The Epic and Awesomely Awful and Yet Hilarious VERY BAD PUBLISHERS Series
This is the most popular thing I ever wrote, with over 500,000 hits.
I posted a first draft sometime around 2006, and have updated it several times since. There’s a few gruesome chapters behind may Patreon paywall that I’m not sure I want out in the big wide world yet. I posted it during the dark days when bloggers only get paid by ads, and then took it to Patreon and Substack, and lo, made more money on it than a publisher was offering me to publish it.
But here’s the links to the entire FREE TO READ Very Bad Publishers.
Enjoy.
I had committed to The Woman’s project for a dead low advance on the expectation of orders and sales promotion that would produce some real sales in the aggregate. In fact, the publisher did promote the project well (due in no small part to the fact that the writer was also the editor in chief). A great amount of time and effort was expended to sell this book.
And few were interested in buying it.
Since the advance was so low, and since reorder activity was not forthcoming, I kicked myself in the butt on a daily basis for making the most basic and stupid mistake of my career: taking a publisher’s word for their sales.
The actual sales on other GN’s in their line amounted to no more than this:
One book had sold 20,000 copies, but the fourth volume in the same series had sales that plummeted to 2,000 copies.
Ouch.
As editor in chief, The Woman claimed to me she had ordered the initial print run on her book destroyed, which would have made it a non-existent book. But she was unable to resist the idea of stamping the second try at the color separations with a Second Printing. That made it look as if the first printing had sold out instead of having been pulped, which made the book seem more popular than it was. They printed another 12,000 copies.
The first print run was never destroyed, however.
So, for a book that had only 3,000 orders, 24,000 copies were printed in only a couple of months resulting in a $24,000 minimum investment for the publisher in printing alone on a book that could not possibly have earned more than $9,000 gross.
So, let’s break it down by the numbers:
You get 8% on all sales of your book under 10,000 copies.
Except for direct sales (accounting for 60% of all your sales.) On those sales you get 4%.
However, even on sales in the direct market that are non-returnable book sales, your publisher will withhold 50% of all your sales as a reserve against possible returns of unsold books. So, for at least one year, you will only get paid 2% of cover price.
On your $6.95 book that sold 10,000 copies, here’s what you earned:
On retail sales, you got +$2,224
On direct market sales you got +$1,668
Total: +$3,892
Divide by 2 to cut the 50% reserve against returns and you now have +$1,946.
Your meager $350 a month advance comes to $4,200
So, before you have even calculated the cost of lettering and coloring on a book that sold 10,000 copies – which would be considered a healthy small press sale – you are in the hole $2,254.
For a brief time, I rented a room from my editor (big mistake in so many ways I will not relate them here). The only place I could put my drawing board was on the porch as there was no space in my little room to work. It got cold on that porch, so the publisher offered me space in their half empty bullpen to work. The good news was, I had work space. The bad news was the publisher decided that I should earn my wonderful work space by doing odd jobs at the company. So, they put me to work in the office.
Without pay and without benefits.
When I worked in the publishing office and witnessed their lawsuit against Teh Crazy over the definition of reprint, I knew exactly what reprint edition meant: an edition significantly different from the primary edition so as to be non-competitive but to appeal to a new market.
Now, my publisher was claiming the exact opposite definition through his attorneys: a reprint edition could mean a second printing, a printing no different from the first. The core of their defense was that since (they claimed) they were the only publisher in Virginia (a ridiculous lie) they set the standard for the legal terms of art in the state, and whatever they said was the definition of reprint edition was what the legal definition ought to be.
Another thing I’ve learned in publishing is that no matter how acrimonious your split with someone, no matter how much you hate each other, or how badly someone has treated you, or how hurtful they claim you have been to them, there is one thing you can always expect from your former adversary:
They’ll be back.
Years after The Woman was gone from Donning, she approached me and tried to chat me up at a convention. This didn’t go over well with me and I gave her the cut direct. To put it mildly, she was furious.
She chirped, “Hi Colleen! It’s (insert dreaded name here)!” repeatedly from the other side of an art show pegboard display. I responded with stoney silence.
After a few more attempts at cheer, and a few more black holes of nothing from me, she walked up to me in the dealers room, took her meaty arm, and gave me a thwap in the side of my back.
“I created the first graphic novel,” he announced.
These words actually came out of this man’s mouth.
By now, I got the picture. He had sold himself to Mr. Disney as the Father of the Graphic Novel. He claimed he had created them, published the first ones, the best ones, the best selling ones. He did it all.
And boy, was that Colleen a buzzkill, because I sat there right in front of Mr. Disney and told him Tom was wrong. Tom had not created the first graphic novel. Tom hadn’t even created the first graphic novel in the same decade as the first graphic novel. Tom hadn’t created anything. He worked for the New Age publishing division of the old publishing company and appeared to have nothing to do with the GN line. I barely had any dealings with him while I was there and Tom had no active involvement that I could see. Moreover, it seemed to me that creators create graphic novels. Publishers don’t. Tom had created nothing.
Sam proffered that Donning would restore my original contract and all the original royalty structures if I did so.
Ho ho.
Turns out all the Donning book contracts had not been assigned to Schiffer, and they were still publishing, albeit in reduced circumstances. They didn’t shut down Starblaze completely until 1992. If I just agreed to go back to my original Donning agreement, then all would be well, said Sam.
Naturally, I said no. They’d violated my contract, lied, ripped me off. I was out.
“We’re an $8 million company. What are you going to do?” said Sam.
Well, that’s what class action suits are for, Sam.
The last time I had a serious problem with Teh Crazy was some years ago. My team had a look at their finances to consider whether or not there was any chance of getting a return on a lawsuit for libel, slander, breach of contract, breach of confidentiality, and all that.
Teh Crazy was $300,000 in debt to their printer alone. I have no idea where their finances stand now, but in the 1990’s, they weren’t in great shape.
Anyway…
Never sign a confidentiality agreement with Teh Crazy. In Crazy Land, they will expect you to fulfill the terms of every agreement (especially the confidentiality clause) no matter how much Teh Crazy lies, cheats, or steals, even if the US Supreme Court informs them that slavery is dead, and copyright squatting does not make them a creator. That said, my lawyer advises me to take the high road with them, and that is easy enough, for they are so low.
Five years after we last did battle with lawyers, Teh Crazy boss asked me out to dinner (!?!?!?!)
Damn crazy.
I saw in a blurb for a documentary about my erstwhile publisher someone offer the testimonial, "He's the most ethical comic book publisher that ever existed." I still don't know what those words could possibly mean. Can ANY publisher be less than very bad and awesomely awful? I'm still hoping to be persuaded.
Yeeeew.