I spent a few minutes hunting for an account export function on Komoot without finding one. The heck with it, their privacy officer email is datenschutzbeauftragter@komoot.de - the email to send is a GDPR Data Subject Request.

Komoot is/was a German company and their acquirer, serial enshittifier Bending Spoons is Italian. Goes to show that it's not sufficient to just be European.

I was wondering the other day what had happened to meetup. Didn't realise it had been acquired. I went back on it after not using it for a few years and seemed to have gone quite a long way downhill.

Just endless nagging to buy a premium account.

Why on shitter , why ?

#usa #clinton

So, rather than buying the book, best someone can do is gift you the cost of the book in a shop, so that you get 100% (minus taxes) rather than 10% (minus taxes)?

Because how it reads is that the publisher makes a profit almost for sure, as long as a modicum of books gets sold.

Suppose each book costs £1 to print and distribute.
Editing (actual work and office overheads) is a fixed cost, say £2,000 per book.
There's tax baked into the cost of the book, perhaps 20%.
The shop keeps some amount, perhaps £1 per book.
The advance to the author is a fixed cost.
So if 1000 books sell at £15 each, that's ~12,000 after tax, of which £2,500 is the advance to the author, £1,000 is the cost of printing and distributing the books, £2,000 for editing, another £1,000 is for the shop, and the reminder, £5,500, go to the publisher.

Are these made up numbers far off?

As someone whose first book is coming out at pretty much the same time as yours on a very similar deal, I hear you 👍

As you say, it’s an almost unpaid grind & it really does feel as though the traditional publishing model exploits the egotism & pride that society invests in being “an author” and being “published” 🥳

And of course the fact that the industry still exists does suggest someone is making money, even if not most of the authors 😕

having read what you have to say about the financial side of writing and being published I went on to read kristie-de-garis.ghost.io/the-… which I identify so much with, even though all my writing is short. Eulogies at funerals need to tell a story, not just be a chronological account of what they've done.

Back to the finances. I think LJ Ross self publishes, successfully. Certainly it's at least 30 books now.

The Slog - What No One Told Me About Writing A Book.

There’s still so much prestige and status attached to a book deal. I'm not sure that’s how it should be-but just 0.

^{Kristie De Garis (By Hand)}

Thank you so much for sharing this. It's so important that we talk about the money part of this. I just signed the contract to be lead editor of an edited volume - royalty numbers for it are less than yours and I know it's going to suck up a lot of my life over the next year. I often say to friends that walking through the book room at a conference is now like a horror show for me- I can feel all the unpaid blood, sweat, and tears leaking out of every book on every table.

I *did* manage to argue up the royalty percentage of the film rights - it's a book on climate change, heritage, and migration, so I have mad plans for those!

And also - congratulations on your book!

Interesting post; thank you for sharing.

In case it's of interest, my first book is also due to be published later this year. I'm getting paid more for writing it than you are, but no royalties. I was a little disappointed by that, but I didn't realise there might be _limits on the number of sales_ that counted: if you max out your hardback sales royalties your total income still won't reach what I'm getting as a lump sum (well, three lump sums: I've only got ⅓ of it so far), and I'm what I'm getting isn't anywhere near minimum wage for the time I've spent on it.

I've enjoyed writing the book, but it's been hard work and I've done it against the backdrop of part-time salaried work. As I go full-time freelance I'm not sure I'll have the financial security to accept a similar deal in a year or so's time.