Two weeks ago I blogged about how Simon & Schuster was treating authors like abusive husbands: giving authors poor treatment but leaving them too broken to actually leave. Now it appears that S&S is going to kiss and makeup. The publishers are all grumbling at S&S for giving in so soon while bottles of champagne are being sprayed around the offices of the Author’s Guild like the locker room of a division champion. (Obviously this is my interpretation of what is happening and given that I am blogging at 12:10 am, you’ll have to forgive my departure from lucidity).
Calling the rights grab attempt as an “early miscommunication”, Simon & Schuster will now negotiate a “revenue-based” threshold to determine the book’s “in print” status. Somehow I still think that the midlist authors are going to get screwed here, but I guess if the author doesn’t have a lawyer or agent, it’s on them.
Via Publisher’s Weekly and Sandra Schwab for bringing it to my attention.
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I read this yesterday, and wasn’t surprised at the turnaround. With the Author’s Guild’s firm opposition to the ridiculous contractual terms, I think they would have found it difficult to get their big named authors to sign up to the marriage from hell.
Good news for authors.
Isn’t if funny that whenever a big company comes up with a sucky idea, that meets with staunch opposition, they call it ‘miscommunication’, why can’t they just admit that they f*cked up, and be done with it?
Indeed, they accidentally said exactly what they meant… you don’t ‘whoopise’ a legal contract.