The career novelist

17

CHAPTER

Electronic Rights:

Power Source or Static?

THIS MEANS WAR!
AFTER A FEW SKIRMISHES IN THE EARLY NINETIES, FULL-SCALE
war broke out in the skyscraper-lined canyons of Manhattan in
October, 1993.
The opponents: book publishers vs. authors and agents.
The issue-, electronic rights.
The inciting incident: the appearance of a new Random House con-
tract with a killer electronic-rights clause. A full legal page long, this
shocking clause enumerated every known form of electronic pub-
lishing and granted control of each one of them (plus any yet to be
invented) to Random House. Worse, the revenue share assigned to
authors was a paltry 5 percent. Worse still, when agents called
Random House to complain they were coldly informed that there
could be no changes to this awful clause. None. Never. It was in
every case, they said, a deal-breaker. Needless to say, technology-
savvy agents and authors hit the roof.
War erupted.
Quickly, authors' organizations fired off batteries of statements in
support of authors. The Authors Guild and the American Society of
Journalists and Authors issued a joint statement that November urg-
ing authors to hang on to their electronic rights, and recommending
stiff contract language for cases in which they were forced to sell. The
National Writers Union also shot off a position paper the following
April, this one concerned with works originally created in multimedia. 203