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What takes me outttt about this meme is the smile because so many of us have been on the receiving end of an offer that everyone involved knows is a basura level lowball but still contains the words "we're so excited" https://twitter.com/johnmanuelarias/status/1291832102024093698?s=19
Brought a project to a publisher once, they took me out to lunch, made a big deal out of how excited they were. I told them explicitly — this is work that I will be leaving other jobs to do. I'm here to get PAID. Nods and smiles, clinked glasses. Cool cool. A few weeks later...
...the offer comes in and it's
so we took the project far and wide, got yelled at for it, went to auction, ended up with well over ten times the original basura offer.
Know your worth and fight for other people to know it too.
Know your worth and fight for other people to know it too.
I repeat:
Know your worth.
It's an ongoing journey to know it, not a straight line. I'm still learning. But you have to set your mind toward that goal, esp because in publishing, other people profit from you *not* knowing your own worth.
Know your worth.
It's an ongoing journey to know it, not a straight line. I'm still learning. But you have to set your mind toward that goal, esp because in publishing, other people profit from you *not* knowing your own worth.
Something else, since we're talking about these things: Among the many toxic traits of publishing that we need to leave in the pre-pandemic world is the notion that you owe a publisher anything that's not explicitly written out in the contract.
You don't.
You don't.
publishers like to talk about family and loyalty when it comes to authors and our next books but suddenly are a business that has to make money etc when it comes to making an offer on that project.
This is not about one publisher or another. This is publishing.
If it's not in the contract, you don't owe it to them. You can decide to do it because it is good for you too, but then make a choice. Don't get guilt tripped or passive aggressed or threatened into doing something you're not legally obligated to do.
This is also why agents are important.
And i think writers go into some of these disagreements feeling like we're burning a bridge just by standing up for ourselves. This is not the case, and usually everyone knows it BUT the writer. And they profit from that too.
I honestly have really good relationships with all the editors, publishers, and agents I've worked with. They're all great people. I've also had to argue with some of them and fight for things to be certain ways and stand up for myself, and sometimes lost and sometimes won.
Probably if I hadn't said what I had to say, we wouldn't still be cool because I'd be harboring resentment. But that's my Capricorn shit. The point is, you're not burning a bridge by fighting for what you need, and if someone makes you feel like you are, that's a tactic.
sometimes you gotta brawl
Lmaooo reminds me of that time someone memed me into my favorite meme lolol
whew! TELL THEM https://twitter.com/LRGiles/status/1291908356672823296?s=20
all of us who do school visits have gotten the HOW MUCH MONEY DO YOU MAKE question lol and I always answer it, because it's important to talk about this shit, but I make sure to break it down as it really is too...because listen.
If you get a 50k advance, usually it's gonna be half on signing, half on turning in the final, or maybe in thirds with pub date, but either way, that makes it 50k over a year or two, minus 7500 to your agent, minus whatever significant% in taxes sooooo...
The point isn't don't be a writer. The point is writers are theeee least protected and most at risk people in the industry. We don't have a union. We're often learning about the business from the very entities that stand to gain from us being timid/not understanding the business
and of course that instability is magnified infinitely for BIPOC and other marginalized folks. And that's not even to get into the chaos of existing online.
essentially your agent functions like a union. Which is why you can't afford to be with one that's more interested in maintaining cozy relationships with publishers than they are in having your back. (None of mine have been like that, but that is a thing.)
Obviously they are *not* your attack dog and they do need to maintain professional relationships, and they also need to be able to talk you down if you're going to war unnecessarily. Also a thing (though probably much less common for us than the other extreme).
