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Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Last August, I received several emails from writers who’d had a very strange experience. They’d submitted to a literary agent in Boston called Sara Levine, only to be informed by Levine's assistant, a few weeks later, that Levine had died suddenly of a heart attack. The regretful assistant suggested they contact Levine’s colleague, Julia Levin of the Florida-based Julia Levin Literary Agency, who was taking over Levine's business. Other writers who'd submitted to Sara Levine were approached by Julia Levin herself, with much the same story. No one had ever heard of Julia Levin before. Her profiles on MySpace, LinkedIn, and Facebook (the only info that could be found on her, online or off) indicated that she'd been in business since 2005, both on her own and as a co-agent with Sara Levine. In emails to prospective clients, as well as in a September Open House on Facebook, through which she hoped to add to her agency roster, she...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Given Random House's recent claim on electronic rights in older contracts , Macmillan's recent announcement that it will be issuing "enhanced ebooks" simultaneously with some of its hardcover releases (and charging even more than for the hardcovers), and the thorny rights and payment issues raised by the rapid expansion of the ebook market, this seems an especially relevant piece of news: the UK's Society of Authors has issued guidelines on ebook licensing and royalties for authors and agents. The full text of the statement (which I found via the excellent TeleRead blog ) can be seen here . The guidelines are below, and seem to me to make a great deal of sense. 1. Consider granting publishers a licence for 10 or 20 years, rather than for the full duration of copyright; 2. Limit any grant of ebook rights to the verbatim text. Wider electronic rights (e.g. for enhanced ebooks) should be negotiated separately and only if...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware I received the statement below this morning from the Authors Guild. I'm not happy with the Authors Guild these days, because of the debacle of the Google Book Search Settlement . But I agree with their position on Random House's recent attempt to claim electronic rights on backlist titles whose contracts do not include a grant of those rights. --------------------------- On Friday, Random House CEO Markus Dohle sent a two-page letter to many literary agents regarding e-books. Much of the letter is devoted to Random House's efforts and investments to market traditional and electronic books. On the second page, Mr. Dohle gets to the point. After noting that most of Random House's backlist titles grant the publisher electronic book rights (we agree, since most backlist titles are from the past ten years, a period in which authors have generally licensed electronic rights in tandem with their print rights), he writes that ...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Last week, the publishing world was abuzz with news that Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and HarperCollins intend to delay the release of ebook versions of most of their hardcover titles by three or four months, rather than releasing the ebooks simultaneously with hardcovers (this delaying process is known as "windowing," and publishers have historically used it to separate hardcover and paperback editions, allowing the more expensive and therefore more profitable hardcover to build sales before issuing the cheaper paperback). According to Carolyn Reidy of S&S , "The right place for the e-book is after the hardcover but before the paperback." Predictable outcry ensued from ebook enthusiasts, and just about anyone with a beef against large commercial publishers. S&S, Hachette, and Harper were accused of being dinosaurs, of shooting themselves in the foot by alienating readers, of trying to delay ebook adoption out ...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Lately I've been getting a lot of questions from writers who've been solicited by Hudson Audio Publishing (which appears to be engaging in a major spam campaign). Per Hudson's website, Hudson Audio Publishing is a boutique service company that specializes in assisting: - Self published authors - Unpublished authors - Seminar speakers - Owners of quality audio material to get their works converted into audio books and sold through the three largest audio book distribution platforms in the world - Amazon, Audible and iTunes. How does it work? You can record your book yourself , using free or low-cost software, in which case there's no upfront fee due to Hudson (verbiage on the website suggests that this fee-freeness is temporary). Or you can pay Hudson to do it for you , using (they say) professional voice talent, which on average (they say) will cost between $1,500 and $2,500. Royalties aren't overly gene...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Kevin Weiss, President and CEO of Author Solutions Inc. , has issued a video statement addressing the responses by RWA , SFWA , MWA , and NINC to ASI's recent partnerships with commercial publishers in launching pay-to-publish divisions. According to ASI's press release about the video statement, Weiss takes exception to these guilds' position that only traditionally-published books can succeed. "There are plenty of books in traditional publishing today that just don't make it; it's a hits business," Weiss said. "It's why the publishing industry is going through a transformation today and the consumer has everything to say about what is good content and what isn't good content. To say that in order for a book to make it in the marketplace it has to blessed by a traditional publisher doesn't make any sense in 2009." Which of course is not at all what the various "guilds'" st...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Today, Mystery Writers of America announced its Board's unanimous decision to remove Harlequin and all its imprints from MWA's list of Approved Publishers, effective immediately, as a result of Harlequin's recent rollout of DellArte Press , a pay-to-publish division. The official announcement is below. MWA Board member Lee Goldberg's blog includes the announcement, as well as the text of MWA's official decision, and a letter from Donna Hayes, Harlequin's CEO, in response to MWA's expressions of concern . ---------------------------- The Board of Mystery Writers of America voted unanimously on Wednesday to remove Harlequin and all of its imprints from our list of Approved Publishers, effective immediately. We did not take this action lightly. We did it because Harlequin remains in violation of our rules regarding the relationship between a traditional publisher and its various for-pay services. What does this me...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Of the many issues highlighted by the recent launch of pay-to-publish divisions by two major commercial publishers (Harlequin Enterprises' DellArte Press --nee Harlequin Horizons--and Thomas Nelson's West Bow Press ), one of the most interesting, to me, is how blurred the distinction between self-publishing and vanity publishing has become. Like many other changes in and around the publishing world, we owe it all digital technology. Pre-digital, self-publishing meant that you became your own publisher, undertaking or contracting out every aspect of the job yourself--from editing to design to printing/binding to warehousing to sales (famous example: What Color Is Your Parachute? ). Vanity publishing meant that you paid a company to do it all for you (examples: Vantage Press , Dorrance Publishing ). Although the end result was similar (since either way, you paid the full cost of production and had to store and sell the books yourself),...