On February 9, The Passive Voice published a piece titled “The Beginning of the End for Patreon.” [link] As he so often does, the Passive Guy linked to another blog post, and then did his own riff on that post. The other blog post is worth reading. It’s by Nate Hoffelder of The Digital Reader, and discusses Patreon’s viability. As the Passive Guy investigated the […]
Business Musings: Surviving The Stupid
I sometimes think I live in a constant state of outrage because I read the news. Every day, there’s something new. I occasionally divorce myself from the constant barrage by going on a news-holiday or a Twitter-holiday, so I sometimes miss the current stuff. Imagine my surprise, as I scanned through Twitter a few weeks ago, to see a writer I follow go after Tor […]
Business Musings: Bestseller Lists Again (Or Chicken Little Is Wrong. Again.)
In the middle of February, I saw a tweet from Melville House, an independent publisher in Brooklyn, NY, linking to an article of theirs. I followed the link and saw this title: “Into the Bezosphere: The Washington Post will syndicate Amazon Charts.” I was surprised. I had heard nothing about the Post’s new bestseller list. Granted, I’ve been busy and preoccupied this year. Still coping […]
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.
Business Musings: Sneaky Money Grabs (Contracts/Dealbreakers)
I was going to write a blog on why you never hire people for a percentage of your sales for the life of the project. I was going to look at some of the contract terms that writers should be wary of, from companies like Booktrope, companies that still exist.
And then I choked on a big gigantic paragraph in the Booktrope sample author agreement. This big gigantic paragraph is the one thing that allowed Booktrope to raise millions of dollars. Had Booktrope succeeded, that success would have come at the expense of its authors.
The scary thing is that other companies are behaving the exact same way.
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