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Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
In order for the long-term control of intellectual property to become a big issue for an author, he or she needs to have been quite unusual in terms of short term success. Not all of those authors are affluent, but, by and large, they don't need our sympathy.
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Steve. Perhaps I have not properly grasped your point, but I fail to see how long term control of intellectual property should not be a huge issue for any author. Anecdotally, there are many authors who have negotiated the reversion of the rights to their own "backlist" titles who are now making good money from them through Amazon or like services. JA Konrath is a good example. Now that there is no need for a book to ever be "out of print", long-term intellectual property rights are even more important. I think the large publishers have now realised this, and I suspect that authors seeking reversions of their rights in the future will be finding it difficult or impossible to be accommodated.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
Also, if terms are more favorable to the author in long-term control of copyright rights, they will be less favorable in others. I think if you look at the publishers who have intellectual property terms more to your liking, you will find that they pay low -- or no -- advances. This represents a shifting of the risk the book will fail from the publisher to the author. That isn't positive to authors.
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To me the system of advances seems to be something which has operated to the benefit of the publishers at the expense of the authors, except of course for those few "blockbuster" authors. Publishers seem to make a lot of money in that margin between a book becoming profitable and the book earning-out. I suspect that few advances give real value to an author for the almost total loss of their rights which is usually involved.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
But, being a reader and not an author, my main reason for cheering on big publishers is that they make books better. Right now I am reading an oral history book, published by Cambridge University Press, on the dramatic story of the people of Quemoy Island, whose lives were forever changed when invaded by the mainland Chinese in 1949 and subject to a near-totalitarian military occupation:
http://www.amazon.com/Cold-War-Islan.../dp/0521726409
I expect to finish it because of the subject matter, but I don't think I have ever found a big five history title this turgid.
The author thanks his academic publisher for pushing him to stress the larger significance of the story. In actuality, this approach nearly ruins the book, with vague summary sentences invoking geopolitical significance on almost every page. The word geopolitical must appear hundreds of times, sometimes more than once in a sentence. This is the kind of story-telling interruption that an insistent Random House Penguin editor would almost surely have prevented. |
I suspect very few people doubt the value of a good, experienced editor. And the large publishers have some very good ones. But there are also very good freelance editors. And, of course, the large publishers are not without their own mediocre or even terrible editors.
Your statement above is little more than speculation that an editor employed by a Big Publishing house would have done a better job than the one employed by the particular academic publishing house. If this is the case, then no doubt a good freelance editor would also have done a better job.
The large publishers do in many cases provide services which often lead to a better book. However, these services come at enormous cost, generally far in excess of their value. The only authors who really come out ahead are the ones who sell so few of their books that the cost of even these services is not recouped, or, of course, the "blockbuster" writers. All other authors would be far better paying for these services themselves.