Publishers do not want authors to know too much about what happens with their book in terms of sales, returns, etc. because, among other things, writers who have accurate knowledge of the performance of their books will not put up with the endemic and institutionalized withholding of income from authors disguised as reserve for returns and “the foreign money payment didn’t arrive during the current reporting period so you’ll have to wait another six months–plus the standard three month delay before we actually issue the report, to lay hands on any of that income.”

It’s called “float” and it’s a lot of what publishers live on while they’re waiting for their accounts to pay them, months and months after they spent the money on printing and shipping.

You could call it a house of cards or you could call it criminal fraud, depending on your point of view and your spot in the food chain.

Evolution can be painful and success isn’t always guaranteed. Publishing has been under siege for a very long time and is probably going to be brought to its knees by the current (and just-beginning) economic crisis. Reading in this society has fallen off a cliff, replaced by sound bites, TV, games, smart phones and other devices that don’t require thought or sustained attention. People used to grab a book for companionship, for the doctor’s office wait, for the ride into work but now there’s texting; find out what your buddies had for breakfast! Instantly comment on the white-boots-black-pants hideousness of the woman standing 2 feet from you on the train…. We all want to write but we’ve lost the desire to read. That’s so self-indulgent and also exactly where we are as a society: we talk, but we don’t listen. We’ve lost so much in the industry — editors that work with authors, houses that nurture careers, literature that was great *and* profitable — but we have to recognize that it’s demand-driven, i.e. a slightly time-delayed mirror image of the world we live in. What’s a publisher to do? People are reading less and less. Fewer books are selling. The entire cost structure is an anachronism. Books, newspapers and magazines are all in the same boat, sliding slowly towards oblivion. I think we’ll eventually end up nearly exclusively digital and print-on-demand or print-at-home because that’s the only financially viable structure. At that point, of course, information will be instantaneous and there will be no excuse for authors to be in the dark about royalties. In fact, at that point there’s no reason not to self-publish, period. But to focus on the lag in royalty information at this point in this industry is to complain about the dinner service on the Titanic.

No. They do not wish to discuss print runs, marketing plans, publicity budgets or shipment/order numbers. We are not only peons. We are the parents of our books whose children have been kidnapped and are trapped in an unfriendly orphanage. We don’t even have visitation rights -much less get paid what is due us for renting out our offspring for life. How are to we to know how many kids were sold to whom at what discount? How are we to know if a child becomes redundant and goes out of print? When one of our children is no longer of any use to them, do they revert the rights to the parent? No. They just warehouse them. And leave us to worry about them not being available forever after.

Book publishers dared tell Pat Holt that electronic online sales updates would cost a lot of money to establish. That’s evidence of their ignorance. Or else it’s a lie. (I vote for #2) Surely, if they provided online reports for us all to consult monthly, they would be able to lay off some accounting people and can a few secretaries who send out those envelopes every six months. You don’t have to pay health benefits for a computer.

My own books are published all over the world. Publishers the same everywhere. A conspiracy against the laity (that’s us). Too busy to send out your royalty statements and checks because they are just getting ready for Frankfurt of the Paris book Salon was only last week or they have to rush off to the conference which nowadays passes for the ABA. French publishers render their phony accounts once a year – usually 60 days late. (Le Salon of course has a very strong back) I have taken to sending them a bill. The Chinese won’t answer mail. The Germans send out accounts twice a year but they never sell anything. Bertelsmann has produced and sold my book for over ten years. But according to my royalty statements, they have never sold any.

I am on the pitchfork committee at suzanwhite@aol.com. Of course organizing a manifestation of authors to carry weapons through the streets of NY would be a life’s work. But thanks to Pat Holt, this is a start. Let’s make our desire for online sales reports known. Got any author friends? Let’s send ‘em a pitchfork and the url of this blog.

In my opinion, it’s an incredibly useful tool, and I just don’t understand why the trade publishers can’t do it too. Granted, the publisher in question that I saw was a self-publisher, but they seem to have proven the idea’s ability to operate as a viable system, and kudos to them for it.

We’re talking all things romance at the Dr. Romance Blog http://drromance.typepad.com/dr_romance_blog/