Post by jimcobb on Nov 23, 2022 18:47:59 GMT
This is my latest book, at least until January when another one drops. There's a bit of a story behind THE URBAN PREPPER'S GUIDE. Several years ago, I was approached by a publisher who wanted to do a book with me. I'd had a few successful books with Ulysses Press at that point, and was quite happy with them. But, I didn't see any harm in expanding a bit and working with other publishers. After a bit of back and forth trading ideas, we landed on urban preparedness. I worked up an outline, they approved it and sent over a contract. The way it worked was I had to turn in at least one chapter every X number of weeks, completing the book by deadline. I had everything turned in on time, though they fought me on a few things I wanted to cover in the book. When they started doing edits, though, things went south.
Now, I'm not a diva and I know full well that editing is where the work actually starts to shine. Hell, I'm an editor myself, I know how this works. However, this editor wasn't just tweaking text and making suggestions, she was inserting entire paragraphs of her own writing into the manuscript. I forget the actual numbers that I worked out, but she'd put in at least a few thousand words of her own all told. Given that the book was only about 50K, that's a pretty big percentage. She also submitted her name as a co-author of the book when it was listed on Amazon. I fought tooth and nail with them to get these things fixed. Then came the cover -- all black with a yellow title and a couple of tiny photos. It pretty much disappeared on any bookshelf, blending in completely. When the book came out, it was bad. The formatting wasn't appealing to the eye at all and they'd chopped up the manuscript so it didn't flow well. They also did exactly nothing to promote the book. I know, that's pretty much par for the course with publishers, but we'd had lengthy conversations about marketing plans and I couldn't get them to send out a single tweet about the book.
It was a truly awful experience, made even worse as this publisher had an extensive imprint publishing book devoted to helping writers be successful, though nobody I dealt with had apparently read any of them.
Flash forward about seven years and I get an email out of the blue from a publisher who is looking to have me write a book on urban preparedness. They were familiar with some of my other books and really liked my "voice" as well as my platform. I was interested, but I already had this other book floating around out there and I wasn't sure if I was contractually able to do another one on essentially the same topic. I told the new publisher (Welbeck Publishing) about this and they agreed to sit tight for a bit to see what I could work out. Basically, we had a gentleman's agreement that I'd do the book with them, provided I could get clearance to do so. By this time, that old publisher had gone belly up and had been bought out by one of the biggies. I contacted them and very politely asked if I could have the rights to the book returned to me, releasing me from any further contractual obligations. In seven years, the book hadn't earned out the advance, and it wasn't likely it would suddenly start selling well. They said sure, no problem, and sent over some paperwork to sign.
Once that was sorted out, I got to work in earnest. I had the manuscript hammered out in about seven weeks, give or take. Welbeck turned that into the most eye-catching book I've ever done. They were pretty decent to work with throughout the process, though my editor ended up leaving the company close to the end of the development stage (nothing bad, just wanted to pursue a different career). But nobody tried to muscle their way into the manuscript and I'm quite happy with the final product.
Thus far, it has been getting pretty great reviews, though some readers aren't quite happy with the format of the Kindle edition. For those who have stuck with this post for this long, you can find the book here: amzn.to/3TWot8x
Now, I'm not a diva and I know full well that editing is where the work actually starts to shine. Hell, I'm an editor myself, I know how this works. However, this editor wasn't just tweaking text and making suggestions, she was inserting entire paragraphs of her own writing into the manuscript. I forget the actual numbers that I worked out, but she'd put in at least a few thousand words of her own all told. Given that the book was only about 50K, that's a pretty big percentage. She also submitted her name as a co-author of the book when it was listed on Amazon. I fought tooth and nail with them to get these things fixed. Then came the cover -- all black with a yellow title and a couple of tiny photos. It pretty much disappeared on any bookshelf, blending in completely. When the book came out, it was bad. The formatting wasn't appealing to the eye at all and they'd chopped up the manuscript so it didn't flow well. They also did exactly nothing to promote the book. I know, that's pretty much par for the course with publishers, but we'd had lengthy conversations about marketing plans and I couldn't get them to send out a single tweet about the book.
It was a truly awful experience, made even worse as this publisher had an extensive imprint publishing book devoted to helping writers be successful, though nobody I dealt with had apparently read any of them.
Flash forward about seven years and I get an email out of the blue from a publisher who is looking to have me write a book on urban preparedness. They were familiar with some of my other books and really liked my "voice" as well as my platform. I was interested, but I already had this other book floating around out there and I wasn't sure if I was contractually able to do another one on essentially the same topic. I told the new publisher (Welbeck Publishing) about this and they agreed to sit tight for a bit to see what I could work out. Basically, we had a gentleman's agreement that I'd do the book with them, provided I could get clearance to do so. By this time, that old publisher had gone belly up and had been bought out by one of the biggies. I contacted them and very politely asked if I could have the rights to the book returned to me, releasing me from any further contractual obligations. In seven years, the book hadn't earned out the advance, and it wasn't likely it would suddenly start selling well. They said sure, no problem, and sent over some paperwork to sign.
Once that was sorted out, I got to work in earnest. I had the manuscript hammered out in about seven weeks, give or take. Welbeck turned that into the most eye-catching book I've ever done. They were pretty decent to work with throughout the process, though my editor ended up leaving the company close to the end of the development stage (nothing bad, just wanted to pursue a different career). But nobody tried to muscle their way into the manuscript and I'm quite happy with the final product.
Thus far, it has been getting pretty great reviews, though some readers aren't quite happy with the format of the Kindle edition. For those who have stuck with this post for this long, you can find the book here: amzn.to/3TWot8x