Royalties

News that Random House had “won” its showdown with The Wylie Agency, over the inclusion of titles by RH authors in Wylie’s backlist digital publishing imprint Odyssey Editions, spread quickly through publishing circles last week, after joint statement released by Random House and Wylie. The statement said that Random House will now be the...
Read more »

More news from the GigaOM summit on “Disintermediation in Publishing” which is sure to have an impact on rights and royalties.  In addition to the paradigm-shifting technology we mentioned earlier, real debate is taking place on complaints from authors about royalty options and pricing policies relating to major retailers. Peter Brantley attended the conference...
Read more »

Debate on how technology will impact the role of the literary agent is taking place at the annual GigaOM Pro Bunker Series. Particularly interesting from a rights and royalties perspective is the potential for disintermediation in publishing. “We publish a lot of….dreck. I’m actually really proud of that because it should not be the...
Read more »

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...
Read more »

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,...
Read more »

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...
Read more »

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...
Read more »

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,...
Read more »

College textbook publisher Flat World announced today that use of it’s openly-licensed college textbooks will double for the Fall 2010 academic year, and publishers are sure to be paying attention. Flat World’s textbooks are published under an open Creative Commons license, as opposed to the industry-standard “all rights reserved” copyright.  Faculty can pick and...
Read more »

Should e-book royalties be the same as print book royalties?  It’s an ongoing argument.  Here is an interesting perspective from the Bookseller: Schnittman defends e-book royalties and rebuts SoA attack | theBookseller.com. From a publisher’s perspective, royalties will get more sophisticated as new formats and digital content proliferates.  Solid royalty software will be an...
Read more »