You need to ask yourself whether 25 percent of what Random House will let you have for what they do to your book (DRM-locking it, for starters, and let's not even get into their pricing strategy) is worth more to you than 100 percent of what you can earn for yourself. My general rule of thumb is simple: Corporations are not my friends. They're not in business to be my friends, any more than I am to be theirs. In fact, what is good for them is generally bad for me, and vise versa. So if someone like Random House were to make me an offer, my first question would be "what's in it for them?" and my second "just how bad are they lowballing me?" because, when you're dealing with any corporation (or, really, any entity who is not a personal friend) that's what matters. In the case of Random House, publishers have demonstrated their bad faith in how they deal with both writers and readers, and I'd personally be very leery of accepting anything they offer, at least their first offer, because no matter what it is, it's going to heavily favor them. That's business -- and from the other side, good business is having your agent, attorney, or both, as well as other authors, scrutinize any offer Random House sends you. They're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, so the sooner you know the score, the sooner you can decide if you want to get into that game.
|