Are traditional publishers honest?

This may seem like an odd and unexpected question, but it is one that must be answered. Do you think that traditional publishers are honest with their writers? Can traditional publishers be relied upon to pay their authors what they are due? I would like you to consider the question and answer it, for yourself, before reading on.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch has written an astonishing blog post, that shook up my outlook on the matter. The link is here: http://kriswrites.com/2011/04/20/the-business-rusch-royalty-statements-update/

Kristine writes of her own experience with royalty statements from a traditional publisher. She discovered through comparing the sales of her personally published ebooks, and those published by her traditional Big 6 publisher that her publisher was UNDERDECLARING her sales by at least a factor of 10. Basically, her publisher was not paying her over 90% of the royalties due on her ebooks. Curious and alarmed, she began to contact other writers and told them of her experience. They, too, on checking, discovered the very same thing. Shockingly, many of these authors had the SAME number of sales declared on their ebooks by their publishers. This is, actually, statistically impossible, essentially.

Further checks by authors have also uncovered underreporting of print book sales too. Book sales figures from Bookscan are greater for many authors of the Big 6, than the figures their publishers are declaring to them. This, again, is impossible, since Bookscan only monitors a fraction of the book market (50 to 70%), so, of course, the publishers’ figures should be higher than the Bookscan ones.

Now, Kristine Kathryn Rusch is very kind. She proposes that this may just be an innocent mistake, a product of archaic accounting systems. In so doing, she is being cautious with regards to possible lawsuits. My own view is not so forgiving. To my mind, it does look like a consistent tendency to deprive the author of earnings, by some of the Big 6 publishers.

For me, this revelation is decisive. There seems to be no point in seeking a traditional publishing deal when such a deal is likely to be with a publisher that would, for whatever reasons, not pay me what I am due, in royalties. I don’t have to state what is really going on here, but the fact that it is means that only a foolish author would seek a traditional publishing deal, anymore. From the behaviour of traditional publishers, in this regard, it is clear that no author should ever expect to see any royalties over and above their advance. So, when being offered a deal by a traditional publisher: think of it this way: the ONLY money you will probably see, will be the advance – for the figures the publisher will declare to you, for sales, may be so low, that you never “earn out” that advance – at least, ostensibly, anyway.

I had begun to look for a traditional publishing deal, for one of my books. I shall now cease to do so, anymore. There is simply no attraction to traditional publishing anymore. Such publishing involves the loss of control over your work, it involves giving up, as much as 94% of all the earnings on the book, even if you are actually paid. Furthermore, publishing for yourself can allow you to secure 30 to 70% of the revenues from Amazon, for ebooks. Why would anyone give up to 70% of revenues, for not being paid almost all of what one is due?

Traditional publishing has lost my trust. Without trust, I don’t have the confidence to place any of my books, with any of them. Yet that does not mean I should go unpublished. There are many tools now for the independent publisher (or “Indie”). As of yesterday, I decided that that was the route I would take. Thus, I hope to be able to begin to bring you my books, as an Indie publisher, in the coming year or so.

I have quite a bit of work to do, to get my books out in the world – but I am confident of this: it will be worth it, just not to face fictional royalty statements from a traditional publisher.

Of course, some might point out that the ebook retailers like Amazon, could also under declare sales to authors – but the thing is, I don’t think they would do that. Amazon is going to win the publishing war, of Indie vs Traditional publishing and all it has to do, to do that, is to be fair and honest with authors. I believe they will do just that. They have got too much to lose otherwise.

I do hope that some of you will be curious enough to buy my books, when I release them. If you do, please take the time to write a review, on Amazon – or a review on your blog. I have an introductory book based on my blog, up there already: “The Boy Who Knew Too Much: A Child Prodigy”. Perhaps you might like to post a review, if you enjoy my blog. Thanks.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks. You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

The effect of passion.

The other day, my wife and I were talking about Art and artists. We have recently been visiting galleries in Kuala Lumpur and it is a pleasant surprise to us, to have learnt that there are many private galleries in this capital city. Indeed, some areas like Solaris Dutamas, look set to become art hubs, with a wide variety of Art offerings.

In the course of this conversation, she expressed her own personal understanding of the motivation which drives artists: "Without passion there would be no beauty.", she observed. For Syahidah, an artist without emotion, is an impossibility. She sees artists as being driven by their feelings to create. Of course, in seeing artists this way, she is most probably speaking of her own motivations to create Art. For Syahidah, it is passion for life, for Art, for feeling, for people, for things, for achievement, that spurs artists to create: the concrete objects that result are solidifications of human feelings. For her, all man-made beauty, begins in the Heart.

I find her outlook interesting as a counterpoint to the scientific currents running through the family. For Ainan, for instance, beauty emerges from THOUGHT. For him, a certain type of thought is inherently beautiful. In the past, he has expressed what seem to be aesthetic reactions to thoughts and ideas. How funny, therefore, to see this contrast to Syahidah's outlook on beauty.

However, that is not to say that Ainan does not appreciate Art: he does - it is just that I think his way of doing so, is different in key ways to his mother's. He is looking for other things and seeing Art in a different way from her - though perhaps some of Syahidah's outlook has informed his reactions to scientific beauty.

Syahidah sees beauty as a product of feeling. Ainan sees beauty as a product of thought. I rather stand between them, and see both types of beauty in the world, in art and in literature.

Syahidah's remark may have broader applicability than she might have noted. It may be that no creativity, whether it be in the realm of beauty, or not, might be possible without passion of a kind. Perhaps, therefore, the whole human world owes itself to that feeling. It is a pity, then, that so many people seem to lack it.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks. You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Does Ainan Cawley exist?

This might seem like a strange question for the father of said child to ask…but it wasn’t me who asked it. An Internet surfer arrived on my blog a couple of weeks ago, using the search terms: “Does Ainan Cawley exist?”. Amusingly, for me at least, they only read one page. I think the existence of this blog, alone, was enough to answer their question.

Now, it would be interesting to be able to discuss where this person was from – but their visit record notes their country of origin as “unknown” and their continent as “unknown”. This sometimes happens, though it is more usual for complete details to be available. So, I can’t make any anthropological observations, of any kind, in this regard. Yet, I can say this: that someone would be led to wonder whether Ainan Cawley exists, does lead me to think they have a very limited understanding of the possibilities inherent in humans.

“Humanity” is a very broad category, in some ways. There are those completely incapable of speech, or coordinated movement, of intelligence more rudimentary than some other animals, that we would still call human. Then there are those whose capabilities so far exceed the norm, that some people, like my unknown surfer, are led to question whether they are merely legendary.

In most parts of the world, these days, the expectations and requirements of children at particular ages, are standardized. Education has become codified and “set in stone”. We come to know what to expect of children of different ages. Differences between children, in such a regime, can end up being hidden, because nothing new is demanded of children capable of delivering more: they are all required to do the same and so, in some ways, end up looking the same. In such a world, it is easy to overlook the huge differences that exist between children, in their innate abilities. Then again there is the question of rarity. A child like Ainan has occurred but once, to my knowledge, in Singapore, a city of five million people. Now, very few Singaporeans, for instance, have had the chance to meet Ainan…perhaps only hundreds, to the low thousands, have personally encountered him, in the course of his life. Were it not, therefore, for the media, having covered him, in his native country, it would be unsurprising, if some of the millions of Singaporeans who had not met him, might be led to wonder if his story was true, or some kind of modern fable. In fact, funnily enough, in the early days, I did see rather paranoid comments on forums from Singaporeans positing the idea that Ainan was some kind of PAP propaganda campaign. It never occurred to them that the PAP would never choose a NON-Chinese boy for such a representative role, thus it is quite impossible that such should be the actual circumstance. However, it is interesting that these commenters thought it more likely that Ainan was a PAP fabrication, than that they thought him real. Nowadays, however, I see no such comments, so it seems Singaporeans have come to accept his reality.

The essential problem with children like Ainan is that they are so rare, in the human population, that the typical person will NEVER meet such a child, in their entire lifetimes. They will only hear of them second hand, as rumours, or press stories. They will never have any real, verifiable, personal contact with them. Instead, their experience will be defined by the more common varieties of “giftedness” that they meet. Everyone, for instance, we will meet many moderately gifted children, in their lifetimes (rarity 1 in 44). So, it is understandable if people’s view of what a gifted child is and can do, is formed by what they observe that moderately gifted children are and can do. Yet, the difference between the category of child that Ainan fits into, and a moderately gifted child, is much greater than the difference between a moderately gifted child and an average one. People, however, having no experience of this distinction, have no insight into just how different children like Ainan are from the typical “gifted” child that they have met.

My blog traffic is very informative as to how people view prodigious children and geniuses in general. For instance quite a common search to arrive on my blog is the question: “Did Leonardo da Vinci exist?”. It may startle you that people can frame this question, despite the plethora of physical and written evidence of his work and life, that still exists today. Yet, people question his reality, because they cannot personally conceive of anyone so much more gifted than a typical human being. The same kind of thinking is applied, by some, to Ainan – because they personally know of no child like him.

The fact that people can doubt the existence of the more gifted members of society and history does suggest that gifted people have much work to do in creating awareness of their nature and capabilities. This skepticism as to the reality of gifted people is a problem – for those who doubt the existence and capacities of such people, can lead to frustrations for the gifted people, in gaining access to the resources they need to do what they can do, given the chance. Quite simply: if gatekeepers don’t believe in the existence of such children, why on Earth would they open the doors to them? The parents of such children can end up being ignored or dismissed, without any proper checking having been done, as to the truth of their statements, being done.

This is a very big problem in some countries as far as I can observe. In Japan, for instance, there is a phrase used to describe parents who think highly of their children and who describe them in terms reserved for the gifted. I have actually seen this phrase used to describe the parents of a prodigy, who had been met with doubt by the Japanese. Guess what this phrase translates as? Well, it essentially says: “Stupid parents”. There appears to be a resistance there, to believing that such children can be. They prefer to think that there is something wrong with the parents. It is not hard to imagine the difficulties the parents of a prodigious child would encounter when faced with such attitudes.

There is a remedy to this reflexive disbelief that some people have when they hear tales of people whose gifts surpass those they are personally acquainted with: public discussion. The more people speak of such people, the more familiar people become with their capacities, the more comfortable people will become with them. The appearance of such people in the media, will gradually educate the masses as to their existence, and abilities. In time, they will come to be accepted – as happened to Ainan in Singapore. The doubters on forums, vanished after a few appearances in the media. Yet, I must say, it took a couple of years to reach that point: there was a lot of paranoia on the way, on the part of some forum commenters.

In a way, therefore, the fact that some people doubt the existence of Leonardo da Vinci, and Ainan Cawley (and no doubt, others too, of a similar ilk), is a failure of communication. The more gifted have not done a good enough job of communicating to the wider public. In that sense, this blog is serving a useful purpose, in that the more I write, the more people become acquainted with what I have observed of Ainan. This is a help to all prodigious children, everywhere, in that they are less likely to encounter the sheer disbelief that they could ever be. Oh. That reminds me. More than once I have received searches for the terms: “Are child prodigies real?” and “Are child prodigies just a myth?”. It is clear that there are people out there, who not only disbelieve in the existence of particular prodigies or geniuses, but who disbelieve in the entire concept of child prodigies. For them, no such children could ever be.

Better understanding of prodigies, can only make their lives easier and make their access to educational and other opportunities less problematic. Thus, I shall continue to write what I see and understand, in the hope that it leads others to understand, too.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks. You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)