Five Years!

It's royalty statement season

It’s my five year newsletter anniversary!

Thank you to those of you who have supported this newsletter by being a paid subscriber, sharing its contents, emailing me to let me know you appreciate it, commenting on posts, and telling your friends. Without you doing one or more of the above, I would have stopped writing this long ago.

Since this newsletter focuses on helping make the publishing industry more transparent, I thought I’d make this anniversary post more transparent. Here are my newsletter stats:

Over the past year or so, I’ve focused on sending something to you once a week (before that, I was more scattershot). I don’t fuss about when I send it out: sometimes it’s Monday mornings, sometimes Wednesdays, but usually it’s early in the week and early in the day.

I don’t plan in advance what I am going to write about. Instead, I sit down, open up the dashboard, click “New Post,” and then whatever topic is on the front of my brain that week bubbles up and I write about. I adore these weekly sessions; if I didn’t think it would be spammy, I’d send newsletters two or three times per week.

Much of my job can be, to be blunt, lonely. Few of my day-to-day activities involve others, be they my colleagues, or authors, or accountants. For instance, over the past two weeks I have been calculating royalties for the October 1 statement period. The first thing I did was call up our ever-expanding Profit & Loss spreadsheet, where all the information about a title is located (price, advance, royalty rate, number of copies sold, number returned, printing costs, per unit costs, labor costs, margin, and, of course, profit and/or loss of the title thus far.) Then I went to our distributor dashboard, and downloaded a report showing how many of each book we sold between January 1 2023 and July 1 2023, the period covered by October statements (the lag—between July and October—is to take into account returns). Then I went into our Shopify store settings, to add up the books we sold directly to readers then. Then I add those two figures, and update each title P&L sales columns. That part completed, , I move to a separate spreadsheet for royalty statements, which also contains the royalty rate, list price, etc. for each title. I plug in those latest figures, add or subtract, and the amount an author is owed by us, or, in the case of advances that haven’t earned out “owes” us—technically only—in the form of a negative balance (that is, we paid an advance that surpasses the number of copies an author has sold to cover that upfront payment). Then I send those who are receiving statements—anyone who has earned enough from us to warrant a check—an email with the statement. And then, and making sure we have enough to cover them, I go to our checking account and issue those checks. (Still curious about this process? I cover it in this book).

No one else is involved in the process—it’s just me. Over the years others have helped me develop this system, and those spreadsheets (and while there is royalty accounting software out there, thus far this bespoke system we created remains the best option). Some royalty statement periods I get to work with Phoebe and/or Mike, or in the past, other Belt folks, to create them. But this year it was just me.

So telling you all about it, as I have just done, is healthy and useful. Thanks for giving me this outlet.

Sometimes people critique my newsletter for being slapdash, and sometimes for containing typos. Neither criticism bothers me. No one has to read this! You can simply delete, or unsubscribe. I do one thing, and enough people enjoy it that I continue to do it. Sure, it would be interesting to earn enough from what I do here to justify spending more time on it, and drafting, revising, and proofing each post. And sure, I would absolutely adore researching topics more, and covering one I’m eager to read up on— I think I could write about them lucidly and helpfully for an interested audience. Maybe someone will offer me a paid column or I will suddenly receive 1000 new paid subscriptions and will get to do that. But for now, I continue to spend the time I can justify here, and if I have a meeting at 11 and thus at 10:37 need to stop writing or revising and hit send, typos and all, and prepare to switch over to that little zoom box, so be it.

Substack the business is controversial, and I read and think about the perils of hitching this ride to that tech company often. I’ll continue to use this platform for now, because, as with the time I justify writing this newsletter, I’ve decided it’s the most prudent choice for me, time/money-equation wise. But I see and hear you, those who have departed as either writer or reader.

Last year, I wrote a four year anniversary post and asked folks to comment on topics they would like to see me cover; it was very useful, and thanks to all who did send me suggestions. What suggestions do you have for me for year six?

Could we get that “paid” number of subscribers up to 500? Go ahead, do your worst.

Yes I DO have spaces in my upcoming book proposal course and you should absolutely sign up if you are on the fence, and also feel free to email me your questions ( no, I don’t know when I might do it again—probably not before next summer).