I showed “Greener Grass” to my wife and a few writer friends, and they all loved it. They wanted more…and I had more to say. Many of the concepts from Hollow Worldwere thoughts that had been floating in my head for decades and just didn’t have the right place to come out. As I worked on other projects, ideas for Hollow Worldkept coming to me. I’d jot them down in my notebook and try to keep focused on the book I was writing at the time.
The next book on my queue was Rhune. This is the first novel in a three-book series: The First Empire, a new fantasy series based in the distant past of the world or Elan (setting for my Riyria Revelations and Riyria Chronicles). My thought was that those books should sell well, as they have an established readership who has already expressed an interest in that plot line. Writing Rhune was the smart thing to do. But I’m pretty much known for notdoing what is smart when it comes to my writing career.
Hollow Worldwas a huge risk. It was in a different genre, and one whose readership had been dwindling over the years. A quick look at the publishing landscape made it clear that the only science fiction books that were selling well were those of an established franchise like Star Warsor Halo, space opera, and military science fiction. This book was none of those. Not to mention it touched on subjects that people argue over constantly: liberal versus conservative, gay rights, religion, and God. There are plenty of ideologies in this book that people will feel strongly about, and I’m sure many people will hate the book, and possibly me, for some of the things expressed within its covers. But none of that could diminish my desire to write this story.
While we are on the subject of ideologies, I’m sure several people will infer what they believe are my opinions on any number of topics. They’re probably almost certainly wrong. As a writer, I spend a great deal of time imagining myself in others people shoes and I’ve been known to argue one side of an argument over a few beers, and once I’ve convinced my drinking buddy to agree with my position, I turn around and argue the opposite side and bring him right back to where they started. It’s an annoying habit, but it can be fun.
In my book Rise of EmpireRoyce Melborn is arguing with Hadrian Blackwater about the notion of absolutes. They are discussing how an object (in this case a dagger) appears differently when viewed from different perspectives. Hadrian concludes that neither perception is correct, but Royce has a different take: that both are right. He goes on to say, “One truth doesn’t refute another. Truth doesn’t lie in the object, but in how we see it.” In other words, two people can have completely different opinions and yet they can both be “right.” The problem, as I see it, is that most believe that if they are “right” then the other opinion must be “wrong.” I believe in dualities.
But getting back to the writing of Hollow World, from a logical point of view, I shouldn’t have written it. I knew it would be a tough sell to publishers, and it may never find an audience. But I don’t care. I love the way the book came out and if the only people who ever love it are my wife and myself, well then that’s enough for me.
After reading the book my agent told me she loved it (okay so that’s three, but in some respects she is paid to love my work), and then she said what I already knew, which is it will be a hard sell. If she could get an offer, it wouldn’t be for much. No new news there. She sent the book to Orbit. My editor echoed Teri’s opinion…“Great book. No market. We’ll have to pass…and oh, by the way, why isn’t Michael working on the next fantasy series?”
In many ways the rejection was a relief. I had been wanting to do some self-publishing for a while. This isn’t to say I’m turning my back on traditional publishing…remember I’m a believer in dualities. And while much of the publishing landscape is waging a religious war between traditional and self-publishing, I probably understand better than most (because I’ve done both) that there are pros and cons to each. Truth be told, I had every intention on self-publishing The Riyria Chronicles but Orbit’s offer was more than I thought I could make through self-publishing, so I signed a contract for it.
So anyway, I had gotten it into my head that I would self-publish Hollow World, but there was a miscommunication and my agent had submitted the book to another publisher after Orbit passed it over. They loved it (that’s what, four now?), and made a nice five-figure offer. Robin ran the numbers, and determined that I could still earn more with Hollow Worldthrough self-publishing so I turned it down.
For those that don’t know, I originally self-published the first five books of The Riyria Revelations and then later the series was sold to Orbit. While our self-published books were quality products, they were also produced on a shoestring budget. I did all the covers, Robin was the main editor, and we paid a few hundred dollars to freelance copy editors. We’ve always had the philosophy that if you are going to self-publish a book, you need to have a product equal to what New York is releasing.
Having published The Riyria Revelations and The Riyria Chronicles traditionally, we had experienced the “New York” process. We wanted to use the same professionals that had worked on those projects (see the acknowledgements for full details), and so we discarded the shoestring approach to have Hollow Worldproduced just as if it had come out of New York. We estimated needing about $6,000 for cover art and editing. Having seen several authors successfully use Kickstarter, it seemed like a good way to raise cash to fund the startup costs.
We made launched the Kickstarter with a goal of $3,000. The thought being that we would contribute half the money and the readership the other half. Plus I thought $3,000 was a reachable goal but $6,000 would be a stretch. If the funding failed, it wouldn’t be the end of the world, we could always get a small business loan or take the money out of our nest egg, but I didn’t want to have the failure around my neck like an albatross. It turns out that my fear wasn’t warranted as the generous Kickstarter supporters gave $30,857. I can’t say enough good things about the people who funded the project—more about them in the acknowledgements.
So Hollow Worldwas going to be released, but there were still a few problems. I have had great success in the audio book world and I wanted my fans who “listen” to the book to be able to get Hollow Worldas well. Usually audio books are sold by the publisher as a subsidiary right (keeping 50% in the process…ouch!) but I had no publisher. Luckily my audio book publisher read and loved Hollow World(what’s that, five now?) and were willing to sign it even without a big-publisher attached. What’s more they gave me four times the money as for The Riyria Revelations and I get 100% of the royalty earned rather than splitting with a traditional publisher. Double win!
Signing the audio book rights got my wife to thinking. Our problem with traditional publishers were that they brought no added value to ebooks and took three times the money. But when it comes to print, they actually have tremendous value. They get the books in to bookstores and libraries, and their share of profits is much more reasonable than the standard division with ebooks. Plus, the rights revert much more cleanly when dealing with just print. Once all the books are sold, you are indeed “out of print” and the rights revert. What we really needed was a print-only deal.
If you’ve ever been to an online forum where self-published writers talk to one another you hear this a lot: “I’ll never sell my ebook book rights, but if a publisher wants the print rights, I’d sell those.” This is great line to throw out, but unless you are REALLY ingrained in publishing you don’t realize just how ludicrous a statement this is. Publishers don’t work this way. They know that the biggest share is going to come from ebooks and they aren’t willing to settle for just half that pie. They want it all and that means all the contracts are for combined print, ebook, and usually audio as well.