Slashdot Mirror
When Publishing Contracts Go Bad
drmofe writes: "It's not just recording artists who are getting screwed over royalty payments and publishing rights. MediaChannel has an op-ed piece asserting that standard publisher-author contracts are now so restrictive that they might in fact be "restraint of trade" under the US anti-trust laws."
There already is one. I use it on my work, "The Japanese Art of War." I think the real upshot of this story is that more and more people will consider using vanity press. It would be difficult to publish as many books that way, but if you are not going to get paid for it, then what is the problem? If you make more money selling 10,000 books via vanity than selling 1 million books via a publisher why wouldn't you accept the risks of a vanity pressing? At least you get total control of your book before, during and after publishing. Look at ID - those guys did great selling doom on their own. In the end they made more money selling via Activision -- but I think the deal they got there was much sweeter.
Are you aware of Tad Williams' Shadowmarch? (Also see slashdot story 1 and 2) :) :)
It's his latest fantasy story, but he's publishing it online - completely on his own, no publishers involved. ($18 for a subscription of a year (first 5 episodes can be read for free), for which instead of proprietary formats used by far too many epublishing projects, you get regular HTML files - it's so good to be able to grep through your local copies to quickly find other references to characters or events.)
And although he's making far less money with it than with regular books, from what I know the site should be paying for itself. Which makes this a very interesting development for all authors wanting to do without publishers. Once you're a big name author, it is possible.
And I'm thinking, the more projects like this that will actually be somewhat succesful, the sooner people will be willing to give less known authors a try as well. Every satisfying experience will create more demand for similar projects, and will make other authors consider doing this sort of thing as well. Who knows, we might just not be doomed to eBooks after all...
As you also mentioned, the almost immediate reader feedback on what he writes was one of the major reasons to start this project. And I as a reader just love seeing how remarks and suggestions made about previous episodes have a noticeable impact on new episodes.
Actually, they do have something -- a pool of people who may not be the "best", but who are willing to work cheaper and give up copyright.
Up until the late 90s, I was always able to politely ask, "Can I retain copyright, and can we strike the 'future works' clause?", and the publisher would kindly modify the contract. That has since changed.
The world is changing, and it isn't for the better...
All about me
Grievance & Contract Division
of the
National Writer's Union
Well worth it.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
GET AN AGENT.
Yes, the publisher will screw you if you sign that contract. That's because they don't seriously expect you to sign it; it's the first step in the negotiation process. If you get an agent, that agent will know all about this, and will get you a much fairer contract in practically no time. That's what the agent is for.
A good agent can get you a far better deal than you can. All professionals use agents. (Unless they're lawyers writing in their spare time... does happen.)
GET AN AGENT.
(Disclaimer: IAmNotAnAuthorIJustPretendToBeOne.SeeALicensedProf essionalIfSymptomsPersist.)
At times when engineers have more clout, they can do something about it (although I think most people just shrug and sign the forms without any negotiation, which could be part of the problem), but if you need the job, and they have it, you have to sign.
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
If the future book lends itself to self-publishing, why not?
The most successful self-publisher I know about is Edward Tufte. He has sold hundreds of thousands of copies of his three books. There is an interview in which he tells why and how he self-published.
An excerpt from that interview follows:
It turned out that all self-publishing required was a really good book designer, some money, and a large garage. For capital, I took out another mortgage on my house. This also concentrated my mind, in part because interest rates were 18% at the time. The bank officer said this was the second most unusual loan that she had ever made; first place belonged to a loan to a circus to buy an elephant!
My view on self-publishing was to go all out, to make the best and most elegant and wonderful book possible, without compromise. Otherwise, why do it? If I wanted to mess it up, I could have gone to a real publisher. And I also wanted a reasonable price so that the book would be widely accessible. It all worked out, dreamlike
Not all publishers screw authors. Yes, contracts tend to attempt to reduce the risk to the publisher, but that is because it is the publisher that books time at the press, pays the money to print, pays the distributors, gets the sales guys to convince every bookshop to own a copy, deals with translations, sorts out marketing deals when the books aren't selling as well as they'd like, etc. There are always many thousands of up front costs that have to be covered, aside from the staff wages and printing costs.
Most of the profits don't go to the publisher, but to the shops who sell them. True they have a risk in carrying all this combustible material that may not sell and has to be shifted if it doesn't, but publishers can get a relatively small share. Not all, but some. Find a relatively small publisher, like O'Reilly or Wrox for IT books, and negotiate a deal. If they really want to publish your work, then they will strike a deal.
Copyright was invented for writers of printed material, to protect both the author (and his family) and the original publisher. Make it work for you.
...for a long, long time. What seems to be changing is the insistence on not changing the terms.
As far back as 1975, Frank Herbert (a very successful author) and Ben Bova (a fairly ethical editor) were telling young authors never to sign the first contract a publisher offered you. The contracts always included all kinds of outrageous clauses. (Well, maybe not all kinds, since this article points out some new ones.) Herbert said that even with all his experience the publishers were still sending him exploitative contracts and his agent was still crossing out sentences and sending them back.
Bova claimed that the publishers knew the contracts were outrageous, fully expected them to be rewritten by the authors, and continued to send them out in hopes of achieving the indentured servitude of a major talent. Some first-time writers told them they were afraid they wouldn't get published if they crossed out things on the contract. But Bova maintained that the publishers would agree to any reasonable change because their editors would already have decided they wanted to publish the book.
This last seems to be the thing which is changing, according to the linked article. Which seems strange to me, given the fact that writers have never been in a position of greater power. It has never been easier to self-publish, let alone the possibilities of publishing your own work on the Internet.
In summary, when you get an outrageous offer:
1) Read the Writers Union advice linked in an earlier post, cross out the things you should cross out, and send it back.
2) If you're not comfortable doing this yourself (or if you're tired of doing it yourself every time you get an acceptance), get an agent. Again, this is explained in an earlier post.
3) If your publisher refuses to comply, get another publisher or self-publish.
Life is too short to allow yourself to be enslaved by immoral cretins.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
Pmancini said some interesting things, but he confuses self-publishing with vanity presses. There's a big difference between the two. In a nutshell, self-publishing is for smart people and vanity presses are for idiots.
With self-publishing, you pay for book design and printing, which sets you back less than two bucks a book. When you hire a vanity press to do that, they deliver the books to you for perhaps ten bucks apiece. At that price, you can't afford to give standard wholesale discounts, and you lose your shirt. Most vanity books end up in a big pile in the author's garage.
This obviously isn't an exhaustive summary of how self-publishing differs from vanity publishing, but I wanted to set the record straight since the term was misused in the above post. I'd suggest people read Dan Poynter's books if they are interested in self publishing.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
From the article:
:-)) and pump them for advice...
In the past, when an author signed a contract with a publisher, he or she could safely assume that the book under contract would be published. However, as a general rule, most publishers now insist upon a clause that relieves them of that obligation. More specifically, if a publisher chooses for any reason not to publish a given book, the author can keep the portion of the advance that has been paid. But that's all. And in some instances, if the author resells the book to another publisher, even that partial advance must be repaid. In other words, the standard publishing contract today is nothing more than a one-sided option to publish--obligating the author, but not the publisher.
Actually, a clause like that has always been there. The difference is that before it took a catastrophe of major proportion to make a publisher actually invoke the clause. Nowadays, when a publisher is in peril (or at least its profits are), it invokes those clauses much more easily. A favourite for fiction publishers is the due date clause. Most fiction authors are perennially late, and this clause (which has always existed) can allow you to can a substantial number of books for only half their advance.
Of course, publishers that play dirty games soon become publishers of last resort among those in the know. The name of the game here is to keep up on industry gossip! Join any author associations that you can and mingle with established authors.
Also note that the rules for bestselling authors are so different from beginning authors that there's not much to be learned from them. Find a midlist author (or three) who's work you like (most authors are very amenable to heartfelt complements
Favorite quote: Five percent of retail is fair if you abandon one erroneous assumption: that the publishing industry exists to compensate authors.
Same ideas as the linked article, just more in depth.
Just because it's two years old doesn't mean it's not interesting. The information in it is timely right now because of all the other intellectual properties debates going on
This isn't news to me. I'm a novellist looking to get a first novel published, and have been hearing the same things. Publishers have realised that they can sign up more books than they can actually sell, and then keep some of them as perpetual bankers to fill slack spots. It's not really anything sinister, it's just that commissioning editors are more keen to justify their existence by signing up books than marketing managers are to dilute their budget stuffing the channel with no-namers. It's simple supply and demand: book buyers make their decision mostly based on the author name, then in decreasing order of importance, the cover art, the title, the cover quotes (from authors in the same stable, naturally), then the cover blurb and finally the author bio. Consider the shelves groaning under the weight of Koontz, King, McCaffrey and Pratchett, and anything featuring Josh Kirbyesque artwork for that matter.
I have been advised that my options for a first novel are:
I'm going for the multi-book option. If publishers want to sell trilogies, a trilogy they shall get (with outlines for five more). I stopped book the first a little prematurely at 90,000 words, and am 30,000 into book the second. I've pretty much accepted that I have to write another 120,000 words or so before I can approach a publisher from anything like a position of strength. As I said, this isn't a problem for me, writing is a hobby at the moment, and the long term payoff will be better. But this would be impossible for someone wanting to write for a living.
This is quite apart from the problem of stopping your work from going straight off the top of the slush pile into the outgoing mail (or the round file). What's making that situation worse is that many publishers are looking for The Next Harry Potter, which means they're prepared to throw their slender resources at promoting a very few new "personality" authors in the hope of making it big, while treating the majority of their current stable as shelf padders and rejecting the rest of the new authors out of hand. Publishers don't accept books any more, they accept authors and series. A slush pile submission really has to be accompanied by a colourful and illustrated biography; you're not submitting a well written novel, but an attractive sales pitch for an ongoing cash cow.
Bear in mind that I'm still optimistic enough to believe that if I put in the work up front, I can be one of those lucky breakthrough authors. Get back to me in a few years, and I might have even more reservations about the whole process. ;-)
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I get the feeling he's pretty relaxed about sharing copies on a small scale though
:)
:) Two things I'd like to add though. :) who thinks the story has far more promise later on.
I wouldn't say that. Rather, as you also mention, he's simply realistic and knows that no matter how much he might hate it, it'll happen.
Though I don't actually think it happens all _that_ much. Perhaps a few copies between friends, but I've just searched in various places and haven't found any mention of the episodes so far. Then again, I probably don't have a clue where to look anyway.
I may even subscribe - think I'll read the free chapters first though.
Always a good idea.
1) Don't be put off immediately by the present tense used in the story. Yes, it makes for quite strange reading at first, but you'll grow used to it, and it adds a great sense of immediacy.
2) Something I hope you'll be willing to take my word for (and for that matter, I hope people here are willing to forgive me for going slightly offtopic like this), the first five episodes do not do justice to the story. They're great for introducing the world and the characters, and showing a bit of the magic in the world, but after having read only the first five episodes I was fearing the story itself would be somewhat mediocre and cliche. Nothing could be further from the truth, but that only becomes apparent after those first few episodes.
Luckily they should be able to convince most people to want to read further anyway, but if after having read them you're doubting whether or not to subscribe, and the quality of the story is a major part of that, then you know now there's at least one person
*ponders* Hmm, maybe I should write a full fledged review for Shadowmarch for use here at slashdot... 's kinda hard with the project still running though. Hmm, I'll have to think about that.
Some notes relative to the computer book publishing business:
First for you technical writing copyright hounds: It is usually very easy to retain copyright for your work - just ask for it. The shelf life of your content is so short all the publisher really cares about is who gets the licensing rights. Even if you assign copyright to the publisher you will more than likely get that back when your book is taken out of print.
Authors are not screwed on royalty.
If you've ever seen a fully loaded P&L for a book you'll realize that in the end the publisher and the author basically split the pie. And that's if the author is getting a 10% royalty. The difference is the author gets most of their money up front while the publisher waits 18-24 months to get theirs.
Why you might get half royalties for electronic content:
Every online site wants the material in a specific format. It costs money to get your content put into that format. There is no revenue going back to the publisher in that market. Publisher's do it now in hopes the market may one day take off. The Publisher is assuming virtually all of the risk in entering that market and deserves the lion's share of the paltry returns. In the future, as the market grows you'll see more equity.
Your mind looks a little cramped. Why don't you stretch it a little?