Comments on: The Business Rusch: Deal Breakers 2012

By: Edward M. Grant

Edward M. Grant — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 22:02:25 +0000

When Konrath was still trade publishing, didn’t he write a blog post along the lines of ‘I don’t send SASEs to publishers because it makes you look like a loser’?

So you could adopt that approach; if they want the book, they’ll pay for a stamp or send an email.

By: R John Hayes

R John Hayes — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 06:07:22 +0000

As a fellow Canadian, there are three easy alternatives to IRCs, which are indeed expensive: First, while a house may not accept electronic submissions, they often are willing to reply electronically, which obviates the need to pay for return postage, and saves that money. Second, if you do need a paper response, American stamps can be purchased for considerably less than IRCs in any Canadian (or for that matter any) city with a stamp store (for collectors), or from the USPS by mail. Check out their website and you can choose what your return mail will look like. Third, and probably easiest, send a few bucks to an American friend of family member and have them send you some stamps back. Make sure that you get the right denominations whether you go for solution two or three, and you will set yourself up for responses as required.

By: Pip Etchells

Pip Etchells — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 20:50:20 +0000

The Writer’s Guild UK (mainly scriptwriters, but novelists are eligible) also have a similar service for Candidate and Full Members.

By: Thomas P

Thomas P — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 19:43:04 +0000

You might want to also consider Baen who prefer electronic submission via a webform with your email adress in the RTF, no SASE required. All the details are on their website under the About Baen menu, FAQ page item.

By: Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Kristine Kathryn Rusch — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 19:17:58 +0000

My sub rights sales are all better without the agent, and I’m finally getting royalties on most overseas projects. Hmmm. Makes you wonder about past royalties, doesn’t it? When you have two layers of agents to go through, one set of which you don’t know and you didn’t hire, then there’s even more chance of dicey and hard-to-trace accounting practices.

By: Laura Resnick

Laura Resnick — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 03:51:22 +0000

In fact, I was talking just recently with a writer who did the math and realized that foreign subrights sales/income has been better in this writer’s career, over the years, during periods WITHOUT an agent than WITH. Which was one of the factors in this writer deciding to quit the agent-author business model for good after recently firing another agent.

By: Laura Resnick

Laura Resnick — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 03:47:48 +0000

um, I meant “trying withOUT success” (I really need to proofread my posts…)

By: Laura Resnick

Laura Resnick — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 03:47:10 +0000

I don’t agree with you there, Russ. (By way of disclosure, although I got all my rights reverted from Hq years ago and am therefore not subject to these practices or involved in this lawsuit, I know many of the parties involved and have been closely following negotiations on this matter since last year (Hq’s PR claim of being “surprised” by this filing is nonsense, given how many months the lawyers for the “class” have been trying, with success, to get HQ to negotiate) since I believe it’s an extremely important case.

The -contract- terms said the writers would get 50% royalties, which is what they understood, signed for, and expected.

The lawsuit being filed includes a charge of breach of contract over this matter.

The writers didn’t sign a bad contract with regard to e-royalty rates (in fact, 50% of net is a BETTER rate than the major houses offer in recent years), nor a contract whose royalty rates they didn’t understand.

They signed a contract which, they now alleges, Hq’s creative accounting practices have breached and violated.

By: Laura Resnick

Laura Resnick — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 03:41:59 +0000

“This year, all three publisher talks I attended revolved around “this is what we can offer you” and ended with the words “thank you, we appreciate that you have a choice”.”

Wow! That’s an unexpected sea change–and a very positive one!

By: Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Kristine Kathryn Rusch — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 21:06:57 +0000

To answer your question, Joyce, I’ve written about this a lot, particularly in this post: http://kriswrites.com/2011/05/11/the-business-rusch-writing-like-its-1999/

You can make the deals yourself with an IP attorney. The foreign publishers & Hollywood & everyone else will come to you through your e-mail or your website. (Make sure you have a contact button there.) They will ask who your agent is. Tell them you handle things yourself. If things get to a contract phase, then hire an IP attorney.

Your agent gets the inquiries the same way.Very few agents solicit foreign publishers. The publishers query them after they’ve heard about your book. Plus there are all kinds of other shenanigans that happen–such as an agent changing the contract in their favor (happens a lot) or turning down deals not worth their while (meaning their commission would be small), but are worth yours. And you’ll never know about the deals. I could go on, and probably should in an update post.

Thanks for the comment–and congrats on getting the books out again.