The fact is that publication in a well-respected magazine, with high circulation, and a low acceptance to submission ratio does give people some tangible evidence of the quality of your work as judged by “the industry”. That “cachet” is probably worth $$. Discounting all those knitters who just want free patterns, the value of a pattern from an unknown designer who self-publishes is probably lower than from a known designer whose work (either this pattern or previous work) has been accepted for publication in a reputable magazine. There are, of course, other ways to build a reputation. But that fact shouldn’t be ignored. (not that you are)

Just think, for a book containing about 70 of my concepts, condensed down to 30 designs, of which I would have to knit multiple copies myself (publishers do not pay for knitters) I could get a fee of about £3k which would cover at least 18mths work of knitting designing, writing patterns and writing copy.

Compare that with say your pattern Rogue, 500 people at least have knitted that design up on Ravelry (more who accessed it from you directly) and you charge $6, so 500 x 6 = $3000 which is about the average amount you can get for a whole book.

I would recommend doing what Woolly Wormhead has done with her book Going Straight, and that is to self publish on Lulu, let the interest trickle in and gather momentum.

I am disabled, and knit very very slowly, and I do design for books and mags but have decided I will knit what I want to, and if it makes a successful pattern all well and good, but I will no longer just be a slave to the industry!

Re blogging and knitting, I have been doing this sort of thing and had Erssie Knits going since about mid 90′s. but rarely could I find enough online to satisfy my needs. I knitted a lot of garments then.

Now, I knit much less, and spend HOURS on line looking at blogs, and Ravelry and answering queries related to my patterns, of which I seem to be getting close to about 80 emails a day.

Your article is a great real world primer on business realities and practice. Thanks so much!

Marnie, this almost made me drop the computer: “Let‚Äôs just say that at one time, I was designing for someone who decided I wasn‚Äôt producing enough patterns fast enough so they wanted to hold my credit card number and charge me if I didn‚Äôt turn around a pattern in time.”

?!?!??!!?!?!?!?!?!?? You are seriously kidding us, right?

I was happy to have negotiated a clause into the designer contract for my most recent book whereby the designers can self-publish their patterns 6 months after the book’s publication and in essence get paid twice. Would I have had the negotiating power to do that if I hadn’t already published a few books? I don’t know, but it felt great to get that for them. 6 months after the book’s out, it’ll be selling used for the price of a single pattern on Amazon anyway, so why not?

Merrily Parker, Knitwear designer

I’ve been a professional writer of one stripe or another for the past sixteen years. In that time, I have several times entered into contract negotiations. Sometimes with publishers I was warned “wouldn’t budge an inch.” Each and every time I was treated with professionalism, and got most–if not all–of my changes through. It can be gut-wrenching for an author who desperately wants to see their work in print. But to the publisher, contract negotiations are just part of a day’s work.

As long as you approach things in a spirit of professional cooperation, you have nothing to lose by asking for changes. You may not get them, and then you have a decision to make. But until you ask, you don’t have all the information about what’s possible.

And in the long run, if many writers end up asking for the same changes, and walking away if they don’t get them, the publisher will have to rethink that portion of the contract. So you’re asking not only for yourself, but for authors/designers everywhere.

At least, that’s how I think about it.

Syne