3 ms·

The big publisher business model is the "Disney Vault" model - i.e. own the backlog, but be really stingy about selling it so you can control the narrative abou

The big publisher business model is the "Disney Vault" model - i.e. own the backlog, but be really stingy about selling it so you can control the narrative about the work. The goal is to get as many new works as possible published, then kill them early so that dedicated fans will stew about it. Sure, not everyone actually believes this. The MBAs surely are just calculating how much they lost off the last print run and deciding to mothball the book. But they can't have writers clawing back rights, because then that makes them competition, and the pesky thing about writers is that they'll invest their own money into rescuing a failing work. What if they win? We can't have that. Ergo, the large publishers become a machine that eats literature so nobody can have it.

PuppyTailWags 4y ago
I don't agree with this. It's well known the big publisher model is trying to predict the market based on an imperfect set of numbers of past sales. Debuts are calculated in their worth by what comparative titles they might sell as much as (in comparison: look at the tags #sffpit, #pitmad, etc. on twitter. See how authors are going <TITLE> X <TITLE>? This is authors trying to show that their work is comparable to these other profitable titles in an effort to imply this book will make just as much money.). Once you publish a debut, how much you sell of it will directly correlate with how much you're offered in your next work. It doesn't matter if the publishing company is intentionally underfunding your launch and doesn't put resources to push your book; if you flop they offer less advances. They are more than happy to let go of work if it doesn't sell enough; its common for mid-trilogies to be cut at book 2 if book 1 doesn't sell enough and then the writer is forced to figure out what to do with a trilogy that's been abandoned by the publisher. [Additionally its common for authors to be cut after their first trilogy: look at what happened to K.S. Villoso, whose first trilogy was launched during COVID and she was cut anyways, even though a kickstarter for her next book was kickstarted for over 20,000CAD including hardcover, softcover, and audiobook productions. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ksvilloso/audiobook-for-outlaw-mage-by-ks-villoso https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ksvilloso/audiobook-for... ]

PuppyTailWags 4y ago

I don't agree with this. It's well known the big publisher model is trying to predict the market based on an imperfect set of numbers of past sales. Debuts are calculated in their worth by what comparative titles they might sell as much as (in comparison: look at the tags #sffpit, #pitmad, etc. on twitter. See how authors are going <TITLE> X <TITLE>? This is authors trying to show that their work is comparable to these other profitable titles in an effort to imply this book will make just as much money.). Once you publish a debut, how much you sell of it will directly correlate with how much you're offered in your next work. It doesn't matter if the publishing company is intentionally underfunding your launch and doesn't put resources to push your book; if you flop they offer less advances. They are more than happy to let go of work if it doesn't sell enough; its common for mid-trilogies to be cut at book 2 if book 1 doesn't sell enough and then the writer is forced to figure out what to do with a trilogy that's been abandoned by the publisher. [Additionally its common for authors to be cut after their first trilogy: look at what happened to K.S. Villoso, whose first trilogy was launched during COVID and she was cut anyways, even though a kickstarter for her next book was kickstarted for over 20,000CAD including hardcover, softcover, and audiobook productions. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ksvilloso/audiobook-for-outlaw-mage-by-ks-villoso https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ksvilloso/audiobook-for... ]