by PunditGuy | May 29, 2007 | Industry |
That’s what National Writers Union president Jerry Colby is calling the move by Simon & Schuster to change their standard contract language to retain rights to a book even if it is stored only as an electronic file. For authors, this is a REALLY BIG DEAL.
“Simon & Schuster is violating the principle that a publisher should retain rights to a book only if it continues to invest significantly in the work,” said NWU president Jerry Colby. “This move is a naked power grab.” S&S has argued that with improvements in print-on-demand technology it has the ability to keep an author’s book available for sale over the term of the license. That is not a good enough reason to keep the rights, the NWU believes. “It costs virtually nothing to keep an electronic file on a computer waiting for the occasional customer,” Colby said. “It does not represent a significant investment and certainly should not be an excuse for tying up rights.” If POD is the only feasible way to keep some older titles available, Colby said, those rights should be controlled by the author, not the publisher.
The real beef is the accurate definition of the term “in print”. Normally that means a book in paper format available for purchase. In the industry it also means a book that sells fairly well and gets attention from the publisher. If there are little or no sales, the publisher forgets about the title and at that point a contract clause usually goes into effect which reverts the copyright back to the author. Then they’re free to do what they want with the title. They can revise it and solicit a new publisher. They can self publish. They can put it on the web for sale, or whatever.
With this contract change, S&S seems to be saying, “that was then, this is now”. They have a point. The market has changed. Print on demand is a real option today. Publishers can make real money in electronic publishing. Technology makes it easy to keep hundreds of thousands of books on a computer hard disk. S&S won’t win any awards for author relations, but from a business perspective, it makes sense to keep rights as long as possible even if the book doesn’t really look like a traditional book anymore.
By the way, this isn’t a new tactic. I know a publisher who puts ‘out of print’ books into an OSI category – “out of stock indefinitely”. By doing this they avoid their own contract reversion clause. More and more, publishers will do things like this to hold on to rights longer. After all, what’s a publisher without rights?
Authors will need to get smarter going into their relationship with the publisher. Publishers won’t settle with print only rights today. Authors will have to weigh the costs of going with a publisher or going it alone. The good news is, thanks to technology, the latter isn’t out of the question.
by PunditGuy | May 8, 2007 | General |
I’m not fully awakening this blog just yet, but I thought it was worth noting that sometime over the past couple of weeks this place welcomed its 1 millionth visitor. My site meter tells me that as of today, 1,001,960 individuals have been here.
That’s cool.
Thanks.
Now go back to sleep.
Tags: Site+Meter, 1+Million
by PunditGuy | May 8, 2007 | Technology |
There are thousands of customers who own a copy of the software produced by my company. Each one of them have individual personal tastes when it comes to the books they use. So, even though they typically receive more than 200 titles in the box they buy, rarely are they satisfied with the selection. So what do they do? They call us or email us with book suggestions. Imagine the hundreds of wish lists we receive each week! It can be difficult to manage, but worth it in the end as we watch customers move from being one time only purchasers to committed owners of a growing personalized library.
But how to we pick which books we develop, market and sell? It’s not really all that complex.
First, when it comes to our main software packages, we aim to build a “standard” biblical reference library. Oops, did I say standard? Yes, I know, a standard library is in the eye of the beholder. But we’ve had years of experience with books and we know that to have a well rounded library you have to have the basics covered. That means multiple Bible translations, Bible dictionaries, commentaries, theologies, devotionals, Bible studies, sermon illustrations, etc. You get the idea.
So, back to the question of which books make it in the box and which don’t? It comes down to two things – coverage area and royalty costs. First, we look at the categories covered in the product and we make sure we have enough books to fill each one. We try whenever possible to have the best book in its category, but in some cases we haven’t been able to acquire a license from the book publisher for the “top” book. That’s OK, we’ll take the second or third best book in the bunch. We never stop working to acquire licenses to books so it’s likely that eventually, we’ll gain access to the best book and we’ll put it in the product.
Next thing we look at is royalty costs. If you’re already a customer it’s likely you started with one of the big 200+ book products. If you were to purchase each of those books individually you know you’d spend a whole lot more than you did when you bought the product from us. We’re able to provide a huge discount on books in the 200+ box because of the favorable royalty terms we’ve been able to negotiate. If a book isn’t in a 200+ book box, it’s probably because the royalty doesn’t allow it. Sure, there are other issues as well…but in a nutshell, that’s mostly it.
More on licensing and book choosing later in the week.
