Rights

The Beijing International Book Fair, which runs through September 3rd, is attracting an increasingly global audience, as the Chinese book market continues to boom. Two questions are most relevant this year: What will happen with the e-book market in China (sales of ebooks and digital products hit 80 billion RMB ($11.8 billion) in 2009...
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Mike Shatzkin‘s run the numbers comparing e-book royalties to hardcovers, to trade paperbacks, and to mass-market paperbacks, and how they work out under both the wholesale and the agency models (with the author getting 25% of net and with the author getting 40% of net). By Shatzkin’s admission, this is a “just the facts,...
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In news that will have broad implications in e-book rights, Andrew Wylie and Random House have “resolved their differences,” according to a joint statement from Mr Wylie and Markus Dohle, Random House’s chairman and chief executive. The feud began when the powerful literary agent announced plans to issue 13 titles as e-books exclusively through...
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Publishers Weekly unveiled  PW Select on Monday, “a quarterly supplement announcing self-published titles and reviewing those we believe are most deserving of a critical assessment.” In the announcement, PW President George W. Slowik Jr wrote: “Each quarterly will include a complete announcement issue of all self-published books submitted during that period. The listings will...
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Students at Texas Tech University are learning the fundamentals of business management from Atlas Black.  Atlas is a 20-something, a bit of a slacker – and he’s a character in a comic book. Professor Jeremy Short co-wrote a series of graphic novels, which he’s been using instead of textbooks in his business classes, to...
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Bestelling author Seth Godin announced over the weekend that his book Linchpin is the last one he will publish in the traditional way. In an upcoming Mediabistro interview, Godin says “I’ve decided not to publish any more books in the traditional way….I like the people, but I can’t abide the long wait, the filters,...
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“The chair of the Society of Authors, Tom Holland, has hit out at publishers’ attempt to seize control over electronic rights, calling ebook deals that lock authors in for the duration of copyright “not remotely fair”.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/12/ebooks-publishing-deals-fair
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Rights, Royalties & Retailers: What Works? Wednesday, May 26, 2010 11:00AM – 12:00PM Location: Room 1E03 Read any news surrounding the agency model, iPad, or Amazon, and one can easily conclude why rights standardization is so crucial today. The pie is only so big, and everybody wants a piece of it. Ebooks supplied the...
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The BISG Rights Committee is making steady progress towards creating a standard for communicating rights information and transactions. As a bit of background, there are currently no standards for communicating rights and the related royalty bearing sales. This lack of a standard hinders the commerce of these rights. By creating this standard, it will...
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BISAC Presentation – Work So Far The above link points to the presentation used at the September 2009 BISAC meeting to introduce the proposal for a rights and royalties working committee to BISAC.
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