New EU directive could give authors more royalties

[Brian G Turner]

The Society of Authors is pushing for the UK to adopt a new EU directive on digital sales that may help increase royalty payments to authors through traditional publishing deals:

Philip Pullman calls for UK to adopt EU plans to protect authors' royalties

"Publishers too often fail to give their authors full information on sales and exploitation of their work. Many more gain an unfair windfall when a work is an unexpected success but do not share any of that gain with authors. This unfairness leads to many authors no longer being able to make a living from writing"

The example they give of Horrid Henry writer, Francesca Simon, is just terrible:

The Society highlighted the case of Horrid Henry author Francesca Simon, who has not received any royalties from the television and film adaptations of her Horrid Henry books, despite the series being broadcast in 44 countries with more than 1.5m DVDs sold.

In an article last December, Simon revealed that she was missing out on the royalties because when she sold Orion her first Horrid Henry book in 1993, the book deal included film and television rights. A deal with Novel Entertainment for those rights was subsequently negotiated by Orion. “They did a poor deal. They did not use a lawyer,” wrote Simon in the Author magazine. “Not understanding their proper value led to the worst mistake of my career.”

 

[Gonk the Insane]

That poor author, that sounds terrible - to achieve such success and yet be denied any appropriate financial remuneration.

 

[Dan Jones]

You'd think hopefully - hopefully - authors would be a little more clued up in 2016 than in 1993, when trad still ruled the roost and SP-ing wasn't a thing. That article comes from The Author, which is the in-house magazine of the Society of Authors, who offer contract vetting as a membership service.

Likewise, I don't think all publishers are likely to try and shaft the author these days; when such transparency is available, I'd like to think it's more difficult to pull the wool over writers' eyes. I'm sure some hucksters try it, though.

It's still a sobering article, and worth the attention of any author who's going into trad.

 

[thaddeus6th]

That's terrible.

It remains to be seen how the publishing and writing business will evolve between self-publishing, traditional and subscriptions (which, I must admit, I am quite dubious about). Hopefully this sort of thing will become rarer.

 

[mosaix]

A directive from the EU? That won't go down well in the current political climate.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I think Francesca Simon made a point that her publisher was clueless when handling the TV rights, rather than malicious. IIRC, the BBC was similarly chastised for its handling of rights for the Teletubbies.

 

[Dan Jones]

A directive from the EU? That won't go down well in the current political climate.

O ye of little faith...

 

[Brian G Turner]

Simon speaks directly, albeit briefly, about the botched deal she signed:
The Horrid case of Henry: why authors need new rights legislation

Publishers always try to grab film, TV, stage and merchandising rights when they are buying book rights. Even though they aren’t film, TV, or stage producers. The rights new authors never think will be important, mainly because they’re so thrilled to be published.

I relied on Orion to negotiate the contract with Novel. They did a poor deal. They did not use a lawyer. They assigned the worldwide rights forever, with no reversion rights for, for example, non-use. I do receive a modest production fee every time a new TV series is made. But that’s it. No royalties.

That actually left me wondering whether royalties are actually a normal part of selling film-rights for novel...

 

[HareBrain]

Publishers always try to grab film, TV, stage and merchandising rights when they are buying book rights.

Not always -- mine didn't, and I'm sure a great many smaller presses don't.