Author Terrill Lankford made a bold stand recently. He read his contract from a major publishing house and balked at the electronic royalty split of 75% going to the publisher. Get the details in this Publisher’s Weekly article.
If you have been following this blog for very long at all, you know that I have long been an advocate of writers electronically publishing their backlist. Over the past six months, evidence has has been mounting that tips the scales in favor of electronic self-publishing for original works (meaning unpublished) of novel-length fiction.
Lankford has seized upon this idea that the publishers are demanding a far greater share of the pie than really is justified. Oh, from the publisher’s perspective, the split is justified. Major publishing companies have survival in mind. By splitting fairly with the author in terms of work performed, publishers risk their own extinction.
From the author’s perspective, however, the electronic royalty split makes absolutely no sense at all, and writers are starting to wake up to this. It’s one of the reasons I hemmed and hawed about sending the manuscript of Neanderthal Swan Song to Angry Robot. While I did ultimately submit the manuscript, it was for reasons other than rights and royalty split. That said, and at the risk of generating an automatic rejection from AR, I certainly stand ready to walk away from a publishing contract that I feel gives too much to the publisher.
