Literary agent (as well as ebook publisher via E-Reads) Richard Curtis posts on his site about Random House’s recent letter to agents explaining their intention to reduce ebook royalty rates on new contracts as of December 1. The new proposal is for a royalty of 25 percent of amount received on sales–compared by Curtis to an earlier contract that provided 25 percent of the retail price until the advance was earned out, and 15 percent thereafter. (Authors who agreed to a lower electronic royalty in the early days will have their rates adjusted upwards.) The company says their previous rates […]
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Harvard Remains a Google Dissenter
Harvard University was one of the earliest Google Library project participants to decide to let the search giant scan and post only out-of-copyright books from its collections, and the Harvard Crimson says that policy will not change even if the court approves the legal settlements announced earlier this week. University Library director Robert Darnton said in a letter to staff. “As we understand it, the settlement contains too many potential limitations on access to and use of the books by members of the higher education community and by patrons of public libraries.” He also noted: “The settlement provides no assurance […]
Free Books, As Long As You Blog
Thomas Nelson has launched a formal program to enroll interested bloggers and provide them with free review copies of “select titles” in exchange for the promise of a posting of a review of at least 200 words on a blog and at Amazon.com. Nelson ceo and active blogger Mike Hyatt credits his own blog with inspiring the initiative. It “originally came from heightened interest on my blog, around two of our recent releases, Stephen Mansfield’s The Faith of Barack Obama and Lynne Spears’ Through the Storm. My readers, many of whom are active bloggers themselves, wanted to engage in the […]
Google Questions, If Not Answers
The settlement with Google is nothing if not complex–the basic agreements runs to 141 pages, before the copious attachments. One of these, intended as a simple summary of the settlement for authors who think they qualify as part of the class action suit, runs 36 pages by itself. There will be lots of questions, both strategic and practical, and most of the answers will only make themselves known over time. Here are just a few that come to mind; feel free to add your own (questions or answers) in the comments field at PublishersMarketplace: — Does making a book available […]
Google Settlement: Following the Money, Now and Later
Just over three years ago the Authors Guild and then the AAP and a group of five publishers filed lawsuits against Google over their library book-scanning project based on the principal that it constituted copyright infringement. Now with all the parties finding different ways of declaring their settlement agreement “historic,” principal has been sufficiently resolved to give way to hopes of commerce and accessibility. Google gets a pathway to a virtual monopoly for an online library of books in the US, and all parties leave the legal issues regarding fair use and orphan works sufficiently unresolved so as to discourage […]
Google Settles
Lawsuits brought by the Authors Guild on a class-action basis and five large publishers as representatives of Association of American Publishers against Google have been settled, pending approval by the US District Court. The release notes that “the agreement acknowledges the rights and interests of copyright owners, provides an efficient means for them to control how their intellectual property is accessed online and enables them to receive compensation for online access to their works.” Yes, compensation. Google will pay a total of $125 million, “to establish the Book Rights Registry, to resolve existing claims by authors and publishers and to […]