Miami, FL –Natural health expert and author Jordan Rubin has recovered $55,000 from Strang Communications in a dispute that revealed the faith-based publisher improperly withheld royalties payments for three years from the paperback edition of his New York Times bestseller The Maker’s Diet. Rubin said he was forced to file an arbitration claim after numerous requests and attempts to settle the matter were ignored, according to a news release from the author’s attorney.
“I wanted to believe this was an honest mistake,” said Rubin. “But Strang’s refusal to acknowledge our requests to review royalty statements eventually left me with no other remedy except to take legal action.” [Read More]
Amazon.com tried to use its considerable retailing clout to ban ebook titles published by Macmillan this week. In the end, they failed and the Macmillan ebooks where restored to the Kindle catalog. But in the process Amazon.com tipped its hand by showing a willingness to sacrifice publisher relations and customer convenience on the altar of their own higher profits. [Read More]
Debtwire.com has alleged that financially troubled Borders Bookstores has been paying large publishers on time but delaying payments to smaller independent publishers.
Major publishers reported they had been paid on time, but the average time to pay independent publishers jumped to 97.9 days, up from 64.9 days a year ago, according to Debtwire.com. [Read More]
You saw the movie “Jerry Maguire,” starring Tom Cruise, so you understand how sports agents earn a living. They try to sign a young promising athlete, and then they try to sell that athlete’s skills to sports teams, trying to get one of them to pay top dollar for a soon-to-be star. Of course, the sports agent takes a healthy portion of the athlete’s income for services rendered, but that’s the way of the world.
Book agents, better known as literary agents, are in the same game. They’re looking for fresh talent that they can pitch to publishers. If they can place your book with a publisher, they will get a cut of your income for the economic life of the book. How much does a literary agent get? I remember when it used to be 10%, and when it climbed to 15%. These days, some agents want as much as 20% of your hard earned advances and royalties. [Read More]
Steve Piersanti of Berrett-Koehler Publishers has researched that question and has come up with these astounding facts. Here is a summary of his research.
- 560,626 new books in all categories using all production methods were published in the US in 2008.
- Book sales have fallen 13.5% from 2003 to 2008. Statistics are not available yet for 2009 but the trend continues downward.
[Read More]
