Legends of the Leaf: an update
Legends of the Leaf’s stunning illustrations by Helen Entwisle
It’s just shy of two years since my book Legends of the Leaf was published, and it’s time for an update. You may have heard recently that the publisher of my book, Unbound, has gone into administration. The writers - the people supposed to be at the very centre of Unbound’s mission - are still owed hundreds or even thousands in unpaid royalties. Sorry this is rather long, but I want to give a full explanation of what has happened to my book - the good and the bad. It’s important to be transparent about this because the world of publishing is very opaque and confusing for writers and maybe this will help someone else.
I decided to publish my book on houseplants - my passion project, a book I had had in my head for some time and wanted to pour my heart and soul into - with Unbound because I genuinely believed in their unique publishing model: using crowdfunding to raise the necessary funds, followed by the ‘traditional’ method of publishing a book, involving editors and designers helping the writer to bring the book to fruition and distributing it through the conventional routes. I’d seen other garden writers such as Lia Leendertz and Alys Fowler use Unbound to publish books, and it seemed like a good fit for me and for Legends of the Leaf.
Me at the launch party in April 2023 at the wonderful N1 Garden Centre. Yep, I paid for those publicity materials out of my own pocket.
I was no stranger to crowdfunding, having used this model to support my podcast On The Ledge via Patreon, and liked the idea of getting a greater share of the royalties. The sum Unbound determined I had to raise was £22,900, which would cover the entire costs of producing the book, from printing to publicity.
The bulk of the promotional work fell to me: something Unbound told me from the beginning and I accepted. I called upon the people who were supported my podcast and believed in me, and they delivered in spades. I made the financial target and more. After reaching my goal, the book was effectively greenlit, so I spent months researching and writing the manuscript, weeks more liaising with the book’s brilliant illustrator, Helen Entwisle and looking at copy edits and proofs. I turned down a lot of freelance writing work to focus on this project, stopped making my podcast On The Ledge for periods, leading to a further drop in income.
Two years on, I want to be completely honest about what I’ve actually been paid for this book. I had to wait for my first payment until September 2024, because there was no advance when you publish with Unbound: a long time to wait when you started work on the project in 2020. Legends of the Leaf’s crowdfunder raised more than £35,679 in supporter pledges, which after ‘platform costs’ (honestly I don’t really know what that means) and payment processing fees was reduced to £29,457.
According to Unbound, my total royalties from publication date to September 2024 amounted to £2910.91, of which I am still owed £528.91, a sum owed from the September 2024 royalty statement which came as Unbound’s financial difficulties began to worsen, meaning they felt unable to pay their authors what they were owed and entitled to. It’s possible I am owed more money than this for the sales from September 2024 to date, but I have not been provided with any information from Unbound on whether this is the case.
It is unforgiveable to me that Unbound got itself in such a financial hole that it couldn’t afford to pay its authors - the very people it claimed to champion - the royalties they were owed. I was owed a few hundred quid, which is far from ideal, but other authors are still owed thousands. Given Unbound’s lack of payment meant they were in breach of our contract, earlier this month I was able to get my full rights back, plus the book’s design files as a courtesy, plus free 30 copies of the unsold copies of the book. Will I ever get my £500-odd I am owed? Boundless, the company that has been set up to take over from Unbound, says I will, but I am not holding my breath. They have said they will not be refunding people who have pledged for books that will not now be published.
The money is one aspect of the story, but almost as bad for me was the way that the book was not given a fair chance by Unbound. The book didn’t sell particularly well: the print run was 2650 (including copies people bought as crowdfunder pledges) and when the rights came back to me earlier this month, Unbound still held 455 copies. Here are what I see as some of the reasons why that was the case.
- I told Unbound from our very first meeting that the book needed to be published in the US, as the majority of my audience was there. That didn’t happen, for reasons that were not fully explained to me other than they had chosen not to distribute it in the US. It missed out on the majority of my audience as a result.
- The week of publication, Unbound didn’t do a single social media post about Legends of the Leaf. Nothing. I organised and paid for my own launch party with the generous support of the wonderful N1 Garden Centre and Paul Holt but no one from Unbound bothered to show up.
- So poor was the publisher’s marketing of the book that I spent my own money on advertising, buying social media ads to try to promote it myself.
- The book ended up in completely the wrong category on Amazon which, rightly or wrongly is where so many people buy their books from. It was in the gardening category herbs - not houseplants. I told Unbound repeatedly it was in the wrong category and they just said there was nothing they could do.
- All the staff I worked with in terms of commissioning, editing and so on left at some point during the process of crowdfunding through to publication, leaving me with no one to go to with queries. I understand that churn of staff is high in the publishing industry, and this proved true with Unbound.
The positives of working with Unbound? There were some! I got a degree of editorial control that I understand would be unusual in most other book publishing scenarios; I chose my own illustrator, the absolutely brilliant Helen Entwisle who was a delight to work with; I wrote the book exactly as I wanted it, and got the cover design I wanted too. I am so glad that Legends of the Leaf made it into print, but I am so sad that, in my view anyway, it was never allowed to reach its true potential, or reach an audience outside the UK.
I don’t claim to understand the ins and outs or what went wrong at Unbound, but I cannot get my head around how a company that is based on the model of raising the money for the entire costs of making a book before it gets the green light could possibly get itself in such a dire financial situation. I can only presume that creators I admire such as John Finnemore and Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeeves) are owed money too for their Unbound books, but as far as I know they have remained silent. I know author Tom Cox has spoken out about the thousands he is owed.
I am beyond disappointed that my book wasn’t given the treatment I believe it deserved, and heartbroken for all the other authors who are owed large amounts, or have books that will now never be published by Unbound despite having gone through the hard yards of crowdfunding.
Lots of people I have spoken to about my experiences with Legends of the Leaf cannot quite believe how poorly paid book authorship generally is as a profession, but it’s true - for every JK Rowling or Richard Osman, there are thousands of professional authors who are paid paltry sums for their work. Here are the facts. In 2022 ALCS issued a report based on a survey of authors’ earnings which found that the median salary was just £7,000, a drop of 33.2% from 2006 survey, or 60.2% when adjusted for inflation (read about it here). It hasn’t put me off writing books, however - I have written another with a conventional publisher which comes out later this year and this has been a very different and far more positive experience.
And what of Legends of the Leaf? Now I have the rights back, I have a few options, from doing nothing more with it, to finder a new publisher, to self publishing. I got the audiobook rights back some time ago and have published an audiobook version under my own steam. If you want to get your hands on a copy I would act now - copies still seem to be available from several online retailers but they will soon disappear as the book is remaindered.
Massive thanks to everyone who supported Legends of the Leaf in myriad ways - I hope you enjoyed reading what I created. You are amazing. I am proud of Legends of the Leaf and the work I did, and must give huge thanks to brilliant illustrator Helen Entwisle - working with you was, as I have said above, one of the highlights of the book!±