Quote:
Originally Posted by cjcherryh
The generation of revenue by giving away an e-book is daily cited by some publishers as a benefit of their site. As a writer whose book is being thus dealt with by a certain publisher, I can state it is not beneficial: what they are doing is using it to promote their company's site, to generate sales---but I get a few dollars a year from this process, and see no added sales. Not only that, they thus hold it 'in print' and thus prevent reversion of rights. This is not a good thing.
Of all the many copies of my books in e-book release, I have yet to see any revenue---and most of them are pirated copies, or copies distributed by otherwise honest sites who have assumed based on their acquisition of a company that e-rights went with the sale. My publisher's legal department is now trying to straighten this out, and many have been withdrawn from sale, but neither my publisher nor I have received revenues from these copies.
Yes, it is publicity, which never hurts, but if no funds ever come through, where is the money going? Not to the creator, certainly. Not to the publisher of record. Somebody is collecting money from these sales. Who, I wonder.
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I do understand the frustration you have with books that are not being legally distributed. That said, when you write "Of all the many copies of my books in e-book release, I have yet to see any revenue..." I find myself compelled to ask a specific question. Surely "The Paladin" and "The Sword of Knowledge" available over at Baen/Webscriptions are legitimate, right? And they do pay you royalties, yes? It's only two books, and one of them is a co-authored omnibus at that, so the royalties aren't going to be earthshaking or anything. But surely you've gotten royalties on electronic sales of at least these two.
And, while we're at it, I've purchased a couple of your books from the Sony store. They pay too, yes? If not I have even bigger beefs with them than my complaints about DRM. DRM sucks for the customer alone. Not paying the author sucks both for the author (immediately)
and also for the customer (in the longer run when the author who didn't get paid either writes less or refuses to make eBooks available).
I sure hope that the Sony store and Baen (at least) are paying the correct royalties. I'd expect good behavior from Fictionwise as well. I sure hope that "I have yet to see any revenue" is a modest overstatement, and not the literal truth. And if it IS the literal truth, a whole bunch of us need to have some words with some publishers and eBook stores!
Xenophon
(who
loves eBooks, but really believes that authors need to get the royalties to which they are entitled.)