Public complaints alter Night Shade deal and demonstrate power of speaking out

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Charlie Jane Anders over at io9.com has an update on the proposed plan for Skyhorse and Start Publishing to buy Night Shade’s author contracts. Short version: they’ve improved the terms of their offer.

It’s still not great, but it’s better. It’s much better, and the reason it became better was that writers talked to each other about the problems and they shared their concerns publicly. Just like with Hydra.

This should happen more often. What’s more, there ought to be a formalized way that, say, a writers organization could tackle it.

Scott Turow is afraid, you guys! He’s afraid!

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Many authors are taking a kick at Scott Turow’s NYTimes opinion piece called The Slow Death of the American Author. Yeah, it’s easy to roll your eyes at a guy who badmouths libraries and/or fantasizes about the ways libraries might damage authors and publishing. Turow seems to think that borrowing ebooks “to anybody with a reading device, a library card and an Internet connection” is somehow harmful. If only we forced people to physically go to their local branch!

Not all that long ago, I heard a rep for a publisher–Penguin, maybe?–complaining about library electronic lending by imagining a future with a single national library that would pay for a single copy of an ebook and begin lending it to the entire nation simultaneously.

Obviously, that’s a silly dystopian “If This Goes On!” style situation that would better suit the old ASFM issues I used to subscribe to, not anything like the situation we have now. I’ve always thought that people who argue against some terrible future outcome always did so because they didn’t have a sensible argument against what was happening right now.

However, that’s a digression I didn’t want to take. The problem with Turow’s argument here is that he’s lamenting the breaking of a system that can never be repaired and reinstated, even if we wanted to. The old paradigm that a reader had to go to a store or library to find a book available only through a publisher was a closed system. It was “safe” in the sense that, when a writer was getting screwed, they knew pretty much where the screwing was coming from and knew what kind of screwing to expect. Delayed royalty payments. Selling stripped books. Publishing in a market without the rights. They were bad things, but they were the sorts of bad things you could expect.

Now it’s different: selling used ebooks, piracy in easily-accessed international sites, and more are new (potential) dangers to authors’ careers and income, and the courts are too ponderously slow to keep up with internet era advances in information sharing. However misguided Turow is about libraries, he’s not wrong to worry about major corporations like Google and Amazon squeezing dollars out of writers’ work without compensation.

Yes, Google only shows parts of an “orphaned” work when you search for it, but they’re still selling ad space on works in copyright without sharing revenue. As for Amazon, everyone including their big boosters is waiting for them to start leaning on authors they way they are on other vendors they do business with, as I’ve written about on my blog many times.

The usual response to these sorts of concerns is to say that obscurity is a bigger danger than piracy, and that’s true, but the answer to that is not to close our eyes and think of England while Google earns revenue from our work while paying us in “exposure.”

Unfortunately, Turow is the wrong spokesman for these concerns: he’s afraid of everything new. He found too much success in the narrow waterslide track of Old Publishing and he sees every new development as a crack that might make the whole thing collapse into the pool below. Yeah, it’s a new world with new opportunity, but we need someone willing to fight back when creators’ rights are threatened.

Randomness for 4/8

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1) Homemade “Romance Pants”. Has to be seen to be believed.

2) Ten of the Most Beautiful Libraries Ever Built (in Minecraft).

3) The 12 Most Controversial Facts In Mathematics. I dunno how I feel about the title but the article is cool.

4) “Are you a ‘Single Interested in Michael Crichton?’ Meet the love raptors stalking OkCupid.”

5) 15 Mid-Century Modern Dream Homes that will Kill Your Children. Via James Nicoll

6) An anti-drone hoodie designed to hide your thermal signature from above.

7) Plewds, Hites, and Indotherms: Terms for the graphic language of cartooning. I’d heard of grawlixes before, but the others were names for things I didn’t even know had names. Very cool.

A Proposal for SFWA and Other Writers Re: Publisher Bankruptcy

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One of the worst things about the Night Shade business is that a publisher going into bankruptcy takes all their books with them. Even if a writer’s contract specifies that the rights revert to the author upon bankruptcy, that clause can’t be enforced because the bankruptcy court seizes those rights as one of the few (if not only) asset the publisher has.

It’s a little more complicated than that, as stated in the link in my previous post on this subjects, but that’s the basics. If a publisher goes bankrupt, in all likelihood a writer’s publishing contracts will be sold off to a third party without any input from the writer.

That’s just a matter of the law, though, isn’t it? Couldn’t legislation change that?

This is something I’d like to see SFWA (and other writers groups, and writers in no group at all) take up. Surely there are legislators on the federal level who are sf/f fans. Does anyone know who they are? Who their favorite writers are? I would bet that a contact from a writer they admire might persuade them to introduce legislation protecting right of reversion contracts.

The Night Shade mess, and other things worth blogging about

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1) I am not and have never been a Night Shade author, but it’s been widely known for quite a while that the publisher has been in trouble and has been working with SFWA to do right by their authors. Word about the new deal they’re offering authors has finally gone public in a public post (now deleted) on Jeff VanderMeer’s Facebook. For the click-phobic, NS intends to sell their contracts to another, more stable publisher, and not all of the contract terms are 100% wonderful.

What little I know about it is all second-hand, but a number of authors, VanderMeer included, want NS to revert the rights to their books before declaring bankruptcy. Unfortunately, that won’t work. The right to publish books is the only asset a publisher has and bankruptcy courts don’t play along when an entity sheds its assets right before telling their creditors they’re going belly up. In fact, it’s fairly common for publishing contracts to have a clause in them that would revert all rights to the author in the event of a publisher bankruptcy, but those clauses are typically overruled in bankruptcy court.

As far as getting rights back from a publisher swirling the drain, that last link is worth reading through to the end. I am not a lawyer, but it seems like a good place to start before getting actual legal counsel.

If there’s one thing I know about a terrible, messy situation like this, it’s that the proposed deal will be a benefit for some and a misery for others, depending on whether books have been turned in, how much money is owed, etc. Night Shade authors are getting together in a closed forum to discuss the issues and I wish them all the luck in the world. None of this is easy.

2) Writing has been at a near standstill while my kid is sick. He had two straight days of vomiting and was finally able to keep down a fair quantity of fluid last night. Today he’s still sketchy but basically okay. I’m glad the Cartoon Network has added so many of their shows to Netflix. We’ve also been watching the Naked Gun movies and, when his belly hurts too much to laugh, the most recent NIKITA tv series.

Of course, the real crime here is that he has no interest in superhero shows, so I still don’t get to watch Justice League, Batman Beyond, or Brave and the Bold. Man, the sacrifices we make for our kids.

3) Speaking of a sick kid, I spent an hour this morning at the grocery store hunting up bad tummy foods like oyster crackers and ginger ale, but one thing I couldn’t find was syrup of coke. All the stupid crap my grocery carries, but I can’t find the one thing that really settles an upset stomach? I left the supermarket confident that I could find a recipe online, and I did. Too bad I don’t keep lavender, star anise, citric acid, etc, etc around the place.

4) This post about humanities PhDs taking a third grade reading comprehension test is right on. When my kid was in kindergarten, they had those silly letter ratings on books. Most of the kids were reading books from A – D mine was reading books rated S. Sounds pretty advanced, huh? Except not, because he was only five and his reading comprehension wasn’t strong enough. Yes to the words. No to the sentences and paragraphs.

The worst thing was reading the teacher who thought kids ought to stay within the stupid letter rating, never going forward or going back. My own kid loves both Ready Player One and Ursula Vernon’s Dragonbreath books. He reaches for more adult fare when he wants to stretch himself (he just bounced off The Road which I knew would be tough sledding). And the idea that kids shouldn’t reread a book they love is poison.

Petition against returnable ebooks

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Over at Change.org, there’s a petition requesting that Amazon end its practice of allowing people to “return” ebooks for a full refund after X days. I thought X = 3 but the petition says it’s seven. Here’s a quote:

Customers know within a certain number of pages whether or not they wish to continue reading the book. Seven days is excessive. There are too many people admitting that they abuse the policy simply because Amazon allows it. This is unfair to authors and publishers because this is how many of us earn our living.

Personally, I don’t worry about these returns much. However, I would support a program that let authors/publishers choose not to sell an author’s work to someone who has bought and returned it before. Want to return my work? No big, but I should have the right to not sell to that person any more.

Of course, if they did that Amazon wouldn’t get their cut, and they aren’t in the business of not selling things.

Randomness for 4/2

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1) The obituary of England’s “King of the Cat Burglars.”

2) The major causes of death in the 20th century, visualized.

3) The Diagram Prize for the oddest book title of the year has been awarded.

4) The anatomy of Goofy, Mickey, Pikachu, and more. Warning: a little disturbing.

5) Paperback covers for Quentin Tarantino movies. Of course, no one does paperback covers like this any more, but they look great.

6) Japanese schoolgirls blast each other with the kamehameha wave, in still photos.

7) How to scramble eggs before you break the shell.

How I feel about the Hugo Awards (spoiler: meh)

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The Hugos are fine. It’s a popularity contest with a small, self-selected sample, and frankly I ignore most everything everyone says about it (except for the juicy melodrama, naturally[1]). They’re not a bad thing at all; it’s nice that people win them and I’m glad they make people happy.

But they have an outsized profile, as argued here. Frankly, I think the guy argues his point too forcefully (“Twaddle”? Please.) but then I stopped trying to drive traffic to my blog a long time ago. He’s right about the awards having a greater significance than they can really support. They’re small groups of people getting together to vote for things they like, which is 100% legit, but should that really be the basis for the most well-known spec fic award in this part of the world? [2]

Anyway, it’s worth reading down to the comments, because one of the authors the OP criticizes, Larry Correia, pops up to justify his behavior (“The smof cabal is against me!” “It’s all just self-promotion!”) and I made the mistake of following a link back to his blog.

Because as disinterested as I am in the usual award stuff, bullshit like this quote below, about Saladin Ahmed, nominated for his debut novel, is toxic:

Saladin’s a nice guy, and beloved by SMOF (we were up for the Campbell at the same time), but I’m predicting he’ll come in last, becasue this is his only book and he’s not built up a huge SMOF backer faction yet, but just having nominated a guy with an ethnic name will make the SMOFers feel all warm and tingly inside and good about themselves, so that’ll be enough for them.

(Tyops in the original)

That’s grade-A horseshit right there. However small the nominating pool was, whatever value should be placed on the Hugo itself, they nominated the man’s book because they liked the man’s book. Attributing it to “an ethnic name” is racist bullshit.

Awards! They bring out the whacky in people. Now I’ll go back to my previous policy of not talking about them.

[1] An awful lot of people hesitate to say a book is awful unless it has won/been nominated for an award.

[2] It’s obligatory for Certain People to respond to any awards criticism by saying “Oh, so the stuff YOU like didn’t make the ballot and that’s why you think everything SUCKS!” It’s an easy response. It’s the knee-jerk response. It doesn’t fit me. To be honest, I don’t think I read a single new book or story last year. Actually, scratch that: I picked up the latest Dresden Files from the library, but I wouldn’t want to give it an award. I don’t really like reading short fiction on my computer, and most of the books I read are a few years old (or more than a few). I’m not what you’d call “up to date” and I don’t worry about it. [3]

So no, this isn’t a complaint about What I Thought Should Be On The Ballot, because I have no idea what should be on there and have higher priorities when I’m reading new stuff.

[3] Also: No, I didn’t release any new work in 2012 that could have been nominated, since that typically has to be said, too.

Modeling your career after news stories

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If you followed the link in my previous post to Mary Anne Mohanraj’s FB post, you’ll see someone popping up in comments to recommend she self-publish: “Huge Howley(sic) was making 8,000 a month just on his indie published Wool.”

We all know how much Howey has earned because it was in the news, and the fact that he was in the news is a strong warning against trying to duplicate his success.

I’m not saying absolutely never ever follow Howey’s path. I’m saying that being in the news should be a mark in the “con” column when you consider trying to duplicate his success.

To analogize: You are a new college student who wants to make a quarter million dollars a year when you graduate. Do you pursue an MBA? Get a job as a Wall St. trader? Or do you read an article about a woman who found a priceless painting at a garage sale and think Oh, shit, I need to start hitting every garage sale I can find?

Nothing against garage sales, most of my furniture is second hand, but the reason a story like that hits the newspaper is because it’s a rare event.

Now, obviously, self-publishing success is becoming less rare all the time. Not long ago people wanted to be Amanda Hocking. Now they want to mimic Howey. What’s more, there are lots of self-published authors making decent enough money. That’s all fine and good.

There are also a great many writers earning good money through NY publishers, probably more than you think. The thing is, this doesn’t make the news any more than “Med student makes good living as surgeon after years of hard work” would.

Because it’s common.

I’m not saying people shouldn’t self-publish. I’ve self-published and I expect to again. I’m saying: Don’t point to news stories and tell people that’s a good path to success. I’m waiting for those success stories to be so common they no longer make the news.

Readers hated Ray Lilly because of his sex life, oh wait, no, he’s a dude

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In a post called, appropriately, Trigger Warning, about mostly-female reviewers unleashing a torrent of slut-shaming on sexually-active female lead characters. FYI: there’s a lot of pain in that blog post.

I came across that link through a public FB post by Mary Anne Mohanraj in which she tells of a book that was declined by Harper Collins because the editor believed a great many readers would not be sympathetic to a woman who has sex when she is not in love.

I immediately thought about Ray Lilly. He has sex in Child of Fire and Circle of Enemies, and he’s not in love with either of those women (he was once in love with Violet, but not anymore). What’s more, neither of those women are in love with him.

And not one reader has said boo about it.

Ray was written to be a likeable character (my first deliberate attempt at one, actually) and a thriller hero, so the narrative context of the sex is different. It turns readers’ attention away from the fact that these characters are living their lives and making these sorts of choices. For a social realist or coming of age novel, the whole thing is *about* those choices.

Plus, he’s a guy, and guys are welcome to get it on whenever they can without much risk of losing reader sympathy. It’s ridiculous bullshit, but it’s still there.

We’ve come a long way, but it’s not far enough.