Are you sick of my contract warnings about serialized fiction apps yet?
Honestly I’m not even sure who I’m aiming these posts at. They go right over the heads of many of the writers who could benefit from them (at least, judging by the emails I receive from writers who’ve read my warnings and still want to know why this stuff is so bad, and clueless Facebook discussions scoffing at me for being such a nitpicker), and for savvier writers, probably aren’t needed. Contract geeks, maybe?
On the other hand, the relatively new serialized fiction app space is shaping up to be a major predator, with dozens of companies aggressively recruiting authors–many of whom are young, inexperienced non-native English speakers–with exaggerated promises of money and exposure, and binding them to complicated English-language contracts that are almost comical in their awfulness.
Popink (parent company INK Universe Limited, based in Hong Kong) looks much like the many other apps I’ve encountered, with large numbers of minimally (if at all) edited novels in various genres, some of which can be accessed for free and others, with “premium” chapters, by subscription.
There’s the usual array of anemic writer benefits: non-exclusive contracts pay a “completion bonus” of up to $100, depending on word count, plus a royalty share; and exclusive contracts also pay a royalty share, plus a signing bonus of $100 upon the production of 60,000 words, a monthly “update bonus” of at most $250 (and only for those who can achieve Popink’s grueling word count benchmarks in less than 25 days per month), and a princely one-time “completion bonus” of $100-$200 for writers who can finish novels of 150,000-300,000 words.
Popink’s non-exclusive contract (which can be seen here) is one of the worst I’ve seen–and that’s saying something. There’s so much to take exception to that I’m just going to discuss the highlights. (Note: in the clauses below, Party A is Popink, and Party B is the author.)
– The use of the term “digital copyright” throughout the contract is troubling.
Here’s just one example:
The language of the contract makes it reasonably clear that the writer is licensing various rights, not the copyright itself. Even so, this is a misuse of the term “copyright”, and I honestly don’t know what, if any, legal ramifications might arise as a result (am I being alarmist here?). This unconventional use of the term is a common feature of serialized fiction app contracts.
– As mentioned, the contract is non-exclusive, and per Clause 6, extends for 5 years after after the work is completed.
That would seem to be better than the 20-year or life-of-copyright contracts I’ve seen. However, the Power of Attorney clause on the last page of the contract says something completely different. Compare and contrast:
So which is it–completion plus 5 years, or life-of-copyright? To put it mildly, that’s not a question you want to be asking when you’re thinking about accepting a publishing contract. Not to mention, by requiring the author to get written authorization in order to exercise rights in the work–as, with a non-exclusive grant of rights, they should freely be able to do, for instance by self-publishing or publishing on another platform–Popink has the power to make this supposedly non-exclusive contract exclusive at will.
You really, really do not want your publishing contract to be internally contradictory. Even without all the other bad stuff I discuss in this post, that should be a deal breaker.
(Requiring authors to grant power of attorney is serious overreach, by the way: such a grant is absolutely not necessary to enable Popink–or any publisher–to publish.)
– The grant of rights is “irrevocable”–you have no right of termination.
Surprise! Not. Almost every app contract I’ve seen is non-terminable by the author.
– You must grant your moral rights to Popink.
Moral rights–which aren’t recognized for writers in the USA, but are important in the rest of the world–include the right of attribution (to have your work published under your name) and the right to integrity (the right to object to any distortion or change that would damage your reputation–note the mention in the clause above of “derogatory treatment”). Surrendering moral rights is a substantial loss of control.
– The grant of rights is super-sweeping.It includes pretty much every right and subsidiary right in existence, including “new works rights”: the right for Popink to create any kind of derivative work “based on, adapting, deriving from, or incorporating elements of the Work (including characters, props, plot, framework or background).” The surrender of moral rights comes into play here: your name would not necessarily be attached to such works–or if it were, and you didn’t want it to be, you’d have no right to object.
You must also give Popink first right of refusal (which Popink calls “exclusive right of priority”) on any related work…
…and you must give Popink the same priority on any re-license of the contracted work, if that re-license is exclusive…even after the contract has expired.
Greedy much? If you don’t comply, Clause 10.1.2 deems you to be in breach, and requires you to pay damages to Popink for “all losses suffered”.
– The author’s income is paid on net profit (another familiar element of contracts like these).
The income split (detailed in Clause 3) sounds sounds good, at 50% of “Net Income” from digital sales and the licensing of various rights, including audio; but per the Definitions section of the contract, what Net Income actually means is “the income portion after costs (including but not limited to channel costs, operating expenses etc.) are deducted from [Popink’s] direct income from operation.”
As with any payment calculated on net profit, this stands to make actual author income considerably smaller than the percentage split suggests. Additionally, without knowing what costs and “operating expenses” actually are, authors have no idea how substantial the deductions might be. Combined with a payment threshold of $100, it’s a good bet that many Popink authors receive extremely infrequent royalty checks.
– Clause 9 levies a series of financial penalties against the author for breach (yet another common feature of serialized fiction app contracts).
Depending on the type of breach, the author may have to hand over 30% or 100% of “all income Party A [Popink] paid to Party B [the author]”. This is somewhat less draconian than other penalty clauses I’ve seen in app contracts, which multiply income by as much as 20 for penalty purposes. But the bottom line is that if Popink judges you to be in breach, you will owe it money.
– As with several other serialized fiction app contracts I’ve seen, there’s “morals” language requiring the author to uphold Popink’s reputation in various ways (Clause 4.2).
The problem with such language is that it’s very broad, and is applied at Popink’s discretion–which offers wide scope for abuse.
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As bad as the terms are for writers, they are likely to be not much better for the editors (aka sales associates) who are responsible for recruiting writers and shepherding them through the contracting and creation process.
This is from serialized fiction app iStory, which very unusually has a section on its Benefits page that addresses editors’ compensation. I haven’t seen this anywhere else. Considering how similarly apps operate, it seems like a reasonable bet that such terms are the norm, rather than the exception. (Be sure to read the fine print.)
How can we delete our accounts from popink. There is NO delete book option. There is NO delete account–how do we do anything?
The Popink contract doesn’t allow authors to terminate, so I’m guessing that’s why there’s no option to delete your book. Can you contact your editor, or whoever you’ve been in contact with, and ask to be let go?
Cheers, Victoria. But the book has been on Amazon since 2014, so it did not depend on sales from his website. And I know many more people bought it than I was told. I was thwarted from the start by the fact that he refused to allow me to send out PDF ARCs to prospective reviewers (like any other publisher does), thereby forcing me to buy books from him, and send out hard copies which drained my funds and resulted in no reviews.
Thank you, Victoria. I think it is high time I called him out publicly. I recently offered him one last chance to honourably return my rights before I take further action. But he has chosen to ignore my request, just as he has ignored several emails in the past few years, including one from my lawyer. His name is Michael Everson at http://www.evertype.com
Thanks for sharing that, Muz. This looks like a highly specialized niche publisher with an enormous catalog of books, most of which will appeal to a tiny audience–so I’m not surprised at the small sales. An interesting example of the long tail in action: a publisher can make as much money from a giant catalog of low-selling books as it can from a small catalog of books that sell in volume.
Please keep me updated on whatever action you decide to take.
Excellent stuff, Victoria. I wish I had known about all this before I naively signed a contract that was all in the publisher’s favour. He omitted to add the customary escape clause that after less than 200 books are sold within 2 years, the rights return to the author. He has admantly refused to add the clause even after many requests to do so. He also refused to divulge how many books he had sold for three years after publication. It wasn’t until my lawyer sent him a threatening letter that he stated that he had only sold 8 books in three years, when I know that many more people than that had bought the book. Now, for the last five years he has made no contact and is presumably still selling my book. I am at my wit’s end and ready to wrest the book back by force, and republish it myself as the Author’s Authorised Edition, (after rewriting several parts he forced me to change against my wishes).
Who is the publisher? Email me if you don’t want to say publicly: beware@sfwa.org
A $100 bonus for 60000 words? Goodness. You can earn the same and get yourself a much friendlier contract by selling a 1250-word story to Daily Science Fiction.
Victoria, thank you so much for your posts! I was pretty clueless (and starry-eyed) about the publishing industry when I started submitting my works, and your blog has really, really helped me to navigate around it. I’ve heard of the reading/writing apps but never given them much thought until I saw you had blogged about them here.
Thanks for the kind words, Anastasia. I’m so glad you’ve found the blog helplful!
Victoria, just letting you know that I love your posts over the years and have been very educational. Due to your excellent investigations combined with my cynicism of human behavior, there’s not a single publisher that I would trust today. Even a large one (P) screwed a friend of mind who was published a lot and a best seller to boot.
Do you blog on the industry itself? Maybe that’s on your other site. I’m self-published on the dreaded Amazon that those with their offshore manufactured phones spew at me they’re the devil (pot to kettle…).
I’m also convinced that fewer and fewer people read books of any kind. Other than advertising on Amazon, I don’t know how one gets noticed anymore. I’m competing with people who have goldfish attention spans and lack determination.
Also today’s writing I find appalling just like the TV shows and movies.
**Oh, I shared a couple of your blog posts to the big Facebook writing groups, a few refused to even post it. I then did a comment on an existing point asking where their brains were for NOT disclosing the dangers to authors on–an author group page? That was a year ago. What I was really stating was, “Where is the rational thinking in this group?”
But the last two years have shown us the demise of rationality, replaced by hypersensitive overgrown children who have replaced rational thinking for copy-pasting labels of thinktanks’ idealism.
However there are still some that still see and actually think for themselves. Do they read? I think not. Most are glued to the Internet seeing what happens next.
thanks!
Kerry
descendantsofatlantis.com
Hi, Kerry,
Yes, I blog about the publishing industry in general, when there’s an issue that seems important–I’ve done several posts on the Internet Archive’s unauthorized book scanning, for instance, and a number of advice posts on things like contract clauses and how to evaluate publishing contracts.
Thanks for helping to spread the word!