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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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