A Compilation Of the Week’s Rabble Rousings on Contracts and Advances

For those of you who don’t want to go through the site to find every piece I’ve written in the last week about Random House/Hydra, bad book contracts and why a “no advance” business model is generally no good for writers, even from an eBook publisher, here they all are in one handy list. In order of their publication:

Note to SF/F Writers: Random House’s Hydra Imprint Has Appallingly Bad Contract Terms

A Contract From Alibi

Raptors at the Fences

Random House’s Letter Re: Hydra

SFWA Responds to Random House

Advances and Me

New Writers, eBook Publishers, and the Power to Negotiate

There, I think that gets us all caught up for now.

I do want to add one quick note, regarding eBook-only publishers (or “eBook first” publishers, which are more or less in the same boat). One might suppose, looking at the various pieces, that I have a thing against eBook-only publishers. That’s entirely not true. I have a thing against publishers who don’t pay advances, and unfortunately it appears a number of eBook-only publishers want to bake not having advances into their business model.

Show me the eBook-only publisher who pays actual advances (i.e., more than a token sum) for the work writers do, and otherwise treats writers fairly and equitably, and I’ll show you the eBook-only publisher I am just fine with.