Regular readers know that I harp from time to time on the idea of authors retaining their copyrights. I’ve been doing this because there’s no clear metric other than raw dollars by which an author can calculate the value of a publishing deal compared with the value of retaining and exploiting copyright ownership themselves. And raw-dollar comparisons are hard to come by.
Which is why this post from Joe Konrath should be the first thing you read today, and tomorrow, and any day a publisher comes calling:
My five Hyperion ebooks (the sixth one came out in July so no royalties yet) each earn an average of $803 per year on Kindle.
My four self-pubbed Kindle novels each earn an average of $3430 per year.
If I had the rights to all six of my Hyperion books, and sold them on Kindle for $1.99, I’d be making $20,580 per year off of them, total, rather than $4818 a year off of them, total.
So, in other words, because Hyperion has my ebook rights, I’m losing $15,762 per year.
It’s only one example. And this author is profiting indirectly from having had his books published by a publisher — including any editing, design work, previous marketing, etc., which helped attract attention to his name and stories. But he’s also being very clear: controlling his copyrights would be putting more money in his bank account.
Whatever a book deal used to be worth to an author in sales and publicity it seems clear that it’s now worth less, and perhaps a lot less. Authors are doing much of their own marketing, more of their own editing, etc.
In the fast-moving digital hurricane that is pulverizing the traditional publishing industry, locking yourself into any deal may be the biggest disaster, because you give up the only thing you really ever own: your copyright. Maybe the contract you sign will be crystal clear regarding reversion of rights to you, and what your publisher has to do to retain rights to your book, but I’m betting it won’t be. Why? Because that contract will be written by the publisher; because you’ll be flattered and thankful to get any deal; and because publishers know they need copyrights in the bank in order to get through this nightmare, so they’re going to write the contract in a way that allows them to control your work for as long as they can.
I haven’t seen an example of this in print, but I would think there’s going to be a wave of contracts washing up on Author Island which include EULA-like language allowing a publisher to retain or expand a copyright so that it can be exploited in new media, including new media not on the market at the time of the writing and signing of the contract. And if the old trigger for going out of print was zero dusty books in a warehouse, what’s the new trigger going to be when one magnetic image on a hard drive is the equivalent of being in print?
As a writer you have no way of knowing now which standards or platforms or e-publishers or publishers to embrace. You don’t know who’s going to be in business in a year, who’s going to get bought out — meaning your copyrights may be sold to someone you didn’t intend to get in bed with — and you don’t know what the most profitable revenue streams will be.
This is a crazy time. Being a professional writer today means being everything: marketing department, publisher, agent, designer, editor, valet, therapist. But there may be no more important job than being your own business manager, and that starts with understanding the numbers.
If you don’t control your copyrights, you don’t control your numbers.
— Mark Barrett
Great post.
What I find even more intriguing here is that a self-pub author’s split from Amazon isn’t even that favorable (at least when compared to something like Scribd or Smashwords), and Konrath is selling at low prices! If he’s on the DTP contract, then I believe it’s 35% for the author.
The math seems to be bad and getting worse. It’s inevitable that the squeeze affecting high-end publishers will filter down, but I also think you’re right that there are inequities — or at least inconsistencies — in the pricing/cost models. It will be interesting to see which publishers/providers work the hardest to cut their own profits in exchange for market share during the transition. (This favors deep pockets, but might also favor smaller, more nimble publishers. Particularly if they aren’t fronting costs for tech, as say, Sony and Amazon are with their e-readers.)
Great article.
As a publisher that pays 30% royalties to our authors, I wish more of them understood that it is in their best interest to become their very own best business manager.
Most have chosen a particular kind of willful ignorance regarding the rights granted under U.S. copyright law. Most are so beaten down, they don’t even know what to ask. I honestly think they believe they have no power at all.
The other part of this discussion has to do with notions of success based on bookstores and the NYTimes review of books appearances. Our most successful authors want to sell books. The ones who make little money spend more time trying to get a review in a mag than in figuring how who wants to buy their books.
We live in interesting times.
Take care,
Jay