Cordelia: Michelle's Version. How Authors Make Money in Publishing and Why Our Rights are EVERYTHING.

I'm in my Take Back My Power Era.

After my Cordelia posts on Facebook, there are so many people asking about my author rights because they don’t know how publishing works (It’s complicated, why would you know if you weren’t published) so I am going to tell you EVERYTHING.

Now, I am an author AND an illustrator, so I own 100% of my picture books.

If a picture book has an author and a separate illustrator, they each only own 50% of the book, makes sense, right?

But I am going to describe what happens when an author/illustrator sells a book to a publisher.

When I sold Dogs, Dogs! And Cats, Cats! To Kane Miller in 2010 it was a 2-book deal.

That means my publisher bought the right to produce my 2 books in both Paperback and Hardback.

In exchange, I received an advance of $2500 per book – half upon signing the contract and half upon submitting all the finished illustrations.

So, I received $5000 at the time I had an agent and she got 15% of that, but I will not talk about agent money because it makes this more complicated, but in general an agent gets 15% of anything I earn from book sales in perpetuity for as long as the book is making money.

The only way an author/illustrator ever makes another dime on a book is if they earn out their advance, then they make royalties.

Royalties is a percentage you earn of the retail price of a book.

To keep it simple and explain how it works, I will use Cordelia paperback as an example – I received a $2500 advance for that as well.

Cordelia paperback sells for $6.99 retail.

My royalty on that was 10% of retail per paperback ( 70 cents per paperback book sold).

In a case with separate author and illustrator, they’d each only make 5% - that is industry standard.

I would not make any more money on Cordelia until I sold 3,571 copies of that book in paperback because 3,571 x .70 (my royalty) = $2500 – that is earning out your advance.

After that, I would make 70 cents every time that book sold.

I would go on to sell 10 books to my publisher and also license a plush Whatif Monster, a Plush Bob Unicorn, and a Cordelia doll.

In the publishing industry, most books do not earn out their advances.

I am proud to say that every single one of my 10 titles and plush bought by my publisher earned out their advances within 6 months of their releases.

To date, my publisher has sold over 1 million of my books and plush – over 10 million is retail sales.

I worked my a$$ off to help do that.

I promoted myself on my website, Facebook, and Instagram, I marketed to my publisher’s sale’s force, I did 8 years of Storytime Live every single week, and I did over 1000 school visits with individual sales people from my publisher to sell my books – this was all organized, alone by ME without any help from my editor or from my publisher’s home office staff.

I took my job of selling books, helping others sell my books, and of helping children very, very seriously.

I built up a six-figure career and I was very proud of it.

Sometime around 2016, things began to change. (I have my opinions why, but I will not say more.)

My name got mentioned less and less in the company.

I got in trouble more and more for promoting myself – I often was getting emails to remove Facebook posts or to change things I offered on my website.

I asked for marketing, promotion, any kind of help, and repeatedly was told no as my sales numbers continued to decline.

I began self-publishing books so I could do things the way I wanted and to have more eggs in other baskets.

Then 2020 came – it was a HUGE year for my publisher and for me.

With everyone at home because of Covid, book sales SURGED.

It was the most money I had ever made.

I took out a loan to build a studio and self-published more books.

Starting in 2021, the company began to have some problems, I can’t obviously know details, but I think one issue was because of their overage of inventory ordered.

They over-ordered stock of many books because there was fear of the prices going up drastically in the future.

They over-ordered all my books.

What I have issue with as far as me, was that they wouldn’t advertise or market me hardly at all, which made no sense when they had so much inventory of my books.

And sales of mine and my publisher continued to decline.

When Jonathan James and the Whatif Monster was 10 years old in 2022, I repeatedly asked if they would do something for the ten-year anniversary of the book.

They said no every time – a book that had sold tens of thousands of copies in the past and helped so many children, never got mentioned once that year that I saw or can recall.

My feelings were hurt, but I also felt it was a poor business decision not to promote a great event – a book that helped so many and sold so many copies being in print 10 years is a big deal!

As the company’s sales continued to keep declining and debts increased, so did mine – rapidly.

I tried to pivot to really push my self-published titles, but it was too late for me.

It became a catastrophic situation for me.

I had put far too many of my eggs in my publisher’s basket and with hardly any royalties, I was in trouble.

I was too in debt and my royalties had become hardly anything at all – certainly not livable income if I was single, I only made $7000 from my publisher in 2023 – thank goodness for my husband.

In January 2024, I had to close my LLC as I didn’t even make enough money to keep running it.

To be clear, it is not my publisher’s fault I had to go out of business – the choices I made that got me into debt were MINE, the choice to sell ALL my titles at the beginning of my career to one publishing house was MINE.

I only blame them for not being willing to try anything different with an author to sell books – especially when they were having so many financial problems with the company - it made no sense that they wouldn’t work with me.

I got a fulltime job in February just to pay my debts, but I am at complete peace with my life now and had to let go of everything. (If you want to read about HOW I cam to peace with all of it, read my book, Life is as Magical as You Make It – it’s all in there!)

I truly love my new job of working with special needs young adults and I am grateful for every single thing wonderful, and not wonderful, that led me to where I am in my life right now.

As far as my books, I had gotten all my hardback rights back a few years ago, because they stopped producing them and I now sell those on Amazon - see them all here.

Recently, I asked if I could get my paperback rights back hoping at least to make them non-exclusive so I could self-publish them myself and maybe make a bit more money while they still sold them too.

I was told I could get my rights back when inventory was gone.

That’s when I found out I had 144,934 books in inventory and remember – all of my books  total, were selling little more than a few hundred books a quarter.

I was so angry and I wrote a not very professional email to my editor and the CEO telling them how ashamed they should be of stealing my books from me - because in essence that is what I felt they were doing.

They offered that I could buy out my stock - which was laughable, with what money?

I told them the saddest part was that I had so wanted to work WITH them as we both supposedly had the same mission – helping children through literacy.

I was broken and defeated.

I was never going to get my rights back and I felt they had stolen my words and my illustrations and simply didn’t care that it broke my spirit and crushed my soul.

But then my publisher began to offer Dollar Day sales and Cordelia was on the list.

Naively, I thought I would be getting my full royalty from Cordelia at 70 cents a book, but then I thought about it and realized the math made no sense.

I inquired to my editor, and she confirmed my contract stated that when a book is sold at a discount, I make 10% of when the company receives. If they make $1, I make ten cents.

So, after them paying any possible sale’s force fees, I probably am being generous when I say I am getting 10 cents – it’s likely less per book.

Is that stealing from authors and illustrators, you ask?

Yes, yes it is – or at least it sure feels like it. It’s gross.

Anyhoo, I also saw a HUGE opportunity in this gross situation.

I realized I could probably get 10,400 Cordelias sold in one week if they were only a dollar.

I decided to bring back Storytime Live on Facebook for a Cordelia Storytime – I quit doing Storytime last summer when I just didn’t have the heart for it anymore – I was pretty broken last summer as I saw the writing on the wall and realized I needed to close my business.

If my plan worked, once inventory was depleted, I’d get my paperback rights back and have FULL rights to Cordelia to self-publish or to sell to another publisher one day.

I thought it would take a week – it took only 6 hours after Storytime Live went live on Facebook to sell out.

So, while many of my publisher’s Home Office and CEO are currently in Austria on a company trip, I sold 10,400 books in 6 hours and made about $1040 – ironically, not even enough to buy a ticket to Austria.

But in the next few weeks, I will be getting my rights back to Cordelia! WOOOO!

And I WILL get my rights back to Jonathan James and the Whatif Monster and Bob is a Unicorn some way, somehow.

My other books, Dogs, Dogs!, Cats, Cats!, and 4 board Whatif Monster toddler board books have such huge inventory amounts I will likely never get my rights back to those unless I have a surge of popularity with my publisher again and they sell out, but I really just need to get back my books that help children the most.

My publisher gets to have those books’ rights for as long as they have inventory – they let me know they don’t plan on reprinting any of my books.

And I don’t plan on offering any new books to them.

However, I still am grateful to have been an author/illustrator for this company.

They publish incredible books by incredibly talented authors and illustrators, and I am in very good company.

And I can never, EVER say enough about the INCREDIBLE and AMAZING women (and a few men!) who sell these books.

The friends I have made through this company’s sale’s force have changed my life and have created lifelong bonds that are truly priceless and precious to me.

I hope if any of them read this and are angry at me for telling my truth and my story, I hope they understand I am not condemning them or the publisher’s books, or my beloved editor – this is just the story of what happened to me, and it is obviously colored by my opinion and my emotions.

I hope my story helps you find the strength and inspiration to tell your story, whatever it is and know you that who you are does not depend on what other people think.

Also because of the recent loss of a beloved friend who loved to fly on this earth and can now soar anywhere he wants, I will end this with my inspirational flying-themed art (plus Herman of course). I promised I'd live like you did Adam - being fearless and doing what makes me happy! Because of you, I will soon have all my rights to Cordelia again and I know somehow I'll get back my paperback rights to JJWIM and Bob is a Unicorn, and I will MAKE MORE BOOKS for children! #LiveLikeAdam #DoWhatMakesYouHappy

*Please note, everything written here is my opinion or can be backed up with emails, screenshots, and financial reports and by listening to the investment calls of my publisher. I am not trying to defame anyone or the company and to the best of my knowledge I have not knowing lied about any of my experiences – if anything here is incorrect, it is not purposeful. I am just trying to explain why I want my rights back to my books and how I got them back.