Here's a very infomative discussion I found on wordpress. For those of y'all just getting started in writing or publishing PLEASE don't give your money to any slickster that promises to make you a bestseller.
Writing and publishing is hard work whether you're traditional or Indie. There's a ton of talent out there; all you have to do is look (editors, cover artists etc). And while I'm at it here's my link:
Q&V Affordable Editing. We do everything except print your books; and we won't break your bank :). Use us or someone else you trust :).
So without futher adieu here's the article:
I was at the London Book Fair last week – and I’ll be blogging about that soon – when the news broke that David Mamet is to self-publish his next book.
His reasons? ”Publishing is like Hollywood—nobody ever does the marketing they promise.”
While I think it’s great that someone as high-profile as David Mamet is self-publishing, I was very disappointed to find out the way he’s doing it.
Self-publishing is big business. By my estimates, self-publishers have captured 25% of the US ebook market. It can be lucrative on the individual author level too, with writers getting up to 70% royalties if they publish themselves.
The reason why those percentages are so high is that self-publishing allows you to bypass the traditional middlemen (agents, publishers, distributors) who each took their own slice of the pie before the author saw any money.
Literary agents in particular must be worried about what that means for their future, which explains their ludicrous reactions when someone like Barry Eisler states the above. However, a company called Argo Navis – a publisher-owned distributor – has come to their rescue, providing them with a way to re-insert themselves in the chain between self-publishing author and reader. And get their cut of course.
Mamet is represented by a major literary agency – ICM Partners – who are just one of many agencies to have signed a deal with Perseus Books-owned Argo Navis.
What Do Argo Navis Offer?
Essentially, Argo Navis are a distributor. They offer a portal through which authors’ work can be distributed to all the various retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Kobo.
In exchange for this relatively trivial service, Argo Navis take a 30% cut. You read that right. After the retailer takes their standard cut (usually also 30%), Argo Navis take another 30% before passing on payments.
Obviously, this is massively overpriced compared to distributors like Smashwords or Draft2Digital, who only take 10%, and especially so when you compare the cost of going direct to retailers like Amazon (it’s free). But the problems with Argo Navis don’t end there.
Services like cover design, editing, formatting, scanning, and conversion are not included in this hefty price tag – but are available for a premium. Who provides those services? According to their website, it’s “third party specialists.”
In other words, Argo Navis outsources those tasks, just like any self-publisher. Except presumably they get a piece of that action too. Their price list for these services is not publicly available – and only distributed to literary agents (who won’t be picking up the tab, of course).
As the price list is hidden, I can’t speak to its contents, but I strongly suspect it’s not competitive (charging for cover design by the hour and formatting by the page is usually an indication that fees are high). From what I’ve seen of the covers and formatting though, the service provided certainly isn’t premium.
Why Are Literary Agents Using Argo Navis?
Argo Navis has been very clever with how they market their service. It’s pitched as agent-curated self-publishing - hey, it’s a step up from assisted self-publishing. Argo Navis don’t (and won’t) deal with authors directly, and will only accept titles for distribution submitted by literary agents.
This in turn allows agents to tap into what I call The Myth of the Segregated Marketplace - where authors believe that the visibility challenges resulting from the open nature of digital distribution are exclusively faced by self-published authors. Of course, those challenges are faced by all authors – however they publish. And given the abysmal rankings of books published via Argo Navis, it’s not a challenge that they are handling well.
But what’s in it for the agent? For starters, royalty checks come to their offices first (after Argo Navis have taken their considerable bite). This allows the agent to deduct their 15% before the author sees any money. Of course, it allows unscrupulous agents to take a little more – something enabled by Argo Navis only providing sales reports to agents rather than directly to authors – but I digress.
Many authors have mixed feelings about agents moving into publishing – and for good reason. But at least (some of) those agent/publishers are providing nominal value for their 15% cut – arranging cover design, editing, formatting, and handling the distribution in-house by uploading to the various retailers.
However, the agencies using Argo Navis are taking the lazy approach to locking down their cut. They aren’t uploading. They aren’t optimizing metadata. They aren’t arranging for cover design. And they certainly aren’t paying for it.
Instead they are simply passing the manuscripts from the author to the distributor, billing the author for any services they need and taking their 15% cut. And what have they done for that cut? Put them in the hands of a crappy distributor who is taking 30% of their royalties (on top of the 30% the retailers take and separate from the 15% agents are getting).
At this point you would be forgiven for thinking that no reputable literary agency would go for this. Well, I wish that was the case. Here’s a list of agencies that have signed up with Argo Navis:
- Writers House
- ICM Partners
- Carol Mann Agency
- Cynthia Cannell Literary Agency
- The Hartnett Agency
- Paul Bresnick Literary Agency
- Pinder Lane & Garon-Brooke Associates
- Curtis Brown (US)
- April Eberhardt Literary
- David Black Agency
- Elizabeth Kaplan Literary Agency
- Folio Literary Management
- Levine Greenberg Literary Agency
- Liza Royce Literary Agency
- Melanie Jackson Agency
- Janklow & Nesbit Associates
- Joëlle Delbourgo Associates
- Arcadia Literary Agency
- Harvey Klinger
- APA Talent and Literary Agency
- Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency
- Irene Skolnick Literary Agency
- FinePrint Literary Management
- Donald Maass Literary Agency...
Read the rest at: http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/lazy-literary-agents-in-self-publishing-money-grab-via-argo-navis/
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