Which will puzzle my American readers very much because the UK and Commonwealth countries all seem to put the day first, and month second, unlike the US. It will be the 22nd century and I'll be long gone worm-food before we get a date sequence again. No I don't believe it is any mysterious portent, other than meaning I have got off my dead prosterior to post again, leaving the incomprehensible delights of der Kliene Rosengarten just for you (well, it is incomprehensible to me... delight no) Yes - you got it, book research.
It's been an upsy downsy week - Upsy - We had our 32nd wedding anniversary, which I find cause for celebration even if you think Barbara a woman deserving remission for good behavior and possibly beatitude. We celebrated with two new seats for porcelain thrones - they had rather rickety plastic ones, one of which had a crack, which could, when you stood up, pinch your tail end. We now have more sturdy ones which are also transparent and have imbedded seashells and dolphins(real dolphins, of course, nothing but the best for our thrones). I fancied the ones with barbed wire embedded, but after 32 years you know who makes the final decision on these.
Then I got my royalty statements. I'm not overly money mad (or I'd have done something that makes me more), but we do have to earn a living of some sort. What I apparently earned in that 6 months - January to June was slightly less than I do in 5 and half hours of manual labor. And to add insult to injury the numbers weren't even added correctly, with a few completely left out. It's honestly not worth my even fighting them about it, because I will just lose my cool. Right now all I want is out of this system. It has left me angry, depressed and wondering if anyone read or enjoyed my books. So: if you have I'd love to know. There appears no reflection of the Kindle sales. My own few -
-and a bunch of other shorts
Had been doing quite well, (A LOT more than I got in royalties) but that too seems to have stopped/slowed. At least Amazon lets me see what is happening day-to-day and pays in 3 months.
So I am a bit bleak about all that.
Then on the positive side I now am the proud owner of an old Evinrude 35 horse outboard motor which one of my friends has taken off his boat - which if I can get it all rigged should make the Zoo a viable boat for just about any kind of fishing and or diving I want to undertake. I've also got a great double full depth sink from Peter, which we really want for the house one day, and I managed to fix two throw-out reels and fix a throw-out rod and buy for next to nothing another - meaning we have a good stock for visitors. That's all definite up.
And then Barbs and her co-receptionist have been having flak with the 'new' program they installed at the surgery - only 14 years old. In the software world? To me it makes perfect sense to install a dinosaur, that it appears only has one company as a client. The teaching skills displayed by the geniuses who got sent here appear to be of the 'you watch while I do it' order of competence. Yes, that always works. So that's been a nightmare, not helped by the non-support they've had. The benchmarks for the volume they deal with is 3-5 people - without the pharmacy which should just about be a full time job for one person by the number of scripts. Needless to say... they don't have the half the staff, don't have the support, don't have the equipment needed to do the job, have a hopelessly badly designed work environment (an architect who puts a step in the passage to escape fire in a Doctor's surgery needs to be shot)... have all sorts of stupid equipment (printers that don't work without being manually driven, off site 'support' that doesn't etc.) and a tribe of meaningless petty rule roadblocks inserted by Peter Principle people who don't have to work with them, and still they manage, and laugh and are nice to patients. They do a fair amount of unpaid extra. They probably deserve halos, even without coping with this POS program. Let's just say this is not quite what Peter Principle seems to be providing. Ah well. Barbs can just chuck it in on my writing income...
Anyway. I've got over the spitting point, and so has Barbs. Back to writing -although what I will do when these contracted books are done is another matter. I don't think I have the fan-base to go it alone, and I've had publishing in square chunks. We had delicious home made ham for our tea, and I went off to rescue a stuck sheep that turned out not to need rescuing and that was definitely an up :-)
Don't give up, Dave. I sold my first book at 52, was first published at 54, second book 4 years later--and finally, at 68, and 10+ books later, I am earning more than an old age pension!!
ReplyDeleteGlenda, I'm formulating a plan of campaign, right now, that includes write and collect the turn-in from my last couple of contracted books - that's more or less a year from now, I anticipate. At the same time I will try to get as many of my rights back as possible. I'm at ?19 books, many shorts now. The re-release of two old books I have got the rights back for says that even on old books, there is a royalty stream to be had. I can more or less - so far, bank on $50 a month as a minimum per book (it's gone as high as $400 when it was newly out, and even shorts make a few hundred dollars in their time.). If that holds up, I don't dream of overseas/off-island travel, well, we live cheaply and I am not a very materialistic man. At the same time I have a bunch of books I have written and not sold. I'll get them edited, get covers, and get them up on Amazon and Smashwords. That will give me a handle on just how many copies I can sell on my own, which in turn does three things - a) it tells me if I'm an idiot and should quit or if this is viable; b) gives me a floor figure for any future negotiations - I'll offer the books but at better than I can earn terms only, and retain rights. If they don't like that, they can lump it; c)gets something (anything?) for work I have largely done. I've got about 15 books at the proposal or part-written stage I'd like to do, if (a) shows it is really viable. Perhaps 3 of them I'll finish/write regardless, because they're philosophical concepts I want to explore. But they could move from 'over the next 2 years to over the next 15, while I try to improve the cash flow doing other things. It's depressing to find one's self facing this after selling near on 400 000 books, but I will keep going. It's just how we do it that has to be decided. As for you earning more than on a pension -that's just a perfect example of you being totally undervalued by the industry. You are a far better writer than I am.
DeleteDave, first off, conga-rats to you and Barbs. As for reading your books, if your name is on it, I've read it. But more important to me is the way your books resonated with my son at a time when he wasn't reading much at all. Now that he is off on his own, I've had to make sure he has copies of your work on his kindle. For a kid who stopped reading because he had too many teachers use reading as a punishment, I can only say a heartfelt thank you for helping him reclaim the joy of reading.
ReplyDeleteThanks Amanda. It means a great deal to me to have got even one youngster reading and enjoying it (I am afraid there is a strong streak of totally un - pragmatic idealist in me - and I do accept this has a price). Still, eventually pragmatism must dictate just how much time and effort I can afford to give. It's not likely that I will stop writing completely, it just may means instead of 300 000- 400 000 words a year, I may do that in 10.
DeleteI want my son to grow up with your books, too.
ReplyDeleteI hope he will :-)
DeleteWe are very different writers; it's not a matter of better or worse. Peaches or plums, some like one, some like the other and many like both.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if where you are missing out on income is in translation. If it wasn't for the my French and German cheques, I'd be eating grass. They pay well. Who has your foreign laguage rights?? They are falling down on the job!
Baen have always insisted on all the rights. And they have never sold a single one. Not one. Not audio, not foreign - both of which people who sell far less than I do have had bought. Not even when I got a direct approach from someone at Funimation (who do Anime, are quite successful, and are based in Texas) last year for the movie rights to one of Eric & I 's early books Pyramid Scheme- which is nearly OOP. I jumped through all sorts of hoops getting someone the publisher, and got told they'd get their 'Hollywood agent' to get onto it. Well, needless to say Hollyweird agent couldn't be arsed. When I followed up Hollyweird agent apparently said 'oh they were just trying to buy a lot of rights from everyone, cheap.' Now... the rights on the book revert just as soon as they sell the last of their stock (or reprint - not likely at the rate they're selling) - the copyright time window has expired. There are no other offers and haven't been for 12 years. So: nothing for the publisher to lose, even if the offer is for 50 cents. Neither had we. And no, it wasn't a big buy-cheap spree. You know, as well as I do, that had everyone been getting these offers - queries would have been leaping around the list. I know a fair number of non-list authors. It wasn't happening to them either. So basically, jackass agent couldn't be bothered to do anything, as they weren't going to pay him a lot of money and weren't Hollywood. So: another opportunity peed down the wind. Anyway, onward.
DeleteFor what it's worth, I'm currently going through the Heirs books again, just cause.
ReplyDeleteSo yes Dave, I love your writing and if there was any justice in the world you'd be a best seller.
Thank you, Patrick. I'm not sure I'd be a best-seller. But it would have been nice to get of promotion and into enough stores on re-order when sold (my books are generally only re-order when requested in the computer hierarchy, which makes building an audience who never sees them really hard.
DeleteThen your agent sucks. That's dreadful. Every time a publisher fell down a hole, my agent whisked away those rights in the next contract. Baen don't have a leg to stand on. Demand that they return the rights. Isn't there an reversion clause anywhere??? Even if there isn't, demand the rights back.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on 23 years!
ReplyDeleteDoes the Evinrude need rebuilding or just a tune-up? I helped rebuild a 5hp Johnson two winters ago. Then our housemate built a boat, and now he's got a 35hp Johnson in the basement with seized cylinders, trying to rebuild to fit on the new boat. (And since the boat's small for the new motor, after that he wants to build a bigger boat. It never ends, eh?)
May your rights reversion and formatting/covers/uploading for the already written ones go smoothly; I hope they make a nice income stream when all up and out there on the digital street corner. (I'm personally hoping they'll do well enough to encourage you to write lots more books, but I'm a inveterate, unrepentant reader like that.) Peter's plan is to get good enough at writing, and get enough books up over time, that he can support us should I lose my job.
Kevin Anderson mentioned the joy of being able to sell backlist titles to fans in countries that had only been able to get one book (or two, not in the same series) from the import shop. I hope you'll also find some fans out there you didn't know you had, and they'll be able to work their way through your titles!
32 years! Ach, no good comes of me typing figures and not triple-checking.
DeleteI've read and enjoyed some of your books. I have a couple more in the to-be-read mountain somewhere and I know there are at least a few more that I'd like to add to that mountain. I'm sorry that the income from your books is so disappointing.
ReplyDeleteNo worries, we'll push through it. Maybe writing less and doing other work more, but we'll push through. :-)
DeleteDave
ReplyDeleteYou have an engaging style reminiscent to me at least of Heinlein in his less indulgent books. I wish I had more to offer. No profiles to leave so I'll sign off with my real name.
Drew