Book Packagers
As a former book packager myself, and an editor for the late NYC book packager Byron Preiss before that (about whom author
Alan Rodgers once said, in perhaps a slight exaggeration, "When you shake hands with Byron, you have to count your fingers afterward), I thought I would talk a bit about this low-profile side of publishing, which is responsible for producing some huge best-sellers, but is also notorious for shady dealings.
NOTE: My laptop - with most of my notes for the rest of the series - is currently recuperating at a Laptop Convalescent Facility. (All my other writing was backed up automatically, but for some reason I'd left the notes sitting on the desktop, outside of the folders that automatically archived every morning....) I'll be working from a slower connection until that happens, so these diaries may have fewer links.
What Are Book Packagers
In theory, packagers produce books that are worth publishing, but are too much trouble for overworked editors at mainstream publishing houses to shepherd into print. (We'll ignore for the moment, one cynical publisher's observation that rather than paying a premium to packagers, some editors relieve their overwork by buying books randomly and publishing them unedited.) Many collectibles guides and travel guides, for instance (containing thousands of pictures for which permissions must be obtained and references which must be meticulously cross-checked) are produced by packagers.
Basically, a packager comes up with an idea for a book or a series of books. He or she then sells that idea to a publisher, and delivers to that publisher completed, edited books. The packager hires writers, artists, book designers, typesetters, copyeditors, proofreaders, etc.; in theory, none of that work will have to be done by the publisher. (In practice, most publishers maintain enough oversight to be certain that the packager can and does deliver the goods, especially since many packagers have reputations for cutting corners, or promising more than they can actually deliver - once seduced by a packager, a wise publisher remains a little skeptical of the packager's insistence that he still respects the publisher.)
Packaging is not a new concept - it dates back before the origins of modern publishing for that matter, at least to the 1600s. Alexandre Dumas, producer of The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Count of Monte Cristo, and many other best-sellers (by the standards of the time), maintained his prodigious output in a pen-and-ink age by employing about 400 writers in a sort of book factory.
Why Haven't I Ever Heard of Book Packagers?
Mostly, because nearly everything they produce is published under some other publisher's name. You've certainly heard of plenty of packaged books. For instance, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Tom Swift juvenile series have been produced and regularly updated by packagers for generations, using the same house names. In the the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books, the same titles were used as well, so you can pick up a book you remember from childhood and find out it's an entirely different story. (On a sidenote, titles can't be copyrighted, which is why you'll see many books with similar titles, often drawn from famous quotes. You're perfectly free to title your next book Silence of the Lambs, Hamlet, or The Bible, though your publisher may not go along. One large publisher - with many imprints who didn't talk to each other much - accidentally scheduled two books with the same name to appear in the same month once, before catching the mistake at the last minute and rescheduling one of them.)
Some other recent examples:
Goosebumps and other R. L. Stine books were packaged by Parachute Press. (The actual R. L. Stine was married to the president of Parachute Press, although many writers wrote under the name once the series took off.)
Sweet Valley High and many similar series were produced by several companies run by Dan Weiss, one packager with a reputation for being very good to work for.
Most of the anthologies produced in the 1980s and 90s were produced by Marty Greenberg, who never called himself a packager but was a master of the logistics that went into producing an anthology. (He eventually sold the company... which was essentially him, but continued in the same role.)
Most packagers are masters at selling projects to publishers, and they all sound like visionaries if you take them to lunch. The upside of that for publishers is the possibility of a Goosebumps-syle mega best-seller. (At its peak in the early 1990s, the average Goosebumps book was outselling Stephen King by a 2-1 margin, and a new book was coming out every month.) The downside can be publishers having to deal with expensive projects that turn out to different from how they sounded, or having to bail out unscrupulous packagers in order to avoid losing the rights to publish a project. In one case I know of, a game company flush with revenue (but naively new to the publishing industry) hired a packager to run their new book line based on their best-selling game, and didn't read the contract closely enough: They neglected to remove a standard clause in the packaging contract giving the packager all game rights (and the packager didn't see the need to enlighten them), and the game company had to buy back their own rights - for enough to cover the packager's new house.
Most publishers, writers, and artists know to read packaging contracts very very closely. (The only-sort-of-joking phrase is "galactic rights," i.e., the packager controls all rights to your work, in any language, and in any medium in use now or ever invented, on any planet in the galaxy.)
What's the Downside for Writers
Typically, a packager sells an idea to a publisher, then splits the advance with the writer who the packager has hired. (There's usually a separate production budget as well, to pay for the cover art, design, typesetting, etc.) In theory, because the packager sells projects for so much more than your work would command by itself - if your work was in high demand, you wouldn't be writing for a packager, would you? - so even half the money is a decent amount, a not unimportant consideration if you're a full-time writer trying to support a family.
Sometimes, writers work with packagers for other reasons: If you're dying to write a book set in the Marvel Comics universe, you can only do it through the packager that has the rights to those books. If you need the money, you need the money - but don't rationalize that you will be exposed to a wider audience by writing for a packager, and don't think that writing in the Isaac Asimov's Robots in Drag series is going to do much for your reputation as a writer. (Sort of an in-joke. Byron Preiss got the rights from Asimov, who knew him from SF conventions, to produce "Robot City" books based on an Asimov story, and then spun those rights into multiple tenuously connected series far beyond what Asimov had envisioned - but technically legal under the contract. I got to edit the Isaac Asimov's Robots in Time series - which had Asimov's name splashed all over the cover and the name of the actual author, Bill Wu, in much smaller letters. I should point out that Asimov never used an agent, and that contract is a good example of why writers need agents.)
In many cases, writers and artists hired by packagers are doing work-for-hire (meaning they don't have any copyright or ownership in what they write). In other words, they are writing to someone else's specifications, and have no ownership or control of the final product. The packager retains the copyright. The writer may get a flat fee or may get an advance against royalties (with the packager theoretically paying the writer out of the royalties the packager is getting from the publisher) but will have no say in whether the packager changes or completely rewrites the material.
It's really important to remember that packagers are not agents. Because writers are theoretically working with the packager's ideas and projects (although in practice making significant contributions of their own) they are getting a flat fee or a split of the royalties. If you have an idea for a project that you want to - and can - do yourself, you probably shouldn't take it to a packager. A packager is in theory a full-service provider (there are exceptions to this) and has to take a significant share (usually 50%, as mentioned above) to cover the cost of providing those services to a publisher. That's reasonable if the project is being developed jointly (if you're an artist with a great idea, for instance, but couldn't actually write the book or pull the idea together without outside help). But if all you want to do is sell a project, take it to an agent, or directly to publishers. Otherwise, you're basically asking a packager to agent something for a 50% commission, instead of the 15% that a traditional agent would take.
The Rest of the "How Publishing Works" Series
The series so far:
Part 1 - Why bad things happen to good books.
Part 2 - Avoiding publishing scams.
Part 3 - Literary conventions (with an emphasis on SF Conventions).
Part 4 - Book packagers.
Part 5 - Submitting a manuscript.
Part 6 - Publishing lists.
Part 7 - Literary agents.
NOTE: If you have a question about something written earlier in the series, feel free to post it there. I will continue to moniter the earlier diaries (and all of them have gotten posts today, so you won't be the only one)
I'll be around for a bit, then off to a party our DTC is hosting in support of Sherry Vogt and Joe Courtney. Lieberman was supposed to show up - which would have been fun, since the building where the event is being held is in a sea of Lamont signs, and our DTC is firmly pro-Lamont, but he bailed a day after making the surprise announcement. I'll be back later in the evening to respond to other comments.
