Royalties
Harper Lee Sues Agent She Says Tricked Her
Harper Lee is suing her former agent, Sam Pinkus, to recover royalties from To Kill a Mockingbird dating back to 2007, when he allegedly tricked her into signing over copyright to the classic novel as she was in an assisted living facility recovering from a stroke.
“Pinkus knew that Harper Lee was an elderly woman with physical infirmities that made it difficult for her to read and see,” Lee’s lawyer Gloria Phares says in a complaint filed in federal court last week, according to Bloomberg and other news sources. The 87-year-old author regained rights to the novel in 2012, but Pinkus has continued to collect royalties.
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Posted in Authorship, Copyright, Royalties
S&S Says Sales Not Suffering Much Amid B&N Dispute
Despite its continuing disagreement with Barnes & Noble, Simon & Schuster did not experience a significant drop in first quarter sales–just 3 percent to $171 million–as the company took steps to make up for business lost as it’s trying to negotiate a resolution with the bookseller.
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Posted in Authorship, Royalties
NYPL President: Big Six Now Allow E-Lending of Books “Anywhere and On Any Device”
Downloading ebooks from your local public library is poised to become much more widespread.
Anthony Marx, New York Public Library President, announced in an op-ed in today’s NY Times (subscription required) that Hachette Book Group has now joined the other Big Six publishers in agreeing to allow e-lending of its titles. Citing surveys that show that most Americans don’t know that libraries offer ebooks, Marx sees a need “to educate patrons that they can download library e-books anywhere and on any device.” Library e-lending, when permitted by publishers, generally allows one-at-a-time, two week uses of ebooks. Library users may download the ebooks from their homes after using their library cards to log in to the library’s website.
Marx discusses the variations in e-lending terms among the Big Six publishers: Penguin and Simon & Schuster offer their entire lists to public libraries through licenses that expire after a year; HarperCollins also offers their entire list with licenses that expire after a title is downloaded 26 times; Random House offers its entire list for unlimited uses, charging a premium for the license; and Macmillan makes only a limited portion of its list available.
The numbers show substantial room for growth in ebook downloads from the NYPL (and, no doubt, other public libraries):
The New York Public Library had 100,000 copies of 37,000 digital titles in circulation last year, compared with 6.5 million copies in circulation of 1 million print titles. Just as libraries decide which physical books to purchase and how many of each, we now will be deciding the same for e-books.
As those with library cards learn that they ”can download library e-books anywhere and on any device,” we may soon see a rapid shift in ebook buying habits.
Posted in Authorship, E-Books, Royalties
Audio of Authors Guild Seminar on Book Contracts — Traditional, Ebook & POD
Here’s a clip from last week’s phone-in seminar with Anita Fore, Authors Guild Director of Legal Services, on the basics of understanding and negotiating contracts with both traditional book publishers and stand-alone ebook/POD publishers. The clip (about 15 minutes) focuses on traditional book contracts:
Members are welcome to contact us for a link to the full-length audio of the 60-minute seminar and a handout that accompanies Anita’s talk. (Not a member? Join up! You must be a published author to join, but many self-published authors now qualify for membership.)
The Guild is hosting additional phone-in seminars for members this week and next:
Magazine Contract Issues (Wednesday, April 24th)
Anita Fore will discuss several clauses freelancers should be aware of when negotiating magazine agreements. Sign up here.
Authors’ Statutory Right to Terminate Publishing Contracts After 35 Years (Wednesday, May 1st)
Paul Aiken, Authors Guild Executive Director, will explain the rules governing publishing contract terminations under Section 203 of the Copyright Act. Sign up here.
Condé Nast Moves to Seize, Lowball Freelancers’ Film/TV Rights
Breaking with longstanding industry practices, Condé Nast is seeking to cut itself in on its writers’ potential film and television deals. In the process, it would slice writers’ share of potential film and television income to freelance works appearing in its magazines by more than 50%. Its new boilerplate contract — introduced last year — would give the company a free, exclusive 12-month right to option dramatic and multimedia rights. Under the contract, Condé Nast could choose to extend that option by up to 24 months for a modest sum.
Should Condé Nast exercise the option, the writer would, under boilerplate terms, be paid just 1% of the film or tv production budget. Negotiated film and tv agreements typically pay the author 2.5% or more of the production budget.
Agents and writers are pushing back, with some success. Since Condé Nast owns such leading publications as Bon Appétit, GQ, The New Yorker, Self, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Wired, among others, authors with significant negotiating clout are affected. Reportedly, some of those authors have been able to substantially alter or eliminate the option terms of the new boilerplate agreement.
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Posted in Advocacy, Authorship, Royalties
Scott Turow on CBC News: “difficult to comprehend Justice Department’s seeming approval” when Amazon’s “aim was clearly to monopolize the e-book market”
In an eight-minute segment on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s nightly CBC News that aired yesterday, Scott Turow discussed Amazon’s tactic of selling bestselling e-books at a loss to lock up a 90% share of the e-book market. He also took aim at publishers, saying “there should be a 50% royalty on net proceeds” for e-books, following established practices for the industry. (See E-Book Royalty Math: The House Always Wins and The E-Book Royalty Mess: An Interim Fix for discussions of e-royalty rates.)
The E-Book Royalty Mess: An Interim Fix
To mark the one-year anniversary of the Great Blackout, Amazon’s weeklong shut down of e-commerce for nearly all of Macmillan’s titles, we’re sending out a series of alerts on the state of e-books, authorship, and publishing. The first installment (“How Apple Saved Barnes & Noble. Probably.”) discussed the outcome, of that battle, which introduced a modicum of competition into the distribution of e-books. The second, (“E-Book Royalty Math: The House Always Wins”) took up the long-simmering e-royalty debate, and showed that publishers generally do significantly better on e-book sales than on hardcover sales, while authors always do worse
Today, we look at the implications of that disparity, and suggest an interim solution to minimize the harm to authors.
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Posted in Advocacy, Authorship, E-Books, Royalties
Tagged amazon, authorship, e-book
E-Book Royalty Math: The House Always Wins
To mark the one-year anniversary of the Great Blackout, Amazon’s weeklong shut down of e-commerce for nearly all of Macmillan’s titles, we’re sending out a series of alerts this week and next on the state of e-books, authorship, and publishing. The first installment (“How Apple Saved Barnes & Noble. Probably.”) discussed the outcome, one year later, of that battle. Today, we look at the e-royalty debate, which has been simmering for a while, but is likely to soon heat up as the e-book market grows.
E-book royalty rates for major trade publishers have coalesced, for the moment, at 25% of the publisher’s receipts. As we’ve pointed out previously, this is contrary to longstanding tradition in trade book publishing, in which authors and publishers effectively split the net proceeds of book sales (that’s how the industry arrived at the standard hardcover royalty rate of 15% of list price). Among the ills of this radical pay cut is the distorting effect it has on publishers’ incentives: publishers generally do significantly better on e-book sales than they do on hardcover sales. Authors, on the other hand, always do worse.
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Posted in Authorship, E-Books, Royalties
Tagged amazon, e-books
