In my weekly cruises around the intert00bz, I came across this worrisome little gem, posted several places, but I found it here on PubRants. Apparently Simon and Schuster wants to take your rights and have them slowly digested over a…thousand years.

What do I find wrong with this as an author? Just about everything.

The majority of the time an author sells a story, it’s to a publisher who intends to put it into print and sell it for as long as they can, to the benefit of author and publisher (and reader, as well–books going out of print means they can’t reach audiences who may have missed them before). In most cases, a publisher releases the rights back to the author when sales fall below a certain level. It’s no longer worthwhile for the publisher to stock the title, and releasing it back to the author makes it the author’s choice as to whether to pursue a possible new/secondary market for the title.

What S&S wants to do is to keep your rights…forever.

The new contract would allow Simon & Schuster to consider a book in print, and under its exclusive control, so long as it’s available in any form, including through its own in-house database — even if no copies are available to be ordered by traditional bookstores.

So that’s it. S&S wants your book ’til death do you part.  And even afterwards.

And make no mistake, there will be authors who don’t have the benefit of knowledge from RWA or the Author’s Guild, whose books will live and die with this conglomerate.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m something of a maverick when it comes to publishing.  I’m published with a small e-press, I have no agent currently, and if I have a single unit of what’s considered “clout” in the publishing world, then I’d reckon “clout” is measured in atomic mass units, and still in the single digits.  But my publisher and I have an understanding–I will write a book to the best of my ability, and they will sell the book to the best of their ability.  If they can’t do this, or after a certain, finite period of time passes, then I can ask for my rights back and try to sell the book to another publisher, who will also try to sell it to the public to the best of their ability.  But if S&S has its way, then once I would sign a contract with them, they would be free to sit on my book and never allow it to see the light of day, and there would be nothing I could do to stop them.  Because technically the book would be “available.”

How are they supposed to make money if they don’t sell books?  Unless their only goal is to keep other people from making money on those books. Seems a bit daft, shooting yourself in the foot like that, but what do I know?  I’ll be paying attention.  I find their lack of threshold…disturbing.

PS - Bonus points for those who correctly guessed that it’s the Star Wars 30th Anniversary.  Hence the metaphors.  I am geek and I am proud.

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