You Didn't Come Here to Make Widgets
Publishers may want to use your work to make themselves money, but that doesn't mean you should be their tool.
I’ve been thinking about Sam Jaffe Goldstein’s interview with Lauren Oyler ever since I finally found the time to read it last weekend. There’s one section in particular that I keep circling back to:
“It would be sad to be a writer that nobody criticizes, because that means nobody is taking you seriously or engaging with your work, and to a certain extent you’re being used to make money.”
In a previous newsletter, at least a year or so ago, I wrote about the relationship between a writer and her publisher, and I noted that no matter how much regard, or even affection, there may be between writer and editor, or writer and publicist, or writer and anybody at the publishing company, the publisher ultimately wants one thing from the book—it should bring in more money than was spent producing it.
Artistic achievement is fantastic, advancing cultural concerns is a noble endeavor, but if your publisher loses too much money on your books, there will come a time when you will fall off the radar. (I say “too much money” because good publishers are not solely mercenary; they are willing to use their greatest financial successes to underwrite the brilliantly written books that for whatever reason don’t click financially, for the pleasure of being able to publish such books. There are, however, limits.)
I’ve also been thinking a lot about a situation involving the science fiction writer Alan Dean Foster, who recently went public with a dispute he’s engaged in with the Walt Disney Company. The origins of this dispute go back to 1976, when Foster ghostwrote, for George Lucas, the novelization of Star Wars. He went on to write a tie-in novel, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, that was originally conceived of as the fodder for a film sequel, but things went so well with the first movie that Lucas could dream even bigger, and we ended up with The Empire Strikes Back. While all this was happening, Foster also wrote the novelization for Ridley Scott’s Alien and some sequels.
None of these books were originally Disney properties, but they became Disney properties after the studio acquired Lucasfilm and then, years later, 20th Century Fox. For years, Foster has been collecting royalties from those novels; after Disney bought Fox, the Alien royalties stopped coming in—and as he and his agent looked into that, they realized they hadn’t been getting the Star Wars royalties either.
“Disney’s argument,” as Andrew Liptak summarizes it, is that “it wasn’t obligated to pay royalties or provide royalty statements for the Alien novels because Foster had signed a contract with the [original] publisher, Warner Books.” The Star Wars contract was actually with the corporate predecessor of Lucasfilm, but Disney hasn’t been following through on that commitment, either.
And, Liptak found out, they’re doing the same thing to at least four other writers of Star Wars tie-ins.
Let’s concede, before continuing this conversation, that most of you reading this are never going to be in the particular situation of writing fiction using intellectual property licensed from a corporation, then trying to get that corporation to pay you the money it’s contractually obligated to pay you. I’ve never been in that situation, and it seems unlikely that I will be any time soon, so my ability to advise you is limited.
I can say this, however, as someone who spent some time on the publisher’s side of the negotiating table—the publisher is always looking to pay the writer as little as possible, usually within bounds of decency accepted throughout the publishing industry. If I’m an author, I’m hoping I’ll be able to extract (or that my literary agent will be able to extract) as huge an advance as possible from the publisher—but if I’m an acquiring editor, I’m thinking to myself, “What’s the smallest amount of money I can offer that won’t make this writer feel like she’s being cheated?”
It’s a question that speaks to the ongoing financial viability of the publishing company, after all. If a publishing company acquires a buzzy debut novel for a $100,000 advance, and that novel flops commercially, that’s not good. If the acquiring editor was able to successfully offer a $10,000 advance, the losses aren’t so bad; there might even be some modest degree of financial success. And if a novel acquired for a $10,000 advance goes on to become a bestseller, the publishing company not only fully recoups its investment, but there will be even more money flowing in—some of which will also flow to the author, in the form of additional royalties.
As I noted at the beginning of the newsletter, a publisher that pays too much for too many books will eventually find itself in a dangerous position. A publisher that is able to acquire books with reasonably modest advances, perhaps occasionally splurging when a book comes along that it has to fight to acquire, may find itself with a string of modest successes, perhaps punctuated by a few big successes.
There’s a baseball metaphor I like to use here: Some publishers, especially at the highest corporate levels, spend most of their time swinging for the fences—and while you can hit a lot of home runs that way, you can also strike out pretty frequently as well. Another approach would be to simply try to get on base, to hit a solid single and, every once in a while, under the right circumstance, with enough hustle, stretch it out to a double, maybe even a triple.
That kind of reliability isn’t necessarily glamorous, and the odds are slim that being the writer who can deliver those small successes will enable you to support yourself solely by writing books. When you get to the point in your writing where you start to focus on getting published, though, and having your work stay in print, it can make a difference in how publishers look at you.
Still, you should alway remember that your book is, in a crucial respect, a tool the publisher wants to use to make money for itself. It’s your job, or the job of your literary agent, to make sure that you’re getting compensated fairly for the use of that tool.
You should also remember that, even if your publisher is inclined to treat your book like a widget, a standardized tool they can deploy in a standardized way, it’s up to you to hold that book in your own mind as a work of artisanal craftsmanship—an instrument with unique specialized functions that only you could produce. I mean, you can be a widget maker if you want, and it might even work out for you for a while. Eventually, though, you may find yourself wanting to accomplish more, and to be recognized as capable of accomplishing more…