Tuesday, May 10, 2016

What Happens To Your Books and Career When Your Publisher Quits?

I requested this guest blog from Pat Brown because you'll learn from her what happens when your publsiher goes out of business, or sells to some other publisher.

Revising Earlier Novels, by Pat Brown

Earlier this year one of my publishers went out of business. This happens frequently today—publishers exist on a very narrow margin of profit and it doesn't take much to tip that margin into the red. So what happens then? If you were smart you have a contract that spells out exactly what happens under these circumstances. Usually, it's that the rights to your works return to you, meaning they are yours to do what you want with. 

In my case, I got the rights back to four books and one novella. The publisher was even kind enough to send me copies of the formatted manuscripts that are completely editable. So what do I do with these five works? Turn right around and self-publish? I've considered self-publishing a book more than once. So far I haven't. I like the luxury of someone else editing my manuscript and preparing a cover for me, saving me the expense. 

Can I find another publisher for it? Some publishers reject re-publishing a work. They only want first rights.  A little research online will answer that question. I decided I was going to look for a new publisher(s). I've actually gone through this before, except the publisher didn't go out of business, we just mutually parted ways. The new publisher edited the old manuscripts just like they would have for a new submission. In my case I think the books were improved by the editing—another set of professional eyes never hurts. I was also able to update the books' police procedures as both my own knowledge had increased and some technologies had changed. Win-win all around. 

Is there any reason to do more than window dressing? After all, the novel was good enough to sell the first time, right? Why make more work for myself?  Except one of those books is Latin Boyz and I've been itching to get the rights back for it for the last two years. It never sold well; I believe it was not marketed well. Not anything the publisher did, but the title was horrible—it made the book sound like a gay porn—and I did something a writer should never do. I gratuitously added sex scenes or added unnecessary detail to existing sex scenes. Not enough to make it true porn, but more than the book called for. The story is actually more a coming of age story about a young Hispanic man coming to terms with his gayness and accepting the love of another man. None of that was conveyed by the title, the blurb I provided or the cover. I hope to remedy that with a new publisher. 

I vowed to rewrite the whole thing. Then I took the opening to my writer's critique group, where I got positive feedback but also an interesting suggestion. The book is primarily written in first person and the idea was thrown out that it might be more powerful if it was close third instead. It was almost  like a light went off. Something had always bugged me about the book, but I could never pinpoint any reason for the unease. Now I had an idea to explore. I went home and took a good look at the manuscript and decided to commit myself to do just that. Rewrite a 92,000 word novel, changing the main character's POV entirely.  I made a new folder and renamed the file with the working title Burn and launched a massive revision. It's too early to tell if I'm on to something, but I have a good feeling about it. 

Time will be the final arbiter.##

Pat Brown is the award winning author of gay police procedurals under the pen name P.A. Brown, including the L.A. series featuring LAPD Homicide Detective David Eric Laine and his lover Christopher Bellamere. These include L.A. Heat, L.A. Mischief, L.A. Boneyard and L.A. Storm. And the Geography series, featuring Santa Barbara cop Alexander Spider and his lover Jason Zachary in Geography of Murder  and A Forest of Corpses.
As GK Parker she is the author of two historical novels.
Ashes & Ice is the story of two Irish immigrants who flee the oppression and crushing poverty in Ireland to find a better life in the New World. Instead, they find themselves struggling to survive the streets of the Lower East Side in the infamous Five Points slum.The sequel to Ashes & Ice will be released in several months. The title is The Perfect Tree and it picks up 16 years later. The survivors of New York City land out west ranching in the foothills in Central California.
Her second historical novel is Indifferent City , set in Los Angeles in 1929, in a time when the only difference between the cops and the bad guys were their badges. LAPD officer Billy Brewster gets mixed up with the wrong people in this gritty tale of corruption and love gone bad. A crooked cop, a mysterious, classy dame; what could possibly go wrong?

GK Parker Website