Posts Tagged ‘Contracts’

Contracts and Rights in More Than 140 Characters

Tuesday, July 10th, 2012

While I was busy at work and then grocery shopping a discussion arose regarding my historical romances and what’s being published where.

Basically, the more than 140 character version is that my publisher only bought North American rights to my historicals. My agent tried to get them to go for World rights but they weren’t interested. I knew I had the foreign rights. In fact, there was a nice handful of foreign sales by my agent

It was only after I wondered out loud to my agent why Not Wicked Enough was on sale at Amazon.co.uk only in paper and not in digital that I learned that Berkley had North American rights only: essentially, the US and Canada.  That book should not have been on sale in the UK at all. And, as it turns out when it occurred to me that I ought to check, the same was true for Scandal and Indiscreet.

So, hoo-yah! Kind of late. I self-published Scandal, Indiscreet and Not Wicked Enough in all the territories where I have rights, including the UK. I will do the same for Not Proper Enough when it releases this September.

I’m still waiting for an accounting of what I am owed for books sold in countries where my publisher did not have rights.

The odd thing is that originally, it was very disappointing that we were unable to get my publisher to buy World Rights. They just weren’t interested. Things are changing fast in the publishing business. Speaking only for myself, I’m glad to have those other rights. And, in fact, I was quite disappointed when my publisher agreed to reprint Indiscreet rather than revert the rights to me. Scandal was/is still in print.

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A sharp tiurn to the left, then left again

Monday, March 12th, 2007

40,409 for Magellan’s Witch. It’s a psychological barrier for me. At about 40K words I start thinking, hey, that’s almost halfway done! I haven’t deleted those two chapters because, as it happens, I may need them. So I’m going to let them hang out for a while. The story took a sharp turn to the left the other day when I turned a tattoo into a burn mark that then turned into a living thing. Which was awesome, I have to say. And then while I was watching 300 on Sunday, I had this other left turn and I swear, I almost got out the notebook and started writing, but it was a simple enough notion that I wasn’t in danger of forgetting it.

My contract for MW came today, which means I had to read it before signing. Not much fun, but pretty straightforward to the extent these things are ever straightforward. It’s scary all the stuff they put in about disasters just waiting to befall a hapless writer. Not turning your book in on time, turning in a crappy book, not being able to fix said crappy book, turning in your book but not getting the edits done in time, stealing the whole book from your cousin Ed (I DO NOT have a cousin Ed!), them not publishing your book after all, floods, fire, subrogation, audio rights, indemnity and the laws of the State of New York… It’s enough to give a writer a flaming case of hives. Which I had for a while, let me tell you.

But then I got some work done on Magellan’s Witch and my two left turns are kind of cool. So I’m mostly okay. But up too late.

Darn time change.

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