On FutureBook, Martyn Daniels takes a look at writer Michael Chabon’s decision to take the e-book rights to his backlist books to an e-publisher that will give him a 50% royalty rate rather than the 25% his print publisher offered. Daniels compares the decision to the sentiment expressed in a Jessie J song, “Price Tag” (which I’d never heard of), whose lyrics suggest that, for the singer, creative freedom is more important than making money.
He wonders whether Chabon’s decision is just about the money, or whether it suggests authors are starting to become more canny about binding themselves into “digital serfdom” with perpetual licenses.
One agent claimed recently to us that the author 25% perpetual royalty deal was good because the publisher could ‘cross sell the back list titles with the physical copies’. We stepped back somewhat amazed. One only has to look at the Amazon page to understand who actually does the cross selling and especially on back list. We raised a list of other contractual considerations that we thought should be taken up with the publisher which had been not considered in the offer. It is often easy for many to think about their own ‘cha-ching, cha-ching’ and ‘price tag’.
As digital offers a chance for authors to take their backlist to publishers who can give them a better deal, Daniels suggests, authors should be mindful of their rights and careful not to get locked into any contracts that will prevent them from taking advantage of this, or of any subsequent business model innovations that e-books bring about.
(P.S.: Three and a half years ago David Rothman predicted that Chabon “should love e-books.” Well-spotted, David.)
Maybe Chabon took a look at how the traditional publishhers manage ebooks (pricing, editing, marketting or lack of same) and concluded in a cold calculated fashion that the value-add did not justify the “price-tag”.
It looks like now the BPH apologists are going to resort to branding as “greedy” authors that don’t roll over and play dead for the traditional overlords.
Funny, how a 50-50 split for the author but and 83-17 for the pubisher isn’t, huh?
Obviously, Mr Chabon knows how to run a spreadsheet well enough to tell where *his* best interests lie.
Good move, sir.