Lest we think that all of us readers and Amazon are the only victims of Publishers’ delusional rampages Teleread and GalleyCat bring us news of Publishers’ attempts to trick writers into 25% royalty rates for ebooks.
Authors Guild warns Authors to protect themselves
Teleread covers the Authors Guild’s advice -
two publishers are trying to get their writers to lock into 25% royalty rates on e-books. While this might look better than the 15% going rate on hardcovers, the Authors Guild warns that the terms may not be entirely desirable.
GalleyCat also have some good snippets (from the letter sent by the Authors’ Guild) -
We’re confident that the current practice of paying 25% of net on e-books will not, in the long run, prevail. Savvy agents are well aware of this. The only reason e-book royalty rates are so low right now is that so little attention has been paid to them …
The Authors Guild letter has 5 points of advice so that authors can ‘protect themselves’ -
- Get the absolute right to renegotiate – AG recommend getting the right to renegotiate after two years.
- Negotiate a royalty floor – Make sure that royalties from ebooks are the same as from the physical book.
- Double-check your revision of rights clause – insert a minimum number of annual sales for a work to be deemed in print.
- Check your Contract – You might control e-rights.
- If you can’t obtain adequate safeguards, you may want to bide your time.
Random House and HarperCollins are the two Publishers that have the Authors Guild all worried.
Do Authors really need to ‘protect themselves’ from Publishers?
This is rather amusing - A few weeks ago authors were up in arms against Amazon when Amazon was fighting Publishers to keep ebook prices low. Numerous authors wrote impassioned letters to rail against ‘evil’ Amazon and defend ‘good’ Publishers.
A few weeks down the line Publishers are rewarding that loyalty by trying to hoodwink authors into signing up for 25% royalty rates. No good deed goes unpunished.
The Authors Guild has the right idea – Authors really do need to protect themselves. Here’s why -
- Lots of books were sold without ebook rights – Authors have those rights. Authors can get much better than 25% – Authors Guild is recommending 50%.
- Established Authors could go it alone and get 70% of their ebook sale revenues from Amazon and Apple.
- Smaller Publishers like Rosetta Books offer 50%.
- If they do go with the big Publishers authors should get more than 25% – Both Amazon and Apple are offering 70% to publishers. That’s more than the 50% retailers used to offer Publishers.
- Publishers’ costs are going down - For example, costs for printing books have gone down (10% or 20% of book prices).
- Publishers are no longer taking very big risks. If an author has a reasonable fan base or is established there’s mostly reward in selling ebooks. Even for a new author the investment is much less with ebooks.
- (As the Authors Guild points out) The 15% royalty rate on hardcovers represented 50% of the net proceeds of the sale of the book.
Publishers will not hesitate to exploit authors
Publishers are in a pretty desperate position as eReaders and eBooks become more powerful, indie authors start getting avenues to sell their books, and smaller publishers rise up.
Would Publishers give authors less than they deserve and keep that to fight the war for Publishing? You bet they would.
Random House’s attempts in the past to claim that ‘in book form’ includes ebook rights was a good example of Publishers trying to get rights they don’t even have. It doesn’t matter whether an author trusts Publishers or not or whether Publishers (which are companies) are ethical or not – The reality of the situation is that Publishers would rather exploit authors than die.
Why are Publishers alienating everyone?
Let’s see what Publishers are doing -
- They’re raising prices and imposing restrictions and making customers angry.
- They’re trying to kill eBooks and making eReader companies and eBook stores angry.
- They’re playing off Amazon against Apple and the two of them probably have a very good idea of how they’re going to repay that.
- Now they’ve even proceeded to take advantage of authors – the only friends they had.
It’s amazing that as Publishers lose their position as gatekeepers and become less and less powerful they are choosing to be more and more hostile and making enemies everywhere.
Publishers can choose to do a better job publishing books, increase customer satisfaction, work better with their authors and retailers. They could add more value and safeguard their position as a platform for Publishing. Instead they are choosing to not add to their value proposition and just threaten and coerce authors and retailers.
This is the perfect time for someone to take over Publishing and Amazon and Apple are remarkably well positioned. One gets 55% of the market and the other gets 35% – It doesn’t really matter who’s 1st and who’s 2nd since it’s a $25 billion a year market just in the US. Even the #3 platform could become a billion dollar business.
Filed under: publishing Tagged: | lack thereof, publishers large heartedness
