Of course, your publisher knows what those early cheapo books by current bestsellers went for originally, and what they resold for. Come the 1970s he sold ’em for, I think, $100,000 US apiece-and the final time he sold them he got something like a million dollars US for these three books that had originally gone for $1,500 US total.) (For example, Isaac Asimov sold the Foundation Trilogy for $500 US apiece in the early 1950s-and didn’t get paid, either. The publisher’s not doing a damned thing with it, so why not get it reverted? It may take you years to resell it, but at least it’s your property again, and if you hit it big, that $4,000 US novel might be worth even more the second time around. Now, from your point of view, this makes sense. If the book is, say, a year old, and out of print, you have every right to ask for an early reversion, and if it’s five years old (pretty much the industry standard except for Zebra/Kensington, which has a more onerous clause), you have every right to demand one. The clause says, in essence, that if your book goes out of print in X number of years, you can get it back at (or after) that time by writing the publisher a registered letter demanding that he bring it back into print, and he’s got six months to do it or the book reverts to you. Unless it’s a term-of-lease deal-and if you’re new enough not to know the term “indefinitely out of stock,” you’re too new to have enough clout to swing a term-of-lease contract-there is a reversion clause.
To understand why, let’s take a look at your contract. QUESTION: I tried to order more copies of my book through my local bookstore, and they were told that it’s “indefinitely out of stock.” What does that mean?ĪNSWER: It means the publisher is jerking you around with an industry-wide ploy. Okay, let’s get on to this issue’s questions. Update: Make that eleven books and three stories. But I’ve optioned seven books since then. Sometimes it’s the truth usually it’s a lie. I invariably tell them that I don’t know the status of the book they’re asking about, that other producers are currently talking to my agent about that very same book, and I have no idea if an option contract is in the works or not. I have been approached by a number of producers since that day. But if they can’t raise the money, you won’t see a penny of option money.”Īnd, sure enough, I never heard from them again. If they make the deal, which is a one-in-a-thousand proposition, you’ll get a lot of money. Now they’ll take it around and try to make a deal, with the comforting knowledge that no one else is going to ace them out of it. Sure, they picked up a $100 lunch check and a pair of $300 airfares, but they saved a renewable $10,000 option payment.
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“When you told them the book hadn’t had any Hollywood interest in three years, you as much as gave them a free option.
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And I mentioned, in passing, that I had commended them on their taste, for I always thought the book could make a pretty nice movie and yet no production companies had expressed any interest in it since its publication three years earlier. I was really flying high when I got home, and I called my friend, Barry Malzberg, to tell him about it. They spent the next couple of hours feeding me, praising my writing, and telling me how much they wanted to make the movie. He flew into Cincinnati with his director, and they met me at La Maisonette, our pricey five-star restaurant. One day, in early 1990, I got a phone call out of the blue from a producer who wanted to option my fantasy novel, Stalking the Unicorn. So I’m going to help you learn by sharing a major blunder I made six years ago.
You learn by spotting the mistakes in Roger Lee Vernon and George Allan England and avoiding them. You don’t become a good writer by emulating Nikos Kazantzakis or Edward Whittemore, because if their art could be emulated we’d all be doing it. You don’t learn from people’s successes you learn from their mistakes.
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