How to Prepare for The Unthinkable
(Losing Your Publisher)
If you are one of the few authors who has been published by anyone other than yourself, you understand what a rare gem you have in your publisher. They give you credibility. They get your work on the market to a broad audience. And let’s be honest, they validate your skills as a writer. This is why the thought that you could be so lucky and skilled as to obtain a contract and lose it is almost unthinkable. Tragic. You’re shuffled back to the endless rounds of querying dues all authors must pay.
Hello, I’m KR Paul, author of the Pantheon series, and I had my publication contract terminated after only publishing two of my three required books.
Authors have their contracts terminated for a variety of reasons: low sales, the imprint closes, the author failing to meet the contract criteria (e.g. – late delivery), or *gasp* just plain bad author behavior. (Yeah, we’ve seen them all over TikTok.) Authors can also seek to terminate bad contracts for a variety of reasons as well, usually stemming from mismanagement on the publisher’s part. This is all to say that contracts end and you should be prepared for it.
(And for those wondering “Kay, why did your contract get terminated?” I can say it was not due to any fault of either mine or my publisher’s. We parted as friends and still provide each other with support on our current projects.)
This article will cover a few things I, as a recently released author, wish I had known before the termination of my contract and some thoughts for how to move forward from here whether you choose to seek other publishers or self-publish.
Life Goes On
First, I’m really sorry this is happening to you. Whether you were released or you sought to leave your contract, it’s a tough spot to be in. I queried so many times and even gave up the idea that I would ever be published before finally inking a contract. The idea of going back into the churn of querying and being rejected feels daunting.
But life does go on and there are always options. There are other publishers and as I’ve spent the last six months working through my options, I realized how many small, niche publishers exist. Sure, the ones I’ve been successful with so far are providing opportunities in anthologies but it is reassuring to know that each successful opportunity gives another chance to show larger publishers that I am a commercial success and that including me in their lineup of novelists would be beneficial. I’ve also taken steps towards self-publishing as well. Authors don’t have to pick self-publishing or traditional publishing, it’s absolutely possible to do both.
Gather Your Goods
The next thing I recommend after having a big swig of your beverage of choice is to read your contract. The whole contract. Focus on the termination and rights sections. First, is this termination allowed or can you fight them on it? (Honestly, if I’m told they don’t want me then so be it, I’m walking. But that’s me, you fight if you want.) Second, what rights do you own if the contract is terminated? What reverts to you? (This is also something I caution those who are looking to publish short stories examine closely.) Do you get all rights to your story? Is there a temporal aspect? (Short stories are often exclusive for a stated period at which point the author is free to republish as desired.) Make very, very sure that you own your work free and clear with no holdbacks before you attempt to move forward. You will also need a signed letter from your publisher clearly stating what rights revert to you, the author, and I highly recommend having it spelled out by title with the ISBNs.
Once you know the status of your rights, I recommend reaching out to ensure you know how any remaining or residual royalties will pay out. If you did not sell out your advance, ensure you don’t have to pay back anything to get your rights returned.
The last step here is to gather up all the finalized media you have available. The most up to date edit of the Word Document, the final cover art (if you will own that copyright), and any other marketing media you may own. You will want everything together so that either a new publisher can take a final product or you are ready to slap the work into KDP as soon as you’re ready to self-publish.
From here, my article will split into two distinct tracks: traditional publishing and self-publishing. As I said earlier on, you can absolutely do both, but I’m keeping them as separate sections for readability.
Traditional Publishing
For the purpose of this article, take “traditional publishing” to mean any form of publication where someone else is publishing your work, whether that is in physical form or e-books. Basically, anything that isn’t self-publishing.
There are a few areas of publishing that overlap whether you use a traditional publisher or self-publish, but here is my short list of things I recommend having prepared if you are moving from one publisher to another:
- Prepare query letters: Develop a standard query letter that can be modified to meet each publisher’s query guidelines. It saves a little time in the process later
- Be ready to show value: Before your contract is complete and you no longer have access to your sales data, grab screenshots or retain copies of your sales. I also suggest getting screen captures of your Amazon or GoodReads ratings for each work. I’m sorry to say that if your work isn’t well rated, you will have an uphill battle trying to be republished.
- Make a list of potential publishers: I would say this is a useful tip whether you are preparing for a departure or not. Even if you have a great contract with no intention of leaving, if no clauses are preventing you from publishing elsewhere, it’s always great to know what opportunities exist for works outside your main fare.
- Query: Throw your queries into the void. Be prepared for rejection. A lot of rejection. But be prepared for success too!
- Rights reversion memo: As I stated in the first section you MUST be able to prove you are allowed to sell your work. If you cannot prove you own the copyright, no one will take it. (Or certainly, no one reputable.)
- Get ready for marketing: This should be completed already but just in case your only social media presence is through your publisher you need to lock down your social media presence now.
Self-Publishing
Congratulations on picking the hardest option! Just kidding, marketing yourself to publishers and facing rejection is equally rough. The self-publishing route arguably has more steps because you will want to do a lot of administrative business actions before self-publishing. While these steps aren’t 100% necessary, I highly recommend you do them as several will grant you additional legitimacy when selling your own works.
- Start saving now: self-publishing is inherently expensive as the entire financial burden falls on the author. Where your publisher can be on the hook for cover art, editing, and marketing, the self-published author will pay for this all out of their own pockets. The good side, however, is that all profits are yours! At the end of this section, I’ll give a breakdown of my costs so far and what I felt was a need versus a want.
- Limited Liability Corporation (LLC): An LLC allows you to operate as a business, even if you don’t have a brick-and-mortar storefront. This is your point of access to business checking and credit card accounts. It will also mean your business can apply for loans and grants that you, an individual, may not be able to access. I also used mine as a layer of protection from nosey followers. My LLC is registered to a Post Office box which keeps me from having my home address publicly available. Finally, I used my LLC name as my “imprint name” when registering my ISBNs.
- PO Box: Get a small one, ignore the first two pieces of scam mail that say your business has to put up big expensive posters. Check it when you think there is mail inbound and otherwise ignore it
- Cool name: All businesses need a name. Pick one that is cool, interesting, and unique. Please, please, please Google your names first to make sure you would be the top hit for that name. Don’t pick the LLC equivalent of “John Smith”! Also, check social media to ensure you would be unique on most social media platforms. Nothing sucks more than finding out there are seven other “Athena Strategies LLC” in the USA and you’ll never get that Instagram handle!
- Lock down the name: email addresses, website domains, social media, etc. Get the name before you register the LLC so no one snipes it out from under you!
- Logo: once you have the LLC filed and approved, get a logo that relates to your new business.
- ISBNs: Your work will likely have had an ISBN associated with its first publishing. Unfortunately, you are going to want to get new ISBNs to help readers differentiate your work from the one your publisher printed. Even more unfortunately, you need one per format (paperback, hardcover, or e-book) and they aren’t cheap. One ISBN on Bowker (the US source for ISBNs) is currently $125 each. So if you, like me, need four (two novels with two formats each) you can either buy four for $500 or bite the bullet, accept you publish more and buy the ten-pack for $295.
- Who doesn’t need ISBNs: if you intend to publish exclusively on Amazon through KDP, they will supply you with free ISBNs. No need to sink hundreds of dollars into an ISBN you can get for free
- Who needs ISBNs: if you intend to publish anywhere other than Amazon, you will need an ISBN for your work. Example: If you want to sell books on consignment at our local bookstore and want them printed through IngramSpark then you need that ISBN.
- Rights Reversion Memo: This is quite possibly the most important part of the process. You must, MUST be able to show that you own your copyright and have the right to republish your works. If you do not have the right reversion memo available you will wait nearly two weeks if not more. It will be 24 to 72 hours until KDP checks your work and gets back to you (assuming you don’t have minor cover and content issues to correct). KDP will, in the course of their checks, realize our works have previously been published and ask you to prove that you, in fact, have the legal right to publish your works. It is the true double-edged sword: I am glad they do their due diligence to check that no one steals my original works and uses them, but it is highly inconvenient to have to dance back and forth with KDP, my publisher, and then the waiting game with my inbox.
- Timing: Ideally you want all of your parts and pieces input and the book to be “In Review” 24 to 72 hours before your publisher takes down their version of the book. I had planned to have these up on New Year’s Eve knowing that my publisher would have their version down on New Year’s Day (yes a planned two day gap). I did not factor in the timeline for the rights reversion memo which led to a week long wait for the paperback version of Pantheon and Pantheon 2: Areas & Athena to be live on Amazon and almost two weeks for them to appear on Kindle Unlimited and as purchasable e-books. (That one was on me, I missed that there were two separate emails requesting a rights reversion memo… not one for each book, but one for each format, but looping in each book… yeah, I don’t get it either.)
- Media: As with those following the traditional publishing track, you need to be prepared for marketing. Fortunately, as your book has been previously published, you should have some social media presence and marketing materials. I highly recommend that if you have altered any of your cover art, create new media for publishing day. Additionally, if you have a mailing list, let them know the new editions are coming! And if you don’t have a mailing list you need one ASAP.
The Self Publishing Cost Breakdown
Green = Admin
Blue = Cost specific to my author expenses
Yes. Starting a business is expensive. You can see I broke down my expenses into three categories.
Necessary to conduct business: the Post Office box, LLC filing fees, the lowest tier of paid website on WordPress, and the four pack of ISBNs. I suppose one could argue that the ISBNs aren’t “necessary” for business but since I intend to sell the books at local bookstores, I deemed them a “need” not a “want.”
Administrative: Canva and the Fivver charges are administrative costs. Canva is a paid subscription which allows me to create my own marketing images, saving me having to either make shitty ones in PowerPoint (it was hella funny though) or paying a sketchy “digital marketing expert” to make them. The Fivver logo was so I could create branded merchandise for which I owned the copyright.
Author expenses: This category is a blurred line between author and publisher costs. This covers convention applications, my author website, and merchandise to sell at conventions. Since I didn’t have much Author KR Paul merchandise to start, it all got lumped in the same account. Now that KRP Publishing is my main publisher, it will be clear finances in 2024.
Moving Forward
Losing your publisher part of the way through a publishing contract is heartbreaking. The knowledge that you have to either return to groveling for the notice of a traditional publisher, forging forward under your own steam (and cash flow), or walking away and letting your stories die. Or a combination of the first two, as I decided. I have empathy for you. I have sympathy for you. But I do have hope for you and the few tips or ideas listed above.
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Want to read more works by Author KR Paul? You can find my first novel here and its sequel here.
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Just looking for wild stories of cave diving, ultramarathons, blacksmithing, or powerlifting. Yeah, I’ve got those too!
KR Paul’s article is a powerful wake-up call for authors navigating the unpredictable world of publishing. Her advice on preparing for setbacks especially the loss of a publishing contract is both practical and empowering. A must-read for anyone serious about building a resilient writing career!