Nightmare Scenarios in a Publishing Career (and What Will Happen Next if They Happen to You)
What if your book deal gets cancelled? What if YOU get cancelled? What if you get sued, or your book bombs, or or or? Breathe into a paper bag & read on.
Your book is about to be published when you realize it contains a catastrophic factual error.
You publish your book, then someone on the internet accuses you of plagiarism.
You publish your book, then someone sues you for libel or defamation.
You publish your book to uniformly vicious reviews. Or sales that are low at a level you didn’t even know was possible.
You’re about to publish your book, but then an online mob comes for you over some decades-old tweet or op-ed. Your publisher flips out and cancels your deal.
You’re under contract to publish your book, but then you turn in your manuscript, and your publisher finds it so irredeemably bad that they cancel your deal.
You have a nervous breakdown and never turn in any manuscript at all.
The above are some of the most common Nightmare Publishing Scenarios.
“Most common” as in most commonly feared by authors. None of them are actually all that common.
Still: they do happen. And when they do, word gets around fast in the writing community. As a result, almost every author in the Anglophone world is obsessively terrified of at least one. And they want to know What Would Happen If.
That’s why I’m devoting this week’s newsletter to answering that question: so I can be lazy and point hyperventilating authors to this piece (LOVE YOU) in the future.
But first, I insist you read some disclaimers:
ONE: I am not a lawyer, and what follows should not be construed by anyone as legal advice.
Book contracts are legal documents. After they have been signed, any remotely complicated dispute arising from them is best handled by a lawyer.
As an agent, the best thing I can offer you is a walkthrough of the relevant boilerplate in most commercial book contracts, supplemented where applicable by notes from my own experience and observation.
This is not the same thing as me telling you for sure what would happen to you if you found yourself in one of these situations. Nor is it me giving you any specific advice on how to react. These sort of things can unfold wildly differently depending on the contract and publisher.
So again: if they happen to you and you have any questions about what to do next, consult a lawyer. Not this post.
TWO: Keep in mind that if you’re fixated on one or more of these nightmare scenarios, it’s likely NOT because you have any particular reason to be. It’s more likely a proxy for some deeper, vaguer concern.
I can’t tell you this for sure, of course. I’m only speaking of probabilities I’ve observed over 17 years or so in book publishing.
Let’s say you can’t stop asking yourself What If Someone Sues Me for Libel. Unless you’re writing an unflattering exposé of a litigious, still-living, private or semiprivate figure or corporation, there’s really no need to obsess over this beyond the basic protections of a well-negotiated book contract.
If you are writing the above type of book, there are more practical and efficient uses for your energy than obsessive anxiety, e.g. hiring a fact checker and working with your publisher’s in-house counsel to put as big of a legal condom on the manuscript as you can.
If you’re not? Worrying about libel suits = a waste of time. This is not me saying it won’t happen; it’s extremely unlikely to happen, but who knows. Rather, it’s me saying that worrying obsessively will have no practical payoff for you either way.
Here’s what you need to remember: book deals are a little like weddings. For all the wild joy they may bring to the starring player(s), they are also some of the biggest trauma triggers on the planet.
If you find yourself fixating on a nightmare scenario, the first thing you need to do is ask yourself: is this a realistic business concern deserving my prophylactic attention? Or could this be my brain’s way of concretizing unrelated imposter syndrome, low self esteem, loneliness, abandonment fears, or rejection sensitivity?
If you don’t know the answer to these questions — or you suspect the answer to something in the latter is “yes” — the knowledge you need to learn is not in this newsletter. You need self-knowledge — the kind you get through curious and compassionate self-regard, therapy, and self-work. Go do all that. You won’t regret it, I promise.
OK, now onto the nightmare scenarios! Tee hee.