February 3, 2025 / 3 Comments

Weird Decisions and Publishing Math

A few folks on Bluesky recently asked about -14- and why it’s not available in paperback. As I’ve said once or thrice before, it’s a whole weird confluence of things all piling up on this one book, and it’s not easy to explain in a handful of social media posts. Especially when you know somebody’ll jump in halfway through to say “Well, have you considered trying…”

So I figured, what the heck. Bonus blog post.

First, before you read any further here, please go read this post about book publishing. Also, while I’m thinking about it, go read through the FAQ, too. Punishment will me meted out if you ask a question/ make a statement regarding any of this that’s already been covered.

So, first off, let’s have a general talk about numbers.

Whenever a publisher considers a book, one of the main questions they ask is “how many copies of this do we think we can sell?” That’s not shocking, right? They actually have teams that sit down and try to figure this out based off the book itself, but also the author, past performance (if any), market trends, and so on. This is also one of the numbers they use when calculating advances. They’re only expecting XXX sales total, so they’ll offer an advance of X that makes sure they at least break even.

This all makes sense, yes?

Now, these numbers also matter when a publisher decides to pick up a book that’s been previously published—either by another traditional press or self-published. If I tell them my book’s only sold eleven copies in the past year… well, I’m not exactly making a great case for them to re-publish it. Why would they pick up a book that doesn’t sell?

But by the same token, they also don’t want a book that’s sold too many copies. Y’see, Timmy, if all the research numbers say my book’s going to sell 50,000 copies, but I tell them it’s already sold 45,000… well, hang on. How many should they really expect to sell now? We’re pretty much saying 90% of the potential audience already has the book. Sure, there’s wiggle room in there, but… it kind of sounds like this book’s sold all the copies it’s going to sell, yes?

Hopefully this also makes sense. I’m not asking you to like it. But from a business point of view—and publishing is a business—you should see why someone would think this way, yes?

Okay, so, with all that in mind… let’s talk about -14-.

14- started out at a small, traditional press. I feel safe saying it was one of the most (if not the most) successful books they had. By a significant margin. I’m pretty sure it was a factor in the original owner selling off the whole press to a group who put some, politely, less-experienced people in charge.

After maybe two years of fairly questionable decisions on all fronts, the new owners decided to take it up a notch and stop publishing physical books. Y’see, they ran the math and realized physical books had the smallest profit margin, so only putting out ebooks/ audio books meant more profits. For them. Theoretically. If you know the publisher I’m talking about, you may recall this caused a bit of discourse for a few days.

I will take a moment to point out the publisher was 100% in their legal rights to do this. It was an incredibly stupid decision in so many ways (again, one in a long chain) and all of the many, many authors they’d signed over the past two years were very rightfully furious. But it was absolutely the publisher’s stupid decision to make.

And while -14- was one of the very few books they kept in physical print… they also stopped pushing it. Because, y’know, profit margins. They had a loose distribution deal with a larger house they let kind of wither away. People would try to order the book from their local bookstore or Amazon and be told there weren’t any copies available. When the contract ended and I got the rights back, the publisher told me they had almost 250 copies just sitting in their warehouse. No, seriously.

Okay, so I’ve got the rights back now! Super-easy to find another publisher who wants this book, right?

Well… remember that math?

Y’see, even though it’d been effectively out of print for almost two years at this point, with ebook and audio -14- was selling phenomenally well, even seven years after it’d been released. Like, I’m pretty sure 99.5% of the people reading this would be seriously jealous of the royalty checks -14- was still getting from Audible when their contract ran out a few years ago. And your heads would explode if I told you what they offered me to renew that contract for another ten years.

But other publishers looked at that and said… oh. So it’s already sold that many copies? Hmmmmm…

Hang on, my agent and I said. There’s still a huge market for the print book, though. I’m constantly getting requests from folks who want to own a physical copy of it.

At which point the publisher would usually ask how many physical copies it was selling under the old publisher, before their rights expired, and we’d have to say “Well… none. For a couple of years.”

And that’s where we were kind of stuck. Because, yeah, it makes absolutely no sense that a publisher would stop selling copies of their most successful book. None. So the real answer has to be that the book has run its course and doesn’t actually sell.

Despite all the sales it’s still racking up to this day.

Does this mean -14- is doomed to never be in print again? Maybe? It all comes down to something changing that math and pushing that number higher. If my profile radically increased for some reason or the book got notably more popular. Heck, if someone announced a Netflix series tomorrow there’d probably be publishers fighting over it.

But right at this moment, for the foreseeable future… we’re probably not going to see it.

Sorry.

3 replies on “Weird Decisions and Publishing Math”

The audiobook version is very good, and how I consume most books these days, as it lets me paint miniatures and enjoy books at the same time.
I encourage people to get it on audiobook if they can’t find a print copy and don’t want to read it on a tablet.

You’ve done very well in traditonal publishing and I’m not going to begrudge you but I wish you’d consider taking your rights to self-publishing for your oldest series because I’d love to see another Ex-Heroes.

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