STATUS: Where has the morning gone? Eek.
What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? HEY GOOD LOOKIN’ by Hank Williams
Today Wiley issued a press release asserting the Authors Guild is in error.
Any Bloomberg authors want to weigh in anonymously and comment, feel free.
And to kick off the weekend, the Bronte Sisters Power Dolls (courtesy of my client Laurence)! Bless youtube. Where would I be without them? Enjoy!
STATUS: All my post-BEA stuff is done! Yes.
What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? FOREVER YOUNG by Alphaville
After my blog tirade two years ago when Simon & Schuster didn’t play nice in the sandbox (by deleting the crucial last four lines of their Out of Print clause without telling anyone), you know how strongly I feel about publishers behaving badly.
Sounds like John Wiley & Sons might be doing similar if the Authors Guild strong warning is anything to judge by.
I do not have any authors impacted by the sale of Bloomberg Press to Wiley so I have not seen this letter. And for the record, I have no personal take or stake on the situation but for general purposes, I like to pass on warnings when they occur so they reach as many readers as possible.
If you’re impacted by this, you might want to touch base with the folks at the AG.
STATUS: Man, I powered through my To Do list today. Gosh I love when that happens.
What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? FREE FALLIN’ by John Mayer
One of things that we always do is make sure the author and our agency have a final copy of the finished novel in electronic form. For the author, it’s just nice to have an electronic copy of the book. I mean, we get the other editions. Why not this one? For the agency, we prefer to use the electronic copy to sell subsidiary rights when we hold those rights.
Usually, this is no big deal and the acquiring editor sends me the final page proof in PDF.
Well, just recently I made my standard request and I received a rather interesting email from the editor in return. (And let me just say right here I feel very sorry for the editor as I know she was simply citing some new company policy…) But basically the editor said that if we wanted an electronic copy in PDF, we’d have to pay a production copy fee of $250.00.
Uh… I rather stared at the email. Is the editor really suggesting that the author has to pay $250.00 for a copy of her already published book in electronic form? No, she can’t be serious.
Needless to say, I voiced my rather incredulous response in a return email.
I’m positive that the company implemented this fee policy for a good reason but in this instance, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
STATUS: Not sure what is up with Mondays but they seem to be getting away from me lately.
What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? CAPE CANAVERAL by Conor Oberst
Most authors, at this point in time, are not interested in walking away from a publishing contract over electronic book rights. The numbers are growing certainly (as we can see that statement to statement) but the numbers, in general, are still very small in comparison to traditional print sales.
Now there are certainly some exceptions. I’m very interested in seeing how it unfolds for author JA Konrath who has long blogged about making a living from electronic book sales and has decided, for his most recent novel, to go with Amazon Encore for the print with the release from Kindle coming earlier. (By the way, Mr. Konrath is embarking on this journey with his agent.)
From what I can tell from my own negotiations as well as from convos with other agents, Publishers are currently holding very firm on 25% of net receipts for the royalty structure. If they are doing an agency commission model (i.e. Apple) they are either not changing their definition of net amounts received in their contracts or they are sticking to the definition that it will be based on monies actually received by the publisher—translation: royalty of 25% of net to author calculated after 30% commission paid to third party (such as Apple). In other words, author is receiving 25% of 70% (not 100%). Reference my earlier blog entry on this topic to get up to speed.
So, if the author does not want to walk away from the offer over ebook royalty (and right now I’d have to say that’s most authors), what does an agent do?
We find another way to protect the author. One method is to include language in the publishing contract that dictates that if industry standard changes in regards to electronic book royalty rates, then the rate can be amended or renegotiated in the future to adhere to new industry standard.
Feel free to add that tidbit to your contracts file.
STATUS: Today I worked on finishing a contract (pre-new boilerplates) which did conclude. I really tackled emails in my inbox as well. Now I just have to tackle the slew of royalty statements we get in April.
What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? GREETINGS TO THE NEW BRUNETTE by Billy Brag
Today is a little potpourri of things.
1. Penguin Australia issued a more formal apology for Cookbook misprint. Sounds like a PR person got a hold of the situation. Grin.
2. Foreign rights co-agent did not make it to London (as you probably have already guessed). On the upside, perhaps more folks will come to BEA at the end of May. As you can imagine, reports from the LBF floor have been quiet. Great for the folks who did make it there though. Will the lack of a robust LBF deter foreign sales? Well, nothing beats conveying enthusiasm for a title in person so that’s the downside for sure. On the whole, I don’t think so. It will be hard to have the “big book of the fair” but I imagine most sales will get done via email and phone.
I don’t envy their journey home…
3. Business has resumed in Poland. We’ve been careful about waiting but today we got emails from folks in that territory so we felt comfortable resuming communication, negotiations, etc.
4. In watching Deal Lunch for the last couple of months, I’m starting to see quite a few more sales listed than I have in the past months. This is a good sign as I take it to mean that editors are starting to get back to buying.
STATUS: Hubby got me XM radio at the office for my birthday! I’ve wanted this for a while. I now have access to fun stations such as Indie/College/Unsigned and UK Pop hits. If I’m in the mood for maudlin, I could play love songs 24/7. How about Spa: New Age. Oh this is going to be fun.
What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? 40 DOGS (LIKE ROMEO AND JULIET) by Bob Schneider
As all writers should already know, spell check is your friend but it’s not a savior. If the typo is one that won’t be caught by a simple spell check program, you might be in a world of trouble.
A fact that Penguin Australia recently discovered when they had to reprint 7000 copies of a cookbook…
Most people should laugh as that’s quite the whopper of an error but part of me thinks that maybe Mr. Sessions should have consulted with a PR person and just admitted some mortification over the snafu rather than making a statement that he didn’t understand why people might find the error offensive. Err on the side of sensitive I’m thinking.
Just an observation. Grin.
STATUS: Off to Italy tomorrow but I will try and blog.
What’s playing on the iPod right now? TELL ME WHAT by Fine Young Cannibals
To give you a real rant. Today I found out that Penguin is no longer sending out final contracts electronically in locked PDF.
Why? Because some unethical agent decided to tamper with the e-lock and then make unauthorized changes in the contract before sending on to a client for signing.
Now the rest of us have to go back to the stone age of having things mailed (unbelievable!) to us.
Unethical agent, I want to hunt you down and slap you upside the head.
Now, I have argued with Penguin to create an “approved agents list.” I’m sure there are many agents like me who have more than proven that we don’t contract tamper and can be trusted with a locked electronic PDF for final contract.
I’m so annoyed by this, I can barely type. And other publishers, please don’t take this step backwards. There is a lot of technology out there that could resolve this issue. Use it. Going back to snail mail is costly—and I do mean in actual dollars.
STATUS: Springtime in the Rockies! It was 65 degrees and sunny today and I must admit, I left the office at 2:30 in order to take Chutney out for a run and enjoy the day. In exchange, I’m working all evening.
What’s playing on the iPod right now? TOMORROW PEOPLE by Ziggy Marley and The Melody Makers
Come sit next to me!
Last week, I pretty much spent every entry talking about contracts but today’s discussion tops the cake.
Just recently, a publisher made an offer for the next books from one of my clients. Excellent. But this publisher is also one of the big 6 that have announced that they are moving to the agency commission model for the sale of electronic books.
As ya’ll know based on my math lecture about net receipts last week, there are some key questions that really need to be answered about electronic books and exactly what 25% of net is going to mean.
So my contracts manager and I insisted on talking to contracts director before closing the deal.
The publisher’s response (and this is a paraphrase): they have no idea what the definition of net receipts will be and feel uncomfortable accepting the language we have put forth. Their suggestion? If the author would like to put the contract on hold until the company makes a corporate decision on this, then the author is free to do so. However, the publisher has no timeline for when this will be resolved.
Snort. That’s the solution?
Publishers. The world is changing. Quit dithering. We agents have to negotiate contracts now so maybe get on this. Telling us we can just put it on hold until you get your act together isn’t an alternative.
Rant over.
STATUS: Lots to tackle today so getting the blog entry out early.
What’s playing on the iPod right now? THE BLACKEST LILY by Corinne Bailey Rae
And the fun of how electronic books are changing the publishing contract continues. Today, boys and girls, we are going to talk about net receipts in Ms. Kristin’s neighborhood.
In light of this new agency commission model where Amazon and Apple will no longer carry the product per se but have an agreement to sell titles via their site in exchange for a 30% commission on the sale (see earlier post to get up to speed), suddenly agents need to re-examine the whole definition of net receipts in publishing contracts.
The definition of net receipts (or amount received) for an electronic book is not the same as the definition of amount received for a physical book.
With the agency commission model, the biggest question is this. Will publishers deduct the 30% commission paid or will they absorb it when calculating net receipts and determining what is the total used to pay authors their 25% of net receipts? One major publisher has stated that their current thinking is that the royalty would be calculated BEFORE deducting commission. In current negotiations for contracts in play, I’m not seeing publishers as excited about redefining net receipts this way.
So what does redefining net receipts mean to the author? Let’s do a little math!
Let’s say a title will sell on Amazon or Apple’s iPad for $10.00 (might as well make it easy math).
Now let’s look at the difference between net receipts if the publisher absorbs the cost of the agency commission versus if they don’t in defining and calculating net receipts.
If Publisher absorbs commission:
eBook price: $10.00
25% of net royalty (all the rage with publishers as of late)
Royalty to author: $2.50 per title sold
If Publisher does not:
eBook price: $10.00
$7.00 received by publisher (after 30% sales commission to retailer)
25% of net royalty
Royalty to author: $1.75 per title sold
Yep, definitely worth the time to find out exactly how this term is going to be defined in the contract when it comes to electronic books.
STATUS: Anita, our new assistant, started her first day of work today. Hooray! We have so much work we could pile on but we are trying to be reasonable. Both she and Sara have colds. Oi! Knock on wood that I don’t catch whatever is going around.
What’s playing on the iPod right now? SWEET EMOTION by Aerosmith
Here is an interesting thought.
Agents will often negotiate bonus clauses with publishers. A popular one is a bonus (increasing the advance) for X number of net copies of the title sold during a certain period of time (12 months being a popular number).
Currently, the publisher ties the bonus to the specific edition. For example, if the title is published as an original trade paperback, then the bonus will be tied to X number of copies of the trade pb edition sold within that time period.
Make sense?
Well, eBooks are changing the landscape and are often released simultaneously with the original edition (be it hardcover, trade pb, or mass market).
So my thought? Why not count and include the sales of the electronic books in the total that is triggering the bonus clause? True, it is considered a separate edition but it’s rather unique in that it mirrors the original edition and doesn’t need a separate performance creation like, let’s say, an audio book.
Brilliant! Oh I’m sure Publishers will be stampeding to this point of view (not) but it is an interesting discussion, no?
My guess is that now we need to start creating bonus language specifically for sales connected to the eBook—especially as this format becomes more prominent and the sales start catching up or outstripping the other main format editions.
Fun fun!