With the apparent disappearance of Guardians of Order, the subject of publishers vanishing into thin air is a popular topic these days.

On a private industry message board, Precedence once announced that it was going out of business. Somebody dug six months back into the archives and looked for a discussion retailers had had about the topic to find out who guessed closest to the exact date of their demise.

I had it pegged to the day.

Since then I've been on the lookout for signs of woe, either from existing companies or startups that start off on the wrong foot, watching for signs of an impending implosion. Seeing Fast Forward get slapped for copyright violation over their use of product identity in their D20 material caused me to stay clear of that train wreck. I had deep concerns about Hero Games after they told customers to buy direct instead of from local game stores, but I have a lot of confidence in Steve Long. They might survive yet.

How is this relevant to writing? How could I possibly tie this in to freelancing? That's easy. Imploded publishers don't pay freelancer bills. Ask me something harder.

What do I look for? What are the signs? How do I know when a publisher is going to vanish out the back door, one step ahead of guys showing up to repo the computer? Well, because I don't have access to financials and rarely get concrete sales figures, I look primarily for behavioral tells. Time for a tangent.

Let's say you're watching a kid holding a video game at Wal-Mart. Kid hovers near the video games for a long, long time. Kid keeps watching the clerk. Kid turns to the side, concealing the game in his hand.

He could be concentrating hard, dredging little-used math to the fore of his brain, debating how he's going to spend his hard-earned lawn-mowing money.

More likely, the kid is trying to steal the game. That behavior—especially the turning away to conceal the game—is called a behavioral tell. So is what's called in law enforcement a spontaneous utterance when you approach him. If he answers, "Hi, can I help you?" with "I was gonna pay for it," then you probably have a stealer on your hands.

With the absolute lack of any sort of oversight or requirement for entry into the world of publishing, any joker who wants to can start soliciting written material online. Your job is to sift through all of the solicitations, guidelines, and open calls to find a legitimate market. Watch for these behavioral tells from publishers.

What's a Publishing Right?

If you ask a publisher about publishing rights, and he answers with a comment about copyrights, stay away. Publishing rights and copyrights are two different things. Any publisher who doesn't have that knowledge hasn't done even a basic research into publishing. If he gets that wrong, how much market research do you think he’ll do before giving you the green light on a book?

Short Stories

Fiction is a tough market, and the market for short stories is slim. If you have a short story you want to sell, you should pitch it to established magazines like Asimov's Science Fiction (which lists at 5-8 cents/word, with a circulation of 50,000). What is a small press RPG publisher going to do with it? Be careful of publishers who actively seek this kind of work because, in all likelihood, they won't sell enough to stay in business.

He Said What?

Publishers necessarily use language professionally. In a small publisher, the guy posting the open call, and therefore acting as an acquisitions editor, is also the graphic designer, art director, packager, sales guy, and editor. If he uses "should of" instead of "should have", "may" when he means "might", and "amount" when "number" is appropriate, I call that a soft tell. I don't even count minor spelling mistakes on message boards, although websites should contain clean copy. The publisher could end up accidentally hiring a writer that doesn't need much editing, or they could have a real editor working for them (but how would they know?), but their final work will probably be substandard. Substandard work usually generates insufficient sales to pay the bills.

Buzzwords without Substance

Beware of the liberal use of terms like "revolutionary" and "non-standard distribution methods." You often see them from people who have an idea about How Things Should Work without first thoroughly understanding How Things Really Work.

Complicated Payment Schemes

Two methods of payment are standard in publishing, both within the RPG industry and within the larger publishing world. One is a flat word-rate. The other is a royalty rate, which is expressed as a percentage of cover price or as a percentage of wholesale price.

One of these two works for all business models. If the publisher wants to reduce costs, the publisher can lower rates or royalties. If the publisher wants to attract more experienced talent, the publisher can raise rates or royalties. Options inherent within these payment plans (such as payment on acceptance or payment on publication) allow for all of the publisher's cash-flow and talent acquisition needs.

Any other payment plan is a sign that the publisher doesn't understand publishing.

Non-disclosure of Rates

"We prefer not to discuss our rates in public." Look at every reputable writing market anywhere and see how secretive they are about their rates. Go ahead, flip open a Writer's Market. All of those publishers list their rates. Dungeon Adventures and Dragon Magazine list rates. Steve Jackson is up front about rates. Not mentioning rates is pointless. Your work might be fine, but if the majority of the team of people involved in assembling a book is of the "will work for credit" variety, expect a flop. Multiple flops means vanishing publishers.

Inflated Experience

Avoid publishers who haven't published books but who talk about traits that their books "usually" have, as in "most of our books are hardback." But ... but ... but you haven’t even contracted any books, much less sold any books. Watch out for excessive extolling of their virtues and morality while evading questions about their actual publishing history. A good startup publisher has worked for another publisher before, although work in a related part of the book sales/distribution chain is a fair second choice.

No Contracts

Let me make this as clear as possible: don't work with this company. This isn't a behavior tell; it's a big block-print sandwich sign that says "I'm unprofessional."

What's the Release Date, Again?

Late releases are ubiquitous in this industry, so a single late release isn't a cause for alarm. However, many and consistent releases being pushed back for long periods of time are usually a sign of cash-flow problems. Sales can overcome cash-flow problems, but if nothing happens to revive the company's bank account soon, it's death spiral time.

The Incredible Shrinking Staff

The loss of staff members who aren't being replaced is another company move to harbor cash. Obviously, the loss of all but one or two staff members is a severe and desperate move that is probably too late and too sudden. Caveat: compare the number of product lines to staff. If the company is letting one game go out of print, they might simply not need that many employees any more.

One-Hit Wonder Strikes Out

This was the clue that did Precedence in. A company that relies on the income from one product to finance multiple experiments is okay—as long as that income source holds out. Naturally, a wise company seeks to diversify its income sources before the previous ones dry up. Precedence was working in the right direction that way. However, the loss of a license the company depends on, combined with the lack of success in any other game, can only mean one thing, and it involves a black-clad figure with a scythe.

Thunderous Silence

Former employees (sometimes part of the Incredible Shrinking Staff) who blatantly refuse to discuss the company are saying more than they're saying, if you know what I'm saying. "I can’t discuss the exact reasons for my departure" might mean the person wasn't receiving a regular paycheck and decided that green martyrdom was for somebody else.

Or it might mean they were fired for theft or a sex scandal. Or have a wry sense of humor. Don't read too much into this one.

Complaints of Non-Payment

This one's so obvious that it almost doesn’t need mentioning. Almost. If a writer is complaining about non-payment, investigate carefully. It could be that the writer flaked out and failed to meet a deadline (thus triggering a reduction in pay clause or something), turned in an unusable manuscript, or is just plain lying.

OOSM

I'm going to include one more tell that few writers have access to. As a retailer, I used to use manufacturers to keep dibs on distributors, and vice-versa. If a distributor told me that they placed an order for restock, I invoked my natural unwillingness to believe things that I couldn’t verify for myself and called the manufacturer. "I can't discuss why distributor x hasn’t gotten a restock on product line y" tells me that distributor x is behind on his bills (sure enough, distributor x is no longer a distributor. I wish I had called a date on that one, too).

However, if no distributors are being restocked, it means there's no product. That means manufacturer doesn’t have enough cash to pay for the new shiny game and the old and tired game at the same time. It might not a big deal, but if new and shiny isn't successful, we might never see old and tired again. If neither old nor new games sell, what do they pay the bills with? I'll just have to ask somebody else, because I’m not sticking around to find out.

Don't assume that any company that shows a single warning sign is doomed. Somebody who inflates his experience might be able to survive on bravado alone until he actually gains that experience. Cash-flow problems happen to the most stable of companies sometimes. Look for multiples and look for the most serious signs (Incredible Shrinking Staff, One-Hit Wonder Strikes Out, and No Contract).

I've never been stuck with a non-paying market. Other freelancers tell me it’s an unavoidable part of freelancing, but I have to shake my head and wonder who they're signing contracts with. You can avoid it if you read the signs correctly.