#how to complain to publishers

[petermorwood]

Something else the editor mentioned - this may have changed now, our conversation was 20+ years ago - was that once a book got over a certain thickness (I'm pretty sure he said "thickness" not "page count"), its cover price shifted to the next bracket up.

This was OK for Stephen King, Tom Clancy etc., whose Thick Books would sell at that higher price anyway, but for less-guaranteed-sales authors, one way to keep their books in the lower price bracket was to use thinner paper.

There's a high quality thin paper, "Bible paper or "India paper", which is used for Bibles (surprise!) dictionaries and, memorably, the first deluxe single-volume "Lord of the Rings", which made it less than half as thick as the single-volume paperback.

That's not the kind of paper used for price-bracket control.

*****

Speaking of which, when DD mentioned "write the publisher a letter on paper", it's because (a) that's very unusual nowadays, and demonstrates a commitment to getting your views across in a more solid form than email.

Also (b) the reckoning used to be that for every letter received there were 50 people thinking the same who didn't send one, a reckoning figure which has - see (a) for why - probably more than doubled now.

Stay polite, and as DD say, more sorrowful than angry. "Unhappy about..." catches more wasps than "Bloody furious about..." no matter how satisfying the thought of squashing those wasps might be.

*****

Re. cover art: even best-selling writers often get hit with (TV Trope) "Covers Always Lie" - for instance, most of Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files" covers show Harry Dresden wearing a fedora. There are 17 novels, and apparently Harry has never worn a hat in any of them...

*****

@scotchfairy mentioned that filk song "There's a Bimbo on the Cover of My Book". The springboard which got the protagonists of Sharyn McCrumb's murder mystery "Bimbos of the Death Sun" to the SF Con where the action unfolds is a cover (and matching title) Just Like That.

As for the filk, its lyrics are under the cut, sung - preferably with friends so you can do harmony on the last line of each verse - to the tune of "She'll be Coming Round the Mountain".

There’s a bimbo on the cover of my book There’s a bimbo on the cover of my book She is blonde and she is sexy She is nowhere in the text, she Is the bimbo on the cover of my book

There’s black leather on the bimbo on my book There’s black leather on the bimbo on my book While I’m sure she’s lots of fun My heroine’s a nun Who wears black leather on the cover of my book

There’s a white male on the cover of my book There’s a white male on the cover of my book Though the heroine is black With art that cuts no slack So there’s a white male on the cover of my book

There’s a dragon on the cover of my book There’s a dragon on the cover of my book He is long and green and scaly But he’s nowhere in the tale, he Is the dragon on the cover of my book

There’s a rocket on the cover of my book There’s a rocket on the cover of my book It’s a phallic and a stout one Though the story is without one There’s a rocket on the cover of my book

There’s a castle on the cover of my book There’s a castle on the cover of my book Every knight is fit for battle But the action’s in Seattle There’s a castle on the cover of my book

There’s a monster on the cover of my book There’s a monster on the cover of my book He is mean and he is hairy Though the stories aren’t that scary There’s a monster on the cover of my book

There are death rays on the cover of my book There are death rays on the cover of my book It’s a philosophical story But the cover must be gory There are death rays on the cover of my book

There are spaceships on the cover of my book There are spaceships on the cover of my book The connection’s rather iffy But if the story’s “sci-fi” * There’ll be spaceships on the cover of my book

(* Pronounced "skiffy" for rhyme and extra scorn.)

There’s a blurb on the backside of the book There’s a blurb on the backside of the book There’s one story on the cover Inside the book’s another There’s a blurb on the backside of the book

My name is on the cover of my book My name is on the cover of my book Although I hate to tell it The publisher misspelled it But my name is on the cover of my book

They reviewed my book in Locus magazine. They reviewed my book in Locus magazine. The way Mark Kelly synopsized it, I barely recognized it, But they reviewed my book in Locus magazine.

Well, my book won the Nebula award. Yes, my book won the Nebula award. Still it ended in remainders, Ripped and torn by perfect strangers, But my book won the Nebula award.

So put that bimbo on the cover of my book. Put a bimbo on the cover of my book. I don’t care what gets drawn If you’ll just leave the cover on. (DON’T REMAINDER ME!) So put that bimbo, dragon, castle, rocket, Vampire, elf, or magic locket- Please put a bimbo on the cover of my book!

I just received a copy of a book I've been very much looking forward to by a favorite author, but the quality of the book itself is... not great. Cheap paper, weak binding, even a weird illustration of the main character on the cover that I'm having trouble believing the author approved. Obviously, I don't want to leave a bad review on Amazon or GoodReads or anywhere, as I'm 100% certain the content is as excellent as her other work. But how can I best let the publisher (Baen) know I'm disappointed without threatening to never buy her books again? Because, well, if this is the only option, I'm gonna keep buying them even in my disappointment.

Well, the first thing I thought when I read this was "Wow, I'm really glad I don't have anything in print from Baen at the moment except a couple of anthologized short stories." :)

As for the rest of it, let's take it point by point.

Adding a cut here, because this will run a bit long. Caution: contains auctorial bitching and moaning, painful illustrations of cases in point, and brief advice on how to complain most effectively. (Also links to paintings of cats.)

Cheap paper: This has been an accurate complaint since well before COVID—and it's often been worse since, with supply chain issues also being involved. That said: one way publishers routinely save money on printing books, especially the bigger ones, is by going for thinner/cheaper paper. I remember one of our UK editors going on at great length and with huge annoyance—during one of those late-night convention-bar bitch sessions—over how the only way they could get some really good books published (because Upstairs insisted on reducing the per-copy production costs) was by reducing the paper quality to the point where you could nearly read through it. Sacrificing decent text size(s) also became part of this. Nobody in editorial was happy about the result: but there wasn't much they could do.

Bad bindings: Similar problem. Sewn bindings used to be a thing in paperbacks... but not any more: not for a good while, now. These days, it's all glue. Even hardcovers are showing up glued rather than sewn. Don't get me started. :/ (This is why I so treasure some of the oldest paperbacks I've acquired, which are actually sewn.)

Crap covers: I've had my share of these—though my share of some really good ones, too. And one of the endless frustrations of traditional publishing is that the writer routinely has little or even no influence over what the cover will look like... let alone how much will be spent on it, or (an often-related issue) how good the execution will be.

There are of course exceptions. If you're working at the, well, @neil-gaiman level or similar in publishing, a lot more attention is going to be paid to your thoughts. You may even be able to get "cover veto" written into your contracts, so that if you disapprove, changes will get made. But without actual contractual stipulations, the writer has zero legal recourse or way to withhold approval. (And I bet even Neil has some horror stories.)

The normal workflow looks like this. After a book's purchased, its editor and the art director discuss what it's about and what the cover should look like. The art director then hires an artist and tells them what to do. After that, the artist executes their vision and gets paid. It is incredibly rare for a writer to have any significant input into this process. And as to whether or not they approve of the final result, well... the publisher mostly just shrugs and goes back to eyeing the bottom line, muttering "Who told them they get a vote?"

Now, I've been seriously lucky to occasionally be an exception in this regard. In particular, my editors at Harcourt (when Jane Yolen and Michael Stearns were editing Harcourt's Magic Carpet YA imprint) would ask me what I thought would be a good idea for the next Young Wizards cover, and I'd think about it a bit and send them back a paragraph or so about some core scene. They'd then talk to their art director, and after that send their notes and mine to Cliff Nielsen (who started doing the covers for the hardcover and mass-market paperback editions of the series in the mid-90s) or to Greg Swearingen (who was the artist on the digest-format editions). And the results, by and large, were pretty good. ...I also think affectionately of the UK artist Mick Posen, who insisted on seeing pictures of our cats before painting the covers for the Hodder editions of The Book of Night with Moon and On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service (the UK title for To Visit The Queen).

But this kind of treatment is a courtesy—not even vaguely suggested in the books' contracts, and very much the exception to the rule. And for every writer who's midlist, there are times when the luck runs out. For example: one time I wrote a book that was an AU-Earth-near-future fantasy police procedural, thematically pretty dark—dealing with issues of abuse of megacorporate power, institutionalized bigotry, and (explicitly) attempted genocide. And the cover, done by an artist who's a good friend and some of whose fabulous art hangs in our house, came out looking like this. It was... let's just say "not ideally representative."

So I was glad, when my local workflow allowed it, to recover the current, revised version of the book with something at least a little more apropos. But the original cover's not the artist's fault. He did what the art director told him... as a cover artist must do to get paid, and (ideally) to get hired again. At present, that's how the system works.

...So. You've got a badly-built and -presented book on your hands. How best to make your feelings known in some way that might make a difference down the line? (As you make it plain that you'll keep buying this author's books this way if you must.)

First of all: when (as part of my psych nursing training) we were taught how to complain most effectively, we were told that the first and most basic rule of the art is this:

Only Complain To Someone Who Can Actually Do Something About Your Problem

So I salute your desire not to waste your time taking the issue to the reviews on Amazon, or the pages of Goodreads... because they can't do anything. The odds that anyone from production at Baen is reading the comments there strike me as... well, not infinitesimally small, not being hit-by-a-meteorite-while-in-the-shopping-center-parking-lot small... but really low.

So: write to corporate.

In your place I would go online and rummage around a bit to find out who's on record as the publisher at Baen. I would then write them a letter on paper. And I would lay out the problem pretty much as you laid it out up at the top.

The tone I think I'd choose would be the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger approach. I'd say, "I write to comment about your recently published book by [X Writer], whose work I love. I have to say, though, that I don't think the cover on [X Book] is terribly representative of the quality of the prose inside. And also, the construction and production quality of the book itself was a disappointment to me because [here spell out why].

"I'd really like to see [X. Writer's] books succeed with you, and I'd like to buy more of them without wondering whether I was going to be disappointed again. But if this is typical of how they're being produced, I'd also be concerned that the state of these books is setting up a situation in which the author's sales will be damaged, and you would stop publishing them... which would really be a shame. Whereas on the other hand, better production quality could keep previous purchasers coming back and buying, not only more books by this author, but books by others whom you publish."

This phrasing, as you'll have seen, walks a bit wide around the issue of your further purchases, while directing attention toward the bottom line... which will routinely be what the publisher's looking at from day to day. And—being, one has to hope, in possession of the wider picture as regards what's going on with their production costs—maybe they can actually do something about it.

Anyway, nothing ventured, nothing gained, yeah? It's worth a try. All you can do is hope for the best.

And finally: please know that I admire your commitment to the author: whoever she is, she's lucky to have you. It's a terrific thing to have readers who'll willing to spend the time to hunt you down, and who're willing not to judge a book by its cover. :)

[kingroan]

not to ramble about iwtv but i think a lot of people who balk at the unsavory parts of gothic fiction are people who have either 1) never truly had to face an onslaught of the macabre in their own life 2) have not actually sat with the discomfort of the darker parts of existence or simply not learned or had to learn how to process truly twisted emotions within themselves. and i bring this up in relation to iwtv because i see a lot of people pointing out 'problematic' parts of the book or bemoaning which ships are more or less toxic. and it's like it's a cow farm there's gonna be cows on the cow farm.

yeah anne rice wrote some weird shit and some of it is definitely unnecessary, most of those elements were corrected in the show. but a lot of it is just gothic fiction. you don't get to have sexy vampires, romanticism and tortured yearning without the inappropriate attachments, the true face of grief and the blurred lines between violence and eroticism which has evoked great interest in humans for centuries.

[moosh2727]

IDW mistakes that make me die inside

This only some that came to mind bc I can't be bothered

ah yes jave the hollow, honestly what the heck is this crap

hmmmmm somethings wrong with this image but i can't put my hand on it...

they did jet so dirty in his first appearance (i fixed it with a mouse to show all the things wrong on the second page)

Reblog annoying IDW mistakes you've seen!

[butchriptide]

genuinely really frustrating that people will like. choose to accept the age mistake made in assassin as canon for deathbringer when it actively contradicts older material. like. sorry idk if this is me being unfair here but genuinely like. why would you think it's intentional when deathbringer is described in main series as maybe a year or two older than glory at most, and can canonically not be any older than 9 due to stated timeline facts in the main series.

like. I get not liking glorybringer, i really do. no ship is for everyone. hell, even if assassin specifically makes you feel weird about it, so be it, to each their own. i can undertsnad that too. and yes, the glorybringer fans who think the age gap are canon are also in the wrong. they're being really gross, i don't think it's necessary to disclaim that, that feels given, but like... that only comes to my point still of like, i really don't understand taking a spin-off as canon over the main series. i don't really understand prioritizing later content as canon as opposed to the main work over spin-off as canon. why should a spin-off take jurisdiction just cuz it's newer? i feel like the older the canon is, the more likely it is the newer stuff will make mistakes. to me, in the case of a contradiction, the main series should be taken to? a spin-off is meant to supplement the main series, so shouldn't it only supplement canon that doesn't contradict?

like also, i get being frustrated it isn't fixed, but also. like. i obviously have not worked with a publisher before, but if I was writing for fucking scholastic books, no matter how well fucking beloved my series was, I don't know if I could risk being like "hey. can you pull my books from shelves and e-stores for me so that I can edit one line?" Like. I really don't think there's any reality in which I can make a corporation agree to that kind of thing, no matter what that one line may fuck up about my main story. like it's not even the only mistake she makes in the winglets. she calls deathbringer a rainwing in the flip book, but we're not hailing that as canon in retrospect, right? I don't know. I think it's unfair to presume that she's choosing not to fix it as opposed to it being an improbable to downright impossible thing to ask of a publisher. like yes tui is an incredibly successful author but i really don't know if we can presume she has that much actual sway on her publisher.

it's just really exhausting as a deathbringer enjoyer to feel like if I want to talk about and enjoy his character, and yes, that includes context given in the assassin winglet once you ignore the timeline error, i feel like I constantlyyy have to be saying "yes I think the timeline error is an error. no i don't think deathbringer is 13." like. every time i bring him up. i'm a riptide fan I'm used to it but also it's sooooo tiring to go into a character tag for a guy i like and be swamped with hatred for him and it's so much worse for deathbringer than riptide because in the deathbringer tag I have to deal with being actively accused of excusing gross shit for liking him instead of people just saying that my blorbo is boring.

[demisexualnathanvuornos]

Funny thing happened as I was checking Lucas Bryant's imdb page, as one does. Suddenly there was a new/old entry. Apparently he was in two episodes of a show in Australia in 2022.

He was in a show called Irreverent, an Australian one season show with Colin Donnell which is a remake/version of the sitcom Impastor with Michael Rosenbaum around 2016. I've watched one ep of that show (2x1) because an actor I like was supposed to be on it (she wasn't). Impastor was a straight up comedy with a Lutheran joke I still think about. So I thought I'd check this new imdb info out and the show. This time imdb was right.

So I checked Irreverent 1x4 which Lucas is credited for and sure enough he is right there from the start of the episode. It's a flashback where main character's shitty father (Lucas) almost let's him drown. Very different start than I expected based on Impastor. The rest of the show is an hour long comedy so the scene feels even weirder in context. Lucas is also briefly in 1x6. It's a very different role than the ones he usually does. The show aired on Peacock but can be found elsewhere.

Again, as someone who checks Lucas' imdb page quite regularly, it's weird I haven't heard anything about this in the year and a half since this would have aired in Australia/USA. It's odd that he did promo work for Five More Minutes Moments Like These without mentioning that he did some acting in Australia. He must not update his imdb much.

[roombagreyjoy]

*said with increasing distress, eyes blodshot and an empty mug in hand* you guys remember writing right????? you guys remember posting fic and publishing things and talking to editors about potential projects right???? you guys remember being creative in your creative jobs and not just rereading old work and having a panic attack over the time wasted over curating hyperspecific character playlists that you get mad about five minutes later right????? i'm not insane right????? creative block is normal even if it lasts for months right???? i haven't written a fic in YEARS but it's ok i'm ok i have to finish TWO original pieces for next week that I haven't even started but it'll probably be fineeeee I'm totally not being a complete and raving lunatic about it it's probably gonna be okay <3 yay <3

[dexterno-artz]

Sigh

what could have been

I should probably put the unlisted video link here so I don't keep torturing myself and reminding myself what could have been from having the video in my watch later

RIP budget - hopefully one day we'll get the canon continuation again://

[lionloyal]

I just read the first volume of skip & loafer in the german translation and they misgender nao 😭

[meadow-mellow]

Man. I'm too old for ship fighting/discourse. I ain't 16 anymore, dunno how these ppl manage to remain so stagnated mentally cause you'd expect they'd outgrow this kinda thing.

[perenlop]

finished “yellowface”. goddamn that was a ride… highly highly recommend if you like villain protagonists

[sanjisboyfie]

someone take my brain and write the fanfiction in my head for me so i can enjoy it from an outsider perspective

[thedevotionaltour]

couldnt imagine being a black widow fan in the 70s and reading her adventures with daredevil bc i would have killed matt where he stood for behaving the way he did with her

[damiemontclair]

Small publisher who's actually trying and has to fund their publication through crowdfunding: here's some freebies that will be included

Some people for no reason: I don't want to pay for your freebies, just make it cheaper.

[unganseylike]

bad news: i have to work like every weekend this month

good news: i’ll be a coauthor on a paper and thus have a publication before i submit grad school applications

mediocre news: it wont be my project’s paper

[passthroughtime]

i’m starting to suspect that i just fucking suck 🤔 unsure yet though, but there are lots of signs already pointing to this... gotta mean something 🧐

[im-still-watching-anime]

reading my drafts like damn this is so good i should really finish it and post it as i am actively closing the window