Dragaera

Book payment (was Re: Issola Spoilers vs. Orca Spoilers)

Fri Mar 14 08:01:04 PST 2003

>> > Someone somewhere (probably a different list with no authors in 
>>residence)
>> > mentioned that when you buy a CD from a music club, the disc isn't 
>>counted
>> > towards the disc's sales in terms of royalties, so you're arguably
>>Really?  Is this substantiated, or just rumor? :)
>
>Heh.
>Although I could believe it; the music clubs manufacture their own CDs, and 
>royalty contracts could conceivably refer only to "copies of your disc that 
>we the publisher produce and sell."

Record labels have a notorious record of screwing their artists with devious 
contracts.  I've actually seen band websites that implore people not to buy 
their music from specific labels because they aren't getting anything.

This is the one thing that serves to make the whole MP3 issues not *quite* 
as cut and dry and one might think.


I don't know what the equivilent situation is with book clubs, but I know 
that most authors do a good job of managing their rights (and that most 
publishers don't live down to their counterparts in the recording industry).

Typically an author will sign a contract that says something like 1st North 
American Printing Rights which will allow the publication house to perform a 
specific run of books in a specific region.  I would expect that similar 
contracts would have to be signed to book club prints.

In such a case, I would (wildly) guess that an author might get a flat fee 
rather than a royalty, but I would be surprised if the author didn't get 
anything.


_________________________________________________________________
Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*.  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail