Melva Gifford

These are notes from Life the Universe and Everything. Any inaccurderecy is the fault of the note taker. by Larry Careera.

Once you write for a living:
– Set the best time for you to write. The muse will kill you. You must write. Takes years to break into the business. Get a degree that will make you good money until you can go full time as writing. Figure out your expense and how much income you need to survive. When you are losing money because you’re doing a day job it is time to quit.
– Involve your printer in your decision.
– Branding: whatever gets you a relationship with your fans?
– Don’t copy someone else.
– One author branding is very scattered. No one knows what to follow or what product to buy.
Q& A:
– Advance: when a publisher buys a book they will give you an advance of __ against royalties. You have to earn it out. Royalty is how much you make per book. (8% on paper book price. If you don’t earn back your advance you are earn-out from a publisher, they consider you a loser. The average may be 10K. There is a time delay. You sell a book it takes a year for a book to be published. Have to wait on royalty because the publisher has to wait for returns from the bookstore. Called remainders covers ripped off. When a newspaper shows big advance the one person so the public sees them as a successful writer. Jim Butcher has a lot of books and shows his success. Visit a book store can see how many books on a shelf show your success. If you have staff in a store who is your fan you can sell more books.
– Branding; success breeds success. The more you look successful people treat you as you are successful.
– Author employees: Very few authors have staff. They have to meet certain criteria. Many writers will hire an assistant. Most of them get one for their ego. If you are busy enough you can hire. Some staff maybe a friend who has not been as successful.
– Bidding war: is a publicity stunt.
– Series verses of the backlist. Make sure the first book of a series is self-contained. In case it is not a winner. Book series do well in the backlist. Every time a fan sees the next book on a series they will buy the prior book of the series. People don’t want to read a series until they know that there will be an end of the series.
– Choose a CPA: such as carber floraic and James recommended. (note taker tried to google them but was unsuccessful. Things can only be counted as a business expense you can’t do my job without this.

Time management:
– You need to pay attention to return on investments. Make sure you get your money’s worth in that product and how much to crate and how to market. You need to pay the artwork that it fits that book and matches the book. Your cover needs to be something you click for. $500 bucks cost for a cover. Don’t try to crews you hire.
– Any business you are going to form a reputation. AS a writer you will get a reputation for what you like to work with. His reputation is writing to speck get a quality product and in the word count. So pay your artists that pay a reasonable write. Don’t be the person who screws over someone else.
– Don’t do anything for free. (For storytelling it was suggested that there be a swap of services) you need to do it for a reason. Don’t squander your skills just for exposure. (Maybe compensate)
More branding:
– Don’t lie
– You want to emphasize the positives.
– Some will complain about the edits of their book and whine about everything they do. When others see the constant negative talk people don’t work with you. Positive is essential.
– Want to associate with other authors who will put the energy they will promote you and you promote them. It is not a competition. A rising tide raises all votes. Point out the positive attributes of other people. Create a little community yourself of others who have the same mindset. Payback for those who helped you and payback for future writers. Supporting others can set the mindset that writers owe you favors. He will sometimes book bomb a writer who he likes. He will read some of that author’s books and recommend them to his fan if he thinks they will like them. Then they will choose a date to book bomb that author’s books. Like them as a person and like to promote them. And recommend to fans and everyone bye the book. Build that community of positive support.
– Barnes B Nobel is the biggest bookseller. It is now new ownership.
Ancillary products:
– Is anything that is related to the brand. Boosted income by creating two role-playing games. Comic books also did kick start for a project, zipper lighters, and mugs. You can do products that are in-jokes with fans. Gun provider branded bullets his logo. Another fan did tomahawks with his logo. Calendars,
– You need to be cool about it.
– The T-shirt needs to have a cool logo.
– Rights and other products involve the publishers. Don’t give extra rights if the publisher doesn’t do anything with it.
– If the contract does not mention something you need to make sure it is defiantly not under their control.
How to Network:
– It goes down to your personality and how you interact with others.
– Personality types hinter or help in a lot in business. You may associate and work well with a similar type.
– Get your product before eyeballs:
– Indi question will be how much market you can reach.
Health insurance and retirement:
– You write until you die. Self-employed insurance is not as bad as rumored. There are brokers out there who sell out to regular insurance. It’s not cheap. With a family, his insurance is $1200 a month.
– Retirements: do IRA or a Simple IRA. You deduct from our taxes. Writers very seldom retire.
– If the backlist is out of print, you need to get rights back so you can publish it. Or put in an eBook.

These are notes from Life the Universe and Everything. Any inaccuracy is the fault of the note taker. by Larry Careera.

Traditional is awesome.
– He went independent because he was rejected 100 times.
– 99.99 rejection rate.
– Advantages of traditional. Publish house is supposed to help you in marketing. They are not very good at marketing. Some publishers will buy your book and not do anything for you and then reject you if you can’t return your advance.
– If you have a good relationship with your editor it’s fantastic. Some editors get editors who are the kiss of death. Editors kept kicking back the manuscript. Professional rout sometimes is not a great ticket.
Indi publishing:
– Get publisher to turn over books
– You get lost of 100K other authors. How do you get yourself to stand out?
– Either path you chose you need to have a good product. You need to figure out how to get your stuff in front of your audience.
– Don’t way around for the muse to inspire you. My muse is a mortgage.
Build your career
– by being prolific. The more you do it the better you get. The better house gets the more people will buy. And the more stuff (past items) they will go back to buy.
– Treat your writing like a job, not a hobby.
– Shakespeare was prolific.
– Michelangelo was always prolific
– The more you write the more you have a chance to be successful.
– You must understand most of the money you make is not on the hot book it comes from your backlist. It is the catalog of work you ruches. The larger your backlist the better for yourself.
– Each 6 mo. get a royalty check. And little items that are from the backlist.
– Most don’t quit their day job until 5-6 books in. you must keep putting new books out. You can get 5K books per book from your backlist. And if you have 20 books that are 20 times $5k from your backlist.
– Keep up with new books because your old books backlist drops and book stores no longer promote you. Most authors live off the backlist.
– You might get a hit book. That may not be enough if you have not learned to be prolific.
– Write books one after another that can get better each time.
– If you take 5-6 years to write a second book you lose your audience.
Agents:
– Take 15% of what you make. Anyone who takes money from you upfront, don’t use them. They’re predators. Money flows down. The agent takes a client you pay them nothing. The agent makes a sale. Gets $15% of the royalty. Agents are supposed to make better contract deals. Sometimes agents don’t understand the market like guns and monsters.
– If you enter into a contract and they don’t serve you. You can leave them.
– Publishers will screw you. Your agent’s job is to support you. Instead, you could have a contract attorney
A contract
– is an agreement between you and your publisher. It behooves you to read it and understand it. If you don’t understand it. Seek out a professional. There are some bad publishing houses that will have a bad contract. The contracts from small Utah publish houses and so predatory that they were known in England.
– The things you have to watch for. What rights are they getting?
– How long do they have to those rights?
– Is there a non-compete clause. If you write anything else we have the right of first approval. Want it forever and in any genera. If it competes with anything else we’ve purchased from you before then we have the power to prevent you to write that.
Sub rights:
– When you turn over a book, you agree to certain things. Publish a book in English and foreign language rights. Don’t sell your foreign rights. Don’t sell to other rights, if they don’t have a department assigned to those rights. Dan wells earns more money in Germany than in the US.
– Other important sub-rights: dramatic rights are movies and TV shows. If your publishing house does not have a Hollywood reprehensive then don’t sell your rights.
– Just because you sell your rights to Hollywood (an option) will pay you money to not let everyone else see it. Of Hollywood 100 options only about 1% goes into production.
– If your publisher has an audio section. If the publisher does not sell audiobooks. Make sure you get paid. Audiobooks get 1/3 income.
– Make sure the rights revert back to a point of time that is beneficial to you. Have them define a book in print that includes eBooks. If a publishing house goes out of business you can’t publish your book. Make sure you have a reversal of rights. Some authors approached publishers to get rights back.
Taxes:
– When you as a writer and get paid you are an independent contractor. You need to keep track of your own holding. You need to pay taxes. And get paid royalties. If you don’t pay taxes IRS will come in 3 yrs. and says you owe taxes and include fines and fees. Do not forget to pay your taxes. You need to report income. When you are at the level to pay mortgages you need to become an LLC. Most writers in Utah become an S corp (small corp. you need to incorporate your estate. Need to
– A tax professional can advise you what you can and cannot use as a tax expense. Rule of thumb of what you can deduct. Pigs get fat hogs get slathered. Computer, printer, etc. are legitimate expenses of a writing business. A big part of the presenter’s house counts because he works from home, so it counts as an expense. Go on a trip to count as an expense is questionable.
– Budgeting: you need to pay quarterly taxes. Fill in paperwork. Make good money to hire a CPA firm. Do not put it off the government will eat you.