Okay, I have a massive amount of work, but I have to post this because it's something that many people on this board will deal with at some time or another.
Many of us salivate at the idea of a traditional deal. Me too. I'm not an exception. Even with my control freak, I-wanna-do-it-myself idiosyncrasies, it still looks like some pretty green grass over there, so when I turned down a few offers from the big boys a couple of months ago it made me really uncomfortable. The biggest hook they dangled was X amount of cash is here on the table now. It's a set number, sure thing. If I continued and pubbed my 2nd book without them, well, who knows what I might end up with. I heard that over and over again. It's a sales tactic that's used to close a sale/ deal - it's called fear of loss - and it's STRONG.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, right? Well, that depends. And now that I know the bush had half a million DAMAGED birds in it and counting, I want the whole damn bush - birds, roots, and all.
My 2nd book in my series came out last week. In ONE week that title outsold the highest offer for the entire series. It was really hard to say no over and over again. There was a lot of pressure on me to just take the deal. I'm not gonna lie and say I was laughing about it, because it really freaked me out. I walked away from a huge pile of cash, it was painstakingly difficult, and it paid off. There's much more to consider than just the one bird in the bush. That's a very narrow way to view sales potential. I mean, there's a whole fricken forest around the bush. We need to see the big picture.
Anyway, more Indies will be pulled aside and given offers from trad pubs. Do the math. Estimate your sales (use pass through rates and est spill into your other works to get a number - don't do feels like this book is worth), and see what number you come up with. If they hit that magic number, awesome. But if they don't, going it alone isn't bad. It's actually very awesome.
Just throwing it out there... The grass is greener over here.
Many of us salivate at the idea of a traditional deal. Me too. I'm not an exception. Even with my control freak, I-wanna-do-it-myself idiosyncrasies, it still looks like some pretty green grass over there, so when I turned down a few offers from the big boys a couple of months ago it made me really uncomfortable. The biggest hook they dangled was X amount of cash is here on the table now. It's a set number, sure thing. If I continued and pubbed my 2nd book without them, well, who knows what I might end up with. I heard that over and over again. It's a sales tactic that's used to close a sale/ deal - it's called fear of loss - and it's STRONG.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, right? Well, that depends. And now that I know the bush had half a million DAMAGED birds in it and counting, I want the whole damn bush - birds, roots, and all.
My 2nd book in my series came out last week. In ONE week that title outsold the highest offer for the entire series. It was really hard to say no over and over again. There was a lot of pressure on me to just take the deal. I'm not gonna lie and say I was laughing about it, because it really freaked me out. I walked away from a huge pile of cash, it was painstakingly difficult, and it paid off. There's much more to consider than just the one bird in the bush. That's a very narrow way to view sales potential. I mean, there's a whole fricken forest around the bush. We need to see the big picture.
Anyway, more Indies will be pulled aside and given offers from trad pubs. Do the math. Estimate your sales (use pass through rates and est spill into your other works to get a number - don't do feels like this book is worth), and see what number you come up with. If they hit that magic number, awesome. But if they don't, going it alone isn't bad. It's actually very awesome.
Just throwing it out there... The grass is greener over here.