Business Musings: Traditional Publishing Stupidity

I’m in the middle of putting my “Rethinking The Writing Business” posts on licensing into a book, having blown past my deadline because I require sleep every now and then. It looks like I’ll have that, plus the additional chapters and material, done within two weeks…. If the world would get out of my way. […]

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Business Musings: Things I Learned From My Readers

The title of this blog is things I learned from my readers. The pieces below link to comments or websites.

The main thing I learned from you folks over the course of writing the contract series is this: Not only do you pay attention, but you use this information. Almost daily now, I get letters from a writer who used some piece of the contracts blog to negotiate a better deal or to get their rights reverted or to handle a foreign rights contract.

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Business Musings: A Real Book Contract (Contracts/Dealbreakers)

Grand Central’s parent company Hachette is suing Grahame-Smith for $500,000, the advance on that second book of this contract.

Figure this: The publisher believes it’s better to sue the author than it is to leave that $500,000 outstanding. There are several reasons that Hachette could have made the decision to file suit.

Expect more of these kinds of suits in the future. If the writers who got huge advances do not meet their obligations with the publishers, the publishers will cut their losses and run as fast as they possibly can.

But what does this suit have to do with the contracts/dealbreakers series?

This:

For the first time, I can share with you a complete publishing contract.

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Business Musings: What Traditional Publishing Learned in 2014

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 […]

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The Business Rusch: A Tale of Two Royalty Statements

Today 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. […]

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The Business Rusch: How Traditional Publishers Are Making Money

The Business Rusch: How Traditional Publishers Are Making Money Kristine Kathryn Rusch  Of course, this past week has been just as busy in publishing as the last several weeks. The changes are amazing, especially considering how stable the industry used to be. Third quarter earnings have come in, and the publicly traded publishing companies must […]

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