Alistair Campbell wrote:Ian Thompson wrote:soheil_hooshdaran wrote:The originally proposed contract demanded a one-off payment. As it was much for me, I aked for a reduced price and he suggested the royalty.
And yes, I published the book and then sent the contract. I hoped that everything would be resolved because he said so in his email. but 2 or 3 of my friend say 300 copies is not publishing
I can understand why Everyman are not very interested when the number of books, and therefore income for them, is so low, and its probably a lot more work for them dealing with you, as a foreigner, than it would be dealing with a book being published in the UK. (I remember reading a long time ago that a typical chess book in the UK would be expected to sell about 2000 copies.)
I read somewhere that most books sell fewer than 300 copies (but presumably that statistic includes a lot of vanity-published fiction).
How many copies of a chess book would one expect to sell in Iran? I guess there is a slightly bigger population, but maybe less chess played per head? Perhaps less disposable income to spend on luxuries like chess books? But then perhaps there is less competition between authors and perhaps someone like GM Seirawan is popular?
In fact, even IM Ghorbani, the guy who would answer my questions during the translation, had no great respect for GM Seirawan, as he has been retired for years and returned in 2012 when he didn't have great results. It was Just after mentioning his successes that he came to respect him, let alone lay people.
I sold 147 copies just in my city Shiraz and 2-3 other places and will sell more, because some school teachers loved it and force students to have it for a chess teaching program, be it an after-school program or a part of cariculum.
Regarding the sales, it is more the question of quality (both of text and translation) and that of time.The text is clear and interesting, as is typical of GM Seirawan, and the translation is pretty accurate, with the help of the forum members and the old (pre-Fischer) American master Aben Rudy and of course the Iranian ex-champion and professional coach, IM Ghorbani, not the least my own command of English language and years of chess experience, and hard work. Also GM Ghaemmaghami wrote a good intro on it. So I expect it to sell well. but it may take years to sell, and my translation of other books in the series, as one book is not gonna do much to chess knowledge of people and is incomplete.
Some people told me it is a text book and does not contain examples but other books in the series have more examples, to be taught is chess schools/clubs. A book suited for chess schools is expected to sell thousands in a few years.
But one problem is the people's access to free PDFs. That makes them somehow unwilling to pay for a translated work
I'd had in mind the 2,000 figure for the UK market as well - on that basis it is hard to see how publishing makes much money - (how much profit would you make - 20% of the cover price??) but presumably it does. Given that, I guess 4,000 copies in Iran might be possible, the carrots being that there's a series of books that you could sell and it may be (for all I know, which is approximately zero, about Iran and/or publishing) a market ripe for expansion. Of course the low price might make it uneconomic.
Several idioms (is that the word?), some contradictory, spring to mind. One is putting the cart before the horse; another is flogging a dead horse; a third (since we are on an equine theme) is about leading a horse to water... Then we have "throwing good money after bad" or "you might as well be hung (hanged, surely?) for a sheep as a lamb".
I'm not sure how much the royalties were (and assume they were in sterling). [/quote]
No, royalties were is dollars.
I guess that there is an amount below which it is not worth Everyman getting involved - they will have to set up accounting controls and open files and for all I know satisfy money laundering legislation.
Probably the case.
If only they would allow me to contact them.
I am willing to give them a reasonable up-front amount of money instead of paying them yearly a fee.