I’ve shared the meat and potatoes of John Scalzi‘s blog posts regarding certain questionable e-book imprints by Random House which included very strong opinions on royalty only publishing models. This is a counterpoint, not to the ghastly details of Random House’s contracts (truly horrific), but to the royalty only bit.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
In Defense of the Royalty-Only Model for Digital Publication
John Scalzi, author, blogger, lame-duck (but by no means lame) President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, defender of working writers everywhere, and client of the agency I happen to work for, has been commenting this past week about a shift toward advanceless book deals and the gradual erosion of authors compensation in the digital marketplace (summary can be found here).
While John is mostly right (especially about Random House’s new Hydra/Alibi/Loveswept/Flirt “profit share” endeavor being exploitative) I thought he was perhaps a bit unfair to the royalty-only model, and I thought I might supply a counterpoint to his criticism, and also a bit of context about how the royalty-only model rose to prominence in the digital book sphere.
Related articles
- Random House Rescinds Controversial E-Book Contract After Online Outrage (wired.com)
- Beware Random House’s Ebook Imprints (forbes.com)
- Random House accused of ‘predatory’ contracts for new ebook imprint (guardian.co.uk)
- SFWA Backlashes Random House for New Hydra Imprint: Publishing House Responds (booksnreview.com)
- Random House Agrees to Respect Authors Right to Make a Living: Excersizing Free Speech Works (natethayer.wordpress.com)
- Random House’s Hydra Imprint Has Appallingly Bad Contract Terms (whatever.scalzi.com)
Jaye Em Edgecliff 