Per a request in the comments, from an earlier post on The Passive Voice Let’s assume you are an author represented by a literary agent. If Passive Guy asks you who your agent is, you’ll respond with something like “Suzanne Jones” or “James Davis.” Passive Guy is certain Suzanne and James are wonderful people, but they’re … Read more
A reprise of an earlier PG post about Agency Contracts per the request of a couple of visitors to TPV. In an earlier post showing an Author/Agent agreement, the sample clause included a claim by the agent that the 15% fee was “an agency coupled with an interest.” This term has rightly caused concern among … Read more
A reprise of an earlier post: An agency clause may be inserted into a publishing contract between an author and a publisher. In essence, a typical agency clause provides that the agent may receive royalty payments on behalf of the author and has authority to act in the name of the author with respect to … Read more
A reprise of a post from last year. Contract clauses beginning with the phrase, “For the avoidance of doubt” are a common feature of business contracts. For example, Company A is negotiating a three-year contract with Company B to purchase twenty different products from Company B. The contract includes ten pages outlining minimum purchases, pricing … Read more
Continuing a Thanksgiving weekend reprise of the most popular earlier posts. Once more, Passive Guy dips into his Contract Collection for another little horror. (What?! You haven’t contributed to PG’s Contract Collection yet? Click HERE to mend your ways!) PG doesn’t disclose who, what or where regarding the sources for his contracts and he has modified today’s … Read more
Passive Guy has so many other things on his plate, he should put his inner ranter on hold, but a rant’s got to do what a rant’s got to do. As PG has read book contracts for his clients (Thank You!) and contracts contributed to his Contract Collection (Thank You!), one message keeps coming through … Read more
Given all the recent uproar about agents getting into the publishing business plus the constant drumbeat about successful indie authors being solicited by agents for representation, it’s time to look at an Agency Contract. Before diving into the details of this contract, let’s review some basic legal principles that govern the relationship of a principal … Read more
Contract clauses beginning with the phrase, “For the avoidance of doubt” are a common feature of business contracts. For example, Company A is negotiating a three-year contract with Company B to purchase twenty different products from Company B. The contract includes ten pages outlining minimum purchases, pricing and quantity discounts, price adjustments for changes in … Read more
From Esquire: “There is no such thing as a ‘nonpolitical’ bookstore,” Josh Cook writes in The Art of Libromancy: On Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-First Century. In the age of book banning, publishing industry consolidation, and the pandemic’s lingering aftershocks, Cook’s words ring with frightening truth. The Art of Libromancy, new on … Read more
From The Los Angeles Times: It seemed to many in book publishing like good news last October when the Department of Justice successfully sued to block Penguin Random House (PRH) from acquiring Simon & Schuster. PRH is the largest publisher in the United States and S & S is third. Together they might have controlled … Read more
From The New Publishing Standard: “The rise of BookTok titles has meant less visibility for other titles, whether they’re longstanding authors or debuts.” That’s per a post in The Guardian this weekend that takes yet another look at the BookTok phenomenon, happy to report easy-come quotes, but as ever short on analysis for what it … Read more
From The Literary Hub: Over the past two decades, I’ve worked on fiction between the spaces of my various law related jobs. Law firm associate. Federal judicial clerk. Law professor (which, happily, I still am). My debut novel, Late Bloomers, was recently released by Random House, and I found myself thinking about the lawyers-turned-writers that have inspired … Read more
From Women Writers, Women’s Books: New Story, New Power: A Woman’s Guide to Negotiation, took a few years to research and write, but it was a lifetime in the making. I have been working in the area of negotiation for more than 30 years, with its origins in my experience in intercultural communications. I lived … Read more
From Publishing Perspectives: As MVB Books UK marks its anniversary at London Book Fair this week (April 18 to 20), the news today (April 17) is that MVB’s Metabooks has signed a contract to become an official metadata supplier to Google. The deal guarantees Google receipt of metadata from Metabooks Brasil and Metabooks Mexico, as … Read more
From Kindlepreneur: Here are the 4 steps to take to get a traditional book deal: Let me be clear: Traditional book deals are a thing of the past. If you do not actively reach 25,000+ people regularly before a deal, no reputable publishing company or literary agent will take a risk on your book. In 2022, don’t bother trying … Read more
From Publisher’s Weekly: Under book publishing’s trending best practices, historical authenticity can be secondary to appeasing people’s sensitivities. I’m qualified to say this based on my recent experience as a literary agent on behalf of a client. The events in question began happily: my client received a Big Five contract for a book about his … Read more
From Writer Unboxed: After the excitement of a “yes” from a publisher comes the job of assessing your publishing contract. Facing down ten pages of dense legalese can be a daunting task, especially for new and inexperienced writers, who may not have the resources to hire a literary lawyer, or have access to a knowledgeable … Read more
From Publisher’s Weekly: Under book publishing’s trending best practices, historical authenticity can be secondary to appeasing people’s sensitivities. I’m qualified to say this based on my recent experience as a literary agent on behalf of a client. The events in question began happily: my client received a Big Five contract for a book about his … Read more
From Fast Company: With the air getting colder and the holidays approaching, it feels like a perfect time to curl up with a good book. But instead of cozying up for a well-deserved break, hundreds of publishing workers in New York City have been braving the cold and walking the picket line. The HarperCollins Union, … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Penguin Random House on Monday said it is committed to publishing a coming book by Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett despite a dissenting online open letter that has garnered more than 600 signatures, including many from the publishing world. The letter, which asks Penguin Random House to re-evaluate its … Read more
From The Walrus: THEY KILL THE WOMEN and the children first. This is the most cost-effective decision. The captain knows by heart the commodity value of a child, knows the women will be worth less than the men at the auction block. So he picks the obvious choices: he orders the crew to push them, the … Read more
From Jane Friedman: When people hear about my feminist, humor book, Jokes to Offend Men, first they ask: Do you actually hate men? (The answer of course is no, only on Thursdays). And then they say: Wait there’s four authors? How does that work? A four-person book is an outlier, but what’s even stranger to me is that I am … Read more
From Public Books: Culture industries increasingly use our data to sell us their products. It’s time to use their data to study them. To that end, we created the Post45 Data Collective, an open access site that peer reviews and publishes literary and cultural data. This a partnership between the Data Collective and Public Books, a series … Read more
From The New Yorker: You were a girl who wanted to choose your own adventures. Which is to say, you were a girl who never had adventures. You always followed the rules. But, when you ate an entire sleeve of graham crackers and sank into the couch with a Choose Your Own Adventure book, you … Read more
From Writer Beware: It should probably go without saying that you don’t want your publishing contract to include clauses that contradict one another. Beyond any potential legal implications, internal contradictions suggest a publisher that either doesn’t understand its own contract language well enough to spot the problem–or a publisher that simply doesn’t care. Neither is … Read more
From Forbidden Bookshelf: For over half a century, America’s vast literary culture has been disparately policed, and imperceptibly contained, by state and corporate entities well-placed and perfectly equipped to wipe out wayward writings. As America does not ban books, other means — less evident, and so less controversial — have been deployed to vaporize them. … Read more
From Publishers Weekly: Historians know the past is a battleground. History as studied and taught is part of a contest to control the present and alternative visions of the future. Today is different. The contest between fact and truth and fiction and lies is unique to this moment. Each of today’s “competing” visions is embedded … Read more
From UnHerd: What did the sensitivity readers say? And did I care? Of all the aspects of the recent attempt to cancel my work, the one that seems to fascinate most people is the moment when my publishers sent my Orwell Prize-winning memoir, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, to be assessed by experts … Read more
From Medium: Back in 2013, I was offered a publishing contract with a small book publisher. They asked me to write ‘Freelance Writing on Health, Food and Gardens’ – a 160 page book based on my success in specialist journalism. The contract was royalties-only, but based on their expertise and enthusiasm, I had high hopes … Read more
From Bloomberg Law: States that want to give libraries a better deal on e-books are watching a publishers’ suit against Maryland, the first state to set terms for how digital books are distributed for public borrowing. Library associations, including the American Library Association and several state groups, have been pushing for state laws to require … Read more
From Kristine Kathryn Rus ch: Here’s a weird thing about businesses: When a business is rolling in cash, the people who run it loosen their grip on the details. Instead of solving a problem, they throw money at it. Often they don’t recognize the problem for the danger that it might be, until it comes … Read more
From The New York Times: A book by Billie Eilish seemed like a great bet. One of the most famous pop stars in the world, Eilish has 97 million followers on Instagram and another 6 million on Twitter. If just a fraction of them bought her book, it would be a hit. But her self-titled … Read more
From The Literary Hub: I know, I know, it’s December, we’re all contractually obligated to tally up the Best Books of the Year That Was—and don’t worry, we will. (No shade to book lists, end of year or otherwise; they are, as Eco reminds us, a cultural bulwark against death. Also they are fun.) But … Read more
From Publishers Weekly: As a former acquisitions editor at a publishing company, I well remember the ritual wherein executives gathered in a conference room armed with their tabbed notebooks. Once a month, department leaders—including those in editorial, marketing, and sales—and key sales representatives arrived for the pub board meeting. As a new editor, I had … Read more
From Publishing Perspectives: Some members of Publishing Perspectives‘ international readership may not be familiar with The 1619 Project. It’s an example of long-form journalism that premiered in August 2019 in The New York Times Magazine and was timed to the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the American colony of … Read more
From The Hill: The largest book publishing companies in the U.S. are facing pressure from Democrats over e-book lending contracts with libraries that advocates and librarians have criticized. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) sent letters to the publishers, Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan, on Thursday asking … Read more
From The Authors Guild: “As the U.S. counterpart to the UK’s Society of Authors (SOA), the Authors Guild fully supports today’s open letter from the SOA to all published writers asking them to request that their publishers provide cover credits for the people who translate their work, “ said Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild, which … Read more
From CrimeReads: Let’s face it, all readers have the same dream—to own a bookstore! Ah, the images it conjures. Spending our days with books, reveling in the aromas of paper and ink, tingling with anticipation when we think of the fictional worlds waiting for us inside the covers of books . . . . The … Read more
From Book Riot: Earlier this year, Fight for the Future — a group of technology experts, policymakers, and creatives — launched a tool called Who Can Get Your Book, meant to highlight the challenges of accessibility and availability of ebooks in public schools and libraries, rural areas, and other communities where these disparities create burdens … Read more
From Nathan Bransford: [Let’s discuss] the journey from the contract to bookstore shelves. It’s a longer journey than you might think! One common misconception about publishing is how fast books come to market or go on-sale. People are often surprised that this process typically takes a year or more. (There are exceptions for books that … Read more
From Publishers Weekly: In separate motions this week, Amazon and the Big Five publishers asked a federal court to dismiss the latest iteration of a potential class-action price-fixing claim filed against them on behalf of indie booksellers. According to court filings, the booksellers’ Amended Complaint, which was filed in July, accuses Amazon and the publishers … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: In 2000 the RAND Corporation invited a group of historians—including me—to address a newly pressing question: Would digital media revolutionize society as profoundly as Gutenberg and movable type? Two decades later, John Thompson’s answer is yes, but not entirely as predicted. And our forecasts were often wrong because we overlooked … Read more
From The Atlantic: If you want a preview of next year’s Emmy Awards, just take a walk past your local bookstore. According to data drawn from Publishers Marketplace, the industry’s clearinghouse for news and self-reported book deals, literary adaptations to television have been on a steady climb. The site has listed nearly 4,000 film and … Read more
From Writer Beware®: Over the past year, I’ve gotten a flood of questions and complaints from writers who’ve been approached by reading/writing platforms or apps based in Hong Kong or Singapore. There’s a growing number of these platforms, and they are aggressively soliciting for content, including on established platforms like Wattpad. While most of the … Read more
From Vox: Book publishing is having an existential crisis. The industry is finding itself saddled with deals by polarizing political figures, and no idea how to handle them. Which, in turn, gives rise to some fundamental questions about the purpose of publishing. Is the industry’s purpose to make the widest array of viewpoints available to … Read more
From The Washington Post: Crying “Censorship!” has become the right’s favorite book marketing technique. Roger Kimball, president of Encounter Books, is the latest publisher to hawk his wares this way in the Wall Street Journal. Last week, on the op-ed page, Kimball complained that Amazon had stopped selling “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the … Read more
From Publishing Perspectives: Less than 100 days into the United States’ Biden administration—and, for that matter, less than two weeks after Simon & Schuster announced its two-book deal with the former vice-president Mike Pence—S&S has experienced new encounters with the heat of political publishing. Today (April 20), Simon & Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp has issued … Read more
From The Washington Post: As it happens, Crenshaw and his publisher, Hachette Book Group, got a little help from the Texas Republican’s friends. The National Republican Congressional Committee, which works to elect GOP candidates to Congress, spent nearly $400,000 on bulk purchases of the book. The organization acquired 25,500 copies through two online booksellers, enough to fuel … Read more
From Publishers Weekly: For years, at writers conferences, I kept hearing the same well-meaning pieces of advice: keep writing, keep submitting, your book(s) will eventually find a home. Though it’s meant to encourage writers to push through rejection, the advice doubles as a toxic literary theory of bootstrapping (bookstrapping?), which suggests that hard work and … Read more
From The Chicago Sun Times: An Evanston bookstore owner wants to take on Amazon. Nina Barrett, owner of Bookends and Beginnings, signed on as the named plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit filed last week that accuses Amazon of orchestrating a price-fixing scheme with the nation’s leading book publishers that makes it impossible for other retailers … Read more