An introduction to the Licensing Expo blogs that will appear here all summer long.
Business Musings: The Agent Clause (Contracts/Dealbreakers)
This week, let’s deal with the clause that agents insert into your book contract with your publisher. (This is the book contract that your agent negotiated for you. Yes, I’m telling you the agent inserted something into that contract that benefits the agent, but doesn’t benefit you.) Agents have been abusing this clause for years now. Agents, not publishers, even though this clause is in a publishing contract between the writer and her publisher.
Business Musings: Discount Abuse (Contracts/Dealbreakers)
Indie writers: Read this post now in case you decide to get a traditional publisher to publish your paper copies. Especially if you had (or will have) an agent negotiate the deal. Because much of what I’m going to discuss here applies to paper books, not ebooks. This is one of those areas where you, the indie who has gone hybrid, is most likely to get screwed.
In fact, this area is where writers have been getting screwed since some publisher thought to change their contracts in the last 1990s—and then all the other publishers followed suit. (How is this not collusion? Oh…Department of Justice…)
Discount clauses always send a ting of discomfort through me, and not just because the things are damaging to writers’ careers and writers’ incomes. But because they are one of those let’s-screw-the-writer clauses that got added into contracts in the past twenty years or so.
Business Musings: Poor Poor Pitiful Me Is Not A Business Model
This poor-poor-pitiful-me attitude has become the norm in the publishing industry right now, and I’m really tired of it.
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 publishing and writing, both indie and traditional, and all of […]
The Business Rusch: When The Old Ways Work (Discoverability Part 13)
Yeah, yeah, I was pretty disparaging of the old ways to promote books back fifteen weeks ago, when I was just digging into this series. And there’s a good reason to disparage the way Things Have Always Been Done. But here’s the catch: The old ways work. Occasionally. Sometimes. When done right. They usually aren’t done right. In fact, most places—including traditional publishers—use all the […]
The Business Rusch: Branding (Discoverability Part 6)
Last week, I got taken to task all over writer communities on the internet (and probably in writers’ group meetings as well) for telling writers with only one or two books out not to worry about promotion. The response I got in the comments to last week’s blog were mild compared to the vitriol my poor name got subjected to on the private message boards. […]
The Business Rusch: Addendums, Rights Grabs & Agents (Yet Again)
Recently, 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 the last two years. These documents are addendums to publishing […]
The Business Rusch: We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know
I 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 because of the new world of publishing, we all have […]
The Business Rusch: Selling Books Elsewhere
For the past week, I have stared at an e-mail that I printed out nearly two years ago. I flagged the e-mail and put it in the back of my 2011 paper calendar, and moved the printout with each new calendar. The e-mail is from my former French mystery editor. We exchanged e-mails as she left my French publisher for a new publisher, and she […]
Ten Little Fen: A Spade/Paladin Novel
Spade and Paladin find themselves snowed in at a remote sf convention, with a killer on the loose! Get your copy here.
The Chase
The Chase, the latest Diving novel, answers a lot of your questions about the series. It also might cause you to ask a few more. Click here to find out more.
Get Early Copies of the Thursday Business Blog and More!
Rethinking The Writing Business
All the licensing blogs in one volume. Learn how to think about your writing business in a way that will enable you to work smarter, not harder. Get yours here.
A New Edition of A Dangerous Road
For book clubs and reading groups, complete with questions! Go here to order.
