The One Where I Tell John Scalzi he is Wrong

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion over on John Scalzi’s Whatever blog about some new book contracts coming out of Random House’s new Imprints, Alibi and Hydra. Normally, I tend to agree with him on many things he writes about and have greatly enjoyed his books. But his stance on advances is just plain wrongheaded.

Now, before I get to how John Scalzi is wrong, let me first say where he is right. These book contracts are absolutely terrible, terrible contracts. Taking full rights to all forms of the book for the lifetime of the copyright is bat-shit insane. No one should ever do that, given how categorically long copyrights are these days. As in, your lifetime plus 70 forevers. Lifetime contracts should be reserved for Supreme Court justices, who usually are pretty old when they get started.

So, right there he’s absolutely correct that you should never, ever sign these contracts just for that reason. Where he begins to go wrong is in some of the other reasons he declares this contract bad. Specifically, his point 0, No Advance and to a lesser extent, point 2 dealing with net proceeds. He goes on a very long winded rant against advances in another post, which is what I primarily want to address.

In this post, he talks about how anyone who doesn’t offer an advance falls into one of two categories:

So why are so many eBook-only publishers attempting to run with the “no advances” business model? If I had to guess, I would say because many of these then-erstwhile publishers assumed that publishing electronically had a low financial threshold of entry (not true, if you’re serious about it) and they fancied being publishers, so they started their businesses undercapitalized, and are now currently in the process of passing the consequences of that undercapitalization unto the authors they would like to work with. Alternately, as appears to be the case with Random House, they’re looking for a way to pass as much of the initial cost of publishing onto the author as possible, and one of the best ways to bring down those initial costs is to avoid paying the author anything up front. Both of these are bad business models, although one is more maliciously so, and both are to be avoided. Just because someone has stupidly or maliciously planned their business, doesn’t mean you’re obliged to sign a contract with them.

I’m going to skip a bit since I don’t want to quote the entire thing, you should read the whole post yourself, but I want to highlight these parts:

And if they wish to suggest that they will make that material investment — by way of editing, marketing, production, etc — again we come to the question of why everyone else is getting paid ahead of the writer.

(And as for “but, but — profit sharing!” my answer is, groovy: The advance is advanced against the expected profits (as opposed to against royalties, which is a separate thing entirely). Rule of thumb: Ifanyone gets paid, the writer gets paid. First. Because, once again: What the writer provides is whyeveryone else gets paid — and the writer has already done the work.)

To sum up for the TL;DR crowd:

• The only publishers who give no advance do it because they are trying to cheat you are because they are a bad business.
• No one should receive a dime of money before the author does, including editors and the people actually print the book into book form.

This entire argument is predicated on a false assumption; that the way book publishing has been done is the only way it can be done. ie, successful companies give advances, therefore if you don’t give advances you aren’t a successful company. Or, scammers don’t give advances, therefore if you don’t give an advance you must be a scammer.

While that may be true in many cases, as in these contracts from Random House, total scam, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it has to be true. Yes, advances are nice and all other things being equal, I’d take one over not having one. But saying any contract that doesn’t initially offer an advance is worthless is pretty narrow minded.

Take the contract my books have been published under. I received no advance. And I don’t get a direct percentage of a sale but rather share in a percentage of the net. What is taken out before I get my half? Production cost if it’s a physical book and anything discounted or charged by the distributor.

So, for example, my book is available on Amazon in ebook, paper and hard cover forms. The paperbacks runs about $15. When a book is sold, the cost to produce the actual book is subtracted (I don’t remember off hand what that cost is, so let’s say $6). Then Amazon takes the distributor amount, 20%, so $3.  The remaining $6 is sent to the publisher. They take 50% and send the rest on to me.  For ebooks, it’s just what Amazon charges to sell the book.

In John Scalzi’s world, this is an absolutely terrible contract since I, as the author, did not get paid first. He’s right that if I hadn’t done the work to write the book in the first place, no one else would have made any money. But what’s also true is if those other people in the chain hadn’t done their part, I never would have sold my book to that reader.

With this model, selling books is a partnership. The author creates the story. The publisher edits, formats and markets it. The printer prints the book. The distributor provides the platform the reader uses to acquire the book.

If you go the self-publication route, all of those costs fall to the author.  The editing, marketing, cover art etc all must come out of pocket. With Amazon, at least, the process would be the same. Meaning, as a self published author, you don’t get paid first either.

And with a big name publisher who offers advances? Sure, the author would be the first to receive a check. But then, you’d also likely end your participation in the process. You would have sold your book and then you’re done.

With my publisher at least, it doesn’t work like that. I’ve been involved with the process every step. And I don’t mean I’ve been doing a lot of work for free. For example, it means I worked with the cover artist to bring my cover to life. My books covers are relevant to the books, unlike what you get from big name publishers.

Take Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files and Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet series.  Butcher describes Dresden several times with his characteristic duster, as you see on the cover. But he also calls out that Harry hates hats. Yet, in every cover, Harry’s wearing a hat.

For Campbell’s Lost Fleet, the main character is an admiral in command of a space fleet. He almost never leaves the bridge of the ship in the entire series. In one of the most recent novels, he even has a scene where the character laughs at some news source that draws him in a picture wearing armor, like he’s some kind of marine, because it’s ridiculous.

These are covers done by publishers who pay advances. The authors clearly had no say in the cover art, and the artists clearly had only a rudimentary idea of the characters they were portraying. So, yes, the author got paid first. But that came at a significant cost.

To begin to bring this really long post to a close, John Scalzi is categorically wrong to characterize any publisher that doesn’t automatically offer advances as bad. That’s to limited a view point.

Advances are good, and if you don’t get one you should ask why not. But don’t dismiss something just for that reason. That’s just as bad as signing a contract just because it offers an advance. You need to look at the whole picture before signing with any publisher.

He is right in asserting that even new authors have the power to negotiate. And to his credit, he does suggest that he may be full of crap and that you should listen to others.  In this case, he is indeed full of crap. He’s let advances become a black or white issue in a world where nothing is black or white.

Update

It would seem others are taking much the same position I have on the issue of advances. Evan Gregory, from the agency that represents John Scalzi, has written a post that says pretty similar things to me. It’s nice to see at least some opposing points of view are listened too.