A Thousand Li: The First Step Audiobook Contract Signed With Tantor! (Patreon)

Woot! Signed with Tantor.

I didn't want to talk about this till now because until the contract is signed and in hand, it's hard to say what will happen. There are still 'escape' clauses (like Travis not being signed) in the contract, but overall, this contract should be good to go.

So. I did the public post. Here's a little on the backend (within the constraints that I can't actually talk about the full details of the contract).

Things to realise on the business side :

- I'm making less per book with an audiobook publisher. 

- this is the 4th time Tantor has come knocking (2nd time seriously since the other 2 times were weird 'can we sign up System Apocalypse books 3 & 4' random e-mails).

- In the first and this time, the offers were VERY different. I have a much better deal than when they first offered it to me. Even when I tried to negotiate the first offer, there was no 'give'. 

- This offer by hearsay from what I've read on things like reddit, etc. isn't the top of the line (I heard / read someone getting a 6 digit advance). I didn't even try to negotiate a change in the advance since I was focused more on the final royalty payout.

- I signed mostly because I'm looking to see what happens with the marketing dollars / sales that Tantor supposedly pushes. The wide distribution option and the marketing push that I'm (hoping) will happen should drive more sales of Thousand Li (ebooks) in general and also, hopefully, more total audiobooks. I doubt I'll make up the loss in royalty, but I'm willing to be proven wrong.

- This is very much a brand exercise. I want / need to build up my 'brand' and going wide and using someone like Tantor and their marketing dollars makes sense. At least to me. 

- In the end, this is all an experiment. One of the biggest things I've learnt -test, test, test. Take nothing for granted (so long as the basic contracts/agreements make sense) and test.

Okay.

Back to writing / editing!