Does anyone have knowledge or experiences about what the author may negotiate with a book publisher to not sign a bad agreement for himself?
Dear Beata,
there probabely exists a dilemma: do you negotiate with a very renomated publisher you have very little to no freedom for contract negotiations: Exception, you are a nobel price winner.
If you negotiate with an unknown publisher you may have far more possibilities to bring through you own imaginations but it could be that almost nobody will buy your book.
Difficult!
Key words of negotiations are (without priorities): free exemplars, money you get per sold book, own rights for other publications in part or totallly; translations in foreign languages; futher editions after selling xxx exemplars; co-auther ships; printing of yyy pages; coloured pictures; numbers of Pictures and tables; help of publisher to author during generating of the manuscript; time frame between manuscript ready and appearance to market; and and and
Peter
Dear Beata,
there probabely exists a dilemma: do you negotiate with a very renomated publisher you have very little to no freedom for contract negotiations: Exception, you are a nobel price winner.
If you negotiate with an unknown publisher you may have far more possibilities to bring through you own imaginations but it could be that almost nobody will buy your book.
Difficult!
Key words of negotiations are (without priorities): free exemplars, money you get per sold book, own rights for other publications in part or totallly; translations in foreign languages; futher editions after selling xxx exemplars; co-auther ships; printing of yyy pages; coloured pictures; numbers of Pictures and tables; help of publisher to author during generating of the manuscript; time frame between manuscript ready and appearance to market; and and and
Peter
Publishing contract makes it poor for the author of the book if the author could not see wisely:
1. Quality of the book
2. Royalty
3. Distribution
4. Publicity
5. Etc.
Dear @Peter, I appreciate your comprehensive answer. In fact This is not my first attempt at negotiations with publishers. I already published a few books, signing unfortunate contracts to me as an author. While negotiating conditions of a new one the publisher suggested recently in the contract "exclusiveness and transfer of copyright for 10 years." After negotiatins they offer me again "exclusiveness" but up to 6 years.
@Peter and Dear All,
Do you know exaclty how many % of copyrights rights can we negotiate as reasonable part?
Dear @Subhash, I agree with your brief structure. Would you please explain the "Royalty" category ?
Dear @Barbara, yes, I try to learn and draw conclusions from mistakenly signed prior contracts. The publishers know we, academics are under many professional pressures and they try to exploit us with our permissions.
Beyond the monetary aspects - which are always important - the crux of the issue concerns distribution. An author wants to be read (and criticised). A publisher who offers a short scale distribution might be considered as less worthy.
As a matter of fact, the university publications suffer from this: most of them are rather poorly distributed.
The Royalties are low and the author has no control of the amount of purchases he must believe the Publisher statement
It would be a huge mistake to unconditionally sign away the right to publish a work. Imagine doing this, then having a publisher decide to file the manuscript and not publish it. Generally an author grants publishing rights for one edition at a time, and when the edition is sold out the author is free to negotiate another edition with the same publisher or a different one. Sometimes publishers specify in contracts that they reserve the right to a second edition; this is something to think about before signing.
Carlos is correct about the generally poor distribution of university publications (with notable exceptions, of course). This is what makes sites like ResearchGate and Academia.edu attractive; they make it possible to reach a much wider circle of readers on an international and pluridisciplinary scale. There is a trend emerging that weakens the power of academic "gatekeepers" to stifle innovative or heterodox ideas. As more universities offer online institutional platforms to distribute the results of their research, this trend will be increasingly consolidated.
I still believe in the importance of printed books (I have been a bibliophile since infancy), but aside from economic concerns, the best way to reach a large amount of readers is to publish books online, on an open access platform. In the long term it may be more advantageous to an academic author to be widely read (and cited) than to receive royalties from a traditional paper-and-ink publishing house.
Publishers use standard contracts with academic authors. I don't how this measures up with novelists. I am exploring opportunities in self-publishing.
Dear @Carlos, @Rolando and @David, thank you for essential remarks and advices. Sad conslusion Dear @George, @Josef, @Terry. I agree.
Hmmm... are publishers around the world using the same strategies towards us, academics ?
Yesterday I refused to sign the publishing contract with quasi mantra condition "transfer of entire copyright to the publisher for 6 years". The proposal in publishing contract seemed too humiliating. I have learned.
Wise decision, George! I still write, but mostly as a hobby. I do not watch television: it became too erratic & noisy for me. I put my books on Amazon/Kindle (digital edition) where seldom anybody reads them.
A couple of my textbooks had several editions (in my country), but I earned very little money from this. I read somewhere than only *one percent* of authors whose books can be seen in bookshops earn enough for living from their writing.
But I do not want to discourage potential authors: a good textbook, or an exciting fairy tale could bring some commercial success.
Not much publicity. Or quite a specialist subject. Won't make you a millionaire but it's bloody good for civilisation.
I am sure we write the harry potter of some academic subject, then success might be achievable. When a publisher converts a book into an ebook, the author should receive additional royalties.
From my experience, there is usually a limited audience for an academic book, as they are highly specialized. Also, and I mean not to offend anyone, but many academics do not write very well. I remember as a student always having a book as assigned reading that was written by the professor teaching the course. Another professor had a closet piled high from top to bottom with copies of his book (as author) of his boos (he gave them away, yet was assigned reading). The publisher was going to throw them away, so he took them ALL!!
Brenda says: "publishers have the upper hand".
They really do. But an editor (of a big publisher) said to me that the life in publishing industry is hard, difficult, and so forth. So, they do not seem happy either. Anyway, what makes me angry is that this publisher charges 41 dollar for each download of my paper (nothing for me), which is far too much.
The most important thing is to make them pay for copyright permissions that have to be obtained to publish even your own pictures published elsewhere. When you are publishing a book, copyright permission charges may run to a few thousand dollars or more if you plan illustrations and tables to a great deal . When you sign the agreement let this be the publisher's duty, otherwise creativity and courtesy suffer as I cannot donate 10,000 dollars or so to write a commissioned book and pay to get rights.
Dear @Padmanabhan,
I agree with content of your comment. Thank you for support. I must say, that I recently failed to negotiate such aspect as: copyrights distribution between the publisher and me-my friend as the authors. I had in mind future similar reasons you indicated. A small loss. In fact there are many other publishers
Major share of the earning potential through authorship may be getting siphoned away by the advanced reprographic techniques, though unethically, as well as through other ill practices.
Nevertheless, the authors do (& must) try protecting their academic as well as economic interests.
Creatorship and businessmanship are generally two different spheres/sets not having much of a common subset. Thus the creator does his job while the businessman does his. In the process the creator may receive a share of the earning depending on the extent of that common subset while the businessman, the publisher, may retain the major share of the proceeds.
Such uncertainty prevails in any domain of creatorship. For instance, one may wonder what share of today’s tremendous earnings through marketing of varied makes and models of mobile phones may be getting transferred to the original inventor (or his legal heirs) of wireless technology!
The following link shows an structure of the publishing contract which may be strengthened by incorporating other appropriate clauses:
http://www.maine.edu/pdf/PublishingAgreementStandard.pdf
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Books