End of March 2017
Alrighty. I’ve decided to make Blaze the home of my MS. But
beforehand, I also wanted to make sure Blaze and I were a good match.
Research time.
There’s your standard research—a quick skim through Google,
browsing the company website, heck, I even jumped onto the Scribophile forum
and asked around if anyone had heard of/worked with Blaze before. (For those of
you who don’t know me, Scribophile = my second home on the Internet.)
In addition to all that, I also reached out to other authors
represented by the publisher either via email or FB messaging (sorry if I came
off stalkerish). To begin with, I asked questions such as:
What is working with the Blaze team like? (ie. do they have a quick response time, do they work on schedule, are the flexible, willing to compromise if there are disagreements, etc)
How much control do you retain over your novel after signing the contract?
In terms of marketing and publicity, how has Blaze helped get the word out about your book?
The two bolded questions were very important to me. If I to invest my time and effort with a
company, I wanted to make sure they were easy to work with and are also willing
to help with the “after publication” aspect, since I’ve heard of so many horror
stories of publishers releasing a book and doing absolutely nothing to help
promote it afterwards.
Additionally, I’m also a very hands-on person, and want to
be as involved with the publishing process as much as possible. So knowing that Blaze
was flexible and willing to work closely with the author is a definite “win”
for me.
Fortunately, all the authors I contacted had a positive experience
with Blaze, and were all happy to share their experience.
What I wish I knew: Don’t
be afraid to reach out. Ask questions. Do your research!
Next: figuring out the contract.
If you have an agent, he/she will usually negotiate this
aspect of the whole publishing endeavor. However, for those of us not repped by
one, there are literary lawyers (yes, you heard that right—lawyers who
specialize in book/film contracts) that can do the job. Basically every article
I read strongly recommended authors to get at least some type of lawyer/person
who is familiar with legal lingo to make sure everything is as should be on the
contract.
What I wish I knew:
Literary lawyers are hard to find. And pricey.
In fact, there aren’t any
literary lawyers listed in my state’s bar directory. (I hail from the
wonderful, nobody-knows-about-us state of NH.) The closest thing I could find
was a building contract lawyer.
So . . . I did something I’m sure I probably sure isn’t
exactly “recommended”: I decided to be my own “lawyer” and did research on what
should be included, not included, specified, etc in your standard book
contract. The chief editor (the person who I was mainly in messaging, in
addition to the operations manager, at this time) was also very friendly, and
willing to answer and clarify any parts of the contract I had questions with.
Here are the questions in the contract I asked (paraphrasing
here):
Does MS sequels (which Blaze would have the right of first pitch to) include spin-offs/companion short stories/novellas?
(Answer: yes)
Does the right to first pitch of my next unrelated (aka non-sequel) work mean that during the 30-day time period in which I pitch to Blaze, I’m not allowed to query other agents/publishers?
(Answer: No, it only means that the publisher has the right
to pitch an offer first to me; I can still do simultaneous submissions)
If I grant Blaze the exclusive right to publish my MS, do the characters, setting, etc still belong to me? Do I retain ownership of said list?
(Answer: yes. Although Blaze has exclusive right to my
characters and stories associated with Of
Silver and Stars, they cannot hire other authors to write stories involving
the same characters)
I like to joke that my characters are my brain children, and
I’m sure most writers feel the same way. PROTECT YOUR DARLINGS (except when you
need to kill them. What’s the phrase again? “Gotta kill ‘em darlings” or something
similar?)
Also, a good piece of advice I saw floating around the
internet is to make sure there is a
renewal section in the contract. What this means is that after a certain
set period of time (for me, it was 24 months), the contract must be renewed or
else everything is nulled. Think of this as a safety feature, because—God forbid—you
end up with an agent/publisher that simply isn’t working out for you, then at
least you’ll have the chance to re-pitch your MS once the contract expires.
What I wish I knew:
Make sure there is a renewal section in the contract
After about 1.5 week of back and forth emails, I finally
felt ready and officially signed on. And now, I needed to send out another
round of emails to other agents/publishers who responded earlier and were still
considering my MS—please, please do this—it’s a simple courtesy. Don’t waste
their time if the MS is no longer on the dealing table. I figured a short and
sweet email like this ought to do the trick:
Dear ___,
I would like to formally withdraw Silver and Ice from submission as the novel has found a forever home.
Sweet—contract is signed—and now the fun begins in Part
Four: Deadlines and Milestones.
***Note: I feel it’s important for me to stress that this
post is in no way meant to serve as
legal advice. Everything written merely reflects my personal experience.
Furthermore, if you can, I strongly urge you not to follow my example and to hire a lawyer/agent (yes, some agents
will offer their services to negotiate a contract for a fee) to look over the
contract for you.***
Make sure not to miss the other posts in the Welcome to the (Publishing) Jungle Series! Click here to read Part 4: Deadlines and Milestones
