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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.)
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
...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.
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.