I am a failed writer in the sense that I have never had my fiction professionally published. These posts, which will run on most Fridays, are an attempt to keep myself creatively motivated and just generally discuss the creative process from someone trying to figure it out. I genuinely love the process of making things — any things, from writing to drawing to music to woodworking to baking. Maybe my own failures can be a source of amusement or interest to others.
I am late to this, as usual, but a new publisher, of a sorts, has arisen. Author’s Equity promises to author’s much more money, a better experience, and unicorn rides. That last might not actually be on the website, but the tone of the coverage in some places seems that giddy. I get that publishing is a hard business (says the un-agented, un-published writer. I mean, you did see the sign on the door when you came in, right?), but this really doesn’t seem like much of an improvement for authors.
Essentially, Author Equity will not pay you an advance, but will pay you significantly higher royalties on the books that you sell. They seem to do this mainly by not hiring people and possibly by limiting marketing. They hype the fact that their work will be done by freelancers, freelancers that they seem to promise the author will have significant control over. This doesn’t strike me as an especially good idea on a lot of levels.
This is morally problematic — it is not as if publishing companies pay living wages to their employees, so the idea that these freelancers will be better off financially is dubious at best. It is also practically problematic — this sounds very much like “we throw away all of institutional knowledge after every book!”. Maybe publishing is different, but I have worked at companies that decided to rebuild the wheel from the ground up on every project and they never do well.
The company also promises more transparency and input for authors. The implication is that authors will have more control over things like covers, marketing, etc. And the face of it, that sounds nice. Most authors don’t get that level of input, and most don’t get any level of input to things like marketing plans. But, more importantly, if you are given the kind of control and input the company talks about on its website, if you are allowed to select the designers, editors, copyeditors, etc. that work on your book, then why do you need Author’s Equity?
I suspect that most authors who sign with Author’s Equity are going to be already established. The kind of writers who can go without advances and who would command the kind of market that seems to be what Author’s Equity are counting on for a significant portion of their uptake to offset their “lower overhead” don’t really need any help. They can run a Kickstarter and do essentially what Author’s Equity is doing for slightly more work and get significantly more reward. For newer authors, with no such built-in audience, no advance is likely to mean no or very little money for their work and “input and transparency” is likely to mean little to people who, by definition, don’t have the experience to offer meaningful advice or opinions.
The whole thing feels like a small step up from self-publishing for big name authors who want to offload some of the self-publishing work, not a new way to publish.
Weekly Word Count
Ten pages. Writing a script is kind of fun. Learning new ways to drag the interiority out of characters without the usual novelist tricks is an exciting challenge that am absolutely borking up. But hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Plotting on the Sherlock is an Upper-Class Twit in Spaaaaaaaace novel proceeds fitfully. I, apparently, would make a shit murderer. Reassuring for the local constabulary, somewhat less than useful for a would-be murder mystery writer.