Bitchin' Blog Posts
: Royalty
April 23, 2011 | Saturday | 27 Comments
Please note: there is not a single royal wedding-type link in here. Fear not. Author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes that she found major discrepancies in the ebook sales reported in her royalty statements and is calling for writers to check their royalty statement ebook sales figures against any self-published works or against Bookscan, and to alert writers organizations to demand audits of publishing houses whose royalty statements are inconsistent. ...traditional publishers are not indulging in a criminal act. They’re doing the best they can out of necessity. They see no reason to spend precious dollars revamping their accounting systems to…
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October 20, 2010 | Wednesday | 176 Comments
Something is very rotten in the state of Dorchester. Both Jane Litte and I have been pretty frank about our hesitation to recommend or buy books from Dorchester since it is relatively well-known that some authors haven’t been paid royalties for years. I know Dorchester’s decision to go digital-first has meant some very tricky and pain in the ass changes for authors, particularly when they were anticipating and planning for a print release that was rescheduled at the last moment for a digital release sometime in the nebulous future. But I thought the Dorchester drama was, for the most part,…
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August 06, 2010 | Friday | 71 Comments
Sitting on my countertop right now are a number of printed bound galleys for books coming out in November. Publishing as a rule works so far in advance, editors are now plotting out winter 2011, or even spring 2012, and thinking little about what’s going on in a month or two. That’s marketing and publicity’s department. And, of course, the author’s concern as well. But if you’re a Dorchester author with a mass market release scheduled for this fall, you are thinking a lot about right now - and from my understanding, thinking you are totally lost, up a creek,…
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January 19, 2010 | Tuesday | 10 Comments
Way back in the day, we used to award titles for those who won contests, from “Guess That Lonely Heart” to random acts of creativity to nailing the right answer to a Help a Bitch Out inquiry in the first comment and having that right answer confirmed. So, Anu, come on down, because it’s coronation time in honor of your immediate identification of the brooding English actor hero. Coronation? Yup - we bestow titles. Royalty titles. Slightly raunchy, utterly bizarre titles. So kneel, Anu, and I, as Her Grace, the Duchess of Cuntington, announce thy Smart Bitch Title™: Welcome to…
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December 31, 2009 | Thursday | 48 Comments
The more I read and discover about how bookselling works, and how some folks want to change it while others want it to remain the same, the more mystified I am about certain elements of the sales and recognition system, most particularly the rubric of what constitutes success. What constitutes great success in selling a book? Making a list. It’s not even making money, though that’s obviously an understood necessity. Everyone likes making money. But book sales success is making a list. Or, THE list (The New York Times, specifically). From where I’m sitting, this has to be the most…
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November 09, 2009 | Monday | 40 Comments
It’s stars and astronomy time! Carina is a constellation in the Southern sky, and is Latin for “keel” - as in, the fins and structures operating below the surface of the water unseen yet keeping the ship balanced, and on its course. Here’s an interesting bit of physics I didn’t know: the keel’s job is to convert a sideways force to a forward force, sort of like trying to figure out how to convert a changing tide or market to keep your industry moving forward. Nice name. It’s even more awesome when applied to Harlequin, who launched Carina Press today,…
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September 11, 2009 | Friday | 13 Comments
From two arms of Harlequin, two different types of awesome, both free. First, Harlequin Mills & Boon is celebrating a year of ebooks by offering… free ebooks. At Everyone’s Reading.com, you can download one free ebook form each of their lines, including Deanna Raybourn’s Silent in the Grave, which I really enjoyed, and two M&B Modern, which I generally enjoy a LOT of a lot. But here’s the cool part: click on any of the covers, and the download options include epub, mobi, OR you can text “books” to a given number to receive the book ON Your PHONE. That,…
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November 06, 2008 | Thursday | 6 Comments
You’re once, twice, three times a HaBO! Deb writes: Like most HABO requests, my description is very light on details. It came out in the early 80s, I think. It was a trade paperback and a historical. The hero was some kind of Aztec, Mayan, or Incan royalty (yes I know there’s a difference, I just can’t remember which it was!) and the heroine was, of course, white and blonde. At some point, the hero’s sister ended up enslaved as a maid to the heroine. Later, the heroine discovered her maid’s true identity (royalty of some kind) and had the…
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