A few words from J.R. Southall about the forthcoming You and Who-related titles
When Andrew Skilleter came in and offered to publish some of the forthcoming You and Who-related titles through his WHO DARES PUBLISHING imprint, it wasn’t a decision I had to think long and hard about. The answer, of course, was yes. Resoundingly so. Who wouldn’t want to be published by a name so indelibly associated with Doctor Who publishing? – And more importantly, I’d already had some experience of his recent publishing projects and was absolutely certain of the level of consideration that goes into the content and presentation of each one. Seriously, if you haven’t bought anything from the Who Dares website yet, then treat yourself. The quality of the products on offer there is outstanding.
And happy to say, throughout our conversations over the last several months, Andrew has more than lived up to his reputation, and of my impressions of him. Along with his right-hand man, Matt Doe!
(Before I go on, a quick word about those titles affected by last October’s unfortunate events: these will be returning to print all together at some point as soon as they’re finally ready; hopefully this summer. They’ll be staying at Watching Books through CreateSpace, as the print runs we’re talking about – thanks to these titles being on their second and sometimes third editions – are going to be too minimal to contemplate anything else.)
Now, the Who Dares Publishing offer won’t necessarily cover all the forthcoming Watching Books / You and Who titles, and each book will be considered on a case-by-case basis. But currently Who Dares are interested in most of the books we’ve had on our plate and as things stand, the plan is for YOU ON TARGET, ME AND THE STARMAN and the replacement Blakes 7 volume, to be known as BLAKE’S LEGACY – FORTY YEARS OF REBELLION, all to be published at Who Dares.
Personally, I couldn’t be happier about that, and I’m sure a lot (most? all?) of you would agree.
However, the promotion from self-publishing into Being Published doesn’t come without certain changes to the original plans, and that’s what I wanted to talk about here. There are particular options that I’d intended to make available when self-publishing that are no longer viable with A Proper Publisher, particularly as we’re still talking about an independent – and proudly so, I gather! – where the margin between the overheads and the returns is significantly closer than it would be with a mainstream, corporate publishing house.
Firstly, a note on the charities: all of the artists’ royalties from these books will still be going to the charities that were announced with the titles themselves, that hasn’t and will not change. So the spirit of You and Who is very much alive and kicking. In fact, thanks to this new deal and the increased publicity, professionalism and visibility that will result, I’d like to think that the totals the charities will be getting from the books will be greater than when self-publishing (where, frankly, the margins are pretty narrow, thanks to the way that business works).
Now, one of the things that’s going to change is that there won’t be an eBook edition; these will be print-only books. That’s rather a standard among some smaller publishers, as the chances of losing sales due to illicit file-sharing is much reduced. I don’t think this is going to affect a vast number of people, as my experience with the previous Watching Books titles was that sales of the print editions far, far outweighed those of the Kindle editions – in fact, I think it’s one of the attractions of the You and Who titles that the authors get to see their writing in print, and if that is now to be with a company as respected as Who Dares rather than the hopefully respected but still print-to-order Watching Books, then I do believe it’s a small sacrifice to make – especially as the upside will be that those print editions will now be in considerably better quality.
But this also means that we now won’t be able to offer a free PDF to contributors. The context for this is that offering such a PDF was something I had done with our last couple of titles, and yet once that offer was made the number of people who actually took me up on it – rather than buying a copy in print for themselves – was tiny; literally single figures in a volume containing nearly 200 authors last time around, if I remember rightly. I like to think that part of the thinking behind that was that those authors also wanted to make sure the charitable donation would still be made. Either way, it seems to me that that’s a tiny sacrifice to make considering the benefits that will be offsetting it, and I hope everyone agrees.
Another thing is America. Through CreateSpace, we were able to offer the Watching Books titles at an equivalent price in North America – although not Australia, where readers had to suck up the extra postage costs and order from Europe – but as things stand (and I repeat: this is as things stand, and will hopefully change going forwards) Who Dares will only be able to publish these books in the UK. Now, obviously overseas readers will be able to order from the UK and pay the extra shipping to obtain these books, but sadly in the current economic climate (blame Brexit if you like! Or austerity), there aren’t any distributors in the United States willing to take on the domestic distribution of independent foreign titles in the kinds of numbers we’re talking. What might change this will be if once Who Dares have enough titles on their books they can strike a deal with someone to take on say ten titles at a time – but that’s something that only the future can tell. Needless to say, we have looked into this issue, and sadly no solution to the problem has presented itself as yet. But this will be something that will hopefully be addressed as soon as feasible. For now, though, American readers will find themselves in the same situation as Antipodean ones, and that’s something that can’t be helped. As I said above, I do believe the benefits of the overall situation far outweigh the disadvantages. (And I am also aware of chatter between editors in the range, concerning the possibility of being able to distribute editions at conventions and so on, which will obviously be something we’ll look into as and when those situations arise.)
Finally, one thing we talked about was the possibility of giving contributors some kind of discount. This wasn’t something we’d ever done at Watching Books, simply because it wasn’t an option that was available to us. After a lot of consideration and looking into the logistics of being able to do this, not least the consideration that any discount would have affected the charities more than anything else (essentially the discount would have to have been made purely from the charitable contribution), it’s been concluded that it’s simply not practical to offer this option. As I said above, this isn’t something we were previously able to offer anyway, so essentially this is an unchanged situation. However I suspect the move to a new publisher might have caused some people to consider whether this might be a possibility, so I thought it worth clarifying here.
I doubt many of you reading this will have been affected by any of these changes – the vast majority of Watching Books’ sales were print editions sold to UK addresses, after all – but to anyone who will be affected by the move to Who Dares Publishing in a negative way, I’d just like to offer my humble apology. It’s not something I enjoy doing, causing anyone any kind of grief no matter how small the number of people affected might be, but like I’ve said this is a situation where the good far, far outweighs the bad. These will be much more beautiful books than I’d ever have been able to produce myself, but they’re also ones that will therefore cost more – in terms of a team effort, as much as anything else – to produce. The end result will hopefully not be any more expensive for the majority of readers, but it is a situation that means there will be more people involved and considerably more risk undertaken. Plopping a cheap-looking cover on a barely proofed PDF on CreateSpace didn’t cost me anything. That’s not what’s going to be happening any longer, but print runs rather than print-to-order and the amount of design and formatting work that goes into these things doesn’t come without an outlay, and it’s because of these criteria that the above situation has been arrived at.
But before I sign off, the one message I do want to leave everyone with is the emotion I felt after Who Dares and Andrew Skilleter had tentatively agreed to take on these titles – an emotion that I hope most if not all of you will ultimately share, and that can only be described as joy. How profoundly lovely, for example, to have You On Target finding its natural home in such a way! As for the other titles, if the cover the redoubtable Robert Hammond has designed for You and 42 is any indication, these are going to be absolutely gorgeous books with the publishers pouring in just as much care and attention as the editors. What more can we really ask for? These are, I do believe, happy days indeed.
And happy to say, throughout our conversations over the last several months, Andrew has more than lived up to his reputation, and of my impressions of him. Along with his right-hand man, Matt Doe!
(Before I go on, a quick word about those titles affected by last October’s unfortunate events: these will be returning to print all together at some point as soon as they’re finally ready; hopefully this summer. They’ll be staying at Watching Books through CreateSpace, as the print runs we’re talking about – thanks to these titles being on their second and sometimes third editions – are going to be too minimal to contemplate anything else.)
Now, the Who Dares Publishing offer won’t necessarily cover all the forthcoming Watching Books / You and Who titles, and each book will be considered on a case-by-case basis. But currently Who Dares are interested in most of the books we’ve had on our plate and as things stand, the plan is for YOU ON TARGET, ME AND THE STARMAN and the replacement Blakes 7 volume, to be known as BLAKE’S LEGACY – FORTY YEARS OF REBELLION, all to be published at Who Dares.
Personally, I couldn’t be happier about that, and I’m sure a lot (most? all?) of you would agree.
However, the promotion from self-publishing into Being Published doesn’t come without certain changes to the original plans, and that’s what I wanted to talk about here. There are particular options that I’d intended to make available when self-publishing that are no longer viable with A Proper Publisher, particularly as we’re still talking about an independent – and proudly so, I gather! – where the margin between the overheads and the returns is significantly closer than it would be with a mainstream, corporate publishing house.
Firstly, a note on the charities: all of the artists’ royalties from these books will still be going to the charities that were announced with the titles themselves, that hasn’t and will not change. So the spirit of You and Who is very much alive and kicking. In fact, thanks to this new deal and the increased publicity, professionalism and visibility that will result, I’d like to think that the totals the charities will be getting from the books will be greater than when self-publishing (where, frankly, the margins are pretty narrow, thanks to the way that business works).
Now, one of the things that’s going to change is that there won’t be an eBook edition; these will be print-only books. That’s rather a standard among some smaller publishers, as the chances of losing sales due to illicit file-sharing is much reduced. I don’t think this is going to affect a vast number of people, as my experience with the previous Watching Books titles was that sales of the print editions far, far outweighed those of the Kindle editions – in fact, I think it’s one of the attractions of the You and Who titles that the authors get to see their writing in print, and if that is now to be with a company as respected as Who Dares rather than the hopefully respected but still print-to-order Watching Books, then I do believe it’s a small sacrifice to make – especially as the upside will be that those print editions will now be in considerably better quality.
But this also means that we now won’t be able to offer a free PDF to contributors. The context for this is that offering such a PDF was something I had done with our last couple of titles, and yet once that offer was made the number of people who actually took me up on it – rather than buying a copy in print for themselves – was tiny; literally single figures in a volume containing nearly 200 authors last time around, if I remember rightly. I like to think that part of the thinking behind that was that those authors also wanted to make sure the charitable donation would still be made. Either way, it seems to me that that’s a tiny sacrifice to make considering the benefits that will be offsetting it, and I hope everyone agrees.
Another thing is America. Through CreateSpace, we were able to offer the Watching Books titles at an equivalent price in North America – although not Australia, where readers had to suck up the extra postage costs and order from Europe – but as things stand (and I repeat: this is as things stand, and will hopefully change going forwards) Who Dares will only be able to publish these books in the UK. Now, obviously overseas readers will be able to order from the UK and pay the extra shipping to obtain these books, but sadly in the current economic climate (blame Brexit if you like! Or austerity), there aren’t any distributors in the United States willing to take on the domestic distribution of independent foreign titles in the kinds of numbers we’re talking. What might change this will be if once Who Dares have enough titles on their books they can strike a deal with someone to take on say ten titles at a time – but that’s something that only the future can tell. Needless to say, we have looked into this issue, and sadly no solution to the problem has presented itself as yet. But this will be something that will hopefully be addressed as soon as feasible. For now, though, American readers will find themselves in the same situation as Antipodean ones, and that’s something that can’t be helped. As I said above, I do believe the benefits of the overall situation far outweigh the disadvantages. (And I am also aware of chatter between editors in the range, concerning the possibility of being able to distribute editions at conventions and so on, which will obviously be something we’ll look into as and when those situations arise.)
Finally, one thing we talked about was the possibility of giving contributors some kind of discount. This wasn’t something we’d ever done at Watching Books, simply because it wasn’t an option that was available to us. After a lot of consideration and looking into the logistics of being able to do this, not least the consideration that any discount would have affected the charities more than anything else (essentially the discount would have to have been made purely from the charitable contribution), it’s been concluded that it’s simply not practical to offer this option. As I said above, this isn’t something we were previously able to offer anyway, so essentially this is an unchanged situation. However I suspect the move to a new publisher might have caused some people to consider whether this might be a possibility, so I thought it worth clarifying here.
I doubt many of you reading this will have been affected by any of these changes – the vast majority of Watching Books’ sales were print editions sold to UK addresses, after all – but to anyone who will be affected by the move to Who Dares Publishing in a negative way, I’d just like to offer my humble apology. It’s not something I enjoy doing, causing anyone any kind of grief no matter how small the number of people affected might be, but like I’ve said this is a situation where the good far, far outweighs the bad. These will be much more beautiful books than I’d ever have been able to produce myself, but they’re also ones that will therefore cost more – in terms of a team effort, as much as anything else – to produce. The end result will hopefully not be any more expensive for the majority of readers, but it is a situation that means there will be more people involved and considerably more risk undertaken. Plopping a cheap-looking cover on a barely proofed PDF on CreateSpace didn’t cost me anything. That’s not what’s going to be happening any longer, but print runs rather than print-to-order and the amount of design and formatting work that goes into these things doesn’t come without an outlay, and it’s because of these criteria that the above situation has been arrived at.
But before I sign off, the one message I do want to leave everyone with is the emotion I felt after Who Dares and Andrew Skilleter had tentatively agreed to take on these titles – an emotion that I hope most if not all of you will ultimately share, and that can only be described as joy. How profoundly lovely, for example, to have You On Target finding its natural home in such a way! As for the other titles, if the cover the redoubtable Robert Hammond has designed for You and 42 is any indication, these are going to be absolutely gorgeous books with the publishers pouring in just as much care and attention as the editors. What more can we really ask for? These are, I do believe, happy days indeed.
