Generally speaking most of the stuff I get published is either "work for hire" (hey, can you do us a Spider story of 15,000 words") or "licenced first use" ("hey, if you write a Sherlock Holmes story of 15,000 words we'll put it out first but afterwards the copyright stays with you").

The exceptions are the Chillwater Press books like Mumph, TTC, and Vinnie, where I get to write what I want without any brief at all. The whole point of that deal was to have an outlet for stuff I didn't think would get past a conventional editor. Rhiannon edited most of the Chillwater volumes and did a more rigorous and testing job than almost anyone else I've experienced.

Payment is either by fixed fee (or sometimed fee per word), by advance and royalty, or by back-end royalty. Back-end royalties are always at-risk and as I said there are several books I've never had any for (there's often a clause saying they won't bother issuing anything under $200 or something because the admin costs are disproportionate).

I have had to go to great lengths to get breakdowns of what amounts I'm sent actually represent, even to know which books they are payments for. Publishers always seem surprised that I would ask such things. When I ask for sales figures and breakdowns of overhead costs they get very evasive. At first I thought this was because of commercial sensitivity or fear that I might challenghe expense items. Now I think its mostly because small press companies just don't keep their records that tightly.

The exception is the publisher who charged a couple of thousand dollars of him attending ComicCon or similar to the marketing costs for a book. Nope.




Sales on those books are consistently low, even though I think they have the best production values of any of my works and the stories are quite good too. That's down to three things:

1. Almost no marketing is done, so they don't penetrate the marketplace. I don't Twitter or Facebook about them, or do "blog tours", or any of the things writers are supposed to do these days to develop their "author platform".

2. I don't generally do conventions where I sit behind a stall and sign my books so that people notice me and the works. I've been to a convention once now, and I enjoyed it, but it was very clear to me that doing that stuff is a lifestyle choice.

3. The actual purpose of those books (apart from the fun of writing them) is to bulk out my portfolio. I get more offers and better fees because I can point to nine published novels and about thirty-five other credits. I was surprised at the convention I mentioned that I was getting better rates than lots of the creators there (because I thought my rates were pathetic) and that I had one of the largest published bodies of work apart from the top-rank bestselling pros.