Hey all, Robin, here (Michael’s wife), and for those who don’t know, I handle many of the “non-writing” aspects of Michael’s career. It’s a great division of labor mainly because dealing with agents, publishers, and contracts are activities that cripple Michael’s ability to write. Having me take care of those very necessary things means more stories for all of us. Something I’m highly motivated to make happen.
As I’m sure most of you know, Michael is a hybrid author. A term commonly used in the industry for a person who releases books through both self and traditional publishing. There is a lot of rhetoric these days about which path is “best,” and from our perspective there is no such thing. Well, no such thing on a universal level. There is a “best” on an individual basis, and it has to take into consideration a large number of factors such as goals, capabilities, resources, and how much (or little) control you desire.
I might be treading ground that everyone knows, but I can’t make too many assumptions about familiarity with Michael’s background. So let me take a brief moment to provide context.
The Riyria Revelations has a long publishing history. The first book, The Crown Conspiracy has been released three times. Once, through a small press (Aspirations Media Inc.), then through self-publishing, and most recently as part of a six-book deal with Orbit. To be honest, when we signed that first contract, we thought it would be our only one. Why? Well, it wasn’t because we didn’t expect any future opportunities, and it wasn’t because we had any bad experiences with Orbit or other publishers. It was simply because we enjoyed the freedom and control that comes from self-publishing and wanted to return to it. But then Michael wrote the first two prequel books, The Crown Tower and The Rose and the Thorn. There was some concern that if we returned to self-publishing right away there could be a perception that Michael’s first series wasn’t successful enough and we HAD to self-publish rather than CHOOSING that path. So we signed a second contract for two books.
Okay, then the concepts and characters of Hollow World invaded Michael’s brain, and he couldn’t write anything else until purging that story. It was an unusual book. First off, it was science fiction, not fantasy. And it was a standalone rather than a series. But most importantly it was traditional sci-fi in the vein of Asimov, Wells, Heinlein, and Bradbury. While the market had gone primarily to Space Operas, this was social science fiction exploring idea such as what it means to be human and what is the nature of love. Orbit turned the book down (they wanted Michael to stick to fantasy), and we did get a decent offer from another publisher, but we decided it would be best to self-publish...with a twist. Bookstore distribution is difficult (or I should say near impossible) for self-published print-on-demand books, so we sold the print rights to a small press (Tachyon Publishing) and kept the ebook and audio rights (later sold to Recorded Books).
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With Hollow World out of the way, Michael started writing his next series, The Legends of the First Empire. The idea was to go back 3,000 years and show the true origin of some historic figures from The Riyria Revelations. In Revelations, we see a world dominated by the Nyphron Church, worshipers of Novron who was the son of the god Maribor. But history is written by the victors, and the exploits talked about in Revelations have been mythologized while the deeds of ordinary men and women had been lost to the past.
Once again, our intention was to self-publish. By this time, Michael was starting to make his mark in the genre, and a return to self-publishing shouldn't have any negative consequences.
Contractually, we had to show Orbit Michael’s next work, but we were pretty sure we’d turn down any offer...with one exception. I thought it was time to move Michael to the world of hardcover releases (something I didn’t feel I could pull off on my own). For those that don’t know, the authors released in hardcover are the publisher’s “A List.” Those books receive more marketing, are pushed harder by the internal sales department, and get two bites at the publishing apple (two separate releases of the same book). They are also more profitable as the hardcover editions have a higher royalty. Plus, because the paperback follows six to twelve months after the hardcover, the bookstores have another reason to stock the titles, which means a longer shelf life.
At this time, we were feeling a bit underappreciated by Orbit. The cover for The Rose and the Thorn seemed “phoned in” and various marketing suggestions I made were either ignored or declined. Even though Michael was making the publisher a ton of money, they didn’t seem to value the work at the same level that we did. Just before negotiations started, I made it clear that I had no interest in another paperback release for the new series, and any offer had to include a hardcover version. Orbit didn’t agree with that strategy. They would only publish the books in paperback, so that’s why the Legends of the First Empire aren’t with Orbit.
One other point I should make, which is especially important for aspiring authors, audio books are becoming a major contributor to an author’s income. In the past, they were 10% of total unit sales, and the advances were ridiculously low. While ebook sales vary from author to author, Michael makes extremely good money from this venue, so much so that it’s become a major focus for us. In fact, if you look at books sold by format, it’s the print copies that are the low man on the totem pole. When considering just ebook and print sales, he sees 65% ebook and 35% print (based on units) and when adding audio books to the mix the ratio becomes 42% ebook, 42% audio books, and just 16% for print. So these days we make it a point to keep the audio rights. I’ll explain a bit more in the next section.
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I’m going to do a quick segue on sub-rights here. Feel free to skip ahead if this doesn’t interest you. When selling a book most publishers want as many rights as they can get: foreign language translations, audio, ebook, print, movie, merchandising, you name it. They are usually pretty good about giving up movie and merchandise, but not so amicable with the others. I personally believe you should NEVER sell foreign language rights to your English publisher (commonly known as “World Rights”). Instead, you should sell “World English”, or “North American English”). Why? Well, first publishers don’t work as hard as your agent does at finding deals. If someone offers, they’ll negotiate it (and you have no say over the amount of the advance, who buys it, or the terms of the sale), but they aren’t out there beating the bushes. And, what is worse, is they’ll take 40% - 50% of the income for doing little more than signing a piece of paper. Michael has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars through foreign sales, and it would have been half as much if our original agent hadn’t insisted on holding back the foreign rights.
Now let’s talk about ebooks. Many aspiring authors say, “I’ll gladly sell my print rights, but only if I can keep the ebook rights.” I’ve heard them say, “Anything is negotiable” but the fact is there are some lines that big-five publishers aren’t going to cross, and this is one of them. Yes, there have been some exceptions. Hugh Howey got a print-only deal with Simon and Schuster. Bella Andre and Coleen Hoover have print-only deals with their publishers. But in all those cases, the authors sell millions of books and have a proven track record. They have the leverage to do so, but anyone new on the scene just doesn’t have the gravitas to make this happen. Even Michael, who does have a print-only deal for Hollow World, got that because he took a low advance and worked with a very small press.
Now back to audio rights. When we signed the first contract, I wanted to keep the audio rights. At the time, I figured Orbit wouldn’t exercise them, and there was a fairly viable market on podiobooks, which sold audio recordings on a pay-what-you-want model. I didn’t expect to make any money, but at least I could get them “out in the world.” Our agent wasn’t able to hold them back. When the second contract came, Revelations had been picked up by Recorded Books and the sales were surprisingly good. The audiobook advance was just $2,000 a book, but it quickly earned out and was making considerable money. Money that we only got 50% of because it was a subsidiary right.
So, once again I asked to keep the audio rights, and once again my agent said it was a deal breaker for Orbit. We ended up signing over that right and took our 50%. With the hindsight of 20/20 I see my acquiescence on audio rights was a big mistake on my part. We’ve lost $143,000 worth of income by not retaining this right, and those losses will continue to mount.
All that context takes us to audio rights for The Legends of the First Empire. To ensure we wouldn’t have to split the income from the audiobooks, we negotiated those rights first. Even before the books were written! I should mention, however, that selling audio rights before a book is written isn’t something that a new author will likely be able to do, but standing firm on retaining the audio right is something that I would highly suggest. Also, some publishers will decline an offer if they can’t retain those rights. It’s possible that the lack of audio book rights was also a factor in Orbit’s decision. Had that right been on the table, they may have been willing to do a hardcover release.
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Well, with Orbit out of the way, and the audio rights already sold (and for six-figures), it seemed to be a certainty that The Legends of the First Empire would be self-published. But we had recently signed with a new agent. The previous one had moved to Germany and had fallen in love, making her unavailable much of the time. The second was enthusiastic about the new series and already had a number of editors interested. I told her she could “shop it around” but needed to keep in mind several points:
1. The publisher had to commit to a hardcover release.
2. Foreign language, movie, merchandising, and audio books weren’t available.
3. The non-compete would provide for a small (several months) window of exclusivity around the release of their book, but outside of that, we were free to publish whatever we wanted whenever we wanted.
This third point is an important one. Non-compete clauses are the bane of my existence and the most egregious part of traditional publishing contracts. I’m going to do another segue which you can certainly skip if you wish.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
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I should start by saying that I’m generally okay with publishing contracts. We give a publisher the right to publish a book (or set of books) in exchange for an advance, production & marketing assistance, and a piece of the pie. But non-compete clauses extend the publisher’s reach to works NOT under contract. They infringe on books the author hasn’t even written yet. The idea came from the non-fiction space where publishers were afraid that an author would write one book on a subject, then write another very similar book and sell it to someone else. So let’s say you were an expert in code-breaking and sold a book to Simon & Schuster. They don’t want another book on code-breaking hitting the market from Random House. Now they can’t prevent other authors from writing such a book, but they do want to stop YOU from rearranging the words and coming out with a book that now competes directly with the book they just paid you for. Seems reasonable. But in the world of fiction, a non- compete makes no sense. If I have one Riyria book and write another, it benefits (not harms) the sales of the first Riyria book. And yet these non-compete clauses exist in every big-five contract.
Back when we received our first contract with Orbit, the non-compete was, without question, a deal breaker. To fully appreciate the depths of depravity of the non-compete clause you have to understand that it stays in effect for the full term of the contract. The problem? Well, big-five publishing contracts are for the life of the copyright (which means 70 years after the author’s death – a REALLY long time!) In the old days, this rarely happened (except for very successful books in which case everyone was happy). The reason had to do with another clause, this one referring to when a book is deemed “out of print.” It used to be that the publisher printed 2,000 – 5,000 books and when those sold, they could either print more or revert the rights to the author. Reverted rights had little value in the old days because the author couldn’t do anything with them. No other publisher would want a book that wasn’t selling (if it were selling the first publisher would have kept it in print), and there was no viable self-publishing market. But oh how the times have changed. Ebooks and print-on- demand versions make it possible for a publisher to keep a book “in print” with little or no effort or expense. Nowadays it’s possible (probable even) that you will lose your rights forever. Publishers can now hold onto a book in case an author becomes more popular, like if a movie is made from one of their books.
Okay, back to the non-compete. Orbit’s version basically said, “For the term of this contract (70 years after Michael’s death) the author will not publish (without the publisher’s consent) any work that might compete with the books in this contract.” And there was no definition that explained what “compete” means. What about another Riyria book? What about another fantasy? What about more fiction? Needless to say, we couldn’t sign the contract as it could limit Michael’s writing—FOREVER!
Both our agent and the IP (intellectual property) attorney told me that the non- compete clause was (a) pretty standard to the industry (b) never enforced (c) something that every author had to sign and (d) was dictated at the corporate level and the imprints couldn’t change. They pulled out contract after contract and read me other non-competes that were all very similar. I was shocked. Floored even. I couldn’t believe that anyone would sign such a thing.
Well, long story short, I spent six months working on getting a non-compete that I could live with. Orbit made a valid point in that if I released another book too close to theirs, then all the money they spent on marketing could be undercut by a self-published novel that I could sell at a discounted price. So, the reasonable solution was (a) we defined what “competing meant” (which came down to the exact same books as those under contract – well duh), and that we would be excluded from publishing anything for three months before and three months after their titles. Other than that, we could publish whenever and whatever we wanted. That was a non-compete I could live with and what I planned for future contracts. Oh, if only that were so. Let’s return to the contract for The Legends of the First Empire because it has a lot to do with the timeframe for The Death of Dulgath.
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Before letting our new agent “shop” the Legends of the First Empire, I spelled out all the various conditions and with that in mind she started reaching out to editors who were already excited about the series. Multiple offers came in, and a few publishers said they were planning on making an offer but needed more time. At least one (maybe two, I forget) turned the project down. The company that I wanted to work with the most was Del Rey. I liked what I heard from Peter V. Brett and Scott Sigler about working with them. Plus, they were an imprint of the largest publisher in the world. Also, I liked what I saw in the titles they had produced. But the biggest reason was the editor, who was a huge fan of Michael’s Riyria work, and was anxious to woo him to their imprint. In general, advances aren’t a big deal with us. We have always “earned out” (which only 20% of the books do), so it’s just money that comes a little sooner rather than later. But the size of the advance is an indication of how the publisher feels about the work (and the author) and a higher one means a bigger marketing push. Del Rey’s offer was extremely generous and after feeling the flames had cooled with Orbit, it was great seeing that someone else care so much about Michael and his writing.
At this point, the idea of self-publishing went out the door. I didn’t think we’d be likely to earn similar money if we went that route, and moving up to hardcover was a big plus. Also, the size of the advance put the deal into the highest classification of a “major deal.” (Publisher’s Weekly has various classifications, for instance, book deals up to $100,000 are known as “a nice deal.” $100K to $250K is “a good deal,” and anything above $500K is “a major deal.”) Having a “major deal” meant the possibility of more foreign translations and a large marketing budget from the publisher.
I verified that our agent had discussed the three points and we were all on the same page. She confirmed this was the case. I told her to turn down the other offers and tell the other publishers who were preparing offers not to bother submitting because more money wouldn’t sway us from our top choice (who had already given us everything we wanted).
A short time later, the deal memo came in. This is the pre-contract document that spells out the advance, the royalty rates, and other terms that will go into the contract. This was when I became concerned with regards to competing works. That memo only mentioned additional Hollow World sequels. I brought this up to our agent, and she spoke to the editor at Del Rey. I was assured that what I saw on the deal memo was a mistake and that we were all on the same page as to what was considered competing and what wasn’t.
Quite some time later, the official contract came in. And there were two problem areas. The first was a line indicating that the Legends of the First Empire would be Michael’s next work and the other was the non-compete which was still not correct. (Although my memory is starting to fade about what wasn’t right with it). Somewhere there was a disconnect, and I’m not sure where the breakdown occurred. Was the agent not clear? Or had Del Rey only heard what they wanted to hear? Who knows. But when the dust cleared it was evident that Del Rey wanted NO book based in ELAN published until after their four book contract was over. This was a serious problem.
You see, Michael keeps his readers well-fed with frequent releases. And it had been quite some time since his last Riyria story. The history of his publication went as follows:
* 2008 The Crown Conspiracy (AMI Version)
* 2009 Avempartha & Nyphron Rising (self published)
* 2010 The Emerald Storm, Wintertide, and the self-published version of The Crown Conspiracy.
* 2011 Theft of Swords and Rise of Empire (Orbit)
* 2012 Percepliquis (self) and Heir of Novron (Orbit)
* 2013 The Crown Tower & The Rose and the Thorn (Orbit)
* 2014 Hollow World (self and small press)
Del Rey was planning on a mid-2016 release of the first book, and while the timing on the other books wasn’t yet decided (after all they hadn’t seen the books yet even though Michael had finished them). It was likely they would be spaced at one year intervals. This meant that the first time we’d be free to publish a Riyria book would be 2020 – seven years after the last one! Unacceptable!
At this point, I considered the deal dead, and it would be too late (nor did I want the hassle) of going back to the other publishers who we already said, “sorry” to. No problem. There were definitely some nice things I’d be losing, but the good thing about hybrid authorship is there are always options. So self-publishing we would go.
Still, it was a shame. All the parties wanted the series with Del Rey, but not enough to adjust the non-compete to the level we could live with. Many publishers still believe that any book by an author will diminish sales for their titles, no matter how similar (or dissimilar) they are. Then we started thinking outside the box. A number of concessions were made by both parties. The first was we COULD release a book before Age of Myth but ONLY if it was far enough away from their release. Basically if we could get a Riyria novel out by the end of 2015, that would be okay with Del Rey. Seeing as how this was March and Michael hadn’t even an idea, let alone a rough draft, that seemed difficult but not impossible. The ace in the hole was that if he couldn’t produce a book he felt was solid, we just wouldn’t release anything. Yes, it would mean a longer than usual wait for the readers, but at least we weren’t tied to putting out a book that hadn’t been written.
The second concession was that we changed the contract to be three books of the First Empire and one “unnamed book set in Elan.” This means it is possible to have a Royce and Hadrian book come out in the 2017 – 2019 timeframe (assuming of course there would be a fourth). If it turns out Michael won’t write a fourth Chronicle, there are several other books based in Elan that Michael could slide into that spot including The Fall of Percepliquis, which tells the backstory of Esrahaddon, Nevrik and Jerish.
So, now we had a book to put out, and it needed to come out quickly. In order to hit a mid-December release, the book would have to be at the printers by the first of October. Writing the book is only half the battle, and you’ll learn more about that in the editing section. But the bottom line is it would have to be written in no more than three months, and I’d have to really push myself with the editing. Most importantly, it’d have to be a good story, or neither of us would allow it to see the light of day. Luckily, we hit each mark, and I think we have a book to be extremely proud of.
Whew, that’s a lot of prelude...but it explains a bit about the timeline of The Death of Dulgath and how it came to be. There is one other component to this...and involves the Kickstarter. But I’ll come back and discuss that at the appropriate time. For now, let’s turn things over to Michael.