Now, Magazines Are Adopting Egregious Contract Terms

In February of 2025, several popular genre magazines were purchased by a company called 1Paragraph, Inc., which in tun is owned by an investment group called Assemble Media. They bought five magazines from the former owner Penny Press: Analog, Asimov's Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Ellery Queen, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

The stories I've been hearing from writers that have dealt with 1 Paragraph over the last four months is nothing short of appalling. The rights' grabs includes merchandising, performance rights, and moral rights.

If you don't know what any of these are and you're a writer, please PLEASE get a copy of The Copyright Handbook by Stephen Fishman, J.D. You don't need a legal degree to understand it. It's written is plain English and easily understandable.

For me, the biggest problem in the contract is the moral rights. Moral rights last for the term of copyright, but what does "moral rights" mean? It means the writer has the right to have their work attributed to them, the right to object to derogatory treatment of the work, the right not to be identified as the author of someone else's work, and the right to privacy.

Moral rights can be confusing, so let's break them down with examples:

1) The right to have the work attributed - It means if a third-party publishes A Question of Balance, my name (or pseudonym) needs to be listed as the author. The third-party publisher cannot say Stephen King wrote A Question of Balance.

2) The right to object to derogatory treatment of the work - A third-party publisher cannot alter, remove, add, or adapt the work. For example, suppose the third-party publisher objects to any mention of the LGBT+ community. They cannot go through A Question of Balance and remove any references to berda or change Sister Dragonfly of Love to anything but a trans woman character.

Or perhaps, the publisher doesn't like the fact that Anthea and Luc's sex scenes fade to black, and they decide to add sex scenes that put Debbie Does Dallas to shame. Nope, nope, nopity-nope. They cannot do that.

3)  The right not to be identified as the author of someone else's work - This is basically the opposite of the first term. Say that third-party publisher tries to publish A Question of Balance under Stephen King's name because they think it will sell more copies. (It won't because Stephen King fans aren't that fucking stupid, but that's a story for another day.) Stephen King has every right to, and probably will. sue the crap out of the publisher.

4) The right to privacy -  No, that doesn't mean you can hide who you are as a writer. (Well, you can, but that's a whole 'nuther blog post.) What this means is if I write a Justice story just for my friend Angie, it doesn't mean I HAVE to publish for the rest of the world to read.

(Not that I'd ever do something like that to my readers. However, I have written private erotic for my husband that will never see the light of day because it was just for the two of us.)

The EU covers moral rights more thoroughly in their legislation, but moral rights exist in the U.S. as well. They cannot be transferred or assigned, but they can be waived. The problem is you have no idea of how someone will use your work.

 Say it with me, kids! MAKE SURE YOU READ YOUR CONTRACT!! If you don't understand it, hire someone who does to explain it to you!

Did I plan to submit to one of these magazines? Yes. Will I now? Not until they get a new owner because I don't trust these idiots.

 Which brings me to another point, all five magazines are still up for sale. In other words, the new owners don't have a vested interest in making these magazines work. So what's the point in submitting anyway?

Bad Contracts

Yesterday, the writer liaison at our local public sent out a call for submissions from a brand new publisher. So what do I do as a recovering attorney? That's right. I check out their contract.

Holy shit, is it bad! Total rights grab for a whopping $10.

*facepalm*

So, for the last twenty-four hours I've been debating what to do. I ran the situation by a fellow writer/recovering attorney. They had the same reaction I did.

Do I tell the publisher to contact a lawyer before they get themselves into deep shit? Do I contact the library liaison and warn her? Do I send it to Writer Beware? Hell, my friend Angie who does a monthly post on her blog of anthologies taking submissions wouldn't touch this one with a 100-ft pole.

Or do I do nothing? I've learned through a lot of bitter experience most writers are attempting to live a dream that doesn't exist. I've lost a lot of friends by opening my big mouth.

*sigh* What a way to end the week.

What Happens When You Can't Fulfill a Publishing Contract?

The short answer to the title question is it depends on what's in your contract. This is a issue that can hit both indie and trad writers. And it's especially true if you have a co-writer(s).

How this issue came about is personal, so if you don't want to read a discussion about lady parts, CLICK AWAY NOW!

As I've said before, Xxxxx Yyyyyy and I are writing a superhero novel. We'd planned to have it out by May 1, but we both had issues with elderly family members that had to be dealt with right that moment! So we consoled ourselves that we'd buckle down in May and finish the damn thing. (FYI - We're at approximately 62K words with 10 chapters to go.)

After the parental drama, I went in for my annual gynecology exam recently, and they found something. In fact, they did the biopsy right then and there.

I've already been down the cancer road with DH. I've already had my own lumpectomy when GK was still a toddler. I wasn't going to panic until there was something to panic about. But that didn't mean the waiting didn't affect my productivity. (However, I take total productivity responsibility when it came to the Rockets and Cavs NBA play-off games. *grin*)

Thank the Goddess, I got the call from the doctor that the suspicious tissue was benign.

But what if it hadn't been? What would have happened?

A lot of writers don't take into account life crap when they sign contracts.* Let's face it, most of us don't want to think about bad things happening, much less death.

With the BHP contracts I've seen, if a writer doesn't deliver a manuscript on time, then the publisher can demand the advance money is returned. And yes, they can and will do this. They don't care if the writer has already spent it on food and electricity. And in most cases, that's exactly what the writer has done.

Generally speaking, most contracts can be renegotiated if you're going to be slightly delayed. I've known writers who've been able to do this when dealing with sick/injured family members. It's a little harder if the writer is the one laid up.

But you can't ask for an extension if you're dead. In which case, the publisher may become a creditor of the estate, trying to get that advance back.

Again, generally indie writers don't have to worry about publishers, but they should be worried about their editors, cover artists, etc. For example, what if I hired the incredible Dan Dos Santos to do the cover for Justice? He's not cheap. What happens if he can't finish my cover because a bunch of paint cans falls on his head and he's in the hospital in a coma?

You don't need a huge, complicated twenty-five-page, double-sided, eight-point font legal document, but you should have some sort of agreement about what happens if your independent contractor can't fulfill his agreement.

Then there's my situation where I'm co-authoring a novel. In our case, Xxxxx drafted what she refers to as the "What if a bus hits us" clause in our agreement. We negotiated ownership percentages (for both early stages of drafting and the completed work), buy-out terms should the affected writer need to withdraw from the project (including buy-out terms for after the novel goes on sale), and what terms would apply to our estate representatives.

Considering how far along we are when I was biopsied, I could have finished my share of the writing if I had cancer before chemo brain set in, but poor Xxxxx probably would have been saddled with the majority of the editing and marketing. Like I said, no one wants to think about worse case scenarios, but any time you're working with another person, you need to have contengencies in place.

This is hardly a comprehensive list of items you need to consider. Every writer's personal situation is different. It's also best that you check with your own attorney prior to signing a contract.

In our e-mail exchange concerning my situation, Xxxxx asked that I add the following:

Maybe add a paragraph to your blog about the need to be flexible on the timetable as you go along. Especially if you're middle aged women, because -- if the past couple of years are any indication -- it's not IF the catastrophe occurs but WHEN.

Which is very true. We're at that lovely age where we're caught between two generations, both of which need our help.

A lot.

And if you're a generation younger than us fifty-something broads, please, PLEASE don't make the assumption that this crap won't happen to you. DH was diagnosed with cancer seven months before our wedding, two months after his thirty-first birthday. A close friend of ours was diagnosed with testicular cancer at eighteen. And my karate instructor's son was diagnosed with cancer at the tender age of six.

I beg you, don't take your life for granted, whether you're a writer or not. But always, ALWAYS cover your ass.

*I'm no longer a licensed attorney, and nothing I've stated on this blog constitutes legal advice or legal representation. As always, please consult with your own attorney prior to signing any contract.

Collaboration and the Indie Writer - The Business Side

Creating with other writers always sounds like fun. If you've been with any type of writing group, whether something formal or just a friend, you've brainstormed and come up with lots of nifty ideas. The energy in shared creativity can be intoxicating.

So intoxicating that writers don't stop and think about the business ramifications of publishing a joint project.

Xxxxx Yyyyyy and I came into collaboration from a different angle than most writers. We were both attorneys at one point in our lives. So we were very aware that we needed an agreement in writing to cover our asses, aka a contract.

As Xxxxx mentioned in her comment on Wednesday, we have a clause concerning acts of Murphy (feel free to substitute the deity of your choice). It acknowledges that we are both in positions of dealing with elderly family members, and frankly, shit can and does happen with them, or us. That goes back to how the actual writing is divided between us and what happens if one of us cannot fulfill her duties.

In most contracts, the parties to the contract agree to which state's law controls the contract (aka, choice of law). In most situations, each party tries to get their own state listed. When we first started talking about a collaboration, I was in the process of moving from Texas to Ohio and Xxxxx lived in Jjjjjjj. So which state did we choose?

North Dakota.

Yes, we picked the most inconvenient place for both of us to force us to come to an amicable decision over something we were at odds over. Though I really think our coin toss clause will solve most of our problems.

We decided whose imprint our joint books under which will be published. (Neither. We created a whole new imprint.) We decided how money will be handled. We also came up with a formula if one of us decides this isn't working and wants to buy out the other person.

These are the situations most writers don't want to think about when they're in the throes of a new relationship. But by shaking out the business bullshit well before hand, you can focus on writing the story.

XinXii and Their Rights Grab

[Edit to add: For anyone who's dealing with XinXii, you have my permission to use the text of my letter to Dr. Andrea Schober, CEO of XinXii. I would suggest that you edit it to illustrate you personal circumstances.  -S.H.]

For those of you who may not know XinXii is a e-book retailer/distributor in Germany. Think of it essentially as a German version of Smashwords.

When I first signed up with them, Amazon didn't have a German store and Apple and Kobo were fledglings in the European market. I took a chance with them.

I stopped uploading books at the beginning of 2012 because of some issues I was having with their interface that were not their fault, I might add. One of the things on my To-Do list was to get the rest of my books uploaded after Christmas of this year.

Not anymore.

On Tuesday, October 1, 2013, I received an e-mail from XinXii CEO, Dr. Andrea Schober, talking about XinXii distributing to Flipkart, and Indian e-retailer. Fifty minutes later I received a second e-mail from Dr. Schober, talking about e-Sentral, a e-retailer servicing Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. Below is my response to Dr. Schober that I sent to her last night:

* * *
Dear Dr. Schober:

I have several problems with the arrangements XinXii has made with Flipkart and e-Sentral and well as the lack of specifics in the both e-mails sent out on Tues, October 1, 2012, and the lack of specifics on the XinXii website itself.

1) You gave publishers forty-eight hours to respond without taking into account any time zone differences. In my case, it cuts the investigation and response down to thirty-five hours because Berlin is seven hours ahead of Houston. Another distributor, Smashwords, Inc., gave publishers two weeks to decide in the matter of Flipkart.

2) You made these two retailers an opt-out option. In the past, new distribution channels on XinXii were opt-in. Frankly, this feels like a bullying move similar to the one pulled by Google and is now in litigation in the United States. Frankly, it does not inspire my confidence in XinXii as a company.

It also doesn't take into account that I may already be distributing to these two retailers by other means. This takes me back to point Number 1, where I have to drop everything else on my business plate to deal with this issue. Again, this does not make me want to do business with XinXi..

3) I'm not happy about the terms offered, i.e. 50% of net, to a third party without any negotiation on my part. Your e-mail does not specify what constitutes "net." Your Terms of Use does not specify what constitutes "net." And the TOU page only send a user to the Distribution Information page shown below, and STILL does not list the specific items which qualify as "net."

At the very least, Smashwords, Inc., listed the transaction fees, the Indian VAT, the fact that they entered into a wholesale arrangement with Flipkart, and that Flipkart can discount at any time for any amount they wish.

XinXii has listed none of this anywhere.

Needless to say, I no longer am comfortable doing business with XinXii since terms are not being fully disclosed, and I have removed all my books I have listed with you. I hope you change your mind about giving full disclosure in your future business transactions.

Yours,
Suzan Harden

* * *
Yes, folks, I am a backwoods, redneck hillbilly, but I'm a backwoods, redneck hillbilly who went to law school. I expect my contract terms to be fully defined, or I'm out of the deal.

When a Book Is DOA

I'm poking my head out of the Batcave (TM) to point you to an interesting tidbit.

Penelope Trunk is a tech start-up expert and a former professional athlete. Go read her blog post about her experience with her publisher pulling her book just because she asked some very pointed questions about their marketing plan for her. These are the question you need to ask BEFORE you sign on the dotted line. Once you sign the contract, you're handcuffed, and not in the purple furry good way.

Many thanks to Passive Guy for the excerpt!

As for me, I'm nearly to the 12K mark for Blood Sacrifice's first draft. I should be at 15K, but a sinus infection along with weather-related sinus headaches have made concentration a little sketchy at times.

I really can't complain about the t-storms that have been rolling through the Houston area daily. The yard is lush and beautiful compared to the barren wasteland it became after last year's drought.

A Voice in the Dark

On Thursday, May 3, 2012, the main website of writer/editor/publisher Kristine Kathryn Rusch was attacked by malware. It's not the first time. It probably won't be the last. The malware then proceeded to invade Kris's other websites as well as websites linked to hers, such as mine. (A shout out to Tess St. John for warning me in time to stop the damage!)


As a show of support, I and many other folks are posting her blog from Thursday. This is a message too important to be lost to a stupid malware attack.


* * *


Welcome to one of my other websites. This one is for my mystery persona Paladin, from my Spade/Paladin short stories. She has a website in the stories, and I thought it would be cool to have the website online. It’s currently the least active of my sites, so I figured it was perfect for what I needed today.

Someone hacked my website. Ye Olde Website Guru and I are repairing the damage but it will take some time. The hacker timed the hack to coincide with the posting of my Business Rusch column. Since the hack happened 12 hours after I originally posted the column, I’m assuming that the hacker doesn’t like what I wrote, and is trying to shut me down. Aaaaah. Poor hacker. Can’t argue on logic, merits, or with words, so must use brute force to make his/her/its point. Poor thing.

Since someone didn’t want you to see this post, I figure I’d better get it up ASAP. Obviously there’s something here someone objects to–which makes it a bit more valuable than usual.

Here’s the post, which I am reloading from my word file, so that I don’t embed any malicious code here. I’m even leaving off the atrocious artwork (which we’re redesigning) just to make sure nothing got corrupted from there.

The post directs you to a few links from my website. Obviously, those are inactive at the moment. Sorry about that. I hope you get something out of this post.

I’m also shutting off comments here, just to prevent another short-term hack. Also, I don’t want to transfer them over. If you have comments, send them via e-mail and when the site comes back up, I’ll post them. Mark them “comment” in the header of the e-mail. Thanks!

The Business Rusch: Royalty Statement Update 2012
Kristine Kathryn Rusch


Over a year ago, I wrote a blog post about the fact that my e-book royalties from a couple of my traditional publishers looked wrong. Significantly wrong. After I posted that blog, dozens of writers contacted me with similar information. More disturbingly, some of these writers had evidence that their paper book royalties were also significantly wrong.

Writers contacted their writers’ organizations. Agents got the news. Everyone in the industry, it seemed, read those blogs, and many of the writers/agents/organizations vowed to do something. And some of them did.

I hoped to do an update within a few weeks after the initial post. I thought my update would come no later than summer of 2011.

I had no idea the update would take a year, and what I can tell you is—

Bupkis. Nada. Nothing. Zip. Zilch.

That doesn’t mean that nothing happened. I personally spoke to the heads of two different writers’ organizations who promised to look into this. I spoke to half a dozen attorneys active in the publishing field who were, as I mentioned in those posts, unsurprised. I spoke to a lot of agents, via e-mail and in person, and I spoke to even more writers.

The writers have kept me informed. It seems, from the information I’m still getting, that nothing has changed. The publishers that last year used a formula to calculate e-book royalties (rather than report actual sales) still use the formula to calculate e-book royalties this year.

I just got one such royalty statement in April from one of those companies and my e-book sales from them for six months were a laughable ten per novel. My worst selling e-books, with awful covers, have sold more than that. Significantly more.

To this day, writers continue to notify their writers’ organizations, and if those organizations are doing anything, no one has bothered to tell me. Not that they have to. I’m only a member of one writers’ organizations, and I know for fact that one is doing nothing.

But the heads of the organizations I spoke to haven’t kept me apprised. I see nothing in the industry news about writers’ organizations approaching/auditing/dealing with the problems with royalty statements. Sometimes these things take place behind the scenes, and I understand that. So, if your organization is taking action, please do let me know so that I can update the folks here.

The attorneys I spoke to are handling cases, but most of those cases are individual cases. An attorney represents a single writer with a complaint about royalties. Several of those cases got settled out of court. Others are still pending or are “in review.” I keep hearing noises about class actions, but so far, I haven’t seen any of them, nor has anyone notified me.

The agents disappointed me the most. Dean personally called an agent friend of ours whose agency handles two of the biggest stars in the writing firmament. That agent (having previously read my blog) promised the agency was aware of the problem and was “handling it.”

Two weeks later, I got an e-mail from a writer with that agency asking me if I knew about the new e-book addendum to all of her contracts that the agency had sent out. The agency had sent the addendum with a “sign immediately” letter. I hadn’t heard any of this. I asked to see the letter and the addendum.

This writer was disturbed that the addendum was generic. It had arrived on her desk—get this—without her name or the name of the book typed in. She was supposed to fill out the contract number, the book’s title, her name, and all that pertinent information.

I had her send me her original contracts, which she did. The addendum destroyed her excellent e-book rights in that contract, substituting better terms for the publisher. Said publisher handled both of that agency’s bright writing stars.

So I contacted other friends with that agency. They had all received the addendum. Most had just signed the addendum without comparing it to the original contract, trusting their agent who was (after all) supposed to protect them.

Wrong-o. The agency, it turned out, had made a deal with the publisher. The publisher would correct the royalties for the big names if agency sent out the addendum to every contract it had negotiated with that contract. The publisher and the agency both knew that not all writers would sign the addendum, but the publisher (and probably the agency) also knew that a good percentage of the writers would sign without reading it.

In other words, the publisher took the money it was originally paying to small fish and paid it to the big fish—with the small fish’s permission.

Yes, I’m furious about this, but not at the publisher. I’m mad at the authors who signed, but mostly, I’m mad at the agency that made this deal. This agency had a chance to make a good decision for all of its clients. Instead, it opted to make a good deal for only its big names.

Do I know for a fact that this is what happened? Yeah, I do. Can I prove it? No. Which is why I won’t tell you the name of the agency, nor the name of the bestsellers involved. (Who, I’m sure, have no idea what was done in their names.)

On a business level what the agency did makes sense. The agency pocketed millions in future commissions without costing itself a dime on the other side, since most of the writers who signed the addendum probably hadn’t earned out their advances, and probably never would.

On an ethical level it pisses me off. You’ll note that my language about agents has gotten harsher over the past year, and this single incident had something to do with it. Other incidents later added fuel to the fire, but they’re not relevant here. I’ll deal with them in a future post.

Yes, there are good agents in the world. Some work for unethical agencies. Some work for themselves. I still work with an agent who is also a lawyer, and is probably more ethical than I am.

But there are yahoos in the agenting business who make the slimy used car salesmen from 1970s films look like action heroes. But, as I said, that’s a future post.

I have a lot of information from writers, most of which is in private correspondence, none of which I can share, that leads me to believe that this particular agency isn’t the only one that used my blog on royalty statements to benefit their bestsellers and hurt their midlist writers. But again, I can’t prove it.

So I’m sad to report that nothing has changed from last year on the royalty statement front.

Except…

The reason I was so excited about the Department of Justice lawsuit against the five publishers wasn’t because of the anti-trust issues (which do exist on a variety of levels in publishing, in my opinion), but because the DOJ accountants will dig, and dig, and dig into the records of these traditional publishers, particularly one company named in the suit that’s got truly egregious business practices.

Those practices will change, if only because the DOJ’s forensic accountants will request information that the current accounting systems in most publishing houses do not track. The accounting system in all five of these houses will get overhauled, and brought into the 21st century, and that will benefit writers. It will be an accidental benefit, but it will occur.

The audits alone will unearth a lot of problems. I know that some writers were skeptical that the auditors would look for problems in the royalty statements, but all that shows is a lack of understanding of how forensic accounting works. In the weeks since the DOJ suit, I’ve contacted several accountants, including two forensic accountants, and they all agree that every pebble, every grain of sand, will be inspected because the best way to hide funds in an accounting audit is to move them to a part of the accounting system not being audited.

So when an organization like the DOJ audits, they get a blanket warrant to look at all of the accounting, not just the files in question. Yes, that’s a massive task. Yes, it will take years. But the change is gonna come.

From the outside.

Those of you in Europe might be seeing some of that change as well, since similar lawsuits are going on in Europe.

I do know that several writers from European countries, New Zealand, and Australia have written to me about similar problems in their royalty statements. The unifying factor in those statements is the companies involved. Again, you’d recognize the names because they’ve been in the news lately…dealing with lawsuits.
Ironically for me, those two blog posts benefitted me greatly. I had been struggling to get my rights back from one publisher (who is the biggest problem publisher), and the week I posted the blog, I got contacted by my former editor there, who told me that my rights would come back to me ASAP. Because, the former editor told me (as a friend), things had changed since Thursday (the day I post my blog), and I would get everything I needed.

In other words, let’s get the troublemaker out of the house now. Fine with me.

Later, I discovered some problems with a former agency. I pointed out the problems in a letter, and those problems got solved immediately. I have several friends who’ve been dealing with similar things from that agency, and they can’t even get a return e-mail. I know that the quick response I got is because of this blog.
I also know that many writers used the blog posts from last year to negotiate more accountability from their publishers for future royalties. That’s a real plus. Whether or not it happens is another matter because I noted something else in this round of royalty statements.

Actually, that’s not fair. My agent caught it first. I need to give credit where credit is due, and since so many folks believe I bash agents, let me say again that my current agent is quite good, quite sharp, and quite ethical.

My agent noticed that the royalty statements from one of my publishers were basket accounted on the statement itself. Which is odd, considering there is no clause in any of the contracts I have with that company that allows for basket accounting.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with basket accounting, this is what it means:

A writer signs a contract with Publisher A for three books. The contract is a three-book contract. One contract, three books. Got that?

Okay, a contract with a basket-accounting clause allows the publisher to put all three books in the same accounting “basket” as if the books are one entity. So let’s say that book one does poorly, book two does better, and book three blows out of the water.

If book three earns royalties, those royalties go toward paying off the advances on books one and two.

Like this:

Advance for book one: $10,000
Advance for book two: $10,000
Advance for book three: $10,000
Book one only earned back $5,000 toward its advance. Book two only earned $6,000 toward its advance.
Book three earned $12,000—paying off its advance, with a $2,000 profit.

In a standard contract without basket accounting, the writer would have received the $2,000 as a royalty payment.

But with basket accounting, the writer receives nothing. That accounting looks like this:
Advance on contract 1: $30,000
Earnings on contract 1: $23,000
Amount still owed before the advance earns out: $7,000

Instead of getting $2,000, the writer looks at the contract and realizes she still has $7,000 before earning out.

Without basket accounting, she would have to earn $5,000 to earn out Book 1, and $4,000 to earn out Book 2, but Book 3 would be paying her cold hard cash.

Got the difference?

Now, let’s go back to my royalty statement. It covered three books. All three books had three different one-book contracts, signed years apart. You can’t have basket accounting without a basket (or more than one book), but I checked to see if sneaky lawyers had inserted a clause that I missed which allowed the publisher to basket account any books with that publisher that the publisher chose.

Nope.

I got a royalty statement with all of my advances basket accounted because…well, because. The royalty statement doesn’t follow the contract(s) at all.

Accounting error? No. These books had be added separately. Accounting program error (meaning once my name was added, did the program automatically basket account)? Maybe.

But I’ve suspected for nearly three years now that this company (not one of the big traditional publishers, but a smaller [still large] company) has been having serious financial problems. The company has played all kinds of games with my checks, with payments, with fulfilling promises that cost money.

This is just another one of those problems.

My agent caught it because he reads royalty statements. He mentioned it when he forwarded the statements. I would have caught it as well because I read royalty statements. Every single one. And I compare them to the previous statement. And often, I compare them to the contract.

Is this “error” a function of the modern publishing environment? No, not like e-book royalties, which we’ll get back to in a moment. I’m sure publishers have played this kind of trick since time immemorial. Royalty statements are fascinating for what they don’t say rather than for what they say.

For example, on this particular (messed up) royalty statement, e-books are listed as one item, without any identification. The e-books should be listed separately (according to ISBN) because Amazon has its own edition, as does Apple, as does B&N. Just like publishers must track the hardcover, trade paper, and mass market editions under different ISBNs, they should track e-books the same way.

The publisher that made the “error” with my books had no identifying number, and only one line for e-books. Does that mean that this figure included all e-books, from the Amazon edition to the B&N edition to the Apple edition? Or is this publisher, which has trouble getting its books on various sites (go figure), is only tracking Amazon? From the numbers, it would seem so. Because the numbers are somewhat lower than books in the same series that I have on Amazon, but nowhere near the numbers of the books in the same series if you add in Apple and B&N.

I can’t track this because the royalty statement has given me no way to track it. I would have to run an audit on the company. I’m not sure I want to do that because it would take my time, and I’m moving forward.
That’s the dilemma for writers. Do we take on our publishers individually? Because—for the most part—our agents aren’t doing it. The big agencies, the ones who actually have the clout and the numbers to defend their clients, are doing what they can for their big clients and leaving the rest in the dust.

Writers’ organizations seem to be silent on this. And honestly, it’s tough for an organization to take on a massive audit. It’s tough financially and it’s tough politically. I know one writer who headed a writer’s organization a few decades ago. She spearheaded an audit of major publishers, and it cost her her writing career. Not many heads of organizations have the stomach for that.

As for intellectual property attorneys (or any attorney for that matter), very few handle class actions. Most handle cases individually for individual clients. I know of several writers who’ve gone to attorneys and have gotten settlements from publishers. The problem here is that these settlements only benefit one writer, who often must sign a confidentiality agreement so he can’t even talk about what benefit he got from that agreement.

One company that I know of has revamped its royalty statements. They appear to be clearer. The original novel that I have with that company isn’t selling real well as an e-book, and that makes complete sense since the e-book costs damn near $20. (Ridiculous.) The other books that I have with that company, collaborations and tie-ins, seem to be accurately reported, although I have no way to know. I do appreciate that this company has now separated out every single e-book venue into its own category (B&N, Amazon, Apple) via ISBN, and I can actually see the sales breakdown.

So that’s a positive (I think). Some of the smaller companies have accurate statements as well—or at least, statements that match or improve upon the sales figures I’m seeing on indie projects.

This is all a long answer to a very simple question: What’s happened on the royalty statement front in the past year?

A lot less than I had hoped.

So here’s what you traditionally published writers can do. Track your royalty statements. Compare them to your contracts. Make sure the companies are reporting what they should be reporting.

If you’re combining indie and traditional, like I am, make sure the numbers are in the same ballpark. Make sure your traditional Amazon numbers are around the same numbers you get for your indie titles. If they aren’t, look at one thing first: Price. I expect sales to be much lower on that ridiculous $20 e-book. If your e-books through your traditional publisher are $15 or more, then sales will be down. If the e-books from your traditional publisher are priced around $10 or less, then they should be somewhat close in sales to your indie titles. (Or, if traditional publishers are doing the promotion they claim to do, the sales should be better.)
What to do if they’re not close at all? I have no idea. I still think there’s a benefit to contacting your writers’ organizations. Maybe if the organization keeps getting reports of badly done royalty statements, someone will take action.

If you want to hire an attorney or an auditor, remember doing that will cost both time and money. If you’re a bestseller, you might want to consider it. If you’re a midlist writer, it’s probably not worth the time and effort you’ll put in.

But do yourself a favor. Read those royalty statements. If you think they’re bad, then don’t sign a new contract with that publisher. Go somewhere else with your next book.

I wish I could give you better advice. I wish the big agencies actually tried to use their clout for good instead of their own personal profits. I wish the writers’ organizations had done something.

As usual, it’s up to individual writers.

Don’t let anyone screw you. You might not be able to fight the bad accounting on past books, but make sure you don’t allow it to happen on future books.

That means that you negotiate good contracts, you make sure your royalty statements match those contracts, and you don’t sign with a company that puts out royalty statements that don’t reflect your book deal.
I’m quite happy that I walked away from the publisher I mentioned above years ago. I did so because I didn’t like the treatment I got from the financial and production side. The editor was—as editors often are—great. Everything else at the company sucked.

The royalty statement was just confirmation of a good decision for me.

I hope you make good decisions going forward.

Remember: read your royalty statements.

Good luck.

I need to thank everyone who commented, e-mailed, donated, and called because of last week’s post. When I wrote it, all I meant to do was discuss how we all go through tough times and how we, as writers, need to recognize when we’ve hit a wall. It seems I hit a nerve. I forget sometimes that most writers work in a complete vacuum, with no writer friends, no one except family, who much as they care, don’t always understand.

So if you haven’t read last week’s post, take a peek [link]. More importantly, look at the comments for great advice and some wonderful sharing. I appreciate them—and how much they expanded, added, and improved what I had to say. Thanks for that, everyone.

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“The Business Rusch: “Royalty Statement Update 2012,” copyright © 2012 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

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Hey, folks! This is Suzan again. I just want to say Kris is definitely not making this up. I've had trad published friends ask for my specific sales numbers. Why? Because they've been ranked much higher than me on certain retail sites, but their publishers are telling them that they sold no e-books.


Please, PLEASE make sure you not only read your contract, but you UNDERSTAND it as well. If you have any doubts whatsoever about a contract, DO NOT sign it. It's a royal bitch to get out of a bad contract.