John Scalzi on Random House book contracts

[thewayne]

I like Scalzi's fiction, and with him being the soon-to-be-former president of the Science Fiction Writer's Association, he has some good insights to the industry. Random House now has two additional imprints, Hydra and Alibi, which they're trying to push for ebooks and new authors.

There's only one serious problem: their boilerplate contracts are little more than totally ruinous for writers.

No advances. All rights in all media, world-wide, belong to the publisher, and pretty much in-perpetuity. You split costs, some of which are normally sunk for the publisher, which reduces profits. And you split profits, but since costs aren't transparent, the publisher can probably adjust what things cost to guarantee minimal payouts to the authors.

Oh, and they automatically get first dibs on your next book.

Personally I prefer Baen and Tor for my SF/F books, I'm not sure what SF/F imprints Random House does. And I'm not likely to publish a book. But there are lots of aspiring writers out there, and anything that can help them to not get screwed is a good thing.

There are two good paths to not getting screwed. One is to get a good agent. Presumably a good agent would see these clauses in contracts such as this to be calamitous to the writer. Another is to self-publish in ebooks or POD.

http://scalzifeed.livejournal.com/2025659.html

http://scalzifeed.livejournal.com/2025324.html

Comments

[vdansk]

I read those, and found them quite concerning. Hydra is not considered acceptable for inclusion in SFWA, probably because they are not willing to condone the methods of the publisher.