Michael Gerber
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The Beatles liked BOOKS.

I had not been following the publishing trials and travails of the world’s foremost Beatle researcher, Mark Lewisohn (having plenty of publishing trials and travails of my own), so I was surprised to hear from commenter @Craig that he doesn’t have a publisher for Volumes II or III of his definitive Beatles history. Volume I, Tune In, came out in 2013 to much acclaim, and so much fan interest that a truly mammoth 1728pp Extended Edition is available right now for $169.00 on Amazon.com. (It had gone out of print in the States, which caused us to opine about it then.)

To paraphrase @Craig, he asked, “What’s the hold up on Volume II? Is it Lewisohn’s meticulousness, or the immense sea of data he must swim through, or some arcane publishing problem? O book publishing guy, enlighten me.”

In responding to @Craig I found myself typing out a fairly detailed publishing plan, so I thought I’d break that out into its own post. I–along with most of you!–desperately want Mr. Lewisohn to finish his series, not just because I want to read it, but because I believe it will be the rock upon which all future Beatles churches will be built upon.

For those Dull-readers who don’t know, I worked in magazine publishing in the 1990s, and then in the 2000s wrote and self-published a series of parodies of Harry Potter that exploded all around the world. My books have sold over 1.25 million copies in 25 languages, so I have negotiated and read a few big-number, worldwide contracts of the Lewisohn-writes-about-The-Beatles scale. (BTW, I’m in the process of writing another Barry Trotter book, encompassing all that’s happened in the wizarding world since 2003. I’m having fun.) Nowdays, I edit and publish The American Bystander, a more-or-less quarterly all-star print humor mag. Bystander was funded via Kickstarter in 2015 and over the last 20 years or so, I’ve raised probably north of $500,000 using crowdfunding platforms.

So I have a lot of relevant experience here; still, I could be full of shit. The following is offered simply in a spirit of thanks and helpfulness to an author whose work I admire.

I was shocked by the one-book deal; surely people who know lots more than I do negotiated this deal, but doing it in pieces strikes me as a heck of a gamble. Each future book would have to be negotiated from scratch, and would rest on the scale of success of the one(s) before it. And since there are multiple publishers for Volume I, there’s just a hell of a lot of moving pieces, any of which could torpedo future deals. Editors come and go, publishing houses get sold, and books tank for lots of reasons — it’s all about timing — and so if I’d been asked, I would’ve said, “One publisher, all three books, big number.”

From the outside, it seems Volume I did well, but I guess not well enough for any of the various publishers (Crown/RH in the US; Little, Brown/Hachette in the UK, others surely) to lock up the rights to the sequels. To be clear, if Tune In had been an Anthology-like smash, someone already with an interest would’ve scrambled to lock up the other two books. Now, since it has only sold well, you’re in a no-man’s-land. Anyone who owns Volume I has a functional “right of first refusal” for Volumes II and III; no new publisher is going to like being partnered to the publisher of Volume I, and so they will try to buy those rights cheaply, and if they can’t, they’ll probably just pull out. Then will you be forced to take whatever the Volume I publisher wants to give you. It’s all sticky.

What I’d assumed–and what I would’ve instructed my agent to go for–was a large lump sum payable over time, for worldwide rights for all three. This would allow for the buyer to reduce their exposure by being able to sublicense books (and audio) in foreign markets, while also securing my research and living expenses for the decade(s) needed. Say, $2.4 million for worldwide rights to all three books, paid out $120,000 annually for 20 years, with lump sums accelerated upon delivery of MS. An arrangement like this would secure Lewisohn’s time, incentivize early completion, and would not be a horrendous risk for the publisher. Publisher risk would also be reduced by the pace of inflation ($120,000 ten years from now is worth less).

But here we are, with Volume I published by various outfits, and Volume II taking longer, and Volume III–perhaps the most difficult one of all–yet to be started. Mr. Lewisohn is doing stage shows to support himself as he researches, and he’s on the outs with Apple (backstory here?). Given this situation, here’s my suggestions, worth what anybody paid for it.

Mark Lewisohn is in an excellent position…regardless of what publishers will tell him. They will tell him that the main buyers for this book (Boomers) are dying, and that subsequent generations are less interested in The Beatles, and less interested in books, and more difficult to market to efficiently, and so forth. They will tell him that the first book in a series is always the most impactful. They will question his vitality and ability to finish the project. They will force him to take out life insurance for the amount of the contract. They will say anything they think will get that advance number down.

But Mark Lewisohn is the preeminent scholar of a pop cultural phenomenon with fans in the tens of, or even hundreds of, millions. There is no guarantee that readers in twenty years will be reading Harry Potter (especially since JKR’s public persona seems to be actively antagonistic to so many fans); biggies like Stephen King or James Patterson face an even more uncertain future. But it is a certainty that, if there is a world in one hundred years, people will still be reading books about The Beatles, and that goes doubly for THE books about The Beatles. So what Mr. Lewisohn is selling isn’t the usual short-term hit, but a property with longterm legs. There is MONEY in the Beatles, and it’s not drying up anytime soon. Every time Disney launches some new Beatles-thing, his publisher will have a marketing opportunity. When Apple authorizes Beatles: The Hologram in the Sphere in Vegas, Mr. Lewisohn’s books will sell 25% more that quarter. Mr. Lewisohn, and Mr. Lewisohn’s publisher whoever that is, will “draft” behind much bigger corporations for decades to come. “A book about the Beatles written by Mark Lewisohn” is the Holy Grail of book publishing: a book that sells itself. It does not need a conventional publisher to get a pile into the corner bookshop, so browsers can happen across it. It does not even need chat shows to have Mr. Lewisohn on. The fans are the buyers; and because the fans are intensely connected, the marketing will take care of itself.

So I wouldn’t publish Volumes II and III conventionally if I were him. If I were him, the first thing I’d do is start the UK version of an LLC. Then, after rallying all my pals in the Beatle fan world–podcasts, YouTube, Reddit, blogs–and using the mailing list that I hope he’s been gathering from his stage shows — I would set up a 21-day Kickstarter with a funding level of $1 million. And I’d set the following pledge levels. Ish.

$2–gesture of support
$10–PDF of Vol. II
$30–Vol. II softcover
$60–Vol. II Kickstarter-only hardcover (some special feature)
$250–signed, numbered Vol. II in hardcover (250 total)
$250–Extended Edition Hardcover
$500–signed, numbered Extended Edition (50 total)
$1,000 weekly private Zoom lectures for a year (available to academics, too!)
$2500–“Patrons” thanks in both books (100 total)
$10,000–attendance at a Beatles Weekend in London or Liverpool, the “Davos” of Beatle fandom. (25 total)

I firmly believe that this would gather well over $1 million in pledges. Pledges is key here — it’s understood that Mr. Lewisohn can take as long as he needs to finish, with those funds in the LLC invested in 4% government bonds or whatever. And THEN, after Volume II was completed, and the pledges were fulfilled, I’d either sell the books myself until the Sun explodes, netting $12+ on each softcover, and $30+ on each hardcover or, if they gave me a deal too good to refuse, I’d sell some big publisher the right to sell the book in stores, at a price higher than my pledge levels. But either way, I’d have plenty of money and time to finish Volume III.

If Mr. Lewisohn does this, not only will he have plenty of resources, he will have mailing lists of people that he can sell things to (merch; cheap tickets to in-progress research talks; Volume III when it’s ready). The higher tiers may reveal people useful in research or interviewing, or simply a group of ride-or-die supporters that he can call on. It’s always good to know rich people, and lawyers, and rich lawyers.

I am familiar enough with British mores to recognize that all this may seem rather grubby and commercial; but Mr. Lewisohn’s reputation is beyond reproach, and publishing via a self-owned entity would be no black-mark. For someone in his particular spot — needing money to finish a book he then would need to sell — it’s simply the most efficient method. And it flips the power dynamic: a high-profile crowdfunding campaign, if it funded, would likely attract a lot of interest from conventional publishers; it demonstrates scale of market, which is the major bone of contention in any book negotiation. Instead of the usual loggerheads — “Well, you only sold x copies of Volume I, so we’re going to offer you 50% less money for Volume II” versus “You guys marketed Volume I poorly, and Volume II is about the mania, which should sell much better, so you should give me 50% MORE” — there’s a hard number, the crowdfunded number, that’s an incontestable reality. If a $1 million Kickstarter seems too much, do $500,000 or even $250,000. Whatever it ends up earning, that number would be the obvious floor for any subsequent conventional deal. “If you really don’t think you can sell more than me going direct to fans, then I don’t think you have proper confidence in this project.” Money in one’s pocket makes one choosy. 🙂

Fan groups are particularly well suited to crowdfunding, and the Beatles have the biggest permanent group of fans I can think of, as big as the biggest sports teams, but international. Having been an author, and now a publisher, I just don’t see any reason that Mr. Lewisohn should not secure the funds he needs, plus more, directly from his customers in advance, so that he can spend the rest of his life researching and writing — getting the story right. Finally, allowing fans to play such a direct role gives them a stake in his books, a stake that might even change his situation with Apple. Today, Mr. Lewisohn is the single most respected writer on a fascinating pop cultural subject; well-funded, and with a direct line into 100,000+ buyers of Beatlestuff? Truly comfortable, unassailable, and thus able to go anywhere the data takes him. Publishers have their agendas, which are not what fans want; Apple, too, has its own agenda. But in this instance, Mark Lewisohn and millions of fans have the exact same goal — getting these books done, and done right — and crowdfunding might be a perfect solution.

Related posts:

Are the guitars on Pepper…different? Ian Leslie: “Notes on Peter Jackson’s Get Back” Try it, you might like it The Beatles without earmuffs Mad King John Critics at Large reviews “The Fifth Beatle” Various musings on Lennon and Addiction Allen Klein, John Lennon, Yoko OnoAllen Klein Playboy Interview, 1971 45 sleeve for Coming UpBeatles singles that never were? Shepard Fairey George Harrison PosterShepard Fairey George Harrison Poster Phil Rickman’s “December”: Wrestling with Lennon’s ghost That was your first mistake