Showing posts with label backlist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label backlist. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 6, 2022

MYOB - How Much Do You Know About Author Finances?

 

ROGUE'S PAWN is out now! This first book in my original Covenant of Thorns trilogy has been re-released with gorgeous new covers. Look for book 2 coming July 26 and book 3 releasing August 16. 

***

This week at the SFF Seven we're MYOB - Minding your own business! 

Seriously, we're taking a long look at how we manage the financial side of being an author. There tends to be a wide range of strategies for managing author finances. As all authors are primarily creatives (with the small exception of the widget-makers who hire ghost writers to write for them, which is another kettle of stinky fish), not all possess the inclination to crunch numbers and balance accounts.

In truth, while I think all authors should have a thorough understanding of what they should be earning, not everyone needs to be a financial guru of their own writing career. In truth, the most comfortable place for an author - or perhaps any creative - to be is independent of the need to make money doing it. This, of course, requires either family money (marrying money counts) or a spouse with a great salary and benefits. In these cases, writing money is all "gravy" and I know many authors in this position who don't really track that income.

The major downside of this model is it means traditional publishing has favored those with this privilege and also takes shameless advantage of these authors. There can be a lot of funky tickling of the financials, both from publishing houses and literary agencies. Believe me: I've seen it.

Learn to read your royalty statements and hold those who handle your earnings accountable.

The flip side is if you're like me - someone who is supporting their household with writing income. This is the other extreme, where ALL finances are author finances. I track everything scrupulously, to the point of using mathematical models to predict my future income. That's the thing about writing income: it's super unpredictable. Sales wax and wane, often due to reasons beyond anyone's control. Traditional publishing pays quarterly if you're lucky and semi-annually otherwise. There's almost no way to predict what those checks will look like, so I end up behaving like the privileged writer as above - I treat my trad income as gravy.

Self-publishing income is what allows me to pay the bills with writing. That money comes in monthly and, because I can access my sales dashboards in real time, I can reasonably predict how much money will come in. The downside of self-publishing is that the author fronts the investment. KAK covered a lot of the nitty-gritty of self-publishing costs yesterday. Most self-publishing authors can implement the simple math of outflow vs. inflow. That is, what you pay to produce and market the book should be less than the money you make from it. Where it gets into higher math is managing that income so that you can cover the costs of being alive. 

With a salaried job, or even hourly income, the basic budgeting model is to figure your monthly income, subtract your expenses, and the rest is "disposable," meaning you can spend it on stuff you want vs. the stuff you need. But with a fluctuating monthly income, this simply isn't possible. 

So, my basic model is to try to keep enough money in savings to pay for two months of expenses should I have zero income in any given month. (Which hopefully will never happen, knock on wood. My backlist is substantial at this point, so the baseline backlist income is relatively steady.) Once I have that in place, I can pay for some of the things that make us happy. This is VERY important. It's tempting to confine oneself only to needs and funnel any "extra" money back into growing the business. This works okay for a while, but it gets soul-crushing over time. We work hard; we must also play hard. Anything else is unsustainable.

As a creative, maintaining your joy in the work is key!

From my initial announcement, you'll see I'm also republishing some of my trad-pubbed books. I did ten books with Carina Press and now have the rights back to all of them. Those royalties came in quarterly, so I'm eager to see how my income on those books changes for me. So far I only have ROGUE'S PAWN up again. Republishing meant paying for covers and formatting, so a bit of investment on my part. Hopefully it will pay off.

As with all businesses, writing for a living requires a lot of hoping for that pay off. Being smart about crunching those numbers provides the reality. A balance of both is best. 


Friday, February 19, 2021

Loving Up the Backlist

 A funny thing happened at the day job last week. The manager said, "I need a Powerpoint of ALL your novels. Give me cover, reviews, awards, and a snippet of dialogue. We're trying to sell you into a gig writing character dialogue, so give me different character voices so we can play that up. Oh. And we need that NOW."

Imagine my delight then, to find this is backlist love week and I just happen to have the backlist in a neat, tidy set of slides. I'm not going to copy in an entire Powerpoint deck. I'm not that much of a monster. Usually. 

The piece of backlist I'll point up is Nightmare Ink. While searching for a snippet of dialogue that showed up a bit of character, I kept finding myself getting sucked into the story - as if I hadn't written it. That seemed like a reasonable criteria for selection. Here's the snippet and the review I found on Amazon that warmed the frosty cockles of my heart.

SNIPPET:

     “Kill it!” he wailed. “Kill it!”
     The creature shrilled in Isa’s head.
     “SHUT UP!” she shouted, yanking her hand free of Zoog’s skin. “I can’t just kill it!”
     Silence settled over the studio.
     Surprise at the pronouncement rocked her. The chill in her gut dissipated, but it took several seconds for the heat and smell of sage to drive away nausea.
     “What do you mean you can’t just kill it?” Zoog said. His voice sounded stronger.
     “It’s wounded. Bleeding. It’s a cornered animal, in pain and afraid.”
     He scowled and shook his head. “You make it sound like it’s alive, babe. This is nothing but Ink and magic, right?”
     “Who told you that?” she snapped.
     He propped himself up on his elbows and levered himself up to look her in the eye. “Daniel. While he was inking me.”
     Isa shivered. She shut out disquiet with a bracing dose of anger. “What? Daniel thinks he’s God, creating animate constructs with Ink and magic? What did you think while he was inking you, Zoog? That he’d birthed the animating force out his ass?”
     He barked a strangled laugh. “You have a way with words, Ice.”
     “Part of my charm.”
     “I know. Marry me.”
     “Sorry. I don’t like the company you keep.”
     “You?”
     “In part.” She smoothed damp palms down her jeans.

The Sweet Review:

I have to say - this one surprised me. What a great concept, and unique world-building.

Isa has magic and can create Living Ink, although chooses not to do it because it's dangerous. Live ink is exactly what it sounds like. Whatever is tattooed on your body, is alive, and shares living space with you.

What she does do is bind ink on those who have live ink when it goes rogue and attempts to leave the body. How creepy is that? Especially for someone who has tattoos?

Someone is summoning all of the live ink off their host's bodies, and it's killing them and the host in the process. Isa may be one of them after a psycho kidnaps her and tattoos live ink on her unless she can stop them.

Isa is an interesting character with an interesting back story, that slowly starts to come out throughout the book. She's tough and likable, and you can't wait to see her kick some ass after what's been done to her.

I couldn't put this book down. It was action-packed from the moment I turned the first page. There is a small love interest although it doesn't really turn into much of anything until late in the book, I assume it will be full-blown in the next book.




Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Now that Texas has seceded and the world is spiraling into chaos...

Today, Texans are dealing with a killer winter, but not too long ago our very own Vivien Jackson introduced us to the award-winning first book in her Wanted and Wired Sci-Fi Weird Western Romance trilogy with that tantalizing teaser. That's right! It's Backlist Love week here on the blog. Time to meet Mari and Heron as they heat things up in a far-future Texas.


WANTED & WIRED
Wanted and Wired: Book 1

Rogue scientist * technologically enhanced * deliciously attractive
Heron Farad should be dead. But technology has made him the man he is today. Now he heads a crew of uniquely skilled outsiders who fight to salvage what's left of humanity: art, artifacts, books, ideas -- sometimes even people. People like Mari Vallejo.

Gun for hire * Texan rebel * always hits her mark
Mari has been lusting after her mysterious handler for months. But when a by-the-book hit goes horribly sideways, she and Heron land on the universal most wanted list. Someone set them up. Desperate and on the run, they must trust each other to survive, while hiding devastating secrets. As their explosive chemistry heats up, it's the perfect storm...

BUY IT NOW:  Amazon Apple Barnes & Noble | Kobo


Tuesday, February 16, 2021

Meet the Gatekeeper on a Mission from Hel

I mailed my backlist Valentine to the first book in The Immortal Spy Urban Fantasy Series...but with DeJoy still running the post office, it probably won't get to Bix in Old Town Alexandria, VA, until St. Paddy's day.  

~cough~ 

Political snark aside, with the snowstorms locking down the nation more securely than the pandemic, now is a great time to meet Bix, a gatekeeper with amnesia and a vendetta; Tobek, the don't-call-me-a-Viking commander of the Berserkers; and Gurp, the walking forensics lab goblin. Oh, and did I mention Bix's best friend is a body thief and her mentor in the spy game is an electricity-wielding demigod? Go ahead, start a new adventure that will take you across this World and many others.


THE BURNED SPY
The Immortal Spy: Book 1

Gods. Always ready to screw you.

When Bix the Gatekeeper is summoned from exile a hundred and seventy years early by the goddess of the Norse Under World, the former Dark Ops agent knows there’s a catch. On the surface, the terms of the deal are simple. Someone attacked the pantheon’s ambassador to the Mid Worlds and left the ambassador in a coma. In exchange for early parole, Bix must identify the perpetrator and drag their soul to Hel.

It’d be a sweet contract, if not for the details. The ambassador is Bix’s ex-girlfriend, the lead suspect is the key witness from Bix’s trial, and the organization leading the official investigation is the same intelligence guild that disavowed Bix when a covert op went pear-shaped. Undeterred, Bix returns to her old stomping grounds where clues in the smoldering woods of Centralia, Pennsylvania, lead to the waterfront of Washington, DC, and Worlds beyond.

Once valued for her skills creating passageways as small as a capillary or as large as a continent, Bix’s success now depends on the relationships she was forced to abandon. As she squares off against friends who betrayed her and enemies keen to destroy her, Bix follows a trail of secrets, torture, and treason that leads to the very superpowers who banished her. With her freedom on the line and revenge within reach, this highly-trained operative will take on Fates, dragons, angels, and gods to get exactly what she wants.

Hel hath no fury like a burned spy.

BUY IT NOW: 
Overdrive (for Libraries)


Friday, October 30, 2020

Chameleon Backlist

Back lists are supposed to be where old books go to make an author a steady trickle of income. But sometimes the back list rises from the grave and lives again. IT LIVES. Yeah. That's all the spooky I got. Sorry. 

Enemy Within was the first book published. That qualifies it as back list. So is the second book in the series, Enemy Games. And then the series was orphaned. I had all but given up getting to finish the series, but sometimes, years long procrastination has its benefits. My rights reverted.

I made plans to self-pub the whole kit and kaboodle. But then the lightning struck my monsters. The Wild Rose Press bought the entire series. They reissued Enemy Within and Enemy Games. They then released Enemy Storm. When I finish the current WIP, they'll get book four - which doesn't even have a working title yet because that's how titles and I roll.

So then. If the back list rises from the dead, is it still back list? If it isn't, there's always that UF series with the demon. Maybe that's a better Halloween horror-fest.