In the past year or so, various parties in the publishing/internet/on-line-retailer industries have tried all of the following: - Google expressed a wish to change copyright law so that ‘out of print’ would be the same as ‘public domain’.
- A Major Publisher (whose name I will not utter here) inserted a clause into their contract, stating that as long as they offered an ‘electronic version’ of a book, it wasn’t out of print-even though they were not actually printing copies and shipping them to bookstores, effectively hanging on to the rights forever.
- At the end of March, Amazon began calling Print-on-Demand companies, telling them that they would print their books through Book Surge (Amazon’s own company) or else Amazon would turn off the ‘buy’ buttons for that company’s books. Several PODs did cave in, but many others haven’t. Most ‘buy’ buttons are still turned on.
- Recently the SWFA ran an article on the difficulties of getting some publishers to pay authors what they’ve earned. Major publishers, not little fly-by-night outfits.
What is an honest writer to do?
STICK TOGETHER.
Every writers’ organization in the country, and some abroad, have jumped all over the Major Publisher and Amazon. (After a ton of protests, the Major Publisher dropped the new clause and apologized for the ‘misunderstanding’.) PEN, The Author’s Guild, SFWA, RWA-all of these groups keep constant watch. They know from long experience, and history, that if writers don’t look out for each other, no one else will.
This is especially important for self-published authors, like me. Although things have improved in the last decade, there’s still a stigma attached to self-published books-mostly by people who haven’t got the faintest idea of how the publishing industry works.
Perhaps at one time, any writer who wrote a good book would get snapped up by a major publisher. This was true, until about twenty years ago. Today, the publishing industry is run more and more like Hollywood; the focus is on brand names and established formulas, whether the work produced is any good or not. That business model (did I just use the phrase ‘business model’?) makes it nearly impossible for new writers to get their work noticed.
If the excellent POD novels I’ve read this year are any indication, the big houses have rejected or overlooked wonderful work. These people self-published because, like me, they believed in their stories and knew that readers would respond. The irony is, If I weren’t self-published myself, I probably would never have read them. But if I want readers to take a chance on my self-published work, I had better put my money where my mouth is. So I have discovered authors like C. S. Marks and D. M. Paul, Seth Kerin and G.L Douglas. I have others I’m going to get to through the year.
Reach out to your fellow writers, whether they’re self-published or not. Never stop believing in your work; if it’s good, people will tell you. The battle is easier if we fight together; alone, nobody gets very far.
Corny, but true.
Tags:
amazon, dodgy tactics, major publishers, self-publishing, sfwa, unity, writers groups
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