Who owns your book? A message for the New Year

Who owns your book? That sounds like a nice, simple question, so here are four answers to choose from. 

Who owns your book – the trad answer

The essence of a publishing contract is simple. You sell your book in exchange for (a) an advance and (b) sales-based royalties. But the first four words of that sentence are the really significant ones, the ones that count more than anything else in the contract. You sell your book.

The publisher, not you, will determine the cover, blurb, marketing plans and sales strategy. They will probably make a polite effort to keep you in the loop and not unhappy, but that’s about it. All the final decisions will be made by someone other than you. You can yell, cajole, persuade and reason – but the decisions lie elsewhere.

Furthermore, suppose that, as is increasingly common, you sell World rights or World English rights. (For example, let’s say you are a British author selling World rights to a British publisher. That publisher would publish the book in the UK, but then sell the rights to other territories to publishers operating in those territories. “World English” means the same thing, but in relation only to sales in the English language, so that translation rights are excluded.)

Once you’ve sold World rights, those rights are there for your publisher to exploit, not you. You will not get consulted about sales strategy. You won’t learn much about what is or isn’t happening with your book. Yes, deals will be presented to you for your approval, but only in a “take it, or leave it” way. There’s no meaningful choice on offer.

In short, once you sell a book to a trad publisher, it is not your book. Don’t be unhappy about that – it’s the culmination of everything that you wanted – but don’t be under any illusions as to what is happening.

 Who owns your book – the indie answer

If you’re an indie author, of course, the answer is stunningly different – and utterly simple: You own the book.

No ifs, not buts.

You can change the cover at any time. You can (and will) change pricing whenever you want. You can change your distributors. You can move in and out of different formats as you please.

It’s your book.

 Who owns your book – the book’s answer

The first two answers talk about your book as a product and in terms of commercial exploitation. And, OK, that’s important, but it doesn’t really get to any interesting artistic truth.

But think about this.

Let’s say you embark on your manuscript with a particular set of goals. Perhaps you want to write a modern country-house style murder mystery. You want to imitate the crystal elegance of an Agatha Christie plot, but brought into the modern day.

Fine. You need an investigator, of course, so perhaps you choose a former Paratrooper with combat experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. That combat experience has shattered him in some ways, but has also left him with something like higher sight in matters of murder and human conflict. He’s an excellent choice of detective. Terrific.

Now you, the author, have really only one task, which is to write the best book that you can.

Your choice of hero brings a challenge: do you honour the emotional complexity of his character? Or do you attempt to properly imitate those great Agatha Christie novels that elevate the puzzle way over any real psychological depth for the detective?

It’s a no-brainer.

When your manuscript comes into conflict with your original goals, you need to change those goals. The manuscript has to win every time. Yes, you are authoring your manuscript, but you are also constantly listening to it. What does it want? What does it need from you?

In this sense, your manuscript isn’t owned by anyone at all. It owns itself. It knows its mind. Your only task is to bend low and listen closely. Then do what you’re told.

Most relationships wouldn’t work well like that, but the author-manuscript relationship really thrives. Not only does the manuscript get better that way, but you have more joy in the writing. More belief.

 Who owns your book – an answer for January

But it’s January, the season of winter damps and New Year’s resolutions.

Sp the hell with publishers. The hell with self-publishing. And (whisper it softly) the hell with what your manuscript wants.

This is your year. It’s your book. Don’t be bossed around by what publishers want, or might want. Don’t be bossed around by what the Amazon algorithms are said to want. Don’t be bossed around by these damn emails or by any advice from the wise heads of Jericho.

Write.

You’ve got nothing to work with until you have words on a page. That first draft is just hauling a block of stone into your studio. The editing is where you start to carve it.

Jane Smiley says, “Every first draft is perfect because all the first draft has to do is exist. It’s perfect in its existence. The only way it could be imperfect would be to NOT exist.”

So let it exist. Make it exist. Your task for the year.

Attaboy. Attagirl.