It’s generally standard practice for a publisher to buy only the first North American printing rights. If your publisher claims to own all your rights, I would check with a lawyer ASAP.

As an author of 2 books, I am on the other side of the fence. The problem lies in the fact that one publisher owns all the rights to my books. They have sold out the first printing, and gone onto a second, but they are no longer pushing my book. They are pushing newer projects.

Pushing a book is incredibly important. There are two major book chains in my area. One pushed my book (because they are sister companies with my publisher), and the second one did not. The first chain sold almost 10 times more than the second book. It was all a matter of ‘getting the word out’.

Google has shown that they are incredibly adept at hooking up people who are looking for things with people who have those things. If I could somehow find all the people who would enjoy my book, I would sell a lot more than the chain that pushed my book for 2 months.

I think google can help both authors, publishers, and readers, by helping people find what they want. Peronally, however, I’d like to see the model taken even a step further. I personally would like a way for me to license my book under a creative commons license, so that mutiple sources could copy and distribute my book. More books means more sales, and more people enjoying the book.

However that particular nut has yet to be cracked, so in the mean time, any way for an author to get their book into the hands of people who might be interested, is a good thing.

I’ve spent a bit of time trying to understand this, though, and consistently failed. Could you explain it to me? How does Google’s proposed search service hurt publishers *or* authors?

From my understanding, Google will answer a query with a small segment of a book, perhaps a paragraph or two. They will provide links around these fragments that direct you to places where you can purchase the book. There’s no facility for free browsing of a copyrighted book, and there’s no facility for viewing the entirety of the book at a time. You’re restricted to the fragment that comes out of the search results.

It seems to me that this could only be good news: for authors, more readers find your work and are interested. For publishers… well, the same thing should benefit them, too, right?

Leaving aside moral and legal issues, how is this a bad idea for the publishers and authors? I’m not trying to be snarky; I really don’t get it.

Thanks!

Most writers work a second job of some type to survive, or have a working spouse willing to contribute.

Forget $30 for a Harry Potter book (by the way, it’s being discounted up to 50%, which means the profit margins for most bookstores are vanishingly small).

Talk about $7.99 for the latest paperback fantasy novel of less-stellar pedigree (which is really what we’re discussing). Where does THAT money go? Less than 10% of that is ever going to the writer, and that’s after the writer pays back their initial advance the publishers gave them to write the book (if possible — it’s based on the number of books sold).

When you start eroding the amount being charged for the book, who suffers? Not the printers, who have hard costs for paper, machines, and employees. And publishing staffs are small as it is. There’s little enough to cut there — and when you start cutting, you affect the ultimate quality of the book, which has to go through editorial and typesetting.

Unless you’re slapping a generic cover on it, you also pay for artwork (and believe me, no cover artists are driving Ferraris on that salary, either).

So … back to the writer. Who is, incidentally, still getting not much more money than he or she was in 1970. That’s where costs can be reduced, because after all, isn’t it a privilege just to get your work in print? So we shave off a thousand dollars here are there … or better yet, turn around authors even faster, so that if one book fails to hit with the audience, the author is out the door so that another eager beaver can try. That’s the world you’re attempting to build.

The reason publishers can get away with $3 for a Jack London book is that they don’t have to pay but a nominal fee to his estate — he made his initial publishing fee long ago. In fact, when Jack London was writing full time, he was making about three times as much as he would have as a mail carrier (his earlier profession). In 1900, Mr. London earned $2,534.13. That was a pretty fair living in those days.

Guess what? An awful lot of writers are *still* pulling down that amount. Those full-time writers I mentioned, most of them are NOT earning as much as a full-time mail carrier, much less two or three times as much.

Apples to oranges, Marion. I refer you to this article:

http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=192513

In which you can see that UK writers are experiencing the same issues as their U.S.-based colleagues.

This issue affects *creators* — not just publishers. Let us not forget that Google is a gigantic, profitable company looking to grow even more — I have no problem with that, I just wish they wouldn’t make it tougher for me.

I refer you to another article which contains solid data about this issue:

http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2005/02/07/how-much-does-a-science-fiction-or-fantasy-writer-make/

Please remind me … who’s the “little guy” again?

– Rachel

P.S. – I also think it’s significant and sad that the two advertisements listed above on the page are both for self-publishing services.