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Author Accounting 101

April 8, 2013 in Business, Career, Contracts, E-Books, Publishing, Steve with 8 Comments

by Steve Laube

Roll of money

You are a published author. You must be rich!
You are an agent. I know you are rich.

If it only were true.

A couple weeks ago we peered at the bottom line for the brick & mortar bookstore, now let’s attempt to do the same for the author. Please remember this exercise is generic, your mileage may vary. As before we will use some round numbers so we can all follow the math.

Let’s start with that $10 retail price book we dealt with before. The publisher sells the book for $6.00 to a store. That creates a “net price” for the publisher. Be aware that some contracts pay the author a royalty based on the retail price and some on the net price.

The net price is $6.00. They author’s contract pays them 15% of the net price. That would mean when this book was sold to the bookstore the author’s account was credited for 90 cents.

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Review Any and Every Contract You Sign

February 4, 2013 in Business, Contracts, Publishing, Steve with 9 Comments

by Steve Laube

Signing contract

Today’s headline sounds like a blinding flash of the obvious but you’d be surprised how many writers are not careful about the agreements they sign. Those with a literary agent have that business partner who will review their book contracts, that is a given. But what about their magazine article or online article contracts?

Earlier this month the Condé Nast organization, which includes Wired, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker, surprised their freelance writers with a new agreement that has Condé Nast controlling the film and television rights on articles published by their magazines, with a cap on the revenue paid to the writer. Why? Because past articles turned into big box office hits like “Argo,” “Eat Pray Love,” and “Brokeback Mountain.”

This contractual assertion has put writers in a bind because they do not want to lose the chance to writer for these prestigious magazines.

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Serious Talk with your Potential Agent

December 13, 2012 in Agency, Business, Contracts, Tamela with 18 Comments

What are some of the things you should ask when an agent has called to offer you representation? Here goes, in no particular order:

1) Would you go over your contract terms with me? Even though you will be reading the agency contract before signing, this is your chance to learn the main points you can expect to see.  Ask questions now. After you review the contract, don’t be afraid to ask for clarifications in writing.

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Why Is My Royalty Check So Small?

December 6, 2012 in Business, Contracts, E-Books, Publishing, Tamela with 18 Comments

by Tamela Hancock Murray

This is it! You’ve had a book published, and your advance money is long gone. But your publisher has promised a royalty check and you know exactly when that check is supposed to arrive. You run to the mail box every day for two weeks until finally, Voilá! The check is here! You rip open the envelope to see a grand total of:

$28.52?

What???!!!

How can this be? So much for the big screen TV. Maybe the pizza place is running a Tuesday night special.

What happened?

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The Landmine of Fair Use

November 26, 2012 in Contracts, Copyright, Publishing, Steve with 31 Comments

by Steve Laube

Remember you can use the big green button to the right of this blog to ask us questions. Recently we received two that were on the issue of fair use of other people’s writing.

Steve,
What are the standard fair use rules for quotes of other published works? I used quotes in my book and my understanding was that if it was less than 250 words then you don’t need permission. But a friend is self-publishing and is concerned about quotations fearing she might get sued.

Always err on the side of getting permission.

One major publisher we work with has the author get permission for any quotations from a single source that is more than 25 words, collected (aggregate) across all uses of that source in the book. So if one quote is 10 words and 100 pages later is a quote for 20 words, the author must get permission.

Another requires the author get a written release from every person they interviewed and quoted in their non-fiction project. Including family members like your spouse, parents, or friends.

For more information read this excellent article by publishing attorney Kelly Way called “All’s Fair in Love and War – But Not in Copyright Law.”

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Book Industry Trends

October 15, 2012 in Agency, Business, Contracts, E-Books, Publishing, Steve, Trends, Writing with 7 Comments

by Steve Laube

Publishing is partly an exercise in guessing what might be the next surprise bestseller. Some of it is an educated guess based on certain trends we see in the industry and in society at large. Any exercise in naming these trends bears the risk of expressing the obvious or being out of date the moment they are stated. So bear with me as I tinker with some of the things that are either influencing trends or are trends within themselves.

The Blockbuster Mentality

If it was your money you would likely “bet” on those book ideas that you know are going to sell a ton of copies. And only those who already have a track record are assured of a ready-made buying audience. In addition, for the non-fiction writer in particular, there is a demand for the author of have a visible or quantifiable platform from which they can launch their book ideas. Much ink has been spilled on defining platform and how to build one, and for good reason.

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To Comma or not to Comma?

July 16, 2012 in Business, Contracts, Grammar, Steve with 7 Comments

by Steve Laube

I came across this entry in the Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynn Truss. The book is a classic on punctuation (although based on British English usage it is still a great book). Read the story below and then answer the questions in the comment section.

On his deathbed in April 1991, Graham Green corrected and signed a typed document which restricts access to his papers at Georgetown University. Or does it? The document, before correction, stated: “I, Graham Greene, grant permission to Norman Sherry, my authorised biographer, excluding any other to quote from my copyright material published or unpublished.” Being a chap who had corrected proofs all his life, Greene automatically aded a comma after “excluding any other” and died the next day without explaining what he meant by it. A great ambiguity was thereby created. Are all other researchers excluded from quoting the material? Or only other biographers?

Which do you think he meant?

What other ambiguities with commas have you seen or written with your own hand?

Why should it matter? It is just punctuation.

Is punctuation important in book contracts?

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Can You Plagiarize Yourself?

July 9, 2012 in Business, Contracts, Publishing, Steve, Writing with 16 Comments

by Steve Laube

Recently John Lehrer of “The New Yorker” was discovered to have reused past material for his articles and his bestselling book Imagine: How Creativity Works.  Here are links to the articles unveiling the controversy. From Jim Romenesko, Jacob Silverman, and Edward Champion. There has been considerable outrage and a genuine apology from John Lehrer.

This incident begs the question, “Can you plagiarize yourself?”

First you have to define plagiarism. The traditional definition is copying someone else’s words word-for-word without acknowledged of some kind, intentionally or not. In the United States this is actually illegal.

But what if the words are your own?

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Goodbye to Traditional Publishing?

May 14, 2012 in Business, Contracts, Defense of Traditional Publishing, E-Books, Publishing, Steve, Writing with 75 Comments

by Steve Laube

Recently Ann Voss Peterson wrote of her decision to never sign another contract with Harlequin. One major statistic from the article is that she sold 170,000 copies of a book but earned only $20,000.

Multiple clients sent me Peterson’s “Harlequin Fail” article and wanted my opinion. My first thought is that this was typical “the publisher is ripping me off” fodder. But that would be a simplistic and knee-jerk reaction and unfair to both Peterson and Harlequin.

Yes, Harlequin pays a modest royalty that is less than some publishers. Since when is that news? That has always been their business model because it is the only way to create and maintain an aggressive Direct-to-Consumer and Trade publishing program. Their publishing machine is huge and they are a “for profit” company. For Profit. If they are unprofitable, they go away.

If an author is uncomfortable with the terms, then don’t sign the contract (which is Peterson’s decision going forward). I urge each of you to be careful not to sign a contract and then complain about it later. Unless you were completely hoodwinked you agreed to those terms and should abide by them.

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Implications of the Department of Justice Lawsuit Against Five Major Publishers

April 16, 2012 in Agency, Business, Contracts, Publishing, Steve with 10 Comments

by Steve Laube

As you have heard by now the Department of Justice (DOJ) has leveled a lawsuit against Apple and five major publishers accusing them of conspiring to fix prices. There has been a lot written on the topic with varying degrees of understanding and a wide disparity of conclusions.

Authors are asking what this all means to them. And many are confused about the math involved. A great, and lengthy summary has been brilliantly composed at Shelf-Awareness. Read that article if you do not understand the details of the situation. It is important that every writer grasp the implications because it could affect how books are sold moving forward.

Already, three of the five publisher have agreed to settle without admitting guilt (HarperCollins, Hachette, and Simon and Schuster). And that settlement will take at least 60 days to finalize. This leave MacMillan and Penguin who have vowed to fight the suit. Such a fight could last years.

By the way, Random House was not named in the suit because they did not change their pricing policies until much later and thus cannot be accused of colluding.

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