Saturday, September 01, 2007
Why royalties?

The posting on author royalties continues to generate interesting comments but perhaps the most challenging response comes from Evan Schnittman on the excellent OUPblog. He argues for a single payment for all standard publishing rights in a title for a defined period - and then spoils the purity of his propsal by introducing 'kickers' for higher than anticipated sales, which is a royalty by any other name, but let that pass. I'm not sure I agree with everything he says but his penultimate paragraph bears reading:

'The state of book publishing requires a radical change to the standard business practices that have existed for decades. This has to happen from within the core assumptions of the most basic elements of the business. Retail price vs. gross earnings are just window dressing on the real problems of trade publishing.'

The author of Typo, David Silverman has uploaded a video about booking a hotel room - it's a joy.

It's the first day of September which means Autumn is with us. It also means I have to compile the monthly statisitics for this blog. August was a relatively quiet month (unsurprisingly) with 77284 visits against 84682 in July but 80% up on August 2006's 42944. It brings the total visits to the site to over the million at 1,068,510.

#    |  Comments [1]  | 
9/1/2007 8:53:49 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Would this be like an advance but presented more as a flat fee ? If so, in theory it is a good idea, in practice, would it not start wars with agents, knowing they were getting nothing other than the initial payment, fighting to make that as big as possible ? Of course at the top end and for authors with a proven track record which can be examined, it is relatively easy - I could work out roughly what the next, say, P.D.James novel ought to get. Harder with first time novelists, lower-selling genres etc. And more of a lottery than usual - the first timer gets, say, 3K. They get onto Richard and Judy and the publisher cleans up. The author, of course, does not - which is where something would really have kick in or it would be grossly unfair. Well worth thinking about. I won`t hold my breath for it happening though.
SUSAN HILL