HarperCollins to start new publishing company

[Tommie Lyn]

The new company, unnamed as yet, will offer no author advances but plans to give authors a 50 percent share of book profits:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/business/04harper.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[righter1]

This looks interesting, Tommie. Thanks for sharing!

It sounds like a revolutionary idea in the publishing industry. Though I'm still an 'outsider', having never been published, I can't help but think that these changes that will be tested with this new company would allow for more free-market advances in the publishing industry. Some of the things they do now, though they've been in practice for a long while, just don't seem to be keeping up with our changing economy.

[Rebecca]

Hmm, that is interesting. Thank you for posting it! :)

Rebecca

[Louchiere]

Looks promising! Thanks for sharing!

[writegirl1949]

Interesting ... but the article doesn't say how large their print runs will be ... which is the real problem with returns. The industry wants/expects large runs to call books a success -- that's putting it simply, I know.

So, without an investment in the author, which I believe is one of the reasons for advances in the first place, will they put less effort in marketing?

I say all of that to say this: it appears they might be recognizing what small publishers recognized years ago -- large print runs with no "guarantee" of selling offers little profit. Instead, small publishers have smaller print runs but offer authors a larger percentage.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I should probably forward the link to my (small) publisher.

Blessings, Francine

[lynnmosher]

Interestin, Tommie Lyn. Thanks for posting this.

[Trilby]

Totally new to me...I'm unpublished too...need to get to work...Thank you for sharing!

[michaelsnyder]

Reminds of Frank Zappa's strategy years and years ago. He got tired of fighting with his record company and decided to start his own. Frank (oddball that he was) knew within about 100 copies, just how many albums would sell. But he could never convince his former label to print THAT many copies. Instead they would order some preordained amount, either too many (lost money) or too few (couldn't ship) and made everyone miserable.

So Frank started Barking Pumpkin Records (I think that's right) and was able to not only have his supply meet his demand, but also pocketed a lot of money his former label could have made for themselves.

The moral of the story? No matter how much money you make, you still ought not name your kids Dweezil and Moon Unit.

As for this new Harper strategy, sounds like it could actually work. Just glad I don't have to be the guinea pig on this first go-round.

Mike

[swiftarrow23]

Enlightening, michaelsnyder. I'll make a note not to name my children Dweezil and Moon Unit. Thanks for the publishing tips and history piece as well.

[paulchernoch]

Frank's problem was choosing to name his daughter using English words. In Italian, "Moon Unit" becomes "Unità di luna". Rendered as a name, I'd spell it "Unitadiluna". Or to be more sonorous, "Anitadiluna". Then her nickname could be Anita. Concept preserved, but child not saddled with weird name.

In fact, I like it so much, I might name one of my characters Anitadiluna.

I have no clue how to sanitize Dweezil. However, the name on his birth certificate is 'Ian Donald Calvin Euclid Zappa'. Dweezil was his family nickname. It was Dweezil who insisted that his name be legally changed to Dweezil, which was originally his father's pet name for his wife Adelaide Gail's oddly-curled pinky-toe.

I should read more about the lives of rock stars. Makes for great backstory possibilities.

- Paul

[Tamera]

Frank's problem was choosing to name his daughter using English words. In Italian, "Moon Unit" becomes "Unità di luna". Rendered as a name, I'd spell it "Unitadiluna". Or to be more sonorous, "Anitadiluna". Then her nickname could be Anita. Concept preserved, but child not saddled with weird name.

In fact, I like it so much, I might name one of my characters Anitadiluna.

I have no clue how to sanitize Dweezil. However, the name on his birth certificate is 'Ian Donald Calvin Euclid Zappa'. Dweezil was his family nickname. It was Dweezil who insisted that his name be legally changed to Dweezil, which was originally his father's pet name for his wife Adelaide Gail's oddly-curled pinky-toe.

I should read more about the lives of rock stars. Makes for great backstory possibilities.

- Paul


Please don't saddle your child with the name Anitadeluna. :rolleyes::D

[tlm]

As for this new Harper strategy, sounds like it could actually work. Just glad I don't have to be the guinea pig on this first go-round.

I might be willing to to it just to get my book read. Couldn't be worse than my PA experience.

I made a profit--just not much.:(

[michaelsnyder]

No, I agree. I would definitely jump at it if the opportunity arose.

One thing I learned as I signed my deal is that an advance is really like a loan. The publisher is letting you borrow money against future sales. The good news is that you don't really have to pay it back if your books don't sell. The bad news is that if your books don't sell, your line of credit runs out and you don't get to publish more books!

So I think this new business model is probably a sound one. There's less risk for the publisher, which COULD mean less scrutiny on the author and his sales numbers. Essentially, everyone is on the same page...the more the book sells the happier everyone is. In my case, I may never see the first royalty check. But I may also have to live with the fact that I was a bad investment for Zondervan! (I envision myself wandering around my dusty village with a scarlet 'Z' on my chest...)

So it will be interesting to see how this flies. I really don't see a big downside.

[Tommie Lyn]

I've been mulling this over, and, perhaps I'm being cynical, but a couple of things came to mind.

First, since there will be no advances, the authors they are likely to attract could possibly be unagented, since agents are going to be interested in signing with a publisher where there is upfront money. Unagented authors will not "know the ropes," so to speak, and might not understand all the provisions of the contract. They might be duped into signing a contract that is not in their best interest.

Second, the 50% of profits sounds great compared to 10-15% -- however, what if the company takes a big chunk of the profits before dividing them, claiming that chunk of money is for "operating expenses," thereby lowering the amount of profit to be split between the company and the author. So, the actual author cut could end up being much, much less than 50%. How is the author to know whether or not he's being short-changed?

Ok. You who are more knowledgeable (and more trusting) than I, poke holes in my reasoning. Please.

[michaelsnyder]

Hah...just realized that my publisher is owned by Harper Collins! Maybe I'll be experiencing this new model first hand before I know it! (Now I don't feel quite so bold about its potential!!!)

[michaelsnyder]

Tommie Lyn,

Not sure if I can poke holes in your reasoning per se. But my initial thought is that agents will still be involved. I know in my case personally, my agent was fighting for every last little percentage point. So the leap from say 10% to 50% really could be huge.

But like anything else, everything needs to be hashed out and upfront before the contracts are signed. I really don't foresee Harper testing out this new strategy on brand new, unagented authors (but I could be wrong too?). It seems a more accurate way to test this strategy would be with a midlist author, someone close to outpacing their advance and collecting royalty checks. That way, they'd have a clear picture of the supply/demand before going to print. And the author would have a reasonable estimation of how much money they could make and how long it will take to get the checks.

The bottom line is that, if the books sell well, everyone makes more, regardless of the way the deal is structured.

But I'm just theorizing here. Who knows how it will all shake out? Should be interesting to watch either way.

[kriswrite]

Very interesting. I see pros and cons. For the publisher, it probably means increased profits. Publishers loose an awful lot of money through advances. On the other hand, their marketing is generally so poor (at least for most books published by a huge house like HarperCollins), this is largely their own fault. As an author, I'd worry that marketing support would be even worse than it currently is.

I do wonder how agents will deal with this.

Kristina

[kriswrite]

Here's a good piece on why the new 50-50 model isn't such a great deal for writers: http://ozandends.blogspot.com/2008/04/running-numbers-on-new-publishing-model.html