Re: Off-topic on publishing (was: Re: Signature book)

[WooF owlswick@xxxxxxxx]

On Mon, 23 Nov 1998, R Tennenbaum wrote:

>
> Olson, Timothy wrote:
>
> >Also relating to this topic is an article that appeared in Nov. 23
> >Newsweek--"Books Caught in the Web." The article is about B&N's buyout of
> >Ingram. The following especially caught my eye: "[B&N] plans to stock
> >every book in print and to revive thousands of out-of-print books using
> >Ingram's Lightning Print, the industry leader in print-on-demand
> >technology. 'No book will ever go out of print again,' says B&N vice
> >chairman Steve Riggio."
>
> Not necessarily welcome news for writers, btw. (Sorry for going far
> afield, but there are a number of us here.) Authors and putatives
> should be aware that it's apparently becoming harder and harder to get
> back the rights to one's book from a publisher: "out of print" no
> longer has any connotation. Instead, the deal with electronic book
> publishing is apparently to offer royalties at the same percentage as
> hard books -- even though, of course, the overhead is a mere fraction
> of book printing and distribution.

That's why there are lit'ry agents. That's also why more recent
contracts (under pressure from agents and authors' associations)
include reversion clauses that eitherr return the rights on
request after a certain date, or after sales have dropped below a
specified number of copies per year.

George H Scithers
Owlswick Lit'ry Agency
owlswick@xxxxxxxx