Michael’s Comments (group member since Sep 27, 2012)

Michael’s comments from the Michael J. Sullivan hosts a Q&A group.

I think they received over 4,000 submissions. I'm not sure how many "gems" they'll find in all of those. It will be interesting to see and I'm sure that many people will be watching.

@C.M. You are welcome.

@Mathias - well a few things. First Harper Voyager isn't offering any advance and while they've not made it public I'm pretty sure they'll pay industry standard so no having an agent won't get you any additional money. Now I will say in general, for a "full contract" they will get a larger advance than the author will be offered on their own...but the royalty rates will be pretty standard so if you earn out the royalty amount becomes moot. But most won't earn out so in that case it is worth it.

You can get some tweaks to a contract but you're not going to get them to change the "standard royalty" on ebooks (as they have auto-escalation clauses that would kick in). Non-competes are VERY hard to get altered. It took me 6 months and a very real threat to walk to get mine altered...but getting it removed (which is what I wanted was totally out of the question).

The thing with any contract is how much leverage do you have? In most cases...a debut author has little to none. The supply demand equation is very much weighted toward the publisher. If author X isn't taking what is offered there are 10 or even 100 other authors just waiting to fill that vacated spot.

I know an IP attorney who has done 700+ big-six contracts and they are remarkably similar. The industry holds to a party line so that they keep the power. It's not too unlike the way ball team owners dealt with free agency when it first came into effect in baseball. Sure a player could become a free agent but when none of the owners made an offer...well it really didn't help to be a free agent.

@Daniel - you are very welcome.

@C.M. - Not all but most. I think about 90% of my books were sold on Amazon and 10% on all the other venues combined.

@Brannigan - glad it helps.

@Brannigan - you are very welcome

@J.M. Query Shark is a great place - I highly recommend - enjoy!

@Daniel - you are welcome

@J.M. I'm not sure it happens as much as some people think it does. I see a lot of accusations, and of course only the author knows for sure if they did or they didn't...but I think most know better, and it's really just a few people who try to circumvent the process.

They are actually making THREE movies out of the Hobbit! I do find that interesting as well as it is such a shorter work (and should fit well in one movie) to think that there will be three is interesting.

There is a lot of heat for doing it as three, I'm going to reserve my opinions until I see it.

I've never read Eragon...I saw the movie and didn't like it much but I heard a lot of it had to do with it not being a good representation of the book. I think a lot of people who are Eragon fans had similar reactions to yours.

Yeah that would be something...wouldn't it. If done right it would be an amazing thing to see. In a lot of ways the books play out like a movie in my own mind so I've seen it pretty clearly. It would be nice if others saw it the same way.

Yeah...it was unfortunate that it didn't align perfectly. I try to convince myself that "They just remember it wrong" in Revelations ;-)

I'm sure I'll take some heat for it, but Crown is a much better story because of the way that plays out. I'm hoping to be able to make adjustments in future revisions.

@Brannigan - No idea at this point. So far I've written the two Chronicle stories and we'll see if people want to know any more after those come out. In some ways a lot of the "charm" of the books is their friendship and interaction with one another, so I'm not sure how many people would be attracted to them a apart.

Of the two I think I would have more interest in doing Harian's story in Calais rather than Royce's in a thieves guild. Royce was not a very pleasant person back in those days. If I were to write him in keeping with the truth as I see it, I suspect some people may not like him very much...so I'm a bit hesitant to do that.

So I won't say "no" but it's not something that is on the immediate horizon. Should the first two books do well, I'll put up another poll and those will be choices so I'll see what others think.

@Lewis - To be honest I never really noticed that I used him several times. He's just a minor character and I didn't put a lot of thought into what his name should be.

If I were try to "spin" thins to be more clever I would say that there must be some famous person in Elan's history named Bartholomew and many mothers named their child based on him ;-p

@Heather B - Thanks for asking.
I'm going to keep all the answers in one place so you can find the answer to:

How you would feel about your books being made into movies - Here

What other fantasy books do you think have worked out well or not so well as movies - here

What other fantasy books do you think have worked out well or not so well as movies?

When I first saw the Lord of the Rings I was a bit miffed because so many things that I wanted were cut and worse new things were added like changing who carries Frodo to the elves. Now in retrospect I have to say they were really well done.

The Harry Potter books were also very well executed as movies, although I like the earlier ones that had a much lighter feel than the darkness that crept in both from content and director vision toward the latter ones.

I'm anticipating good things for the Hobbit.

I'm not a huge fan of Game of Thrones as a book (because I didn't connect with or care about any of the characters) but I think the production values for the series has been excellent. I still don't like the characters, but I do enjoy watching it..especially for the production values.

How you would feel about your books being made into movies?

The increased exposure of having a movie deal is nothing short of amazing. It really will make the books sell at a level that nothing else can have a similar effect for.

The reality is...there is such a VERY small chance of this happening that it's one of those things that you got to not waste cycles thinking about because no good comes from it. There are hundreds of projects that have been optioned, some for decades, and they still don't have movies.

In some respects...if I were to get a movie deal...I would like it to happen only after the books blew incredibly big (which I doubt they will). It's only then that you have the "leverage" to have creative input. J.K. Rowling got a lot of input into Harry Potter, so did Stephanie Meyer with Twilight. I really don't want "any movie" I want "a good movie" and if I were to be signed with the types of sales I have now I would have zero input and just have to hope and pray that it's not screwed up.

Still...it would be nice to get an "option" if for no other reason then to say be able to say that is the case. I do have a really good Hollywood agent who is working that end for me. Josie Freedman who is the head of the book-to-film division of the ICM agency. So I at least rank to get "quality people" working on it it, but as I said I'm not holding my breath.

If I could have my dream director I think it would be Joss Whedon - I think he does the "humor" / "drama" aspects well.

Good questions guys...keep them coming.

@Mathias - The Harper Voyager thing is very interesting, and I think ultimately a bad deal for authors as they can get the same themselves and retain higher % of income. I went into more detail here.

With Harper Voyager recently making their big announcement about opening up for direct submissions (albeit for a short window), do you think that this is a signal that there is something wrong with the current quality or quantity of projects being pitched to them by literary agents (for whatever reason)?

No I don't take it that way at all. I see this is a disturbing move that will be the state of things to come for the "mid-list" from major publishers. Basically how I see this is Harper Voyager said to themselves....

* Wow a lot of self-published authors are selling well
* I bet many of them would be willing to sign with a big-press
* We don't have to do print or offer advances (so we can have a much lower initial investment
* We make 52.5% and they make 17.5% WHAT A DEAL.

I think this doing this is the best way to "jack in" to already successful self-published authors (because they don't have agents). When I saw the announcement I thought wow, I feel like George Baily in It's a Wonderful Life who is trying to explain to people who are rushing to get their money from Potter that he's cashing in on their mob mentality.

Fact is...the traditional publishers have a HUGE advantage in print book distribution...this is what authors need them for. When it comes to digital the playing field is level and indies do very well (toe-to-toe infact) with the stuff they are putting out (50% of the epic fantasy list is indies and 50% traditonal). This is one of those situations where it is a GREAT deal for hte publisher but the author really isn't getting something that they couldn't get on their own.

As for it being "unagented" - well I think that is because few agents would recommend a "digital only" deal for their authors.

If you look at the authors in the Amazon imprints (Thomas & Mercer, 47 North, Montlake, Encore) A LOT of them are high earning self-published authors. I see this as Harper-Voyagers way of scooping up these people just as Amazon has done. I would suspect that quite a few who are "offered" a contract will be self-published...I also think, if they are smart...they will turn it down. But at least they will have the validation that a big publisher thought they were "good enough."

From my point of view, I would think that if the process of using agents as a feeder system was working well, Harper Voyager would have no need to go around them. Perhaps they are just looking to cut out the middlemen as well and save some money by not having to pay the commissions? Which would be a shrewd business move.

The "cost" to HV is the same with or without an agent. so they don't save any commission - that comes out of the author's share. But in general agents don't like "no advance" deals. So most wouldn't be interested even if they were included.

@J.E. - Yes there is a lot of information overload out there, and things do change VERY fast. I think the best thing is to follow the advice of people who have been successful (so glad you are following my wife's blog - she is dealing with some family issues over the past many moons so no recent updates, but hopefully she will be getting back to that at some point).

To that end. I've picked out some books by some people who I think are really smart and very successful: H.P. Mallory, John Locke, Carolyn McCray, Bob Mayer. Here is a link to them, All are rather short and if you follow what they suggest you'll be heads and shoulders ahead of "everyone else."

@C.M. Glad you enjoy the books!! Yes I do think it is a good idea to have a short to feed into a novel or series. I've written more details here along with some tips not to forget when doing so.