Re: Re: consequences of shift to ebooks

On Jan 6, 2008, at 1:02 AM, auwg wrote:

> --- In [email protected], "Lida" <publisher@...> wrote:
>> Ebooks vs. p-books
>> With epublishers, your book can be accepted, published
>> and available to readers in about four months or less.
>> Very few epublishers will pay an advance.
>
> I've never understood why publishers pay an advance. Books are works
> of art created on spec, however good or bad they may be.
> Let those works generate sales -- or not -- according to their ability
> to motivate readers to buy.

Most buyers pay when they get the product, not when they get the money  
from their customers. Advances against royalties make perfect sense.  
The buyer is the publisher, not the reader. Making it an advance  
against royalties just means that if the publisher makes more than  
they expect, the manufacturer (the author) gets a cut, but only after  
the publisher gets paid back. **shrug** it works.

And FYI, many types of book (almost all non-fiction) are sold on  
proposal. They are NOT works of art created on spec. They are  
contracted for and are not particularly works of art, more works of  
effort.  It is right and appropriate in that case for the publisher to  
pay during the writing process because truth be told, if they did not  
pay, professional writers would do other work that did pay instead of  
writing non-fiction books. Writers have to have food, clothing and  
shelter while they work too.

But because we are dealing with royalties for IP instead of straight  
salary, the mechanism of payment and the vocabulary is a bit different.

> Many musicians and actors now demand a percentage of sales as well as
> a set fee for their performances.

Actors do now. Musicians long have. They get royalties too, though the  
royalties are SO LOW that they barely pay back what the music  
companies say is owed. Which is why so many groups tour relentlessly  
even when they have no album to promote. Touring is how groups make  
their money. It is only recently that music companies are pushing to  
get a piece of the touring revenue. THAT's the big change coming on.

>
> They know about the long tail.
> They've seen it first-hand, as musicians and actors of the fifties and
> before got not even one thin dime when the music and movies they
> helped create went to TV and radio and began generating repeated
> income over the last several decades.

If their contracts included residuals they did! Those were pretty  
standard in pretty much all contracts since the studio system  
disintegrated in--what, the 50's? The whole writer's strike is about  
internet and online residuals.

> Nuts to an advance.
> Just guarantee me (and my heirs) a percentage of every sale and keep
> the company books open for sales audits.

Yeah, but for p-books the in print period is very short. This attitude  
puts ALL the risk on the author. If the book doesn't sell as well as  
the publisher thinks, the author gets nothing (or little to nothing)  
and his book (the rights in his book) is gone. I'm sure big publishers  
would LOVE to go to a no advance system, it benefits THEM so highly,  
removing the risk that the book won't sell through its advance, thus  
saving them millions over the whole industry of books. I can see why  
any publisher would want this situation. Talk about a windfall!

But I suspect writers won't like it too much. The risk belongs to the  
entity with the power and the money. In the vast majority of writing  
contracts, that is NOT the writer.

dej

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