Pub Rants

Category: Publishing/Publishers

Article 3: Fearless Negotiation: An Agent’s Most Important Role for an Author

by Kristin Nelson

Article #3: Fearless Negotiation: An Agent’s Most Important Role for an Author

Of all the skills a literary agent is required to have, the most important is the ability to negotiate well on behalf of the author client. Authors hire agents to protect their business interests in publishing. In my mind, and other folks may disagree with me, all other skills are kind of moot without this one.

This is why a literary agent has a job.

To say this another way, your agent might be a great communicator or team builder, give great marketing feedback, have good relationships with editors, have good taste in picking projects (all wonderful skills to have), but if they aren’t also a good negotiator, then just how valuable are these other skills to you and your career? A good agent will have the complete skill set.

All this begs the question: How do you know if your agent is a good negotiator? Here’s how:

1.) Good agents negotiate all deals. Sounds simple enough. Doesn’t that always happen? Not necessarily. 

Good agents don’t accept the initial offer from the editor. There is always something that can be negotiated. A higher advance, a better escalator in the royalty break, two books instead of one, restricting the rights, holding or giving audio. The list goes on and on. I share with my authors the original offer and then the final offer before accepting. Does your agent? They should.

Good agents negotiate the deal even if an author brings the publisher offer to the agent. Where the offer comes from doesn’t matter. Every deal and every contract is negotiable. Always. There are no exceptions.

Good agents are willing to walk away from an offer if the terms aren’t favorable enough for the author. If you are interviewing agents, ask if that person has ever walked away from an offer and why. Every good agent will have a story.

Here’s mine. There is a small but well-known publisher that doesn’t include an actual out-of-print clause in their contract. Instead, they include a clause that says the Publisher will hold a meeting once a year and determine, in good faith, whether the rights should revert to the author.

Well, isn’t that nice and vague? Why have a contract at all then? Why don’t we just shake hands on a deal and the whole publishing endeavor and go from there?

In my view, the contract exists so that crucial items like this are clearly spelled out. After much back and forth, during which the publisher asked why I thought I was so special when the editor could cite dozens of other agents who had allowed their clients to sign the contract with this vague language (uh, why?), I counseled the author to walk away. Ultimately the author makes the final choice. It was devastating and super hard for the client, but said client did walk away. That publishing entity is now defunct.

Talk about dodging a bullet in the long run…

2.) Good contract negotiation takes time. Literally. 

Even with a basic boilerplate for my agency in place, most contracts take 6 to 12 weeks to negotiate fully. Every author is unique. Every deal is unique. So every contract negotiation is unique. There are many rounds of back and forth for the requested changes, as publishers are always introducing new clauses or making tweaks to their house contracts. In addition, there may be unique elements negotiated for your specific deal that necessitate changes to several contract clauses that won’t be true for any other author at that particular house.

The contract belongs to the author, so the author has a right to know all the details about what was negotiated on his/her behalf. When I complete a negotiation, I send on the final contract to the author along with the master redline that shows all the incorporated changes. I also send along the requested changes documentation with all my notes and responses from the publisher so the author can read the entire communication chain. They see what was given, what was let go, and why.  In ad nauseam detail.

The contract is legally binding, and you, the author, are going to sign it. Don’t you want to know and understand what your agent has negotiated on your behalf? If I were an author, I certainly would! I don’t share this info just to “be nice.” It’s rightfully yours.

Does your agent share these details with you? If not, why? Ask for it. Read your contract in its entirety. If there’s anything you don’t understand (and it’s OK if that’s the entire contract!), schedule a phone call with your agent to discuss.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the number is around 50% for agents who don’t fully understand a publishing contract or have the ability to explain the meaning and importance of the clauses there in detail.

Do you really want that person representing you?

If a new boilerplate from a publishing house is introduced, then it can take 6 to 9 months to get a new agency boilerplate in place that is reasonable for an author to sign. In the last 6 years, both HarperCollins and Macmillan introduced entirely new contracts. Rumor has it that later this year Random House and Penguin will merge their contract forms into a new Penguin Random House contract boilerplate. I haven’t seen it yet but it’s probably coming in the not-so-distant future.

Contracts turned around quickly or that take less time than what I’ve mentioned above = the agent is not negotiating or is not standing firm on key items until a compromise is found. And compromise can always be struck so both publisher and author are happy. But that takes time and several rounds of negotiation.

You don’t want agents pushing through a contract quickly simply because they need the money, or can’t be bothered, or don’t understand the clauses.

By the way, most agents are not lawyers (although some are). I’m not, nor do I think it absolutely necessary for an agent to also be a lawyer. An agent just has to be good at publishing contracts—which often necessitates thinking like a lawyer. None of the publishers’ in-house contracts managers I work with are lawyers either, and yet they do the negotiation. However, lawyers are often consulted on points of intellectual-property law if necessary.

By the way, lots of smaller agencies work with freelance professional contract managers (who once worked in-house for the big publishers) to assist in contract negotiation. This is a good thing, and I highly recommend it so that the author benefits from the contract manager’s savvy and gets a level of protection if the agent sucks at negotiation.

But it’s still essential for an agent to be a good negotiator. Why? Because it’s the agent who negotiates the initial offer (that’s what you’re paying them for!), not some hired contract professional. And often that necessitates some savvy pre-negotiating skills during the offer stage—before a contract is even generated. For authors further along in their careers, this is a given; they know it needs to be done. It’s not a maybe. And if your agent is not a good negotiator, you can see pretty clearly how that is going to impact your level of success and your longterm writing career. Your agent might not know how to do this.

Next month, Karen and I will tackle The Negotiating Tactics of Good Agents.

*******

The genesis: In January 2015, Backspace co-founder Karen Dionne and I had a conversation in which she mentioned that writers sometimes want representation so badly they are willing to sign with an average or even a below-average agent. Trust me, not all agents are equal. I replied, “Well, writers don’t know what they don’t know.”

In that moment, a lightbulb went on for both of us. Writers don’t know what a good agent does. How could you if (1) you’ve never experienced it and (2) you’ve only ever had one agent and no way to assess just how strong he or she might be at the job?

Thus, this series of articles was born.

*******

Archive:

February 2015 Newsletter – Article #1: Agent As Savvy Business Manager

March 2015 Newsletter – Article #2: Commanding Authority: An Agent’s Negotiation Edge.

Article 3 – Good Agents Geek Out About Contracts by Karen Dionne

by Kristin Nelson

To prepare for this month’s topic, I watched a video from the 2011 Backspace Writers Conference in which Kristin, Scott Hoffman of Folio Literary Management, Suzie Townsend (then of Fineprint  Literary Management, now with New Leaf Literary), and Diana Fox of Fox Literary discussed the nuances of publishing contracts.

One of the things I learned is that publishers often change their contracts to give themselves more favorable terms. Agents who are paying attention pick up on the differences and understand the ramifications. Agents who aren’t, don’t.

As an example, the agents explained how a few year ago Simon & Schuster removed four sentences from the end of the rights reversion clause. These sentences defined the sales threshold, which states that rights will revert to the author if the number of sales drops under a specified amount. Removing these sentences meant that if the publisher also bought digital rights, the book would in effect never go out of print, and the publisher would own the rights to the work in perpetuity.

This created a furor among agents who were paying attention. But not every agent caught the change. Some even let their clients sign the contract, then had to negate that contract and start over again. And some didn’t catch the change at all, which left their authors with no possibility of ever getting the rights to these novels back.

I also learned that agents “geek out” over contracts, as one agent put it. It’s a good thing they do, because as I listened to these agents enthuse over the finer points of contract details, my eyes glazed over. Not that the panel wasn’t interesting and enlightening—it was. Rather, I quickly realized that the nuances of contracts were so not my thing—like signing up for a study course and finding out two weeks in that you have zero interest in the subject.

“I go over every contract with a fine-toothed comb,” Diana Fox said. She then writes a detailed memo and sends it to her contracts manager, who goes over the contract again. “If Random House puts a clause in their boilerplate, I’ll know it.”

I read my first contract carefully. All 11 legal-sized pages of fine print. Four times. I also asked my agent questions, because I wanted to be sure I understood what I was signing.

But agents drill down deeper. An author might not even see the earliest version of the contract their publisher offers. “There are very few things publishers aren’t willing to negotiate on,” Scott Hoffman told the audience. “Some are deal-breakers, and it’s up to the agent and author to decide if a contract clause is in the author’s interest.”

So thank God for agents who geek out over foreign rights, audio rights, boilerplate contracts, and out of print clauses. Good agents watch out for their clients in ways authors don’t even know.

********

Karen Dionne is an internationally published thriller author, co-founder of the online writers discussion forum Backspace, and organizer of the Salt Cay Writers Retreat and the Neverending Online Backspace Writers Conference.

She is represented by Jeff Kleinman of Folio Literary Management. This panel discussion along with the full Backspace Writers Conference video archives are available exclusively to Backspace subscribers and online conference registrants. 

Kristin’s Original Pitch Letter to Editors – Under A Painted Sky

by Kristin Nelson

And as further celebration, my original pitch letter to editors when this work was on submission. A couple of things to note:

1) As my letter reveals, UNDER A PAINTED SKY was not the original title. We have Stacey’s estimable editor Shauna to thank for that! It was a great suggestion and way more evocative than Golden Boys. LOL Titles can be tough. As an agent, I either come up with a terrific one right away for the submit or it doesn’t happen until after the book is sold etc. But editors trust me so I know they’ll read the manuscript even if the title isn’t 100% golden. Pun intended.

2) This novel has received a lot of accolades and two STARRED reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. Over the last two weeks,  several editors have reached out to me with congratulations and a request for me to keep them in mind for future stories like this. Given how wonderfully this title is coming out of the gate, it’s easy to assume this might have been a slam dunk of a sale when on submission.

It was not.

Putnam really took a chance and with Shauna’s (and Jen Besser’s) wonderful editorial guidance and vision, Stacey worked hard to perfect the story of Sammy and Andy for the novel you get to read today. My fingers are crossed that this is a sleeper hit in the making.

 

Hello EDITOR NAME REDACTED

It was so lovely to see you while I was in New York. As promised after BEA, I’m sending along GOLDEN BOYS by Stacey Lee, a  young adult historical western a la True Grit.

After I had offered rep and Stacey accepted, I dug in to do the slow read. I was worried that my lack of sleep caused by staying up to read the manuscript had impaired by judgment when offering rep. *grin*

Lucky for me, it was just as good, if not better, than the first time I read it! I love love love it! Get ready to hold on to your saddle because I think you are going to love it as much as I do.

After a suspicious fire burns down her father’s dry goods store with him in it, newly orphaned Young San-Li, who goes by Samantha Young, confronts the landlord she suspects of setting the fire. When she accidentally kills him in self-defense, her only option is to hit the Oregon Trail. She knows the law in 1849 will not side with the daughter of a Chinaman.

With a whip-smart runaway house slave at her side, “Sammy” and “Andy” disguise themselves as boys and join a band of young seasoned cowboys headed for the California gold rush. Sammy must evade bounty hunters and hunt down Mr. Trask, the man entrusted with her dead mother’s treasured jade bracelet. When she also falls for West Pepper, a cowboy with no tolerance for greenhorn boys let alone girls, Sammy is convinced that the trail poses more hazards than a demure violinist can handle. 

When the wild West doesn’t prove big enough to hide her, Sammy must choose–avenge her father, forsake the memory of her mother, or embrace a new identity forged in the frontier and forever lose her history. 

Stacey Lee wrote her debut novel GOLDEN BOYS because her great great grandfather was one of the first Chinese to come to California at the time of the gold rush. She wondered how a Chinese girl born in the U.S. during its expansion west would have fared.  This novel won the 2012 Golden Gate award at SCBWI Asilomar Conference. This work is also a finalist in the Chicago North Romance Writers of America Fire and Ice Contest.

Enjoy!

All Best,

Kristin

Article 2: Commanding Authority: An Agent’s Negotiation Edge

by Kristin Nelson

Article #2: Commanding Authority: An Agent’s Negotiation Edge

in the series WHAT MAKES A GOOD AGENT? by Agent Kristin and Karen Dionne, co-founder of Backspace

In January, one my clients emailed me a great note to kick off the new year. She wrote:

“This is going to sound random, but I feel the need to do a bit of effusive gushing to you. As you probably know, authors eventually turn to gossip (about their contracts too) and I recently found out that several writers I know are stuck with joint accounting, one of them being a NYT bestseller. To say the least, I was agog. My next, immediate thought was that I have the best agent ever.”

Because my client knows that all our contracts here at NLA have separate accounting. I really appreciate when my authors recognize a good job well done because let me tell you, great contract negotiation is not the sexy part of agenting. But it’s the backbone of a great career for my authors.

First, let me explain what joint accounting is: A multi-book deal that grants joint accounting allows the publisher to apply all earnings for all books on that contract to the total advance granted; in other words, none of the books earns out until all of the books earn out.

Separate accounting, on the other hand, specifies that each book’s earnings apply only to that book’s advance; in other words, if book one earns out, the author begins to earn royalties, even if the subsequent books on that contract have yet to earn out. Yay! Royalties!

I decided early in my career that Nelson Literary Agency would only do multi-book deals if the contract granted separate accounting. I weighed the pros and cons, and I just couldn’t see an advantage to granting joint accounting. Since my job as agent is to advocate on behalf of my authors, I’ve held firm on this issue—even if it means we can only sell one book to an editor instead of two or three.

If editors know that joint accounting isn’t available, they don’t bother asking me for it. Why am I sharing this example? Because I want to discuss what could be considered a rather nebulous concept, and my #1 criteria for what makes a good agent:

Good agents command authority naturally.

What does it mean to command authority naturally? For one thing, it means that an editor has immediate respect for the agent. They view the agent as powerful, well informed, and fair yet tough. Especially when it comes to negotiation. So if the agent has established that she won’t grant XYZ in a deal, then editors don’t bother asking for it. In other words, the agent is not a pushover as a negotiator.

There are many agents who are absolutely lovely people but who don’t command authority naturally.

Why should you, as a writer, care about this?

Because it is the essence of this biz. Publishers (who are not evil, by the way) want the most they can get out of a contract (which is often not in the author’s favor), and the agent’s job is to grant only what won’t be detrimental or disadvantageous to the author so that the author gets the fairest contract possible.

The goal is to meet in the happy middle, where both the publisher and the author feel satisfied. And it’s simple: Authors with strong contracts have more successful careers.

So if an agent commands authority naturally, editors will respect that. Editors who know an agent is a negotiating pushover will ask for as much as possible, and since the agent won’t stand tough on key issues, writers get stuck with yucky stuff in their contracts, joint accounting being just one example.

In fact, I know of agents who simply accept the first offer an editor gives without any negotiation whatsoever. Yikes!

Agents who command authority naturally get their projects read more quickly.

Agents who command authority naturally get higher advances and better royalites for their authors’ work.

Agents who command authority naturally are granted more compromises during negotiation, making sure contracts are advantageous for the author.

Agents who command authority naturally get more leverage when dealing with conflict (for instance, over a cover image or something else in the author’s career).

By the way, this doesn’t mean that the agent will always get her way. But it does mean that the editor respects, values, and weighs seriously the agent’s opinion. And sometimes that translates into swaying the editor on the issue.

Agents who command authority naturally are just better at the job of agenting. And in my mind, if the agent is better at agenting, the author is going to have a stronger, more successful career.

And since authors want to make a living writing, this becomes pretty important indeed!

*******

The genesis: In January 2015, Backspace co-founder Karen Dionne and I had a conversation in which she mentioned that writers sometimes want representation so badly they are willing to sign with an average or even a below-average agent. Trust me, not all agents are equal. I replied, “Well, writers don’t know what they don’t know.”

In that moment, a lightbulb went on for both of us. Writers don’t know what a good agent does. How could you if (1) you’ve never experienced it and (2) you’ve only ever had one agent and no way to assess just how strong he or she might be at the job?

Thus, this series of articles was born.

*******

Archive:

February 2015 Newsletter – Article #1: Agent As Savvy Business Manager

Article 2 – When Agents & Editors Respect Respect Each Other by Karen Dionne

by Kristin Nelson

Guest Blogger: Karen Dionne

One of my favorite panels regularly offered at my Backspace Writers Conferences was one in which I invited an agent I respected to bring in an editor they’d worked with to discuss the process of selling and bringing out a book. Sometimes called “Agents and Editors, Working Together,” sometimes “The Business of Selling the Book,” these discussions were far more interesting than their titles. I loved how they pulled back the curtain on an aspect of the publishing business that authors generally don’t get to see: the relationship between agents and editors.

The conversations were always casual, engaging, and honest. It was easy to see that the agent and editor respected each other and enjoyed working together—even though they acknowledged their jobs often put them on opposite sides of the fence.

I thought about these panel discussions after I read Kristin’s article about how a good agent needs to command authority naturally. In one discussion, the editor lamented how hard it was to know if the agent pitching a manuscript was telling the truth.

Agents lie to editors? I remember thinking. Apparently, some do. Editors know it, and it makes their jobs harder. As an example, the editor said an agent might tell her they have “interest” in a manuscript. Normally this means another editor wants to acquire the book. But “interest” could mean as little as the agent and editor had waved to each other in the hallway. The editor was exaggerating for effect, but the truth beneath her comment was clear.

“I will never, ever lie to an editor,” the agent broke in. “I’m a salesperson, so naturally I’m going to portray the book in the best possible light. But I will never say anything that’s factually untrue.”

“I know that,” the editor replied. “And I trust you. Personal relationships are super important to figuring out what’s actually going on [in negotiations].”

Or as Kristin puts it: “For an agent to command authority naturally means that an editor has immediate respect for the agent. They view the agent as powerful, well informed, fair, yet tough.”

Kristin also says: “Agents who command authority naturally get their projects read more quickly.” 

In the same panel discussion, the agent told the audience that if he thinks a book will generate interest from multiple publishers, he likes to send the book to editors on a Thursday. Why Thursday? So the editors can read the manuscript that night, get their colleagues on board the next day so they in turn can read the book over the weekend, and the following week the agent can hopefully set up an auction.

“We hate when agents do that!” the editor said. Dropping everything she had planned and reading is the last thing she wants to do at the end of a busy week. But because she respects the agent, she trusts that when he says the manuscript is hot, it really is, and he’s not lying in order to get the project read quickly. So she reads the manuscript right away.

“Agents who command authority naturally are just better at the job of agenting,” Kristin says.

At another of my Backspace conferences, when I met the editor the agent brought in for this panel and told her who my agent was, she said, “You have a good agent. He’s tough.”

I found out later that my agent and this editor are friends. Yet their friendship doesn’t preclude my agent being a tough negotiator when the situation calls for it. More important, this editor respects my agent because he is.

*****

Karen Dionne is an internationally published thriller author, co-founder of the online writers discussion forum Backspace, and organizer of the Salt Cay Writers Retreat and the Neverending Online Backspace Writers Conference.

She is represented by Jeff Kleinman of Folio Literary Management. This panel discussion along with the full Backspace Writers Conference video archives are available exclusively to Backspace subscribers and online conference registrants. 

The Power Of A Kindle Daily Deal

by Kristin Nelson

If I was looking for evidence of how powerful Amazon has become in the book-selling market, then I don’t need to look much further than the news I received yesterday! Gail Carriger’s Finishing School Series hit the New York Times young adult series list. [ETIQUETTE & ESPIONAGE, CURTSIES & CONSPIRACIES, and WAISTCOATS & WEAPONRY]

So what you might ask. Agent Kristin always has titles hitting the NYT list (Ha! I wish that were true.) But it happens often enough that I’m guessing folks aren’t surprised to hear the news. So why is last night’s news a big deal?

It’s big because of the timing of the hit.

As a general rule, unless a title is a big perennial seller, titles don’t hit the list except during release week and the immediate weeks following. That’s when any given title is going to have the most number of sales (in a short period of time) to catapult it on to the NYT list.

But in Gail’s case, Waistcoats & Weaponry was the last title to be released and that happened in November 2014. It’s months after the release. So then the question becomes, what caused it?

I’ll tell you. It was the Kindle Daily Deal for Etiquette & Espionage that happened last week. Thousands and thousands of ebook copies sold during a short period of time. As we can now see from yesterday’s news, it was enough to propel the whole Finishing School series onto the NYT list. (FYI – once there are three books or more in a given series, then an individual title can no longer appear on the regular NYT list. It can only hit the NYT on the Series List.)

Hubby and I went out to dinner to celebrate my 35th New York Times bestselling title/appearance. I do tally the first appearance of a series on the NYT list, attributing “the hit” to the last release in terms of my title count. Otherwise I’m not sure quite how to do it.

Regardless, it’s news worth celebrating.

Polarization of Authors?

by Kristin Nelson

NINC is a terrific conference that caters to authors who are already multi-published. After attending last week, it’s clear to me that this conference is leaning more and more toward supporting authors who are exploring the indie-publishing route.

There was a decidedly anti-traditional-publisher sentiment in a lot of the panels that I both participated in and attended. This is not a commentary on the conference, by the way. It’s merely my observation. I think a lot of attendees would probably agree with my assessment.

But this is what worries me. I sense a widening division between authors who traditionally publish and authors who self-publish. And there’s no need for that. This is not an either/or question, nor is there only one right path to publication. (By the way, for what it’s worth, editors from “traditional” publishers much prefer the term “commercial” publisher.)

The conference vibe seemed to rest on a few assumptions:

1) That authors who stay with traditional publishers are stupid for doing so (not necessarily true) and that they can’t make a living/career by solely writing while partnering with a commercial publisher. (Also not necessarily true as plenty of traditionally published authors make high 6 or 7-figure incomes and enjoy the marketing campaigns their publishers invest in them.)

2) That indie publishing is the only route for an author who wants to be in control of his/her career (not necessarily true, as agents negotiate a lot of things in contracts).

3) That indie publishing is the only way to make good money or a living by writing (also not necessarily true, as some indies make really good money and others are not seeing as much financial reward).

It’s a disservice to the industry in general and to the conscious choices an individual author would like to make about his/her career by thinking in these kinds of divisive absolutes. Plenty of good reasons exist to choose one path or the other (or a combo of both).

Writers, in the end, there is only one right path–the path that is actually right for you and your career. And when you gather the data, weigh the pros and cons, and make a conscientious decision about what you’d like to explore, you are actually thinking like an agent. As that is what we do every day for each individual client at our agency.

Is HarperCollins Pitting Authors Against Booksellers?

by Kristin Nelson

Just this week, HarperCollins announced that they would give authors a royalty incentive (35% of net instead of 25% of net) on any sales of an individual author’s book(s) that are sold via an affiliate link to HarperCollins’ new consumer-facing branded book retail site.

In other words, if the author is directly responsible for the sale, they get a higher royalty percentage. (Note: this only holds true for sales of books by the author. Authors can’t provide HarperCollins links to other author books and get an affiliate commission on the sale.)

To sum up, authors are rewarded if the sale is made directly through their publisher.

So does that pit authors against booksellers?

In my mind, the answer is no. Here’s why. HarperCollins is not mandating that their authors provide and feature ONLY links to the HarperCollins’ branded retail site.

HC is simply asking that the link be included along with all the other retail links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google, Indiebound (the consortium of independent booksellers), etc.

If HarperCollins mandated that authors could only use their links on websites, newsletters, and email blasts, that could create a problem.

But it does raise another interesting thought. If Publishers have online storefronts? Are they in direct competition with booksellers? After all, they are now selling direct-to-consumers.

(By the way, Publishers have always had the ability to sell directly to readers via mail order, phone sales, catalog, and special sales, but it hasn’t been a big revenue avenue in the past, except for some specific titles.)

That answer is probably yes, if a publisher’s retail store starts building real market share.

S&S finalizes agreement with Amazon

by Kristin Nelson

This went out on the wire late last night. Carolyn Reidy has finalized S&S’s agreement with Amazon. Yes, the same agreement Hachette has been at loggerheads with Amazon for months now. So what is S&S okay with that Hachette isn’t? That’s a very good question….

S&S - Amazon Agreement

 

 

If It Sounds Too Good to Be True, It Is

by Kristin Nelson

As I was reading Digital Book World‘s daily email blast, I came across a press release in the form of an article called Writer’s Digest Inks Deal with Book Baby. It was about a new self-publishing imprint called Blue Ash Publishing.

What struck me was this bullet point:

  • 100% Net Earnings on all sales: Blue Ash Publishing takes no commission on any book sales. Authors keep 100% of their book’s net earnings. Once retailers are paid their percentage, all remaining revenue goes back to the author. BookBaby offers the largest eBook distribution network, including Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and many other popular retailers in more than 170 countries around the globe.

One-hundred percent of net earnings on all sales goes to the author. Sounds great, right? So immediately I started thinking like an agent. And the first question that pops to mind is, “What’s the catch?” There is no such thing as a free lunch. Just how exactly will Blue Ash Publishing make money in this venture?

Always follow the money…

I decided to do a little digging. First stop, check the source–Blue Ash’s website. Sure enough, right there on the home page was a link to Blue Ash’s publishing packages.

In actuality, writers need to think of this as a service or one-stop shopping for independent contractors to convert the book, do the cover, hire the editor, etc. This is not a publishing house. I repeat: This is not a publishing house. And from what I see on the website, they offer nothing that you can’t do on your own pretty simply, for a lot cheaper—and you’ll get paid directly rather than via a third party.

As my indie authors constantly remind me (and other writers who will listen), no one can publicize your book as well as you can. And it’s certainly not worth the $3,000+ for Blue Ash Publishing’s “Ultimate Package.”

Last but not least, because you are thinking like an agent, if you are going to explore this “service,” be sure to get a very clear definition of what “net” means to Blue Ash.

Bottom line? Pass. You can do this all for a lot cheaper than these price tags.