Items that piqued my interest over the past few weeks:
Contract changes for Random House UK
UK authors, agents, and authors' groups are up in arms about a pair of recent changes to Random House UK's contract boilerplate.
The Bookseller reports that Random House is attempting to re-work its out of print clause in much the same way that Simon & Schuster did a year ago. Apparently, the new language allows rights reversion "only if the publisher cannot supply a physical or electronic copy of a book within a month, or if there have been no royalty earnings for a year." So as long as your book sells just one copy a year, Random House can refuse to declare the book out of print, and you cannot get your rights back.
As I noted in a previous post on the importance of rights reversion, "in print forever" is not a good thing. Why should publishers have control over books they aren't marketing and selling? If your book's availability is limited (for instance, if there are no physical copies that can be ordered by stores and the book exists only in an electronic edition), or if it's still available but few copies are selling, you're better off if the publisher takes it out of print, allowing you to revert the rights and regain control of them. This is why, if you're signing a life-of-copyright contract, it's important to make sure that you can demand rights reversion once sales fall below a minimum level--for instance, fewer than 250 copies sold over two consecutive royalty periods.
The other contract change affects children's writers. The Guardian's Book Blog reports that Random House has decided to include the following clause in its standard children's book contracts: "If you act or behave in a way which damages your reputation as a person suitable to work with or be associated with children, and consequently the market for or value of the work is seriously diminished, and we may (at our option) take any of the following actions: Delay publication / Renegotiate advance / Terminate the agreement."
Children's writers being such a debauched group and all. Who knew?
How literary agents get their start
"Everyone has to start somewhere." This is one of the most frustrating phrases I hear on a regular basis, applied to agents without publishing experience. Yes, everyone has to start somewhere, but as with other skilled professions, "starting somewhere" does not mean "starting from zero." To effectively perform a difficult and complicated job, you need a matching base of knowledge and experience. What does this mean for agents? They need to start their careers in some aspect of publishing, or by apprenticing at a reputable literary agency.
This dialog between two established literary agents (from Open Book Magazine) is interesting for many reasons, not least because the agents provide detailed descriptions of how they got their got their start.
Sam Hiyate, president of The Rights Factory, was an editor and publisher before he became an agent. "When I became an agent," he says, "I took the things I love most about my old job – finding and working with new writers, and promoting their talent and work – and took it to the bigger publishers to do the rest of the work...I had to learn how to sell to publishers and how to negotiate the best possible deals. I’d say those things are both so difficult and impossible to master overall that I am still learning."
Hilary McMahon, vice-president of Westwood Creative Artists, had various jobs before landing a front desk position with Westwood. "I worked on the front desk for a few years, which was tremendous training - seeing how the different agents worked and experiencing all facets of the company. Then I became Bruce [Westwood's] assistant, which was also an amazing experience; working with writers like Rohinton Mistry and Timothy Findley was a pretty great way to learn the ropes! When Jennifer Barclay left the agency to travel the world...I inherited her client list and have been adding to it steadily ever since."
When you're evaluating a new agent or agency, this is the kind of background you want to see--not "I'm a retired teacher/professor who loves books," or "I've worked in advertising/PR/real estate for 20 years and I really know how to sell," or (worst of all) "I'm a self-published/vanity-published/unpublished writer who has suffered the slings and arrows of the cruel publishing industry, and I swear I'll be nicer to you than they were to me."
For a longer discussion of why literary agents need relevant professional experience, see this blog post.
Is this the future of publishing?
A little while back, I wrote a Tidbit on HarperStudio, the new HarperCollins imprint that has generated quite a bit of discussion for its stated intention of sharing profit with authors and doing away with returns.
Recently, HarperStudio head Bob Miller hosted a breakfast to present more information about the imprint. Reports from literary agent Nathan Bransford and media blogger Jeff Bercovici reveal that, in Bransford's words, "HarperStudio will pay authors no more than $100,000 advances, and instead of royalties, utilizes a profit sharing model that incorporates expenses on one side of the ledger (expenses will include publicity and unit production, but not editorial and overhead), and income on the other side. Profits are split 50/50, and accounting reports four times a year, translating to a break-even point at around 25,000 copies sold."
HarperStudio will publish 25 books a year (17 are already signed for its launch list). Miller is still working on ways to incorporate a no-returns policy into the mix.
It's an intriguing experiment, and it will be interesting to see where it goes. (Nathan Bransford has blogged about two other "imprints of the future" that, like HarperStudio, are attempting to address some of the perceived problems of the publishing industry by making changes to the basic publishing model: Vanguard Press, an imprint of Perseus, and Twelve, an imprint of Hachette.)
Or is this the future of publishing?
From the Guardian UK, an article by Emma Johns on how focus groups are pushing their way into the arts, including publishing.
Johns describes Hothouse, "a London-based business that aims to give children what they say they want from stories, rather than what adults think they want." Hothouse employs a market research company to present kids with story ideas: "Using dummy covers, short excerpts and blurbs to prompt conversation, researchers ask the children their opinions on which characters, plots and ideas they enjoy most. Each child is also visited at home by a researcher, who finds out what kind of books they already own and read. Drawing on this research, Hothouse commissions a team of writers accordingly."
So far, Hothouse has launched two focus group-generated children's series: Darkside, published by Scholastic, and Fright Night, published by Puffin.
"You could ask whether Hothouse is publishing books that will endure, or merely pushing products," Johns remarks. But children's books are already pretty product-oriented, with the many packaged series that crank out installment after installment, and the growing trend toward actual product placement in YA books and children's learning books. Still, creating books by focus group does seem to take it quite a bit farther. One can certainly see why this appeals to publishers--but as a sometime YA author, I don't find it an encouraging trend.
Calling Guy Noir
Last but not least, from the UK's Telegraph comes one of the odder bits of book-related news I've seen lately: the Norfolk County Council has admitted that it spent more than £80,000 over the past three years on private detectives to hunt down debtors--including paying detectives £9,190 to recover overdue library books, CDs, and DVDs.
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