Nadia Lee :: Paranormal Romance Writer

Random House decided that all your eright are belong to us them. According to Publishers Weekly:

A letter sent to agents Friday by Random House chairman Markus Dohle has renewed the debate about who controls the right to publish the e-book editions of older backlist titles. In his letter, Dohle makes clear that RH believes the “vast majority” of its backlist contracts “grant us the right to publish books in electronic formats,” while older agreements “often give us the exclusive right to publish ‘in book form’ or ‘in any and all editions.’” Random spokesperson Stuart Applebaum said the letter was “in the works for many weeks and is the product of the thinking of our publishers sales colleagues and others.” The letter, Applebaum added, was sent in the spirit of collaboration not confrontation, and was mailed (or e-mailed) before the holiday break to give agents time to think about its contents.

I don’t know if agents feel the “spirit of collaboration”.

• Kristin Nelson’s response: RH Gets Brazen.
• Dystel & Goderich’s response: Random House eBook Rights Grab
• Richard Curtis’s response: Random Serves Notice on Would-Be E-Interlopers

Jane from Dear Author summed up the situation well, and I wanted to highlight it:

The legal foundation that Random House rests upon is shaky at best. Author contracts are largely contracts of adhesion and as such any ambiguity is resolved against the drafter of the contract, meaning if a term “book” is deemed to be ambiguous by the court, then the interpretation that favors the non drafting party (the author) is usually upheld…. Further, the court in the Rosetta cases determined that new uses referred to new uses in the same medium (ie print), not a different one (digital). Perhaps Random House is convinced that it could convince a different judge to come to a different conclusion. This move is meant to strike fear in the hearts of authors who think to take their backlist titles elsewhere and for the majority of authors, this tactic will likely work.

P.S. For those of you unfamiliar with where the title for this blog post comes from, check out the video below. You can hear the now immortalized “All Your Base Are Belong to Us!” at the 0:18 mark.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw this video on YouTube. It’s about forming a weekly accountability group. Please watch it if you’d like:

Okay. Done?

I think it’s a brilliant idea to have an accountability group with goals that are tailored to individual members. I’ve been in groups like “100 words a day” or something, which is great for some people, but for me, I need more flexibility. I don’t (and sometimes can’t) write 100 words/day, and there are times when I want to take a week off to read or do research or whatever.

I also thought identifying the most highly leveraged activity(ies) for each week was fantastic. Not all activities are created equal, and some give you better return than the others.

So I figured I’d create a group. Laura (the lady who made the video) said she does it over the phone, but I thought maybe a mailing group might be easier, so people can post their previous week’s results and share their new week’s goals with the group on weekends.

Anybody with me? If so, sign up below or click here. To make the group more manageable, I’m thinking about limiting it to about 4-6 serious career-minded writers.

Thanks!

Subscribe to Weekly Accountability Group

I’m sure many of you have heard that RWA has decided that Harlequin Enterprises, as a whole, is no longer a non-vanity / subsidy publishing house.

So many people seemed confused about why many writers are unhappy about the Harlequin Horizons situation. I do not believe that Harlequin Horizons is a true self-publishing house. It’s really a vanity press, no matter what Harlequin calls it.

Let’s look how Harlequin Horizons works — I’m going to use an example to illustrate the situation. (Judging from what’s going on in the Blogsphere, using a poor new unpublished writer seems to muddy the water…)

Harlequin Horizons Scenario Explained — in layman’s terms:

Let’s say you’re a salsa maker. Your dream is to distribute your salsa so everyone in the world can buy it from supermarkets, etc.

So you go to…Pace. Pace says, “Your salsa recipe isn’t good enough to add to our Pace lineup, but you should consider taking your salsa recipe to Pace Self-Salsa. If you sell a lot under that brand, we may considering adding your salsa to our main lineup.”

So you contact Pace Self-Salsa (PSS). PSS says you have to pay them money to make and bottle and label your salsa. For every bottle of your salsa that sells, PSS gets to keep half of the profit and you get the other half. So — after paying Pace a bunch of money up front — you have to split the profits with PSS 50-50.

You decide to pay PSS because you figure you can use the Pace brand and its distribution and marketing power to sell your salsa. But later you learn that PSS has no intention of associating its Pace brand with your salsa. Pace tells you that the brand “Pace” is the “gold standard” in salsa and that it will not be “compromised” to help you sell your PSS salsa. Nor does Pace plan to allow you to use their distribution network to sell your salsa. (But you can, for an additional $12K or so, get access to the Pace mailing list. This will allow you to spam 10 million Pace customers with entreaties to try your judged-to-be-not-up-to-snuff salsa all you like. And for extra $20K, you can make a commercial video that you can upload to YouTube and other social networking sites to promote your salsa (but nothing on TV channels).) And your PSS salsa will not appear next to Pace salsa on grocery store shelves. You have to do all the legwork, etc. and you have to split any profits 50-50, even though — remember — you paid a lot of money at the start for the bottling and labeling service.

That’s vanity. And, frankly, it’s exploitation. There’s virtually NO CHANCE that you will recoup the cost of investment (the bottling & labeling fees and so on). But PSS makes lots of money because it charges you and other salsa makers a premium for its bottling & labeling services, and it gets to keep 50% of profit made on each bottle of salsa sold. Just in case you missed it: Pace will make money up front, even if you never sell a single bottle of salsa. You, on the other hand, will need to sell a hell of a lot of salsa just to break even.

The true self-publishing model can be explained using a similar example:

Again let’s say you’re a salsa maker. Your dream is to distribute your salsa so everyone in the world can buy it from supermarkets, etc.

So you go to…Pace. Pace says, “Your salsa recipe isn’t good enough to add to our Pace lineup.” So you decide you’re going to make your own salsa company, just like Pace.

So you put in your money to bottle and label your own salsa by either contracting it out to an independent bottler or learning how to do it yourself. You study how to distribute your salsa, and you get some of your local supermarkets, etc. to carry your salsa.

People try out your salsa and buy some.

You may lose money because you can’t sell enough salsa. But if you do make profit, you keep 100% of the profit.

(If you’re very very successful, your salsa may become a worldwide bestseller. And who knows? Some big company (like Pace) might buy you out. Again, you assume the financial risk and you keep all the losses / profits.)

So that’s the difference, ladies and gentlemen. That’s why I do not consider Harlequin Horizons to be a viable option for anyone who’s serious about being a career-minded writer.

Disclaimer: I like Pace salsa a lot. Pace did not pay me to use its name or to say that I like their salsa. The above are just hypothetical examples I made up.

Any questions or comments?

status: I’m feeling more positive since I realized that I can salvage about thirty pages or so out of the eighty plus I’ve written on the earlier pre-writing draft (WIP).

music: “It’s a Fight” by Three 6 Mafia

On today’s #askagent, someone asked if agents check a potential client’s blog before offering. Colleen Lindsay responded:

Always. And I don’t want to see whining about how many times you’ve been rejected. A huge turn-off.

I’m always amazed at the kind of information people put on their websites/blogs and other public places. Nobody wants to work with someone who is high maintenance or crazy or just doesn’t know how to act professionally. Would you put the following on your blog while job hunting?

It’s been five months since I sent my résumé to fifty companies. Only ten wanted to interview me. I went to all of them, but they all said no. I hope I get a better result from the other forty.

Writing feels like “art” and therefore some may feel that they’re entitled to act like artistes. That’s a huge mistake. Creating a story is art. The other aspects are anything but. Treat getting published like a business and you’ll have more success.

P.S. My agent read my blog before offering. I was amazed at the amount of information she was able to garner from my posts, including where I lived, my quirks, etc. So beware!

…check out Lynn Viehl’s post on the reality of a NYT bestseller.

mood: upbeat; well-rested and happy
currently thrilled about: All the King’s Women 1st draft
signed up for: another workshop; this time, Holly Lisle’s How to Think Sideways

Yesterday went pretty well. I figured out exactly how to end the story, so I’m feeling quite pleased.

So here’s yesterday’s progress:

I want to address one of the points brought up re: Pre-Published v. Unpublished because I got quite a few comments / messages on MySpace.

I’m not against being positive or wanting to reaffirm one’s dedication to one’s dream. If your goal is to become published, good for you. But…!

If you want to be published, you need to understand how publishing works and present yourself professionally. Misusing terms and misrepresenting yourself do not help your cause.

There are many people who want to feel good, feel validated, feel warm and fuzzy, etc. etc. But it’s all about feel, feel, feel.

Forget feel for a moment. Put on your thinking cap and think. Imagine you’re an industry professional. Let’s say…an agent. And someone misrepresent their publishing credit / status. Even if it was born out of ignorance or desire to feel good, wouldn’t you be annoyed that you wasted your time googling the writer’s name to see what that person has published?

IMHO, most professionals want to work with someone who understands how business works. Someone who’s done their homework. And when you’re putting yourself out there as a professional, it’s not the time to feel, but to think.

mood: excellent
cooked: spicy chicken & veggie soup, sweet & spicy shrimp pineapple stir-fry, Cajun potatoes
just watched: You Don’t Mess with the Zohan

No writing progress today since today’s my official day off. I’m still trying to not write at least two days out of a week, unless I absolutely must (translation: contractual obligations, which I don’t have at this point). I’m itching to write a scene, but I must calmly wait. Oi…!

Onto to the real meat of today’s post –

I’ve blogged about it before elsewhere, but decided to repost it since I saw another writer misuse the term “pre-published”.

I hope people would just stop using the term “pre-published” to describe their “unpublished” status. So many unpublished writers use it, like it somehow makes them more special or something to call themselves “pre-published”.

Pre-published is a very specific word describing a very specific situation in publishing. Nephele Tempest, a literary agent, explains:

Pre-published implies that an author has sold a book, but it hasn’t actually hit the shelves yet.

I don’t understand why people think that calling themselves “pre-published” when they’re really “unpublished” is affirming and positive.

Do you call your friends on diet “pre-thin”? Do you call your single friends “pre-wives” or “pre-husbands”? Do you call people with cancer or other terminal illnesses “pre-dead”?

Surely not.

Calling yourself pre-published when you’re not only makes you sound pretentious, ignorant and/or worse, foolish, like you don’t know what the word really means and/or use it anyway to sound “cool”.