It was chilly but peaceful this morning.
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I have to second the calendar thing – especially with posted times when you are going to be working. It’s kind of strange that you seemed to get more work done when you were busy with your teaching job – but human nature seems to be like that to some degree.
As for the walking at a specific time – that’s a good idea as well, but the thing to remember is just how heart-stopping it is for *US* to hear you break through ice, and occasionally stumble. Once the weather gets into reasonable territory, it’s fine to walk early in the morning, especially once daylight starts arriving earlier. But in the dead of winter, with crappy weather, and not even army/navy definitions of twilight showing up until fairly late – it’s probably better to consider shifting your planned walk time to a slot later in the day.
After all, this is your first time through the full weather cycle doing your daily walking – there’s things to be learned, even about just walking! Of course, the alternative is when the weather is nasty – get on the treadmill. NaNoWriMo proved your family *can* work around giving you time to write – it’s just easier not to with you caving in.
Something I just noticed, looking over the e-book collection I’m building…
Ballantine Books is putting some utterly stupid-looking covers in their e-books.
In general, book cover artists are going to have to consider that e-book readers, especially cheaper ones, are relatively low-resolution devices, and the cover thumbnails most e-book reader programs use in their shelf metaphor are even lower resolution – this means that while the image selected needs to be nice and decently detailed – attention needs to be paid to the size of the text of the title and the author’s name, and the thickness of the font. Looking at some older book cover scans, you’ve definitely got a mix that will and that will not work. I will say the cover for Ravenwood does seem to work fairly well!
Be nice if they included spine images as well, so those could be lined up on the shelves…
You have a deadline. 6 books in a year, 12 months, so, end of Feb, April, June, etc. = 6 books in 12 months. Sort of a deadline. Just a thought——
Hi Nathan,
I help sell a modest amount of foreign rights, (although not to the UK) and one thing I’ve heard – a lot – is that the UK is one or two years behind the US in terms of ebooks, and Germany and France are 2-3 years behind the US. So my concern is that signing a contract now might be like signing a contract in the US, in say, September or October 2009 or 2010. A lot could be left behind if that isn’t taken into account. There’s nothing about your books that would be dated if you were to wait a few years, should you want to. I would also recommend calling other authors you know and finding out what is a reasonable advance these days for that market.
The other huge thing is that most foreign rights are only sold for terms of 5-10 years, not the life of copyright nonsense that most US publishers demand. So if they won’t increase the money or terms, you could do it for only 5 years (though they might scream and wail) and so be able to, realtively soon, re-evaluate and adjust the situation if things have changed.
9 times out of 10, I’ve found foreign rights agents to be completely useless. They just sit around waiting for a publisher in that country to come to them. In only one case have I ever had an overseas agent actively searching for a publisher for a book. For the 15% they normally get, they’ll draw up a contract and not much more. The only advantage to having such an agent is that they have a good idea of what rights go for in that country, and will get that amount. (Versus making offers that are too low, or demanding too much for that market.) But you can get a good idea of a reasonable estimate of a good advance by asking around to people you know who’ve been active in that market.
With regards to making sure you walk rain or shine and (while agreeing with Tara about timing when it’s dangerous/completely dark) getting it in your walk early enough in the day…
Step 1: Buy new boots! 🙂
Seriously. You walk every single day! (almost). That’s a lot of use. You deserve good boots that don’t leak. Allow yourself a good-sized budget that gives you the freedom to get the ones that will work best, since you use them a lot more than many people who spend significant chunks of change on hiking boots!
I can’t count how many times you’ve mentioned your leaky boots as an obstacle or hardship. Get rid of that obstacle! Get rid of that hardship!
If you don’t want to spend a lot of time going to the store and if you have a good idea what brands/kinds you like, you could try endless.com. They have a large selection, 1 or 2 day free shipping and free returns (including shipping) if what you receive doesn’t work. Plus, they’re owned by Amazon, so they’re trustworthy. I’ve been happy with when we’ve used Endless to buy shoes for my wife, my daughter and myself.
With regards to the European(?)/world-wide rights deal:
Keep in mind, while they may be decent people they are also in this to make money by taking as much of your profits as possible. It is their job to sell you the idea that they can help you–to negotiate a deal with you.
I really don’t think you should give a lot of weight to “what they might do for [you]” (e.g. paying your way to conventions, actually promoting your books in foreign-language markets, etc.) unless it is written explicitly in to the contract as something they are contractually required to do. Assuming they will do <x> for you may be making the same mistake you always talk about other authors making when they sign on with a big publisher and assume the publisher will promote them, etc. If it’s on paper, signed in blood, that’s different. 🙂
On the topic of how big a portion of your overall sales world-wide sales beyond the US (and Canada?) constitute, it seems to me like they’re trying to pull a fast one on you. Keep in mind that the small portion of your sales that are non-US/Canada are without really selling in to any of those markets directly. If you were to invest in other markets more, you might see a larger portion of your sales from them.
… and even if I’m totally off-base about that, Chong Go makes darned good points about not letting them make you think that if non-US is x% now it will be x% later, due to other markets lagging a few years behind the US in uptake. That also sounds like excellent advice for if you are tempted to cut a deal with them and they won’t budge enough on other elements of the contract, you could say you’ll consider the contract if it is changed to a 5 year rights deal.