Thanks for all the congrats, everyone since my last post! :)
Specific replies:
Good for her! Congratulations. And ditto what others said about getting rights back - negotiate the "in print" language if you can so you get the rights if they aren't selling plenty of copies. Also keep an eye on the "competitive works" and option clause if they will take a while to publish (so she can publish other things if she wants). If this is more a throw it at the wall & see what sticks situation, hopefully they will be reasonably flexible.
Yup, those are definite things we're looking out for. Apparently Harlequin has a standard contract for all new authors and aren't too flexible on it (got this from another forum I'm on to support her writing, from writers that have written for Harlequin). But we'll see.
I don't know much about romance, but if she decides she wants an agent & wants some info from Pub Mark as she's narrowing her field, feel free to pm me.
I don't know what that means. :)
Good for her! I also very much enjoyed the two historical novels she sent the beta readers. This world can never have too much romance, right?
Well, I don't know about that, but I'm glad she's enjoying it, and I hope the readers will. :)
Well, congrats on that too - end of August, eh? I know a couple of people who have hiked the Camino, or at least parts of it, and whether religious or non-religious, have found it pretty life changing.
Yeah, it should be quite an adventure! :D
Thats impressive, as a writer of two books; i know its nearly impossible for someone not being in journalism to get published or even looked at.
Yeah, it's her first thing ever submitted anywhere, and she was asked to do a short blog article for one of the Harlequin sites about getting "The Call" (that they want her book), and she looked at other samples and some of them submitted a bunch of books for years before getting accepted. She's doing quite well, apparently. Somehow things just tend to work out for the best.
Congratulations! As a buyer on Amazon, I prefer books from authors who have some feedback, or have been published. It lessens the chance of buying complete rubbish.
Yeah, we're not sure how far she's going to take this side-gig (/career?), but it certainly seems like it can't hurt much.
LTTP but congrats. I'm not a romance reader but if she needs/wants an eye on technical editing for the self-pub ones, PM me.
Finishing (and publishing) a book is on my goals for 2015. Making good progress with one, though gardening season has derailed me a bit. I've been writing for years, but I'm terrible about finishing anything. At this point I've got 6 mostly finished novels and countless other projects I started and then abandoned, or wrote mostly for world-building.
That's awesome, you definitely should finish some of them up!
Congratulations!
Follow up question: flowery bodice-ripper or gritty, housewife semi-smut? (I'm not at all ashamed to say I've ready a handful of the latter ha ha!)
I don't know what that means. :)
Here is the cover we had designed, if that gives you some idea?:
Link to larger version:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9743562/Vegas%20Passion.jpgThough now that we're selling it to Harlequin, they're going to be designing a new cover for it.
I did some a technical book in my youth (20 years ago) that covered the advance within the first three months. When I did this, I got a royalty on the wholesale price the retail outlet paid the publisher. So on a $40 book, they paid $15, and I got 6-8% of that (6% on the first 15k copies, went to 8% after we sold a bunch). Worked out to about $1.20 per sale. I ended up making about 30k over the life of the book.
Not sure how the romance genre works out, or even if the money matters to her. For me, that book helped me close sales to clients. For her, it may just be a bucket list thing and the money doesn't matter, in which case, sell it for the $4k advance and consider it a big win!
Whatever you do, don't calculate the hourly rate. When I did that on the advance, it looked like a terrible idea, because I was giving up consulting revenue to write the book and the advance was less than half my consulting rate. But in the final analysis, the book I published made me a ton of money from helping win me more work, and you can't know what that looks like today. If this deal opens doors, it could be a huge plus for her.
Good to know! The money doesn't matter so much (see: latest MMM post on doing things as if they paid you $0 once you're FI), but hey, it doesn't hurt.
Her hourly rate on it is actually pretty darn good, though that's because we're comparing it to a teacher's hourly rate and not a consultant's. ;) She got paid more per hour for the advance--even if she never earns out and gets royalties--than she does tutoring or anything, I believe (though we don't have the exact times, so I can't be sure).
At a free book week or two to generate interest and reviews then epublish for the $.99, you definitely might do better that way. BUT for bragging rights I just might do it at least with one. Harlequin is my #1 favorite romance novel company. :-)
Yeah, she's pretty excited about having a print book from a legit publisher, not just printing her own. But we'll likely be doing all the self publishing tricks w/ permafree, etc. on the other series.
WOW - that IS badass!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Super awesome. You and your wife seem to be quite the dynamic duo!!
Hah, thanks. That's a great phrase. Makes us sound like crimefighters or super heroes or something.
We do pretty much look like this:
If you add an extra eye to her..and change the hair color from purple to blond..and change the robot to.. eh, screw it, I guess the analogy kinda fell apart there. :P
"Dynamic duo" though just has a fun ring to it. :D
Congratulations! As a buyer on Amazon, I prefer books from authors who have some feedback, or have been published. It lessens the chance of buying complete rubbish.
On this, you might ask the people who were beta readers here to do Amazon reviews as soon as it comes out.
Definitely planning on doing that--once we get a short freebie up on the site to encourage mail list signups, and self publish the first one (both the shorter one and the first one were sent to the beta readers), we'll email the next one and ask for reviews on the first. :)