Michelle Sagara

janni's question about earning out your advance: I know a lot of people who have, in fact, earned out their first book advances.

So. If your advance does earn out, are you in fact underpaid?

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I have, in previous posts, made one assumption in general which I should now address a bit.

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[Oh -- I forgot to mention something else, which I should. The vast majority of all returns will be front-list books. The new books that have come out. Backlist books should have a much smaller rate of return because in theory the bookstore knows how those sell, and can order accordingly.]

This would be part 4, but apparently there's a word-limit in LJ posts, which -- to no one's surprise, I'm sure <g> -- I've exceeded. So this is first half, second to follow. Sorry about the flood :/.

So returns are a fact of life, and as seen, there are various reasons for them. One of the frustrations of a small independent with no warehouse is that the discount given by many publishers to the bookstore is often 40%. Chains will get close to 50%. Whose returns are higher? Not the independents. If you'd offered -me- an extra 10% to buy everything non-returnable, I'd have done it in a second. Instead, the publisher incentive to buy non-returnable was often 2 or 3 percent, which wasn't worth it. On the side of publishers, however, they often ship to warehouses, so the shipping costs and the handling costs are less, and the publishers absorb those. There are always at least two sides to a story; there are often three.

Where was I? Right. Let's look at something that never happens, and is therefore an extreme example made for the sake of clarity. If a book has a 100% sell-through, it can be argued that the publisher failed to get -enough- of those books to shelf. I think it can even be reasonably argued. Let me explain (and if I sound talking-downish, I grovel and apologize in advance.)

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Now that the book has been ordered, and the initial numbers have come in, it, along with all of the various titles for the various publisher imprints, will be printed and shipped to bookstores and rack jobbers (and Ingram and Baker and Taylor, who will also send it to bookstores. The advantage to Ingram and Baker and Taylor is that there is no per publisher minimum to be met; there's a strict dollar minimum. This means you can order 5 books from Penguin, rather than the 30 that would otherwise be required to make a minimum order, combining the 5 from Penguin with 5 books from Bantam and 5 books from Random House and 5 books from Overlook, etc., you can meet the general minimum).

The book is now on the shelves! Yay!

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I have no idea how many people here want to write, and I'm certain that most people who already write are familiar with much of what I'm going to say, but I'd like to say it anyway, so a possible boredom alert has now been issued, and I'll rap the knuckles of anyone who complains. Or snores. You could have left.

Something janni said got me thinking, which is why I started this. And, as it's long, it's multi-part, which will, I'm certain, surprise no one <wry g>.

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Just in case anyone has missed this, it's pretty funny. It's an mp3.

http://www.pythonline.com/plugs/idle/index.shtml

It's not really rated for work, and it's not entirely language suitable for obvious reasons (Eric Idle was fined 5,000.00 for using the F word on air in the US, and this is his response).

Just came back from a few days at a friend's cottage, and I'm about to put the kids to bed. Well, okay, I'm about to -try-. I see an pressing and interesting discussion about fantasy in papersky's topic, and also interesting responses to the last comment (thread?) here, so I'll try to get back to stick my two cents in <g>.

Having almost finished the requested revisions for one project (I'm waiting to get something clarified before I can actually say done and heave both a sigh of relief and a manuscript out the door), I'm getting back to writing the novel I put aside to work on revisions. [I've been finishing up the Sunburst Jury award work as well.]

Which is sort of my excuse for being so darn slow to get up to speed on HOUSE WAR again.

When I was younger, I found switching between projects almost a relief. I'm not sure if it was due to the fact that I had no children then, and that there was nothing therefore consuming emotional energy and time in the particular fashion; I do think about this a lot. Why? Because I think I'm becoming, in novel terms, a serial monogamist.

It takes me a while to sink the emotional roots I need to have in place into any novel, and when I move to a different project, I seem -- these days -- to uproot them all. When I come back, I have to give myself a big mental slap, and change speed, tone and direction -- all of which would be easier; I have to find the emotional threads and bindings, which is harder than it used to be.

So I'm sort of wondering how many people here can work on two books at once, and how they manage to do it if they can. I can take short story breaks, but I think this has more to do with the differing processes of the two media.

A number of discussions have cropped up recently that have made me think about the nature of relationships and attraction.

A word of context: I'm married, happily, have 2 children, and a large extended family, much of which is not related to me genetically. I've spent a good number of years building family, although I have a quirky, reasonable one for the most part, by birth.

3 conversations, very abbreviated:

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I probably shouldn't be writing this, because it's always a good idea to take a breath when one's annoyed. Or several. Or in fact, a night's sleep. But then again, if I were a sensible person, I wouldn't be a writer.

I don't know how many of you have followed, or regularly read, Making Light, the excellent, varied, intelligent and oft pungent blog of Teresa Nielsen Hayden. I was pointed at it by two friends (Chris Szego, for whom I work, and another, as yet unpublished writer, Graydon Saunders, who also lives in Toronto) many months ago, and have lurked more or less frequentIy since then, but I do my best, having learned over time that this is wise, to lurk and keep my opinions in general to myself. This is less hard -- for those of you who know me -- than it might initially appear, because there are some pretty darned smart people who regular post there, and they usually say anything I might say, but with more cutting wit.

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