Writers’ Roundup

A few short weeks ago, I blogged my suspicions that publishers are talkin’ fuzzy about ebook rights, seemingly unsure of their revenue-generating potential. Meanwhile, at least one Canadian publisher has been approaching authors by mail, offering to relieve them of their ebook rights to out-of-print books in perpetuity, in exchange for a 10% royalty. A dirty job but someone’s got to do it, right?

Still other Canadian publishers scratched their heads in dismay when asked, by The Writers’ Union Chair during his recent cross-country round table talks, what they thought was a fair royalty to pay writers for their ebook rights. It’s so hard to quantify, so elusive to put a percentage figure to this service, they waffled.  They still have no idea what their costs might be to produce ebooks (an e-text file?) or how to host or market it online (Has any publisher actually visited the net lately?)
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I have opted out. Nobody right now may be rushing to obtain erights to your out-of-print titles or books published prior to 2009 but this is only temporary. I opted out because I will not surrender my erights in perpetuity for a pittance to Google Corporation. Note that they offer to pay “net” of expenses. Net of expenses is called “monkey points” by writers in the movie business because net of expenses tends to inspire creative accounting on collectors’ parts. Collectors benefit first; writers are paid last. Net means whatever’s left after the Registry has deducted its own (unknown) operating costs. The Registry is not a neutral, altruistic, collection service for writers and publishers. It is the collection arm of the Google Corporation.

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Bite marks are beginning to collect on The Google Settlement. As writers, publishers and legal beagles chew their way through its 385 pages, the bitter taste of a possible price-fixing monopoly is beginning to spread. I’ll turn the column over now to Lynn Chu, a principal at Writers’ Representatives LLC whose challenge to the proposed Settlement was published in the Wall Street Journal. She sinks a powerful pair of incisors into the Google Corporation’s grabby handy-pandies: Continue reading