I\u2019ve never really been a sailor, but I\u2019ve done some mucking around in dinghies on lakes and on the coast. At one point, my dad, thinking that I should actually learn something about the craft, gave me a book about it. I don\u2019t now remember the difference between a halliard and a shroud, but I remember one section quite clearly. There was a long and patient discussion of rights of way on the water \u2013 who gives way to whom, and that sort of thing. The discussion ended with this verse:<\/p>\n
Here lies the body of Mike O\u2019Day It\u2019s a ditty that I urge you bear in mind. Here are three reasons why:<\/p>\n Copyright<\/strong><\/p>\n A lot of authors, especially indies, are anxious to Protect Their Copyright. Back in the day, people used to mail themselves sealed, dated packages containing their manuscript. More sensibly, you can register your work with the US Copyright Office, at the cost of some manageable fees and some tiresome form-filling.<\/p>\n And OK, if you want to do it, do it. (Any competent publisher will do the legal basics for you, and you can always check to see that they have.) But here\u2019s the thing: let\u2019s say you have the world\u2019s most bullet-proof copyright registration in the world. Let\u2019s say you have film of Barack Obama solemnly testifying, his hand upon the Great Seal of the United States, that he watched you and you alone write your manuscript. Ok, great \u2013 but so what?<\/p>\n If your book is popular, it\u2019ll be pirated. Sleazy crooks, probably based in Russia, will rip off your book and make pirate copies available online.<\/p>\n What then? What do you do? It\u2019s not like there\u2019s some Interpol of Copyright staffed by a combination of Daniel Craig, Tom Cruise and the like. There\u2019s literally no one who\u2019s going to help you. So, sure, you could sue, but you\u2019d have to go to a Russian court to do it (and good luck with that.) And even if you did that and won, the crooks would just pull down one pirate site and pop up a duplicate site two weeks later.<\/p>\n I can prove to you that you won\u2019t defeat piracy, as follows:<\/p>\n Which all sounds terrible, except that almost no one gets their books from pirate sites and plenty of people make plenty of money from books. So the problem can\u2019t be that bad.<\/p>\n Contracts<\/strong><\/p>\n You sign a contract with a top publisher. They make various commitments and you take those undertakings in good faith.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not unheard of for big publishers to break their contractual commitments. It\u2019s happened to me, more than once. It used to be really quite common. Now, I think, it happens a bit less than it used to, but it still happens.<\/p>\n So let\u2019s say a publisher breaks a contract with you. Let\u2019s say, they commit to publishing three books. They publish one and it doesn\u2019t do well. They bring out the hardback of #2 and it doesn\u2019t do great. Meanwhile, corporate shenanigans mean the entire imprint is being reduced in size, so you get an email telling you sorry, there won\u2019t be a paperback of #2 and they won\u2019t bring out book #3 at all. That story isn\u2019t made up. That exact thing happened to a friend of mine.<\/p>\n (And what\u2019s more, the whole communications round the episode were terrible. It would be one thing for you editor to call, or take you out to lunch, and say, \u201cLook buddy, I\u2019ve got terrible news and I feel awful.\u201d Quite another to get a blunt email from someone in Contracts you\u2019ve never even met. I might also add that there was nothing wrong at all with the books \u2013 the same author has a great career elsewhere now. The sales failure was entirely on the publisher\u2019s side.)<\/p>\n So what do you do?<\/p>\n You have in black and white a contract signed with full faith and credit of a very large corporation, undertaking that they WILL do X.<\/p>\n You could \u2013 you really could \u2013 go to court and seek an injunction compelling the so-and-sos to do what they\u2019d promised. But in the first place, the publisher would probably deny they\u2019d caused commercial harm. In the second place, a publisher forced by court-action to publish a book is hardly likely to do a great job with it. And third: what next? The great publishers of the world are unlikely to want an author who\u2019s willing to sue them.<\/p>\n In other words, there\u2019s damn all you can do. (Or almost damn all: you should make a big, bloody fuss because someone might offer you some apology-money, and because you thoroughly deserve to have your feelings known and recognised.)<\/p>\n But legally speaking? You are Mike O\u2019Day: right, but powerless in your rightness.<\/p>\n Agents<\/strong><\/p>\n Same thing here. With agents, the issues don\u2019t tend to be contractual exactly, as the author\/agent contract is often pleasantly brief. But there IS an implicit contract, nevertheless, which runs as follows:<\/p>\n Often though, that\u2019s just not how it turns out. I know of well-known agents at absolutely first-class agencies who have simply discontinued any kind of comms with no-longer wanted authors (even, in one case that springs to mind, when that author was actually a bestseller in her own country.)<\/p>\n So, quite possibly, the agent you think it going to take care of your career simply exits, stage left, with no proper discussion or handover. And even though your contract is with Big Agency, LLC, not with Jane Jones of Big Agency, LLC, it turns out that Big Agency has literally no interest in taking care of you if and when Jane Jones decides to wash her hands of you.<\/p>\n Is that fair?<\/p>\n It is not.<\/p>\n Is there \u2018owt you can do about it?<\/p>\n There is not.<\/p>\n Sandy O’Donnnell<\/strong><\/p>\n So where does that leave you? You should sail your career like a wiser Mike O\u2019Day. You take care of your copyright, your contracts, your agents and all the rest of it as professionally as intelligently as you can.<\/p>\n You will do that, and people may still \u2013 unreasonably and uncontractually \u2013 mess you around. You are welcome to scream. You are welcome to feel peeved. But the thing you do after that is get back to your desk, so you can start writing another book.<\/p>\n Here lies the body of Sandy O\u2019Donnell Do not be like her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve never really been a sailor, but I\u2019ve done some mucking around in dinghies on lakes and on the coast. At one point, my dad, thinking that I should actually learn something about the craft, gave me a book about it. I don\u2019t now remember the difference between a halliard and a shroud, but I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-harrys-friday-email"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Who died maintaining his right of way.
He was right, dead right, as he sailed along,
But he\u2019s just as dead as if he\u2019d been wrong.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
\n
Who never again would write a novel.
An agent betrayed her, a publisher lied \u2013
And instead of just working, she sat down and cried.<\/em><\/p>\n