NEWS: Publisher Redefines Terms of Business; Publishing World Not Amused

CULTURE: Publisher Redefines Terms of Business; Publishing World Not Amused

So here's a story that's blowing up the literature blogosphere right now: it seems the powers-that-be at publishing conglomerate Simon & Schuster decided to just up and redefine the meaning of the phrase "out-of-print." It's a small contractual parsing of terminology that seems nitpicky at first, and even gives the company a very technologically righteous and forward-minded appearance; when you really get down to it, however, it looks an awful lot like a way for the publishing company to tie writers up in legal tape, which is very far from righteous.

Motoko Rich of the New York Times breaks down the old definition for you:

Now, however, in our sophisticated world of Print-On-Demand, there doesn't really need to be a backlog of the books in a warehouse somewhere waiting to be sold -- when you run out, you can just print more. With that considered, Simon & Schuster decided to simply remove that minimum annual threshold. Thus, as long as a book can be ordered on demand, the brand will still consider it "in print."

The Authors Guild is up in arms about this development, calling for Simon & Schuster to be excluded from upcoming book auctions, and it's hard to understand why if you're not clear on what it all means, especially when the publisher's spokespeople are making it sound super-nifty.

It's a tricky matter though, this whole book-selling business, and others in the trade have some ideas of how this could all go very well for some people and very wrong for others. Authors Guild executive director Paul Aiken cites cases in the past where authors with books out of print were able to take back their rights, sell the manuscripts to another publisher, and revive their careers. Meanwhile, a literary agent explains the reality of printing-on-demand.

Meanwhile, Simon & Schuster's Rothberg would like to assure everyone that nothing will really change, it's just some minor little contract words that don't really mean anything, they just thought they'd mix it up a little for fun. 'Cause, you know, that's what lawyers do. Change things around to no effect.

Sounds good, pal. At least this it doesn't seem like this has started a chain reaction among other publishers. So far, spokesmen for Random House and Grand Central Publishing have come out to say that their old threshold policies will remain unchanged. I certainly hope so.

Bastards.

Another of the irritating aspects is that print on demand quality is typically inferior- you don't have to be a journeyman pressman to see the difference between something printed on a big web or sheet fed offset printer versus what are essentially glorified laserjet printers, especially on really bright or colorful covers.

Meanwhile, many of the domestic print on demand providers are outsourcing to foreign production.

Why are Simon and Schuster such fucking assholes?

Schuster especially.

ugh...."and they can make a compelling case to us that it should be so" sounds alot like "not a chance in hell".

Well, that's fucked up. Going out of print was pretty much the only way a lot of people could get the rights to their own work back, and with this, I don't see much of any way at all now.

Hey an author does not have to sign with them on that contract. As a business they have every right on all FUTURE contracts to word them any way they want including sign in blood and your soul is ours type stuff. Nothing is forcing anybody to sign. There are other publishers out there. If you really want to be with S&S and you don't like that part of the contract make an addendum to the contract that makes it do what you want. If they really want to publish you they will do what it takes. Once the contract is signed though it is much harder to go back so when their people say "Hey don't worry about those words now" that should be a big warning to WORRY ABOUT THOSE WORDS RIGHT NOW!

If they refuse to change the contract then they are not the right publisher for you. Go directly to their competitor.

That being said, Simon & Schuster are still douches.

Wow. I was just beginning a law journal paper on "orphan works," i.e. out of print books, movies not sold on DVD or shown in theaters, etc. The 1976 copyright system eliminated re-registration, so it took the ability of a lot of works that aren't selling to fall in to the public domain away. This throws a nice hiccup into my paper.

Well, I guess I'll be ignoring S&S when I finally get around to writing that novel...

Yeah, but if people don't show organized opposition to this (like they are now) then this will become an industry-wide precedent.

I always thought Simon was the evil one, just has the look of a serial killer.

Yup

What Simon & Schuster have done is what all other big publishers are going to do eventually, and on the whole it's going to be good for authors. True, PoD books will be available only in "dribs and drabs", but the only books that would be relegated to PoD status would be the ones selling at this rate. In the past, a sales rate of "dribs and drabs" meant impending doom for a title; now it's enough for the title to live on indefinitely.

And the quality isn't bad at all. Discard notions of blinding white paper and smudgy black ink. Most of the trade paperbacks you buy from major publishers could be replicated almost exactly by today's PoD technology.

As for the issue of taking back rights, in principal it sounds awfully important but in practice the odds of an author "reviving their career" by taking back the rights of their book and shopping it elsewhere are infinitesimal. Think about it: your book was published by Simon & Schuster, one of the biggest publishers in the world, but it's now selling so poorly that they'd put it out of print if not for PoD: who's going to pick it up and think they could do better with it?

What this article doesn't mention is that PoD is economical only on very short print runs, so in the event that a book relegated to this status starts to pick up sales velocity, there's a very good chance it'd get a traditional printing as it would have in the old days. The difference being of course that in the old days it would have gone out of print never having a chance at a second life.

Why would a writer with a publishing deal need to use a print on demand service?
Surely if a better offer came in once it was relegated to POD, it could be made to include a buy-out.

I can see that this development could become a problem, but this is similar to what has and will happen in the music and film industries and the 'spectre' of print on demand is no more scary in reality than digital downloads.
Writers signing contracts with publishers just need to be more savvy about what they sign up for.
And if they ain't signing, publishing houses are just going to have to be offering better incentives, aren't they?
Its called progress.

I think if anybody's using a print on demand service which can't give them commercial print quality they need to shop around.

You'd think so, but my girlfriend spent a year designing for one of the big POD names (hint: they're in the Wikipedia article on POD) and was often surprised at how shoddy the print jobs were. The other side being that 'commercial print quality' implies a pretty wide range of work, and some major POD printers are benchmarking themselves at the low end of that range.

Well these publishers are gonna be losing their good authors, and the thing they seem to forget is that it doesn't matter what you say something means TODAY; it matters what it meant when the documents were signed! No judge will force authors to stay bound to their publishers if that was not part of the original deal.

Most of these authors who want to leave can sue them and they will win. Few good new authors will sign up with them.

There goes the wax, and now begins the wane.

Publishing involves much more than printing and distributing a title. Publishers also have an interest in marketing the titles under their imprint. By reselling a work that has fallen out of print, an author instigates a new marketing campaign. This new definition of "out of print" will allow S&S to retain the rights to books which they (obviously) have no reason to promote.

As an author, I can tell you from experience that it is not nearly that easy.

This is pretty insidious, and if it spreads to other houses to become the norm it will be very bad for writers.

Authors instigate marketing campaigns!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

You gotta come by the office and do that routine. Seriously, you'd kill.

Hooo harharharhar!.

Sorry. Let's be serious for a moment and consider this at the level of publisher-author interaction.

Author: "Hey, Random House/Harper Collins/Mondo Publicatio Inc., have I got a book for you."
Publisher: "Hit me, comely author person."
A: "Check it. So good it went out of print when Simon & Schuster was publishing it."
P: "..."
A: "Awwww... yeah!"
P: "Get out."

That's more or less how it goes down in the Real World, where "throwing good money after bad" is not yet a sport or national pastime.

In Comedy World (you have a lovely national anthem!) the last line is, "SUMMON THE ADMEN, POSTHASTE!" and the author gets to see their book sell gajillions.

That's a *cough* lulu.com of a caper, right there. DIY soon will rule the world. Correctly so.

I imagine as with most businesses there are some cowboys so you've certainly highlighted something to be wary of.
All the stuff I've got back from POS sites have been perfect paper and print, except one cover where I'd pissed up my .pdf file myself.
But that was my fault so I'm not counting it

You're right the marketing is the part of the process which would vanish in a print on demand world.
A writer who can also edit, publish and distribute is pretty much a literary superhuman and I don't think there are many of those.
Still, at least it cuts out part of the middle-man's job, and having worked in the sales and distribution side in terms of music and film at least, I'd say that can only be a good thing for non-commercial literature in the long run.

Fuck you. Do you work in publishing? A title can go out of print because the editor who believed in it and bought it retired, or went to work at a different house, or got hit by a car. The original publisher would still control the rights, and that publisher with it's new marketing team can conceivably have zero interest in promoting an old title they never liked, or which was acquired before their tenure.

If the author is able to revert the rights back to herself, she can take it to a new (perhaps smaller) press which may have always been a fan. Or she can take it to a niche publisher who has always wanted a book like hers. And whenever a publisher buys a new title, they are going to put some effort into promoting it--even if it's just featuring it in their catalog or sending out an announcement on their puny list-serve. It could, conceivably, still amount to more marketing than the original publisher is currently giving it.

So...again, fuck you. A title can go out of print because nobody promoted it wholeheartedly or in the most effective way--not because it inherently sucks. By retaining the rights to that title, the original publisher is preventing everybody from making a new pitch.