For an Author, Blogging is Marketing

One of the most effective marketing an author can do is to develop and maintain a Web presence. This means both a website and a blog.

Blogger Rob Enderle (ITBusinessEdge) presents a strong argument for the importance of blogging in marketing here. It doesn't hurt that he plugs QDB's The New Influencers as well.

Publishers Weekly reports on the Simon & Schuster–Author's Guild latest confrontation in an article on PW Daily. It has been traditional for the rights to a book to revert to the author after the book goes out of print. Basically, out of print means the book is no longer listed in the publisher's catalog and there is no longer any stock in the publisher's warehouse. Getting the rights back allows the author to try to find another publisher who would like to republish it.

S & S announced recently that they would include wording in their standard contract that would give S & S the rights without any provision for those rights ever to revert to the author. S & S's argument is that the book would still be available on a print-on-demand basis, thus, in a way, still in print.

Certainly the ability to deliver books digitally and via POD avenues clouds the out-of-print issue. If a book can be ordered one at a time from a POD venue or as a PDF off the publisher's warehouse, does that constitute in print?

A book that a publisher has lost interest in promoting and distributing is unlikely to sell many copies via digital avenues. (Of course, the argument that the author should still be promoting his book and that the sales generated by him will keep the publisher's interest up has merit.)

We've gone to using a formula based on royalties paid to the author. If QDB has run out of inventory, but is still generating sales via digital or POD avenues, and paying the author X dollars in royalties each year, then the book is considered still in print. If the royalties drop below a certain threshold for two reporting periods in a row, the book is deemed out of print and the rights revert back to the author.

Of course, what we, and most publishers would like, is for the author to work with us to try to get the book selling again. Maybe an update is called for? Maybe the author can begin going on the lecture circuit, or maybe he or she can start blogging. (See above.)

—Steve Mettee