Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
For the most part, author contracts assign copyright for the duration of the contract, which generally speaking is _not_ the same as the duration of copyright. All you have to do is look at some of your favorite authors and see the various publishers they have used over the years. As an example, Jerry Pournelle's West of Honor started with Pocket Paperback in 1978 and was later published by Baen Books in 1987. Last time I looked, copyrights last longer than 9 years. Birth of Fire was published in 1978 by Laser Books, and was later published by Baen Books. One can go through numerous authors who were in the business long enough to have a backlist and see this.
Most authors who aren't desperate and know what they are doing, have various out clauses, typically depending on sales. If sales drop below a certain figure per year, then the rights revert to the author. Fairly obviously, if the book is out of print, then odds are the sales have dropped below that figure.
Small niche publishers and authors that use them tend to be in a different space. In general, authors in this space tend to fall into the desperate group, i.e. they can't interest the bigger publishers. Some are mid-tier authors who are on the downward slope, or are trying to find someone who will publish their backlist (Stackpole probably falls in this group). The mid-tier authors, if they have any sense at all, will only assign the paper rights to the niche publisher and keep the eBook and audiobook rights separately.
My father use to talk about one of his first professional jobs where the employees were paid on Friday and everyone rushed to the bank in case some of the checks bounced. Needless to say, he started looking for another job as soon as this started to happen. This is no different. Stinks to be in that situation, but any author in this situation who hasn't been paid his royalties and didn't go to a lawyer after the first missed payment is not a very wise business person.
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I'm pretty sure many authors aren't particularly good business persons. Some are, of course, but I don't think they're the majority.