Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware
One of the important negotiation points for life-of-copyright publishing contracts is including provisions in the termination clause that oblige the publisher to take the work out of print when sales or royalties drop below a minimum level.
Why is that important? Well, when your book has fallen so far into the backlist that your publisher no longer even includes it in its catalogs, and sales have dropped down to practically nothing, there’s no reason for the publisher to continue to hold your rights. Much better for the book to go out of print, and for you to revert the rights and do something else with them–self-publish as an ebook, for instance, to take advantage of the exploding ebook market, or try to market them to other publishers.
That’s what I did with my Stone duology (The Arm of the Stone, first pubbed by Eos in 1998, and The Garden of the Stone, first pubbed by Eos in 1999)–and I’m thrilled to announce that both novels have been bought by Phoenix Pick, a small publisher that specializes in re-issuing previously published books by established science fiction and fantasy authors. The books will have brand-new cover art, and will be available as trade paperbacks and as ebooks.
Arm has just been released, and is available at Amazon, among others. To celebrate, I’m giving away three signed copies. To be entered in a random drawing, please email me at victoria [at] victoriastrauss.com with your name and mailing address, and “February Contest” in the subject line (your info won’t be shared, and you won’t be added to any mailing lists). All entries must be received by midnight, February 28, 2011. US and Canadian residents only, please!
Garden will be released next month, and I’ll be posting another giveaway then.
For ebook enthusiasts, the publisher will be giving away free downloads as soon as both books are available. I’ll post an announcement then.
Please feel free to post this giveaway on Twitter, Facebook, etc., or to feature it on your own blog. Thanks!
Pranada, I do think the contest you're asking about is a way for Hay House to entice writers to sign up for a writing workshop (details are here). And the contest is advertised as "This could be YOUR chance to publish a book with Hay House and become a New York Times best-selling author!"–which I think is misleading. Publishing a book with Hay House (or any other publisher) and becoming a NYT best-selling author are two completely unrelated events.
However, the contest itself looks pretty straightforward–you attend the workshop, which teaches you, among other things, how to write a book proposal. You then can submit your completed proposal to the contest for a chance at publication by Hay House with a $10,000 advance. There are some things it would be good to know–for instance, would the publishing contract be negotiable?–but all in all this looks like a nice opportunity for workshop attendees.
I'd also note that the workshop seems mostly geared to nonfiction (only one novelist on the faculty) and that book proposals are not typically done for fiction by first-timers.
Congrats on the resale!
Thanks for this insight and, sincerely, congratulations on using the strategy personally. I have a question. Can you comment on this offer for a $10,000 publishing advance from Hay House? http://www.hayhouse.com/event_details.php?event_id=1312
Congrats on the reissues. Very cool and timely…
Oy. I'm having my "D'oh!" moment here.
I read these books a couple years ago, and have been reading your blog for months now, and never put those two things together until today when you actually mentioned the titles of the books. Sheesh.
Anyway, congratulations on them coming back to print! I particularly loved the first one, and then hurried to buy a copy of the second one to see what happened. (And both copies survived the great purge when we moved a year ago, so I still have them.)
(And, see? #9 and #21 in my March 2008 reading list: http://chappysmom.com/2008/04/01/books-from-march/ )
Congratulations, Victoria! I entered the contest too. 🙂
Fortunately, the new paperback and the Kindle edition are both available from amazon.co.uk (so I have bought both).
Too cool! I'm thrilled to see your novels in print again. Thanks for having this giveaway.
Congratulations!
That's terrific, Victoria! I hope you sell oodles of them. I'm off to beg for a signed free copy.
Good luck the second time around!
Cool! Congrats on the resale!