New words, old words, different words -- Editing vs. Proofreading

The past couple of weeks I've been working on minor edits and revisions to one of my previously print published books with the intention of putting a digital version up on Amazon.  Because the current digital file was spliced together from a variety of sources, I knew it would have to be gone over with a fine-toothed comb to make sure everything was as clean as possible before I began the actual conversion and then publication.

It's a tedious process.  The story is familiar and I know what I want to have written, so it's easy to see what should be there instead of what is there. 

It's also a complex process, because editing is not the same thing as proofreading.  As I found out when talking to a friend about it the other night, not everyone understands that difference.

Proofreading is a very simple, uncontroversial task.  The proofreader goes through the manuscript carefully looking for typographical errors, word usage errors, punctuation errors, grammatical mistakes, and other mechanical errors (and sometimes, but not always, ambiguities).  The proofreader does not look for factual errors, internal inconsistencies, or plot holes.

Here's a hypothetical segment from a hypothetical novel:

"Your not going to wear that dress are you"? Caitlin asked in exaxperation.

"I'll wear whatever I want to wear.  It's my party, not your's so don't tell me what I can and can't wear to it."  her younger sister declaired.

The two girls faced each other across the expance of the bed upon which the garment in question was spread in all it's crimson glory.

"Your just jealous," Vanessa said, "Because Mama made you wear pink for you birthday ball."

The older girl leaned to her left and punked her sister with her elbow.

A proofreader will fix the you/your/you're/yours errors, correct the punctuation and spelling, and will maybe ask if that "punked" should have been either "punched" or "poked" instead.  But there's no guarantee on that last one, because "punked" is a real word and maybe that's what the author intended to use.

A proofreader probably will not ask the author, "If the girls are on opposite sides of the bed, how did Caitlin poke Vanessa?"

That's a task for an editor.

From what I can tell, most of the "editing" that's done on self-published digital novels these days is proofreading, not editing.  (And frankly, some of the proofreading doesn't appear to be top-notch either.)

What an editor -- a good one, that is -- will do is spot the structural and composition errors and help the author turn the sow's ear of a rough draft into a final silk purse.  An editor looks at the whole package of the novel; the proofreader deals with the minute details of individual words and rarely looks at anything larger than a sentence.

A good proofreader can clean up a novel, even a messy one, in a day or two.  And when she's done, she's done.  Proofreading does not require the author to make any major changes to her work.  She in fact has asked the proofreader to fix mistakes, and that's it.  The proofreader's service is to correct errors; her job is not to make suggestions that the author has the option of following or not following.  Maybe she charges $100 or $300, but when she completes the task, she hands the manuscript -- or digital file -- back to the author and that's it.  Her job is done.

An editor's job is far more complex and if done properly, editing is process that involves both the author and the editor in at least some back-and-forth exchange involving creative issues of story-building and story-telling.  These issues may be as minor as changing the spelling of a character's name so it's more recognizable to the reader or as major as altering the ending.

Here's another example, again a very hypothetical passage from a hypothetical novel:

Jessikah stood in the cabin's doorway and looked around.  She saw a plain room with a fireplace and some furniture.  It was empty.

She closed the door.  She wondered if the roof leaked.  She was already wet from the storm.  She hadn't intended to walk all the way from town and hadn't expected rain.

An editor might suggest to the author, "I'm not sure readers are going to be able to skim over that spelling for the heroine's name.  It's going to stop them, make them think too long about how to mentally pronounce it."  Maybe there are reasons for the odd spelling, or maybe not.  And that can be an easy thing to fix if the author decides to take the editor's advice, either by changing the spelling or by providing an explanation so the reader can recognize and "hear" the name.

But looking at that scene, the editor may also say, "Give me more description of the cabin.  How big is it?  What kind of furniture?  Is it warm or cold?  Why do you say it's empty when you've just said it has some furniture?  Do you mean no one was there, or is the 'empty' a kind of comparative term?  Why not have Jessikah/Jessica wonder about the roof in her own thoughts rather than narration?"

Now again, this is a tiny passage, and this hypothetical editor is focusing in on a very small section.  But assuming the author agrees with her editor, maybe the author rewrites the passage:

Jessica stood in the cabin's doorway and took in every detail of her surroundings.  The small space seemed larger than it really was because a crude table just large enough for one person to dine and a narrow bed in the corner comprised the only furnishings.  Ashes lay black and cold in the fireplace.  The very air smelled of damp and emptiness and abandonment.

She closed the door behind her, shutting out the storm.  With a nervous glance upward, she whispered, "Please don't leak, roof."  The last thing she needed after the long, unexpected walk from town was more water falling on her already soaked clothing. 

Editing, then, is something the editor does and then the author has to respond to and act.  The editor's job isn't the end of the process, the way the proofreader's is.

Here's another hypothetical example of how an editor works:

By the time they had loaded everything in the wagons, Melody ached everywhere.  She couldn't remember when she had felt so completely exhausted.  Back in Boston she had worked hard, scrubbing floors and toting water for the laundry and waiting on the various old ladies who had hired her.  Like old Mrs. Cleeford who added the task of caring for her miserable old cat to Melody's chores.  Melody hadn't liked cats since then.

And the editor adds a note regarding the highlighted section:  "Is this really necessary?  Nothing else in the book references Melody not liking cats. . . . or Mrs. Cleeford."

So sometimes an editor suggests that something be removed from the book.  This may be due to length restrictions -- which is more a concern for print publication than digital -- or because it just doesn't add anything to what may be an already rambling narrative.

The original version of one of my published books included a lengthy scene in which the heroine has a particularly vivid nightmare that seems to foretell events that unfold later on in the novel.  I felt it was a very well written scene and it depicted some of this character's fears at being in a situation over which she had virtually no control and which offered a lot of threats to her safety.  The book's editor, however, said the scene was too long and really didn't add anything to the story.  I was very reluctant to include that scene in the cuts that had to be made to reach a publishable word count.  As I realized later, however, I could convey the character's fears and even her apprehension that something terrible will happen in a few lines of dialogue with other characters, and thus leave the actual development of events for dramatic, on-stage action rather than duplicate what had already been portrayed in the dream or, far worse, relegate the on-stage action to a brief "everything happened exactly as she had dreamt in her nightmare." 

I was asked a few days ago why I spend time reading and evaluating other people's books.  My answer was, of course, that if I hope to sell my books in an increasingly crowded digital marketplace, I need to know what my competition is.  And then I have to figure out ways to give myself and my books a competitive edge.

Do I believe that good writing, solid story-telling, and clean formatting are enough of an edge in the digital marketplace?  The truth is, no, I don't.  It wasn't enough in the days of print-only, and it certainly isn't enough now.  Twenty years ago, no one was defending and/or dismissing "published" books that were so filled with grammatical errors that they were virtually unreadable, mainly because "published" books weren't filled with grammatical errors.  Now we have authors, their friends, their husbands, their mothers, posting glowing reviews of books that independent reviewers assess as so poorly written that the books are difficult to read.  How can any author who doesn't have a huge fan base or a publisher's promotional apparatus even hope to compete with that, short of doing the same?

I don't  know for sure.  Yet.

Is a stolen picture worth a thousand stolen words? UPDATED

I am VERY pleased to report that the following situation is in the process of being rectified.  As you'll see in the comments below, author Jillian Eaton is correcting the photo credit for the cover of her book.  I thought about taking this whole post down, but decided to leave it as a reminder to ALL AUTHORS that the people who create our covers are artists, too, and deserve full credit for their contributions.  I'm also leaving it as an example of how gracious someone can be in admitting a mistake.  We all make them; the first step to fixing them is to admit it.

Thank you, Jillian.





This breaks my heart.

Please note the dreamstime.com watermark at the bottom of this photo.  If you go there, you'll find that the photo is copyrighted by Konradbak.  A little bit of research will tell you Konrad Bak is a Polish photographer.  His pictures are available at Dreamstime, at Shutterstock, at iStock, at 123rf, and a bunch of other royalty-free stock photo sites.

Now look at this:

That pretty much gives you the information as to where this is from.  I don't think I need to add the link.

And if you "look inside" that Kindle edition, you'll find this:

"Cover art photography courtesy of Helena Beumer.  All rights reserved."

Well, at least it didn't say (c) Helena Beumer. . . . .

Photography is covered by copyright protections, too.  I know most writers don't want their words stolen, but shouldn't they be a little more respectful of their fellow artists?

Lost words

Sometimes the computer eats them.  Sometimes they're scribbled in a notebook or on a piece of scratch paper and then forgotten.  Sometimes they never exist outside my brain because when I go to write them down or type them out, they've vanished.  One time I had a computer disk stolen that had the only copy of two chapters of a novel.  The rest of it was carefully backed up, but not those two chapters.

Several years ago I attempted to transcribe all the little bits and pieces of half-started novels and put them in one file on the computer: NEW BOOK IDEAS.  Seriously, folks, you don't want to know how many folders are in that file.  Gazillions.  And there are a bunch of others that I never had time to transcribe.

One of my (many) problems is that I can come up with half a dozen titles at the drop of a hat, and then I want to write books to go with the titles.  Some of the folders in that digital file contain no more than a page or two of vague ideas, but I liked the title.

A couple of days ago I went looking for the original hard copy version of one of my published novels and discovered that it has disappeared. Even though I have two other hard copies as well as two other versions on disk, that original original original is . . . . gone.  So I have four versions plus the actual printed edition (which is slightly different even from those) but the original is lost, probably forever.  I wanted one scene from it to resurrect into a revised digital edition and now I'll have to live without it.

It doesn't pay to get too attached to our words. 

The words of a glorious tradition

There's a discussion going on at Smart Bitches Trashy Books about a canon for romance fiction.  Anything I'd write as a response would take up way too much space on their site, so here it is on my blog.

One of the very first pieces of writing that I ever had published was a brief article in "Authorship," the newsletter of the National Writer's Club, back in 1980 or so.  The title of my essay was "Whatever it is, it isn't trash," in which I pointed out that romance fiction, and in particular historical romance fiction, had a long and very honorable literary history.

My definition of "romance" at that time -- and pretty much through to today -- is a story that focuses on a relationship between lovers (gender and number non-specific) and how other events that the characters experience affect that relationship.  In some cases, the relationship does NOT end with happily ever after, but the ending is consistent with the story and does not compromise what the lovers have endured.

Charles Dickens wrote historical romance in A Tale of Two Cities.  Shakespeare wrote historical romances, meaning romances set in a time before his own.  Henry Fielding's Tom Jones is a romance; Tom's love for Sophia Western -- and hers for him -- drives many of the book's actions and complications.  Certainly Jane Austen wrote romances, and so did Charlotte Bronte.  Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights may not have had a happy ending, but it was a novel driven by a romantic relationship and the ending was consistent with characters.

Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo was probably the first adult romance novel I ever read, in a junior high illustrated version.  Edmond's love for Mercedes provides the motivation for all his many adventures.

Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore.  The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Mark Twain's time traveling A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Cour features a romance, even if that isn't the main focus.

Bring the whole genre forward into the 20th century with Rafael Sabatini, Noel B. Gershon, Thomas B. Costain, Margaret Mitchell, Kathleen Winsor, Laverne Gay, Jan Westcott, Mary Stewart, Norah Lofts, Victoria Holt, Samuel Shellabarger, Frank Yerby, Gwen Bristow, Edison Marshall. 

One of the authors who wrote historical romance both before and after the Woodiwiss milestone is Roberta Gellis.  Knight's Honor was first published in 1964, reprinted in 1976 when the historical romance craze was taking solid hold.  She now writes fantasy.

I think it's important to understand, as Sarah and Jane in the Dear Bitches, Smart Authors podcast point out, that there are different purposes of a romance fiction "canon."  Certainly if one is looking for suggestions for reading material for someone who has not read romance before, there are a lot of other considerations.  Does the reader prefer contemporary or historical?  Reality-based or paranormal?  Sexy or sweet?  And these have pretty much been the basis for determining reading lists anyway.

But do you want to recommend the books you've liked, or the books you think the reader will like?  The books that are the best of the genre or the most typical?  The new or the classic?

Because all of that is a far cry from suggesting a list of the influential books of romance fiction.

As a writer of historicals, I was much more influenced by Dumas and Yerby and Shellabarger and Sabatini than I was by Margaret Mitchell.  Does that mean all writers of historical romance in the 1980s shared the same influences?  Of course not!  But the writers whose books were published in the 1970s and 1980s were writers who had grown up on the books of the previous generations, and in turn those books of the 70s and 80s would influence the new writers of the 90s and onward.

I don't know how many of the early writers of 1980s and 1990s paranormal romance were influenced by Elswyth Thane's Tryst,  or Thorne Smith's Topper (the movie or TV incarnations thereof) or The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.  The point is that there were influences, and many of them.  How much of the magic in today's paranormal romances derives from the authors' encounters with heroic epic fantasy of William Morris, E.R.R. Eddison, H. Rider Haggard, and Edgar Rice Burroughs?

So whether the purpose of this "canon" is to bring new readers to the genre or to explain the genre to its existing fans, that purpose will be reflected in the list itself.

Were there names missing from the podcast discussion?  Oh, my goodness, yes. 

Where was Janet Dailey?  Regardless how tragic a figure she became after the plagiarism was revealed, she did make an indelible mark on the genre as the first American writer to be published by Harlequin.  For a while she was writing a book every two weeks, but she went on to write historicals as well as contemporary category romance, and single title contemporaries as well.  Janet Dailey was "there" before Nora Roberts was.

Laurie McBain wrote one of the earliest (in terms of post-Woodiwiss) continuing series, with Moonstruck Madness (1977), Chance the Winds of Fortune (1980), and  Dark Before the Rising Sun (1982).  The first of Jude Deveraux's Velvet series wasn't published until 1981.  But again, were those authors building on the tradition of Elswyth Thane's Williamsburg series?  Or back to the Musketeer series of Dumas?  How much does the current trend such as Robin Carr's Virgin River series or J.D. Robb's "in death" series owe to the original serialization of novels in magazines?  Not to mention, of course, the chronicles of Angelique.

I think it's only fair to examine the romance novel of 2012 -- or of any other contemporary point -- in relation to the entire genre's history.  These novels do not spring up like mushrooms (and even mushrooms come from spores).  And I believe that understanding the traditions from which the current romance types emerge will not only establish the romance as an important art form but also as one that transcends gender restrictions.

There were other issues brought up in the podcast that I think justify further investigation:

Tracing hero archetypes.  And I'd add heroine archetypes. . . villain archetypes. . . . other woman archetypes.  (Hey, didn't you smart bitches ever read Joseph Campbell, Clarissa Estes, or Christopher Vogler?)

The hero pursuing the heroine as a new trope?  You need to read more, girls!

Another author barely mentioned if at all:  Jayne Ann Krentz.  Prolific in a variety of subgenres, she is one of the first of the post-Woodiwiss generation of romance writers to venture into futuristic romance in the 1980s. Was this in response to the popularity of the Star Wars and Superman movies?

It's not just other cultural artifacts that influence writers.  Krentz was also somewhat notorious in the 1980s for her references to the use of condoms in sex scenes.  Even though unplanned pregnancies had been a staple of romance at least since Woodiwiss, the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s brought an awareness of the risks of unprotected sex.  What was radical and scandalous in 1989 barely rates a notice in 2012.

Angsty romances?  I think LaVyrle Spencer was a strong early author in this sub-genre, as well as for using more ordinary people as her protagonists instead of the wealthy and powerful and adventurous.  Her early books feature heroines who are caught in emotional dilemmas that could destroy the romantic relationship.  Candace Camp's superbly angsty The Rainbow Season was published the same year as Spencer's The Fulfillment.  Both books feature ordinary people as protagonists and heroines with conflicted emotional attachments.

The wide variety of types of romance is the reason I personally get so bent out of shape when "scholars" publish papers on what they think a romance novel is or does or says and their research is based on a sampling of 20 or 30 novels.  I consider that a gross insult.  They wouldn't be able to get away with it if the genre being studied were science fiction or pulp westerns or police procedurals. They'd be expected to examine and analyze not dozens but hundreds of representative novels; it's only with romance that they think they can get away with a couple dozen at most.  They're all alike, right?  WRONG.

Personally, I think of a "canon" more in terms of a collection of writings that not only exemplify the genre but that best promulgate the ideology of the genre.  Until there is established such an ideology, I think it's futile to try to assemble a definitive canon.

But that's just my opinion.

Words as numbers, and making words count.

I want to reiterate some of the issues that started this blog, and started my return to writing, because not everyone is going to read all the old stuff and because the old stuff is relevant to the new.

The three items that prompted it all were:
1.  The report of the Dorchester boycott listed at AAR.
2.  The article about Connie Brockway's adventures into self-publishing, also on AAR.
3.  The obituary of Walter Zacharius that a friend showed me from the New York Times.

It actually began maybe a year before, when the same friend who told me about Walter's death had told me about Kate Duffy's.  That kind of prompted me to slide back toward a writing hobby -- not yet a career, if it ever really was one -- that I had been seriously, seriously away from for at least five years.  But it wasn't until last spring that the ideas started to coalesce again and I began surfing the review sites and so on to see what was going on in the industry.

On reading the Brockway tale, I discovered that self-publishing, which had for so long been considered anathema for "professional" authors, now offered a legitimate means for authors to by-pass the parasitic publishers who often did more harm than good, to the individual authors, to the readers, and to the various genres as classes.  And so I began to pursue my own self-publishing ventures.

When the issue with Dorchester arose last week, I spent considerable time locating the warning letter I had written to RWA in 1993, unaware during my search that that letter also contained the cost analysis of a mass market paperback.  The two are, of course, inextricably linked.  I'm not sure that this issue was ever examined after that 1993 analysis was printed in PANdora's Box.  I do know that I followed up briefly.

In a letter I wrote to PANdora's Box sometime after the publication of the original analysis -- my file is not dated and I do not yet know for sure if it was ever sent -- I brought out additional financial facts about royalties:

If indeed the publisher makes a profit of even a modest 10% on the sale of each and every paperback romance novel sold, and the authors of those same novels are paid the slave-wage royalty of only six, perhaps a paltry four, and all too frequently an insulting mere two per cent royalty, what I failed to see was that I was still comparing apples to Nerf basketballs. For the publishers' profit of 10% is a net profit, whereas the royalty to the author is a gross (!) income.

From that income one must further deduct all the costs and expenses already deducted from the publishers' receipts. Their ten percent is what they have left after paying taxes and insurance, printers and shippers, advertisers and distributors. Authors, out of their pittances, still must come up with agents' commissions, taxes (including the full social security contribution), postage and copying, bookmarks and RT ads, conference fees and mileage to those book signings at which we sign two or three copies.

We also have no control over our "wages." If the publisher wishes to give away 1500 free copies of our book at a conference, they chalk it up to promotional expense and we get -- nothing. Fifteen hundred fans have now saved the cost of the book, money which they will probably spend on someone else's novel. They will also share that book (just as they share their others, including the ones from the used book stores) with two or three friends. Or, if they don't happen to like the type of book we've written, it goes immediately to the used book store. Unlike the baker who supplies bread for the grocery store, we can't tell the publisher, "Hey, wait, guys! I worked my ass off for that book! What gives you the right to give it away for free?"

Why does this all this matter?  Because we as writers matter.  We are human beings.  For many of us, writing is our livelihood.  For others writing is an obsession, and I don't mean that in a bad way.  But it also matters because readers matter.  Because publishers have traditionally been the means for getting written material from the author's pen or typewriter or computer into the hands of the reader. 

We who are living in the 21st century take our technology pretty much for granted, especially printing because the printing press has been around for over 500 years.  But it hasn't been all that long ago that a musician had to perform live for anyone to hear him.  We cannot watch Edmund Kean's theatrical performances, we cannot hear Paganini on the violin, but we can read the words written about them.

The recording of a theatrical or musical performance requires the coordinated effort of a lot of people: It begins with the script writer or playwright or composer, progresses to cast/performers, crew, set designers, camera operators, and finally the distribution medium, whether that is Lionsgate Films or YouTube.  Computer technology has progressed over the past few years that allows some diminution of the process, but it hasn't completely eliminated the need for a coordinated effort involving a lot of people.

Writing, on the other hand, has always been primarily a solitary endeavor and it's only the distribution process that has required the input of others.  The writer writes, and was more or less done with the project until it landed in the hands of the publisher, when all production activity took over.  The publisher did all the work, granted the writer a small cut of the revenue, and walked away with the majority of the profits.

What digital self-publishing has done, however, is to make the publisher redundant.  Publishers, obviously, don't like this, and some writers are reluctant to take on the additional responsibility that self-publishing puts on them.  But let's look at the numbers, so that we, as writers, can at least make an informed decision.

Looking at the figures I posted originally -- based on a 1993 cover price of $4.99 (rounded to $5 for ease of calculation) -- on a sale of 25,000 copies, the author earns $7,500 in royalties.

If the author digitally publishes that novel on Amazon Kindle at $2.99 -- that's a major discount from a 20-year-old price, let alone from a 2012 price of $7.99 or $9.99 or $12.99! -- at a 70% royalty rate she earns approximately $50,000.  I say approximately because there is a download cost associated with Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing program that's based on the size of the download file.  However, the comparison kind of makes you sick to your stomach, doesn't it?  Imagine paying for a little bit of online promotion out of that $50,000 compared to buying a print ad in Romantic Times  or having bookmarks make up to distribute at conferences?  How does $50,000 in royalties compare to $7,500?

Look at another financial scenario.  Even selling on Amazon for $.99 -- a 99-cent bargain for the reader -- and only 35% royalty, that 35-cent royalty per copy is still -- STILL -- higher than a 4% royalty on a $4.99 book, and lots higher than a 2% cut on foreign sales.

Financially, digital self-publishing is a no-brainer.  Added just to the raw numbers are the considerations that digital self-publishing can be done in a matter of days and payment usually arrives in 90 days or less after sales.  Traditional print publishing requires at least six months and often as much as 18 to 24 months before a print edition is released, and royalties are paid long after that.  While the "advance against royalties" may be paid sooner than that, it is increasingly industry standard that advances are paid in more chunks and not until the completed manuscript is delivered and approved.

There are, of course, non-financial considerations.  With a traditional publisher, along with that up-front advance, the author gets cover art (which she may or may not like), proofreading and editing services (which may or may not make the book any better), and status (like membership in a "professional" writers' organization).  Oh, yes, and the delight of actually autographing print copies.

But what if the publisher, whose primary concern is the bottom line, their profit and not yours, indulges in activities that hurt your bottom line?  Looking at those 1993 Leisure/BMI editions again, they carried a UPC bar code for a cover price of $4.99 -- or even $5.99, as on the copy I found buried in my stash last night -- but I don't know what they actually sold for.  Did they reach a discount place in Kansas, as Jaye Manus reported, to be sold for 99 cents?  How did the "cover price" affect what, if any, royalties were paid to the authors?  At least I know the "cover price" on my 27,780 copies of Touchstone was actually $1.00.

As I went through some of those old issues of PANdora's Box and read comments of published romance writers who lamented over and over the eagerness of new writers to accept any terms just so they could be published and who further lamented the acquiescence of RWA on the really shitty terms and shabby treatment offered to new writers, I was quite literally moved to tears.  It's been almost 20 years since we tried to get that stopped.  By "we" I mean those of us who advocated for a stronger, more professional RWA: Margaret Brownley, Jaye Manus, Susan Wiggs, Betty Duran, among so many others whose complaints were voiced only by "Name Withheld."

I refuse to withhold my name any longer.

Old words, old pathways, old destinations

The search for the evidence that RWA had been apprised of Dorchester's shenanigans (a good word on this St. Patrick's Day) took me through some dark and shadowed avenues of my earlier writing career.  I may detail some of the other half-forgotten items I discovered, but not yet.  Some of the re-opened wounds are still too painful.

My intention, however, through all the things that happened and that I myself did, was always to honor my chosen genre and its writers as well as promote the welfare of ALL writers and defend them against the depredations of the publishers. ALL publishers.

I know now that I first notified RWA about Dorchester/Leisure/BMI almost 20 years ago.  What, if anything, was done in the five years between then and when I left RWA in 1998, I don't know.  I haven't been able to find anything.  I know that very little was done to bring Kensington/Zebra to heel when they were behind on royalty payments and had royalty rates below industry standard. 

(One of the items I found in my search was a royalty statement of my own from Kensington that shows a sale of rights to Russia, but I'm not sure yet I was ever paid for it; I need to find the time to look it over more closely.  I've also discovered that there was apparently another printing by Kensington of another of the three books I worte for them, but it doesn't show up on any of the royalty statements.  Again, I need more time to research it.)

But my point here is that from the very beginning, RWA was in a position simply due to the overwhelming size of its membership -- 8,000 or so in 1993; now over 10,000 -- to do something about Dorchester/Leisure, and it doesn't look like they did.  Too many unpublished RWA members saw Leisure, regardless its royalty rates, regardless its crappy contracts, regardless anything, as a viable avenue for publication, and publication was the brass ring that could not be moved any further away or made any harder to grasp.  And the unpublished majority ruled.

I went over to the RWA website the other day to verify whether certain subdivisions of the organization still existed.  PASIC is still there, the Published Authors' Special Interest Chapter, shown as founded in 1995.  No, my friends, PASIC was not founded in 1995.  It was founded on the evening of 13 October 1994, when the following was posted on the GEnie network's Romance Writer's Exchange Roundtable discussion board, where a number of authors had been discussing their desire to have an RWA conference for the published authors only, without the crush and bother of the unpublished:

Sent on 10/13/94 at 8:53p

All:

This may be a long post, and I really have difficult work I should be doing but . . . . . . . . .

I *think* there may be a way to have a PAN conference.  Now, I could be way out in left field and this idea just came to me and I haven't explored it very much, so I'm just throwing this out for discussion.

WHAT IF we formed an RWA chapter, just like any other chapter, only the bylaws of the chapter restricted membership in that chapter to published authors?  Then we could have a chapter conference just for published authors, couldn't we?  And we could have it anywhere we wanted, because if RWA is inc.'ed in TX but has a converence in NY or HI, why not a chapter in CA having a conference in IL or MT or wherever it damn well -- ooops, sorry -- darn well pleased?

As I understand it, there is at least one chatper that does have some kind of restrictions on membership, so hey, why not explore this angle?  A chapter can have conferences, put out a newsletter, charge dues, give awards, have meetings, etc., etc., and be under the RWA umbrella for taxes unless and until it wants to go out on its own.  Other chapters have done that, too.

Linda, scared to death and holding her breath, Hilton

Words as evidence -- I found the letter

(Note:  I have removed addresses and phone numbers, even though I've moved, and fixed the paragraph formatting for ease of reading, but nothing else.  If there are typos, they remain from the original.  The body of the letter regarding the cost accounting for book profits was published almost as-is in PANdora's Box.  I've included the original here, without any changes that were made for publication.)

Linda Hilton

P.O. Box

Buckeye, AZ 85326

(602) 　

20 July 1993
　
Margaret Brownley
PAN Liaison

Dear Margaret:

I'm sorry I didn't get these off to you last week as planned. My schedule from now until St. Louis is going from frenzy to chaos.

However, here are the copies of the covers and some inside material from the two Leisure books my friend Kim picked up from Book Margins, Inc.

As you can see Gloria Pedersen's Nighthawk's Embrace has no logo or publisher's name at all on the cover. On the inside, however, the title page and copyright page say "Leisure Books." If this were an unsold "remaindered" copy, it would have the Leisure logo -- and the price would not have gone up to a very current $4.99. As recently as 1991, Leisure was still selling books for $3.95, and this one is from 1987.

The Golden Threshold which is copyrighted by Leisure rather than the author, clearly has a "BMI" logo by the price on the cover and on the spine. The title page lacks any publisher information, but the copyright page reads "Published by special arrangement with Leisure Books." The BMI version doesn't have the gold foil embossing for the title on the cover, and the ISBN is different from the original. The new one from BMI only has a publisher's ID number, 83148, the same as on the other Leisure book. Leisure's ID, by the way, is 08439. And again, the price is $4.99, up from the original. Also, the original edition included four or five pages of advertising material for other Leisure titles; this material has been cut from the BMI edition


I called BMI last Friday after talking with you. "Stan" had already left for the week-end, but I was told he would call me probably Wednesday. Naturally, I'm going to be gone all day tomorrow, but my son is capable of taking messages, and there is always the machine...

After you and I talked Friday about the home subscription situation, I received something interesting in yesterday's mail: my entry in the Harlequin $1,000,000 Sweepstakes! According to the outside envelope, I'm guaranteed a cash prize. The inner material, of course, reveals that this cash prize can be as low as 50 cents.... Still, one wonders how Harlequin can expect authors to accept 2% royalties on a marketing venture that supposedly loses money -- in order to give some reader a million bucks! And 50 cents is more than Harlequin pays its authors, even at 6% royalty!

What many authors may not know is that some of the financial figures on home subscription sales are readily available, and they do not bear out the publishers' complaints and justifications. I know you said you had some figures, but I thought I'd take this opportunity to give you what I compiled about two years ago, to see how they compare.

The typical retailer gets approximately a 40% discount on paperbacks, sometimes a bit more. The wholesaler from whom the retailer buys gets another 5% to 10%, so let's split that to take into consideration the higher volume discounts some retailers get and say that the total discount (wholesale and retail) is 47%. If the author receives the standard 6% (though many only get 4%), this leaves the publisher with 47% of the retail price to cover his costs and make a profit. (In some cases, the publisher may also have a distributor, as Zebra does with Penguin, but the percentage there is almost negligible, so we'll just lump it in with everything else.)

Zebra currently offers its Lovegram subscribers approximately a 17% discount; Harlequin offers Intrigue subscribers a bit more than 13%. If we add 25% for shipping, handling, bookkeeping, etc. (a rough estimate and probably high), the net to the publisher after the standard 6% royalty becomes 52% to Zebra, 56% to Harlequin, higher than the net on normal retail sales. If the bad debt level is so high that they can't afford even 4% to the author, then perhaps the whole idea of subscription sales should be done away with.

Then perhaps again, the proposition is more lucrative than the publishers would like us to believe. Perhaps, since these things are frequently distributed through the U.S. Postal Service, audits of the publishers would reveal just exactly how many subscribers there really are -- and how many of them are deadbeats.

The real point, however, is that publishers apparently expect us to believe that they lose money on this mail-order scam and therefore we have to help them cut their losses by accepting lower payment because they choose to sell our books at a loss. I for one do not think any of this is true.
Here's a quick lesson in cost accounting: As in any other business, advertising expenses and bad debts are figured right along with material and labor and other overhead into the cost of manufacturing the product. This total cost is then used to establish a selling price. Publishers are no different from steel mills or lingerie factories in this regard. They cover all their costs first, add a profit, and come up with a selling price. Cutting our royalties does not cover costs; it increases profits.

Another "business" lesson: Many retailers, especially grocery stores, feature loss leaders in their advertising. A staple product, such as bread or milk, is promoted at a selling price well below what the store pays for it from the dairy or bakery. The dairy or bakery may give them a volume discount, but they do not absorb the grocery store's loss on the item. The attractive price, however, is used as a lure to bring consumers into the store so they'll buy other things on which the profit margin is higher. Why do you think bread and milk are inevitably in the back of the store and as far apart from each other as possible? People have to pass a lot of other merchandise on the way to the bread and milk!

A third lesson: I have some numbers on the cost of publishing a paperback, partially based on figures taken without apologies from agent Natasha Kern's posts on Prodigy.

Using Ms. Kern's percentages, I've extrapolated the costs for a typical single-title mass market paperback, retailing for $4.99.

Cover price: 5.00
Retail discounts @ 45% 2.25
Printing cost 0.85*
Typeset/design 0.25*
Overhead 0.70*
Royalty (6%) 0.30 4.35
Total net to publisher 0.65

The * items are based on the figures Ms. Kern gave for a 5,000 print run of a $22.00 hardcover. If you bump that print-run figure up to 50,000 (which is probably minimum romance paperback from what I can guess and I'm sure there are people somewhere out here who have better numbers than I), then the Typeset/design and Overhead figures get cut to 0.025 and 0.07 respectively, and the publisher's cut jumps from 65 cents per book to $1.505 per book! This, of course, is based on a 100% sell-through, but when you consider the number of romance novels that sell more than 50,000 copies and the fact that even the above listed $.65 (at 5,000) is twice what the author makes, something is fishy!

Here's another way to look at the same numbers, only this time we'll take into consideration a 50% sell-through on a 50,000 copy print-run:
　
Costs:
Printing cost @ .85 42,500
Typeset/design 5,000
Overhead 3,500
Total cost 51,000

Revenue @ 50% sold:

25,000 @ 55% net (2.75) 68,750
Less royalty @ 6% 7,500
Less total cost 51,000
PUBLISHER'S PROFIT 10,250
　
The important thing to consider in this scenario is that only 25,000 books were sold, leaving another 25,000 in a warehouse somewhere. However, these unsold books are fully paid for, because the cost for all 50,000 has been deducted from the revenue on sales on only 25,000. The publisher can sell these leftover 25,000 copies at $1.00 each to some discount broker -- like Book Margins, Inc., if BMI were legitimate -- and make another $25,000 profit. Because most authors' contracts allow the publisher to renege on royalties if the books are sold below "cost," the publisher can produce figures showing that the books cost $.95 to produce (based on the figures in the first example) and the author gets NOTHING while the publisher pockets a cool $25,000.
Clever bastards, ain't they?
　
The bottom line (and as you yourself have said, it is always the bottom line) is that the publishers are not entering into this home subscription venture without assurances of a profit. We don't need to accept
their excuses.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to call -- anytime. I'm usually awake by seven in the morning and rarely get to bed before midnight. I know timing is tight between now and next week with the conference, but I have no real schedule, so you won't be interrupting anything except general chaos!

Feel free!

I am eagerly awaiting this conference. I think it is going to be one we will remember for a long time to come. In fact, I have a feeling RWA may emerge much changed as a result. I'm glad I'll be there.
　
Sincerely,
　
Linda,