Episodes
Tuesday Jul 23, 2019
Episode 9: I Get Paid for This, Right? - The Money Episode
Tuesday Jul 23, 2019
Tuesday Jul 23, 2019
Hi everyone, and thank you for tuning in to another episode of the We Make Books Podcast - A podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between!
This week, it’s the Dreaded Money Episode! That’s right, we’re talking about advances, royalties, and how you get your money. This seems to be a bit of a taboo topic for a lot of writers, but it shouldn’t be! You wrote something and you should get paid for it! Rekka and Kaelyn go through all that, talk about some personal experience, and spend way too much time listening to Kaelyn obsess about a pond and debate the merits of pajamas as every day wear.
We Make Books is hosted by Rekka Jay and Kaelyn Considine; Rekka is a published author and Kaelyn is an editor and together they are going to take you through what goes into getting a book out of your head, on to paper, in to the hands of a publisher, and finally on to book store shelves.
We Make Books is a podcast for writer and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, concerns, and descriptions of any recurring bad dreams you’ve had since watching that trailer for the “Cats” movie.
We hope you enjoy We Make Books!
Twitter: @WMBCast | @KindofKaelyn | @BittyBittyZap
Kaelyn:00:00 Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the, We Make Books podcast, a podcast about writing, publishing and everything in between.
Rekka:00:06 I'm Rekka, I write science fiction and fantasy as RJ Theodore.
Rekka:00:10 Um, I'm Kaelyn. I'm the acquisitions editor for Parvus Press.
Rekka:00:14 So acquisitions, editing, writing, like we're all in this to make that cheddar, right?
Kaelyn:00:22 We're talking about money today, people, this is, this is that episode. Uh, we are talking about money.
Rekka:00:29 Yes. So we mentioned it in the episode. It's a bit of a thing, like it feels like it's taboo. It feels like, how dare you presume to even approach me with these questions? It feels like it's -
Kaelyn:00:43 It's scary
Rekka:00:43 I'm creative. How am I supposed to talk about money? Because if I'm talking about money and thinking about money, then I've sold out like, so we want to just, we get into that and this episode is full of as much information as we could broadly discuss. We, um, are not lawyers. We are not financial advisors.
Both: 01:02 [laughs]
Rekka:01:02 We do not want you to follow every word and, um, have a bad experience. But we did want to just approach all these subjects that most people feel that they can't talk about or that, um, it's, it's above them. It's not their business or anything like that. It is your business because you're a writer.
Kaelyn:01:24 It's absolutely your business.
Rekka:01:24 When you sign a contract, that contract is to sell the rights to print your book. So if you are selling the rights, then there should be an exchange of currency as part of that sale. And so where is it? Who determines it? Where does it come from? When do you get it? We're going to go into all of that in this episode and it's chock full of information. And again, we apologize when the episodes run a little long, but I think this is one that maybe everybody needs to hear.
Kaelyn:01:46 Yeah, this was, um, we tried to cover as much as we could, um, in the time that we had, um, like Rekkaa said, this is not something you should be embarrassed about talking about. You're at the end of the day you're, you made a thing, you should get paid for the thing
Rekka:02:03 And information is empowering. So take a listen.
Kaelyn:02:06 Take a listen.
Rekka:02:07 Empower yourself and then go out there and yes -
Kaelyn:02:10 And sell that book, dammit.
Rekka:02:12 All right.
Kaelyn:02:12 All right. Enjoy the episode, everyone. Thanks
Music:02:14 [Intro music]
Rekka:02:28 So that was shocking to me
Kaelyn:02:28 Do you not walk around in your pajamas?
Rekka:02:31 Only to the bathroom to change.
Kaelyn:02:33 Really?
Rekka:02:33 Yeah. Like because of the cat hair cause I don't want to getting into the bed.
Kaelyn:02:37 Oh, okay. I know I, I spend most of my time in my pajamas.
Rekka:02:40 I would if I had no pets.
Kaelyn:02:42 Fair. Are we recording?
Rekka:02:44 Oh absolutely.
Kaelyn:02:44 Of course we're recording. Yeah, we're recording already. [laughs] But, I mean, but like this place is so freaking picture-esq. You can't not hang out in your pajamas a little bit.
Rekka:02:54 [laughs]
Kaelyn:02:54 And like take it all in.
Rekka:02:57 I have started setting aside couch clothes, so like lounge wear for the couch, but it's not my pajamas so that I'm not tracking cat hair into the bedroom. But I keep forgetting to change into them when I get comfortable.
Kaelyn:03:11 Okay.
Rekka:03:11 We're working on it.
Kaelyn:03:11 'Cause, I mean this place is just -
Rekka:03:12 Plus they're flannel pants and it's June now I need a new pair of pants for lounging.
Kaelyn:03:20 This place is just, it's so picturesque. It's disgusting.
Rekka:03:21 And by this place, of course, we are talking about the utility closet at Parvus Press.
Rekka:03:25 Yeah, no, we're recording from the, uh, the containment unit records writing shed in her backyard, which backs up to a beautiful pond with trees and turtles and -
Rekka:03:38 Tadpoles.
Kaelyn:03:38 We saw some tadpoles. I was advised there could be snakes and disappointed that I didn't find one.
Rekka:03:42 But you did find mint.
Kaelyn:03:43 I did find mint. Yeah. So just, I'll put a picture of it up. It's so disgustingly serene. Um, but yeah. Anyways, so, uh, welcome to another episode, everyone.
Rekka:03:53 Speaking of serenity.
Kaelyn:03:54 Yeah. Serenity. This is not a serene one .
Rekka:03:56 This is our capitalist episode.
Kaelyn:03:58 This is a stressful episode for a lot of people. We're talking today about money.
Rekka:04:03 Like specifically, can I have some?
Kaelyn:04:04 And how you get it?
Rekka:04:06 Can I please Kaelyn can have some.
Kaelyn:04:08 Sure. Of course.
Rekka:04:10 Kaelyn just handed me a quarter, everybody.
Kaelyn:04:11 [laughs] Um, yeah. Today we're talking about money and um, how you get it and how much you're entitled to and um, what you should be getting.
Rekka:04:23 And when you get it.
Kaelyn:04:24 When you get it. Exactly. Yeah. Um, so we wanted to do this episode because this is a bit of a dirty subject type thing.
Rekka:04:34 Taboo
Kaelyn:04:35 Taboo is probably a better word. Yeah. Um, and I think it's something a lot of people are nervous about that they don't want to ask about. They don't want to discuss.
Rekka:04:43 Like we put out the call for questions.
Kaelyn:04:45 Yeah.
Rekka:04:46 And crickets. And I think everyone is afraid to be the person that asks that question.
Kaelyn:04:50 Exactly. Yeah.
Rekka:04:51 Or they think we aren't going to really get into the details on those.
Kaelyn:04:56 It's -
Rekka:04:56 Unfortunately, some of them we can't because it's going to depend a lot on your contract.
Kaelyn:05:04 Yes. And we will flag those areas certainly. But, um, I think also there's the taboo around it because a lot of people have this mentality of I'm writing because I want to create, I'm writing because of this. That's awesome. But also you get paid for this and you should be aware of what you're getting paid for and be knowledgeable about it because this is important. You put a lot of work into something, you should make money off of it, you know? So anyway, we decided we wanted to, uh, to talk about that and hopefully provide some guidance with, um, you know, how things like advances and royalties work -
Rekka:05:37 Or at least make it a little less scary.
Kaelyn:05:38 A little less scary. Yeah. That should, that's a theme for this whole podcast: making writing less, a little less scary. Um, so we're going to start off with, you know, just some as we usually do with these kinds of things, some definitions. What, uh, what different things are, uh, kind of take you through what you can expect in terms of advances, royalties, how these things work. Um, we won't get too much into that because that's more of a contract specific thing.
Rekka:06:08 But there are some things that people just -
Kaelyn:06:11 There's some broad, yeah.
Rekka:06:12 Don't have a general understanding of even.
Kaelyn:06:15 Exactly. Yeah. Because it's a very intimidating process and going, going online and reading things about it is not always
Rekka:06:23 helpful. And the articles are old or the people who are willing to put articles online about it are vanity presses who shouldn't be giving you advice anyway.
Kaelyn:06:32 And you know what actually I did just because I wanted to see what was online before we did this episode. I spent some time on Google and it's something interesting I found is that not even the good articles, the ones that have good information in there helpful, none of them talk about ebooks.
Rekka:06:45 Mmm, yeah
Kaelyn:06:47 It's all print.
Rekka:06:48 Yeah. And as two very different things.
Kaelyn:06:51 Yeah. And you know what's interesting is the articles were like recent enough that like they should have like as doing ebooks should have been a thing. Um, because that's very confusing. Anyway, uh, we're gonna walk through, you know, what you can expect in terms of how the royalties work. Uh, we're going to talk about how money actually trickles down to the authors and then talk about, you know, what payments look like and what forms they're going to come in and where they'll be coming from. So, um, dive in.
Rekka:07:22 Yeah, let's just start.
Kaelyn:07:23 All right. So, uh, advances.
Rekka:07:26 Yes, please.
Kaelyn:07:26 Yes, Rekka?
Rekka:07:28 Can I have one? [laughter] Yeah. So an advance is the word. Um, used in the definition, it is an advanced payment that you get on the assumption that you would eventually earn this through the royalty agreement that you settled on in your contract. So this is a payday loan without the interest rate.
Kaelyn:07:55 Well ...
Rekka:07:55 Yes. that sounds awful. But like you know what I'm trying to say, you are getting money now that you will have to earn later.
Kaelyn:08:02 Yes. It's, it is an advance of money that you are going to earn.
Rekka:08:06 Right. Okay. I said have to earn, we'll get into actually that too I think.
Kaelyn:08:11 Think of it as here's a check for money you are going to make in the future and that um, the publisher will typically give you that right when you sign. Um, usually what happens is an advance might be broken up into two or more pieces, two standard, you know, usually half when you sign half when you finish the manuscript, I'm very rarely are they going to give you the whole thing at once. It's usually half now, half when you're finished, there might be, you know, there could be other weird little things in there about how they're broken up, but every, you know, one of the running themes for this episode is going to be, it's depends on your contract.
Rekka:08:47 Yes.
Kaelyn:08:48 Typical though half now half when you finish. An advance is different from royalties obviously.
Rekka:08:55 In a way.
Kaelyn:08:57 Yes.
Rekka:08:57 It's the more, like royalties are based on actual sales numbers. The advance is royalties that are based on expectations and prophecy.
Kaelyn:09:10 Yes. Um, typically what publishers do when we're trying to decide what an advance is going to be is we go into the secret room, consult the blind mages, provide the necessary sacrifice, they gaze into their crystal ball and come up with a number for us.
Rekka:09:28 Mmmhmm.
Kaelyn:09:28 You of course have to take into account whether or not you're doing this on a full moon because that can make the numbers a bit squiffy. Um, no and we'll uh, we'll talk about um, numbers and percentages later in the episode. We kind of just want to get through royalties and advances and what they are at this point.
Rekka:09:47 So, so it isn't the full phrase is advance on royalties.
Kaelyn:09:51 Yes
Rekka:09:51 So it is technically royalties, but it's not in the sense that you'll get royalties later. Will you? We'll be able to see this is a royalty for the sales of books.
Kaelyn:10:00 This is a uh royalty for sales that you are going to make in the future.
Rekka:10:06 Right.
Kaelyn:10:07 Um, if you want to, I work in finance. If you want to put it in those terms, it's a futures commodity.
Rekka:10:12 Fair enough. Yeah. It's, well, it's, it's almost a good faith payment from the publisher.
Kaelyn:10:17 Absolutely. That's what it is. Yeah. And it's also, it is a, hey look, you did all of this work and you still probably have about a year and a half minimum to go until you start making money on this. So here's money up front for the work that you already did.
Rekka:10:33 Yeah.
Kaelyn:10:34 And, um, we can, you know, we won't get too much into like what advances should be used for because really that's, that's -
Rekka:10:43 Your business.
Kaelyn:10:43 It's your business. And it depends on what, you know, what you need to use it for. But, um, you know, it's a payment for, you've already done a lot of work. Have some money.
Rekka:10:54 Yeah. Um, if I were to offer advice on spending the advance, I would say treat it as a payment toward your author business and use it as you would as the owner of that author business.
Kaelyn:11:07 Yeah.
Rekka:11:07 But not everyone has the luxury to separate that from their, their household family.
Kaelyn:11:12 There's absolutely nothing wrong with however you want to spend your advance, assuming you're not blowing it on like jetpack futures.
Rekka:11:20 Yeah. Well, that's fun.
Kaelyn:11:23 Yeah.
Rekka:11:24 If you're, if you're a gambler, risk taker maybe you don't need the money and you're insulted by the commoditization of your novel and you're like, you know what? I'm going to spend this on something that will never ever pay out.
Kaelyn:11:35 That's fair.
Rekka:11:36 Really?
Rekka:11:37 Yeah. 100% your prerogative, however -
Kaelyn:11:40 Short of setting it on fire, just, you know. Um, so royalties like Rekka was saying are, that's what you're actually, when you're getting paid on your book, when the book has sold and you get money from the book being sold. Royalties are tricky and I think they're scary.
Rekka:12:00 Mm. It's, it's spreadsheets is its -
Kaelyn:12:04 It's numbers.
Rekka:12:04 Math and it's a whole lot of different numbers and calculations based on at least five different moving targets at all times.
Kaelyn:12:14 Yeah. So when we talk about royalties, I'm going to break this down into two different groups, which is print books and ebooks because royalties for each of those work differently.
Rekka:12:24 And we should say that we're talking North American US.
Kaelyn:12:26 Yes.
Rekka:12:27 In terms because things may be different when to you cross out of international boundaries
Kaelyn:12:32 Yes. So for print books it's going to be exclusively, you know, things that are sold in the US where, I'm not saying it's different everywhere. I'm just saying I can't guarantee that it's not.
Rekka:12:46 Mmmhmm.
Kaelyn:12:47 Print books. Typically authors are going to get paid on what's called the list price. And that is if you flip the book over in the back, it should have a price on it.
Rekka:12:56 Yeah. It'll be associated in the ISBN code. It'll be probably printed beside it or inside the cover. Or if it's a hard cover with a slip case, there's a dollar sign there. There's usually a decimal point.
Kaelyn:13:08 Exactly.
Rekka:13:09 And that is your list price.
Kaelyn:13:13 So when you get a royalty for that book, let's say the book sells for $10 just for the sake of round numbers and your royalty rate is 10% you're getting a dollar when that book sells. Print books, it should always be the list price that's still standard for print books. Um, royalty rates for print books may be a little lower, but they are more expensive than ebooks.
Rekka:13:44 So when you say they're lower, you're saying they're lower than the royalty rate you're going to get for ebooks because ebooks don't require things like printing costs -
Kaelyn:13:53 The overhead on ebooks is very minimal -
Rekka:13:55 - and there's no warehousing them, there's very little chance of returns that do happen.
Kaelyn:14:01 Rarely ebooks, ebooks get returned.
Rekka:14:03 But I'm, the book seller is not going to buy a large number of ebooks and then potentially return half of them.
Kaelyn:14:10 Yeah. So that's the most straight forward explanation. With print books, it's your royalty percentage off the list price. Ebooks, however, are a whole nother monster. I'm going to use Amazon as sort of the base example here, but most of the other ones kind of work the same way. Um, you know, everyone's a little bit different but,
Rekka:14:35 But Amazon's kind of set the rules and everyone else is -
Kaelyn:14:38 Yeah. And most of us get our books through Amazon now.
Rekka:14:43 Mmmhmm.
Kaelyn:14:43 Um, like by a lot.
Rekka:14:44 Yeah.
Kaelyn:14:45 So what's happening with ebooks is there's no print book, obviously. So overhead is nothing compared to print books.
Rekka:14:55 It's server space.
Kaelyn:14:56 They're sending you a file.
Rekka:14:57 Yeah.
Kaelyn:14:58 Essentially. So Amazon is taking their cut right off the top because when you're selling print books, the bookstore is buying the book and keeping the profits from the sale of the book. Amazon is getting their cut after the book sells. So your royalty rate on an ebook on Amazon is probably going to be either 70% or 35, depending on if it meets the criteria for Amazon to put it at 70. And here's the thing, most books do. Um, it's, it has to do with pricing length. Um, you know, those kinds of things.
Rekka:15:37 You're deliverable file size.
Kaelyn:15:39 Exactly.
Rekka:15:39 Even if you have a lot of illustrations or photographs in your ebook, you're going to have less money coming in because Amazon's going to charge you for the space because their distribution to kindles is free for the user, the reader.
Kaelyn:15:53 Yup.
Rekka:15:53 So they're going to charge you if you use a larger than standard amount of data to send to that.
Kaelyn:16:01 Yeah, so Amazon is taking their cut right off the top of the sale. So again, let's say your book is selling for $10 on Amazon and you're getting a 70% royalty. Well in this case your publisher is getting a 70% royalty on that.
Rekka:16:17 So we'll use the word publisher when we are talking about royalties coming directly from an Amazon sale. If you're an Indie, like your self published, you are the publisher. So we're talking about you directly. If you are an author signed with a traditional publisher or a small press then they are the publisher. And when we say 70% royalty, we're talking about what is coming back from Amazon. It's very unlikely that 70% is the royalty in your contract.
Kaelyn:16:46 No, it's not.
Both: 16:49 [laughter]
Rekka:16:49 Hey, look, we can't speak for everyone, but we're going to assume that yours is -
Kaelyn:16:53 It's not -
Rekka:16:54 Significantly lower than that. So, um, so yeah, a book sells on Amazon for $10 and a 70% royalty goes to the publisher is getting $7 and Amazon has taken their $3 in, they're happy and then then
Kaelyn:17:06 And then the publisher is paying you based on your royalty rate off that $7. So it's an extra step. Um, although technically if you look at the bookstore, it's really not. It's actually a little more straight forward.
Rekka:17:20 Yeah.
Kaelyn:17:21 Um, so that's how you're getting your royalty rate from ebooks. And that is the easiest way I can sum it up. There are a lot of factors in how Amazon prices and sells books. They have all of these algorithms, which this is something a lot of people don't know. Amazon can change how much your book is being sold for. If they think that there's someone that like maybe they've clicked on it like three times in the past two days and they haven't bought it, Amazon's algorithm will knock it down, say a dollar.
Rekka:17:51 Right.
Kaelyn:17:51 And see if they can get you to pick it up and then guess what your book sold for nine bucks instead of 10. So Amazon, Amazon can take your book and reprice it for the -
Rekka:18:03 Read that fine print when you sign up for KDP.
Kaelyn:18:06 Yeah. So that is just kind of the definitions and the examples of advances and royalties. Um, so you're probably wondering now, well, how do I get these numbers? How do I know all of this stuff? As always, it's in your contract. Please read your contracts. I know they're long. I know they have absurd words in them. I know they're boring.
Rekka:18:31 Go through them. Get a highlighter and highlight the numbers you're going to want to come back to reference.
Kaelyn:18:36 Yes, yes.
Rekka:18:36 Print out those pages. If your contract is digital and you know, pin them somewhere where you can get to them, where you can see like, this is my payments, this is my, um, royalty for this, this, these are the, uh rights I retained. These are the timelines at which my contract might revert back to me under certain conditions. So those are the kinds of things you want to at least be aware of those things. And you know, you don't have to memorize them but know where to find them.
Kaelyn:19:06 Yeah, your contract will in all likelihood have a schedule in it that explains how your royalties work. Um, it's going to give you different amounts for ebooks and print, uh, maybe audio books. Um, if that's something that your publisher is doing, if you're getting an audio book. Um, one of the things that might have on there is a graduated royalty schedule. What this means is you're going to get different royalty rates based on the number of books you sell. And typically what will happen is the more books you sell, the higher your royalty rate gets. Now you're probably going, well, why don't they just give me the high one right off the bat. The publisher is trying to recoup the money they spent on the book.
Rekka:19:53 Right.
Kaelyn:19:54 So they're saying that if we get to, for instance, you know, 50,000 books, we've recouped everything that we spent. We want to pay you more now right on this.
Rekka:20:06 Right.
Kaelyn:20:06 So you might see like 10 - you know, books, one to 10,000 are at royalty rate X books, 10,001 to 25,000 are at royalty rate X plus one.
Rekka:20:20 Right.
Kaelyn:20:21 And they'll keep increasing. So what that means is the more books you sell, the higher your royalty rate is going to be. Not everyone does this.
Rekka:20:29 Right.
Kaelyn:20:30 But here's the thing with royalties and advances and contracts: everything's negotiable.
Rekka:20:34 Yep.
Kaelyn:20:35 So if you have an agent, there'll be the one handling that for you and they'll be trying to get you the best deal possible. Um, if you're doing it on your own, these are good things to know about cause it is a little scary and people don't like talking about money.
Rekka:20:50 Right. And I can imagine that a lot of authors are afraid that if they try to negotiate on their contract that the offer will evaporate because they've been selfish. Or presumptive.
Kaelyn:21:01 No. And you know, don't, don't think that, you know, if, especially if you feel like you're not getting the best deal, pushback. Don't, you know, if you get a good offer right off the bat and you're happy with it, there's nothing wrong with that. Take it and be happy with it. But if you feel like you're not getting quite what you wanted, have realistic expectations but also ask questions.
Rekka:21:24 Right.
Kaelyn:21:24 No one's going to be like, sorry you asked too many questions out the door. Um, you know, we talked about this before, if you have someone that can look at a contract for you, it's always a good thing to do that, especially when it comes to the money sections.
Rekka:21:40 Yup.
Kaelyn:21:40 Just make sure everything that you think you understand is what this actually says.
Rekka:21:45 There are, um, author organizations out there that you can join and for the, um, the dues that you pay to those organizations, there might be some sort of access to a contracts lawyer as built in. So, you know, keep in mind that not all organizations are, you know, on are equivalent are, um, on the same level. But that is an option. Something you can look for that might cost you much less than a lawyer.
Kaelyn:22:12 Yeah. Those are just good resources in general.
Rekka:22:14 Plus any lawyers that they have are likely to be like contract, like publishing.
Kaelyn:22:19 Yes. They'll know what they're looking at. Yeah. If nothing else in the contract, pay attention to the money part. There is nothing wrong with wanting to make sure that you're getting paid fairly and adequately.
Rekka:22:32 But there's also know what your reasoning for going to a publisher is, and there may be things that you are far more like interested in tham negotiating the absolute best dollar amount. You may be the type to settle for a lower royalty but retain more of your rights for example. ,
Kaelyn:22:49 Yeah exactly. So every everything's a give and take with us and you know at some point we'll do another episode about contracts and rights and things, but for now we're -
Rekka:22:58 But all of these,
Kaelyn:22:59 They're all factors
Rekka:23:00 decisions that you make in your, in your contract negotiation are going to affect your royalties and your advance going forward.
Kaelyn:23:07 Exactly, yeah. So the next question you're probably wondering is, okay, so how, how and when do I get money?
Rekka:23:16 [laughs] Right?
Kaelyn:23:18 This is great. I've signed this contract, I've got, you know, a royalty schedule that I'm happy with. How and when am I going to get paid? So like we said right off the bat with your advance, you're probably gonna get half when you signed half when the book's done. So that's the advance. For the royalties you may not see a royalty check for a while.
Rekka:23:39 Because you have to earn out that advance for the royalties start paying towards you.
Kaelyn:23:43 Exactly.
Rekka:23:43 So you may get royalty statements. You, you may not actually get legal tender until, well, you will not get legal tender until you earn out the royalty. It's a matter of what your royalty was versus how your book is selling versus um, you know, if you have multiple books and therefore like a joint accounting for example, between those books on your advance. So it's going to be a while, but it's not, it doesn't have to be years, but it may also be never. Lets you know, just to put it out there.
Kaelyn:24:18 Yeah. So what - Okay, let's say that your advance again for the sake of round numbers was $10,000. You need to earn $10,000 in royalties -
Rekka:24:29 Those are those small percentages of the purchase prices
Kaelyn:24:33 before you get a royalty check.
Rekka:24:36 Right.
Kaelyn:24:36 So as soon as you hit $10,000 in 1 cent, then you start getting paid on your royalties. Because remember what we said, the advance is payment on money you are going to make in the future. So now they're repaying the money that they already paid you to themselves.
Rekka:24:55 It's a zero interest semi loan that's immediately forgiven from the publisher. Okay, here's the question that I can imagine to a lot of minds. If I don't earn back my advance, do I have to pay the difference back to the publisher?
Kaelyn:25:11 No, you don't. And again, contracts, you know, check contracts,
Rekka:25:14 Check your contract.
Kaelyn:25:16 But -
Rekka:25:16 there's probably something in there where if you don't give them the book you promised them you have to pay back the advance.
Kaelyn:25:21 Yes.
Rekka:25:21 That's in there. But you are receiving an advance on projected sales and it's the publisher's job to give you an advance that they believe that the y can support with book sales.
Kaelyn:25:32 Yes. So if you don't earn out your advance, you will not have to pay back the advance. Let me go further and saying that if you sign a contract that says you have to pay back your advance, don't sign that.
Rekka:25:48 Yeah. Don't, don't sign it in the first place. Yeah. If you receive a contract, if you see a contract, if you smell a contract run, that says -
Kaelyn:25:57 You have to pay back your advance. And so no, you don't have to give back your advance. But let's, okay, so you have a $10,000 advance. Your book has now earned $10,000 in one cent. You're going to be getting a check for 1 cent.
Rekka:26:11 It, depending on your contract, your, your publisher may have a minimum threshold -
Kaelyn:26:15 Okay, yes -
Rekka:26:15 - which you want to watch for too. Because if that minimum threshold is very high, you still won't see a check for awhile.
Kaelyn:26:20 For a while. Yeah.
Rekka:26:22 Um, you have a $10,000 advance at $10,000, 1 cent, you now are owed royalties by your publisher.
Kaelyn:26:30 You are owed roylaties. Exactly. And if your book just keeps earning and earning past that, you will keep getting royalty checks. There isn't a cap on this. As long as your book is making money, you will keep getting royalty statements and checks.
Rekka:26:43 Right.
Kaelyn:26:44 Um, here's the thing though, you have to keep in mind how long it takes to get a book published. So even once you've signed the contract, it's probably going to be a year and a half before that book goes to press.
Rekka:26:58 Right.
Kaelyn:26:58 And then depending on the size of your royalty and depending on how quickly it sells, it could be a while before you start getting a check. Royalty checks. Um, depending on how long it takes to earn out your advance. The reason I'm saying this is don't bank on having money immediately from the book.
Rekka:27:16 And since you can't predict the sales of your book, don't bank on it at all.
Kaelyn:27:20 Yeah, that's, that's a good point.
Rekka:27:21 You know, don't, don't plan on, I will have x amount in the next royalty check. There is no way to control that. There is no way to insure it yet.
Kaelyn:27:30 So now Rekka brought up something interesting earlier that she just kind of threw out as an example but is a good quick note to talk about which is joint accounting for royalties. So let's go back and do that real quick.
Rekka:27:42 So joint accounting is when you have a multi book contract with a publisher and it can be a duology, a trilogy, whatever, whatever number of books has been agreed upon and is covered by that single contract.
Kaelyn:27:58 In the single contract.
Rekka:27:59 It's not with options for the rest of the trilogy. It's this is for three books. Yes, for an example of a trilogy and then you have a total advance that they are going to break up per book and whatever that advanced payment schedule is. And in joint accounting you do not earn royalties until you have earned the entire advance out -
Kaelyn:28:27 For the entire series
Rekka:28:27 The entire series.
Kaelyn:28:29 So it all depends on how the contract is written and laid out. Again, please read the contract.
Rekka:28:37 Right. So your first book may sell to the point where you've earned out, as Kaelyn was saying, earned out the advance that you receive for that book. But depending on how your contract's written, you may be receiving those royalties against the total advance of whatever number of books is covered under that contract. So if your total advance for three books say is $30,000, if your contract is written as such, you won't get royalties even though the second book isn't out yet until you earn back the advance for all three books, all $30,000. And that's again, it's the language in your contract. That's why you want to have help looking at your contracts.
Kaelyn:29:17 Yeah. So the base question, you know, when do I get a check or royalties check? Typically twice a year is pretty common. Um, you know, there's a, I, I do this, I actually deal with the calculating all the royalties, it is not easy, it is it's a process. So, uh, it is kind of easier to get a bunch of months all together and do them all at once.
Rekka:29:39 Why don't you break down all the different moving pieces?
Kaelyn:29:42 Oh God. Okay. Well, um, one of the things, so right off the bat, what you're going to have to do is gather all of the information from the different places that have sold your book. If you are a traditional publisher with a distributor, this is an insane process. It's, it is gathering a lot of information and it's just so many spreadsheets. And so you have to get all the information together and figure out how much did the book sell for what did we actually get paid on it. And then you got to check and make sure that's correct because I know this is shocking, Amazon occasionally makes mistakes.
Rekka:30:20 No.
Kaelyn:30:20 I know. Um, the print books are even trickier with that because you have to, you're looking at books that were purchased by a bookstore that may still be sitting in the bookstore and haven't been sold yet.
Rekka:30:32 Yeah.
Kaelyn:30:32 But for my purposes, that doesn't matter as long as the bookstore has it. That's what I'm most concerned about. Um, the next thing you have to do is go through and normalize everything. And with Amazon, they will sell your ebooks internationally and then it just all gets funneled through the one Amazon account. Um, like I said, I'm not going to get into the international stuff too much because, uh, with print books especially, it's very different. Amazon people can buy the book internationally, no problem. So, um, you have to go in and do all the currency conversions and normalize everything. Then you gotta take all this giant list of everything you've sold and break it out by author.
Rekka:31:14 Right.
Kaelyn:31:14 So now at Parvus we have, um, you know, authors with multiple books. So that -
Rekka:31:20 Which might mean multiple contracts.
Kaelyn:31:20 It might mean multiple contracts and multiple advances. So then you have to go and take that and figure out like, okay, Author X had, and you know a Y advance, they've earned Z,
Both: 31:35 [laughs]
Kaelyn:31:35 So on
Rekka:31:38 Or just eat some alphabet soup
Kaelyn:31:40 [laughs] So on this book, so I have to apply that amount to this book. But wait, then they sold this many of book Q and they earned that on it. And you get all of this information together, figure out how much money you owe to who, and then put together a royalty statement. Um, one of the things I'm going to, I'm going to stop here and I'm gonna toot Parvus's horn a little bit. We're very transparent. Um, we send detailed lists of sales. I don't think any one of our authors actually look at them.
Rekka:32:14 That is not true.
Kaelyn:32:15 Okay Rekka looks at them, which isn't surprising. Um, but like, you know, it's hundreds of lines on a spreadsheet and it's, we're, we're very upfront about this stuff. We want you to see here is the book that you sold on Amazon. Here's the rate Amazon game, and here's what your royalty percentages and it was in US dollars. And so it comes out to this amount. Um, but we know that everyone's not going to look at that. And if they do, it's not going to mean too much to them. So the other thing I put together is a royalty statement, which is you sold this many of this book this month, this many of this one. You earned this amount on each of them. Here's how many you've sold all time, and here's how many you have, how much money you've earned all time, and here's how much you've earned this quarter. We do ours quarterly. Um, and then we send the payment based on, you know, what they're owed for that month. Um, if you're still earning out your royalty, there'll be another little section from me down at the bottom that says, hey, here's what your royalty was. Here's how much you earned towards it this quarter. Here's how much you have left to go. So it's, it's summarized, you know, it's just a little thing. You should be getting those.
Rekka:33:23 Yeah.
Kaelyn:33:23 And I am shocked the number of authors I talked to that have never seen one, never seen one, and don't ask for one.
Rekka:33:30 Yeah.
Kaelyn:33:31 I can't believe sometimes the authors I talked to that don't know if they ever earned out their advance. You have to pay attention to this stuff and advocate for yourself. Because I'm not saying that publishing houses are trying to steal from you. It's that if you don't ask for it, they might not provide it because maybe they're like, oh, that's one less thing I have to do.
Rekka:33:58 Mmmhmm.
Kaelyn:33:58 But here's the thing, people make mistakes sometimes too. I mean, when you're dealing with this much information, you could, you know, a decimal point gets moved one direction to the other and it throws everything off. So pay attention to this stuff, ask for it, never feel embarrassed for asking for it. And if anyone tries to make you feel embarrassed for asking for it, push back on them.
Rekka:34:18 Right. Don't and make sure if you want that it's in your contract that you can see the accounting.
Kaelyn:34:24 Yes.
Rekka:34:25 Again, the contract is a lovely piece of paper that -
Kaelyn:34:28 Everything is negotiable.
Rekka:34:29 Yeah.
Kaelyn:34:30 Um, so that's, that's kind of what is going on in the other side. So dovetailing onto that, how does, how has this happen? How does the money get down to the author?
Rekka:34:43 Um, they leave some quarters under your pillow.
Kaelyn:34:46 No, at night we fly in and, you know, just deposit it, teeth are not - it's fine. We don't need the teeth anymore.
Rekka:34:52 Um, you've already had your teeth knocked out.
Kaelyn:34:56 The, the rundown is basically this, we start with the reader at the bookstore. Amazon.
Rekka:35:01 An individual person makes a decision to purchase a book.
Kaelyn:35:04 They picked it up or they looked at it online. They said, you know what, this sounds like something I want to read. I will give someone money for this.
Rekka:35:10 Yes.
Kaelyn:35:11 So -
Rekka:35:11 And thank you for that.
Kaelyn:35:14 [laughs] Um, it's a little different with bookstores and ebooks. So if they do it in a bookstore, they go, they pay the bookstore. Now the bookstore, if you are distributed, if you're through a traditional publisher that's distributed, the bookstore has already paid the distributor for the books.
Rekka:35:32 Right.
Kaelyn:35:33 So the publisher is getting their money from the distributer, the publisher then in turn calculates the royalties and the payments that have to go out. If you have a literary agent, your check is going to your agent first.
Rekka:35:47 Right.
Kaelyn:35:48 They're going to cash it, take their, you know, how, whatever their percentage is, their 15, and then the literary agent is going to write you a check for the remainder of it.
Rekka:35:57 Right.
Kaelyn:35:58 If you don't have a literary agent, the publisher should be sending the money right to you.
Rekka:36:01 Yes.
Kaelyn:36:02 For ebooks, same thing, you know, you're looking at the book, I like this, buy it on Amazon. Amazon is going to pay the publisher. Now you can have distributors through ebooks. Um not, you know, not uncommon, actually, fairly common. And again, so if that's the case, the Amazon is going to pay the distributor and then the distributor is going to give it back to the publisher.
Rekka:36:31 And it still in that case, based on each individual sale, not like the bookstore situation where they're bought ahead of time.
Kaelyn:36:39 It's not a list price, yeah. Um, so then it's the same thing. The publisher is going to calculate the royalties. If you have an agent, it goes to them first. If you don't, it goes to directly to the author. Um, what you're noticing along the way here is everyone is taking a little piece off of this. So you're starting with a pile and then everyone's taking a little bit of it and you, the author are the last person to get the pile.
Rekka:37:02 However the pile comes to you.
Kaelyn:37:06 Yes.
Rekka:37:06 At no point, do you write anyone else a check.
Kaelyn:37:08 Yes. The pile should, even if it's a smaller pile than when it started, the pile should be coming to you. Do not give anyone money. Just don't.
Rekka:37:19 Yep. It's, it's not how this works. Yeah.
Kaelyn:37:22 If you're self publishing, fine, then you have to pay for things.
Rekka:37:25 Right. But again, that's you're not paying for, it's tricky to say what, what the difference is in terms of what you pay for as a self publisher, you will be paying contracted people to edit your work. You'll be paying contract and people to do your covers. Those are investments. Those do not come out of your royalties. So when it comes to the process of like, how do I make someone buy my book, there are things that you'll be paying for once the book is in bookstores that hopefully will result in a sale. But this is not like, hey, the distributor got returns and now you owe them $20.
Kaelyn:38:11 Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that is, you know, how do I get paid? Way in the future and not as much as you think.
Both: 38:22 [laughter]
Kaelyn:38:22 Um, it's, it is a trickle down process. So if your book sells well eventually the money will be coming in. But again, even if it doesn't, no one should be you for your advance back.
Rekka:38:36 Right. And I just want to emphasize, you know, everyone in this digital age where you can just upload a file to Amazon and get the biggest amount of royalty for the ebook sale as possible. People want to know why the publisher is taking such a big cut, et cetera. The people who take cuts are the people who are putting themselves at risk for the sale of your book. You have put yourself at risk if you're a self published author completely. It's all your risk.
Kaelyn:39:05 Yeah, it's all you.
Rekka:39:06 If you are going through a publisher, they have given you money in the form of the advance. They have paid for a distributor to print and warehouse books - W
Kaelyn:39:15 hich by the way is not cheap.
Rekka:39:19 Noooo. Um, it's not as expensive as it used to be for the printing, but the, I mean they kind of even it out and make up for the difference in probably the warehousing costs these days.
Kaelyn:39:28 The margins on print books are not great.
Rekka:39:31 Yeah.
Kaelyn:39:32 Um, it is, it is not as expensive to print a book, especially a large group, batch of them as it used to be. It's still not cheap.
Rekka:39:42 Right. So when you, and I'll go back to self publishing as the comparison for like the most you could expect to get for something. Um a self published author will be usually going through a print on demand service, which means that book is being printed one at a time, which means that book is as expensive to produce as possible. That book is, it's getting printed on a one off run. If you've ever taken something to um, you know, staples to have it printed and you notice that the price to have one copy is 10 cents, but by the time you're printing 500 pages, you're paying more like 6 cents a page. That's because the, the labor involved in printing one is higher than the Labor involved in printing a large quantity of the same thing. So when you are paying a distributor to print your book, you are saving money per book, but you are investing in advance to have them all printed at once. And that's why print on demand sort of like made self publishing blow up in a new level even that ebooks hadn't is that now you can just print what sells, which is great, but you are making less per
Kaelyn:41:02 Yeah, you're not, I mean you are not making much on print, on demand box.
Rekka:41:05 And even when you get the, the distributors, um, bulk price on printing, if you were to say pay out of pocket to fill your garage with hard copies of your book, you are still not making a large margin on those books. It's nothing compared to the margin you make on ebooks and digital.
Kaelyn:41:26 Yeah. So um back to what Rekka was saying. You know, why is there so much constantly coming off of this? Everyone has expenses. Books are not cheap to make. Um, you know, I think we think like, oh well it's fine. It's a book. So like what's the big deal? You have to print it. Well, no, you have to pay the various editors -
Rekka:41:50 There is a layout person and there's a copy editor.
Kaelyn:41:53 Illustrator. There's the cover art. The marketing. Marketing is very expensive -
Rekka:41:58 That it never goes away.
Kaelyn:41:59 It never goes away, exactly. And which by the way, that's where a lot, that's a lot of the money that goes into this. Um, it is expensive to make a book. It's a lot of people involved and it's a far more complicated process than I think a lot of people realize.
Rekka:42:17 Right.
Kaelyn:42:27 So it's a whole other debate, you know, whether or not the publishers take too much off the top, but there is a reason for it because a lot of books don't always even recover their entire cost. The publishing companies are paying you, even when you know you've earned out your advance, that's money they already gave you. So then on top of that, you may earn about out your advance. The publisher may not recover everything they spent on the book.
Rekka:42:50 RIght.
Kaelyn:42:50 Everything is so subjective. You really, it just depends. Um, so I think that's, that's most of the, the technical side of things. Uh, one, one question we did kind of come across was, so if I'm, if I've got multiple offer offers, if I'm lucky enough to have multiple offers, do I just take the one that's offering me more money?
Rekka:43:12 Which might be your inclination.
Kaelyn:43:13 Yes. And my answer to that is maybe. Um, let's look at the contract, look at the contract and look at what you're getting out of it and look what you like before you even receive.
Rekka:43:25 Like I would say it's maybe too late for some of our listeners now, sorry about that. I should have shown up before, but like before you start querying your book, have a goal in mind. Like what is your picture of success?
Kaelyn:43:41 Yeah.
Rekka:43:41 And your contract may not need to have as many zeros as possible for you to feel like you have successfully published a book.
Kaelyn:43:51 Yeah. And think about when you're looking at the contract, what are they giving you in there? Like, okay, maybe they're not giving you as much of an advance as you were hoping, but do they have a lot, a good marketing plan? Do they have like a lot of time and money that they're going to dump into making sure people read your book because then that's gonna make you money.
Rekka:44:14 Right.
Kaelyn:44:14 Eventually. Um, if you're looking at this and going, you know, I just kind of want to get as much out of this as I can and get the book out there, then maybe you're more interested in a bigger advance. Um, it isn't, the point I'm at is a slight cautionary tale is don't immediately jump at the biggest dollar sign if you have multiple offers. Because some of it is also going to be like, okay, awesome. How much effort are they going to put into making sure this book continues to sell? Because in the longterm, that could be where you make your money.
Rekka:44:53 Right. You could actually make more in your royalties after the advance than you make on the advance. One hopes that that's what's going to happen and you need a publisher who's interested in selling your book for the long run versus a publisher who's going to give it three weeks of attention after the release date and then move on.
Kaelyn:45:09 Yeah.
Rekka:45:10 If you have a publisher who is, you know, far more interested in, um, you know, using their back catalog for most of their income, then that's going to be a longer term game and you can -
Kaelyn:45:26 And they'll want to market your book and make sure people still buy it. Yeah. Um, so, you know, just it's another, read the contract, be aware, but you know, decide what's important to you. There's no right or wrong answer there. It's just a matter of, like Rekka said, decide what your goal is, like what you want for this book. And don't be afraid to talk about money.
Rekka:45:47 Right.
Kaelyn:45:48 It's, you know, we set in the beginning of the episode, it's taboo. It's, you know, I think almost perceived as rude
Rekka:45:56 Or if I care about money than am I really a creative person?
Kaelyn:46:01 Yes
Rekka:46:01 And well, I don't care if you feel like a creative person while you're negotiating a contract. Frankly -
Kaelyn:46:08 You should be the embodiment of Rockefeller at that.
Rekka:46:12 Yeah.
Kaelyn:46:12 Go in there and be horrible.
Rekka:46:13 And because your publisher may love books, but they're running a business. The bookstores love books, but they're running a business. The distributors love books, but they're running a business. You write books, but you're running a business.
Kaelyn:46:25 You as the author, you are your business, you are your own brand and advertising. You come along with this book. So don't be afraid to ask about these things. It's not insulting you're not - to be honest with you, on my end, when people ask me about it, I get relieved because now granted I work in finance, I work in business. So like we're very used to, you know, money talk. And it is funny because I go into like contract negotiations with clients, like it's talked about -
Rekka:46:59 Nobody's afraid.
Kaelyn:46:59 It's talked about like it's nothing. And it's like, look, I'm not saying, you know, you have to go in there with like the negotiator hat and mustache on, but -
Rekka:47:07 Is there a negotiator hat and a mustache?
Kaelyn:47:09 Oh yeah. I wear them to every meeting I go to.
Rekka:47:12 We'll post a photo of that on Instagram.
Kaelyn:47:17 But don't be afraid to talk about it and ask questions because also I know on my end that a lot of people that I'm working with, this might be the first time that they're kind of addressing this sort thing. And there's nothing wrong with not knowing. Your publisher is your partner. They're not there to take advantage of you. They're not going to lie.
Rekka:47:36 They shouldn't, you know.
Kaelyn:47:37 But they won't lie to you and give you bad information about these things. Don't be afraid to ask questions and don't be afraid to say, listen, I don't understand this. I don't want there to be a problem down the line and don't be afraid to talk about money. You are your product. You should get paid for what you've created.
Rekka:47:57 Yep.
Kaelyn:47:58 So, um, on that note, I think that's a good, good last.
Rekka:48:02 Sure.
Kaelyn:48:03 Sentiment to leave on.
Rekka:48:04 And there's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of contract topics that we didn't get too far into because we do want to have at least one future episode on contracts.
Kaelyn:48:12 Yeah, just contracts.
Rekka:48:14 And so that will be where we'll do a deeper dive into where maybe you can look for opportunities to ensure that you're going to get as much as possible. But that's a whole other.
Kaelyn:48:26 That's a whole other episode. So anyway, so how are we doing on time?
Rekka:48:31 We're, we're way over.
Kaelyn:48:33 Um, so anyway, that's the money up at the dreaded money episode everyone got through. We're all still alive.
Rekka:48:38 We all love getting paid. So I don't know why we have to say that. It's all dreaded. It's -
Kaelyn:48:43 But it is. I mean, it's, you know, but you beloved listener, um, I hope you're so alive and listening and if you're not, I hope you have as queued up on autoplay [laughs].
Rekka:48:54 Um, so hopefully before you passed away, he left this rating and review.
Kaelyn:48:59 Yeah. So anyway, thanks for listening again. Uh, you know, you can find us on the socials as usual.
Rekka:49:05 Yep. Yeah, we are @WMBcast on Twitter and Instagram. We are at WMBcast.com or WeMakeBookspodcasts.com, and uh, whatever survives Apple's transfer away from iTunes. Please leave us a rating.
Kaelyn:49:22 Yeah, this is going to be scary.
Rekka:49:23 I don't really know.
Kaelyn:49:24 I know. We don't know what's happening.
Rekka:49:25 Is the algorithm going to change?
Kaelyn:49:27 They've been very, they've not been putting information about what's going to happen.
Rekka:49:31 Yeah so maybe by the time this episode airs that will all have settled and you will know exactly where to go and leave us a star rating and review so that other people can find us. Assuming that the algorithm works the same way.
Kaelyn:49:43 Sure it will. And as always, you know, please reach out to us. You know, like maybe you had another question about money that uh, we didn't get to your episode.
Rekka:49:50 There's definitely more to talk about.
Kaelyn:49:52 We can, uh, do some questions. You know, one off questions in the future and you can email us or DM us.
Rekka:49:58 Yeah, the dms are always open. They're wide open to the, you can ask us questions that you're embarrassed that you don't know and that's fine. That's great stuff. We want to hear those questions. There is no topic that's too small. There's no, you know, quote unquote stupid questions. You know, just send us your questions so we can help you understand what the whole thing with publishing is, because it is a whole thing.
Kaelyn:50:22 We want to make this less scary. Yeah. Alright. Well, again, thanks everyone for listening and we'll two catch you in two weeks.
Rekka:50:29 Yeah, two weeks.
Tuesday Jul 09, 2019
Episode 8: Why Do They Smell Better? - Advance Reader Copies (ARCs)
Tuesday Jul 09, 2019
Tuesday Jul 09, 2019
Hi everyone, and thank you for tuning in to another episode of the We Make Books Podcast - A podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between!
This week we’re talking about ARCs or Advance Review Copies! What are they? Why do we print them? Who gets them? Why do they smell better than your average book?? Rekka and Kaelyn discuss all of those things, tell a few funny stories, and spend more than a little time getting side tracked talking about ARCs they’ve received.
We Make Books is hosted by Rekka Jay and Kaelyn Considine; Rekka is a published author and Kaelyn is an editor and together they are going to take you through what goes into getting a book out of your head, on to paper, in to the hands of a publisher, and finally on to book store shelves.
We Make Books is a podcast for writer and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, concerns, and any particularly good pie recipes you may have – apple is especially appreciated!
We hope you enjoy We Make Books!
Twitter: @WMBCast | @KindofKaelyn | @BittyBittyZap
Rekka:00:00 Welcome back to another episode of the we make books podcast. I'm record Jay and I write science fiction and fantasy as RJ Theodore
Kaelyn: 00:07 And I'm Kaelyn Considine and I am the acquisition editor for Parvus Press. This is one of my favorite things that happened in the process of publishing a book. And we are of course talking about advanced review copies or ARCs.
Rekka:00:19 Because you get to see it and it's a thing and it's real and they haven't been lying to you this whole time and they're really going to publish it.
Kaelyn: 00:24 I don't know what it is. I love getting the ARCs it's -
Rekka:00:27 Do they smell different?
Kaelyn: 00:28 They yes, they smell, this is a trade secret: they smell different than a regular book.
Rekka:00:33 They do smell different,
Kaelyn: 00:34 Yeah.
Rekka:00:35 I'm going to dive in here.
Kaelyn: 00:36 No Rekka's right in to the spine.
Rekka:00:39 [laughter]
Kaelyn: 00:39 Um, so yeah, we're just talking today a little bit about what ARCs are -
Rekka:00:43 What it is because as you even mentioned, and I think one of our very intro episodes -
Kaelyn: 00:46 It was the intro episode
Rekka:00:48 You didn't even know what ARC meant so -
Kaelyn: 00:49 That was the example I gave about don't be afraid to ask stupid questions because I knew what an advanced review copy was and I had just never heard it abbreviated to ARC and then I was like, oh, it's that thing I love.
Rekka:01:00 Yeah. It's my favorite thing. I know what it is, I just didn't know you called it that.
Kaelyn: 01:03 Yeah. You know, we talked a little bit today about what an ARC is, what its function is -
Rekka:01:06 Who gets them.
Kaelyn: 01:07 Who gets them.
Rekka:01:08 And where they go.
Kaelyn: 01:09 Where they go.
Rekka:01:09 And what their purposes.
Kaelyn: 01:11 Exactly. Yeah. So, um, you know, a little interesting bit about the history of them, sort of where they come from and why they are what they are.
Rekka:01:20 Mmmhmm.
Kaelyn: 01:20 Um, so I think it was a great episode.
Rekka:01:22 Yeah
Kaelyn: 01:22 I enjoyed doing it.
Rekka:01:23 Yes. Well, I always like paying attention to ARCs and, and we get to squeal a little bit about ARCs that are out there in the world. Right this moment as we recorded.
Kaelyn: 01:30 Yeah we definitely devolved into -
Rekka:01:33 A little bit of squealing.
Kaelyn: 01:33 A little bit of squealing. So apologies for that.
Rekka:01:36 No apologies.
Kaelyn: 01:37 Okay. Nevermind. We're not sorry.
Rekka:01:38 Love us as we are -
Kaelyn: 01:40 Or not at all. Thanks everyone for listening again and uh, we hope you enjoy the episode.
Rekka:01:47 Yeah.
Music:02:02 [inaudible]
Kaelyn: 02:03 So today what we're talking about our advanced reader copies or ARCs
Rekka:02:09 Or advanced review copies, what is the proper nomenclature?
Kaelyn: 02:12 Well, that depends who you're sending it to. Okay. Um, I always call them advanced reader copies because that means readers and reviewers.
Rekka:02:19 Okay.
Kaelyn: 02:19 So, um, but yes, we're talking about advanced copies of your book, which are copies that your publisher will send out to people going like, Hey, we have this book coming out and it's awesome. You should read it. Give us a review or a blurb. And they're awesome. They're, actually ARC's a lot of times are collectors items.
Rekka:02:38 Oh dear.
Kaelyn: 02:38 Did you know that?
Rekka:02:40 I don't want to see them on Ebay though.
Kaelyn: 02:42 Not well, I mean, but that's actually, that's a thing. There are a lot of people that collect um, ARCs and uh, because frequently they're uh, you know, labeled as, you know, uncorrected advanced proof.
Rekka:02:53 Advanced, mmmhmm.
Kaelyn: 02:54 Um,
Rekka:02:54 Not for resale.
Kaelyn: 02:56 Not for resale. That does not always stop them from popping up.
Rekka:02:59 Right.
Kaelyn: 02:59 But like, you know, especially if the book really takes off and you have one of the early copies of it, that's a pretty cool thing to have, I think.
Rekka:03:07 Yeah.
Kaelyn: 03:07 I want to kind of go through some definitions real quick. Mostly between a galley and an ARC. I think galley has really fallen out of use as of late, but you might still hear people throw this term around.
Rekka:03:21 Actually I heard it at the Nebulas quite a lot of different contexts.
Kaelyn: 03:25 Yes and that was also a group of writing professionals and people who have been doing this for a while and I'm not going like, oh, they're old.
Rekka:03:32 [laughs] Eh.
Kaelyn: 03:32 But like people that are from, we're writing in an time that galleys were definitely still a thing so. A Galley actually comes from, uh, the middle well, the renaissance era when, uh, typesetting became a thing and you had to put all of the -
Rekka:03:50 Letters,
Kaelyn: 03:51 Everything in there, print it, and then the pages went into a galley, which was the metal tray that all they all got stacked up in before being bound.
Rekka:04:00 Yes.
Kaelyn: 04:00 So a galley for a long time was actually just the printed manuscript for corrections. So then you had an uncorrected proof that's, you know, when someone goes through and marks everything up and when oh, my God, we used to have to do this by hand, everyone.
Rekka:04:17 Yes.
Kaelyn: 04:17 Um, then you have a final proof, which is okay, we're good. The book is in the shape, it's in the, uh, grammar and the punctuation is, uh, mostly correct and in our day and age now that becomes an advanced reader copy. And the main difference between a galleon advanced reader copy now is a galley, is basically a bound manuscript. Um, it probably does not have cover art. It's probably just in a book with big letters on it saying what it is and who it was by. An ARC. On the other hand is going to have cover art. Um, it's going to have cover copy on it. It will say uncorrected advanced proof. Um, or some version of that. It's probably, it might just have a big red band across the top. It might have like a big sticker in the middle of it,
Rekka:05:06 Mmmhmm.
Kaelyn: 05:06 But it is going to be very clear that this is an ARC. This is not the actual book.
Rekka:05:11 Right.
Kaelyn: 05:11 So -
Rekka:05:12 What is the reason that you would send out a thing that is not the actual book?
Kaelyn: 05:16 [lauhgs] That is an excellent question, Rekka. This is actually gets to the heart of a bigger thing, which is why does it take so long to publish a book?
Rekka:05:25 What the hell anyway?
Kaelyn: 05:26 Well, because your ARCs are going out about six months before the book is released because what your publisher is going to be trying to do is get buzz around it. Get people to say like, Oh yeah, I'll write a review on it. Get a blurb that they can stick on the back cover for when the final release is well released.
Rekka:05:43 Mmmhmm.
Kaelyn: 05:43 Um, you want people to read this book and the people reading it know, this isn't the final.
Rekka:05:50 Okay.
Kaelyn: 05:50 They're not getting this and going, oh my God, this ugh - didn't put the commas in the right place.
Rekka:05:55 Commas aren't voice. What the hell?
Kaelyn: 05:57 Yeah, no, that should be taken care of by the. [laughs] The publishers are sending it to them in hopes of them getting it and going, wow, this is really great, I'm going to write a review on it. There is this book and it's awesome and I loved it and here's all the great stuff I loved about it and you should go buy it.
Rekka:06:12 Mmmhmm.
Kaelyn: 06:12 We're all trying to generate sales here. We're all trying to make money.
Rekka:06:16 So this is a marketing tool, you would say?
Kaelyn: 06:18 Yes, I would definitely call it a marketing tool. It is to generate interest in the book. Your ARC is a very precious, very special thing that I think a lot of people underestimate the importance of, you know, we came back from the Nebulas a bit ago and Rekka actually got the unique chance to hand out some of her own ARCs.
Rekka:06:40 Yes. And so I got very nervous because, um, Kaelyn said to me as she opened the box, don't just give these to anybody.
Kaelyn: 06:51 Yes.
Rekka:06:52 So apparently there's an audience for ARC that is more worthy than another.
Kaelyn: 06:57 It's not that there is an audience that is more worthy. It's that there is an audience that is going to do more for you and -
Rekka:07:05 Right.
Kaelyn: 07:05 I know, you know, I'm going to come in and be the coldhearted publisher here, but, and something I keep saying, at the end of the day, we're all here to sell the book. So if you, you know, in this case only have a limited number of these that were shipped to the conference.
Rekka:07:19 Right.
Kaelyn: 07:21 You have shipped -
Rekka:07:22 Hand delivered.
Kaelyn: 07:22 Hand delivered, hand delivered to the conference. You have to, you can't just hand them out to your friends at that point. Your ARCs are to get people to pay attention to your book. So you want to get them into the hands of people that are going to take the time, spend the time with these, and hopefully say something nice about them. They're going to put some thought into it. They're not just going to, you know, put it in a pile and go like, oh, I guess I'll read that eventually.
Rekka:07:48 Right. And let's just be straightforward. This is a short run of your book. So they are also expensive.
Kaelyn: 07:53 They are expensive. Yeah. They're, this is not, you know, obviously if you're at one of the bigger publishing houses, this is, you know, whatever, you just make however many, how many will be printed, depends on the book. I don't have an answer to that. It can be a hundred to 500. It could be, you know, any number of them. But also ARCs are sent out digitally now -
Rekka:08:14 Yes.
Kaelyn: 08:14 -as well.
Rekka:08:15 Some people prefer them digitally
Kaelyn: 08:16 Some people prefer them digitally.
Rekka:08:17 Which is a shame because if they have the final cover art on them, that sort of loses a little bit of the glamour.
Kaelyn: 08:23 Yeah.
Rekka:08:23 Because there are people who take a photo of the books that arrive in the mail that day.
Kaelyn: 08:28 I always get so excited whenever I see one of our books and like someone's stack and I'm like,
Rekka:08:32 It's always a stack. So make sure your spine is pretty too.
Kaelyn: 08:34 Yeah. Um, and that's actually the thing. People get a lot of these.
Rekka:08:38 Yeah.
Kaelyn: 08:38 Yeah and it's a lot of work to read and review those kinds of things. So like most people especially, you know, if you're just like, you have a blog that gets attention or you just, you know, run a website where you do this kind of stuff, sending someone an ARC is not a guarantee that they're going to review it.
Rekka:08:52 Right.
Kaelyn: 08:52 There's actually a very good chance that they won't -
Rekka:08:54 Just because of the quantity of ARCs they receive.
Kaelyn: 08:57 I mean, you do it anyway because it's an industry norm. Like, I mean, I think they're fun. I really like them. One of my favorite things is sending out all the Parvus Arcs. I love um, you know, like you get the giant box of them and like it's really cool because I'm usually the first person to see the physical copy of this book.
Rekka:09:14 Yeah, mmmhmm.
Kaelyn: 09:14 And it's like, it's so pretty, it's everything I imagined it would be. Um, so that's, that's a treat with me because at Parvus, I'm the one who send out the ARCs just cause I like doing it.
Rekka:09:28 Yup, yup. and you have a big table that you have access to.
Kaelyn: 09:30 I have a big table that I spread out on and you know, put everything in. And um, one of the things I do, because this is the thing is everyone gets bombarded with these is I always try to do something a little special to the books. I tried to wrap them in a way that's thematic to the book. So, um, cause I really, I don't know what it is. I don't know why I just really like dealing with and sending out the ARCs cause they're special.
Rekka:09:54 Yeah. They're like, these are the, the new baby announcements. These are the -
Kaelyn: 09:59 Yeah it is, it is just the new little baby that has come into the, come into the world. It's like, wow, this really exists now.
Rekka:10:05 It's really happening.
Kaelyn: 10:06 Yeah.
Rekka:10:07 Yeah. So that's as an as an author.
Kaelyn: 10:09 Yeah.
Rekka:10:10 That's the exciting part for me. It's like, oh my gosh, look, it really exists. As you're really going through with this, like, yeah, we're doing this, we're doing this. And my Gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, and here's my cover and here's what it looks like printed. And there's just something so lovely about seeing the cover, not as a .jpeg.
Kaelyn: 10:26 And holding it, and just being like, oh my God, like it's a book
Rekka:10:29 It's a real thing.
Kaelyn: 10:30 Like for real now,
Rekka:10:31 Like I said, all the words in order and everything -
Kaelyn: 10:32 And I wrote those words!
Rekka:10:34 Yes and oh my gosh, now I have to decide who gets to read those words and oh my gosh, who's was just going to help me because I'm scared.
Kaelyn: 10:41 So you know what actually we brought up a good thing is that, did you notice who gets the ARCs here?
Rekka:10:47 Sure.
Kaelyn: 10:47 It's not sure the author, right? It's the publisher.
Rekka:10:50 I happened to be in the building where they arrived.
Kaelyn: 10:53 Rekka just happened to be there because we were at this conference.
Rekka:10:55 Mmmhmm.
Kaelyn: 10:57 Um, but we get the ARCs.
Rekka:11:00 Right.
Kaelyn: 11:00 Not the author because we're the ones who decide who they go to.
Rekka:11:06 Yeah.
Kaelyn: 11:07 Now, I mean authors definitely, you know, like if you have someone that's like, Hey, talk to this person, and they said they'd be happy to send a review, absolutely we're going to send them a -
Rekka:11:14 Right.
Kaelyn: 11:15 - a copy of that. Um, but authors, you guys don't get to decide who the ARCs get sent to because the publishers are the ones with the relationships -
Rekka:11:25 The familiarity with the process.
Kaelyn: 11:26 Exactly. Yeah. And also, you know, the like I sent handwritten notes with a lot of our ARCs where it's like, hey, you know, you really liked this other thing we sent to you. Maybe you've enjoyed this.
Rekka:11:36 Right.
Kaelyn: 11:38 Again, authors, you guys don't have as much control over this process as you think you do.
Rekka:11:43 Okay, but now having said that, what if somebody is self publishing and decides they want to send physical or even digital arts, how would they decide who should receive them?
Kaelyn: 11:53 Well, there's a few ways to do that. And um, it is one of those kind of like trade things of how I get my list of physical addresses to
Rekka:12:02 Right.
Kaelyn: 12:02 send this to. And that is one of the biggest parts of this, you know, but there are people that do review blogs and different stuff that will just say like, Hey, if you want to send me a review copy, this is where you send it to.
Rekka:12:14 Yup.
Kaelyn: 12:14 Um, so finding that on your own is just a matter of digging. There's really no good way to do it. I'm sure there's like websites and resources and stuff, but you know, take everything with a grain of salt,
Rekka:12:25 Right. Be careful about submitting your advanced copy to a site that you're not that familiar with as a self publisher. You might find yourself on a pirated site as a result of going through these. Instafreebie was a thing for a while that people were using for advanced review copies. And I think that backfired. It might've even, I think they've changed the way instareview works these days.
Kaelyn: 12:47 I think so. I will say Netgalley is an excellent resource.
Rekka:12:51 Netgalley is pricey, but it's supposedly going to get you the higher quality reviews that you're going to be hoping for. Um, Reedsy now has a book discovery, um, process for the same sort of thing, but you only get one review through that. Um, but it's supposedly a higher quality review and if it's a good review then they feature it. So in theory you're getting exposed to more. Um, but you know, look at the audiences of the people that you're sending it to. Look at the, the quality of their reviews, look at the types of things they tend to say. If you are looking to collect, um, quotes that you can put on your cover, you need them not to be reviews that don't get around to the point until the end of the paragraph and don't really put it in a short pithy phrase that you can lift.
Kaelyn: 13:36 Yeah. Anything you pull for like a blurb is going to be a sentence.
Rekka:13:40 A tweet length.
Kaelyn: 13:41 Yeah, a tweet like as a good is a good marker for them. Aside from sending out the actual physical books. Um, we use Netgalley and a couple other sites. Um, and what that allows us to do is give access to the book to people that maybe aren't on our list -
Rekka:13:57 But they're seeking.
Kaelyn: 13:57 But they're seeking.
Rekka:13:59 Yeah.
Kaelyn: 14:00 And they're interested in reading this kind of stuff. So that's, that's a great tool too. But we do still send out the physical books. It's just something that's never going to go away. So that's, you know, that's who is getting, get the ARCs now. What are they going to do with them? Well, there's a very good chance they're going to sit in a stack of books that they will get to eventually.
Rekka:14:18 Eventually. Maybe after release date.
Kaelyn: 14:20 People that are doing these get, I mean dozens every month and even if you did nothing else but sit there and read them, I don't think you'd finish -
Rekka:14:30 Right.
Kaelyn: 14:31 - all of these. A lot of times having a personal relationship will help with that. Um, you know, publishers will kind of, you know, talk to someone beforehand or maybe someone through the author that they know to say like, oh, hey, would you be willing to, to give this a read and give us a review? We'd like to use you for a blurb. So I don't want to paint the picture of spamming people -
Rekka:14:52 Right.
Kaelyn: 14:52 With this in the hopes that one of them pick it up. But you do do some of that because you know, sometimes a book just catches someone's eye, but review copies are also sent up digitally and that one definitely can be more of a like, hey, everyone read this.
Rekka:15:06 Yeah.
Kaelyn: 15:06 So what are they going to do with that? Let's say they picked it up, they're going to read it. And depending on if they, you know, had talked to the publisher beforehand about like, Hey, would you do this, you know, this specific kind of review or you know, interview about it. Some people will just pick it up and write a review on it and say like, you know, I really liked this. This part was lacking. Those are going to be the honest reviews you get.
Rekka:15:30 Yeah.
Kaelyn: 15:30 And those are the ones that are a little scary.
Rekka:15:31 Yes.
Kaelyn: 15:32 Usually if it's going through the publisher and the person will have already kind of had an understanding of what the book is going to be and agree to do it so that they don't have to then be put in the awkward position of writing. I wasn't super into this.
Rekka:15:45 Yeah. Sometimes you're going to get people that you don't have that specific agreement with ahead of time that you know, find it through Netgalley and they might -
Kaelyn: 15:55 And that's a risk.
Rekka:15:56 And that's a risk. Um, Netgalley does allow you to require to approve requests for the ARCs and you could take a look at their profile and say like, you only read erotica. I do not want you to read my space opera.
Kaelyn: 16:08 Yeah.
Rekka:16:08 You know, um, cause that's a risk that happened to me once with, um, a site that I was using to host my ebooks. I did not realize had added the ebooks to a public list and somebody who was very much into Christian books and Erotica.
Kaelyn: 16:24 Oh, interesting.
Rekka:16:25 Read the book and left me a review on Amazon that said, it's slow to start, but it gets there and I'm like, it doesn't get where you thought it was going, but all right.
Kaelyn: 16:35 [laughs]
Rekka:16:35 And it was a three star review and then I'm stuck with it. You know, that's just a funny anecdote aside, but it is, um, if you can, you know, vet the, the service that you're using to gather advanced reviewers, um, and then have one specifically that either makes you or your listing private so that you have, you are sending out the link and that's the only way to get it. Or you send it to specific email addresses and it has to be tied to those email addresses or um, something like Netgalley where you at least have to take a look at the person's profile and say, yeah, I don't really, you have no history of actually publishing reviews once you've read it, so I'm not interested in you.
Kaelyn: 17:11 There are ways to control this and um, you know, there's ways you can make it so that people aren't just going to read a free book and there's was around it. And um, you know, there's, you have some degree of control over this. Um, now also though, exercising that degree of control can reduce the amount of reviews and exposure your book gets.
Rekka:17:53 So it's a trade off.
Kaelyn: 17:54 Yeah. Um, so that's kind of what's going to happen when the ARCs go out into the world.
Rekka:18:03 So when you are collecting blurbs from industry professionals or industry readers or you are collecting reviews from other ARC readers, what's the goal? Like when you, when you launched the book, what are you hoping to have?
Kaelyn: 18:17 By the end of it, what I'm hoping to have is a solid set of reviews, a solid set of blurbs. And people saying they liked the book.
Rekka:18:26 Okay.
Kaelyn: 18:26 There isn't a, you must have this many. It depends on the scale of the launch, you know, if it's like, you know, Chuck Wendigs "Wanderers" is coming out soon and like that's already got -
Rekka:18:40 There's stuff everywhere for that.
Kaelyn: 18:41 There's stuff everywhere for it, it's got dozens of reviews. And if you're working with like a more independent publisher like Parvus yes, we will absolutely target certain things and we will still come in good and strong, but it's not going to be, you know, the scale and scope that something from like Simon and Schuster -
Rekka:18:57 Right.
Kaelyn: 18:58 Is going to generate. Um, but even, you know, certain things from it depends on how much money they want to put into the marketing.
Rekka:19:05 Right.
Kaelyn: 19:05 And that's an uncomfortable thing to hear. And ARCs are part of the marketing, but they're not the whole of the market.
Rekka:19:11 Right.
Kaelyn: 19:12 They're actually a small fraction of it, in terms of marketing.
Rekka:19:16 They're a level of social proof that, you know, this isn't an untested book. Someone has read it, enjoyed it. Don't be afraid to check it out.
Kaelyn: 19:25 Yeah. So now you might be wondering, well, what's in my ARC? When do I know this book is quote unquote ready for ARCs? A lot of this has to do with publishing calendars. One working on a book takes a while. So right off the bat, that's probably bare minimum six to nine months, probably longer than that, depending on the editor's calendar. So then when the book's done, there's a lot of stuff to do with it afterwards. And all of that considered you need at least six months, maybe even eight or nine to start putting the book out there to generate interest in buzz and send out advanced copies. Right. Six months I think is pretty standard. So that's half a year right there. Right. And then you're figuring out everything in the lead up to that. So if you're going, well, if it's six months beforehand, what happens in those six months after. You finish the book?
Rekka:20:24 Right [laughs]
Kaelyn: 20:25 Yeah. Um, and I shouldn't say finish it as in finishing writing it, but this is when it's maybe some touches, some line that it's definitely copy, you know, a real true copy edit. You may get feedback from your reviewers that are like this thing, heres not working.
Rekka:20:45 Yeah. I would blurb this except for this major thing.
Kaelyn: 20:50 And then, hey, guess what?
Rekka:20:52 You're going to take that thing out.
Kaelyn: 20:53 You're going to go back and work on the book a little more.
Rekka:20:54 Yeah.
Kaelyn: 20:55 Um, because we're in a digital age, it's so much easier to fix these things and send them out again. You know? So like if a publisher is feeling a little iffy on a book, maybe they'll send it out a little earlier, get some early feedback. Rekka has firsthand experience in a pretty, not significant, but not small changes that were made after ARCs went out
Rekka:21:18 They were not line edits, they, they were, uh, we got feedback on the ARCs which, um, caused us to go in and correct a couple of small points that were overcorrections based on earlier feedback.
Kaelyn: 21:33 By the way, they were great, you know, great corrections. Your book absolutely is, well, I mean, it was already amazing, but
Rekka:21:39 It's improved for having made these corrections -
Kaelyn: 21:40 And getting that back is not, uh, this sucks. And sometimes it's like, hey, look, we got this feedback.
Rekka:21:46 Yeah. And this feedback is something we want to act on because of the source of the feedback or the nature of the feedback or you know, this was not something we'd thought carefully about at the time when we were, you know, doing structural edits. But now that it's, you know, got a spotlight on it, we're realizing, yeah, taken, taken as it is in this moment. We don't want to publish it this way.
Kaelyn: 22:09 Yeah, you know, I think a lot of people listening to this might think, Oh God, like so they can just go back and make me change all of these things after the book is done. Let me be very clear about something that is not a decision any publisher would make lightly.
Rekka:22:20 No.
Kaelyn: 22:21 Um,
Rekka:22:21 But if in that moment you already know that that book should have been put out differently, you still have a chance to change it and in two years you're going to wish that you changed this.
Kaelyn: 22:34 And don't think of it as a frustration. Think of it as an opportunity to get a little bit of a do over a little bit of you get to time travel a bit here. You get to go back and fix something.
Rekka:22:46 Now, if that feedback came in on a review site, that review may be there forever. But um, that's, you know, eventually it will get buried more or something, you know. But um, it's, it's not like you can pretend it never happened, but it is a chance to show that like, yeah, I'm going to take that feedback and I'm going to do what I can to correct it versus, uh, nope, it's good, it's good, it's fine, you're wrong. And you know, shouting down the reviewer.
Kaelyn: 23:16 You know, the other thing here is don't, don't think that your publisher is taking every review and going, oh my God, this thing they didn't like, we need to fix it.
Rekka:23:25 I have, I have gone to Colin again, you know, this is my, I have a personal relationship with, with Parvus Press. I've gone to Colin and said, I saw that review that just posted. He's like, don't worry about it.
Kaelyn: 23:34 Yeah.
Rekka:23:34 That's wrong. Don't worry about it. It's an off the mark.
Kaelyn: 23:36 It is and, I will say it can be very frustrating, especially like you know, especially for the writer but like as the editor and I know what people at home were probably screaming into their listening devices at this point is well Kaelyn. You always say if a lot of people are saying it, then it's something you need to take into account.
Rekka:23:52 Mmmhmm.
Kaelyn: 23:54 Here's the thing you need to understand about reviewers. I won't say they have an agenda because they don't, a lot of times they just enjoy doing these things, but there are definitely people that something maybe they wouldn't read review this book except something bothered them about it so they need to go online and set it right.
Rekka:24:12 I mean this is the age of the Internet where we go online to complain about things.
Kaelyn: 24:16 We also go online to galvanize things.
Rekka:24:18 Yeah.
Kaelyn: 24:18 We would go online to, you know like, and I really wish we'd have more of that in the world. Talk about things you love.
Rekka:24:24 Oh my gosh right now that what you will hear people screaming about, it's still won't be out when we air this episode is Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir and Kaelyn is making a face because Kaelyn has not gotten to read this yet
Kaelyn: 24:37 I have not gotten an advanced copy of that and I'm not happy.
Rekka:24:40 As soon as mine comes back, I will, I will loan it to you. Um, you will have to let Ryan read it over your shoulder because I've also promised it to him. This book is amazing and it's just a -
Kaelyn: 24:50 Ryan Kelley, by the way, is Rekka's editor-
Rekka:24:53 I suppose we should introduce him.
Kaelyn: 24:55 And she's not sure who you're more tied to here.
Rekka:24:58 Well I see you more often.
Kaelyn: 25:00 That's true.
Rekka:25:00 I haven't met Ryan in person yet and Ryan and I talk when I've done something wrong. Um,
Kaelyn: 25:07 [laughter]
Rekka:25:07 But um, yeah, so like that's what I mean. Like the gal - , you will go on Twitter -
Kaelyn: 25:11 Yes.
Rekka:25:11 and you will just see people are screaming their heads off in love with this book for good reason.
Kaelyn: 25:16 And I am, I love seeing that kind of stuff. I love when to use the example of Gidion the Ninth and generating buzz. For instance, the way I first heard about this book was our
Rekka:25:27 Mutual friend.
Kaelyn: 25:28 Mutual friend Alexandra Rowland.
Rekka:25:29 Alex was showing our other mutual friend -
Kaelyn: 25:33 Yes. Yes, that was it.
Rekka:25:33 Jennifer Mace, Macy at the table. I already had read mine or it was halfway through mine or something at that point. And um, I was able to pick it up, show it to Kaelyn and say, you need to read this book at some point, open it up to a random page and find an amazing like line that was just like evidence of why this book was great. And the buzz at that table, there were four people sitting at that table at that point -
Kaelyn: 25:58 All talking about this.
Rekka:26:00 All talking about this one book two people who haven't read it yet, who now had to read it. And that's the power of, that's the magic review copy
Kaelyn: 26:08 That's the magic of ARCs. You know, I don't think anyone actually does this. I'd be curious if people really go through and look for the differences. If you got the ARC and then you get the final copy, I'm sure for certain books that are super fans that will do that
Rekka:26:22 Well, for Salvage, they're are going to be some obvious differences.
Kaelyn: 26:25 Yes.
Rekka:26:28 Um, Salvage -
Kaelyn: 26:28 Let's talk about that. What the difference between, you know, how different can you expect an ARC to be from your final copy?
Rekka:26:36 We mentioned earlier that an ARC may not be produced in the same print run style that the final would be, which might make it more expensive, but we'll also create differences in the paper and the, the trim and things like that.
Kaelyn: 26:52 We'll put a picture of this up on Twitter and Instagram. But, um, we, we were going out to the Nebulas and we were like, you know what, we've got to get Salvage out because
Rekka:27:02 I'll be there.
Kaelyn: 27:04 Rekka, will be there. But also we're really excited about this and we're like, it would be a wasted opportunity to not just have a bag with, you know, a few of these that we can hand out. Right.
Rekka:27:12 And when I say that I'll be there. I didn't mean because they need to give me an ARC to make me feel happy and pretty.
Kaelyn: 27:18 No, it's -
Rekka:27:18 It's because I will be there making personal connections with people and here's a great chance to hand them the ARC.
Kaelyn: 27:25 Yeah.
Rekka:27:26 If immediately following or whatever.
Kaelyn: 27:28 Yeah.
Rekka:27:28 That conversation.
Kaelyn: 27:29 Yeah. And if the ARCs handed to you by the author, it's, and it's an extra little special, you know, so we were like, okay, we're going to do this. And we used a different printer than we normally do just because of where we could fit into the printer's schedule. But we did use a local printer so that they were just right there and they use very, very nice paper.
Rekka:27:49 It's very nice.
Kaelyn: 27:49 It's really nice paper. It made the book about half an inch thicker.
Rekka:27:55 Over 576 pages as it turns out, 0.0006 inches of difference in paper thickness adds up to .4 inches.
Kaelyn: 28:05 Yeah.
Rekka:28:05 In spine width, so we'll put a picture up of the, the Nebula version of the ARCs next to Flotsam and next to the final version of the ARCs that were printed later.
Kaelyn: 28:15 Yeah. So, and that is something you also see with ARCs is a lot of times the book looks at, the only way I can describe it is as awkward [laughter] and just you pick it up and you're kind of like, I know this isn't quite right. Yeah. Um, but yeah, this, this was -
Rekka:28:32 There's some growing pains and -
Kaelyn: 28:33 Yeah this is, uh quite a quite a size. So it's, um, it's cool to have hold to have those.
Rekka:28:37 It's a massive chunky book.
Kaelyn: 28:40 Yeah. So, but anyway, um, there's going to be differences in Salvage from what the ARC is to a final print run.
Rekka:28:51 And some of that is just going to be simple, like the cover is going to look slightly different because the ARC binding has -
Kaelyn: 28:59 Was so thick.
Rekka:29:00 Well pull that. Well, yeah. Okay. So the spine is going to be very different. Therefore the weight of the book is going to be different. But also there's a red band across the outside of the cover that says on it, um, uncorrected advanced review, um, and the dates that it will be published there. Um, therefore all the, the titling stuff has moved down and adjusted. Um, the back cover copy is not the final back cover copy. This is more like, you know, why you should open this ARC versus the ARC that came the same day to your PO Box. Um, and the artwork on the inside I have supplied because I draw the chapter art for my own books. Um, this is not expected of all authors by the way.
Kaelyn: 29:40 That's not even usually tolerated and everything.
Rekka:29:43 Right. So I, I do have a professional background in design.
Kaelyn: 29:46 So anyway ....
Rekka:29:48 So anyway, so Salvage, uh, currently the ARCs have the same chapter art from Flotsam because the chapters themselves have different POV characters. And just on the timeline, I don't think there was a chance to really sit down with the, um, with the layout person who was not me in this case and say like, okay, it's chapters one, seven, 11, 12 and 13. This art, this art, this art.
Kaelyn: 30:14 Yeah.
Rekka:30:14 So that was just a layer of complexity that wasn't going to happen on the timeline that we had. Um, so there will be different artwork on the inside. I didn't look whether Colin did his typical copyright page malarkey.
Kaelyn: 30:30 Do you want to go grab the book and find out?
Rekka:30:32 Yeah, I'll find out.
Kaelyn: 30:33 I'll tell the story, our publisher, Colin Coyle, who I promise we will have on the show at some point, um, has a fun little thing he likes to do that there is an Easter egg in every Parvus book. Um, they're not always on the, uh,
Rekka:30:49 I've seen this in something else. So this is not uh specific to Salvage. He must've lifted it from something else.
Kaelyn: 30:54 Oh okay, yeah. Um, we have a little running joke at Parvus that there's an Easter egg in every book.
Rekka:31:01 On the copyright page.
Kaelyn: 31:02 Not always on the copyright page.
Rekka:31:04 Oh dear.
Kaelyn: 31:05 A lot of times, not always,
Rekka:31:07 Alright, alright.
Kaelyn: 31:07 But usually you can find at least one on the copyright page. So, you know, the whole point is that at the end when the final version of Salvage comes out, it's going to be different. It's not going to be majorly different.
Rekka:31:19 But if you were selling this on Ebay, please don't, um, you would be able to point to like, yes, this is the version you're looking for because, um, evidenced by these various differences.
Kaelyn: 31:31 Yup. So, um, that's, you know, how do you know when your book's ready for an ARC? We were kind of talking about this a little bit with the calendar. Really it kind of falls into your book is scheduled to be released this date. That means we have to start sending out ARCs by this time.
Rekka:31:48 And there are also, um, publications that you might send it to in the hopes of like a starred review.
Kaelyn: 31:53 Yeah.
Rekka:31:53 And they have a very, they're very tight grace period of when they need to receive it by. So I say very long grace period. That's the opposite of what I mean, they have a very short window of opportunity. If you don't have it in by this date, it's not going to even be looked at.
Kaelyn: 32:10 They're not going to look at it. So, um, when is your ARC done? Hopefully at least six months beforehand. Even if it's not done. But that's the thing. Your ARC is not your finished book.
Rekka:32:22 Right.
Kaelyn: 32:22 So when is your book done? That's completely separate issue from when your ARCs are ready to go out.
Rekka:32:27 That can be 6:00 PM on the day that it needs to be uploaded to Amazon.
Kaelyn: 32:30 If you're self publishing.
Rekka:32:31 Self publishing, yeah.
Kaelyn: 32:33 But if you're, you know, being, if you're going through a traditional publishing house and if you're distributed they don't need as much run time.
Rekka:32:39 But like -
Kaelyn: 32:40 They need some cause they have to order a print the books.
Rekka:32:42 Yes.
Kaelyn: 32:43 Um, and you know, we are living in a day and age where that happens much faster now.
Rekka:32:48 But it still physically takes time. Like there's, there's a certain amount of time that it takes for the ink to dry on the page before they can bind it. There's a certain amount of time that it takes for the trimmer to cut through the, the massive, you know, oversized book and cut it down to its final trim size. Like these things just, you know -
Kaelyn: 33:06 They just take time.
Rekka:33:07 It takes Kaelyn a certain number of seconds to open an email and that limits how many submissions she can go through it.
Kaelyn: 33:14 I can go through, yup.
Rekka:33:14 Like it is just a physical limitation of the, you know, construct of time.
Kaelyn: 33:20 Yup. The construct of time. It is a construct.
Rekka:33:23 It's totally a construct because where does it go?
Kaelyn: 33:25 Erm, eh yes.
Rekka:33:27 So speaking of where does time go? We are out of time for this episode, but I -
Kaelyn: 33:31 Already?
Rekka:33:32 Yeah.
Kaelyn: 33:32 I even got to get back to my roots and give a little history lesson in the beginning.
Rekka:33:35 Yeah. Are you happy? Do you feel fulfilled?
Kaelyn: 33:37 Um, I don't have any undergraduates, uh, looking at me, very bored. So -
Rekka:33:42 So you feel like you did it wrong?
Both: 33:45 [laughter]
Kaelyn: 33:45 I feel a little better than I normally did. As always. I hope this was, uh, entertaining and educational.
Rekka:33:52 Yeah. And if you have any questions that we didn't answer about ARCs, uh, you can shoot us a question at WMBcast on Instagram or Twitter. You can follow us and, or support us at patreon.com/wmbcast or email us at feedback@wmbcast.com. But, um, yeah, so ARCs are extremely cool. I hope everyone gets to look at an ARC someday -
Kaelyn: 34:13 Yeah, and check out Netgalley. It's free to sign up for and you get to read and find a lot of really cool stuff on there.
Rekka:34:18 Yes.
Kaelyn: 34:19 Um, so you know, if you're looking, if you're interested in being involved in that kind of thing, Netgalley is a great place to start. And then you know, you can go on Goodreads, you can go on Amazon and say like, I got an advanced copy of this -
Rekka:34:30 And maybe in a future episode we'll talk about like how to structure a review that is going to be useful for a lot.
Kaelyn: 34:36 I've got thoughts.
Rekka:34:37 Yeah, we've got thoughts I've got, there are definitely thoughts. So maybe that's a future episode or we're thrown on Patrion or something like that if it doesn't end up a full length episode. But I feel like we could rant about that 45 minutes.
Kaelyn: 34:46 I'm not sure anyone's going to want to listen to it.
Rekka:34:48 Yeah, you know, you know, emoting and commiseration are things that -
Kaelyn: 34:52 We'll do a dial in, call us and tell us your, you know, so, um, yes.
Rekka:34:57 So the other thing is if you are self publishing and you don't know how you're going to get an ARCs, you can get ARCs through kindle direct publishing. You can also upload your file to lulu.com or other, um, small -
Kaelyn: 35:10 Print on demand.
Rekka:35:11 Print on demand services and you can see it in person first. And honestly, I really feel like you should before you release it into the world because there's things that you just might not consider when you've only looked at it in a digital space. So that's another good reason to look at an ARC even though that's not really the traditional function of them. They're not the proofs, um, the cover proofs or anything like that. We're talking about, um, use in promoting your book, but order one before you order 20 is all I'm saying, if you haven't seen it in print before.
Kaelyn: 35:40 Yeah. So, you know, thanks so much for listening. Everyone and -
Rekka:35:42 Send us your questions. If you could rate and review us on iTunes, that would be great. And if you have a friend who is interested in writing or publishing, send them this episode, share it. You can help guide the conversation and sort of be part of it. So, uh, we'll look forward to hearing your comments and your ratings and reviews, and we'll start reading reviews in a future episode. We do have a couple, we just haven't fit that into the episode yet.
Kaelyn: 36:03 Yes. Alright. Thanks so much for listening everyone, and we'll see you next time.
Rekka:36:07 Take care everyone.