Musings on contract renewal

[julesjones]

Received my contract renewal notice from Loose Id for Promises to Keep this morning. That means it's been out for nearly two years now -- it was published on 19 October 2004, as part of their Halloween collection. It's a longish short story, 5000 words, sold as a Fling (Loose Id's line of short, cheap ebooks). In the year and ten months it's been out, it's sold 549 copies, and it continues to sell around 10 to 20 copies a month. If I've got my numbers right, that means it's earned me some $380 in royalties so far. So it's had a much smaller audience than if I'd managed to sell it to the anthology I originally wrote it for, but I've had a lot more money back from it than I would have had from the anthology payment. 7.5c/word, so far, and those of you who know about SFWA will understand why this pleases me. It's picked up some very nice reviews from the romance review sites, and resulted in some fan mail. I definitely feel... satisfied with the way this one has gone.

Yes, I'd like that contract with a New York publisher, and I'd like to be earning enough money from this writing lark to make a living at it. But there's a nice glow of accomplishment at what I've achieved in the small press.

Comments

[jjsass.livejournal.com]

That's a pretty good sales record for a novella and you're right - over 7c a word is very good.

[julesjones]

It's actually a short story by SFWA standards, although IIRC it's a novelette by everyone else's rules. So I'm pretty pleased about the royalties, especially given that the anthology payments would have been in the $50-100 range. If that had been a sale to a magazine or anthology market, it would have qualified as a pro sale by SFWA rules.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Impressive figures!
It's definitely something you can mention with pride when you submit to agents or editors - 'these are my small press sales, I am steadily picking up new readers and getting good reviews' - not to be sneezed at.

Congratulations!

[julesjones]

Thanks. :-)

[strix-an-stones.livejournal.com]

That is really great! I don't have anything that has been out for so long but still... something to shoot for in terms of impressiveness.

Odd question, does every publisher have a different standard for short story, novella, novel etc? up to 1,000 is short-short or flash fic, 5,000 is short, up to 25,000 is novella, then there is catagory length novel and novel length. But I did think I saw that different companies used different word number stats for their catagories, or am I misremembering?

Have to say I really like the cover you've got on Prmoises to Keep, eye-catching.

[julesjones]

I'm not really sure, as I've only been published in ebook by one company, and to be honest I'm not sure what *their* length categories are other than looking at what I know the word count to be on mine and what they classed it as. I just write it and send it to Raven for a yes/no. But I get the impression that they do vary between publishers. As a writer, all you can do is look at what length they say they'll actually take. E.g. over the transom Loose Id takes anything from 20,000 words up -- they do publish shorter stuff, but only from their in-house authors, and not very many even there. As a reader, you have to dig around their website and see if they actually say anywhere. The other place to try is Fictionwise, because a lot of the ebook houses put at least some of their books through there, and Fictionwise gives an exact word count in its catalogue.

One of the pieces of evidence that I am an sf author at heart is that I always think of length categories by SFWA (and other sf organisations) standards, so for me it's not a novel unless it's over 40,000 words.

Yes, that's a nice cover on Promises to Keep. :-) The Fling books use generic covers used on several books, rather than specially comissioned ones. At the time PtK was being put together, they only had one, which featured a silhouette of a woman example here: http://loose-id.net/detail.aspx?ID=3 I pointed out that this was not entirely appropriate for an m/m story, and they commissioned a new one that was more suitable. :-) I actually had two Fling cover debuts, as the cover on Four Leaf Clover was that artwork's debut as well: http://loose-id.net/detail.aspx?ID=182

[ceciliatan.livejournal.com]

Huzzah. I can't tell you how many "prestigious" big press anthologies I've sold stories to for less than your $380. I think Best American Erotica might have paid me $350 last time, which would be a lot (it was for two short-shorts though, so the per word amount was high...) In fact, I think I can count on one hand the short story sales I've made for above that amount.

More power to ya!

[julesjones]

Thanks. :-)

I was paid $75 for my story in Ultimate Gay Erotica 2005, and 4c/word which I think came to around $160 for the one in Fishnet Magazine, so I've had two electronic market short story sales which have paid better than the one in a print anthology. I'm certainly glad of the exposure and credit from UGE, but the monthly royalty statement from Loose Id is serious egoboo.