A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran

Comments from the original message board posts are included below. Apparently, it was not hard to figure out who The Woman was, for though her professional life was short, her life in fandom went on…

Also, additional commentary about remaindered books and the accounting for same.

OK, back to our story.

We didn’t quite hit rock bottom on that misery mine yet.

Now, in an ideal world, IF my book with The Woman had been getting an 8% of cover price royalty, it would still have to have sold over four times the 3,000 copies it actually DID sell to earn out the advance. My original understanding was that my advance would have been ammortized equally over the books in the contract (instead of being lumped against the first one) and, of course, I had no idea that the accounts would be cross-collatoralized over all books in the series and all books on contract I had with the company.

Unfortunately, after deductions for net costs, my meagre advance, and slashing half the royalty for sales at discounts of 50% or greater, and cutting another half for holds against returns, there was no way that a 12,000 advance sale on A Distant Soil would bring in any royalties either.

But things get even worse when you realize that, because The Woman was entitled to a half royalty share on the GN I had illustrated for her, I wouldn’t be getting 4% of cover, I would be getting more like 2% of cover, or about 14 cents per copy sold.

Now, to be fair, The Woman took no advance on the book herself which was generous of her, but then, she sure as hell didn’t need an advance, either. She not only got royalties on several books she edited at the company (even when the creators did not), she also got a salary that made her New York editor counterparts envious. She was permitted to work half days at home writing. She often didn’t come into the office until 1PM. The publisher was subsidizing her writing ambitions by paying salary for her to stay home and write at least a half dozen projects only one of which, to my knowledge, ever saw the light of day – the book I illustrated. (EDIT: To clarify, mine was the only FICTION project she had published there, that I know of. I think she had one or two non-fiction projects.)

So, simply to earn out the entire advance which was paid out over the course of a year and a few months (one year’s advance plus a short extension), the book would have had to sell almost 35,000 copies JUST TO PAY OUT THE ADVANCE of $300 a month and that DID NOT COUNT all the net deductions, 50% held against returns, etc. That was just to earn back what I had been paid even though what I had been paid amounted to the worst page rate I ever received in my entire career.

35,000 copies is good sales by any standard and I didn’t see that happening on this book.

To ALSO earn out enough to pay the colorist and letterer – and to pay the writer their 50% share – for me to even begin to see any more money on the project, it would have to sell between 60,000-70,000 copies.

Moreoever, for the entire time the book was earning out at a loss, ANY AND ALL losses would be deducted from profits on A Distant Soil. In the end, A Distant Soil would be forced to subsidize the book I was illustrating for The Woman.

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