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Weird Market
Oct. 16th, 2008 08:22 amSo I'm wandering around the interwebz, looking up market info and I run across Abandoned Novel.
This sounds like a fun little project, where people send in the beginnings of their novels and they publish 10 or so together in a book next year...
I have several abandoned novel starts, one going back all the way to 6th grade. (I wouldn't send that one, BTW, as it's about cats and kinda boring. And handwritten.)
Anyhoo, I read through the submission guidelines, and then the 'terms and conditions'. Here's what I notice.
1) Nowhere is compensation mentioned....a bad sign.
2) Nowhere can I find what rights they intend to purchase with the 'sale.'
3) "The cover page must contain your copyright as an affirmation of your ownership of the work submitted" What?
It might be fun to submit, but they don't sound very professional....
Who are these people? Anyone familiar with this market?
ETA: One of my flisters let me know that Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware posted about this site back in August.
ETA:
A friend e-mailed the contact (although she had to try 3 times) and got there answers:
1) The rights which we buy will be set forth in the royalty contract offered to the writer. Since this work is essentially an anthology, depending on the particular work, our offer may differ from author to author.
2) The compensation will be royalty based and will not have any minimum sales threshold or administrative or marketing deductions. The total royalty payment offered for will reflect industry standards for novels. Obviously this will be split amongst the various contributors.
3) As I am sure you know, copyright of a work attaches with or without registration of the copyright with the federal government. We require that our submitters be the actual copyright owner and that they affirm that to us by including the copyright on their cover page. We do not require that the copyright be registered.
Uh, no on all three....
This sounds like a fun little project, where people send in the beginnings of their novels and they publish 10 or so together in a book next year...
I have several abandoned novel starts, one going back all the way to 6th grade. (I wouldn't send that one, BTW, as it's about cats and kinda boring. And handwritten.)
Anyhoo, I read through the submission guidelines, and then the 'terms and conditions'. Here's what I notice.
1) Nowhere is compensation mentioned....a bad sign.
2) Nowhere can I find what rights they intend to purchase with the 'sale.'
3) "The cover page must contain your copyright as an affirmation of your ownership of the work submitted" What?
It might be fun to submit, but they don't sound very professional....
Who are these people? Anyone familiar with this market?
ETA: One of my flisters let me know that Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware posted about this site back in August.
ETA:
A friend e-mailed the contact (although she had to try 3 times) and got there answers:
1) The rights which we buy will be set forth in the royalty contract offered to the writer. Since this work is essentially an anthology, depending on the particular work, our offer may differ from author to author.
2) The compensation will be royalty based and will not have any minimum sales threshold or administrative or marketing deductions. The total royalty payment offered for will reflect industry standards for novels. Obviously this will be split amongst the various contributors.
3) As I am sure you know, copyright of a work attaches with or without registration of the copyright with the federal government. We require that our submitters be the actual copyright owner and that they affirm that to us by including the copyright on their cover page. We do not require that the copyright be registered.
Uh, no on all three....
