Aug 26 2008
Kassia Krozser’s Booksquare Tells a Cautionary Tale About EPublishing
Kassia Krozser of Booksquare examines Terry Goodkind’s ebook deal with Rosetta Books. Goodkind owned his ebook rights and instead of going e with Tor, his print publisher and one that doesn’t have an ebook presence, Goodkind went to Rosetta Books because Rosetta offered better terms. Obviously Goodkind is in a better position than many authors to negotiate his rights separately but wouldn’t it make sense to sell your ebook rights to say, Samhain, and get 35% of the e royalties?
What was even more interesting, though, is that Krozser showed how dangerous it is for authors who do not have an ebook version of their books. The refusal of an author to be in eformat doesn’t stop the eformats from being readily available.
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Aug 27, 2008 @ 06:31:30
Got a Failed to Connect to Server error on the links even when I cut and pasted the url from Google.
I meant the Booksquare story links not the ones to Google.
Aug 27, 2008 @ 13:09:24
The linkages worked for me, DS.
I notice that Goodkind’s deal is for the Kindle only, even though his work is already freely available because of cyberpiracy and his mass market paperback books can be bought for a penny. Which is undoubtedly why Goodkind is now going to legitimate edistribution – he’s got nothing to lose; lots of people are reading his books but it doesn’t translate into making him money. And Amazon gets yet another exclusive offer to incite Kindle sales.
Since you can now buy some of the Harry Potter books (used) for a penny, I’m guessing it won’t be long before J.K Rowling also sees the light.
As for the royalty rate – maybe it’s even higher than 35%?
Aug 27, 2008 @ 18:37:13
Er, has he been to http://www.tor.com recently? Y’know, the publisher that’s been splashing out by releasing ebook versions of all its top hits for the past several months preceding the launch of a social network/blog/publisher mash-up site? Methinks it didn’t have anything to do with “ebook presence” but, instead, the moolah. After years of resisting, he’s finally cottoned on to the fact that ebooks make money too. (I’m with you on Rowling too, Hortense.)