A Simple Guide to Book Advances and Royalties

A Writer’s Path’ Ryan Lance has written a very informative and simple guide to book advances and royalties. Thank you very much!

A Writer's Path

by Gary Smailes

When a book publisher offers a book deal to a new author, the contract will talk about ‘advances’ and ‘royalties’. These can be a little confusing to new authors, though a little bit of knowledge will go a long way to helping you fully understand what you are being offered.

In this article, you will learn about royalties and advances, you will discover what is usual for a book publisher to offer and you will find out how the publishing world is changing the way it provides advances and royalties.

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THE DEFINITIVE SELF-PUBLISHING CHECKLIST ~ For People Who Aren’t Very Organised and are absolute beginners.

Thank you very much, Evie Gaughan, for publishing the ultimate self-publishing checklist! We really appreciate it! (In particular a beginner like me!)

Evie Gaughan

You just hit publish, right?  That’s what all the articles say.  Any idiot can upload a book in minutes.  And yes, I suppose any idiot can, but it takes a very informed, dedicated, professional and talented individual to upload a book that people will want to read.  A recent Facebook post from a first-time author seeking advice made me realise how long I’ve been doing this self-publishing thang and how I’ve kind of taken for granted that everyone has ‘the knowledge’.  There are so many blogs, articles and how-to books on the subject, and yet authors can still struggle with the basics.  The first author asked what she should be doing in the run up to her launch and another suggested that while there is a lot of information out there, it’s almost overwhelming.  Where do you start?  Where does it end??  So in an effort to share said knowledge, I’m writing…

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Public speaking tips for writers (putting a bag over your head is not one of them..)

Graeme Cumming published a guest post on Louise Jensen’s blog. Thank you very much Graeme about your tips and tricks on public speaking.

fabricating fiction

I am a writer. I am an introverted writer. The thought of public speaking makes my skin prickle and my head swim and yet it is something writers are often expected to do, and to be honest, despite the fear, it is something I am eager to do. The chance to meet readers. To talk about my books. A couple of weeks ago, on World Book Day, I gave my first ever talk to 250 primary school children on reading, writing and following your dreams (you can read about that here.) Beforehand I was lucky enough to get some tips from my good friend and fellow author Graeme Cumming who is so adept at public speaking he belongs to a Speakers Club (for fun!!!). Thankfully I got through my own talk without fainting/vomiting/crying/all three and I’m delighted to welcome Graeme onto my blog today to share his wisdom with you. 

Getting…

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DRM or Not for Amazon

DRM or not for Amazon? Jo Robinson has the answer. Thank you for an excellent article, Jo!

Lit World Interviews

When you load your book up to Amazon you will get to choose whether or not to enable Digital Rights Management.

It is important to note here that this particular choice cannot be undone. Short of unpublishing and republishing this cannot be changed. Once you have some nice reviews and lots of sales on any particular book unpublishing it is not a great idea, so give some thought to this before setting it in stone. So, what is DRM?

Amazon says that Digital Rights Management “is intended to inhibit unauthorized access to or copying of digital content files”. While this sounds great in terms of combating piracy, in reality it’s about as effective in this regard as a straw hut would be at keeping you dry in a hurricane. My African Me & Satellite TV was published with DRM enabled and it is my most pirated book. Stripping DRM is…

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Top Publishers of 2016

The Write Nook

A few weeks ago, Publisher’s Weekly came out with a ranking of America’s top 20 publishing houses for 2016. It’s no surprise who the top 5 were, but what’s really important is what came after.

The sixth and seventh publisher were both that of children’s books- Scholastic and Disney came in right under the ‘Big Five.’ It’s quite a refreshing thing to see. Children’s literature has always been a tough genre to crack because the audience is smaller, the interests change rapidly, and the surge of technology has threatened to turn some children away from reading and the love of books. Nevertheless, books sales for 2016 has proved that there is still so much to love about children’s publishing. For Disney, Star Wars and Rick Riordan books led the way.

Houghton and Workman come in next, showing us that non-fiction titles still have a big impact on our consumption market as…

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Not All Publishers are Equal

Steven Capps informs us with his article not all publishers are equal, which I think is an interesting and informative read, in particular for us ‘newbies’. Thanks Steven!

Steven Capps

I originally posted this in a Facebook group, but I liked the topic and wanted to expand on it here. If you’ve already seen it, I’m super sorry though like I said, I have added more content. Recently, I’ve had some writers asking whether a publisher is good or not. Ultimately, this decision is up to the writer looking to submit to them. We all have differing motivations and some simply just want to get published and nothing more while others want to make a career out of writing. This post is not going to talk about scam publishers (you can read my post about them here), but rather what seperates an okay publisher from a good publisher.

There are three requirements I look for when I am considering if a market is worthy of a submission. If they do not meet these then they are a waste of…

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6 Signs of Scam Publishers

Steven Capps gives us excellent advice on what to look for if we want to find out about whether our publisher is a scam. Thank you Steven. We appreciate your efforts!

Steven Capps

As a warning, I am writing the rough draft of this post on my IPhone while I do cardio at the gym (cue gym selfie below). I am trying to be more efficient and thought that this would be a good time to get in some writing.

Earlier today, I was browsing Facebook and amid the swath of political drivel, I found an advertisement for a publisher looking for authors. Several red flags flickered almost immediately. Though this post is inspired by an actual publisher, I am going to omit their name because when I reached out to them, they deleted the content. It seemed like they were more of a naive kid rather than a malicious con-artist. Regardless, here are 6 Red Flags to be aware of when looking into a publisher.

Red Flags of Scam Publishers

1. Poor Marketing Design

It doesn’t take an award winning artist to…

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