Authors and Self-Publishing

[pig4bill]

If it gets the Zee/Sucker book in print, I'm all for self-publishing. They can even make 14 bucks off me.

[MRBAA]

Look, we keep rehashing the same arguments. My books have sold what I say, I have the numbers to back it up. We've made what I say, again I have the money in the bank.

It's insulting that you presume to know better -- I'd never try to guess your sales or income. Both my books have been out for awhile and sales have slowed. They've both been in the top 20 of poker books on Amazon when they were newer. I never represent them as dynamic sellers, but their sales are solid for non-2+2 titles. Remember, I don't have a platform like this Web site to promote them, either.

I respect the 2+2 books, and am even more impressed by the 2+2 Web site and overall business.

I'm not impressed at all by your petty sniping -- which seems based primarily on a general sense of offense that anyone outside your orbit has published a solid poker book that has actually been purchased and (presumably) read by a sizeable audience.

[Red_Diamond]

My 2 cents..

I have 2+2 books here, where apologetically, it is pointed out that the grammar within the books are not grade A class.

Well, let me tell you something. When ever I buy a self-published poker book, it is OFTEN because the book is so horrible (yes, I also collect horrible poker book too). And I don't just mean strategically, I mean even reading can be a hard chore. Some of these I would bet on, were written by an ESL student.

I'll tell you one thing, 2+2 books in comparison to the SP variety look like they have been written by a linguistics professor, and then proofed by a team of grammarian experts.

In any case, I have been told 90% of books submitted to professional publishers will NEVER get off the slush-pile, even if their subject is in demand, just due to the horrible writing structure.

I believe it.

And then you have organizations out there like 'Publish America' *caugh *caugh... who will publish literally anything, despite most their base probably isn't even from American students, or even writers who can write basic English well.

There's a sucker born every minute, you are right. Often it's the (*caugh) writer. For what seems to be a small fee, they can get their poker book listed on Amazon.

Well that's great, but Amazon really will sell ANYTHING, no matter how poor. But they won't be stocking SP books on the shelves, and this is what a lot of suckers in that bizz over-look. Your book gets listed in the computer and that's it, unless someone misclicks, and orders it by accident.

[Jackal69]

Mason,

you mention 2p2 sales figures - are these publicly avaialble and if so could you link me?

thanks

[phydaux]

[ QUOTE ]
If I am not mistaken there is this old-timed pokerplayer who self-published his first book. Think it was a geat success and sold a lot of copies - so its doable. The number of poker books sold at that time was small compared to the number of poker books sold today so its a lot easier to find a publisher today.

He called it Supersystem, but then Doyle Brunson is a 2 time WSOP main event winner.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, and he sold it at $100.00 a copy. And that was 1979 dollars. It would be more like $500.00 today.

[Jackal69]

also speaking of self publishing did anyone ever hear of anyone buying/reading this, and is that the reason it cost £100 for a 98 page ringbound copy (or is it just an elaborate joke)?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Secrets-Online-P...261&sr=8-12

[Mason Malmuth]

No. They are not publicly available.

Best wishes,
mason

[Doc T River]

[ QUOTE ]
Hi Nick:

Given the way we print, the cost for 1 and only 1 copy of a 300 page book would be about $10,000. That's because the set up charges for the press are expensive. But if you're going to print a bunch of books, the unit price is a lot lower.

Also, the op doesn't understand that he would have a lot of trouble selling a $30 retail book at wholesale price if he paid $16.00 a copy.

As for our royaltis, I can't get specific because it would give away an authors income, and I think that's private. But our royalty rate ranges from 10 percent of the retail price up to over 25 percent. However, to earn a royalty at the upper end, we need good reason to believe the book will be a great seller.

Best wishes,
Mason

[/ QUOTE ]

I have read the entire thread and this one post leapt out at me.

Let me see if I understand this right. You negotiate a flat royalty percentage upfront based on your belief of what the sales will be rather than actual sales.

So if Dan Harrington, just to use a name, were to propose a book, you would promise him twenty-five percent while if Joe Schmoe came to you with a book, you would probably promise him ten percent since he was not known and you did not have high expectations based on that?

What would happen if his book were to end up outselling the Harrington book? Would his royalty stay at 10%.

If so, that does not seem very fair. Seems like the fair thing would be to tie royalty percentages in with actual sales. If the publisher sells X number of copies, the author (no matter who it is) gets X percentage. If the publisher sells Y number of copies, the author gets Y percentage. If the publisher sells Z number of copies, the author gets Z percentage.

Isn't that fair?

[Mason Malmuth]

[ QUOTE ]
What would happen if his book were to end up outselling the Harrington book? Would his royalty stay at 10%.

[/ QUOTE ]

What would happen if his book doesn't sell at all and we get massive returns and lose a lot of money on it? Do I then go back to the author and say you owe us money?

[ QUOTE ]
If so, that does not seem very fair. Seems like the fair thing would be to tie royalty percentages in with actual sales. If the publisher sells X number of copies, the author (no matter who it is) gets X percentage. If the publisher sells Y number of copies, the author gets Y percentage. If the publisher sells Z number of copies, the author gets Z percentage.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is much more difficult than you think because returns are negative sales and they may appear a long time after books are initially sold and we receive payment for them. Plus, we don't link royalties to the suggested retail sales as some publishers do but actually link them to the wholesale price. So in our contracts the royalty rates are actually double the figures I used here. This allows us a flexibility that most publishers do not have, and if we didn't do this, our overall royalty rate would need to be lower.

But the bottom line is we don't pay royalties on a sliding scale. In fact, there's no reason for us to do something like that since our royalty rates tend to be so much higher than what is typical for the publishing business. Even our lowest royalty rate, which is actually 20 percent of wholesale price as opposed to 10 percent of retail is much higher than standard in our field.

But in cases where a book sells great and the author has a low royalty rate we do up the royalty rate on future books to a very generous amount recognizing the success of the previous book. We also may invlove that author on a new project as another way of recognizing the success of his earlier book. Finally, and this is something I recently did, I was so impressed with one of our manuscripts that I changed the contract, with authors' agreement, to a higher royalty rate. So again, it's a pretty good deal becoming a Two Plus Two author. And if your book sells well, it can be an even better one.

So all of this seems pretty fair to me. Remember, we don't force an author to sign a contract. If he thinks he can do better elsewhere, that's his decision.

MM

[dirty banana2007]

Mason,

Roughly how big are your initial print runs for a book? For example is the first printing kept small to test the market, with a large second second printing or is the first printing quite big to reduce the marginal cost of each book?

Are the print run sizes the same for all titles or do you adapt it for each particular title?

When would you decide to reprint a book? i.e does it have to sell a certain % of it's run within a maximum time scale to considered?

I've always been interested in publishing and have read a couple of books on the subject, but am curious how it works in the real world.

Thanks,

D.