Discontent amongst the Puppies

[james_davis_nicoll]

Discord between at least one Puppy and Baen. The obvious test is to buy one of the dead books and see if the sale shows up in their next statement.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

If all publishers are low-balling sales results, then Scalzi is selling even more than we think...

[jayblanc]

I'm Shocked! Shocked!

[(Anonymous)]

Your royalties, Sir.

[jreynolds197]

Vultures! Vultures everywhere!

[martianmooncrab]

that is very odd indeed, I have writer friends and I hear about their indie sales on 30 plus year old books, they do sell, so six montns with no sales whatsoever? sniff sniff.. hmmmm

[theresawright]

Sarah Hoyt isn't a big seller in the chain I work for, but 0 sales isn't plausible. Throw in the rest of the MGC and it's impossible.

I suspect that Baen is trying to cut back on the costs of inventoring and reporting items and accounting for sales, and the result is neglectful under-reporting that is indistinguishable from deliberate rip-off. I lean towards that theory simply because it's such a common form of corporate misdoing.

[james_davis_nicoll]

As I recall, there was a kerfluffle in the aughts when Baen, faced with a short term cash crunch because royalty expenses were higher than planned for (higher than expected sales and no, I don't know why revenue from higher sales would not precede royalty cost payout), had to prioritize who got paid first. Again, AIR, Jim Baen decided to go with paying his buddies first over paying the high earning authors first. This went over poorly with the high earners.

[theresawright]

I don't know why revenue from higher sales would not precede royalty cost payout

All I can imagine is some set of contractual terms that required certain expenses to be paid as soon as revenues were known but before end of quarter or end of year when author royalties were to be paid out. Or a debt coming due. But that's just a guess.

[kjn]

AIUI, from a source I trust and who had good insight in what happened, the issue was that Jim Baen might have been a good editor, a great marketer, and with a keen sense of story, but he wasn't really a professional at running a business. When Baen Books suddenly got noticably higher sales and revenue due to its successful ebook strategy, he set aside the normal amount of money for royalties and taxes, and put the extra money into whatever pet projects he had. So when it was time to pay taxes and royalties, Baen Books had set aside much less than they needed.

Then Jim Baen handled the communication with some of the writers and their agents badly. My source was directly impacted by that, in that they got some royalties delayed and couldn't get as big an advance on their next book as was customary, but at least they got to talk directly with Jim Baen.

[martianmooncrab]

it will be blamed on a technical issue and much denying of stuff..

[agharta75]

What would John Galt do?

[jbwoodford]

Shrug.

[al_zorra]

In what universe is it that people who publish a low selling genre novel find that the key to a teaching gig? hmmmmmmmmm, either in These Days or in the Days Before covid-19.

[philrm]

Yeah, I have no idea where Hoyt got her bizarre and often-repeated theory that people are writing SFF novels to get jobs in academia.She also appears to believe that most of the people writing the SFF that she doesn't like (i.e., pretty much all of it) have faculty positions.

[rezendi]

Perhaps worth noting that Chris Anderson's Long Tail theory was interesting, somewhat intuitive, and a great story ... but appears to have been pretty conclusively disproven. Instead, "product variety is likely to increase demand concentration." (Italics mine.)

https://mackinstitute.wharton.upenn.edu/2017/is-tom-cruise-threatened-an-empirical-study-of-the-impact-of-product-variety-on-demand-concentration/

cf also https://medium.com/before-the-dot/the-long-tail-when-a-famous-theory-got-almost-all-wrong-12d3c6eb0de9

[rezendi]

Also worth noting: maybe it's not the publishers; maybe it's the recommendation algorithms. If most sales came from people browsing online, as opposed to specifically searching for author or title, then a tweak to recommendation algorithms can have the effect of moving all copies from bookstore shelves to storage out back; still technically available for sale, but nobody's just picking them up.