{"id":494,"date":"2013-03-06T22:20:42","date_gmt":"2013-03-07T03:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/wordpress\/how_the_random_house_hydra_contract_becomes_the_ne"},"modified":"2013-11-17T05:19:57","modified_gmt":"2013-11-17T05:19:57","slug":"how_the_random_house_hydra_contract_becomes_the_ne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/2013\/03\/how_the_random_house_hydra_contract_becomes_the_ne.html","title":{"rendered":"How the Random House \/ Hydra Contract Becomes the New Normal (For a While)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>John Scalzi has the goods on <a href=\"http:\/\/whatever.scalzi.com\/2013\/03\/06\/note-to-sff-writers-random-houses-hydra-imprint-has-appallingly-bad-contract-terms\/\">Random House&#8217;s new Hydra vanity press<\/a>, and the <a href=\"http:\/\/whatever.scalzi.com\/2013\/03\/06\/a-contract-from-alibi\/\">contract really does sound awful<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to publish fiction, there are two main options.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Go with a reputable publisher. Advantage: the publisher fronts a bunch of fixed costs around book production and distribution and pays you an advance. Disadvantage: your book might never be published, and the publisher keeps most of the revenue from your book.<\/li>\n<li>Self-publish. Advantage: You keep the lion&#8217;s share of the revenue. Disadvantage: you get no advance, and you have to front the cost of design, editing, art, etc. (Though if you don&#8217;t give a rip about design, editing, art, etc., this cost could be close to zero.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Random House \/ Hydra combines the worst aspects of both paths. Unlike going with a publisher, you get no advance, and you end up paying the fixed costs of production. Unlike self-publishing, you only get 50% of the revenue, not 70% or 90% or 97.1%. And critically, unlike either of the above options, you lose your rights over your own work, in perpetuity. Random House assumes no risk and takes 50% of your money &#8212; forever. Just unbelievably cynical and awful.<\/p>\n<p>The trick will be making this kind of contract the new normal. Here&#8217;s the playbook:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Full court press in industry publications and social media, arguing that the contract is actually <em>fantastic<\/em> for authors, 50% is like totally way better than 15% you guys <em>duh<\/em>, and anyone who says otherwise is a fuddy-duddy who doesn&#8217;t get The Internet and hates puppies.<\/li>\n<li>Select a handful of authors and spend serious money promoting them, making sure they rack up some respectable sales by hook or by crook. Brag a lot about the top-line numbers.<\/li>\n<li>Wait for shit-rags like <em>Business Insider<\/em> and <em>Newsweek<\/em> and <em>Slate<\/em> to dutifully churn out praise for this brave new business model. Wait for this sentiment to work its way up the media food chain.<\/li>\n<li>Profit???<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>I dunno. The thing is&#8230; if I worked for Random House, and if I were worried about competing with Amazon, Apple, Smashwords etc., I would spend some time thinking about how I could offer a <em>better<\/em> deal. I&#8217;d at least try to match their terms, and maybe add some unique features that the others can&#8217;t match. The <em>last<\/em> thing I would want to do is construct a business that is worse than what my competitors currently offer in every respect, and that promises razor-thin margins for a few more years at best.<\/p>\n<p>It seems like an awfully ugly way to die.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The thing is&#8230; if I worked for Random House, and if I were worried about competing with Amazon, Apple, Smashwords etc., I would spend some time thinking about how I could offer a *better* deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":547,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions\/547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}