paperwork

[julesjones]

It's royalty statement day. I didn't notice last month because I didn't look at the total that included the Fictionwise sales, but a second title is now over 1000 copies sold (God knows how many pirate copies there are out there, but that's the number I got actual money for). Another probably will be by the end of the year. Small press numbers, but definitely respectable small press numbers.

Just received the formal renewal offers from Loose Id for First Footer in A Kiss At Midnight, and Spindrift 2: Ship to Shore. The wonders of the modern age are such that these have arrived four days after I posted the new contracts back to the Nevada office. I actually got the renewal offer and a pdf of the current contract by email last week, but to be official it has to be sent by snail mail as well. :-)

When LI first started, the contracts followed EPIC guidelines on renewal, and said that renewal had to be by formal written offer/acceptance by both parties. There's a good reason for that guideline, but once they got two years in and had to actually start dealing with renewals for multiple books per week, I suspect it rapidly became a paper-chasing nightmare. They've now switched to a system where the contract automatically renews on the anniversary date unless one or other party sends formal notice of termination. In the meantime, those of us on the old contract have to send in a new one as the old one expires.

In my case, that's been quite a lot of contracts to check, fill in and sign, especially when we get to the nice complicated ones like The Syndicate, where there are two authors, two of the ebooks published at different times were combined into a single print edition, and there was a completely separate contract for the print rights rather than the combined contract we have now. I'm sure treva2007 winces when she sees an email from me with the header "contract questions"... I haven't got my files to hand at the moment, but I *think* that this is almost the last of them, and Pulling Strings is the only one left on the old contract.

Comments

[sarahf.livejournal.com]

What a terrible problem to have, you poor thing!

[julesjones]

I should have known I'd get a response like that about the contracts, especially given that I regularly do the world's smallest violin routine to one of my friends who's been too successful for his own good...

(Literally, in his case -- he signed several contracts that would have been well within his capacity had he not then had a protracted bout of ill-health, partly brought on by the amount of travelling he suddenly found himself doing as a result of being a Successful Author.)

[sarahf.livejournal.com]

No, I know it must be frustrating and a lot to remember, but it's a problem I'd love to have. I just, like, need to get off my ass and write. But then I need to get off my ass and do a lot of things.

[julesjones]

[grin] Some of my friends are Name authors, with signing tours, and print runs in the tens of thousands, and reviews in the big industry journals. I'm way down in the small press, in a sub-genre that even a lot of genre people look down on, and likely to stay there. Occasionally I forget that there's a perspective from which a dozen books at a legitimate small press looks pretty good...

I don't mind the paperwork. I'm just rather *aware* of the paperwork at the moment, as I'm sitting in a newly rented flat with very little furniture, and no way to file paperwork except in piles on the floor. :-)

I know you've got other things on your mind right now (though fortunately off your bladder at long last), but yes, arse on chair, fingers on keyboard is the only way to do it. It's not the right way for everyone, but I found Terry Pratchett's "300 words a day, every day" very helpful, even if I don't always stick to it. As he says, 300 words in a day is an achievable goal for most people, and at the end of the year you've done 100,000 words, which is a novel...