Please bear with me. I am going to feel so much better once I am done ranting.In recent months, the folks who follow the book world for a living have bemoaned the fact:
a) HarperCollins has canceled more than 100 contracts for books they had signed up, and
All I can say is: IT'S ABOUT TIME.
b) The "mid-list" author, the one who "The New York Times" defined as someone who sells less than 15,000 copies of their work, is an endangered species.I write books for a living, so I have a very vested interest in what is going on in the industry. But where is it written that anyone in publishing owes me a darn thing? If what I write isn't commercial, that's the way it goes in a free-market economy. Why should publishing be different from any other industry? The folks who made the Betamax, New Coke, and the Studebaker all had more skills than I do, and the last time I checked, no one is paying them.
And speaking of paying people, did all the folks talking about how this publishing trend is the end of civilization as we know it read the entire stories about HarperCollins canceling contracts?
Harper is paying the authors their advances. In full.
Harper is willing to do this, in order to avoid shelling out the additional money for printing, packaging and marketing books they no longer think will sell.
Let's see if I have this right. I sign to write a book for Harper. They give me a $50,000 advance. (Typical for a mid-list author.) Harper then says, "Never mind, Paul. We don't want to do your book. Please keep the money, and feel free to sell it somewhere else."
Would someone get my agent on the phone? I want to know where I sign.
Thank you for your attention. I feel so much better now.
Paul B. Brown writes about business and finance books each month. He can be reached at PaulBBrown@aol.com
His opinions are very much his own.
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