Pamela Jackson’s secrets forced her to change her identity and move to the Oregon Coast. When Pamela finds herself called to jury duty—and worse, selected for the jury on a murder trial—she fears she must see it through to keep up appearances as an upstanding citizen. But Pamela might know a little too much about murder to pull it off. “Jury Duty,” by New York […]
Business Musings: Content, Content, Content (Hollywood Part 2)
A few weeks ago, I got a survey from the Global Licensing Group, the people in charge of the Las Vegas Licensing Expo. They wanted to know my opinion (and probably hundreds of other people’s opinions) about content. Is it important? Why is it important? How should I/we/they handle it? Oh, and am I a content provider (licensor) or someone who licenses content (licensee)? I […]
Free Fiction Monday: Homecoming
Fortan’s space mission ends ten years later (for him) and one hundred years later (for everyone else). He expects changes when he returns to the good old U.S. of A. He doesn’t expect to get arrested upon landing. He really doesn’t expect all the charges for back family support, considering he had no child or wife or girlfriend when he left.
He just left an enclosed environment that felt like prison. Will he go to actual prison for a crime he hasn’t committed?
“Homecoming,” by Hugo Award-winning author Kristine Kathryn Rusch is free on this website for one week only.
Business Musings: Diving To Freedom
Here’s the heartbreaking part of this new world. Many long-time writers, who want to go full indie, are abandoning their series rather than put money into their traditional publishers’ pocket. The first time I heard a writer say he was going to do that, I was shocked.
Business Musings: Long-Term Thinking: Rights Reversions (Contracts/Dealbreakers)
Slowly, traditional publishers have realized that backlist titles are worth a lot of money. As I wrote recently, traditional publishers are slowly figuring out that they are no longer in the manufacturing business, they’re in the rights business.
So they’re buying—and holding—rights. Years ago, when I got angry at a publisher for their misbehavior, I offered to buy back the rights to one of my books. It caught that publisher flat-footed. No writer had ever done that, and the publisher had no idea how to estimate the books’ value to the company.
Now, I’m hearing from more and more writers that their publishers insist on the writers paying to get rights reverted.
Business Musings: Thugs, Lawyers, and Writers (Contracts/Dealbreakers)
Writerly weirdness causes conflict with our careers and our businesses, in part because we are (as a group) imaginative, rule-bound, pessimistic, ethical, and the center of our own small universes.
We bring all of those things into the realm of contracts.
Be honest with yourself: What do you imagine will happen to you if you don’t follow your book contract to the letter?
Business Musings: Indie Contracts
Boy, I’ve been seeing a lot of crappy contracts lately, and not at all from the place I would have expected. I expect bad clauses in traditional publishing contracts. Too many writers don’t hire intellectual property attorneys to vet those contracts, relying instead on agents, and that leads to all kinds of terrible book contracts. If you want to see what some of those are, […]
Business Musings: Stupidity Fatigue
I’ve written five openings to this blog today. I want to write a completely different blog—and I will. In fact, I’ll write five completely different blogs, but I can’t publish them for several months. If I publish them now, then the people I’m referring to will know I’m referring to them, and that would be bad. Several months from now, I will have accumulated even […]
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