May 31, 2024 • 14 mins
Rebeca provides the three reasons why it's been two months since her last update, including a VERY exciting coming event.
Learn more at https://www.rebecabooks.com
Learn more at https://www.rebecabooks.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
>> Rebeca (00:16):
Welcome to the 9th chapter of raising
Rebeca the birth of a publishing house.
This is the audio story of me, Rebeca
Seitz, building a traditional, royalty paying
publishing house from the ground up, told
to you as it unfolds. It
has been over two months since I
brought you an update. Now, there are three main
(00:38):
reasons for that wide swath of time passing in
between episodes. First,
as you know, Rebeca Books is the publishing
division of my company, the one C Story
Network. Well within the
network is an audio and film division
called one C Productions.
In these past two months, one C Productions has
(01:01):
launched one new podcast show and
developed another that launches in June.
Those shows took, and continue to
take a lot of time, and only one of
them was planned for. The show that launched
May 3 is called Right to Life, and
I encourage you to check it out at write two
lifestories.com.
(01:24):
the other is called Teacup Talks and
is slated for initial release later in June.
The other two reasons for the delay between
episodes are due to Rebeca
books itself.
>> Speaker B (01:41):
You're listening to raising Rebeca Books,
the birth of a publishing house on the one C story
network. One C is made possible in part by the
support of the following sponsor.
>> Rebeca (02:10):
To publish Books, a ah publishing house first has
to acquire the rights to intellectual
property. And this is reason number two
that all's been silent on the podcast front.
See, early on, the writers and the
projects for the first cohort of Rebeca Book's titles
were identified. These authors and I have
been talking for months developing their
(02:32):
projects. They have been hard at work writing.
At the same time, a team of people has been
working on development of the Rebeca Books publishing
contract. Now, I don't
think I've spoken to my corporate attorney as much in
the decade I've worked with him as, I have this
year on the topic of contracts.
(02:53):
Because I am both a traditionally published author
and someone who has worked with numerous traditional
publishing houses, I happen to have a lot of their
contracts, or at least knowledge of them,
at my fingertips. I
know firsthand what it's like to be a
traditionally published author at a major
(03:14):
publishing house, and I've been a part
of the teams inside publishing houses when
they're deciding whether to acquire projects and
figuring out how to negotiate those contracts.
At, Rebeca books, I have had one
singular guiding force
for our contract template.
(03:35):
Take care of the author, but
don't require the author to be more than
the author. Now, what does that mean in
practicality? Well, first you have to
think about all the ways that the intellectual property of a
book can be monetized in book
form. There are numerous foreign language
rights, audio rights, special editions
(03:58):
for book clubs or specific retailers,
large print, those are just a few.
Then there are ways that the book's content
can be exploited into other media.
Films, streaming television series and
audio dramatic series are the ones that usually come to mind.
First, those versions of the book's
content involve players like
(04:20):
studios and writers and contracts that aren't
privy to that initial book publishing
contract. And that's why,
more often than not, it is in those
exploitations of the book rights that
authors get cut out. I
mean, they'll get their percentage of whatever flat fee the
publisher gets. Say the publisher sells
(04:43):
film rights for $100,000 and then splits that half and half
between the publisher and the author. But after that, the author
is done, a movie gets made, makes
millions of dollars, and people assume that the author
is now richety rich, and yet all the author ever
saw was half of that initial licensing fee that
the publisher got, and hopefully a bump in their
(05:03):
book sales when the movie comes out.
Now, this is not the case all the time.
Nothing in the entertainment business is ever
the case all the time. Bigger name
authors, or ones that have agents or managers who are
quite savvy and possess persuasive power in the
business, can sometimes negotiate better deals to
(05:23):
stay included in the profit stream of whatever gets made
off their work. But in the majority
of instances, authors of the source material, the
book, are not getting percentages of whatever
that secondary product, the film, the streaming series,
or what have you makes. And
I wanted to see if we could fix that
(05:44):
contractually for Rebeca Book's authors,
while simultaneously avoiding the
outcome of rendering Rebeca Book's titles
unattractive to those who would flip them into other kinds of
media. And that verbiage
took a while to craft. But in the
end, we did it. Another part of
our contracts was paying the author's will for the
(06:06):
sale of their books. Yes, the
publishing house does have the biggest financial
gamble at the start, because we are covering
the considerable costs of turning that
manuscript into a book in the hands of a
reader, that requires tens of thousands of
dollars. And that's the argument that
is used to justify publishing houses
(06:28):
keeping 85% to 90% of the
revenue that those book sales generate.
But that number, it simply seemed too
high to me. It's why the majority of
traditionally published authors don't even earn
enough to break the poverty line with their book
earnings. They have to hold down additional
(06:49):
jobs or have other ways to meet their bills
while still protecting and nurturing their ability
to write. As, someone
who has lived this way for all of her
career, I do not think it serves
the world or writers well to hamper
their ability to be full time
writers. Would you ask your doctor
(07:10):
to also bag groceries or drive Uber to be able to
afford being your doctor? How about your
dentist? Or your attorney?
Riding requires both learned skill
and nurturing of inherent ability.
It blossoms beautifully, thereby
serving everyone well when it is given
the space, time, and
(07:33):
attention to flourish.
I want Rebeca books to help make full
time book writing a truly
possible career choice.
The solution we arrived at was to not only
raise our royalty rates higher than the industry
standard so that authors make more per
(07:53):
book sold here than they would at other traditional
houses, but also to pull
out a chair for authors at the
larger corporate profit table.
See, at, Rebeca Books, a percentage
of corporate profit is allocated each
year to the author pool. That
(08:14):
pool consists of authors whose books released that
year, and as the years progress, it
will include authors whose backlist titles
meet a certain sales threshold in that year
as well. So let's say we publish
twelve authors in a year. A percentage of corporate
profit at the end of that year is
distributed equally to each of those
(08:36):
authors, in addition to the royalties
that they made from their own specific books
sales. Another way
we increased profit for the author was to provide
speakers bureau services. I had this in
my previous company, Glass Road, so it was
easy enough to build out the same thing here at one c
(08:56):
we create all the pitch collateral. We
contact event organizers to arrange speaking
engagements, handle all the logistics of
the author and the books actually being there. We
negotiate the contracts, we manage the return of whatever
product doesn't sell. Basically, we take care
of all the details so that our author
only has to show up, speaker,
(09:18):
perform, and get back to writing.
We keep a small percentage of the speaker's fees that we
negotiate for them. The rest goes to the
author. And since we're the publisher, we
don't have to charge a percentage of product sales. On top of that,
the publisher is already making money off of those product
sales. Everything I
just told you had to be written into our
(09:40):
contracts. Now listen, have you ever
worked on a contract with a legal team?
Good heavens. The placement of a
comma semicolon or a period can
entirely change the implementation of words
we worked so hard to
describe. Those higher royalty rates, the
corporate profit participation schedule and rates,
(10:03):
and the speakers bureau services and processes.
It has taken an enormous amount of
time, let me tell you. I
want to pause here and give massive kudos to
our main corporate attorney for the time he spent
on not just getting the language right, but
first taking the time to understand
(10:23):
how and why we wanted our
contracts to function differently than typical
traditional publishing contracts. Here,
care of the author is primary.
We literally finalized the version of our contract in
the final half of maybe. Yeah, it took that
long. And now that
(10:44):
contract is sitting in our author's hands.
Which leads me to the third reason for
the distance between episodes here.
The first gathering of Rebeca Book's
authors is happening on Wednesday,
(11:04):
June 5.
Now, I want to say here at the top of this item
that I'm a little nervous. I mean,
that's a lot of power and ability being
gathered into one room. The women of Rebeca
books are each stunning and
incredible in her own right. They're
(11:25):
wise, talented,
accomplished survivors,
thrivers. They are
present, inquisitive and
insightful, brave and
welcoming, knowledgeable and
yet curious. They are walking
billboards for the spectacular
(11:46):
magic that happens when a
woman comes into her own.
One woman living within the fully
embodied nature of herself is a sight
to behold. A room of
them. Yeah, I'm a touch
nervous, but I'm also giddy with
(12:07):
anticipation, because these women, they don't
know each other right now. I'm the only
one who knows all of them. They all came to me
through different avenues. So when
we gather in person for the first time
on June 5, literally
anything can happen. We'll
(12:27):
be walking through a lot of corporate information that day,
including contract review as a group.
But I know as I sit here talking to
you, that what unfolds on June 5
isn't fully known by me right now,
and I am so excited about that.
So that's where we are with Rebeca books. Our
(12:49):
first line is still slated for spring
2025. Documents and data
have to be in our sales team's hands by July 1 of
this year. We've got a crazy busy
month ahead to hit that deadline, but hit
it we will, and I'll be back here
as soon as I can with an update.
(13:10):
For now, I'm Rebeca Seitz.
Thank you for coming along on this journey with
me.
>> Speaker B (13:24):
You've been listening to Raising Rebeca Books,
the birth of a publishing house from the one C Story
network. Subscribe to the show wherever you get your
podcasts and learn
more at rebecabooks.com. that's
R-E-B-E-C-A
books.com.
>> Singer (14:03):
The 1C story network. For
the love of stories.
Welcome to the 9th chapter of raising
Rebeca the birth of a publishing house.
This is the audio story of me, Rebeca
Seitz, building a traditional, royalty paying
publishing house from the ground up, told
to you as it unfolds. It
has been over two months since I
brought you an update. Now, there are three main
(00:38):
reasons for that wide swath of time passing in
between episodes. First,
as you know, Rebeca Books is the publishing
division of my company, the one C Story
Network. Well within the
network is an audio and film division
called one C Productions.
In these past two months, one C Productions has
(01:01):
launched one new podcast show and
developed another that launches in June.
Those shows took, and continue to
take a lot of time, and only one of
them was planned for. The show that launched
May 3 is called Right to Life, and
I encourage you to check it out at write two
lifestories.com.
(01:24):
the other is called Teacup Talks and
is slated for initial release later in June.
The other two reasons for the delay between
episodes are due to Rebeca
books itself.
>> Speaker B (01:41):
You're listening to raising Rebeca Books,
the birth of a publishing house on the one C story
network. One C is made possible in part by the
support of the following sponsor.
>> Rebeca (02:10):
To publish Books, a ah publishing house first has
to acquire the rights to intellectual
property. And this is reason number two
that all's been silent on the podcast front.
See, early on, the writers and the
projects for the first cohort of Rebeca Book's titles
were identified. These authors and I have
been talking for months developing their
(02:32):
projects. They have been hard at work writing.
At the same time, a team of people has been
working on development of the Rebeca Books publishing
contract. Now, I don't
think I've spoken to my corporate attorney as much in
the decade I've worked with him as, I have this
year on the topic of contracts.
(02:53):
Because I am both a traditionally published author
and someone who has worked with numerous traditional
publishing houses, I happen to have a lot of their
contracts, or at least knowledge of them,
at my fingertips. I
know firsthand what it's like to be a
traditionally published author at a major
(03:14):
publishing house, and I've been a part
of the teams inside publishing houses when
they're deciding whether to acquire projects and
figuring out how to negotiate those contracts.
At, Rebeca books, I have had one
singular guiding force
for our contract template.
(03:35):
Take care of the author, but
don't require the author to be more than
the author. Now, what does that mean in
practicality? Well, first you have to
think about all the ways that the intellectual property of a
book can be monetized in book
form. There are numerous foreign language
rights, audio rights, special editions
(03:58):
for book clubs or specific retailers,
large print, those are just a few.
Then there are ways that the book's content
can be exploited into other media.
Films, streaming television series and
audio dramatic series are the ones that usually come to mind.
First, those versions of the book's
content involve players like
(04:20):
studios and writers and contracts that aren't
privy to that initial book publishing
contract. And that's why,
more often than not, it is in those
exploitations of the book rights that
authors get cut out. I
mean, they'll get their percentage of whatever flat fee the
publisher gets. Say the publisher sells
(04:43):
film rights for $100,000 and then splits that half and half
between the publisher and the author. But after that, the author
is done, a movie gets made, makes
millions of dollars, and people assume that the author
is now richety rich, and yet all the author ever
saw was half of that initial licensing fee that
the publisher got, and hopefully a bump in their
(05:03):
book sales when the movie comes out.
Now, this is not the case all the time.
Nothing in the entertainment business is ever
the case all the time. Bigger name
authors, or ones that have agents or managers who are
quite savvy and possess persuasive power in the
business, can sometimes negotiate better deals to
(05:23):
stay included in the profit stream of whatever gets made
off their work. But in the majority
of instances, authors of the source material, the
book, are not getting percentages of whatever
that secondary product, the film, the streaming series,
or what have you makes. And
I wanted to see if we could fix that
(05:44):
contractually for Rebeca Book's authors,
while simultaneously avoiding the
outcome of rendering Rebeca Book's titles
unattractive to those who would flip them into other kinds of
media. And that verbiage
took a while to craft. But in the
end, we did it. Another part of
our contracts was paying the author's will for the
(06:06):
sale of their books. Yes, the
publishing house does have the biggest financial
gamble at the start, because we are covering
the considerable costs of turning that
manuscript into a book in the hands of a
reader, that requires tens of thousands of
dollars. And that's the argument that
is used to justify publishing houses
(06:28):
keeping 85% to 90% of the
revenue that those book sales generate.
But that number, it simply seemed too
high to me. It's why the majority of
traditionally published authors don't even earn
enough to break the poverty line with their book
earnings. They have to hold down additional
(06:49):
jobs or have other ways to meet their bills
while still protecting and nurturing their ability
to write. As, someone
who has lived this way for all of her
career, I do not think it serves
the world or writers well to hamper
their ability to be full time
writers. Would you ask your doctor
(07:10):
to also bag groceries or drive Uber to be able to
afford being your doctor? How about your
dentist? Or your attorney?
Riding requires both learned skill
and nurturing of inherent ability.
It blossoms beautifully, thereby
serving everyone well when it is given
the space, time, and
(07:33):
attention to flourish.
I want Rebeca books to help make full
time book writing a truly
possible career choice.
The solution we arrived at was to not only
raise our royalty rates higher than the industry
standard so that authors make more per
(07:53):
book sold here than they would at other traditional
houses, but also to pull
out a chair for authors at the
larger corporate profit table.
See, at, Rebeca Books, a percentage
of corporate profit is allocated each
year to the author pool. That
(08:14):
pool consists of authors whose books released that
year, and as the years progress, it
will include authors whose backlist titles
meet a certain sales threshold in that year
as well. So let's say we publish
twelve authors in a year. A percentage of corporate
profit at the end of that year is
distributed equally to each of those
(08:36):
authors, in addition to the royalties
that they made from their own specific books
sales. Another way
we increased profit for the author was to provide
speakers bureau services. I had this in
my previous company, Glass Road, so it was
easy enough to build out the same thing here at one c
(08:56):
we create all the pitch collateral. We
contact event organizers to arrange speaking
engagements, handle all the logistics of
the author and the books actually being there. We
negotiate the contracts, we manage the return of whatever
product doesn't sell. Basically, we take care
of all the details so that our author
only has to show up, speaker,
(09:18):
perform, and get back to writing.
We keep a small percentage of the speaker's fees that we
negotiate for them. The rest goes to the
author. And since we're the publisher, we
don't have to charge a percentage of product sales. On top of that,
the publisher is already making money off of those product
sales. Everything I
just told you had to be written into our
(09:40):
contracts. Now listen, have you ever
worked on a contract with a legal team?
Good heavens. The placement of a
comma semicolon or a period can
entirely change the implementation of words
we worked so hard to
describe. Those higher royalty rates, the
corporate profit participation schedule and rates,
(10:03):
and the speakers bureau services and processes.
It has taken an enormous amount of
time, let me tell you. I
want to pause here and give massive kudos to
our main corporate attorney for the time he spent
on not just getting the language right, but
first taking the time to understand
(10:23):
how and why we wanted our
contracts to function differently than typical
traditional publishing contracts. Here,
care of the author is primary.
We literally finalized the version of our contract in
the final half of maybe. Yeah, it took that
long. And now that
(10:44):
contract is sitting in our author's hands.
Which leads me to the third reason for
the distance between episodes here.
The first gathering of Rebeca Book's
authors is happening on Wednesday,
(11:04):
June 5.
Now, I want to say here at the top of this item
that I'm a little nervous. I mean,
that's a lot of power and ability being
gathered into one room. The women of Rebeca
books are each stunning and
incredible in her own right. They're
(11:25):
wise, talented,
accomplished survivors,
thrivers. They are
present, inquisitive and
insightful, brave and
welcoming, knowledgeable and
yet curious. They are walking
billboards for the spectacular
(11:46):
magic that happens when a
woman comes into her own.
One woman living within the fully
embodied nature of herself is a sight
to behold. A room of
them. Yeah, I'm a touch
nervous, but I'm also giddy with
(12:07):
anticipation, because these women, they don't
know each other right now. I'm the only
one who knows all of them. They all came to me
through different avenues. So when
we gather in person for the first time
on June 5, literally
anything can happen. We'll
(12:27):
be walking through a lot of corporate information that day,
including contract review as a group.
But I know as I sit here talking to
you, that what unfolds on June 5
isn't fully known by me right now,
and I am so excited about that.
So that's where we are with Rebeca books. Our
(12:49):
first line is still slated for spring
2025. Documents and data
have to be in our sales team's hands by July 1 of
this year. We've got a crazy busy
month ahead to hit that deadline, but hit
it we will, and I'll be back here
as soon as I can with an update.
(13:10):
For now, I'm Rebeca Seitz.
Thank you for coming along on this journey with
me.
>> Speaker B (13:24):
You've been listening to Raising Rebeca Books,
the birth of a publishing house from the one C Story
network. Subscribe to the show wherever you get your
podcasts and learn
more at rebecabooks.com. that's
R-E-B-E-C-A
books.com.
>> Singer (14:03):
The 1C story network. For
the love of stories.
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