My first book turns two today.

I am so incredibly proud of the book that Lyndsey and I wrote together. The story of the National Women's Football League feels like one of those once-in-a-career kind of stories, the kind of thing I may never stumble upon again. It is a story that I will forever be grateful that I had the opportunity to tell.

And yet, there remain disappointments for me about the publishing process. I don't think that, as authors, we talk as openly about our disappointments as maybe we should. But I think it's important that we do.

First, let's talk numbers.

I want to provide some transparency around how HAIL MARY did, sales-wise (obviously the book will continue to sell, but barring getting a TV or movie deal, it's unlikely to see any significant boosts, especially since we are not getting a paperback, which we'll get into later). I'll also give a peek at the monetary reality of writing a book because I don't think most people realize how little money there is in book-writing for the majority authors.

We got a $45,000 advance for HAIL MARY, which was with Bold Type Books, an imprint of Hachette. This means we were with a big five publisher. Minus our agent's 15% and divided in half because I had a co-author, my advance was $19,125.

That $19,125 was paid in 3 payments over two years.
-$22,000 on signing (I got $9,350) in November 2019
-$17,000 on manuscript acceptance (I got $7,225) in March 2021
-$6,000 on publication (I got $2,550) in November 2021

I also had to pay taxes on that $19,125—which is like 15-20%—and brings me closer to about $16,250ish for take-home for the book. Again, that's over two years, meaning I brought home just over $8,000 per year while writing the manuscript. This meant that I couldn't afford to just focus on the book project. I had to continue freelancing and had to juggle the book project with ongoing pitches and reporting and writing for other pieces. It was a lot, and if I'm being completely honest, I didn't get to put the kind of focus and attention on the book that I wish I could have.

I'm a perfectionist and harder on myself than anyone else will ever be, but it sucks to look at my book and see places I would have probed more deeply if I'd had the bandwidth to do so.

OK, but what about sales numbers?

As of today, two years from publication, we have sold 8,168 hardcover copies. The vast, vast majority of those were in the first three months after publication and that number continues to go down as stores return unsold inventory.

In January 2022, we went into a second printing: the first printing was 9,000 copies and the second was 1,800. We likely will not earn out our advance, as most books don't. This means the chances of us ever getting royalties are slim to none.

Despite going into a second printing, we did not get a paperback.

What? No paperback?

I'll be honest that I was naive and really thought that a paperback would be a guarantee. To be fair to me, I had good reason to think that. For a long time, paperbacks were pretty much a given. And when our book went into a second printing, I assumed it sealed the deal. But publishing has been hit really hard by the pandemic and the way things are done has changed a lot. One of the ways it has changed is that many publishers are much choosier about which books get paperback editions (Jeanna Kadlec recently wrote about this, too).

Not getting a paperback for HAIL MARY was devastating for a variety of reasons. For one, a paperback is considered like a second chance for a book to find its audience. It's back in the press, you do book events again, and it's available at a lower price point that the hardback, which hopefully translates into more sales.

I feel like we missed a lot of marketing opportunities with HAIL MARY's publication, especially because the book was marketed solely as a sports book. But I don't think that's where HAIL MARY's core audience lies. I think not capitalizing on the book as a women's history and/or queer history book really limited its ability to reach the kinds of people who would want to read it.

But there's an even bigger reason we were hoping for a paperback: the ability to update the text. When our book was published, new sources came out of the woodwork. New information was provided that filled some of the holes in our reporting. For example, in the book we say we don't know who was around the table for the 1974 meeting in Los Angeles that resulted in the establishment of the NWFL. But during the fact checking process we connected with a source who had all the notes and documents from that meeting—now we do have those names.

We mention not knowing whether the Philadelphia Queen Bees ever took the field and we can now confirm that they played at least two games—one against the Columbus Pacesetters and one against the Detroit Demons. We also got our hands on a Queen Bees roster (which would allow us to try to track down players). Here is a photo from the game between the Queen Bees and the Demons on July 13, 1977.

We have a ton of new photos and rosters from the Demons. More players have reached out to me. Perhaps most importantly, we can now confirm two trans players in the league—one transmasculine person who transitioned after playing for the New York Fillies in the early 1970s (in a team that was part of the pre-cursor to the NWFL) and a trans woman who played with the Houston Herricanes.

And the story of the Columbus Pacesetters, who formed a corporation to purchase their team from the men who owned them, didn't make it into the hardcover edition of HAIL MARY. We found these sources during the fact checking process, too late for them to be added to the book but in time for their story to be run as bonus content at Sports Illustrated. While I'm so excited they got that coverage, I wish their story could be more fully fleshed out in a book about the league, too.

So what now?

I've been unsure what to do with the bits of reporting and stories I've gathered since HAIL MARY published. Knowing that we won't get to put them into an updated paperback edition of the book makes me incredibly sad. None of it seems sprawling or interesting enough for standalone features to be written. So it all lives in my head, in files on my computer, and in the what-ifs and if-onlys I play in my head.

We haven't gotten very far in our attempts to have the women and the league recognized by the Pro Football Hall of Fame. We haven't had much success getting the NFL to highlight the league. We haven't had anyone bite in terms of optioning the rights to the book, which I think is a massive missed opportunity.

Thank you to every person who has read, recommended, or purchased HAIL MARY. I still believe it is an incredibly important book and I'm so happy it exists.

Happy birthday to my Scorpio stellium baby.