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 solicitations target writers directly, agents are receiving approaches as well.
Some platforms appear professional, with contracts that are fairly reasonable and straightforward. Others…not so much. Last October, I wrote about the terrible contracts offered by A&D Entertainment and EMP Entertainment, two companies that are deputized to recruit for Webnovel.
A new player in in the reading/writing app field is Fictum (domain registered just this past November). Available on Apple and Google Play, it’s owned by ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, and is currently recruiting writers with existing published books, as well as writers willing to produce 200,000 words or more of new material for its Long English Story Project.
For new material, Fictum offers both exclusive and non-exclusive contracts, with different levels of financial remuneration that are rather confusingly described here. You must first publish three chapters in order to apply for a contract; once you’re contracted, you must fulfill punishing word counts and maintain a grueling schedule in order to earn. For the exclusive contract, for instance, you must publish at least 1,000 words a day in order to receive a “daily update bonus” of $200 per month. More words equal more cash: if you can bang out 100,000 words a month, you get $400. Time is money, though: you can’t take more than four days off in a single month, and if you fail to produce for more than four days in a row at any time, you forfeit payment.
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 solicitations target writers directly, agents are receiving approaches as well.
Some platforms appear professional, with contracts that are fairly reasonable and straightforward. Others…not so much. Last October, I wrote about the terrible contracts offered by A&D Entertainment and EMP Entertainment, two companies that are deputized to recruit for Webnovel.
A new player in in the reading/writing app field is Fictum (domain registered just this past November). Available on Apple and Google Play, it’s owned by ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, and is currently recruiting writers with existing published books, as well as writers willing to produce 200,000 words or more of new material for its Long English Story Project.
For new material, Fictum offers both exclusive and non-exclusive contracts, with different levels of financial remuneration that are rather confusingly described here. You must first publish three chapters in order to apply for a contract; once you’re contracted, you must fulfill punishing word counts and maintain a grueling schedule in order to earn. For the exclusive contract, for instance, you must publish at least 1,000 words a day in order to receive a “daily update bonus” of $200 per month. More words equal more cash: if you can bang out 100,000 words a month, you get $400. Time is money, though: you can’t take more than four days off in a single month, and if you fail to produce for more than four days in a row at any time, you forfeit payment.
I’ve seen one Fictum contract, offered for an existing published book. You can view it here. To put it mildly, there are issues of concern.
– The Grant of Rights is non-exclusive and time-limited–but it is also irrevocable. In other words, you aren’t stuck forever–but you have no right to cancel.
There was originally a clause allowing the author to terminate for cause, but in the contract I saw, that clause had been blacked out. The deletion wasn’t as effective as someone thought, though, because when I converted the contract to PDF, the excised words showed up:
This isn’t much better than saying “no, you can never cancel”. You’d have to wait a year, and you could only invoke the clause if not a single person had accessed your work in all that time (which might be hard to show, given that Fictum doesn’t have to tell you how your work is performing–see below). Talk about crafting an option so that it practically never happens! Plus, if even if you were unfortunate enough to fulfill the requirements, you’d still be screwed, because you’d have to give money back to Fictum:
Let me know if you can make sense of that formula.
– You must waive your moral rights. Moral rights include the right of attribution (the right to be identified as the author) and the right of integrity (the right to protect your work from changes that would be prejudicial to the work or to you). If you waive your moral rights, you surrender both. Among other things, this means that your work could be published without your name, or under someone else’s name.
Moral rights aren’t really recognized in the USA, but they are important in other countries, and the Fictum app is distributed in multiple nations across the world.
Link to the rest at Writer Beware
If you’re an author and not familiar with Writer Beware, you probably should be. To the best of PG’s knowledge, the site was founded under the auspices of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Curently, it’s also supported by the Mystery Writers of America, the Horror Writers Association, and the American Society of Journalists and Authors.
The current staff, as listed on the website is Victoria Strauss (also a co-founder), Michael Capobianco and Richard C. White. All are authors and each is a volunteer.
To the best of PG’s knowledge, none of the three is an attorney, but his strong impression is that each is a savvy veteran author who knows her/his way around both the legal and non-legal aspects of the publishing business. Besides, PG knows an unfortunately large number of dumb attorneys and you don’t have to climb very high on the smart and savvy tree to be better at locating traps in contracts that authors sign than a dumb lawyer.
Besides, PG has never seen any information about a US law school that includes any specialized program that focuses on laws affecting authors and the publishing world. (Way more money in representing people who have been injured in auto accidents involving insured drunks.)
As full disclosure, PG learned about intellectual property law in law school (Gutenberg was still suing people who ripped off his printing press), and worked for a company that made its money licensing patents, but his first exposure to the world of publishing contracts was when Mrs. PG became dissatisfied with her traditional publisher.
That was the first time PG had looked at her publishing contracts (barefoot shoemakers’ children, etc.). He figured out how to break the contracts so she wasn’t shackled to her publisher any more. Prior to that, PG knew a lot about business contracts, but nada about publishing contracts.
So, PG thinks it’s a good idea for authors to visit Writer Beware on a consistent basis. He’s going to be more consistent in checking the site for potential TPV posts, but don’t rely on him to tell you everything you know about whatever appears on Writer Beware.