Publishers demanding audio rights

[The Big Peat]

One thing I would say in defence of the publishers here is that if, and I know it's a whopping big IF, if the publisher spends a load of money promoting a book and then subsequently someone else publishes the audio edition, that someone else will benefit from all that unpaid for promotion. Of course if the publisher does little or nothing to promote the book in the first place then they haven't a leg to stand on in my opinion.

This is a very fair point. I can see why publishers are unwilling to take on the risk of being the big backers (although the extent to which they back seems an ungoing argument) of being an author only to see valuable markets go elsewhere. And I'd be interested on seeing their numbers in terms of profit when they get the audiobook rights vs not getting them.

At the same time, it sucks for the author, who generally gets more of the suck on these deals anyway. And long term, you have to ask if it makes sense for publishers to encourage more authors to talk about how little they need them?

What point is there of selling a hundreds of books and only seeing >12p a book? If you value READERSHIP your arguement makes sense, but not sales. Your book will be read more via a trad than self pub in most senarios.

Going back to topic. This has been a growing issue for a while now.
Publishers are out to make money, as others have said. That's any company's first objective.
When you sign keep that in mind. Wise up before you sign up. It's your responsiblity.

I sometimes feel the best path for authors these days is to go trad pub to build awareness of themselves, then go indie once they have an audience so they actually see the money.

Audio rights can be worth more than print or E. Far more.

The big three audio houses are really stepping up their game. They also add advantage in that they can attract the big-name narrators - and audiophiles are drawn as much by them as they are by an author.

I now write as much with audio in mind as I do with print. (For example, dialogue tags are best structured more towards incorperating action and I watch those 'invisible' words a lot more which suddenly seem to stand out in audio)

The difference of writing for audio and writing for print would make a good topic in its own right.

 

[Vertigo]

I sometimes feel the best path for authors these days is to go trad pub to build awareness of themselves, then go indie once they have an audience so they actually see the money.

That's an interesting point and I wonder (though absolutely don't know) whether this isn't somewhat analogous to the unsustainable shopping technique I hear so many people proudly espouse these days. You go into shops to handle/try on/get a close look at a product you fancy and then go off and buy it cheaper online. The inevitable end result is those shops going out of business. This has a similar feel. If, and this is the same big IF as my previous post, if the trad publishers do their job and successfully promote a new author, they are obviously hoping to get the returns once they have established that author. However if said author immediately departs for the greener indie pastures once their name is well known then sooner or later the trad publishers will simply go out of business and that particular option will no longer be there.

 

[The Big Peat]

That's an interesting point and I wonder (though absolutely don't know) whether this isn't somewhat analogous to the unsustainable shopping technique I hear so many people proudly espouse these days. You go into shops to handle/try on/get a close look at a product you fancy and then go off and buy it cheaper online. The inevitable end result is those shops going out of business. This has a similar feel. If, and this is the same big IF as my previous post, if the trad publishers do their job and successfully promote a new author, they are obviously hoping to get the returns once they have established that author. However if said author immediately departs for the greener indie pastures once their name is well known then sooner or later the trad publishers will simply go out of business and that particular option will no longer be there.

Quite possibly.

Still, if its dog eat dog, that's someone else's problem. If the publishers can't persuade the authors they've taken on that the services they offer are worth the cut they take in the course of their relationship together, that's on them.

And if we're looking for altruism and enlightened self-interest all around, does the publishers' record stand up to scrutiny?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

That's an interesting point and I wonder (though absolutely don't know) whether this isn't somewhat analogous to the unsustainable shopping technique I hear so many people proudly espouse these days. You go into shops to handle/try on/get a close look at a product you fancy and then go off and buy it cheaper online. The inevitable end result is those shops going out of business. This has a similar feel. If, and this is the same big IF as my previous post, if the trad publishers do their job and successfully promote a new author, they are obviously hoping to get the returns once they have established that author. However if said author immediately departs for the greener indie pastures once their name is well known then sooner or later the trad publishers will simply go out of business and that particular option will no longer be there.

But we know that this isn't happening. One of the biggest market drops has been in sales by traditionally debut authors. There are a number of factors feeding into that, not least the higher price of ebooks in comparison to their indie counterparts but the decline has been pretty shocking and well out of line with the rest of the market.

Which means that, actually, the worst thing a debut can do is go with a big publisher. Their work gets lost, they get no sales and, worst, they've failed with a big publisher. The chances of them getting a second shot is mimimal.

 

[Vertigo]

Understand I'm just playing devils advocate here. I certainly don't know this market. However what I'm wondering is whether we're looking at the chicken or the egg. If debut authors are getting promoted then going indie (which is what was suggested earlier and certainly has happened though I don't know how much) then publishers are going to wary of spending money on new debut authors and then the records will show less debut authors getting promoted by trad publishers. But maybe that's not the order things are happening in. I'm just saying that if I was a publisher and I was seeing people going indie as soon as they're well known I'd be less inclined to spend the money to get them to that stage. Seems like a potential vicious circle to me.

 

[The Big Peat]

I was suggesting it as a logical path but I can't think of any authors that have taken it. I know there's a few old school established authors that have gone indie; I know there's a few who've started as indie, gone to a publisher, then gone back to indie; but I don't know of any recent occurrences of someone getting the nod and then scampering off to indie after making a name for themselves.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

The market for people listening to books as downloads or (for the truly old-fashioned) on CD has exploded in recent years. Big publishers have wised-up to that fact - late, as usual.

This is a very interesting thread. I was particularly interested in Ralph's comments about his writing style being changed by circumstances. Makes you think. I had the opportunity for "Hairy London" to be done as an audio book, but, at the time, it didn't work out. Now I need to go back and re-consider.

 

[DrMclony]

I refused a contract on Waters that wanted a share of my film rights. And I consistently make more out of Inish than all the others because I choose its promo and nurse it along.

Honestly I have 3 models these days:

Agent interest with possible deal

Then either! Trad published and funding to write the book (since I can't get funding to self published) or self published.

I need revenue to keep writing. It is that stark, my time is so limited at the moment. So I will always go for the model that pays best and work hard to retain the rights that will bring me income.

This - all of it. I have refused a few approaches for my work with movie and audio grabs hidden in the fine print. Of course, some were worse than others, but nothing I have been offered was even close to acceptable to me. Enough so obscurity is preferable. And then there's the worst of it which I've never had to deal with - the vanity bastards praying on the desperate with life of copyright grabs for film tv etc with zero payment to the author. I feel the worst of the trade contract grabs now are simply what the vanity scams had the balls to try a few years ago, which implies things may only get worse as the trade guys decide if those guys can get away with it, so can we. I really do hope I am wrong.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Curse you, the internet!
But also thank you.
:/

 

[AnyaKimlin]

The market for people listening to books as downloads or (for the truly old-fashioned) on CD has exploded in recent years. Big publishers have wised-up to that fact - late, as usual.

At the risk of being more old fashioned I prefer my audio book on tape - it's still the most practical as it stops and starts at the same place, and they turn off if you go to sleep listening to it without leaving any red lights on.

 

[HareBrain]

I was particularly interested in Ralph's comments about his writing style being changed by circumstances. Makes you think.

It shows how far literary style has changed from the way stories used to be told. For example, the advice we get on not using "then" to begin a sentence/paragraph is fine for fiction being read silently, but such "unsophisticated" techniques are perfect for spoken word.

I much prefer reading to listening (even though I like the style suitable for spoken word), so the recent explosion in popularity in audiobooks has passed me by and even baffles me somewhat. I'm tempted to start a thread to see how many people prefer one over the other, and why.

 

[Vertigo]

It shows how far literary style has changed from the way stories used to be told. For example, the advice we get on not using "then" to begin a sentence/paragraph is fine for fiction being read silently, but such "unsophisticated" techniques are perfect for spoken word.

I much prefer reading to listening (even though I like the style suitable for spoken word), so the recent explosion in popularity in audiobooks has passed me by and even baffles me somewhat. I'm tempted to start a thread to see how many people prefer one over the other, and why.

If you do it might be interesting to compare preferences on all three formats: paper, digital, audio. Can you do like 1,2,3 on the survey's, for example digital first then paper then audio?

I think it's been done before but only between digital and paper, not audio.

 

[chrispenycate]

With audiobooks, is the publisher expecting to receive a fully mastered file to distribute, or is he handling the recording and editing himself? In the latter case, how much control, artistic and technical, has the author over the final product? Can (s)he sit in on the recording session, and suggest how scenes were intended to be interpreted? Has (s)he a power of veto over choice of 'talent' (voiceover artists are always considered talented, while authors rarely are ). Who is responsible for the expenses incurred - is it the standard arrangement that no royalties will be paid until all costs have been covered?

A standard book lasts at least ten hours of recording, and three to one (three hours in the studio for every hour of final product) is not a bad ratio. And for the recording phase, you need a studio, or at least a well acoustically treated and soundproofed recording booth - a noise that is not integrated into the action is as distracting as a misprint in a dead tree version. And the talent has to be there, and it's better to have someone else listening to the results, spotting out errors. The actual recording period is expensive. The editing period needs less technical preparation, a decent computer and a pair of headphones, and just one human blocked, and can be done in a bedroom or worse. It is still a lot of time. And the listen through - preferably with the author - will last the length of the book, and can't be done in one sitting. All in all, this is quite an expensive process, and the standard of some of the audiobooks I've listened to make it clear that if you're not working with a potential best seller, standards are allowed to slip somewhat. To save on costs you use your artists in periods they have free from other responsibilities, and periods when the studio is not prebooked (when these can be organised to synchronise).

The preparation of an audio master is time consuming and expensive, and most publishers don't really know anything about the process yet. I've been recording talking books for the blind since they were on 162/3 LPs, before cassettes, and the technology has changed massively in that period, but not the time required to do a decent job (or the ability of the voice artist to produce a performance that long, and consistent.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

@chrispenycate

The person holding the rights to publish will normally cover the costs (which is important to note - many self publishers now create their own audio books). There are services that allow an easy upload (but with Very Variable quality) or a publisher/author can hire a voice artist (expect to pay around £60 per finished hour).

As ever how much say an author has will vary from publisher to publisher.

 

[Dennis E. Taylor]

The market for people listening to books as downloads or (for the truly old-fashioned) on CD has exploded in recent years. Big publishers have wised-up to that fact - late, as usual.

This is a very interesting thread. I was particularly interested in Ralph's comments about his writing style being changed by circumstances. Makes you think. I had the opportunity for "Hairy London" to be done as an audio book, but, at the time, it didn't work out. Now I need to go back and re-consider.

If you listed to "Locked In" (or probably any Scalzi book), he's one of those authors who believes that "said" is invisible and can be used in most cases. But in audio, it sounds clunky and becomes obtrusive. He's commented on this himself in interviews.

 

[Dan Jones]

That's an interesting point, and not one I'd considered. Dennis, did you edit your original MS to make it more pleasing to the ear (ie change all those "saids" to blurted, exclaimed, ejaculated, hollered, etc...)?

 

[ralphkern]

I wince when I check my audio and get two 'said's in a row on dialogue. It's become a find word for me and limited as much as possible.

As ever, a difficult balancing act - it can seem a little forced to constantly strive for replacements (which in itself can become intrusive). I do vaguely wonder whether it would be neater to have two versions. A print and a scripted (with tone) to guide the narrator.

RK (angry) - These damn invisible words.
DT (Weary sigh) - I know.

By the way, the good narrators are very good at drawing things out of a book which the author might not even consider. For example, in Erebus, it never even crossed my mind that the MC spoke in a cynical soft cockney accent. But it worked very well.

 

[Dennis E. Taylor]

That's an interesting point, and not one I'd considered. Dennis, did you edit your original MS to make it more pleasing to the ear (ie change all those "saids" to blurted, exclaimed, ejaculated, hollered, etc...)?

Personally I use a lot more beats and a lot fewer tags. The problem with tags from an audio POV is that this sentence has to be voiced as, well, one sentence:

"I'm a little teapot," he said.

The problem is that if the narrator is doing different voices for characters than for the narrator, you get an abrupt switch of voice between "teapot" and "he". It's ok once in a while, but get into a long string of dialog where two or more characters are saying things and tags are being used, and you get a lot of voice changes.

OTOH, if you use beats, the beat is generally a different sentence, and the narrator can pause long enough to separate them:

"I'm a little teapot." George grinned and wagged his eyebrows.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Reading all this, I think there may be a bit too much worry about 'said'...
I'm currently listening to Rob Inglis reading The Hobbit and LOTR, and I never notice the s-word.
It's always the go-to word over almost everything else. You can use 'reply' a bit, occasionally 'answer,' but almost nothing else.
On the other hand, Tolkien's extraordinary over-use of 'was' is quite surprising!

 

[Old_Man_Steve2016]

They can take my audio rights from my...hoarse, spasmatic, laryngitic vocal cords!