Joseph Nassise

A few months ago I was chatting with friend and fellow writer, Jon Merz, about ideas for a book to work on together. It just so happens that we are both martial artists and follow the sport pretty avidly. Mixed martial arts, or MMA as it is known, is the fastest growing contact sport in the US, with a fan base that makes Nascar fanatics seem tame in comparison. Knowing this, we brainstormed different ways we might combine our passion for mixed martial arts with our passion for writing and came up with the idea to do a non-fiction expose on one of the major MMA organizations.

Jon had just finished writing The Complete Idiots Guide to Ultimate Fighting and by chance happened to know one of the senior executives at the International Fight League, a major MMA organization and the only one who approached the sport as with a team, rather than individual, concept. The IFL is a truly innovative organization when it comes to MMA promotions and we believed they would be an excellent partner to work with, so we arranged a meeting and pitched our idea to their top execs.

The folks at the IFL loved what we came up with and enthusiastically endorsed our concept. They gave us unparalleled access to the organization, from the day-to-day operations to the coaches and fighters themselves. Whatever we needed, they said, just ask. With their complete backing, Jon and I took our proposal to our agent.

Like the guys at the IFL, our agent was excited to take the project out to publishers. A sure hit, he called it, a blockbuster if he ever saw one. And he wasn’t just blowing smoke up our asses – he loved the idea as much as we did and after working in publishing for more than thirty years we were confident that he knew what he was talking about.

We turned the proposal into an event, sending it to a dozen publishers with a specific deadline attached, and sat back waiting for the offers to come in. This was it, our ticket to the big leagues, we thought.

Trouble was, we forgot that getting a deal isn’t as easy as just convincing an editor that the book is a good one.

For those who have never been through the process, here’s how it works. A writer puts together a proposal and send it off to the editors he’s carefully selected (or, as in our case, let’s his agent do so). The editor decides if he likes the proposal and, if he does, agrees to take it to the editorial board meeting. At the meeting, the editor pitches the book to the representatives from the various departments – editorial, marketing, sales, art, etc – and tries to convince them that one of the precious slots they have open on their publishing schedule should go to this project.

We heard from several editors who agreed that the project looked excellent. They informed us that they would be pitching at the next editorial meeting and would get back to us as soon as they knew something more. Convinced that we would have a deal in place, Jon and I travelled to the Open Tryouts that the IFL was hosting to build up their roster for the 2008 season, figuring it would make a terrific chapter in the book. We interviewed prospective fighters and some of the IFL top coaches, we took a few hundred photographs, and generally had a great time.

Meanwhile our enthusiastic editors were being shot down by, of all people, the sales departments.

See, there are only a handful of books out right now on mixed martial arts. Of the five I can think of off the top of my head, three of them are personality books, meaning they focus on select individuals in the sport rather than the sport overall. The other two happen to be instruction manuals. Which meant there wasn’t anything our there for the sales departments to compare our book to, to help them figure out what to expect with regard to sales, returns, and the like. In addition, there wasn’t any statistics that they could point to in order to show that the millions of fans who tuned into the weekly television shows and pay-per-view specials would pick up a book about the sport.

It didn’t matter what ammunition we provided to the editors – and trust me, we had it all, from network ratings data to growth projections for 2008 and beyond – each and every time the book was presented the sales departments shot it down, claiming that they weren’t sure that they could sell it.

And just like that, our brilliant idea died a quiet little death through no fault of our own.

We’d written a terrific proposal. We had the complete backing of a major MMA organization who was offering us unbelievable access to every aspect of the 2008 season. We had hand-picked editors who routinely bought sports-oriented books and publishers with an excellent track record of promoting such works with enthusiasm. In short, we’d done everything possible to make the project a success.

And it still wasn’t enough.

Sometimes, timing is everything. If one little cog of the publishing machine jams up, the whole thing can swiftly go out of whack and that’s exactly what happened to us. The idea was new and original, the sport was relatively new, there hadn’t been more than a handful of books on the sport with which to compare it – all the things that got the editors excited about the project were exactly the things that made the sales departments nervous. If there had been a track record of best-selling mixed martial arts books, we would have struck gold, as every other department was as excited about is as we were. But since there wasn’t, all it took was that one No to send us packing.

What’s the moral of the story? Remember that convincing the editor that your project is a good one is only the start of the battle. There’s an entire team involved in publishing and you need each and every one of them on your side in order to be successful.

In 2004, there were roughly 1.2 million books in print.

80% of those books sold fewer than 100 copies.

98% sold fewer than 5000 copies.

Only a few hundred books sold more than 100,000 copies.

About 10 books sold over a million copies.

Still with me?

Haven’t had a heart attack or gone off to commit suicide at the sudden realization that the chances of hitting the big time after selling your book are just slightly above the chances you’ll find a living, breathing Tyrannosaurus Rex living in the bushes of Central Park?

Let’s unpack those numbers a little bit more.

First, I’m using 2004 because, quite frankly, that’s the latest date that I have reliable, reasonably complete numbers to work from. The publishing industry is highly computerized, but getting actual, hardcore numbers from publishers is slightly harder than the seven tasks of Hercules. I do have some data from 2005 and 2006, such as the fact that US book publishing rose roughly 3% between 2005 and 2006 or that the number of juvenile titles dropped more than 10%, but I’m looking at overall English language publishing data and 2004 is the best I’ve got.

Second, a lot of those titles were self-published titles by authors who couldn’t find a traditional advance and royalties paying publisher, so they paid some outfit to print up a bunch of copies for them and had an ISBN slapped on the back. I think it is safe to say that self-published books account for a good chunk of those books that sell less than 100 copies.

Third, it is also important to remember that not all books in print were published in 2004 obviously. In the last few years, the number of books actually published per year is in the neighborhood of 175,000. A book stays in print for a number of years and the sales numbers for a title decline over time. The rest of those titles selling less than 100 copies a year probably fall into this category.

Still, even with those considerations, it is clear that only about 10% of books published in any given year will sell over 5000 copies.

For someone wanting to make their living at writing, that’s a scary number.

It’s also the reason that the vast numbers of writers out there do NOT make a living from their craft. The actual number of writers who support themselves and their families from writing in the US falls at roughly 1 to 2%.

Remember, that’s 1 to 2% of those writers who are being published by traditional advance and royalty paying publishers, not of writers in general. That means it’s a very small number indeed.

But if you’re like me, writing is in the blood and you’d do it even if they didn’t pay you to do so.

So what do those numbers mean to me?

They mean I have to treat writing like a business. Not just in the sense of income and expense, which I don’t always have a lot of control over, but in the things that I can significantly impact day after day.

In the way I plan my time.

In the work habits that I cultivate.

In the projects that I select.

In the people I chose to work with.

In the way I control my rights.

In the hundred other little things I can do to ensure that my career is as successful as I hope to make it.

Five years ago I’d never published a thing. Now I’m in that group of writers who routinely sell more than 5000 copies but less than 100,000 copies of each individual work.

But that’s not good enough for me.

I want to reach that next step. I want to break that 100,000 copy barrier. And the only way to do that is to be as diligent as possible in the way I treat my career.

100,000 copies.

That’s my goal.

I’ll worry about that million copy mark next year.

Earlier this month I received my editorial letter on the third book in the Templar Chronicles series, DIE SCHATTEN (The Shadows).

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, an editorial letter is just that – a letter from your editor. In it, the editor will point out and explain any changes and revisions they would like to see made to a manuscript before it goes into final production. The intent is clear – to use the editor’s input and the author’s skill to make the best volume possible.

How the editorial letter is used varies from editor to editor. Some editors will make vague suggestions about what they want done. Others will provide detailed commentary. From talking to some of my writing friends, it has also become apparent that a fair percentage of editors don’t seem to have the time to bother with an editorial letter at all.

I’ve been extremely fortunate in my career when it comes to this phase of the writing process. My first editor, Amy Pierpont, not only would send back detailed editorial letters pointing out conflicting character issues, unresolved plot threads, and areas that just weren’t as clear as she might want them to be, but she would also redline the entire manuscript. Sentence by sentence. Page by page. Her detailed input helped shape my early writing and helped me improve at a faster rate than I could have done on my own. I’m indebted to her for that, particularly when I think about how rare that type of input is getting to be in today’s publishing environment.

My current editor, Tim Sonderhusken, was apparently cut from the same editorial mold as Amy. His editorial letter for DIE SCHATTEN contained fifty specific points/comments that he wanted me to address in the final version of the manuscript. These varied from a simple comment that the first chapter was “the perfect way to start the novel” to a detailed analysis of one of the secondary characters motivations and how this needed to be adjusted slightly so that it would not overshadow one of the primary characters goals. And he’s done this for each of the three novels I’ve turned in to him to date. While Tim doesn’t redline the manuscript itself, it is quite evident from his editorial letters that he has gone through it line by line and taken the time to do a very careful analysis of the work. He usually gives me a few days to work through his commentary and then we get together to discuss things in more detail. What makes this more amazing to me is the fact that English isn’t his mother tongue. I’m writing original novels for the German market, so Tim is taking my novel, written in English, reading it, converting it to German in his head, and making suggestions to improve what will be the final German language version of the book. That’s impressive. And there is no doubt that the process works. Each and every time our partnership has produced a stronger, more marketable book and that is good for both sides of the equation.

I have thirty days to turn this manuscript around and I’m about halfway through. (Which is good, because I’m halfway out of time, too!) I’m enjoying the work because, while it can occasionally be frustrating to rewrite something several times, I know that in the end both myself and my fans will be happier with the finished product.

I’m curious to hear from other writers about their editorial input. What editors do you particularly like working with? Why? Is there something your editor does at this stage of the process that you’ve found to be especially helpful? Is there something you’d like to see more of?

Let’s talk.

Several years ago, when I first got into this business, someone told me that it is better to be published well than to simply be published. I thought I knew what that meant. But I’ve come to understand that sometimes, you think you are being published well, when in reality, you are not.

Case in point.

In 2005, Pocket Books published my second mass market novel, HERETIC. It was the first book in a series known as the Templar Chronicles, a series that was intended to run for at least three books. It had great cover blurbs by Clive Barker and Peter Straub. The cover art itself was pretty good. It quickly sold foreign rights in several countries and was an Alternate Selection for the Mystery Guild, Military, and Doubleday Book Clubs, who did their own hardcover editions. My podcast of the novel over 56 weeks gained 37,000 listeners in 83 different countries. Most recently, the story was adapted into a six issue comic series that completely sold out its first printing.

From my perspective, that’s a fairly successful book.

Before HERETIC ever hit the shelves, however, Pocket had made the decision internally that they wouldn’t be working with me any further on the series. This was because sales of my first novel (unrelated to HERETIC) hadn’t done as well as they had expected.

Pay particular attention to the timing there – Pocket decided BEFORE publishing HERETIC that they wouldn’t be doing a third book with me. Not based on the performance of HERETIC, but based on the performance of the book before that.

I’m sure you can guess what they meant for HERETIC. Sure, they went through the motions. They published the book. They made it available through the normal distribution channels. Their sales team went out and marketed it. Most of the usual chains like B&N and Borders had a copy or two on their shelves. But since Pocket was writing it off, it became very easy for the bookstores to write it off. No one was pushing them to reorder once those first few copies disappeared from the shelves and it soon dropped out of the public’s awareness.

Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, HERETIC was on track to disappear into that great remainder stack in the sky.

Skip forward to April 2007. The first of those foreign editions hits the shelves in Germany. The title is now DER KETZER, but it is the same book – same story, same words, just a different language.

And more importantly, a different publisher.

My German publisher, Droemer Knaur, is a large paperback house. My editor takes great pride in his work and from the very start told me that he intended to make me a household name in Germany. I have to admit that I was skeptical – at the time I was dealing with the recent news from Pocket and I wasn’t quite comfortable believing anything that I was told by a publisher.

But then Droemer’s well-oiled machine went to work. The editor talked up the book at the publishing house, getting everyone else excited about it. The art team produced a dynamic and interesting cover. The sales team went out and did such a bang-up job that the initial print run had to be doubled to handle the demand. The publicity team followed suit.

In short, they decided that, in Germany, the name “Joseph Nassise” would be synonymous with great supernatural thrillers and they set out to make sure it happened.

DER KETZER hit the shelves two weeks ago. It has spent those first two weeks in the number #51 slot on the paperback bestseller list. It’s current Amazon.de sales ranking is #76 and it has stayed in that range for the last couple of weeks. It has done so well that preorders for the next book in the series, DER ENGEL, are flooding in and the decision has been made to promote it as one of Droemer’s lead books at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October.

Remember, this is the exact same book, writing wise, that was released in this country and then seemingly disappeared without a trace a few months later.

Suddenly I understood what that person had been trying to tell me five years before.

Publishing is a joint business. Sure, the writer has to produce a decent book in the first place. But the hard part comes next, when the editor, the art department, the sales team, the publicity team, the local bookstore manager, and the reading public all have to work together to make a book a success. And the team that you have behind your creation makes an INCREDIBLE difference to the success or failure of that work.

It’s true. It’s not enough just to be published. If I had settled for that I wouldn’t have my first bestseller and I wouldn’t currently be negotiating a new three book contract.

Being published well – now that’s something worth striving for.

(A quick note for those wondering what’s happening with books two and three in the series. Overseas, all three books have been acquired and will be released with about four to six months between volumes. Here in the States, my agent and I are actively involved in looking for a new publisher to complete the trilogy. Hopefully, we’ll have some more news soon.)

In the five years that I have been writing professionally, I have been very fortunate in that all of my novel-length works (4 to date) have been acquired for foreign publication. When this first occurred, I was focused on the fact that it would provide another set of paychecks and another set of readers to help promote my career long term. What I didn’t understand at the time is that it can be so much more than just that – and I’ve been very lucky, particularly at this stage of my career, to experience it.

 

Some background for those not familiar with the fun little nuances of selling a work for publication. Typically, a publisher will buy the rights to publish the work in a particular market in a variety of formats. For instance, my contracts with Pocket Books call for publication in the English language in the US, UK, and Canada as the primary market. Additional clauses provide for an agreement where the subsidiary rights department at Pocket can then market the right to translate the work into additional languages and details just how the income from such sales is split. (A typical clause is 80% to the author, 20% to the publisher.) Some authors prefer to sell only one set of rights and allow their agent to market the rest – decision for or against such actions depend on whether you think the publisher has inroads into a particular region and whether they will diligently pursue a sale for you in that area.

 

For most of the authors I know, foreign publication means they receive a check in the mail as a result of the sale and occasionally they get a copy of the finished book. There isn’t much in the way of interaction between the foreign publishing house and the author, for a variety of reasons. Usually the work has already been published in the US, so there aren’t any revisions to be done. Discussions with marketing and sales people are very limited in the author’s home market, if they happen at all – having them with your foreign publisher is comparable to finding an extinct species in your backyard.

So you can imagine my surprise when I opened the door to my deck one afternoon and found a Tyrannosaurus Rex staring back at me.

 

He was a lean, mean, fighting machine who roared out a challenge and dared me to accept it. I’m talking about the editor who had just purchased the rights to publish my novel HERETIC in a German language edition. Tim works for Droemer-Knaur, a major publishing house in Munich, and he was very excited about developing my career in his home country. Our first conversation nearly blew me away, as he was determined to make me a household name and had a slew of ideas ready to go in order to accomplish that. From marketing plans to cover art to promotion at the Frankfurt Book Fair (one of Europe’s largest publishing conventions), Tim generated a sense of excitement that was completely infectious. Soon his staff was as excited about my career as I was, something that doesn’t happen very often, let me tell you.

 

In the months that followed, Tim went on to purchase the next two books in the Templar Chronicles series. He arranged for excellent cover art to grace each volume – art that was classy, intriguing, eye-catching – everything a writer could want. He pushed the series to his sales force and set them out like a Special Forces team with a mission. Then he pulled his coup de grace – he scheduled each of the books to hit the streets with only a few months between them, maximizing the readers’ interest in the series and capitalizing on the excitement generated by the previous volumes.

 

Our working relationship is an exciting one and as we get ready to launch the first of the Templar Chronicles volumes into the German market in the next few months, we continue to make plans for the future. Discussions are underway to broaden my fan base by writing both in the horror genre and outside of it. A proposal for a new book unrelated to the Chronicles has been met with much enthusiasm and it’s very likely that it will see publication in Germany before it’s even sold here in the US. What started out as an adjunct market to my fledgling publishing career here has turned into a parallel publishing track that has helped me go from writing part-time to making it my sole occupation. And it’s just begun. Like David Hasselhoff, I’ve found a home overseas that I never expected and one that will serve me well in the years ahead.

 

So what’s my point? Just this – Remember that the world is a big place and that there are opportunities out there for those who are willing to go after them. What starts out as a minor blip on your publishing radar can very quickly grow into something worth cultivating, something that can change your career for the better. All you’ve got to do is keep your eyes open and know the difference between a Velociraptor and a Diplodocus and you’ll do just fine.

We all know the drill. You bust your hump writing your latest novel. Your agent sells it to a major New York publisher. You wait another ten to eighteen months before your book sees print. You’re excited, enthused, ready to take on the world – this is the book that is going to be your breakout work. Big time here you come!

Six weeks later your newest “masterpiece” is relegated to the returns bin in the back of the store, waiting to be sent back to the publisher.

When looking at your next work, your publisher glances at your sales figures for that book, says “eh” and you find yourself wondering what happened to that terrific relationship the two of you had as that next book is turned down flat.

Obviously, there is a lot happening here. Marketing and promotion play a major role in how your work fares in the marketplace. So do reader interests and society’s latest trends. Many of these issues are outside the author’s control.

But at the same time there are things that can be done to bolster that initial relationship. One area many authors are unfamiliar with (or don’t take the time to look into) is foreign rights sales.

For the uninitiated, typically a publisher buys a certain set of rights, permissions to publish the book in a certain geographical area. First US rights, first English language rights, first World rights – the variations are seemingly endless. There are also film and theatre rights, graphic novel rights, comic rights, audio rights, etc. As a writer, you will get paid each time a new set of rights is sold. For instance, my novel HERETIC was recently acquired by the Book of the Month Club and the money earned in that sale was used to help my book earn back a fair portion of its advance before it ever hit the streets.

Foreign rights work the same way. Each sale earns the author more money. That money is applied against their advance until that advance earns out. Once it does, the author starts earning royalties, a situation we all like to be in. On the publishers end, the book is more successful with each sale made. So you would think that most publishers or author’s agents would be actively working to sell additional foreign rights for the titles they acquire.

You would think.

Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Publishers might be too tied up with their latest blockbusters to push foreign rights for your new mass market paperback, particularly if you are writing in a genre like horror. Your agent might not have an interest in foreign sales or might be partnered with a sub-rights agent who doesn’t have the same faith in your work. Like most everything else in the publishing industry, there are a thousand different variables that come into play.

As an author, you CAN do something about this. Educate yourself on what’s selling where. Understand what foreign publishers regularly by translations to be republished in their country. Know who the editors are who are making those acquisitions. Inform your sub-rights department (if your publisher controls foreign rights) or your agent (if they do not). I try to provide both my sub-rights rep and my agent with a list every few months of foreign publishers who have acquired book similar to my own, at least in general terms, and politely suggest that they submit to these individuals, citing these recent acquisitions. At worst, all it means is a few minutes of work and another rejection. At best, another sale. And that sale can increase your worth in the eyes of your publisher, making them more prone to attempt other foreign rights sales or more interested in your next book.

And that’s a good thing.

There are several places you can do some research with regard to foreign publishers. I’ll suggest two, but this is by no means an exhaustive list. The first way is to make a habit of researching publishers in your local library’s International Literary Marketplace. This exhaustive book lists all of the works coming out from foreign publishers and provides information about the publishing companies themselves. (I suggest the library edition because the book – or the online version at www.literarymarketplace.com – is damned expensive.) Another way to do it is to join Publishermarketplace.com as a member (something like $15 or $20 per month, if memory serves) and use their Deal List to review recent sales of foreign rights. The advantage of this latter method is that it often tells the name of the agent who sold the rights as well as the name of the editor who bought them.

In today’s market, making that first sale is great. But selling that book two, three, four or more times means greater success for you and greater interest from your publisher.