Thread by @robicellis

As suspected, I have been given an offer to write a book highlighting the 100 best restaurants in Washington DC FOR ZERO DOLLARS. And but of course I will be tweeting out all the details, because I am sick & tired of being asked to work for free. A THREAD:

https://twitter.com/robicellis/status/1148412444890546177

To preface: I was referred to this publisher by a dining site in DC. This book is part of the "Unique Eats" series, which requires me to eat at close to 100 restaurants. Email opens "I took a look at your website and am very impressed by your work".

Now let's look at what they expect for this title. Buckle in, guys, because this is a long list!

-90 Items (60-70 spreads/ 20-30 single page)
-Heading
-Standard Vignettes (single page): 150-200 words, 2-3 images
-Extended Vignettes (spreads): 400 words, 4-5 images

The have told me that I am responsible for all the photography myself, but the restaurants may supply their own:

-Total Images: Approximately 200 images (2-5 per vignette)
-Brief caption for each image (30-50 words)
-All images must be high resolution (minimum 300dpi)..

-Interior images will print in grayscale so images should be very clear/good contrast and ideally not nighttime photos as this won’t translate well to grayscale. Images for book cover will be selected from provided images so please provide all images a color."

Again, in addition to providing them with the manuscript FOR FREE, I also need to take my own photos OR tell the venues to provide their own at cost. So if you want to be in this book, it's going to cost you. AND THERE'S STILL SO MUCH FUCKERY TO COME GUYS.

I am supposed to supply them with a full marketing plan. Now, before I started writing books I figured that publishing companies would do this since, you know, their job is to make and sell books. BUT NO! It's now the author's job to market & sell the book, amongst other things.

With my marketing plan I also need to provide:
"-list of 5 scheduled author events
-list of 20 stores that might carry the title
-list of 20 media contacts that might cover the book
-Once author supplies 5/20/20 they receive $100 to put towards their launch party"

Let's take that in again: I need to provide TWENTY media contacts to cover the book. TWENTY. I'm an established writer with an excellent contact list, and I'm supposed to give them market research AND contacts all that these pubs for their company files FOR FREE.

Now they stress I can make REAL money through signings and author events, which is a fucking lie. Know what happens at book signings? People talk to you, then say they'll buy the book on Amazon where it's cheaper. But let's learn how publishers frame it!

"Authors can augment their book income substantially by purchasing and reselling books, especially at events. Given that authors can purchase books at half of retail, they can net half of retail, less shipping, on every sale they make.....

.....So if a book retails for $16, and shipping comes out to $1 per book, the author can make $7 per book sold."

I cannot tell you how many hours of my life I have wasted at signings, listening to obnoxious people telling me how they can do my job better, than not buying crap.

It's like Twitter, but in real life. You think you people know mansplaining! HOO BOY try doing a book signing! You will leave feeling stupid and worthless, but have to keep a smile on your face the entire goddamn time because MAYBE you'll make $7!

Now: how do I make money from books sold in stores?
"We pay authors on a royalty basis. The percentages in your contract are based upon net sales, which is defined as collected receipts from book sales after deduction for any sales taxes but without deduction for shipping costs.

Ready for some math guys? Time to learn what we make off books we are writing FOR FREE:

"Wholesalers and stores buy at different rates. For example, many wholesalers buy at a 50% to 55% discount off the retail price, whereas stores buy at a 42% discount.....

.....That said, wholesalers tend to buy more books on the whole, so expect average net sales on a $10 book to fall between $4 and $5, which represents 45% to 50% of the retail price. "

I emailed to see what the royalty is: 10%. So on each book sold, I will make 40 cents.

Btw, a 10% royalty in publishing is VERY good. I know so many authors who are given less than 5%. Fuck, for the WWE book I'm getting 0% royalties, but I did it for a decent flat rate and to impress my sons. (they were not impressed). So 40 cents per book is seen as generous.

I asked what the budget was for me to eat at 100 restaurants. I would be eating at each only once, which wouldn't give me the clearest picture, but these are the times we live in.

"we do not offer an advance or spending money for the project"

This means my options are as follows:
-lay out thousands of dollars of my own money to vet these places
-ask 100 restaurants to give me free meals FOR EXPOSURE
-don't actually eat at any of these restaurants and slap together an authoritative book by guessing

Now I am opening up the floor to other writers: how would you like me to respond? Do I write a long winded missive, or do I lead them on?

Btw, I am not naming this publisher as they are on Twitter & I don't want them blocking me just yet. Let's have some fun first.

Update: been running errands all day so I have not yet responded to the publisher. I shall shortly, and inform you of their response as soon as I get it!

I decided not to flat out reject them. I asked how I’m supposed to check out 100 restaurants in DC without a budget. I want to see how they respond to this.

I’m still waiting on a response, and have a few minutes to kill so let’s take some time and seriously cost this thing out. I know most of you reading this are not writers or authors, so you need to learn how exploitative this business is.

As I mentioned in another tweet somewhere, this publishers books are EVERYWHERE. I constantly see them in B&N, airports, gift shops. You can say “Well if they’re everywhere they probably sell a lot, and 10% is good!”. Now, on the math we saw above, it’s about .40 per book.

Now, I’d have to write 100 vignettes. I need to throughly research each, connect with them, take pictures, write, edit, and copy edit. Let’s say I was a fast writer (I am not)- with the correspondence and travel, we’re looking at maybe 3 months of work.

Now this is just for the content. Now we need to get to the marketing plan I’ve provided them. I need to go out and make introductions to various press people, try to get my foot in the door, sell them on why they should cover this book. That’s a full time job for some.

AND once I’ve built this list of contacts and a media network, I have to hand it to the publisher FOR FREE so that they can use this in the future. Then I have to actually go market the book, AND go to stores and ask them to sell it. So I’m a their sales rep now, too. For free.

But as we established, their books are EVERYWHERE. So let’s say they sell 20,000, which really is an insane number for any book to hit. That means I would make $8000 before taxes. Now comes the fun math part!

So $8000 for three months of writing and research. Then doing full time market research, my own marketing, and time spent doing events. The time pounding the pavement making sales calls. I’m not even factoring the expenses incurred in all of this.

Roughly speaking, if I write this book and then, and only then it becomes a SPECTACULAR success, I will average about $7 an hour for all this work. Again, ONLY if it sells 20,000 copies. And this is assuming I am not eating at any of the restaurants in this book.

Oh, and if it doesn’t sell? That’s 100% the authors fault. After all, the publisher is taking a huge risk on you! They’re making you do almost all the work, they’re cutting their own staffs land putting essential employees on 1099s, and nothing is their responsibility!

Their copy editors? They can be used on an as needed basis. 1099 them! Fact checkers? Well, we live in a post truth society. Make authors pay for it themselves, and if anything is wrong who cares, it’s not our fault!

Photography is expensive. Let’s make the authors pay for their own out of their advance, and force them to beg their friends to work for peanuts because they can barely afford their services!

Money for recipe testing? What the fuck is that shit? Never even heard of it! I mean, if they’re writing a cookbook they should just know how to cook, so they don’t need to test anything. If they want to do it, make them pay for it themselves!

And you’re thinking “well, I can see the stuff in the last few tweets being the case at a small independent press”. NO! THAT IS WHAT THE MAJOR PUBLISHERS DO! They just have the decency to pay you an advance that barely covers your expenses!

Every single published author knows about this. EVERY 👏🏻 SINGLE 👏🏻 AUTHOR. I have friends who have written best sellers who used food stamps to pay for ingredients. Friends who won James Beard awards who stuggle to pay bills. And NONE OF US are calling this shit out.

That needs to stop. It needs to stop immediately. We are doing such a huge disservice to the younger authors out there, the kids who dream of writing a book one day and being in any way compensated for their hard work. Publishers and shareholders get compensated. Not the writers

GUYS WE HAVE A RESPONSE! To catch everyone up, I responded “i have not eaten at 100 restaurants in DC. If there is no budget for the project, how am I supposed to get the information I need? This would cost me at the bare minimum at least $3000.” GUESS WHAT THEY WANT ME TO DO.

“Several of our authors for this series have gone to the restaurants directly, letting them know that they are featuring them in a book and asking if they'd like to provide a meal sampler, etc.”

I need to beg restaurants for free meals FOR EXPOSURE!

And you know what’s fucked up? I have been forced to do this in the past, because I had no other choice. It was beg for free things in order to get the information I needed, or don’t write the piece at all. I hate it as a human, and I hate it as a former small business owner.

It concludes “Due to production costs of the book, we are not able to afford any advance.”

Now, I can’t say for sure that this is a lie, BUT I know what it costs to produce a paperback book. It’s not that high.

Now that they’ve confirmed my suspicions, AND lied to me about the cost of producing a book, here’s their details: they are called Reedy Press. This series is called Unique Eats & Eateries of (insert name here). Here’s a link to all of them on Amazon:
amazon.com/s?k=unique+eat…

I put their author paperwork in a Google Doc if you guys would like to read it. Make sure you send it out to other writers in your area to make sure they’re not preyed on by these guys either:

docs.google.com/document/d/1Bp…

And here’s the specs on those books, if you’re interested. Again, make sure other writers know about this shit. There are LOTS of predatory pubs out there, all making bank off of free labor that they’re treating as a gift.

docs.google.com/document/d/1ml…

I just realized I haven’t figured out what my final response to them is going to be! So many possibilities. I’m taking requests!

UPDATE: I have responded to their solicitation for free work. You can read it and share in it's entirety on my website: bit.ly/2YCA28x. You can also contact the company directly with thoughts of your own -- everyone's contact info is in those documents I posted earlier.

Figured it was better just to link to it, because it's a pretty long response. But it's a good one! I thank:

Naomi Stevens
Acquisitions Associate
[e-mail]
Reedy Press | 314-397-1707

For letting me know about this generous offer.

Also: if anyone out there has decided to contact Reedy Press themselves after all of this (again, all their contact info is in those documents), please let me know! Would love to hear about it. And if people have connections at bookstores that carry their books, hit me up. 🤗

UPDATE: to answer a question I have been asked many times, no I did not receive a response to my email from Reedy Press, nor do I want one. I have already spent way too much time dealing with this company. I owe them nothing. But I WILL add more information to this thread!

Another writer reached out saying she had been approached by Reedy, asking her to work on some books in their other series. She sent me the specs for those books, so here they are! First up: their Secret [insert city name here] guidebook series.

And here is the checklist for their 100 Things to Do in [insert city name here] Before You Die series.

Thank you to this kind lady for the last images. I don’t want to @ her because her mentions will quickly get out of fucking control, but give her a follow/buy a book!

I really cannot stress this part enough: if writers and creatives keep working for free, none of us will ever be paid again. This has become the Exposure Economy. We’re also on the verge of losing the boring copywriting gigs that keep our freelance careers alive to AI.

Reedy is not the only predatory publisher out there. When these things happen you need to call it out, because they’re just going to move onto the next writer looking for a break. I am 100% certain this book will still be written.