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Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
But what's described in the book proposal is unlikely to ever get finished without some kind of advance and/or research subsidy.
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Even if we confine our discussion solely to "research based non-fiction", I don't know that this was true even in the past. And things have, you may have noticed, changed. I haven't seen any hard data to back up either my point of view or yours in this area. The reality seems to be that we simply don't know.
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I'm focusing on research-based non-fiction. But even with a novel, and excepting the one person in a hundred million genius author, it a good idea to have friends read your book, tell you what parts confuse or drag, and follow their advice. And since it is impossible to tell if you are a genius, you had best assume you are not.
This is, as I understand it, the practice of my favorite series author.
Is that what you mean by selling your soul?
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An author signing the usual BPH contract gives up almost completely all control of their work and its marketing, distribution etc. Effectively they trade their intellectual property rights in return for a bundle of services, including editing etc. Most of these services are available on the open market and reasonably priced. The services not so easily available mainly involve the distribution to Brick and Mortar stores and other physical book outlets. Not only is the latter becoming far less important. It is now available from some much more innovative non-BPH traditional publishers who offer authors much better terms.