Every Wednesday I post my thoughts about the changes technology is forcing in the publishing industry, in a string of articles I like to call Notes From The Revolution.
I was saddened this week to learn that Chippewa Publishing has folded. Chippewa was one of my favorite publishers of the new revolution, and I wanted to see them succeed.
It is easy to get caught up in the excitement of the revolution, but the demise of Chippewa has brought to light one of the problems that, while neither new nor unique to the revolution, may be bigger than ever: authors not being paid. In fact, I heard about Chippewa closing through a post from one multiply-published author who has quite a history of not being paid, including by the former Keep It Coming (like me).
Even when they stay afloat, it can be very difficult for authors to be sure that they are getting paid what they should be. Publishers of all kinds, of course, have long been accused of shorting authors–and sometimes with good reason. That’s the purpose of the audit clause in the contract, after all. It’s one thing to audit physical copies, though. It’s an entirely different matter, though, when you’re selling e-books. When you’re just selling copies of bits, accounting can be very slippery, and it would be very easy for someone in the chain to divert the money, on purpose or even accidentally. The customer buying from an e-book seller would never know. The publisher has little choice but to trust the e-tailer, and the author has little choice but to trust the publisher. Sure, there are honest people out there, but all it takes is one….
That’s why I’m in favor of authors selling their own works as directly as possible. It isn’t difficult to sell e-books from your own website, direct to the readers, with no one to trust, no one to suspect, and no one to blame. Barring that, anyone can set up e-book sales through Lulu (or some similar place), and have only one link in the chain trust chain. Any more than that, and I start to wonder.
Of course, cutting publishers out of the picture altogether would be very bad for the publishers, so they naturally don’t like the idea, and they dismiss such efforts as amateur. It’s not about name-calling, though; it’s about reputation. If a writer can write, he or she will build a reputation and find an audience, and they won’t care what names the publishers are calling them, because no one will be listening.
