Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

An enterprising author offers up his book for auction on eBay. The auction, entitled “Offering the Rights to My Book” starts with a bid of $5,000.00 and free shipping.

The book has apparently already been sold to a publisher and is set to be published this coming month (September), but the rights (unclear what exactly those rights are) are for sale. According to the auction, there will be no loss of investment because “50,000 MINIMUM COPIES ARE SOLD ON ON AN AVERAGE OF ANY PUBLISHED BOOKS. IT’S MORE THAN ENOUGH TO COVER YOUR MONEY AND NOT TO MENTION YOUR PROFIT!”

Plus, by buying the rights, you’ll be engaging a “great humanitarian help” to the author’s family. “I CAN’T EFFORT TO PAY MY BILLS ANYMORE. I HAVE FIXED THE PRICE BASED ON THE AMOUNT TO COVER MY UNPAID BILLS, MORTGAGE (MY HOME WILL BE FORECLOSED ANYTIME) AND ENOUGH TO SURVIVE TILL END OCTOBER 2008. ”

The Synopsis is included:

What does a married man do when he is obsessed and seduced by another woman? This obsession and seduction cost the man’s normal life, his business and …

GalleyCat had an interesting article regarding a contretemps involving author Michael Cisco and his publisher Prime Books. Prime Books is a small print publisher of science fiction,fantasy and horror fiction. Cisco complained that he hadn’t received any royalties from his last book. He determined from watching the traffic on Amazon that he must have sold at least 500 books through Amazon. He also spoke with other Prime authors and they, too, had received delays in payments and at least one author was waiting for money she was owed on original cover art. He asserted that Prime wasn’t following through on marketing commitments and promotion.

Prime executive editor, when contacted by GalleyCat, acknowledged that they need to improve communications with their authors but that his non payment of royalties was accurate. Galley Cat noted that Cisco’s estimate of books sold was “grossly inflated.”

GalleyCat noted that Cisco’s comments sounded “bitter rather than older-but-wiser.”

Given the debacles of epress and small print publishing that we have seen in the romance community, the failure to pay royalties, the lack of communication by a publisher, the failure to follow through on promises to promote and/or market a book …

I received two publisher alerts and want to share them with the community. One relates to a Yaoi publisher closing shop and the second is Tokyo Pop’s Manga Pilot draconian contract.

Iris Print:

Iris Print is a Yaoi publisher who apparently closed up shop and failed to tell its authors. Giapet.Net first reported this on May 17:
Something I didn’t mention in my Yaoi Press report was that Yamila Abraham, when asked about publishing yaoi novels as well as comics, said that it tends not to work very well, and pointed to Iris Print as an example– saying that the company has actually closed up shop.
Emails to the owner of Iris Print have seemingly gone unanswered. From an Iris Print author:
Well isn’t that swell? Iris Print closes up shop and doesn’t bother to tell the creators they have under contract. Nice. So what about our books? What about our titles? :/ I don’t know what to say about this, except that I’m truly disappointed. I’m beyond pissed; I wonder though, where is Amazon getting their re-stock if Iris is out of business? What about all those people who paid pre-orders for Queer Magic? It would’ve been nice to know …

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.

Sometimes I’ll blog about information that seems to be directed straight at writers and I wonder if some readers think to themselves, but this isn’t for us. It doesn’t affect us. Aren’t you guys a readers’ blog? We are, but sometimes industry changes have a great affect on we, the readers.

Simon & Schuster’s announcement of its contractual changes is an example of that. Last week, it was discovered that Simon & Schuster intended to include language in its contracts that would essentially eliminate any reversion of rights. What does reversion of rights mean? A little copyright lesson. Stay with me. It’s not that boring, I promise.

When an artist creates a work of art, this art has a copyright. The copyright is a form of protection that is granted by the U.S. Congress. Essentially, the writer of a book has the right to

reproduce the work (make a copy)
prepare derivative works (i.e., a series of books like the Black Dagger Brotherhood series or Eve Dallas series)
distribute copies to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, by rental, lease or lending; …