Tara Maya's Tales

I think we'll be seeing a lot more of this : Harper Voyager has launched an international talent search, with aspiring writers invited to submit their un-agented manuscripts directly to the publisher. The HarperCollins sci-fi and fantasy imprint will be opening a two week window in October where writers can submit their novels, with plans to publish selected titles digitally. Writers are wondering if this is a good deal . Obviously before the digital revolution and the possibility of cutting out an extra layer of middlemen, this would have been a great opportunity. But is it now? I have a couple of thoughts: 1. The only possible reason to go with a traditional publisher at this point would be to get your books into a bookstore, hopefully in hardcover. So why on earth would you sell ebook rights only? 2. There's no such thing as "free" editing, cover, proofreading and promotion. You are paying for these services by forking over a huge percentage of your roy...

Lynn Viehl reached covetted New York Bestseller list with her latest book Twilight Fall. And she's kind enough to give us the down and dirty on what this means to one's pocketbook. My advance for Twilight Fall was $50,000.00, a third of which I did not get paid until the book physically hit the shelf — this is now a common practice by publishers, to withhold a portion of the advance until date of publication. Of that $50K, my agent received $7,500.00 as her 15% (which she earns, believe me) the goverment received roughly $15,000.00, and $1594.27 went to cover my expenses (office supplies, blog giveaways, shipping, promotion, etc.) After expenses and everyone else was paid, I netted about $26K of my $50K advance for this book, which is believe it or not very good — most authors are lucky if they can make 10% profit on any book. This should also shut up everyone who says all bestselling authors make millions — most of us don’t. She also recieved her first royalty statment (link...