{"id":1940,"date":"2011-10-19T19:14:48","date_gmt":"2011-10-19T23:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/?p=1940"},"modified":"2011-10-19T19:14:48","modified_gmt":"2011-10-19T23:14:48","slug":"are-publishing-co-s-punishing-writers-for-sleeping-with-the-enemy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/19\/are-publishing-co-s-punishing-writers-for-sleeping-with-the-enemy\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Publishing Co.’s Punishing Writers For “Sleeping With The Enemy?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was a very interesting NY Times article\u00a0<\/a>a few days ago written by\u00a0David Streitfeld.\u00a0\u00a0 It discussed\u00a0Amazon's\u00a0bold steps in building its own\u00a0publishing brand. The title of the piece spoke of Amazon writing publishers out of deals.\u00a0 The publishers are \"terrified and don't know what to do,\" according to Dennis Loy Johnson of Melville House.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Amazon has been aggressively pursuing top authors. Even celebrities have seen the business sense of partnering with Amazon.\u00a0 Director\/Actress Penny Marshall got an alleged $800,00 advance <\/a>for\u00a0signing with Amazon to do her memoir.\u00a0 Likely,\u00a0Ms. Marshall\u00a0also got a piece of the pie because Amazon is building brand loyalty by\u00a0sharing the profits from the sale of books with the authors who wrote them.\u00a0\u00a0 It's\u00a0quite sad how revolutionary that concept is and it's quite funny that the weapon of equity pointed straight at their P&L sheets so terrifies the traditional publishers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some publishers have taken the war a step farther by punishing authors who dare to self publish material that is NOT UNDER CONTRACT.\u00a0\u00a0That's right, Penguin supposedly canceled a new author's publishing contract because she dared to self publish some old work during the long - long - long period between signing a bood deal and the book actually appearing for sale.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hawaiian writer Kiana Davenport signed with Penguin and received a 20k advance for publication of her book \"The Chinese Soldier's Daughter.\"\u00a0 It was due to come out next summer.\u00a0 During the interval, Ms. Davenport, mindful of lectures about the need to drum up publicity and build her \"brand\" self published an e-book of some of her old work on Amazon.<\/p>\n

She says:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

When Penguin found out, it went \u201cballistic<\/a>,\u201d Ms. Davenport wrote on her blog, accusing her of breaking her contractual promise to avoid competing with it. It wanted \u201cCannibal Nights\u201d removed from sale and all mentions of it deleted from the Internet.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ms. Davenport refused to remove the\u00a0e-book.\u00a0 Penguin says it will pursue legal action\u00a0if the author doesn't return the balance of her advance.\u00a0 A lawyer with the author's guild who has represented Ms. Davenport, Jan Constantine, says that Penguin made an example of Ms. Davenport<\/a>. The lawyer feels Penguin's acts are intended to\u00a0warn\u00a0published authors that for them, self-publishing is a risky business.<\/p>\n

The writer felt she was being punished for sleeping with the enemy<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The publishers could try beating Amazon at its own game by\u00a0sharing some of the wealth and some of the control over the final product with authors.\u00a0 I guess it's just that if you're used to keeping all but a tiny slice of the pie, you've come to consider the pie yours - rather than the creation of the baker who cooked\u00a0it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Traditional publishers have put out some fine work from some amazing folks through the years.\u00a0 But they should recall that authors talented enough to create such masterpieces are likely risk-takers by nature.\u00a0 If publishers don't change their tune the best and the brightest are likely to dance away.<\/p>\n

Oh and Amazon - yoo hoo-over here - over here. \u00a0**Waves**.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maybe I should try billboards???<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was a very interesting NY Times article\u00a0a few days ago written by\u00a0David Streitfeld.\u00a0\u00a0 It discussed\u00a0Amazon's\u00a0bold steps in building its own\u00a0publishing brand. The title of the piece spoke of Amazon writing publishers out of deals.\u00a0 The publishers are \"terrified and don't know what to do,\" according to Dennis Loy Johnson of Melville House.\u00a0 Amazon has ...continue reading \"Are Publishing Co.’s Punishing Writers For “Sleeping With The Enemy?”\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1940"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1940"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1942,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1940\/revisions\/1942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}