BilmBlog500

Dear KDP Author, Just ahead of World War II, there was a radical invention that shook the foundations of book publishing. It was the paperback book. This was a time when movie tickets cost 10 or 20 cents, and books cost $2.50. The new paperback cost 25 cents – it was ten times cheaper. Readers loved the paperback and millions of copies were sold in just the first year. With it being so inexpensive and with so many more people able to afford to buy and read books, you would think the literary establishment of the day would have celebrated the invention of the paperback, yes? Nope. Instead, they dug in and circled the wagons. They believed low cost paperbacks would destroy literary culture and harm the industry (not to mention their own bank accounts). Many bookstores refused to stock them, and the early paperback publishers had to use unconventional methods of distribution – places like newsstands and drugstores. The famous author George Orwell came out publicly and said about the new p...

I'm looking forward to attending my second British Worldcon next week, and will be at London's Excel for Loncon 3. Here's when you can see me: Thursday 14 August, 13:00 Kaffeeklatsch, London Suite 5 (Level 0) A Kaffeeklatsch is a small group around a table, and advance reservations need to be made with or at the convention.  I know it's early in the convention weekend, which doesn't give a lot of time to sign up.  I hope you'll make plans to be part of this small group. Saturday 16 August, 12:00 Finding an Agent, Capital Suite 16 (Level 3) Join me, author Jacey Bedford, fellow agents Ian Drury and John Jarrold, and moderator and long-time editor Betsy Mitchell.  This is an especially exciting panel for me to be on because of the great co-panelists.  Betsy gave me my start in publishing, and John Jarrold was one of the very first UK publishing folk I got to meet in person, during his days at the Earthlight imprint at Simon & Schuster. Saturday 16 August, 13:3...

Somehow or other I never posted these two play reviews from several months ago... Dinner With Friends, which first played in New York in the late 1990s into 2001, is one of the major plays by Daniel Margulies.  For a literary type such as myself, Collected Stories is perhaps the keynote. It's an All About Eve story of an aging writer and a young admirer/protege.  More recently, Time Stands Still, a play about a wartorn journalist recovering from wounds physical and spiritual at home got a lot of attention. But it's Dinner With Friends that I saw today in a revival at the Roundabout's Laura Pels Theatre, and I can't say it impressed. It's a yuppie marital drama.  A couple, probably in their thirties, are having a friend over for dinner.  She reveals that her husband is leaving her.  A few scenes that night of the aftershocks, one at her house, where he stops by when a flight cancellation keeps him from heading off to his new home.  They have sex.  Anoth...

So, yes, the big publishers really do treat their authors shittily sometimes. This example can be considered an extension of my post in March called The Royalty Jar , where I discussed reserves against returns as part of a series of posts on royalty statements. As I mentioned in that post, we (a) try to review our royalty statements very carefully, including any itemization of the reserve against returns on the royalty statements (b) have contract language that puts some sort of limit on how much money a publisher can hold back in its reserve against returns. Late last week, I was reviewing a royalty statement from a British publisher. The contract language we negotiated for this deal says that the publisher can, at its discretion, take a reserve on paperback editions each semi-annual period of up to 25% of the author's royalty earnings for this edition.  Simple, right!  The language even suggests that the publisher could use its discretion to take a smaller reserve.  Not...