Originally Posted by redietz View Post
Two interesting tidbits.

1) In 1984, Gamblers' Book Club published Who's Who in Sports Gambling, which was self-published by Rick Hall as an attempt to clean up the tout business and steer people to respectable handicappers. Hall was a Born-Again Christian and a handicapper. He considered it his duty. Yours truly was vetted to be in the book. So the self-publishing options of Gamblers' Book Club are somewhat familiar to me. Interesting that Singer also went that route.

2) The odds on getting 20K two years after the publication are pretty long. As someone who has friends who have been published (Scott Beck, Ken Mijeski, Bob Bruno, Tony Cavendar), I can tell you that the money ratio here is, as Positive stated, highly, highly unlikely. But it's possible someone at GBC was tossing a good local Italian boy a bone, so not impossible if you read between the lines.

Another thing I forgot to include in Singers $20k deal:

I mentioned they would have to sell another 2,000 books, just to break even. It would actually be much higher than this, since you would have to subtract what the publisher is already receiving as their portion, if there were no buyout in place.

Unlike now, with ebooks, back then the publisher was taking a huge portion. As an unknown writer, you would be lucky to get $2 for every book sold. If you sold your royalty rights, they now get that $2 that was previously going to you. Prior to buying you out, they were taking the bulk of it anyhow. Simple $2 swing.

$2 book / $20k = 10,000 books just to BREAK EVEN! Yikes!