I want to say nothing, but that’s not true. Traditional publishers learned a lot these past few years, and in 2014, started putting their knowledge into action. Over the next few weeks, I’ll do the traditional media thing, and provide you with my own sort of year in review. All of it will focus on […]
Continue ReadingRecently, I got e-mail from another career writer, talking about a rights grab from a traditional publisher. I saw the document in question; it’s egregious. I do not have permission to talk about this particular document nor would I, since it’s proprietary, but it’s the kind of document I’ve seen at least six times in […]
Continue ReadingI had a lot of marvelous, thoughtful comments on last week’s blog. I didn’t respond, in part because I was extremely busy this past week, but mostly because I would have been expressing my opinion on the commenter’s life and career choices. I try not to do that, particularly in public. We’re all different, and […]
Continue ReadingI was a bit stunned at the response to last week’s blog, not because the response was negative—it wasn’t—but because so many of you said that you had no idea that writing was a career choice. On a gut level, many of you knew that some of us had made careers as writers, but over […]
Continue ReadingBecause of this blog, I see a lot of publishing contracts. People want advice on certain clauses. I tell folks that I can’t give legal advice because I’m not a lawyer, but I will look at the contract and tell them if they need to hire a lawyer to negotiate it. Most of the time […]
Continue ReadingOver the last couple of years, a number of writers have written to me to ask how to get the rights to their traditionally published novels reverted back to them. These requests increased while I wrote the most recent short series, “Why Writers Disappear,” and finally, one of the readers mentioned via e-mail that I […]
Continue ReadingToday I had hoped to write a blog about something other than traditional publishing contracts, but events have conspired against me. Cory Doctorow published a column on Publishers Weekly’s website about a new contract demand that might be coming from Hachette. Apparently, Hachette has decided to ensure that all of its e-books have some sort of DRM. […]
Continue ReadingFor the past several weeks, this blog has focused on deal breakers in modern publishing contracts. Novelists Inc. asked me to update my article on deal breakers for their conference binder from last year, and wow, oh, wow have things changed in these short twelve months. I used that article as a jumping off point […]
Continue ReadingI started this small series on deal breakers two weeks ago, in response to Novelists, Inc’s request for an update of an article that I gave them last August. I thought such an update would be easy until I read the article itself. Then I realized just how much had changed in the last year. […]
Continue ReadingDean Wesley Smith and I have spent a good part of this summer teaching, as well as talking to other professional writers. One thing we discuss is the history of the business because it helps us understand how we got to where we are. In the beginning, publishing was a handshake operation. Writers and publishers […]
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