Ketchup

…or, Jeff Bares All Without Losing His Pants!

For you cultureless heathens who don’t already know, Towelie is the intelligent super towel developed by the military in South Park. He’s also fond of bong hits. Hence the dull, bloodshot eyes and one of his catch phrases: “I’ve got no idea what’s going on.”

My buddy Joe Jordan, a fellow writer and Writers of the Future winner who is currently far away in the paradise known as Afghanistan, was among several folks who’ve asked about the foreign deals for the Plague novels, how it all works, what’s the money like, and whether or not Diana’s quitting her job and we’re buying a pair of Porsches.

Well, no. Even worse, sometimes I feel like Towelie. I have no idea what’s going on.

For one thing, remember, I’m still very new at this. For another, keep in mind that publishing is insane. I’m not going to get into specific numbers because I’m long way from being enough of big shot that I can wow y’all with lots of zeros, but here’s what I do know so far:

My advance from Ace was modest to say the least, but it earned out immediately. We saw a decent royalty check after the first accounting period, which wasn’t even a full six months, and we’ll be seeing another royalty check again shortly. Why? They got behind the book in a good way: embossing on the cover, some ads, and, most importantly, Plague Year really was a “mass market” mass market paperback. The initial print-run was solid and, for the first month, they had me on front-of-store display towers and tables in the major chains. Possibly even better, I was in airports and bus stations. The book went to a second print run to meet demand and by now, I’m pleased to report, we’re into a third edition.

By comparison, my German advance was hefty indeed. Partly that was because it was for three books, rather than one-by-one as Ace is doing, and you get half of the money for each title up front. Partly that was also because they’re paying in Euros, and some of the checks converted at upwards of 1.6 dollars per Euro. Shazam. The weird part to me is that the print run there was non-hefty. Of course, Germany and Austria are a much smaller market than North America, and my editor at Piper Verlag tells me that our run was quite good for a first novel by a foreign author… but I can’t see how they’re going to earn their money back. Not immediately. Possibly their business model isn’t so tightly screwed down as the American one, which seems to be make-or-break right out of the gates. The Europeans are wiser and calmer, and I have to assume they know what they’re doing. I write. They publish. That’s how it works. But I worry a bit.

Here’s where it gets extra strange.

The advance from my Spanish publisher was minimal. Neither I nor my agents expected anything more than a nice trade paperback release from Minotauro, just one book among several. We never even heard anything about when it would be published. What happened, of course, in the industry terminology, is that they went completely ape shit. The print run was fantastic for a first-time foreign author, in that gorgeous hard cover, with a promotion campaign that beats anything I’ve ever heard of. If my American publishers were duplicating that effort, we’d be millionaires.

So I have no idea what’s going on.

The only people who have shown any sense to date are the Romanians, bless ‘em. Small country… small advance… a small print run is planned… but with HUGE enthusiasm. My editor there loves what he’s doing and he’s going to play the books to the hilt, and I admire that in a big way.

Does that answer any questions or just open us up to more???

Labels: La Plaga, NANO, PLAGUE YEAR, the writing life