Other What's ruining your life right now?

My new book was supposed to launch in the UK on the 13th of November. The day came, went, and it changed to the 12th of December. Then it got pushed up to the 1st of December - progress!

Now it's the 1st of December, and Amazon's showing this:


There's supposed to be a big marketing push on this tomorrow. S'no bloody good if that's the message prospective buyers'll see, is it? Add on the fact that it takes "5 weeks transit" (apparently) for copies to get from Wiley US to Wiley UK, and that's the Xmas sales period missed.

Absolutely bloody gutted. Thanks, Wiley. You're well worth the 90% of net you pocket(!)

 

If I'm reading my previous emails right, they've shipped 1,400 copies into the UK. 1,400 copies of the *official* user guide - a designation I, not Wiley, worked to achieve, complete with a massive planned marketing push from the Micro:bit Educational Foundation that isn't costing Wiley a goddamn penny - into a market which was a million strong as of 2016. Oh, and getting any more copies will take five weeks - so bye-bye, Xmas sales period.

I'm absolutely spitting feathers. I can't believe Wiley's managed to waste this massive, massive opportunity. I've been working on this for a year now, and they've managed to destroy it at the very last minute. Skills.

 

Yup. Well, 10/12/14% tiered based on sales volume.

The book's RRP is a fairly steep £20.99 VAT-exempt. Net is half RRP, so that's £10.495 - call it £10.50. I get 10% of that, which is £1.05; Wiley gets the remainder, £9.45.

Welcome to the wonderful world of publishing!

 

'cos there are a bajillion authors and a far smaller number of publishers. Self-publishing was supposed to bring balance to the force - I could stick the thing up on CreateSpace as a print-on-demand title and be making closer to 60%, with the added bonus of it never being able to go out of stock - but there's so much self-published dross you just end up lost in the noise.

When there's a large number of sellers and a small number of buyers, the buyers set the terms - hence Wiley being able to get away with taking an obscene profit off the back of its authors.

Oh, and I haven't even *started* on advances. You know when a big author signs a "$10 million five-book deal?" Yeah, that $10 million is an advance on royalties - you get it either up-front or in stages during the books' production stages, then you don't earn a single penny in royalties until you've paid the whole thing back. This is called "earning out," and the vast majority of books never actually do it.

(I'm lucky in that all my previous books have easily earned out, but that's not stopping Wiley from trying to slash the advance on the next one in half "in case it doesn't sell well." The cheeky feckers.)

 

Hah! Hah! HAH! HAH! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA! <weeps>

Yeah, pretty much. The whole thing's very one-sided (and about to get significantly more one-sided if I agree to the new contract terms on my next one - things like the 10/12/14% tiered royalties for international sales (including the UK) being dropped for a flat 10% rate...)

 

I mean, technically I could sue 'em, 'cos you can sue anyone for anything at any time. I wouldn't win, though, 'cos they can afford significantly better legal representation than I can - and I'd kiss goodbye to ever working with any major publishers ever again, 'cos I'd be too big a risk.

So, effectively, no. I've sent one of my typical Halfacree Brand Snotty Emails™, which exist largely to make me feel better rather than in the expectation of achieving anything, to the senior editor, and that's about as much as I can do.

There's progress, though: it's now showing as "Ships when available in 1-2 days," which is promising. I'm not holding my breath, 'cos this is the same system that said it was coming out in November then changed its mind, but it'd be nice if it were right...