May Invite + Publishing Industry Secrets Revealed

+ I finished* writing "Carcass!"

Hello everyone! Here is the invite to the next meeting:

Authors Meeting

Saturday, May 25 · 5PM PST, 6 MST, 7 CST, 8 EST

Video call link: https://meet.google.com/qks-cqhc-obm

Support the group!

Thank you to the people who have paid subscriptions, which you can do by clicking above! This newsletter/group is free but I’m very grateful to the paid subscribers. If you want to support me with a different amount of money, I have PayPal. If you would like to donate to a 501(c)3 charity instead, might I suggest a $10 donation to Small Town Community Cats (where I got my beloved Bijou) or Wyoming Arts Alliance, which has been generous to me. I’d love it if you could mention me/ANBIP in the note of the donation, just because I’m curious to see if and how much this may result in.

Meeting Notes

-A* Mission Accomplished: I’ve finished* writing my book, Carcass: The Afterlives of Animal Bodies! *But all the chapters are in various degrees of fact check and then I don’t know how much editing I’ll have to do.

-Have you published?
Congratulations! If you’ve been to at least two meetings and your book is out, I’ll post about it in the next meeting notes! Give me a link for the preorders, your website, your book tour, whatever.

-Book recommendation
Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction and Get It Published

-Ethical struggle: Do you include unflattering quotes and criminal anecdotes?
We discussed what to do when a source confesses or commits a crime, or something unflattering, in front of you. One school of thought is never to squeal on your sources’ crimes. (Presumably, that advice is contextual. In investigative journalism, squealing/holding people accountable is kind of the point.)

If a source knows they are talking to a journalist and that they will be written/talked about in an article, book, video, etc., or filmed, then everything they say or do is on the record and fair game to capture (with exceptions!) So, to give a fictional example, say a source is smoking marijuana during the interview. It IS within the ethical standards of the writer to divulge that.

However, I wouldn’t do it all the time. We all occasionally let things slip that the whole world doesn’t need to know. Let’s have a level of kindness that hopefully doesn’t conflict with our responsibilities as journalists. If the source is a politician hellbent on banning weed, then the fact that they smoke it themself is in fact very pertinent to the story. If I’m talking to a paleontologist about their most recent discovery, I would not include what they smoke. (That being said: If you’re ever being interviewed, don’t risk saying or doing anything you don’t want the world to know. Keep your secrets secret. Make it easy on us.)

One example I struggled with was when I had a source who yapped about how strictly he follows certain laws—but then broke adjacent laws right in front of me the second they became inconvenient. I ultimately decided to leave that out, but I certainly didn’t include any quotes painting him as law-abiding, either. It was a tough decision. (The crime wasn’t like murder or anything if that’s what you’re wondering. I suppose it was victimless.) On the other hand, I did include his confession that he used to do something cruel when he was younger and said he knows better now. (Let me know if you have anything to add to this conversation; I can still edit this chapter.)

A fox farm from the “Fur” chapter of my book

Great Analyses of Publishing & Book Sales

Here are some interesting reads on the publishing industry, right here on Substack.

The Elysian

analyzed some incredible numbers that came out of a merger trial between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster in this essay “No One Buys Books.” In her previous essay “No One Will Read Your Book,” she describes publishing houses as venture capitalists, who invest in a lot of projects knowing that most of them will never pay off. Some books do pay off, in spades, bringing lots of spare cash to the publisher so they profit and can invest in more books.

Counter Craft

countered with “Yes, People Do Buy Books,” and had previously published “No, Most Books Don’t Only Sell A Dozen Copies.” Both perspectives use numbers very well, explaining how a simple stat like that isn’t that simple or correct. Many of us in this group cover science, so surely most of us have had a headache or two regarding statistics that are misleading, complex, contextual, and/or have all sorts of biases. You can make numbers say anything to support any idea, really, especially when you don’t have clear definitions and parameters.

LitHub also published the essay “There Are Too Many Books; Or, Publishing Shouldn’t Be All About Quantity.” It focuses on trad publishers spreading their resources too thin and not putting enough time and effort into selling the good books that they have.

I realize some of the aforementioned articles are “negative” or whatever. I don’t care, I’m your reality check friend. I believe in (generally) telling it like it is and it’s up to you to consider the pros and cons of book-writing, and it’s totally valid to decide not to do it.

HOWEVER!

You’re an individual, not a number. Maybe your book will sell better than the average or median book—maybe it will sell worse. Do you have reasons to think one way or another? Also, I’m not sure what these revelations about the publishing industry practically mean for us authors, if anything. I guess I’m just grateful that the profits from celebrity books bankroll us little guys. (Knock on wood, I hope all of our books sell well enough that our books end up bankrolling other authors!)

That’s a great thing about getting an advance, and we nonfiction non-memoir writers are somewhat unique in that we generally get the money before we invest in finishing the book. If you get an offer for a $XX,XXX advance, and you don’t actually think it’s worth it to write a book for only $XX,XXX guaranteed (even with unknown possible royalties on the way,) then you just don’t take the offer and you don’t write the book. Maybe you pitch it elsewhere or maybe you don’t.

Keep in mind that, although your publisher very well may not ever earn a profit from your book, the time you earn out your advance is WELL after the publisher has made their money back. They’re not cursing you and blackballing you and banning your book if you don’t earn out within a month of publishing. These things take time, they know there’s a big chance they’ll lose money on you, they chose to take that risk, and publishers do profit from books that haven’t earned out yet if they sell enough.