Tag archive: e-publishing

Today’s the Big Day

When I decided to form the Toronto Indie Publishing Meetup group, I was warned (by Meetup) to expect only two or three people to attend the inaugural meeting. I figured that would be okay, so I boldly took Meetup’s suggestion to have a get together within the month, and I booked the first event smack in the middle of summer. So what if our Meetup consisted of just two or three die-hard fans of indie publishing having a beer?

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The E-publishing Beta Testing Revolution and Cover Reveal

The great thing about e-publishing is that readers can actually influence writers in a way that simply was not possible in the traditional publishing model. Didn’t like a chapter? Write the author to tell him/her, and they can actually change it and seamlessly update the work on Amazon or Smashwords. I’m not suggesting that writing should become a collaborative effort, but if hundreds of people e-mailed me to say they loved my novel except for one non-essential chapter, I’d toss it.

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Agents as Publishers

If a publisher came to me and asked to represent my novel, promising to shop it around to other publishers, I’d be stunned.  If the publisher went on to say that if they couldn’t sell it to another publisher, they’d put it up as an e-book on Amazon, collect the 70% royalty and give me half, I’d say that a serious conflict of interest existed.

Confused yet?  Meet to the 21st century literary agent.  More agents everyday are crossing the boundary between agent and publisher, and authors should be very aware.

Right now some agents are getting the e-rights to their clients’ out-of-print books and e-publishing those novels.  At a conference I even heard one older author express delight at getting a 50% royalty on net sales from his agent/publisher.  I didn’t have the heart to put my hand up and tell him he could e-publish it himself and get a 70% royalty.

Dean Wesley Smith has already written what many of us are thinking: how long before agents move on from the out-of-print novels and start putting up new work from their clients?  Will they even shop a client’s novel around to see if a traditional publisher would pay big bucks?  That’s a lot of work when the agent can just cash in on the client’s name right away by e-publishing his/her work.

It’s the Wild West in the e-pub world right now.  Authors need to be very careful about what contracts they sign with their agents, and especially what rights they sell to the agents.

See where this is going?  How long before authors need an agent to negotiate a contract with their agent/e-publisher?

If I were an established author with a back list, I’d cut the agent out right now.