It is with the deepest euphoria that I announce my permanent separation from commercial publishers. They have wasted too much of my time. They forget that serfdom was abolished in Britain in 1574. To celebrate my release, I have asked Sam2 to design the above card, as a sequel to the more fragrant one featured in an earlier post.
My decision has nothing to do with the fact that I spent the whole of 2017 approaching 47 commercial publishers about publishing George Calderon: Edwardian Genius and only two of them offered me a contract — which I had to reject. It was an interesting, if time-consuming experience, from which I learnt a lot. For example, that 50% of them never reply (even when I had had dealings with them before). For example, that big publishers cannot accept anything new. For example, that they yearn to be writers themselves and entirely rewrite your book.
No, the decision has been triggered by my recently acquiring experience of the lower end of commercial publishing, namely publishers who may have old, much respected names, but publish not many books and in specialised areas. What I am going to describe is quite possibly, nay certainly, common knowledge amongst full-time professional writers, but it has come as a revelation to me.
My co-author and I were invited to meet an interested publisher and his editor. The discussion seemed to be going well, except that (I am not exaggerating) one could never see the publisher’s actual eyes in his forever grinning face. My co-author said that he felt the proposed price for the book was too high for something so short which we hoped would reach a wider public. The publisher agreed to drop it below £10. The publisher called for certain additions to the Preface, which I persuaded my co-author to accept. We also consented to shorten the text in eight places. General agreement seemed to have been reached, and the publisher told us he would now draw up a contract. Then he said:
‘Unfortunately, we cannot offer an advance.’
Caught completely off guard, we were lost for words. The publisher, however, had delivered this line as though it were a minor detail, rattled straight on and concluded the meeting as fast as possible. We should have smelt a rat at that point.
Of course, we knew that it would never be a big advance, but an advance is symbolical; however small it is, it conveys good will and a commitment to literary etiquette. The point was not the size of the advance (it could have been as symbolical as £50) but the positive message its giving would have sent. Evidently the publisher didn’t care about that.
Then the contract arrived. It was the most Draconian, exploitative, offensive contract I have ever seen. What it added up to was that the publisher would take every penny off us that he could; indeed we would probably end up giving him money, because of two specific clauses in it. The first is too long and complex to explain here, suffice it to say that it empowered the publisher to withold royalty payments after three years ‘as a reserve’. The second was far worse. This would have obliged us to pay to the publisher the money paid to us from PLR (Public Lending Right provisions for authors). This seemed so extraordinary that I emailed for confirmation that it was what the clause meant. It was. If not actually illegal, such extortion is completely against the spirit and intention of PLR. Incidentally, in the contract the publisher had reverted to the price which he had agreed at our meeting would be dropped to under £10…
We inquired whether this contract was negotiable. It was not. We therefore refused to sign it. Significantly, I think, the publisher told us that he was used to turning down authors for contracts, but not to authors turning him down. He implied he was offended!
Well, at that point the penny dropped. These publishers (we had rejected a contract from a similar one six months earlier) are a new brand of ‘vanity publisher’. A little investigation on the Web reveals that they arrogate the names of distinguished publishing houses of the past along with what remains of them on paper, and launch their enterprises on these imprints. In the old days, authors paid ‘vanity publishers’ to publish their work; these new vanity publishers, however, don’t ask for money from their authors, they simply prevent them from making any and fleece them for extras like PLR payments. Of course, it amounts to the same thing. Despite their venerable names, the publishers we had been dealing with are vanity publishers trading on the fact that their authors want their work published. Indeed, a more detailed examination of the last publisher’s list revealed, as well as a few respectable names, several works that were dreadful (‘unpublishable’).
So I have seen the light about publishers big and small, and I will stay with Sam&Sam, thank you. Henceforth I will resort only to independent publishing of the timbre that brought out George Calderon: Edwardian Genius.
However, I admit this does raise a question; one that I would be very interested to hear readers’ views about. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VANITY PUBLISHING AND SELF-PUBLISHING? (Apart from the fact that in vanity publishing someone else takes the money and in indie publishing you do.)
SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’ Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter
‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
‘It is bound to remain the definitive account.’ Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama, Tufts University
‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.‘ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
Thank you very much for this, John: words of wisdom based on experience. No-one knows better than you what the work of marketing a self-published book involves! Yet (I think you would agree) it’s intensely satisfying because one is achieving those sales through one’s personal exertions and entirely for one’s own profit.
You will be interested to hear that the Society of Authors have emailed me to confirm that it is illegal for a publisher to extort PLR payments from an author. They are ‘concerned’ to hear of the practice.
Yes, I think ‘vanity publishing’ is used sniffily by mainstream publishers. What concerns me more, though, is when common readers — even one’s friends! — brand something ‘vanity publishing’ simply because one has published it oneself. It cuts no ice when one points out that Shakespeare, Swift or Proust, say, were self-published… There is a snobbery here, and a desire to ‘score’, that is akin to saying: ‘I haven’t seen your book in Heffers yet!’ I intend to return to this psychological phenomenon, but if you have something to say about it from your own experience, I shall, as ever, be pleased to hear from you.