4 Responses to Yet another interesting post

1. Laura Resnick says:

   July 26, 2010 at 4:08 am

   Complicated, indeed! A lot of relevant questions and interesting suggestions in the Shatzkin post.

   I found this one pretty relevant, for example: “even if Random House is the only house that openly boycotts the agency, there’s an impact on all Wylie clients in return for a theoretical advantage for the ones being he will publish through Odyssey. One must imagine there are more than a few current authors with that office who are scratching their heads about what this might mean for them.”

   This may be a subject that the Wylie agency discussed with its 700 clients and got everyone on board with… but that would be quite unusual. So it seems not-unlikely that, among those 700 writers, there are some authors ready to go to contract again this season with Random House, the conglomerate umbrella for dozens and dozens of imprints, who are thinking, “Er… where does this leave ME? Hullo? Anyone?”

   I think Stazkin also makes an excellent point here:

   “Their public position seems to be that they can’t make a competitive deal on this backlist because it would create precedents for the new titles they’re negotiating for today. But it doesn’t have to.”

   Indeed. =It doesn’t have to.= Contracts are negotiated individually, and monies are based on P&Ls. Even royalty rates are negotiated (my lawyer and I negotiated for a number of changes in rates at both the houses where we’ve worked together on the contract). The announcements we’ve seen from some publishers proposing/stating blanket non-negotiable e-royalty rates have struck me as odd–and Shatzkin has been the one to articulate (I now realize) WHY I find it odd.

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   • dwsmith says:

     July 26, 2010 at 2:02 pm

     This morning a bunch of articles breaking about how many publishers are starting to give out up to 50% rate for ebook rights. That’s now getting into the range of acceptable in my opinion. But again, as Stazkin said near the bottom of that article, it’s all changing and even 50% won’t be enough for authors in five years from publishers, and I agree with that.

     Authors are going to be doing profit and loss statements on their own (the smart ones) in a short time. One profit and loss will be “how much can I make if I publish it myself” or a second calculation “how much will I get if I sell it to a large publisher?” What are the trade-offs?

     In a profit-and-loss (P&L) statement, such factors as lower rates through major publishers offset by higher rates through your own company. Higher sales offset lower sales. Time factors. Quality factors. Author time factors. So many other variables in these P&L calculations.

     For example, you sell a book now to New York and you might never get the rights back unless you are darned good with contracts, even if the book is out of print in most places. If you are doing it yourself, the book stays in print forever. Everywhere. And so on and so on and so on.

     For another example: Say you have a novel that would earn you only $1,000 per year self published or through a small company you control. That’s about $84 per month in sales over both POD and all the electronic outlets. In ten years that’s $10,000. You sell to New York and get a $5,000 offer and it will never earn out. They will hold onto your rights for at least 10 years. At least, even with a good contract. Your book could sell only $40 bucks per month on your own or through a self publisher and you would make the same money over 10 years.

     See how authors are going to have to be doing P&L calculations in the near future on any sale?

     This is very interesting times we are playing in, and only going to become more fun as the year goes by for authors.

     And by the way, for those of you thinking the big publishers are in trouble, this morning Penguin announced a 9% profit for the last quarter, with ebooks bringing in 8% of their total revenue. Does not look like trouble to me. (grin)

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2. Ty Johnston says:

   July 26, 2010 at 6:18 am

   That just made my head hurt.

   But I think Shatzkin is on the right track in the conclusions he draws in the last couple of graphs.

   I don’t, however, believe the conflicts over ebook pricing and channel consolidation have come to an end. Shatzkin doesn’t claim those issues are finished, though he does say they’ve been “solidified” by the major publishers. “Solidified” is a fairly safe word here, in my opinion. Not trying to be nit picky, but just sayin’.

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3. Deborah says:

   July 26, 2010 at 3:42 pm

   I know my head’s spinning! LOL

   Tons of stuff going on, and at times it seems difficult just to keep up but it sure is fascinating to see all the news breaking!

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