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Author Encourages Users to Pirate His Book
mariushm writes "Peter Cooper, the author of Beginning Ruby, breaks down how he gets paid for the book, including the advance and royalties, giving a nice clean explanation of how authors get paid for their books. He also describes the negotiations over the second edition of the book, in which he begged his publisher, Apress, to offer the ebook version for free, believing (strongly) that it would promote sales of the paper book. He even notes that the original version's ebook barely had noteworthy sales, so it seemed reasonable to offer up the ebook for free to drive more attention. No dice. Even though Apress has done that with other similar titles, it wouldn't agree. As he retains the copyright for the actual text, he encourages people to buy the book and create an online version of it without covers, contents table and indexes, promising not to enforce his copyright over the new work."
He most likely granted the publisher an exclusive license.
Was it an exclusive license for a couple years, or was it an exclusive license for the duration of the copyright?
IAAL. 17 U.S.C. 501(b) authorizes an exclusive licensee to sue for inringement. he has granted an exclusive license. thus he might not want to sue you, but his publisher can. Look through the Silvers v. Sony Pictures case -- unless his contract specifically deals with the right to sue for infringement....his publisher can.
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
Back when I wrote a book, three different publishers sent me contracts and the one from Apress was the most author-friendly by far. The royalty rates were higher, and the terms limiting the exclusive rights were written with authors in mind. All in all I found it to be an equitable arrangement - they were taking a risk by fronting the production costs and wanted a chance at profit. I was compensated more than fairly for the work I did.
The accounting never confused me. The percentage is paid on revenue (not profit), so there isn't any "hollywood accounting". There are several different kinds of sales, each with their own price, but it all adds up.
The "reserve" is really very simple. Distributors order more books than they might need from the publisher. These count as sales. But the publisher also will allow excess inventory to be returned. If the publisher paid out all royalties in full, then at the tail end of a book's life when returns exceeded sales, they would have to ask for money back from the author. It is also difficult to gauge the ups and downs of sales/returns (lots of sales in Q4 followed by returns in Q1). The reserve is a buffer against that. A sort of minimum balance that the publisher owes you but is escrowed against possible returns. Honestly, I never found it to be a problem.
As someone who has published three books through traditional publishers, and who has many colleagues who have also published, I can tell you that for technical books 5% is pretty much standard. Actually, it's 10% of the actual sale price to the publisher, which is usually half of the cover price. The other half is the markup that bookstores and other distributors get. In the technical realm, you would have to be a true superstar to get any terms better than that.
Also, the posters here who say that the author has given away exclusive rights are probably right: it is standard to do that. Publishers don't care if you retain the copyright because the contract is generally exclusive. Again, exceptions are sometimes made for "superstar" authors.
Because of these difficulties, I published my fourth book myself. See my thoughts on this at http://expresswaysolutions.com/valuedrivenit_com/wiki1/tiki-index.php?page=Living+Book+Concept