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I haven't talked much about this openly (or even semi-openly on this blog), although I did mention a few months ago that I was seriously thinking of getting a rights reversion for my first book from my publisher.
So...my experience with my first published novel really sucked.
It was the book of my heart; it was the story about mental illness and trauma that I really needed to write at the time, with all the tropes that I loved. And it bombed hard in pretty much every single way.
How did my publication experience suck, you ask? In these ways:
- My experience with the publisher wasn't great. After a long delay in release, I was asked to do line edits/copy edits in 2 weeks, which completely stressed me out (and a lot of the copy edits were "get rid of prepositions" which was.........weird...........). I wasn't satisfied with the book cover (by which I mean, I really wanted a book cover that accurately reflected the content and mood of the book), either, and found the process of communicating about the book cover combative from my publisher's side.
- I don't think I had ARCs/preorder links until right before release, so I couldn't do any pre-release marketing. I did try to reach out to review blogs to offer review copies, and...no one wanted to review my book.
- My publisher didn't do any marketing. I know authors always complain about this, but my publisher stopped doing blog tours, only tweeted once about my book, and did a "release blitz" thing that only one or two smaller blogs participated in.
- The book released to negative reviews and very low sales. (By "very low," I mean after 3 years, the book sold less than 100 copies.)
So...yeah. It might be obvious why I want the rights back - if the book isn't going to sell well because it's extremely niche or something, I might as well keep all of the profits myself.
I think other people might look at my experiences and conclude that I made a mistake. That I should have shelved the novel when I couldn't land an agent because I've effectively locked myself out of ever traditionally publishing it.
But the thing is...I don't really regret what I went through with this book. Here's why.
1. I can't handle shelving books. I'd rather do anything than shelve something.
Maybe it's the immigrant in me, but the idea that I'd completely wasted an entire year writing and revising that book would have devastated me beyond anything. I would have rather self-published the book than shelve it.
Also, when it came to the people around me who are not well versed in the publishing industry, they were impressed enough by the idea that any publisher picked up my book, even a tiny one, that they took me seriously as an author. (The stigma against self-publishing is real.)
2. In retrospect, I think this book falls into the category of "not suitable for traditional publishing," so even if I shelved it, I doubt I ever would have gotten traditional publishing interest in it in the future.
It's very influenced by fanfic tropes and narrative structures, and the best way to classify it is "SF romance," which is absolutely not a thing in traditional publishing. Although once in a while, a publisher like Tor (or Orbit, to a lesser extent) will publish a romance-heavy SFF book, SFF novels that incorporate romance beats still generally confuse publishers/general audiences, despite being wildly popular in fanfiction. It's also...very heavy on the mental illness and trauma themes.
Unless I ever became so famous that publishers would buy my laundry lists, I can't imagine traditional publishing ever being interested in this book.
3. I learned a lot from going through the publishing experience with a book, and my negative experiences with this book taught me how to deal with failure.
In hindsight, I'm very thankful for this part.
I learned that publishing is, for better or worse, heavily dependent on marketability. The fact that no one wanted to review or buy my book is something I'm pretty sure was caused by a failure of marketing, which I did experience at the querying stage. The hard truth I learned is that if you can't sell your book at the query stage, you are probably going to have issues later on, when you reach end readers.
I completely readjusted my expectations for publishing after going through what I went through with this book. I realized that I can't be in this for the money or accolades; I learned how to cope with reader reviews that call me "the worst writer ever" (yes, I have gotten reviews like this).
I learned that I can survive the book of my heart flopping. I never would have dreamed I could be that resilient, but I am.
And I never would have learned any of this if I'd shelved my first novel. While all the querying and sub rejections I've received since then still hurt, I suspect they would have hurt a lot more if I hadn't already experienced so much rejection and failure to begin with.
(Literally, when I queried for the second time, I sat down and asked myself, "What's the worst that can happen?" And I was overall much more chill about querying that time, because the idea of this book failing didn't scare me anymore.)
I think I'm more resilient as a writer than I was when I wrote this book, as well as more realistic about what it takes to survive the publishing industry and pursuing writing as a career.
And for that, I'm grateful.
So...my experience with my first published novel really sucked.
It was the book of my heart; it was the story about mental illness and trauma that I really needed to write at the time, with all the tropes that I loved. And it bombed hard in pretty much every single way.
How did my publication experience suck, you ask? In these ways:
- My experience with the publisher wasn't great. After a long delay in release, I was asked to do line edits/copy edits in 2 weeks, which completely stressed me out (and a lot of the copy edits were "get rid of prepositions" which was.........weird...........). I wasn't satisfied with the book cover (by which I mean, I really wanted a book cover that accurately reflected the content and mood of the book), either, and found the process of communicating about the book cover combative from my publisher's side.
- I don't think I had ARCs/preorder links until right before release, so I couldn't do any pre-release marketing. I did try to reach out to review blogs to offer review copies, and...no one wanted to review my book.
- My publisher didn't do any marketing. I know authors always complain about this, but my publisher stopped doing blog tours, only tweeted once about my book, and did a "release blitz" thing that only one or two smaller blogs participated in.
- The book released to negative reviews and very low sales. (By "very low," I mean after 3 years, the book sold less than 100 copies.)
So...yeah. It might be obvious why I want the rights back - if the book isn't going to sell well because it's extremely niche or something, I might as well keep all of the profits myself.
I think other people might look at my experiences and conclude that I made a mistake. That I should have shelved the novel when I couldn't land an agent because I've effectively locked myself out of ever traditionally publishing it.
But the thing is...I don't really regret what I went through with this book. Here's why.
1. I can't handle shelving books. I'd rather do anything than shelve something.
Maybe it's the immigrant in me, but the idea that I'd completely wasted an entire year writing and revising that book would have devastated me beyond anything. I would have rather self-published the book than shelve it.
Also, when it came to the people around me who are not well versed in the publishing industry, they were impressed enough by the idea that any publisher picked up my book, even a tiny one, that they took me seriously as an author. (The stigma against self-publishing is real.)
2. In retrospect, I think this book falls into the category of "not suitable for traditional publishing," so even if I shelved it, I doubt I ever would have gotten traditional publishing interest in it in the future.
It's very influenced by fanfic tropes and narrative structures, and the best way to classify it is "SF romance," which is absolutely not a thing in traditional publishing. Although once in a while, a publisher like Tor (or Orbit, to a lesser extent) will publish a romance-heavy SFF book, SFF novels that incorporate romance beats still generally confuse publishers/general audiences, despite being wildly popular in fanfiction. It's also...very heavy on the mental illness and trauma themes.
Unless I ever became so famous that publishers would buy my laundry lists, I can't imagine traditional publishing ever being interested in this book.
3. I learned a lot from going through the publishing experience with a book, and my negative experiences with this book taught me how to deal with failure.
In hindsight, I'm very thankful for this part.
I learned that publishing is, for better or worse, heavily dependent on marketability. The fact that no one wanted to review or buy my book is something I'm pretty sure was caused by a failure of marketing, which I did experience at the querying stage. The hard truth I learned is that if you can't sell your book at the query stage, you are probably going to have issues later on, when you reach end readers.
I completely readjusted my expectations for publishing after going through what I went through with this book. I realized that I can't be in this for the money or accolades; I learned how to cope with reader reviews that call me "the worst writer ever" (yes, I have gotten reviews like this).
I learned that I can survive the book of my heart flopping. I never would have dreamed I could be that resilient, but I am.
And I never would have learned any of this if I'd shelved my first novel. While all the querying and sub rejections I've received since then still hurt, I suspect they would have hurt a lot more if I hadn't already experienced so much rejection and failure to begin with.
(Literally, when I queried for the second time, I sat down and asked myself, "What's the worst that can happen?" And I was overall much more chill about querying that time, because the idea of this book failing didn't scare me anymore.)
I think I'm more resilient as a writer than I was when I wrote this book, as well as more realistic about what it takes to survive the publishing industry and pursuing writing as a career.
And for that, I'm grateful.
