getting a book published
Steve Law
it published. Following are my specific questions:
1. What are the respectable publishers for computer reference
books? What is your experience with them?
2. When should I contact these publishers? Should I wait until
the first draft of my book is complete?
3. What are the things that I can negotiate with the publisher?
Any other advice/suggestion is welcome. Thank you for your help.
Steve Law
ihnp4!petsd!law
Chuq Von Rospach
> it published. Following are my specific questions:
> 1. What are the respectable publishers for computer reference
> books? What is your experience with them?
You don't say what kind of book it is. Are you writing another Unix
introduction book? A macintosh or PC book? A text book on data
communications? Different publishers have different interests or
specialties, and won't even look at certain niches.
If you're doing PC or Mac books, for instance, Microsoft Books or Sybex
would be good choices, as they both market good material to these markets
and they have some quality books in their lists. For text books and the
lower volume technical market, Addison-Wesley and Prentice Hall might be
better choices. Everyone is doing Unix books, but you want to stay away
from publishers that seem to be turning out dogs lest your book be given
the same moniker...
> 2. When should I contact these publishers? Should I wait until
> the first draft of my book is complete?
Each publisher is different. Your best bet would be to find a copy of
"Writers Market 86" by Writers digest books. Most publishers will have
entries that explain their submission preferences and needs. In general,
three forms of submission are used:
o Send in the entire draft.
o Send an outline and some sample chapters. Typically a detailed
outline of the content, the first three chapters and one other
chapter. It is cheaper than mailing the entire thing, you can send
it out before you're done with the entire book, and you'll usually
hear back sooner than an entire manuscript. You WON'T normally get
a contract out of it, just an indication whether they want to see
the whole thing or not. But at least they'll turn you down sooner.
o Send a query. If you aren't sure what to do, do this. One or two
pages that describe what the book is about and why you are
qualifified to writer it. Writers Market is critical as a resource
to find out who to send it to.
> 3. What are the things that I can negotiate with the publisher?
For a first book, not much. If you find a publisher interested in buying the
book, I suggest you find an agent to do the negotiation for you. There are
lots of writers willing to pay (literally, just ask the subsidy publisher
market) to have their works in print, so it is a buyers market.
> Any other advice/suggestion is welcome. Thank you for your help.
It sounds as if you haven't researched the market very well yet. Before you
write a book, see if there is anyplace interested in seeing it. Writers
market is a starting place, as is their monthly magazine "Writers digest"
Do some research into what it takes to be a writer as opposed to writing a
book, and see if you really want to do it. Writing a book sounds like a lot
of fun until you get halfway through and the rent check is due.
Dave Smeds had a great line on this: Writing is the only business in the
world that makes taking out the garbage look like more fun.
chuq
--
Chuq Von Rospach chuq%pl...@sun.COM CompuServe: 73317,635
{decwrl,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!sun!plaid!chuq
O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim
Of Brahamana and recluse the honoured name!
For, quarrelling, each to his view they claim,
Such folk see only one side of a thing.
-- Buddha -- The Elephant and the Blind Men
John Oswalt
> it published. Following are my specific questions:
>
--
John Oswalt (..!{hplabs,amd,pyramid,ihnp4}!pesnta!valid!jao)
Graeme Hirst
> books? What is your experience with them?
If you don't know the answer to this from your own reading and observation,
then are you sure you should be writing such a book?
However, almost any large publisher is likely to be interested.
Addison-Wesley, McGraw-Hill, Prentice-Hall, . . . (and even some without
hyphenated names). Avoid Springer-Verlag. Morgan Kaufmann are building an
excellent list, though they concentrate mainly on AI and databases; they make
a point of being author-friendly, and are rapidly gaining a reputation in their
(narrow) domain.
The text-book reps who stalk college halls pressing their wares on professors
are also always on the lookout for books to publish. If you aren't working at
a college, ask an instructor you know to tell you who his local reps are.
> 2. When should I contact these publishers? Should I wait until
> the first draft of my book is complete?
No. (1) You are unlikely to present a publisher with exactly what they want
unless you find out in advance. (2) The publisher will offer you lots of
helpful advice as you work.
Send out a prospectus that tells what the book will be like, and who the
potential readers are. Include a draft table of contents and a few sample
pages, or an outline of the book (100-200 words per chapter).
> 3. What are the things that I can negotiate with the publisher?
Anything, but unless you are dealing with a small publisher (or they want you
very badly), you will mainly talk about royalties (as a percentage of
publisher's net receipts -- 15% is about normal), the number of free copies you
will get (ask for 20 and hope for 10), who will pay for copyright permissions,
research expenses and the like (normally, you), how much of your royalties you
receive in advance, etc.
If you foresee big bucks or tough negotiations, you could try to find an agent
who will (in return for a cut of the action) take you on. Unlikely to be a
good idea in academic or technical publishing (or any other time if the agent
is no good).
> Any other advice/suggestion is welcome. Thank you for your help.
The smaller the publisher, the more help you will get and the more clout you
will have -- but you may also get poorer distribution. On the other hand, a
large publisher may, despite their better distribution and sales reps, fail to
give your book the attention it deserves if they feel they have other items
they want to push harder.
--
\\\\ Graeme Hirst University of Toronto Computer Science Department
//// utcsri!utai!gh / gh.toronto@csnet-relay / 416-978-8747
Kim P. Collins
xw
pete...@milano.uucp
Rates can vary widely according to publisher, type of book, and market.
For college-level textbooks, my experiences have been that 15%-16% is
"normal", but I had offers as low as 12%. To get a higher royalty rate
required either doing more (like providing a computer tape all set up
for typesetting or even doing the typesetting yourself -- and I mean
typesetting not dot-matrix or laser printer output). The other
possibility that you might consider is a changing scale according to
sales. For example, take 12% for the first 5,000 per year, then 16%
for the next 5,000; 18% for the next 5,000 and 20% for any more. I
assume that publishers mainly make money for their "best-sellers" and
lose money on the non-sellers (one of my books sold 72 copies the
first year). So they have to pay for the losers with the income from
their winners. A sliding royalty rate says that you won't cost them
as much if your book doesn't sell (you take the loss not them), but
in return you should profit if it does sell.
Also remember that the royalty rate is not for list price, but only
the publisher's income which is typically 75% - 80% of list. So for
a 15% rate on a $20 book, the author gets 15% of $16 or $2.40 per
book.
Computer Science Press made its position in CS/EE college texts by
offering royalty rates of up to 24%.
--
James Peterson
pete...@mcc.arpa or ...sally!im4u!milano!peterson
Jim Gardner
The following is based on a conversation with a Canadian publisher in 1976.
The situation may have changed and may be different in other countries.
The retail price of a book is usually set at 5 times the cost
of creating the physical book (printing, paper, binding, etc.).
Thus we have:
20%: material costs
The mark-up on a book is 100%. Therefore, the retailer gets
50% of the retail price. This may seem steep, but books do
not have a fast turnover, and it is necessary to carry large
slow-moving inventories. Anyway...
50%: retailer's cut
The author gets 10-15% of retail price for hard cover books
(less on mass market paperbacks).
15%: author's royalty
Amount left for the publisher: 15%, and this has to cover
the cost of distribution, publicity, editor salaries, design
(e.g. paying an artist to draw a cover), and so on. Now
most of these jobs (editing, design, etc.) are one-shot
deals; distribution is the only continuing expense. Thus
if the book sells well, the publisher comes out ahead;
however, if the book does not sell, the publisher loses
money, because the expenses have to be paid regardless of
number of books sold.
MORAL: If a book sells well, publishing is profitable. If not...I
don't know about other countries, but in Canada, almost all our
publishers are just scraping by. (The exception is Harlequin,
which is something of a mixed blessing.)
Jim Gardner, University of Waterloo
Richard Hoffman
> anyone else think that this is outrageous?
The author of a book has no recurring publication costs. That is, for
each book sold, the publisher has to pay printing, distribution, marketing
and overhead, whereas the author gets a free ride -- especially if he
got paid for writing the book itself. In light of these costs, the
15-85 split seems fairly reasonable.
--
Richard Hoffman | "If you take a starving dog from the street
Schlumberger Well Services | and make him prosperous, the dog will not
hoffman%hds...@slb-doll.csnet | bite you. This is the principle difference
PO Box 2175, Houston, TX 77252 | between a dog and a man." -- M. TWAIN
m.juliar
almost any publisher's point of view. Unless your name is Norman Mailer
or Danielle Steele (to cover a spectrum), you will get 10% royalties, or
in some cases, less. The next question of course is 10% of what. It
often is 10% of the normal selling price of the book by the bookstore--
that is, what you would pay for it at Waldenbooks, for example. Some
publishers push for 10% of their selling price--that is, the wholesale
price--to the bookstore or the book distributor.
It all boils down to getting what you can get, as in any contract
negotiation. An experienced contracts lawyer who knows publishing can
help, but then that is a lawyer. There are author leagues and guilds
and cooperatives which give guidelines to new authors on negotiating with
publishers. Look in the LMP, the Literary Market Place, available in any
library and published every year.
Lawrence J. Mazlack
>I saw that 15% royalties (85% publisher?) is about standard. Does anyone else think that this is outrageous? Are there any publishers that have a quality reputation and give higher royalties? Or does it really cost that much for all publishers?
15% is pretty standard for paper-bound texts that they expect to sell a lot of
(at least 5,000). Sometimes, hard-backs only get 12%, but this is becoming
more rare. If your book is expected to sell more than 20,000 you should be
able to get at least 18%. Normally, first time authors can expect to get
no more than 15%. The largest that I have heard of is 22% - but this was
for a book that went over 80,000 copies on the first edition - the 22% was
for the second edition.
I don't think that it is outrageous. The publishers front end costs are high
(editing, typesetting, aquisiton, clerical, etc.). If I understand it
correctly, they don't break even until about 8,000 copies have been sold.
(Sold, not used books, not books that were given to a professor and then
sold to the used book people.)
...Larry Mazlack maz...@ernie.berkeley.edu
Gene Dykes
Be glad that you are not trying to have a portfolio of pictures
published as a calendar. Try 0.1% !!! Honest. You get 1 cent
for every ten dollar calendar sold. (Landmark Calendars)
--
Gene Dykes, 120 Rand Hall, Cornell U., Ithaca, NY 14853 (607)255-6713
{ihnp4,decvax,allegra,vax135}!cornell!batcomputer!gdykes
Matt Bishop
> For one thing, I am dubious that any reputable agent would take on
> a previously unpublished author.
Sorry, that's simply not true. There are reputable literary agents who
do take on unpublished authors (my mother is one.) What matters is the
quality of writing, not publications.
In general, authors who deal with publishers directly may not get so good
a deal as those who deal with literary agents -- since the latter do that
all the time, they have a lot more experience than most authors do. More-
over, editors get to know literary agents, and if the agent is a good
one, editors will pay more attention to manuscripts that agent sends
than to unsolicited manuscripts.
But I'm biased -- my dad's a writer and always worked through literary
agents, and (as I said) my mom's a literary agent.
Matt Bishop
ARPA: m...@riacs.arpa
UUCP: {decvax!decwrl,ihnp4!ames}!riacs!mab
Chuq Von Rospach
> > For one thing, I am dubious that any reputable agent would take on
> > a previously unpublished author.
>
> Sorry, that's simply not true. There are reputable literary agents who
> do take on unpublished authors (my mother is one.) What matters is the
> quality of writing, not publications.
I can second this. My father has worked with a couple of agents who
have put in a good part of their timegetting his manuscripts read. Some
agents won't deal with unknowns, but many more will -- after all, it is
the unknown author that can turn into the really big paycheck down the road.
> In general, authors who deal with publishers directly may not get so good
> a deal as those who deal with literary agents -- since the latter do that
> all the time, they have a lot more experience than most authors do. More-
> over, editors get to know literary agents, and if the agent is a good
> one, editors will pay more attention to manuscripts that agent sends
> than to unsolicited manuscripts.
Many publishers will suggest heavily that you get an agent when they tell
you they want to buy a book and you don't already have one. They may well
suggest a couple of names that they have worked with. Believe it or not,
this is in everyone's favor. For the author, the agent will get the best
possible deal without sinking the contract. They know what is and isn't
negotiable, and what to give in on. On the publisher's side, they won't have
to deal with someone who may make impossible demands because they simply
don't know any better. They want to buy the book, and they want to be fair
about it, but there some some things that they have to kill the contract
over rather than buy it, so working with an agent to them means that they
have a better chance of actually getting things closed up.
An agent can also deal with things like subsidiary and foreign rights and
build entire markets for the book that an author wouldn't know existed.
Look at it this way: you don't want your programmers doing Marketing,
and you don't want your publicity people doing programming. This deliniation
is quite apt for the author/agent relationship as well. Authors are usually
best at writing, agents at selling. Every minute you spend on the phone
arguing over a contract is a minute you aren't putting words to a page.
In my eye, agents more than pay for themselves.