Simon & Schuster has sent out an amendment to authors which purports to add a provision setting the standard royalty rate at 15% of the catalog retail price for e-books. The Author’s Guild sent out an alert to instruct authors of three things:
members should discuss the amendment with their attorney or agent; warns that, [...]

Coming on the heels of the Samhain announcement on Monday of the joint venture with Kensington that will see a Samhain imprint as part of the Kensington line, is the news that Ellora’s Cave will be upping the number of books to be published and distributed through Simon & Schuster.
Pocket Books began releasing Ellora’s Cave [...]

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 [...]

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 & [...]

Just as a prefatory matter, I want to explain a bit about copyright law and how that works in relation to authors. Authors create a unique work to which they own a copyright. That copyright gives them the right to copy and distribute that work. Authors sell that right of copying and [...]

Atria, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, partnered with Ritz Carlton to provide a free collection of short stories by authors like Jodi Picoult, Susan Isaacs, and John Connolly in Turndown Tales. This paperback will be given free as part of its turndown service.
Turndown service is usually performed in the early evening [...]

Simon & Schuster will be putting up a channel on YouTube.com and other video sharing sites called Bookvideos.tv. The channel will feature videos of authors and their books and will be approximately 2 minutes long.
I think its smart of S&S to use existing structure such as YouTube to carry their message instead [...]

The e-backlist has been a long time in coming. Readers, particularly romance readers, are big glommers and they often are searching for the one book their reading buddy says is a must find. Unfortunately, these books are often difficult to find and very expensive. Publishers are being more responsive by making backlist titles [...]

Simon&Schuster and Harlequin are experimenting with an early release digital program whereby readers can buy the ebook version of a print book a month in advance. What’s more is that these ebooks are often sold at a discount. Simon & Schuster sells its ebooks at 35% off the cover price making regular mass [...]

Simon & Schuster had an increase of 6% in total revenue although profits were hampered by teh AMS bankruptcy. S&S decided to absorb the AMS bankrupcty in 2006 and sums recovered from the bankruptcy proceedings will be pure profit in 2007. Mass market sales were flat but the higher priced premium paperbacks helped [...]