Getting Published is Just the Beginning

By Rhoda S Baxter

"Read this book before you sign your next contract." 
Dr Kirsty Bunting, Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University's Manchester Writing School

 

"This enjoyable and informative book is essential reading. It will help you  decide which publishing model works for you, and will explain how to get the most value out of the writing that you spent so much time and effort on." Emma Byrne - Author of Swearing is Good for You and How to Build a Human

 

" Written in a lovely friendly style that made the information easy to understand and absorb." Amazon review.

 

Are you an unagented novelist managing your own writing career?

Have you written a book and don't know where to start with getting a publisher?

Are you trying to decide if the publishing contract you've been offered is a legitimate one?

 

This book will help you:

• Understand Copyright
• Learn what to look for in a publishing contract (and save money by asking the right questions when talking to lawyers)
• Tell you what to expect when dealing with agents and publishers

 

I have worked in the Intellectual Property (IP) and licensing sector for over a decade. I'm also a novelist and creative writing mentor.

Over the years I've answered a lot of questions from authors who are at the start of their traditional publishing careers. Many writers find the business of licensing IP confusing and contracts impenetrable. Often, even when they seek legal advice, they aren't given a context in which to interpret this advice.

 

This easy-to-read guide will demystify your publishing options and give you the tools you need to take charge of your author career.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rhoda Baxter
• Release date: Nov 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781913752033

Book preview

Dedication

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To Herb.

Introduction

Why I wrote this book

A few years ago, I started running writing workshops. One of them was called ‘Plot your novel’ and ran for one day. I was surprised by the number of people who came to this workshop who had done creative writing degrees or diplomas who didn’t know much about the publishing process. Or rather, they knew about one option - the agent and publisher model, which used to be the only publishing path available. They didn’t know, for example, that you could submit directly to publishers now. Or that independent publishing was a viable path now. So I’d talk them through these options. I did this often enough that I felt I should write things down ... but never got around to it.

Like most writers, I have a day job. Mine involves looking after university generated intellectual property (IP). I am an active member of the Romantic Novelists Association and the Society of Authors and often attend meetings run by both. I kept having conversations with authors about the publishing industry and hesitantly explaining things about intellectual property. These were often things that seemed obvious to me, as someone who worked in the field, but seemed to be impenetrable to those who didn’t.  I kept thinking I should write things down ...

Then one day, I met someone who said they didn’t read their contract before they signed it and I realised that I should definitely write things down. So I wrote it down.

A lot of the things in this book are things I wish I’d known more about when I started out in publishing. Hopefully, knowing them up front will save you a few years of flailing around making mistakes.

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Who the hell am I anyway?

I’m a novelist. I write romance as Rhoda Baxter and women’s fiction as Jeevani Charika. My books have been published by publishers ranging from a tiny two person publisher to an imprint of a big publishing house. I have also self published a few books. That is to say - I’ve seen both sides of the ‘trad or indie’ argument and settled on ‘both’.

In my day job, I have a DPhil in microbiology from Oxford and have worked in the field of Intellectual Property (IP). I’m not a lawyer. I work in university technology transfer - assessing new inventions for commercial potential and working out how best to protect the IP in them. A big part of my job involved discussions about how to licence that IP to commercial partners and reading through the contracts (drafted by proper lawyers) to check that it covered what we thought we’d agreed. Although my main expertise is in patents, I know the value of IP and what licensing contract terms mean. If you’re confused about what IP is, I will explain in a later chapter.

Possibly more relevant than anything else, is the fact that, despite all my knowledge on the topics of rights and licences, I have signed a bad contract ... despite knowing it was bad, because I thought I was taking a calculated risk. I calculated wrongly.  So, I have been there. I’m here to tell you all the things to look out for so that you don’t have to learn it the hard way.

There are several places where you can get legal advice on contracts from actual lawyers. The Society of Authors and The Alliance of Independent Authors (Alli) are authors’ unions and both have contract vetting services that are free to their members. They’re advice is good, but sometimes you need context so that you can evaluate that advice. That’s what I’m trying to give you. No one can decide what to do for you - it’s your business. But we can try and give you all the information you need to make an informed decision.

Throughout the text, I had signpost further resources. All of these are handily collected on one place on my website https://rhodabaxter.com/ip_resources/.

There is a free downloadable contract checklist – with a list of the sorts of things you need to look for in a contract at https://rhodabaxter.com/contract-checklist/

Chapter 1: Becoming a professional Writer

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What are you writing now?

The first thing to know about being a professional writer (as in, one who makes money from their writing) is that you’re probably going to need more than one product. There are writers who wrote one book, hit the big leagues with it, got the movie deal and then retired for a life of peace and solitude... but the chances of that are rather slim. An author career is a long game. The more works you have, the more chances you have to make money.

So, I’d suggest you write another book (or play, film script, or whatever). If you’ve just finished your first book/script/song/pamphlet, then well done - that’s a huge achievement. Now write something new. If nothing else, it’ll take your mind off the waiting while you try and get project #1 to market.

If, like me, you’re on the Nth project now and you’ve forgotten how many things you’ve written, then you’re probably already writing the next thing. After a while it’s hard to stop. Just in case you’re not ... maybe you should write something new?

When I was starting out, I went to a talk at Reading library, given by some multi-published authors. After a very informative panel discussion about the craft of writing, they did a Q and A. One of the questions was ‘Did you sell the first book you wrote?’. None of them had. Some had sold their second book, some their fourth. None of them had sold the first-written book first. In the case of the one who sold her fourth book first, two of her other books were sold alongside it as a three book deal.

In case you’re wondering, I sold my second book first. My first-written book was finally published over a decade after I’d first started submitting it, as my seventh