Fable & The Verbivore

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Episode 235: Traditional Publishing Contracts & Things People Don't Talk About

Bethany Stedman

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Ep 235: Traditional Publishing Contracts & Things People Don't Talk About Fable & The Verbivore

Today on Fable and the Verbivore, we pull back the traditional publishing curtain and talk about the ins and outs of querying and agent contracts.

This episode is a natural extension of our recent series on developing your author brand. We talk about how your individual brand knowledge is useful when looking to find an agent — checking out their Manuscript Wishlist and their personal bio can help you identify who is a good fit for your book, strengthening your querying materials to ensure they reflect and communicate well your distinctive writing brand, and developing an elevator pitch to be able to quickly and easily distill the most compelling aspects of your idea down to something bitesize.

In this conversation, we use a variety of resources to unpack some of the things to research if you plan to go the traditional publishing route and what to be aware of.

Things like:

  • Making sure your querying materials (for ex. Pitch, Query letter, Bio, and Synopsis) reflect your unique brand

  • Agency specific submission guidelines

  • Agent website, bio, and Manuscript Wishlist

  • Vanity presses - making sure terms are not predatory and level of compensation make it viable

  • Agent contract red flags — Reader fees, Editing fees

  • Agent contract standard terms to be aware of:

    • What they do and what you do, What specific part of your work they represent, Royalty %, Agreement Timeframe, Termination clause, Death clause

  • Reviewing all contract terms and consider negotiating (redlining) where it feels necessary

  • Seeking advice from other authors, researching the industry and agency standard, and consulting a contract lawyer if there are concerns

  • Consider if an agent feels like a good fit, before accepting offer of representation

  • Contracts protect both parties if good things or bad things happen

  • Publishing contract terms and timelines - How long does the publisher have to publish before the rights revert back to you, Is there a standard of quality for subsequent work (like in a multi-book deal), Royalties

  • Case studies of worst case scenarios - Poor royalty compensation, Publisher not releasing royalties in accordance with contract, Debut author’s leaving original agent

Towards the end of this conversation, we talk about treating searching for an agent as you would looking for a job — meaning you are wanting to make sure they are a good fit for you as well and fighting the urge to accept an offer of representation if it doesn’t feel right. We also talk about how bringing the idea of finding an agent down from a hypothetical dream to an imperfect reality can be helpful, as it allows you to prepare for possible bumps along the road.

We hope you enjoy listening to this episode and that you find it useful wherever you are at on your writing journey!

Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

We reference a couple past episodes from the Fable and the Verbivore podcast. They are:

Here are several resources referenced in this episode:

Books Mentioned:

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)