Michael Cairns and I have both been frustrated with most of the conversation surrounding the Google Book Search settlement. The principal concerns of most of the participants in the dialogue seem to be: 1. Has Google unfairly captured a monopoly on some content? 2. Has the “class” of “orphan authors” been dealt with fairly, since […]
Times Book Review on advances, and related thoughts
The NY Times Book Review published a piece on advances online today to which I was first pointed by Twitter early this morning. I couldn’t tell whether author Michael Meyer was “for ’em or agin’ ’em”. On the one hand, he seemed to suggest that publishers are inclined to overpay, and he cites Public Affairs head […]
More on returns, thanks to Michael Cader
Michael Cader responded to my post on returns yesterday (Tuesday, 4/7) with some ruminations of his own. All of them were thoughtful and useful and triggered some additional thoughts from me. Here is Michael’s commentary with thoughts of my own interspersed. I will remain in italics throughout this post. I have posted Michael’s entire response […]
Talking to the agents, and introducing Filedby
I was flattered to be asked to speak to the AAR last night as part of a very distinguished group. My fellow panelists were John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan; Morgan Entrekin, the CEO of Atlantic Monthly Press; the agent Larry Kirshbaum, who was CEO of TimeWarner’s book division (now Hachette Book Group); and Susan Katz, the […]
The author-publisher deal needs tweaking
I just want to riff briefly on a challenge; I am still thinking about what might be a solution, or even an approach to a solution. Here’s the challenge. We need some creative dealmaking between authors and publishers. The partnership is getting more complicated. Publishers (will always) need authors and (most) authors (still) need publishers. […]