HAIL HYDRA! DONATION TO COMPANY ORGAN BANKS NOW OPTIONAL, NOT MANDATORY!

[james_davis_nicoll]

Reacting to criticism from the Science Fiction Writers Association and other groups about the terms for its new digital imprints, Random House has made changes to its contracts. The most significant change is that prospective authors for the Hydra, Alibi, LoveSwept and Flirt imprints will now be able to choose from two models--the original profit share deal or a more traditional advance plus royalty deal.

At the cost of sounding like a churl, when they say

Hydra, Alibi, Loveswept, and Flirt seek to acquire rights throughout the world and in all languages. This expands the author’s opportunities and earnings potential.

Actually, this*may* expand the author’s opportunities and earnings potential or it may not; the author already has the option of selling rights around the world and I could see how having one entity handle them could work out for or against the author. What it does is expand Hydra, Alibi, Loveswept, and Flirt’s opportunities and earnings potential.

Comments

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

I'm sticking with my Overton Window comment from last time. I'm willing to bet that they're pulling back in the hopes that people will go, "Oh, that's better," and be encouraged to take the cartoonishly awful profit-share version seriously.

Between this and Amanda Palmer's recent TED talk (http://www.thevinyldistrict.com/storefront/2013/03/an-open-letter-to-amanda-palmer-a-fellow-musicians-response-to-the-ted-video/), I'm getting weary of the continuing message to entry-level creative professionals to expect nothing for their efforts, to count themselves lucky, to live on hope and handouts. Palmer's nothing if not sincere, but the end result is so transparently the production of a creative class that's ripe for exploitation.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much for the link. It should get stuck in the link-dex right next to one of John Scalzi's carefully worded screeds about why he refuses to write "for free".

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

Yes, she expresses the issue very well, and with more patience toward Palmer than I could have mustered.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Ditto.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

There seems to be something in the air at the moment, as Ta-nehisi Coates recently went Full Artiste and declared that getting paid to write is an optional thing (http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/lucrative-work-for-free-opportunity/273846/).

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

He should feel right at home, then, working for a commercial organ that apparently is asking people to write for free. Actually, that's probably too snarky. But still.

One wonders if professional writers are (or should be) worried that they'll be increasingly supplanted by people who are willing (or can afford and choose) not to get paid.

One wonders if the publishers will offer deals that feature no advance, but royalties, and only a very limited license to publish with dramatic secure-back (i.e. you have exclusive north american book publishing rights for two years, and from that point if the property isn't in print, in hardcopy and e-book, available through all major online retailers, the rights revert back to author).

One wonders if more and more genre publishers will self-publish, or publish in commune groups.

It's a brave new world a comin'!

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

He should feel right at home, then, working for a commercial organ that apparently is asking people to write for free.

I believe he wrote that piece specifically in response to complaints that his employer was asking people to write for free. The employer that presumably pays him to be an employee. I'm reminded of the old saying, "Where you stand depends on where you sit."

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

I suspect publishers will eventually become what vanity presses claim to be, where an author pays them to edit and market a book and get it in whatever physical bookshops still remain.