Don't let this happen to you...

Before anything else, take a glance at this Gawker piece on the "laziest" freelancer. Then consider the the message sent to the PR person who forwarded it to Gawker. I noticed a few things:

• On the surface, it largely looks like a call for sources from PR firms.


• She mentions the size of the article and number of tips, but I've seen PR people who ask how big an article is going to be.


• She lists what she's covering, probably a quote from the editor.

It doesn't read all that differently than many requests for sources that I've seen. Now, maybe the writer in question actually is asking PR people to write an article for her. Or maybe the PR person in question has a grudge against the writer and decided to torpedo her career. Perhaps the truth is something in between, or even completely different. That doesn't matter.

What matters is how easily a writer can be tarred in front of potential clients and in such a way that clearing the air and limiting the damage is impossible. This can happen when posting on writers' boards, when either an editor is lurking or another writer decides to drop a dime. It can happen with a whisper into the ear of prospects. And it can happen in a public and particularly brutal way, when the publication, Gawker in this case, has so much taste for venom that it publishes a story on the strength of one anonymous source and apparently without making an effort to reach the subject.

Any writer should know that words can sting. When you're putting a request in writing, in a way that can be distributed and reproduced, take some care and consider how you present yourself. Emails and online posts can be notoriously ambiguous. Be sure you've nailed down the meaning before letting someone else nail it down for you.

Writers' Rights Hitt Woman

Emma Hitt is the medical writer who runs The HittList, a free subscription email sent weekly with info about staff and freelance science and medical writing and editing work. It sounds as though she's a freelance writer, and so should understand the concerns of those in the business. On the front page of her site there is a notice about a "$1500 prize for a true story about your experience as a freelance writer or your experience hiring a freelance writer." Apparently she's putting together a book on freelance writing and is looking for material. Well, fine, sounds like a Chicken Soup for the Soul type of formula; get writers to tell their stories, collect said stories, edit and publish for a profit. But get this clause (because the entry form is technically a contract):

Note: all entries will be considered for inclusion into a book about freelancing. By entering this contest, you agree that the piece can be published in this book after the final edited version has been cleared with you and that you relinquish copyright of your piece. You also acknowledge that the piece is true, not embellished, and has not been previously published. You will receive a free copy of the book if your piece is included in the book. Please do not submit your entry if you cannot agree to these conditions.

So, I send in a story based on my own experience and whether it's selected or not, I'm expected to give away the copyright? And only one of the entries will win the $1500 prize? That is ridiculous. Hell, she could be this rapacious and simply ask for non-exclusive anthology rights to include a piece in her book (and leave it at that), though I'd consider that outrageous as well. If there's not enough money to pay the people who actually create the content, why should anyone make money on the project? It's bad enough to see some Craigslist bottom feeder trying to get something for nothing, but someone who not only is a freelance writer but who runs a job list for writers ought to know better - and ought to act better.

Amazon Buys Book-Centric Social Network

Writers trying to understand the book marketing and various commercial forces within it might do well to read about Amazon's acquisition of Shelfari. It's a social network for book fanciers and, clearly, a potential indirect (or even direct) marketing outlet for Amazon.

As I mentioned before, Amazon also bought AbeBooks, which gave the former a stake in LibraryThing, a Shelfari competitor:

This resulted in an awkward scenario - while Shelfari and LibraryThing are similar and could conceivably be merged by Amazon pending a dual aquision, there is bad blood between them. LibraryThing’s founder has openly criticized Shelfari for spamming users and astroturfing blogs, and generally behaving as a “bad actor”.

It might be that Amazon will cut LibraryThing loose, or it could try to fully acquire it as well and merge the two services together.

What is clear for authors, though, is that the market - in a broad sense, running from production to consumer marketing and distribution and sales - is being tied up by Amazon. I think this is a bad situation for any who want to make book writing a part of their businesses. The more concentration in one set of hands, the more control those hands have. If those hands happen to use spamming and other techniques that annoy users, the results could spill over onto the authors.

Global State of Consumer Publishing

PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of the big accounting firms, released a report on the state of global consumer publishing. When you look at the results, they may leave you wondering just how bad, or good, things are. For example, the total market has grown about 13 percent over the last five years. Good right? Well, not really, because you have to see these things in context, and in this case, context is how businesspeople and investors look at numbers:

• The growth was about a 2.6 percent per year over the five years.


• The real boost was advertising revenue, at a compound annual growth rate of 4 percent. But circulation revenue grew by only 1.9 percent.


• PwC expects 18.6 percent growth in the industry over the next five years, with advertising representing most of that.


• But online advertising is growing a lot faster: a compound annual growth rate of 38.1 percent from 2004 to 2008. As a comparison, print advertising was up 4.4 percent and newspaper advertising by 2.4 percent.

The problem this creates for publishers, at least those that are publicly-held, is that investors like high growth. That's because high growth businesses rapidly increase in value, creating the possibility of selling investment and getting a good return on the money they put it originally. It's not that consumer publishing is moribund, but that it can't grow fast enough to suit investors, and so managers feel pressure to "improve" performance. That's why you can expect to see more budget cutting in all areas, including personnel. My bet is that at a lot of publications, that will actually mean less staff and fewer freelance assignments. Management is happy to take staff, stretch them thinner, and then require more from them. That's one way to make more money from the investment, improving return to court investors.

Some other things to learn from the study:

• Most consumers like print, but many are also interested in interactive digital content.


• Younger consumers want all content online.


• People will pay for digital content at most half of what printed content brings. Although publishers might want to call this a reason to drop freelance rates, there's a lot of cost to a printed pub that simply goes away. That's got me wondering whether online pubs, given more development of ads, might be more profitable than print.


• North American and British publishers expect to derive a fifth of their revenue from digital publications within the next five years. Europe as a whole lags behind.


• The most successful at making the switch are those that "leverage strong brands across multiple media platforms and generate revenues from online advertising, search-engine marketing and e-commerce." In other words, the publishers that have best shifted online are the publishers that have been most successful at it.

DMCA Takedown May Require Fair Use Analysis

A U.S. district court judge ruled that before issuing a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice, a copyright owner must consider whether a site was engaged in "fair use" of the material. Copyright owners, including writers, use the takedown notices when a site uses their material without permission. Having to consider whether the site owner could reasonably invoke fair use is new, but I'd strongly suggest that writers trying to use the DMCA go through an analysis and even add to the takedown notices that they had done so. Although the court ruling doesn't have the weight of statutory law, it is a precedent, and courts pay attention to such things.

To perform a fair use analysis, you have to consider the factors that the copyright law itself offers:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes


2. the nature of the copyrighted work


3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted
   work as a whole


4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted
   work

I think you'd have to reasonably construe each of these; there's no shortcut you can take to automatically get to where you want to go. As I often say, I'm not a lawyer, but here's how I'd construe some situations:

• Someone reposts an entire blog posting of yours. You'd think that would not be fair use because it used the whole entry, but considering fair use is not so easy. If you just wrote a paragraph or two, would it be unreasonable to post the whole thing, as it was so short to begin with? If the person who did it was running a site that wasn't getting advertising, then it might be fair use. If the site was simply collecting entries from many places automatically to provide an advertising platform (this is fairly common on the web), then maybe not.


• A news site reproduces something short of yours. On one hand, it's probably a commercial use. On the other, it's also educational. A number of news organizations, like Associated Press, do go after uses of their material, so if it was such an organization, I'd say that their own approach would mean that they had to consider themselves out of fair use territory. That brings in the notion of intent. Did someone sincerely believe that they were engaged in fair use? If so, then you may have a problem, particularly as the person can dispute your claim and force you to go to court under the DMCA. The smart approach might be to first send the site owner a pleasant note first, asking them to take something down, and then issue a DMCA notification if you didn't get cooperation.


• Some "fan" posts a big chunk of something that you've written. Is there a discussion of it or some analysis? If there is, then perhaps it could be considered fair use because it is educational in nature. If not, then you have to decide whether issuing a takedown notice will just aggravate a situation. It might make more sense to point out to the person that such postings are considered copyright infringement, but offer them a license for this particular use if a) they provide a link to your site and b) they promise that in the future they'll ask permission of you or any other writer.


• A business posts your article in a "news" area clearly used to add to the value it brings its customers. I'd say that's clearly a commercial use, but depending on the size of the organization might still send a note to them first to see if they would voluntarily take it down.

It's not the end of writers using the DMCA by any means, but we will all have to take greater care going forward and probably document the consideration in the takedown notice.

Where to Send DMCA Takedown Notices

For a while I've had posted instructions for filing a Digital Millennium Copyright Act infringement claim, when you find your work used online without permission and you want a U.S.-based ISP to take it down. But one step that has been vexing is trying to find the right person at an ISP to accept a DMCA takedown notice. But I just came across a U.S. Copyright Office web page that gives the appropriate contact, as well as email physical address, for many hosting companies. This is a lot faster than trying to dig up the proper person from the ISP's site itself.

Q&A with Bloggasm Author Simon Owens

Simon Owens is a 24-year-old newspaper journalist who's just landed a job as a new media analyst largely because of his blogging work. Bloggasm is where Owens covers new media topics and where, on a good day, he'll get 8,000 or more – a lot more – readers for a single item. I spoke with him about his experiences and the realities of marketing a blog – and marketing yourself.

Erik Sherman: Why and when did you start blogging?

Simon Owens: [It was] ego, I think. I started in 2003, second semester my freshman year in college. It was becoming the big thing. They called them journals or diaries or stuff like that. It was much more personal. I forget what year, 2004, or 2005, I started a site called LitHaven.com. It was like a literature blog. I would interview short story writers. I'd post market news for people that wanted to submit their short stories or essays and things like that. That was my first blog when I tried to reach a wide audience. It was semi-successful back then for a 21 year old kid. It had 200 readers a day. But that was the first time I tried to have a blog that was much more than a personal blog.

As the years went on, I became more obsessed with the blogosphere. I ran a few other blogs. The reason I decided to write this blog [Bloggasm] was at the time there wasn’t anything like it. It was going to be non-stop emailed Q&A interviews with other bloggers. I was thinking, "This is going to be a great idea, nobody has ever done it before, maybe I can get a lot of readers." I graduated college and there was probably month or two between when I graduated and when I started my first job.

Once I started getting a lot of experience as a newspaper reporter, I noticed that there weren't a lot of blogs that did what newspapers and magazines did, doing interviews and reporting. I liked the New Yorker. Working for small newspapers I couldn't break into first person, my copy would get hacked apart. Bloggasm was my night time chance. I usually average two articles a week.

ES: How did things change?

SO: I wrote a post about what your chances are of getting laid on Craigslist. I created these fake Craigslist ads to see what response rate a straight female, a straight male, a gay male would have. The male to female ratio was so high that it was almost impossible to get a reply. It became huge and got over a hundred thousand hits, hit the first page of [web reader recommendation site] Digg.

As far as I can tell, I'm one of the few bloggers who does this kind of reporting. The more and more I posted and the more features articles I did, the more I got noticed. Now it's a lot easier to get on the front pages of BoingBoing or Instapundit. It got easier and easier to get on a lot of those big blogs on the Technorati 100 [a list of the top blogs followed by the blog traffic monitoring service]. But while I got a lot of links, it's hard to get repeat visitors [posting once a day]. It's hard for me to create a large background readership. These days, it's almost like a glass ceiling or sorts. Basically, I can't get over a thousand readers a day consistently. If I get on the front page of Instapundit, I get 8,000 readers a day. A lot of these bigger blogs update 8 times a day to get the number of repeat readership.

ES: How do you attract readers and get good placement?

SO: I've really honed my marketing of my work into an artwork itself. Half of the work is behind the scenes. As I’m working on an article, I'm working on a key list of bloggers who will be interested in that article. When I email you, I can reference your posts exactly. When I write, you get addressed by first name; I know the topic your blog covers. But it paid off.

ES: What is a typical day in doing your blog like?

SO: I surf the Internet during the day, always keeping my eye out for something I'd like to write about that night. If I see something, I'll shoot an email saying can I contact you, anytime after 6pm is good for me. Sometimes if they're not available I'll sneak out of the office and interview them with my cell phone in my car. After I do the interview I go back into the office and act like nothing happened. I try to be ethical and not blog during the day time, trying to keep myself from getting into trouble as much as possible.

I did a study a few months ago where I emailed over 250 editors, five from each state, of editors to see whether they'd allow their reporters to have personal blogs. 40 to 50 percent would not allow their reporters to blog. For me, the blog has been the elephant in the room. It's always been such a huge hobby for me that if they said no, I'd have to choose between the job and the blog.

You're always waiting for that hammer to fall. I try to give them as little reason to do that as possible. I've created a code of ethics for myself about blogging. On one hand it sucks. [The blog] would probably be a lot bigger if I could post small things during the day and do the long features at night. Thank god, the new [job] allows you to blog during the day.

I transcribe that night and I'll start pulling the pages doing research and do a marathon writing session, sometimes finishing a single article by night. If I'm lucky, I'll be finished by 10 or 11 and then spend a few hours hyped up on coffee emailing bloggers that I think would be into it. Then I get to bed by 2 and am up again at 7. I put a lot of work into it in terms of actual time spent.

ES: You ended up with a job offer that you're taking because someone read your blog. Was that part of your plan in writing it?

SO: I think it's pretty much a happy coincidence. Out of nowhere, people started approaching me.

ES: What was the difference?

SO: I think it was where I went from one or two articles a month to two or three a week. I started ramping it up in late May. Because I had more consistency, I think I started getting more attention. And I was interviewing top people like an editor of the Los Angeles Times and an editor at the Huffington Post. I interviewed a guy from the strategy company for an article I was doing, and over the next few weeks we were chatted back and forth and that's when he went to his bosses. Because of my contact with him, he was my step into the company.

ES: When did you start talking to him?

SO: It was probably some time in June. I got the offer for this job either Wednesday or Thursday of last week. He initially said something like, "If you ever want to work here, I'll definitely recommend you to the bosses." I didn't take it seriously. But then it got close to the end of July and my lease was coming up, so I thought if I wanted to make a jump that would be a good time.

ES: How will that change what you are doing with the blog?

SO: It's really hard to tell in the sense that I was told by them that I should keep blogging. They wanted to say that we have these people who are already entrenched in new media. I guess what I had in my mind was that I'd continue how I am now, but do some micro blogging, like Instapundit links during the day. [Note: a quick count on Instapundit.com yesterday shows 54 short posts on 8/19/08 alone.] Because by the end of the day those links are widely distributed, it's too late to do something. I would like to post during the day links that fit into my niche.

ES: How did your experience change how you look at blogs?

SO: I mentioned my glass ceiling, because I didn't have the full time capacity to blog, to really put all the energy I wanted into it, I got frustrated that I could never get over the humps. I've wanted to be able to attract thousands upon thousands of readers a day and then sell advertising and make money off the blog. But in these anecdotal cases, I realized that it served other purposes. If it wasn't for Bloggasm, I wouldn't have gotten my foot into the door. It's a resume, a way for me to introduce myself to the new media world. This is the first job where I didn't have to actively submit my resume somewhere. It allows you to go into an interview with more confidence, if you're not just a person on the assembly line going into interview.

ES: A lot of writers start blogs to make names for themselves and money and to get noticed. Most fail. What's your difference?

SO: I've been in the blogosphere so long, I know how it works. I know the scaffolding and I know how to market. The way the blogosphere works now, it's hard to make a name for yourself if you weren't in early. If you're somebody already famous and you start a blog, it's easy to get a lot of links.

The blog Eschaton, a liberal blog, the guy is not talented at all. He got into blogs at the right time in the right place. He doesn't even do that much writing. If he were to start from scratch, he wouldn't be able to get to where he is now. Even if you're a good writer, you [have to] know how to sell your writing. [My entry yesterday points to his piece on the politics of Digg.]. A lot of getting links to your stuff is a lot of rubbing elbows.

Learning to Dig Digg

If you're writing online, then you need to understand services like Digg, in which readers vote for stories they like and the most highly rated get top placement, which can turn into thousands and thousands of people reading a piece - often enough to literally crash an unprepared site. The problem is that there's a game to all this and it's not obvious. Blogger Simon Owens, with whom I've exchanged notes over technology industry topics (I cover that at BNET), has an interesting piece on his blog called The Politics of Digg. If you want to start understanding how the online world actually works, I cannot suggest this post strongly enough.

Navigating the New Terrain of Online Writing Compensation

Publishers are experimenting with new ways of compensating writers in the online world. Look at this article on a publisher of free dailies bringing on non-professionals to write online with compensation based on page views.

Clarity is looking to get hundreds of people (in 60 cities and 25 different categories) to write for them online, and these writers will get paid between $2.50 and $10.00 per 1,000 page views, Gawker reports.

This isn't an unusual arrangement, at least as a bonus, and Gawker itself uses it. But Gawker has been cranking down the figure because bloggers were too good at attracting traffic, and the company would have had to pay more than it had planned. And paying in such a manner without a ground level amount of compensation for doing the basic work is ridiculous, although I'm sure many writers will jump at the "opportunities."

Negotiation is going to get tougher, not easier, and you're going to need to pay attention and be careful that you don't agree to a harebrained scheme that some publisher declares to be "standard" on the web.

Being Careful with Sources

In a digital age, it's easier than ever for someone to pretend to be something that he or she is not. This can be a serious issue for a journalist. (In fact, I've got an article coming up in the October issue of The Writer on how to help detect such problems before they happen.) I came across an example of someone pretending on the social networking site Twitter to be from ExxonMobile. A market analyst from Forrester wrote about the "person," assuming that her defense of such things as the Exxon Valdez was real. He never checked out the person, and so looked like a fool in print. It's a danger to take people at electronic face value. Before using comments that someone makes, be sure you know who exactly is making them.

There Is No Safety on Writers Boards

I've probably said this before, but it bears repetition. Writers go to online boards and assume that a closed and paid membership guarantees confidentiality and privacy. I've seen writers complain about editors, troll for help with stories in ways that at times suggests they don't put much effort into their work, and admit to working practices that would scare off many desirable clients. Why? Because they think they are safe.

A recent episode on one board was a reminder that editors may be freelance and on the same venues as the writers. I've also seen multiple cases over the years of someone forwarding comments to a publication in an attempt to curry favor while indirectly attacking a competitor.

The only way to use writers' boards safely is to assume that anything you write will be available to anyone and everyone. Before you post, tell yourself that the editor is also logged in, or that some partisan is ready to relay every sentence (or chosen ones out of context) to clients or prospects. There's a lot you can get out of discussions with other writers, and there are also times that burning a bridge with a client is warranted. But most often you don't want the latter, so don't put yourself into a position where you do so unintentionally.

Contract Review: Preservation Magazine

Here's a review of the publishing contract for Preservation Magazine, produced by the National Trust. As always, I'm no lawyer, this is no legal advice, and you shouldn't say yes or no to a contract before trying to negotiation whatever changes you want.

• Compensation They use the term "honorarium." I'm guessing that is a non-profit and/or academic legacy. It's still pay, though. One problem here is that there's effectively a 25 percent kill fee if they don't publish, no matter what the reason. There is an expense cap which you might need to negotiate, depending on the assignment.


• Review They can edit your manuscript and if they want rewriting, they expect it to be done "in a timely fashion," whatever that ends up meaning. They can also decide not to publish your article. It would be more reasonable for them not to pay you the full fee only if the article, after at least one requested rewrite, was unprofessionally written or off the originally assigned topic.


• Rights They want FNASR to start for 90 days after the intended issue date listed at the top of the contract. That means if they don't use it by then, you get it back. Unfortunately, that would probably mean that they wouldn't publish it and you wouldn't get the full fee. They also want a perpetual, non-exclusive license to display, print, and distribute the article, including keeping it in web sites and putting it in an online archive or database (which probably means the database services). The right is transferable, so they can technically allow someone else to do the same, and I suspect that could be structured so they transfered the license for a given use, then it gets transfered back again, so they could effectively resell your piece.


• Representations and Warranties There are various warranties. The one about that the article does not "infringe any copyright, trademark, or proprietary right, violate any right of privacy, or contain libelous material" is overly broad, particularly as the contract is not explicitly construed under the laws of a specific state, and many of these issues can vary widely from one state to the next. Also, the section includes indemnification for any breach or alleged breach, which means if someone claims you've done something, you're on the financial hook. That last part is a deal killer for me.


• Payment You get paid 45 days after submitting an invoice.


• Contractual Relationship You're a contractor, not an employee.


• Sole Agreement These are the conditions and a note from your editor or any other assurance does nothing to change anything.

Mindboggling Copyright Infringement

Read this story in Slate about an alternative weekly in Texas that seems capable of plagiarizing every single article in an entire issue. And that's to say nothing of the web site (now apparently removed). This is so bad that it's astounding.

Potential Cost of Online Apps

I know lots of people are enthralled with online applications and services, particularly when they are free. The attraction is clear: you get leading technology, don't have to do much to make it work on your end, and you save money. But there are some downsides, and you can read about a big one in a blog by Chris Brogan. When you depend on online services, you can become stuck with little recourse.

He tells of a colleague whose account was abruptly cancelled by Google:

Suddenly, Nick can’t access his Gmail account, can’t open Google Talk (our office IM app), can’t open Picasa where his family pictures are, can’t use his Google Docs, and oh by the way, he paid for additional storage. So, this is a paying customer with no access to the Google empire.

The colleague eventually was able to get his account returned, but it took "a lot of work." What if you were on deadline? What if you expected an important email from a client? The more you allow others to control your business systems, the more they control your business. This is the reason that I use desktop apps, keep extra physical storage on hand for backups, maintain an old-fashioned wire phone line. When things go wrong, I usually ahve a way to work around the problem, so I lose neither sleep nor business.

Another Read for Book Authors

Unfortunately, I came across an amusing concept in a Guardian blog this morning after my post for the day had already gone out, or I'd have combined these two. A novelist decided to bring in some extra cash by selling shares in his future US royalties. Though, on reflection, perhaps amusing isn't the right word. There is something sad about having to trade on your future potential because you can't get enough money to undertake your profession based on what you've already done. But there is something intriguing about the publicity possibilities in such a move. Sadly, once done, I think it would be tough to get attention a second time. All you have to do is come up with the next outrageous gimmick to get media attention on your book, which is really where you want it.

A Must Read for Book Authors

I literally just finished going through the Businessweek article, The Online Fan World of the Twilight Vampire Books, and cannot reccomend it strongly enough to anyone writing fiction or nonfiction books. This is a story of a woman who used online intelligently and imaginatively:

Meyers success isnt due simply to her vivid imagination for vampire romance. She also figured out before almost anyone in the book industry how to connect with readers over the Internet and inspire them to build on her work. Since Meyer published the first Twilight book in 2005, she has reached out to readers on social networking sites, such as MySpace (NWS), and participated in online discussion groups. Fired-up fans have championed her books on Amazon.com (AMZN) and set up their own sites, such as Twilight Lexicon and TwilightMOMS. That has helped propel sales of the series to 7.5 million books. "Other authors have pockets of fans online, but nothing to this extent," says Trevor Dayton, a vice-president at Indigo, Canada's leading bookseller. "Stephenie Meyers Twilight series is the first social networking best seller."

To be fair, her publisher, Little Brown, saw the possibilities and got behind her first novel, as it paid $750,000 for a three-book deal. But that could have flopped. And it's not as though she was a trained marketeer. Instead, Meyer started taking up opportunities that presented themselves. Will every book pushed online do this type of business? Absolutely not. Run quickly from any "silver bullet" solution to your marketing needs. However, the example shows how it is possible to go beyond what the publisher alone can or will do.

How Many Kindles Have Sold? Almost a Quarter Million

Through an inside source, the blog TechCrunch has a lead on the number of Kindle e-book readers that Amazon has sold: 240,000, which turns out to be a lot of money -- probably over $100 million though some estimations that I found reasonably done. Over the next year, estimates of how many more Kindle units that Amazon will sell seem to be running between about a half million and upwards of 750,000. It's hardly the whole book buying public, but this shows a readiness of many consumers for electronic book reading. That will affect publisher and, therefore, author business strategies.

Contract Review: More Magazine (New Version)

I received another More contract. This one is a bit different from the More contract I reviewed in March, so what I'll do is cover the areas where there's a difference. Please remember that I'm not a lawyer, that this is not legal advice, and that it's always possible to try and negotiation contract changes with publishers. Also, be aware that Meredith is known for having multiple contracts, so my review of this version may not be of help if you get a different one.

• Grant of Rights This is the single most heavily restructured section of the contract, however, from my reading, the new one largely just makes explicit what the previous version allowed.
  
  First, More magazine gets six months exclusive use after being first to publish the piece. Then Meredith can reuse the material in print, in any of its magazines (and I'd have to assume that would include custom publications). The contract also says that Meredith can distribute the article "in any other device, medium or mode of communication, whether now known or hereafter developed, throughout the World, upon payment of five percent (5%) of the Fee." At least there is some extra payment, and I'm guessing this is angled toward magazine distribution through the Kindle.
  
  Use on More's web site is the same as before. There is also the right after the exclusivity period to run the article on other Meredith sites for an additional five percent of the fee. It's not clear to me whether this is one time payment for use on all sites, or a per site payment. I suspect the former, but it would be good to get a contract change to make that clearer.
  
  Another use, and, again, this would have been allowed under the previous contract, I think, Meredith can authorize others "to use the Work to promote Meredith or any Meredith publications or web sites in which the Work is published," which means that could take out some sources of income and help dilute the market for the material.
  
  The company can put the article into any "version or edition of the Magazine or derivative thereof published outside the United States, including the right to reproduce and distribute the Work as part of such version or edition, in print or electronic form or in any other device, medium or mode of communication."
  
  The contract explicitly states that Meredith can syndicate the article, although I think a reasonable interpretation of the previous contract would have enabled it to do so before.
  
  Meredith can authorize reprints and allow third parties to publish and distribute them for a 10 percent fee. Whether that is a one-time fee or per use is unclear. Also, this provision explicitly says that it doesn't come into affect for the previous two types of uses (subgraphs g and h), so I haven't the slightest idea when this would actually occur. It could be that they're talking about a classic reprint, which would mean reproducing the pages on which the article appeared originally in the magazine.
  
  The company can also give away copies or distribute in any way the article to non-profits for educational use.
  
  Much of this is unclear, and you'd need to get someone, probably from Meredith's legal department, to send you an email explaining what the differences are.


• Waiver of Moral Rights This clause is missing from the latest version.

Otherwise, the content of the two contracts seem pretty much the same, though some sections are shifted around a bit.

Important Clause in Blogging Contracts

When I wrote about eight important principles in negotiating contracts, I mentioned a recent negotiation I undertook for some blogging work I'm doing. What I didn't mention is a clause that is of particular import in this line of work: traffic payment triggers. Many sites base their pay at least in part on traffic. Often, certain thresholds of page views result in a bonus. But accompanying bonuses can be an expectation of minimum traffic levels, below which a writer does not get paid.

I can understand trying to give writers incentives to pull in more traffic, and they can work to everyone's benefit, but there is a bottom line degree of marketing that the site owner must do. Yet, because many sites have implemented such a demand, there is some expectation of this being "reasonable." Obviously it isn't; asking writers to help create increased success is one thing, but expecting them to guarantee traffic unfairly shifts a responsibility of the business owner to the contractor.

I did find a negotiation strategy that worked. In the contract was also, as one might expect, a termination clause, giving either party the right to end the association with a certain amount of notice. I argued that as I am a professional writer, I must be paid if I'm producing the required work, but as the company could terminate the agreement without cause, it was free to do that should the traffic not meet its minimum expectations. Had they said no, I would have walked, even though there was an exemption for a number of months, as they realized that the site was still ramping up. Because I had already been doing some work during the negotiations, and they had seen a building of traffic, they were probably disinclined to have me leave. If they were happy to see me leave, then it was a relationship that wouldn't have lasted long anyway.

In contracts for online work, remember that practices are still developing, and writers overly anxious for exposure and an outlet have often encouraged ones that are simply untenable for a professional. Don't get outraged. Instead, Break apart the roles as laid out in the contract, contrast them to accepted basic business customs and look for other protections that the contract gives the publisher.

Amazon Buys AbeBooks

Canadian online book reseller AbeBooks announced today that Amazon is acquiring the company

AbeBooks will continue to operate as a stand-alone business with all aspects of AbeBooks’ bookseller and customer experience remaining intact. AbeBooks’ headquarters will remain in Victoria, BC, Canada, and our European offices will remain in Dusseldorf, Germany. We will continue to support both our international marketplaces and our domestic marketplace here in Canada. I will continue to lead AbeBooks.

We expect this change to allow AbeBooks to expand its offerings and introduce new features and services to enhance the book buying and selling experience. Amazon is committed to further developing the AbeBooks brand and building upon the success of the past 12 years. This is not the first time AbeBooks has changed hands since being launched in 1996. Hubert Burda Media, a German media company, took a majority shareholding in 2003.

First, I find it very hard to believe that the "we want to keep you as you are" was either sincerely delivered or ever said. Large companies don't generally do acquisitions in closely aligned businesses to keep them running as standalone entities, and the AbeBooks referral model to third party resellers is exactly what Amazon does. Put the two together, and you have fewer markets for books, and more control in one set of hands.

As Amazon has shown with its push to force publishers using POD to get their service from the online giant, it wants to dominate the book industry, both as a reseller and as an industry vendor. They've been trying to lock up business on the Kindle, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if the company soon bought a book publishing outlet. They could print their own copies, they already have distribution and warehousing, and, with a smart acquisition, probably could do at least as well as Barnes & Noble.

Now you can expect Amazon to push on the used book presence it has let tiny third parties pioneer and develop on its site. I suspect it will be another major blow to the industry independent resellers, many of whom have found that the only way to make a living was to shift to online selling.

I have had nothing against Amazon on principle, even with creating a market for used books. But the company is trying to control too much, and that is clearly bad for the industry as a whole. It may be that they think they are "saving" the industry, though I'd bet that most of the managers' time there is simply spent on how to keep growing their own company.

Mediabistro for Nothing? (UPDATED)

I saw the story that Forrester bought Jupiter Media for about $23 million. However, Jupiter bought Mediabistro not too long ago for about the same amount of money. So what's going on? My guess is that the MB purchase may have been a not-too-smart acquisition, because what company buys another for X and then sells itself, with said acquisition, for the same amount of money? Jupiter must have been flailing about.

It does make me wonder about the long-term viability of MB. Forrester used to publish its own magazine not too long ago, but apparently didn't like the return they were getting on the investment and so scuttled the whole thing. MB seems to be peripheral to what Forrester does, which is market analysis and research. I'm guessing that they either shut the whole thing down or try to spin it off, though I'm not sure who would pick it up. Here's a tip of the hat to Ms. Touby for fabulous timing and getting out when the market crested.

Big Update

Looks like I am wrong and misread the story in a major way, as pointed out by a reader who used to work at Jupiter. It was JupiterResearch that Forrester bought, not JupiterMedia. The latter sold the former off Jupiter Research a year or two ago to a private equity firm, and it's the private equity firm that did the deal with Forrester. Ah, well, nothing like the dangers of reading and posting too quickly.

Even More Updating

I was curious about the quick spinaround, so I did some poking. The private equity firm, MCG Capital Corporation, bought JupiterResearch for $10.1 million in mid-2006. So it's more than doubled its money in two years. Not bad. Now, quick, someone stop me before I update again.