Anything that relies on a book going out of print is out of date. Print on demand and e-publishing have made it possible to keep a book in print forever at almost no cost. Something to be aware of.
I confess, the experiences I’ve had making Fragments has been a huge learning process x.x I read over the article Watts did for the front page of FWG and found it validated much of what I had learned. I hope to dig around the links in this thread and learn even more before tackling another paid anthology.
This the right place to ask this question?
I’m trying to organize an erotica anthology and one of the writers I’ve invited asked if there were any plans for the authors to receive proceeds from the sales if it goes well. After I said in the first message that I’d pay on acceptance of their stories. Admittedly, they have no prior experience with anthology writing.
What would you suggest I say next.
At least in the fandom, it’s pretty standard to give the author a one-time payment, along with a copy of the finished book. Other markets outside of the fandom will sometimes pay royalties for anthologies as well. The biggest reason being that fandom anthologies don’t make enough money for royalties to every author to be worth it.
When I was editing my Cats and More Cats anthology for FurPlanet, a reprint anthology of stories first published in original-paperback anthologies 15 to 20 years earlier and long out of print, we had a couple of authors who refused reprint permission because we wouldn’t pay royalties as well as the $50 flat fee and a copy of our book, which I understand is the normal fee for a reprint of a short story that isn’t a best-seller or award-winner. The reason for our refusal was that the royalties for a short story in such an anthology would have been minuscule, but would have legally required filing a royalties-owed statement every six months(?), and a cheque for the money owed, which would have been 2¢ or 3¢ for a story in a FurPlanet anthology. The statement would have been required to be sent to the author even if there was no royalty for that period. In other words, the bookkeeping/bureaucracy would have cost FurPlanet far more than the $50 flat fee, and would not have gained the authors anything appreciable. They might not have even bothered to cash a cheque for 2¢. But they insisted, so we did not reprint their stories.
Most professional authors had no trouble with our $50 flat fee. A couple even expressed gratitude that we were interested in their forgotten story.
I should add that, today, a print-on-demand book usually never officially goes out-of-print, so a contract that returns reprint rights to the author “when the book goes out of print” is worthless.
My Watching Anime, Reading Manga that was published in September 2004 by Stone Bridge Press is still in print because of electronic printing, even though the 2004 trade paperback version sold out long ago. I still get a royalty statement from Stone Bridge every six months – the last was in October for 14 e-book copies sold during the first half of 2016. It was accompanied by Stone Bridge’s cheque for $31.78.
http://www.stonebridge.com/catalog/watching-anime-reading-manga-1
I asked the publisher I was looking at for the anthology if they had any contracts I could give my contributors and they sent this back.
If you purchase work from others then it's up to you and the writers who made that work if you're allowed to sell it. We would not need each of them to sign a contract but by signing ours you will be stating that the work is yours to sell and if legal disputes due arise from the other authors it is your responsibility to bear.
Most of the in-fandom publishers will take care of the contract for you, but from what I’ve heard, it’d not uncommon to have the editor take care of any agreements between them and the editor, so that the publisher is only dealing with contracts from one person. I like to have paperwork more under my controls so I’ve always done it this way for my own anthologies, but it was less expected and more tolerated.
If you’ve worked with any of the fandom editors that have dealt with writing such contracts or publishers, it may be worth asking them if they’d be willing to provide you with a sample contract that you can alter and use for your anthology. The big things you’d be looking to include are:
- The author gives you rights to publish the anthology (whether exclusive or nonexclusive is up to you) for X amount of time
- The type of formats the author is giving you rights to print in (print, digital, audio, etc) and in what languages and region(s)
- The author owns the work they are submitting
- When rights will revert back to the author
- Explanation of compensation, whatever that may be
You WOULD need to get some of this information from the publisher, though. For example, if you only ask for exclusive rights to the story for six months, and they require them for a year, you’d have to go back to the authors with updated contracts.
Hope this helps a bit!