If I had a nickel for every time I’ve shot myself in the foot, I’d have wooden feet and a bag of nickels.  By the same token, if I’m going to screw up, it’s reasonable to expect that publishing houses—made up of fellow human beings with all their quirks and foibles—will screw up, too.  That’s just the way it goes. All we writers and publishers can do is try to be better next time.

If this sounds like a sermon, it’s only because I’ve been telling myself this all day in a desperate effort to keep from throwing large objects out the window.  This morning, I woke up to an email from my fantasy publisher saying that he’d decided to release me from my contract.  I checked online and found that he’d already pulled my book off Amazon, Goodreads, various distributors, etc. 

But let me backtrack a little bit here.

I’ve always wanted to be a fantasy writer.  That might sound odd, coming from a guy who has published poetry books and won some awards in poetry, but when I was growing up, my early love of Tolkein was one of the few things my dad and I had in common.  It was also an escape; economic poverty and a slew of birth defects meant I wasn’t exactly the popular kid at school.  So for me, “world-building” wasn’t just entertainment; it was a chance to play God, to craft a world where people suffered, sure, but it was within my power to set things right.

It’s not that one genre outshines the other; like I tell my students, as cheddar as this sounds, poetry is the lens through which I view the world.  However, well-written fantasy has always held a place in the gnarled thing I call a heart.  So I was dancing off the walls when Deron over at Double Dragon Publishing accepted Wytchfire, book one of my dark fantasy trilogy. Many of the characters in the book—for better or worse—mirror parts of myself, so the validation I felt went miles beyond a mere feeling of professional/artistic accomplishment.

I didn’t mind that they said it would be over a year until they published it.  No advance but they’d give me 30% royalties, design a cover, publish it in all ebook formats, and offer it in print on their website, as well. 

Yes, I wanted my book in stores, but I figured ebooks were the future, and anyway, I’ve always been very prolific so I was anxious to start a new project.  Even though a few of my author-friends frowned when I told them the royalty percentage, I wasn’t worried.  I figured the point was getting my work out there (and, hey, if it got picked up and republished by a bigger press down the road, so be it).

Enter, disaster.

Well, not just yet.  I suppose I should begin with some disclaimers.  In addition to the stuff I said in my first paragraph, and despite the fact that this hasn’t exactly been My Favoritest Day Ever, I don’t think this is about revenge and/or bridge-burning; more like telling what happened, as fairly as I can, for better or worse. If I’m a cautionary tale, so be it.

OK, now back to the disaster.

It started when I was paired with Elekra (her email handle, presumably not her real name), a copy editor chosen by Deron to go through Wytchfire with me.  She had little in the way of suggestions and our exchanges (all over email) seemed to go well enough.  However, being a consummate worrier, I asked to see the final document before it was sent to press. When I saw… well, let’s just say that that wasn’t a very good day, either.

I found that in addition to arbitrarily uncapitalizing most of my capitalized proper nouns, Elektra had rewritten some sections—and done so rather badly.  But even that was nothing compared to how I felt when I saw what she’d taken every third person description of somebody’s thoughts and put it in italics.  Now, it might be hard to understand what I mean, so let me give you a couple examples, straight from Elektra’s version.

From the very first page:

The sun was in Fadarah’s eyes now. He did not blink. He was, after all, a Shel’ai. What was the sun, if not fire?

Here’s a better one:

He told himself there were other options. He need not join one of the slum gangs or take work as a brothel-bruiser. Maybe he could join the Red Watch at Lyos or find slightly more honest work as a merchant’s bodyguard. “Some rich bastard always needs another caravan guard,” he grumbled, quickening his pace.

OK, see the problem here?  Again, basically she took third person descriptions of what the character was thinking and reformatted them as internal monologue.  There’s a way to do that, but even a child who reads a little would know that this isn’t it.  In the second example, at the very least, the pronoun needs to be changed!

Now imagine that this isn’t an isolated incident or three; these botched italics were everywhere in the book (in addition to a zillion other typos, many of which she added herself).  How long before a reader would throw the book aside and give up?

So as calmly as I could, I contacted Deron and told him what was up.  His entire response:

Hi Michael

That’s strange? I wonder why she I’d that. Would you be able to fix it and resend it to me before release?

Well, I wasn’t crazy about the idea but at least I knew it would be done right (provided I didn’t miss anything, which of course, I did).  So I spent about twenty hours re-editing the manuscript myself (even though Elektra was supposed to do that in return for 5-8% of the royalties).  Finally done, I sent off the manuscript with this message:

Hi, Deron.

Here’s the corrected Wytchfire manuscript. As I said, I went through the entire manuscript and “accepted” or “rejected” each change. This ended up being a good chance to fix a few typos and little rough patches that we’d missed before; still, I have to say that I was pretty shaken up when I saw all the unauthorized “corrections”. 

I know I mentioned that many of my proper nouns had been randomly lowercased, but probably the worst unauthorized change was that all descriptions of the characters’ inward musings (“He wondered if…”) were put in italics but left in third person phrasing. That worries me because I know that if I bought a book and saw a couple sloppy mistakes like that, I’d probably just give up and put the rest of the book aside.

Elektra did have some good corrections but I honestly had to spend about twenty hours fixing her mistakes.  I really hate ratting on people but I felt like that’s something you should know (not just for me, obviously, but for the sake of the press and Double Dragon’s authors). 

Definitely let me know if you have any questions.  I’d be happy to talk to you further about this if you like.

Sincerely,
Michael 

Again, here’s Deron’s entire response:

Hi Mike,
Thanks for this. I’m scratching my head as well. Elktra actually runs her own editing business and is not an employee as such. I would have thought her better thna this.

Cheers,
Deron

Odd that he didn’t apologize, I thought, but decided to put that out of my mind.  (Quick aside: Elektra never apologized either or gave any indication that she’d screwed up.)

Things went forward, Deron made a cover (which I liked), and we were set to go.  He sent me the Kindle file, I liked what I saw, and prepared to knuckle down and do some hard work promoting the book.  But before that, I sent him this message:

Cool.  Hey, not to be a dumbass but when it comes to sending out review copies, everything I know pertains to poetry presses, which aren’t really interested in F/SF.  Do you have any suggestions?

His reply:

Actually I don’t. But we have a Yahoo group for advertising… did you join that? If not I can find the url. You’ll find review sites listed there among the chatter.

I thought it was telling that in 2013, I was being directed toward a Yahoo group—but again, I didn’t dwell too much of it.  I tried to join the group.  I assume the emailed request sat in Deron’s inbox for about a week.  Finally, I was accepted.  By then, though, I was already off and running.  I’d researched book reviewers and sent out about 120 emails (mostly personalized), inviting journals and reviewers to read my book for free and, if they were so inclined, offer a review.

Things went on like this.  I posted all over the internet, emailed reviewers, looked into setting up readings and buying ad space, participated in blog tours, etc.  As far as I could tell, though, Double Dragon wasn’t doing a thing.  That would have made sense with a vanity publisher but I got to thinking that if I was going to do everything myself, what distinguished this from self-publishing (aside from the fact that I was only getting 30% royalties)?

Meanwhile, the book was getting good reviews and selling relatively well.  There are almost a million ebooks on Amazon; naturally, mine started out ranked in the hundreds of thousands, but that rank quickly improved.  Before long, it was ranked about 60,000, then 20,000, then around 10,000.  I’d read that Amazon rank fluctuate a lot but was heartened that mine seemed to be steadily improving.  I tried another flurry of advertisements on blogs and social networking and my rank improved by a few thousand more.

At this point, friends suggested I get a table at a conference so that I could discuss (and hopefully sell) my book in person.  I decided to contact Deron and ask if we could work something out.  My email:

Hi, Deron.

First, I thought I’d let you know that I’ve had a lot of people mention how much they love the cover you did for Wytchfire!  Well done!  Also, I know you’re very busy but I was hoping to discuss book promotion with you. 

As you might imagine, I’ve been working very hard lately, sending out review copies and promoting on blogs, plus I also just purchased ad space on ***** (not to mention working on Book 3 of my trilogy, plus an entirely new series I started last year).  It seems to be paying off; Wytchfire is already getting good reviews and my Amazon rank (which I’ve been following closely by tracking my daily sales numbers at *****) has been steadily improving.  As I continue refining my promotions strategy, though, I was hoping you could give me a better idea of what kind of promotion Double Dragon is doing/can do to help things along. For instance, are there any plans to make and release book trailers, set up ad space, promote at conferences, etc?

I chose not to go the self-publishing route because I was—and still am—impressed by Double Dragon’s reputation.  I’d appreciate a little reassurance, though.  Especially as I complete this trilogy and continue working on a new, even bigger project, this is something of a professional concern of mine because from my perspective, I’ve already put in well over a hundred hours and a lot of expense into promotions (not counting the time spent personally correcting all the “editing” done by Elekra).  I hope you understand.  Thank you in advance for your time and attention.

Sincerely,
Michael Meyerhofer

Deron’s response:

Hi Michael,
I’m glad everyone likes the cover.

Be careful with ***** they won’t give you a true representation of actual sales. They are giving estimates based on ranking, so they are rarely correct.

It sounds like you have things under control. But as far a promotion, I don’t have the resources or manpower to actively promote a single title. For this reason we leave promotion up to the author. In the end the promotion of an author is something that will stay with them and go beyond the scope of their titles with any particular publisher. The goal is to create a “readership” base that will follow you from publisher to publisher and title to title. You can do this via blogging, book signings (we offer 30% off author sales for this purpose), etc. We also have a DDP promotions group that our authors can discuss ideas for self promotion.

Deron

This bothered me, seeing as how I was already in the promotions group and wasn’t finding it all that helpful.  All suggestions came from fellow Double Dragon authors and went something like, “Hey, have you thought of making a Facebook page?”  Others suggested we submit to indie book contests, many of which seemed on investigation to be the fiction equivalent of that infamous site, Poetry.com.

I was also a bit galled that I still hadn’t gotten so much as an apology about the editing disasters.  Wytchfire’s sequel was done and set to come out in a few months; the third book was coming along nicely.  I really didn’t want to get stuck paying for ads and conference space, and keep sending out review copies all on my own.  I admit it: I was frustrated.  So at this point, it could be that I overstepped my bounds a little. 

Deron,

I appreciate the heads up. Well, I know you’re busy but aren’t you the one who picks the books?  A table at GenCon, for instance, would benefit both of us. If this isn’t self-publishing, why am I taking on all the risk for 30% royalties? Also, it would have gone a long way, professionally speaking, if you hadn’t been so glib about the editing disasters and instead took responsibility for the editor YOU assigned, who nearly killed the whole project and forced me to pay someone else so I could do their work for them. Seriously, I’m a patient man but this is miles past ridiculous. If you don’t want to work with me, that’s fine. You’re welcome to void the contract and I’ll make money for someone else.

Now, on retrospect, that last line goes too far.  What I was really referring to, though, was the publishing of the other two books in the sequel.  It didn’t occur to me until today, combing through my contract with somebody far more knowledgeable in legal matters, that my contract really only applied to Wytchfire and didn’t mention or guarantee anything about the other books.

Well, I went to bed very worried, expecting anything from an apology and a compromise to a heated exchange in which I would eventually be the one apologizing.  But I figured we’d at least we’d have everything on the table and could work something out, going forward.  Instead, I woke up to this:

Hi Mike,
Yes, I think with all thinks considered, it may be best that I release you from your contract. Consider it done. What I’ll do it send out all the notices today and remove what I can. I think it may be best for both of us.

Good luck to you in the future.
Cheers,
Deron

My first thought: Wait, what? I looked online and, sure enough, Wytchfire had been taken down.  You can no longer find, buy, or preview the book anywhere, either in electronic or printed format. 

Right away, I felt a sinking feeling in my gut.  Had I screwed up?  Was this a blessing in disguise?  Yes, it was frustrating that neither Deron nor Elektra ever issued so much as an apology, and yes, it was frustrating to have to do all the work myself for only a fraction of the royalties… but publishing a fantasy book has been my dream for years.  And now, in the space of a day, it’s back to the drawing board.

To be clear, I’m not some kind of literary prima donna who needs to be coddled.  I’m used to hard work.  And I’m not one to hold a grudge.  I’ve had presses accept then not publish work and one big contest declare me the winner then never pay me; I understand that funds dry up and mistakes can happen.  But there’s a lot to be said for compromise and apologizing when it’s called for.

As you can imagine, today has been rough, though a few writer-friends are encouraging me to look on the bright side.  I tried sending out the book about five years earlier but it was a much younger, less polished version, the implication being that I’ll probably have better luck now—and with the contract “released,” I shouldn’t run into any problems. 

I’ve also been encouraged to self-publish it; my friends know I have a bit of a bias against self-publishing (more like a fear of the attached stigma) but as one said, “You’ve already done all the work.  At least you’ll get to keep all the royalties!”

We’ll see.  I’m not quite sure whether you need a prevailing dose of confidence or arrogance to be a writer (probably both) but despite feeling sufficiently humbled, I believe in the project more than ever.  Also, I’m bolstered by the good reviews and sales I had (although I’d have greatly appreciated them lasting a bit longer).