Scott Raun <sraun at fireopal.org> writes: > On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 01:29:44PM -0600, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: > > Steve Simmons <scs at di.org> writes: > > > > > Various folks mentions authors being tied to pre-existing contracts that > > > would prevent the author taking direct control and doing e-publishing: > > > > Those contracts generally cover only the next novel, or the next novel > > in a series, so if that were the only problem, an author could get out > > from under it. > > Hmm? OK, I don't know about current (as in, this year) practice, but > the last I was paying any attention, it seemed that three or four book > contracts were very common. Less common now, I think. But yes, you do often sell multiple books in a contract. I was thinking of "option clauses", which bind you to submit future books not yet contracted for to a particular publisher. > > > I had the pleasure of interviewing George R. R. Martin this past winter, > > > and he made a comment that was pretty telling. For most of his career, > > > he wrote novels before selling them. This worked pretty well, letting him > > > pick and choose what he wanted to write and giving him a lot of > > > flexibility in dealing with publishers. > > > > That's a very unusual choice, though. It's expensive for the author. > > Lois Bujold commented - sometime during the shopping for a publisher > for Curse of Chalion, IIRC - that she preferred doing it that way too, > if she could afford it and could convince the publishers. Neither of > which were always possible. One of her problems with multi-book > contracts is that the last book gets paid for at rates 3-4 years old, > which tend to be lower than current rates. On the other hand, if you sell consistently well, the advance isn't the whole story. -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net / http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/ John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net Dragaera mailing lists, see http://dragaera.info