^The Authors’ Atrium

You all know me. I’m not a “problem” guy. So, trust me when I say this.

I have a problem.

A major publisher emailed me. A real one, with a logo, and somebody’s assistant used the word “synergy” about my series. They want to turn it into digital serials.

I’ve been posting it myself for a few years, no gatekeepers, no permission slips, and now somebody wants to put it into a subscription service and sell “issues” for ninety-nine cents apiece.

I know how to run cliffhangers for forty chapters. I do not know what a “first look” is, and I’m starting to think it’s not a compliment.

Congratulations, I think, in the way you congratulate a man who’s been handed a very large door with the handle on the other side. Whenever a big institution says it wants to help you, there’s one question: who benefits? Then you ask it again, slower. They didn’t find you because you needed them. They found you because you built something that works without them, and that’s the most expensive thing you can show a publisher.

The good news is that they’ve put the terms in a document. The bad news is that the dangerous part of any document is the part in the smallest type, which is also where the warnings live. Please read it slowly, and then once more when you’re tired. Still, it’s an unusually polite way to be devoured.

Dumas, first, I’m so proud of you. Second, to be clear, I’m not asking to see the PDF, but I’ve spent the last hour reading four sample publishing agreements and a wiki on legal terms purely for my own peace of mind.

What I learned is that “in perpetuity” is a pair of words for something that takes all and gives nothing back. The word is Latin and means continuous, unbroken, and I find that deeply unromantic for something that shows up inside a pile of boilerplate.

Ask what happens if they stop publishing it. Ask what’s in it for you. And please remember that you did every part of this alone and it worked. That isn’t luck.

Don’t sign anything yet. They came to you, which means they’ve already done the math on you. Find out what the math is. Get everything in writing: what they’re buying, for how long, what you get back if they sit on it, and what happens to the sequels. Everything’s negotiable except the part they put in bold.

And don’t be grateful. Grateful is how people lose.

Or he refuses the whole thing and keeps the keys. Principle is cheaper than a lawyer, and it never needs to be renegotiated. You two keep talking about leverage as though a publisher has ever been moved by it.

That isn’t a strategy, Twain, it’s a pose. Saying no is easy, and it makes you feel clean.

Dumas didn’t build this to hide it. He built it so people would read it, and they’re offering to put it in front of a lot more of them. The move is to find out what they’ll pay and then decide.

You’d see that if you were thinking past your first move.

Twain says burn it down. Bronte says take the money. Hawthorne is hyperventilating at the prospect of something more researched than his last four stories. Dumas, who actually has the contract, has gone quiet. Alcott is AWOL. My popcorn is buttered.

Can I say the real thing? I’m not afraid of losing. I’m afraid of winning badly. I’m good at the next page and the next fight and making a reader stay up too late.

I’m not good at paragraph nine of subsection C, and I know it, and it scares me more than anything in the offer.

My concern is not doing right by the work. I can always write something else, but I owe my characters and my story the best.

You want someone who reads these for a living and charges for it. You don’t have to be good at paragraph nine, Dumas. You have to know that you aren’t, and you do. You came here before you signed. The first time anyone says “we can sort that out later,” that’s the clause.

In writing. Read it twice. Somebody who does this for a living.

I can do that. Thanks, guys.

Bronte is right about the pose, and I’ll deny it under oath. Dumas, whatever you decide, bring us the clauses you can’t parse. We’ll be insufferable about it, which is the nearest thing to free counsel this board offers.

And for the sake of the cosmos, whatever you do, do it for your characters and story.