As a lawyer by day, I have a bit of a leg up on understanding the intricacies of intellectual property law, whereas authors with no legal training may not. I do not specialize in intellectual property (IP) law by any means, but I have enough knowledge to be worried about giving up my IP rights to my creative content and my published work(s). When I finished my first draft of The Toy Maker, I wanted to ensure that anyone I worked with, from editors, publishers and potentially even advertising professionals, would not take any of the creative control from me, nor was I willing to give up my ownership of the finished product. Royalties are something I wouldn’t mind splitting, but my story and my characters are mine to do with as I please. This may not be true for all authors, but for me creative control is my main goal.

I’ve always wanted to publish the stories I write, however I’m not willing to compromise my own vision for the story if it wasn’t “marketable” to traditional publishers. Now this isn’t to say I’m not open to criticisms and suggestions. I actually welcome them, the more input the better. I just want the final say as to what goes into the finished product at the end of the day. Anne Rice is an author who never let anyone else edit her books; she wanted full creative control and wouldn’t even allow an editor to touch her work. I can’t say I would go to the same extreme, maybe because I really don’t like the editing process. It’s difficult for me to edit (I blame the ADHD). Once I have a finished product I dislike having to re-read the story over and over, picking it apart. Once I have the story completed, I tend to not want to go back to it. I’d rather move on to a new story.

So, for The Toy Maker, I went with a company called Tellwell, based in British Columbia. It allowed me to pick and choose whatever assistance I wanted with the self-publishing process. I got to have a professional editor work on my book and make suggestions in two rounds, the first looking at the story and substance of the novel (i.e. a substantive edit), the second looking at the grammar, diction, correcting errors, etc. (a proofreading edit). All edits were suggestions only. I disregarded some of them, especially in the substantive round as there were some things that didn’t fit with the characters I had created, in terms of how they’d speak or what they would do. But, there were a lot of great ideas, like fleshing out the story and going down red herring rabbit holes to make it harder to guess the killer’s identity. I still had to do all the writing myself, I just had comments that helped give me some guidance on what the editor didn’t follow or thought was missing. This worked great for me, it got me out of my stuck position of being fed up with editing and showed me what a reader might not understand and see gaps in the book if I didn’t flesh it out. Altogether I think I wrote an additional 15,000 words after the first round of editing suggestions. It resulted in a better novel overall if you ask me.

Another thing that worried me about traditional publishers, is losing the full ownership rights to my work. A story I had heard about back around 2011 (the same year I graduated high school), was that of author L.J. Smith. Some people may be familiar with that pen name, others may be better familiar with her book series and the TV adaptation of the same name, The Vampire Diaries. Now, I had read these books in my teens and was a fan of the TV show when it originally ran, but when I heard about this story of what happened to the author, it gave me pause about traditional publishing routes. L.J. Smith last wrote The Return: Midnight in The Vampire Diaries series of novels. But, what if I told you that they’ve published other books in that series since then under the name L.J. Smith but it wasn’t the author, Lisa Jane Smith, who wrote them? In 2011, after submitting a draft of the next instalment in that series titled The Hunters: Phantom Lisa Jane Smith was fired. Many emails written by L.J. Smith have been leaked detailing how her story arcs were not in line with what the publishers wanted, such as changes to the plot about major issues like which characters were in relationships. If you want to read one of the emails she wrote I will link it here. These leaked emails can be found floating around on the internet even now. A ghostwriter stepped in on The Vampire Diaries series and L.J. Smith was also fired from her other series under the same publisher, The Secret Circle, both series are currently written by ghostwriters under the pen name L.J. Smith. She lost her ability to write these stories as well as her name. This is what a true horror story looks like.

What happened to L.J. Smith is something that she attributes to a bad contract with the publisher. She didn’t understand what she was giving up and now she cannot write either of these series without the publisher’s permission. Even though the copyright belongs to her, the books belong to the publisher. With a story like that, I didn’t even bother searching for traditional publishing options. Contracts are tricky, even for someone who reads them for a living. You may miss a clause, or not anticipate how it could go badly, so any contract should be thoroughly reviewed by a lawyer with IP law experience before signing on the dotted line.

I chose Tellwell after doing research into different self-publishing options because I knew, at least on the first book, I couldn’t do it all myself. I wanted to make sure I had the creative control and I also wanted to ensure that my work and my name would not be taken from me. Tellwell operates like a contractor you hire, picking and choosing what you want to hire them to do. Instead of me selling my rights to my book(s), I hired Tellwell to do a job for me. It meant that more pressure gets put on me for what gets done and I don’t have a publisher bankrolling me, but it ultimately gives me more peace of mind. For any authors who read this, I encourage you to look into self-publishing options as well as traditional publishing ones. No matter what option you go with, there will be paperwork to sign and tread carefully with it. It is worth the cost of hiring a lawyer to review it for you, rather than to lose everything later on down the road. Know what you are signing. For anyone else reading this, I encourage you to support self-published authors as well. Just because someone chose self-publishing instead of going through traditional means, doesn’t mean they don’t have a good product to put out there. Self-published authors need the support just as much, sometimes even more, because we’re doing the work ourselves or hiring people out of pocket to help us with things like editing, publishing, printing, advertising and more. Traditional publishers typically bankroll these things because they’re either getting a cut of royalties, own some or all of the rights to the finished product or both. I don’t write this to point fingers or call out anyone. I only wish to spread awareness of the issues and if one author gets this information and doesn’t end up in a bad position, I’ll be happy with that.

I do have an affiliate link with Tellwell as well, as part of their Author Referral Program. Using my link you can get a free self-publishing guide, a free consultation with Tellwell, access to free webinars and 10% off of your first publishing package with them. I do get rewards if people go through and purchase a Tellwell package after being referred through my link, rewards such as credit toward the publishing of future projects for me with Tellwell, cash back or other rewards that Tellwell adds through their Author Advocate Program. I want to be honest about that and that is why I am including my link here. I encourage all authors to shop around with self-publishing options as well as traditional ones if they interest you. No matter what avenue an author chooses, I just hope they do it with full knowledge of what they are getting into. If you have any questions about this article or self-publishing in general, feel free to comment below or reach out to me via email or social media. Please share this information with any authors, aspiring or otherwise, to help spread the word. Good luck to all the authors out there!

Sincerely,

Melanie