is a challenge. In most cases, they only accept submissions from licensed literary agents, or industry professionals they have a working relationship with. That represents a big barrier for first-time authors.
The financial “rewards” for the author are often disappointing. The author’s royalties are usually about a dime for each dollar of book sales. The big houses frequently pay an “Advance” when they sign the contract with the author. The advance for a first-time author can be as high as $10,000. Most are less.
It is important to understand that an author advance is not a gift, it is a loan. That money has to be paid back to the publishing company before the author receives the first penny of royalties. If you are lucky enough to land a large advance, it means you go into the publishing arrangement $10,000 in debt. When you remember that your cut is only a dime for each dollar of sales, you can see that the book must sell $100,000 worth of books before your “earnings” climb out of the negative numbers. For many authors, the advance check is the only check they ever receive.
As we said, the quality of the book produced by traditional publishers is a huge benefit. But it comes at a cost. In addition to giving up the lion’s share of your earnings, you also pay a cost in the loss of creative control. The publishing house takes control of your book shortly after you produce a clean draft. They will bring your book up to a professional quality. The downside of that is, unless you are an established author with some clout, you will probably have little if any say in the process, even if they decide to make dramatic changes to your story. The finished book will be up to professional standards, but it can be frustrating for an author to give up all creative input.
Editing and formatting is not the only area where the publishing house exerts absolute control. Once they take control, they maintain it for the life of the book. If the book does not do well immediately after the launch, they can and often do decide to pull the plug, and write the book off as a loss. In many cases, the author does not have the contractual right to re-launch the book themselves, or even to continue promoting it. A publishing house can and often will pull all the copies off the shelves, mark them as “remainders,” and liquidate the remaining copies at pennies on the dollar. This is a terrible result for an author who invested blood, sweat and tears to create the book.
One area traditional publishing houses do not take control, is in marketing, unfortunately. As part of your book proposal, you are expected to reveal your marketing plan. You must show that you have an established platform which will ensure that their investment in your book will not go to waste. That is not to say they don’t do any marketing, but you need to understand up front that the money the publisher will spend on marketing your book will be limited. If you have not established a platform of 20,000 raving fans waiting with baited breath for your book, the future of your book could be in trouble.
If you think that sounds a bit like a horror novel, you are not alone. Don’t get us wrong, there are many, many authors who have reached phenomenal levels of success after being published by major publishing houses. Just be aware that for each major success story, there are many other authors, even some who make the New York Times best sellers list, who never make significant money.
2. The Self-published model. You probably already know that self-publishing is an option. It doesn’t cost much, and to be honest, it is relatively easy to accomplish. Unfortunately, being self published carries a certain stigma with it. Many people assume that if you are not published by a traditional publisher, you probably are not very good. They may not even consider you a “real” author if you are self published. It is too early to tell if that stigma will break down over time or not. Every time an author writes a book hastily and publishes it to the internet without proper editing and quality control, they reinforce the stigma.
Too often self-published books are not much more than a rough draft. A large publishing house may do as many as nine editing passes on a manuscript before publication. You can see why a poorly edited self published title doesn’t hold up well in a head-to-head comparison.
In terms of creativity, the author maintains complete control with the self-published model. This can be a good thing, but it can also be a big negative. Even the best authors benefit from a set of “fresh eyes” during the editing process. Most authors are not experts at cover design, or interior formatting of books. As a result, many self-published titles look and feel cheap, and unprofessional.
In terms of financial compensation, the self-published author’s royalty is 60% of the list price on Amazon at the time of this writing. That looks a lot better than the 10% royalty from a traditional publisher. The natural follow-up question is, “how big is the pie?” If the book only makes one dollar a month, and you keep sixty cents, it will be a long time before you quit your day job.
3. The Hybrid Model. The hybrid model is interesting. It offers the best of both worlds. It also offers the worst of both worlds.
In the hybrid model, the author pays half of the up-front cost of producing the book. The Publishing company pays the other half. I know of one non-fiction author who paid $10,000 out of pocket to publish his book. The publisher provided no editing of the manuscript. The book was published pretty much in the form the author presented it. The “editor” who got the book ready for publishing was woefully incompetent, and at the last minute, a different editor had to brought in for an emergency “flash edit” two days before the book went to press. That is not the way to produce a quality book.
In the hybrid example I referenced above, the publisher did not provide for shelf space in brick and mortar stores. Most of the sales were through Amazon, and most of the sales were a direct result of extensive promotion done by the author himself. He was a celebrity in his field, and he was a savvy marketer, with a big marketing machine at his disposal. He had a platform of tens of thousands of established fans. Utilizing all of that, he did manage to achieve best-seller status in one narrow category on Amazon, with a lot of help from his friends. I know of one friend who bought ten copies of the author’s book on publication day because the author was a few copies short of achieving the coveted best seller rank on Amazon. The author’s hold on the best seller status lasted a matter of hours.
Author earnings for the hybrid publishing method are negotiated on a case by case basis, and reflect how much celebrity power the author brings to the table, and how much they are willing to spend on marketing. Rather than 10% with a traditional publisher, the author may receive as much as 25% royalties. The celebrity I mentioned above sold 5,000 copies of his book within the first three years. I have a hunch that puts him ahead of most books published using the hybrid method. The author achieved those sales by actively promoting the book himself with “sponsored” ads on social media and Amazon the entire time. Those out of pocket costs ad up quickly.
If the book sold for $15.00 that would produce a gross revenue of $75,000. That’s pretty impressive. Assuming he made a 25% royalty, his earnings should have been around $18,750. Sounds good, right? Subtract the $10,000 he invested up front, and you can see he earned about $8,750, or $1,250 per year. That breaks down to an average of $104.00 per month. Subtract the cost of all those Amazon ads and social media ads, and… well, you can see the dynamics at play. Imagine how it would have played out if the author had been an unknown first-time author without an established platform. One could make the argument that the hybrid model is only a small step above the vanity press.
What does Multivalent Press offer? Let us say upfront that we are not a huge publishing house. We cannot garner shelf space in brick and mortar stores by traditional means. However, we will get you set up properly with the major book wholesalers, so that any reader can go into any brick and mortar bookstore, and order a copy of your book to be delivered there. More importantly, independent book stores, libraries, and airport book stores can all order your book from the wholesaler they are used to working with. We can help you maximize your online sales, and by signing with a small but legitimate publishing house, you avoid the stigma of being a self-published author.
Accessibility: We are a micro publishing house, meaning we publish fewer than twenty-four titles per year. We apply an aggressive, non-traditional approach to connecting authors and readers. Since we can only publish a few titles per year, we must be selective. We are not a hybrid house, who will publish anything and everything regardless of quality or merit. The upside is that we are approachable. You can get in touch with us, and have direct contact with an actual human being. We don’t require an author to land a deal with an agent prior to submitting to us. That step alone can save years of your life. If your goal is to be a published author, we may be able to help you, and in much less time than a larger house can.
Editing: We will have your book edited well. We won’t do nine editing passes on your manuscript, but we will probably do three or four. We are looking for authors who have enough pride in their work that they have already gone over their manuscript with a fine tooth comb, to the point that it is at a quality level above most self-published titles. We will add several layers of polish on top of that, and produce a work you can truly be proud of. Quality is an absolute requirement if your book is going to find a loyal readership.
Cover design and interior formatting: We will be in control of both cover design and interior formatting. Our focus is on quality, and to ensure quality we have to maintain control over those aspects of the production. Unlike the larger houses, we will keep you “in the loop” about the progress of your book, and while the final decisions will be ours, if you have concerns, we will at least listen to your input.
Printing and publication: Because sophisticated print on demand services are available today, we believe it makes sense to take advantage of them. We will farm out the actual printing of the books to one of the big companies like Ingram Spark, or Amazon Services, just as you would if you self-published. The difference is, we work with industry professionals who have been through this process many, many times, and know all the ins and outs. Because your books are not printed until they are ordered, there is no large up-front fee required. That allows us to run a lean, stream-lined operation, and apply the funds to marketing, where they matter most. Your books will have the Multivalent Press imprint on them, so they will stand apart from those that are self-published, and the quality of the finished product will rival that of traditionally published titles.
Publishing costs: After the printing costs themselves, the major expenses of selling books are in editing, formatting, cover design, and marketing. These four critical elements must come together to give your book its best shot at success. It is important to understand that all costs of producing the books, including marketing costs, are deducted out of the revenue before we start splitting profits. Before we enter into any agreement with an author, we will clearly enumerate what the various costs are expected to be, and how those costs are going to be covered. In most cases, Multivalent Press will cover the editing, formatting, and cover design costs. The marketing costs will be shared between MVP and the author. How much of the marketing costs the author is expected to contribute will be specified prior to any agreement being made.
We don’t have the budget of a big publishing house, so we have to be strategic about where and how to spend marketing dollars. We don’t want to be anywhere, we want to be everywhere. We think of marketing in two categories. The first category, we can call “Standard.” The second category, we can call “exceptional.” Here are some examples of each.
Standard marketing methods are those that are routine, and are done with every book, and maintained for the duration of the time we are promoting the title. These include maintaining an author page on Amazon, and on our Multivalent Press website, and working to drive traffic to those author pages. Running regular amazon ads each month to keep your book in front of readers is standard, as well as producing marketing images, such as 3-D images of your books, professional crafting of your marketing copy, and optimizing your book’s position on Amazon using professionally produced meta-data. It is also standard to produce a simple video book trailer, and hosting it on YouTube.
Exceptional marketing methods are those that do not happen every month. They are the exception to the rule. Most of them become available once or twice a year, but they have an affect on sales for several months, if not all year long. This would include paying to have your book included in special pushes, such as:
- a mailing to the people who purchase books for libraries.
- a mailing going out to buyers for airport bookstores.
- a mailing to owners of small independent book stores.
- a mailing to the leaders of book clubs around the nation.
- a blog tour, where you are interviewed by perhaps a dozen or so bloggers who have a following, and your book is promoted to their audiences.
- an add in a magazine that usually results in multiple chances for you, to be a guest on radio shows in multiple markets. Television spots are harder to come by, but if your story touches on some hot topic, it can happen.
- a sophisticated video trailer for the book. This will likely only happen if and when the sales of the book take off, but it can increase your book’s visibility substantially.
- author giveaways, where multiple authors promote their books to each others’ mailing lists.
- special promotions through services that maintain huge data bases of individual readers.
- reduced rate specials through the online outlets.
Each of the above examples cost money, but taken together, they can have a profound impact on the lifetime sales of your book. Many of them also have the potential to build up a list of loyal readers who are open to receiving special offers, and more importantly, announcements about the release date of your next title.
Author Advances: We rarely pay author advances, except when an author is working with us as a co-author. The co-author may be paid a modest advance to write the first draft of the book, if that is important to the author. Any advance will be paid in installments, based on how much of the book they have completed. Any advance given will be included in the “cost to produce the book,” and have to be repaid prior to the beginning of the profit sharing phase. Asking for an advance will have an affect on the percentage of back-end royalties the author will receive.
You can understand that we will be investing heavily in your book on the front end. In other words, we will be assuming real financial risk. For that reason, we will receive the larger share of the profits, just as all publishing houses do. But the royalties the author receives will be greater than what a big publishing house would offer, perhaps even in the range of those received under the hybrid model. Since there is little or no out of pocket cost to the author, that is a good deal.
Each contract is unique, and will reflect the amount of risk we are assuming, balanced against what the author brings to the table. If the author brings a huge customer base and celebrity marketing power, they will receive a larger percentage than an unknown author would.
We feel our model is a better opportunity for the author than any of the other three options. If you would like to submit a manuscript for consideration, go to our Submissions page, and follow the instructions. Do NOT send in a manuscript unsolicited. That will almost certainly disqualify you, and your manuscript will probably never be looked at. No matter what method you ultimately utilize to publish your book, we wish you the best of success. We are sincere in that.