Incarcerated Interest:
The Real Thing About My Experience
Managing An Author Behind Bars
Part 2 of 3

by Jarold Imes
November 2007

Incarcerated Interest Pt. 1
Incarcerated Interest Pt. 3

Myth #2: I stole Victor’s money. If that ain’t the craziest thing… anyway, the short answer to that is HELL NO I didn’t steal that man’s money! I put that here because there are so many versions of how “I” or “Victor’s People” stole his money. He’s told other authors one thing and fans have been told by other “fans” and people “who pretend to be fans” something completely different.

Forgive me current and past TCP authors for putting the family business out there but let’s get this part straight: Everybody knows that by Summer 2005, Triple Crown had a damn good batting average when it came to placing books they published on the Essence Bestselling List. In fact at that time, they had more books make the list than not. Vickie stated in several publications like the one in the Inc.com issue that was published May 2006 (http://www.inc.com/magazine/20060501/qa-stringer_pagen_2.html) that Triple Crown presales 10,000 units of each title that is published and it had been noted that many of Triple Crown’s most popular titles (like Gangsta by K’Wan and A Hustler’s Wife by Nikki Turner) had sales in excess of 50,000 units. In that very issue, she also states that she pays an advance between $5,000 and $25,000 and offers royalty of 10% of the retail price, which is a fair offer for a publisher of its size and its previous sales record in comparison to authors already signed and the books published. In their case, it helps that they have fans that specifically look for the three crowns stacked high and the name Triple Crown Publications on the top of the book. That is the machine Victor has been accustomed to.

So let’s get to the money. According to Stinger & McPherson (pg. 13) it cost Vickie approximately $2900 to print 1500 copies of a 288 page book called Let That Be the Reason. That means the printing cost at that time is about $1.94 a book. Now take this into consideration: the more units of a book you print, the less it cost to print each unit. If you are supposed to charge eight times the production cost of each book (Stringer & McPherson pg. 44), then a book that you retail for $15 should cost you less than $1.88 to produce. If I had just the money from his advance, I could have printed 15,000 books (minimum), paid MarionDesigns.com (who did his previous book covers) to design the cover (which I would do with the third printing of Unique’s Ending), paid his editor and his typist, print some flyers, ship most of those books to stores and bought some advertising where I saw fit (or could afford after I took care of the necessities). And because the minimum amount of revenue (Stringer & McPherson pg. 70) I could have gotten off of each book would have been $5.25 (which is 35% of the retail price)… WHY WOULD I NOT DO THAT?!  I mean, let’s be honest… I’m taking a high quality and highly anticipated title and one of Triple Crown’s authors. And who didn’t want one then?  I’m talking about an author that can sell at least 10,000 units in a year (we’ll say 2006 was a slow year) and whether I want to admit it or not, using just the basic formula published in Stringer & McPherson’s book, Unique’s Ending could have had a minimum revenue of $52,500. We’re not including the faithful fans who buy every book directly from Triple Crown that would have (and did) buy this title from me; we’re not talking about what I did do out of the trunk of my car or any other ways I could have charged $15 per book and made major profits.

So hopefully, you know this means I did not have the money to print even 1500, much less the 15,000 I would have printed. I was supposed to have that money but somebody got greedy before it got to me. I take what I said in the past two paragraphs and ask the person who did this thing every chance I get, why? That’s my only question for them. Why? Especially when they would have given more than what was stolen to begin with…

Fortunately, one of the things that going to A&T or any HBCU teaches you how to do is build something on a shoestring budget. Up until recently, a significant number of HBCU and smaller colleges had to learn how to do things without having access to the latest technology. I did it when printing Never Too Much, The Rhyme, The Story N Me, Hold On Be Strong, and four other books. I had no choice but to depend on my Aggies and Rams (WSSU alumni) friends and fam to pull together and make something out of the very little I had. Use of a good graphics program to create a non-traditional but decent cover of Unique’s Ending… check. Access to a halfway decent editor and a review team… check.  My trust in my top four wholesalers and distributors… check, check, CHECK!

In spite of it all, I did okay, although in 2006, we all ran into a company or book store that could not or just outright refused to pay for the books they sold. I don’t feel so bad because I know I wasn’t the only one… enough of us, including some of the majors had the same exact problem. It’s not uncommon to lose money from non payment of books; nor is it uncommon to “give away” a few hundred books to those helping us sell thousands more; then there are the books set aside for the author and what have you. The issue is that because we were much smaller than our strategic partners and competitors, those losses affected us more than they would a company the size of Urban Entertainment, Triple Crown or Life Changing Books.

When an author is incarcerated, they have to depend on whoever is willing to stay in their corner. And according to those who know the situation closely, I did a damn good job with what I had to work with. Although we may not have been under the Triple Crown banner, folks were buying books because they were anticipating a project from Victor L. Martin… not because of who the books were published by. The original Unique’s Ending had so many characteristics of what made a great book stand out in spite of the fact that the book was out of the norm for a street novel and I’m proud of that.

However, what did me in was not the lack of money or the fact that I wouldn’t take direction from Victor. First of all, Vic Mar Publications has always been and was mostly my company up until December 2006. When news broke out that I would be handling Unique’s Ending, immediately the hate started sitting in. Some of his fans were outraged that I would have the nerve to put my hands on one of his books. I was not hood enough for some of the fans. And then to top it off, I was even called (on somebody’s message board) a “Bama from North Carolina who doesn’t know shit.”

Some of Victor’s “fans” would write him with concerns about the well being of the title. Victor in turn would allow some of them to “check on me”… like I was somebody’s bitch or something. He’d tell them when to expect an update on the website (that I bought and paid for prior to agreeing to work with him just so he could have a fan site) and if I was a day late, they were there with the letters saying, “Jae ain’t did this…” or “Jae ain’t doing that…”. So, many times I’ve had to set a few of them, who weren’t doing anything but trying to cause dissention between the two of us straight about who exactly was running Vic Mar. Yes, Victor had more say on this project this time around than he ever had with Triple Crown as well as an investment, but his dollars weren’t the only one’s working to try to make this book a success. I financially contributed significantly to the print run and production of Unique’s Ending.

There were people who felt like they had something financially to gain from Victor being in print. My question is where were these people when me and my flesh and blood were staying up packaging individual books; calling distributors to verify orders; calling folks who needed to pay us (Victor and me) our money? Hell, it would have been nice not to be the only person at the Vic Mar table at different book signings… I mean, when others came to Winston-Salem (where Vic Mar was based) or Charlotte, it was always just me. Other authors and publishers had entourages and runners and I didn’t have any of that. It was me holding it down.

Victor and I had disagreements about how to do things as any person working together on a project would. We are two different people… I brought the book smart and prior experience as a book store manager and self-publisher to the table… he brought the book and the respectable track record. There were some decisions that I made that were wrong—there were suggestions he made that I disagreed with, however allowed to be implemented. I always had the upper hand because I was the one the distributors dealt with; I was the one who contacted Triple Crown when I was his manager or dealt with his lawyers (I made sure they were paid during my term with him); I put the books on the market. I could have chosen to take what little money was given to me to help operate the company and did my thing. Lord knows I would have been on a better path financially if I did that or I could have taken that formula and did it for my own titles… but I didn’t… I saw the picture I painted a few paragraphs ago about building a literary house in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Hell, the Tre-4 as we affectionately call the city from time to time is supposed to be THE arts area of the state since the School of the Arts (that Jada Pinkett Smith attended) and world renowned poet Maya Angelou are based here.

Eventually, the people who were persistent in ending my working relationship with him would get the best of the situation and out of the blue, I was accused of stealing money from the company. At first I thought, “He can’t be serious?” Why would I steal money from a company that was helping put food on the table and keep my dream coming true. Apparently some “fan” or whoever wrote Victor a convincing letter indicating that they could prove that I was taking money out of the company. I’ll tell you what… we can do this Sean “Diddy” Combs style cause I have no problem walking into any lawyer’s office or any publishing executive’s office and showing the financial records for Vic Mar. The bank statements and the products of what I purchased with the money from Vic Mar (which was his and mine by the way) are proof that I did not take money out of the company and spend it on myself. I have already done that with those close to helping Victor now.

Jarold Imes is a contributing writer for The Urban Book Source and author of Hold on Be Strong; he is the creator of online soap opera: Hold on Be Strong (www.holdonbestrong.com), send emails to:jaroldimes@yahoo.com

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