04-28-2015, 02:38 PM | #1 | |||
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Publisher behaving badly
From the Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...0-year-old-man Quote:
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Of course, it *is* Hachette, not the Randy Penguin, but still. I'm thinking... beach balls! They should sell their movie rights to Mel Brooks if they get away with it. |
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04-28-2015, 05:40 PM | #2 |
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Interesting that the word 'piracy' isn't mentioned once in the article.
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04-28-2015, 06:17 PM | #3 |
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04-28-2015, 06:18 PM | #4 |
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04-28-2015, 06:46 PM | #5 |
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04-28-2015, 07:04 PM | #6 | |
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Hitch |
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04-28-2015, 09:39 PM | #7 |
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One aspect I found particularly amusing is that Hachette chose not to exercise their UK english language rights directly and subcontracted them out instead. This need not have happened if Hachette had published it themselves but apparently they didn't think the book would be popular enough to support directly.
Last edited by fjtorres; 04-28-2015 at 09:47 PM. |
04-29-2015, 02:10 AM | #8 | |
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04-29-2015, 07:17 AM | #9 | |
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Now the agent... Well, that is a different story. Best guess? Incompetence. Really, there are no clean hands here. Just a black comedy of fools and scoundrels. |
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04-29-2015, 09:22 AM | #10 |
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As fjtorres says, the really interesting bit in the story is the sales figures. The edition published in 2012 was a paperback - the only hardback edition was a later large print version, I think.
So that's 500,000 paperbacks and 700,000 ebooks. The paperback RRP was £8.99, the ebook seems to have RRP of at least £4.99 So for popular new releases, ebooks are now outselling paperbacks by a considerably margin. It will only have widened since 2012, so for a release now, ebooks might well outsell paperbacks by more than 7:5. Perhaps even as much as 2:1? (Oh, and my guess at the missing royalties is around £1,000,000!) |
04-29-2015, 09:56 AM | #11 |
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Maybe the author will wake up to reality with that mistake being pointed out to him. Publishers usually do only the minimum to promote a book as far as I've heard and it is up to the author to do their part. Including making sure that they are getting their part of the funds for the sales properly and on time.
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04-29-2015, 11:11 AM | #12 |
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To be fair, that's really the agent's job. The article does mention a previous agent and a current agent, so it may well be that this mess led to a change of agent (although that is purely speculation on my part).
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04-29-2015, 11:12 AM | #13 |
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We don't know, of course, how much the author was paid as an advance (I suspect quite a lot!). That amount would be deducted from any royalty payments. It's certainly conceivable that the author and agent didn't realise that royalty payments in excess of the advance had become due.
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04-29-2015, 11:45 AM | #14 | |
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It is doubtful Hachette got much upfront money because if they thought it would be a big UK seller they would've published it themselves. They were effectively betting against their own book and when it won the jackpot they not only missed out on what Hesperus earned honestly but on the unpaid royalties. Bad bets for everybody except the missing execs. |
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04-29-2015, 03:49 PM | #15 | |
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