royalty statements, and filthy lucre
Sep. 27th, 2008 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
julesjonesAnd it's that time of the month when I get to see whether people like my writing enough to shell out hard cash for it...
The good news is that five weeks after release, L&M2 has made more than RWA PAN minimum royalties ($1000). This makes me a happy author, if very definitely a small press author. And comparing with the equivalent figures on the first book in the series, the series loyalty from readers is looking extremely good. There's also a clear spike in backlist sales on the first book.
This is also good news for fans of the series, because it means that it is worth my while to write the third book, and worth my editor's while to say "Yes, Jules, go ahead and write it" instead of gently suggesting that I should turn my attention to another project that might be more commercially viable.
There *are* other potential projects. This is the nature of writing, that there are always more ideas than time to write them. It's a matter of picking the most appropriate ones for what I want to do with my writing career, and even though I'm content enough to be a small press writer, commercial considerations still come into play. I'm not going to turn out hack work to make a quick buck, because I don't get paid enough to bother writing anything at all unless it's something that I *want* to write. But I do want to reach an audience, and the best way to do that is to write a good selection of commercially viable stories that make money for me and for my publisher. It's a lot easier to find people who'll read the out-there stuff if I already have a built-in audience from my more mainstream material.
So, time to consider the ideas queue, and do some planning for the next year or so's writing...
The good news is that five weeks after release, L&M2 has made more than RWA PAN minimum royalties ($1000). This makes me a happy author, if very definitely a small press author. And comparing with the equivalent figures on the first book in the series, the series loyalty from readers is looking extremely good. There's also a clear spike in backlist sales on the first book.
This is also good news for fans of the series, because it means that it is worth my while to write the third book, and worth my editor's while to say "Yes, Jules, go ahead and write it" instead of gently suggesting that I should turn my attention to another project that might be more commercially viable.
There *are* other potential projects. This is the nature of writing, that there are always more ideas than time to write them. It's a matter of picking the most appropriate ones for what I want to do with my writing career, and even though I'm content enough to be a small press writer, commercial considerations still come into play. I'm not going to turn out hack work to make a quick buck, because I don't get paid enough to bother writing anything at all unless it's something that I *want* to write. But I do want to reach an audience, and the best way to do that is to write a good selection of commercially viable stories that make money for me and for my publisher. It's a lot easier to find people who'll read the out-there stuff if I already have a built-in audience from my more mainstream material.
So, time to consider the ideas queue, and do some planning for the next year or so's writing...
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-28 02:00 pm (UTC)Are the minimum earnings decreed by RWA PAN lifetime sales or do they have to be achieved in a certain time period (after release, in any given month, etc)?
I've had some success in interesting other readers in your books and I'm happy to see that I might get L&M3 out of that 'work'. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-28 02:12 pm (UTC)The rule to qualify for PAN membership is that you earn $1000 from the advance and/or the royalties of a book from a non-subsidy, non-vanity publisher. When the rule change was first discussed, I think there was a time limit of the first two years of publication, but that doesn't seem to be in the rules on the site. More details on the RWA website here: http://www.rwanational.org/cs/become_a_member/join_pan
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-28 03:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-28 03:33 pm (UTC)I've got an idea in mind for the third book, but it's going to be set in pretty much present time, about three years after their wedding. Of course, if I get a fun idea for the lead-up to the wedding, I could always write another short to put on my website.
L&M3
Date: 2008-09-28 08:35 pm (UTC)I do have 1 question though...why are they still using condoms if they are married? In Flight of Dreams when Steven and Mark are in the bathroom on the plane Steven thinks "Especially as he didn't have a condom on him". Why haven't they been tested and doing without the condoms now?
Love your books,
Thanks for writing,
Nicole
Re: L&M3
Date: 2008-09-28 08:52 pm (UTC)There's that brief comment in Mark's interior dialogue in L&M2 about doing without the condoms one day, but now's not the time to raise the subject -- he does eventually negotiate it with Steven, though given Steven's views on the subject, it does *need* a certain amount of negotiation. :-) It may show up in a conversation about the subject in L&M3, where it will be relevant to the plot, but I'll need to think about how to use it without it feeling like an info-dump.
Re: L&M3
Date: 2008-09-29 12:42 am (UTC)